Part 12

In a letter to “dear Leonardo” of this time he sent a “complete list of drawings for the _Volpone_,” suggested its being made a companion volume to _The Rape of the Lock_, and asked Smithers to announce it in _The Athenæum_. Besides the now famous and beautiful _Cover_, he planned 24 subjects, as Smithers states in his dedication of _Volpone_ to Beardsley’s mother, though the fine initials which he did execute are, strangely enough, not even mentioned in that list. He reveals that the frontispiece is to be, like the design of the prospectus, _Volpone and his treasure_, but that is to be in line and wash--obviously in the style of _The Lady and the Monkey_--yet strangely enough, the remaining 23 subjects he distinctly puts down as being in “line”! And it is in this letter that he promises “a line drawing for a Prospectus in a few days,” stating especially that it will be a less elaborate and line version of the _Frontispiece_--and that it is not to appear in the book. We have the line drawing for the _Prospectus_--and we can only guess what a fine thing would have been this same design treated in the manner of _The Lady and the Monkey_ or the _Initials_. That, in this list, 23 of the 24 designs were to be in line is a little baffling in face of the fact that the _Initials_ were in the new method, line with pencil employed like a wash, and that Beardsley himself definitely states, as we shall see in a letter written on the 19th of this month, that the drawings are a complete departure in method from anything he had yet done, which the _Initials_ certainly were.

On the 8th of December, Beardsley wrote to “friend Smithers,” sending the _Cover Design for Volpone_ and the _Design for the Prospectus of Volpone_, begging for proofs, especially of the _Design for the Prospectus_, “on various papers at once.” Smithers sent the proofs of the two blocks with a present of some volumes of Racine for Beardsley’s Christmas cheer. The beautiful _Miniature_ edition of _The_ _Rape of the Lock_, with Beardsley’s special _Cover-design in gold on scarlet_, had just been published--the “little Rapelets” as Beardsley called them.

However, these 24 designs for the _Volpone_ were never to be. But we know something about them from a letter to Smithers, written on the 19th of December, which he begins with reference to the new magazine of _The Peacock_ projected by Smithers, of which more later. Whilst delighted with the idea of editing _The Peacock_, Beardsley expresses fear lest the business and turmoil of the new venture may put the _Volpone_ into second place, and he begs that it shall not be so, that there shall be no delay in its production. He evidently sent the _Initials_ with this letter, for he underlines that _Volpone_ is to be an important book, as Smithers can judge from the drawings that Beardsley is now sending him--indeed the _Initials_ were, alas! all that he was ever destined to complete--the 24 illustrations were not to be. That these _Initials_ were the designs sent is further made clear by the remark that the new work is a complete, “a marked departure as illustrative and decorative work from any other arty book published for many years.” He pronounces in the most unmistakable terms that he has left behind him definitely all his former methods. He promises the drawings to be printed in the text by the first week in January, and that they shall be “good work, the best I have ever done.”

On the morrow of Christmas, Beardsley was writing to Smithers, urging on the production of the _Prospectus for Volpone_; and it is interesting to find in this Yuletide letter that the fine drawing in line and wash, in his aquatint style, of _The Lady and the Monkey_, was originally intended for the _Volpone_ and not for the set of the _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ in which it eventually appeared; but was cast out of the _Volpone_ by Beardsley as “it will be quite out of keeping with the rest of the initials.” So that the style of the Initials was clearly the method he had intended to employ for his illustrations.

What his remarkable creative fancy and dexterity of hand designed for the illustrations to _Volpone_ only _The Lady and the Monkey_ and the _Initials_ can hint to us--he was never to create them.

The sunshine and the warmth, the picturesque surroundings of the place, the mountains and the sea, brought back hope to the plagued fellow; and again he clambered out of the grave. Languor and depression left him. He was on the edge of Yuletide and had known no cold or chill; indeed his only “grievance is mosquitoes.” He would weigh himself anxiously, fearful of a set-back at every turn.

* * * * *

Now, a fantastically tragic fact of Beardsley’s strange career--a fact that Max Beerbohm alone of all those who have written upon Beardsley has noticed--was the very brief period of the public interest in him. Beardsley arose to a universal fame at a bound--with _The Yellow Book_; he fell from the vogue with as giddy a suddenness. With the last number of _The Savoy_ he had vanished from the public eye almost as though he had never been. The Press no longer recorded his doings; and his failure to keep the public interest with _The Savoy_, and all its superb achievement, left but a small literary and artistic coterie in London sufficiently interested in his doings to care or enquire whether he were alive or dead or sick or sorry, or even as to what new books he was producing. The _Book of Fifty Drawings_ seemed to have written Finis to his career. Nobody realised this, nor had better cause to realise it, than Leonard Smithers. It had been intended to continue _The Savoy_ in more expensive form as a half-yearly volume; but Smithers found that it was hopeless as a financial venture--it had all ended in smoke. Smithers was nevertheless determined to fan the public homage into life again with a new magazine the moment he thought it possible. And the significance of the now very rare “newspaper cutting” had not been lost upon Beardsley himself. So it had come about that Smithers had planned the new magazine, to be called _The Peacock_, to appear in the April of 1898, to take the place of _The Savoy_; and had keenly interested Beardsley in the venture. For once Beardsley’s flair for a good title failed him, and he would have changed the name of _The Peacock_ to _Books and Pictures_, which sounded commonplace enough to make _The Peacock_ appear quite good when otherwise it seemed somewhat pointless.

[Illustration: INITIAL FOR “VOLPONE”]

Beardsley’s letter of the 19th of December to Smithers was clearly in reply to the urging of Smithers that Beardsley should be the editor of his new magazine _The Peacock_ and should design the cover and whatever else was desired by Smithers. But Beardsley makes one unswerving condition, and but one--that “it is quite _agreed that Oscar Wilde contributes nothing to the magazine, anonymously, pseudonymously or otherwise_.” The underlining is Beardsley’s. Beardsley’s detestation of Wilde, and of all for which Wilde stood in the public eye, is the more pronounced seeing that both men had entered the Church of Rome with much publicity. Beardsley would not have Wilde in any association with him at any price.... Before Beardsley leaves the subject of _The Peacock_ he undertakes to design “a resplendent peacock in black and white” and reminds Smithers that he has “already some fine wash drawings” of his from which he can choose designs for the first number of the magazine. So that we at least know that this first number of _The Peacock_ was to have had a resplendent peacock in black and white for its cover, and that it was to have been adorned with the superb decorations for _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, the supreme artistic achievement of Beardsley’s resplendent skill. He outstripped in beauty of handling even his already exquisite craftsmanship: and it is the most tragic part of his tragedy of life that he was to die before he had given the world the further fulfilment of his wondrous artistry--leaving us wondering as to what further heights he might have scaled.

Beardsley knew full well that these drawings in line and wash, in his “aquatint” style, were his supreme achievement.

We know from a letter from Beardsley in this month that Smithers was still at his little office at No. 4, in the Royal Arcade, off Bond Street, whence Smithers sent me a coloured engraving of the _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, at Beardsley’s request, which had been beautifully reproduced in a very limited edition. Though Beardsley himself realised his weakness in oil painting, he would have made a mark in watercolours, employed with line, like coloured engravings.

But the gods had willed that it should not be.

Beardsley always had the astuteness to give great pains and care to the planning of his prospectuses--he watched over them with fatherly anxiety and solicitude. But what is less known is the very serious part he played on the literary editor’s side of the magazine of which he was art-editor. And in his advice to Smithers concerning the new venture of _The Peacock_, he has left to us not only the astute pre-vision upon which he insisted to Smithers, but he reveals his own tastes and ideals in very clear terms. The magazine, as he wisely warns Smithers, should not be produced “unless you have piles of stuff up your editorial sleeves.” And he proceeded to lay down with trenchant emphasis his ideals for the conduct of a magazine and, incidently, his opinions of the art and literature of the day, revealing a shrewd contempt for the pushful mediocrities who had elbowed their way into the columns of _The Yellow Book_ and even _The Savoy_. “The thing,” he writes, “must be edited with a savage strictness, and very definite ideas about everything get aired in it. Let us give birth to no more little backbone-less babies. A little well-directed talent is in a periodical infinitely more effective than any amount of sporadic and desultory genius (especially when there is no genius to be got).” Beardsley gives in more detail his mature attitude towards literature: “On the literary side, impressionistic criticism and poetry and cheap short-storyness should be gone for. I think the critical element should be paramount. Let verse be printed very sparingly.... I should advise you to let Gilbert Burgess do occasional things for us. Try to get together a staff. Oh for a Jeffreys or a Gibbon, or anybody with something to say.”... And then we get in definite terms his sympathies and antipathies in art--“On the art side, I suggest that it should attack _untiringly and unflinchingly_ the Burne-Jones and Morrisian mediæval business, and set up a wholesome 17th and 18th century standard of what picture making should be.”

There we have Beardsley’s whole range and also, be it confessed, his limitations. To the 18th century he owed all; and on the edge of eternity, unreservedly, frankly, and honourably, he made the solemn confession of his artistic faith.

X

THE END

1898

Yet the cruelty of Fate but more grimly pursued the stricken man with relentless step. December went out in “a pitiless drench of rain.” It kept Beardsley indoors. A week of it gave place to the sunshine again, and his hopes were reborn.

So the Yuletide of 1897 came and went; and the New Year broke, with Beardsley dreaming restless dreams of further conquests.

In the early days of the New Year, the dying man’s hopes were raised by the sight of “a famous Egyptologist who looks like a corpse, has looked like one for fourteen years, who is much worse than I am, & yet lives on and does things. My spirits have gone up immensely since I have known him.”... But the middle of the month saw the cold north-east wind come down on Mentone, and it blew the flickering candle of Beardsley’s life to its guttering. After the 25th of January he never again left his room. February sealed his fate. He took to his bed, from which he arose but fitfully, yet at least he was granted the inestimable boon of being able to read. The Egyptologist also took to his bed--a bad omen for Beardsley. By the end of February the poor plagued fellow had lost heart--he felt the grave deepening and could not summon the will any further to clamber out of it.

[Illustration: THE DEATH OF PIERROT

“_As the dawn broke, Pierrot fell into his last sleep. Then upon tip-toe, silently up the stair, noiselessly into the room, came the comedians Arlecchino, Pantaleone, il Dottore, and Columbina, who with much love carried away upon their shoulders, the white frocked clown of Bergamo; whither, we know not._”]

The sands in the hour-glass of Pierrot were running low. It was soon a fearful effort to use his beloved pen. Anxious to complete his designs and decorations for the _Volpone_, and remembering the pushing forward of the _Prospectus_ that he had urged on the publisher, he had fallen back on the pencil--as the elaborately drawn _Initial_ letters show--for each of the scenes in _Volpone_, employing pencil with the consummate tact and beauty of craftsmanship that had marked his pen line and his aquatintesques in line and wash. Whatever dreams he had of full-paged illustrations in line and wash had now to be abandoned. Just as in his Great Period of _The Savoy_ he had come nearer to nature and had discovered the grass on the fields and flowers in the woods to be as decorative under the wide heavens as they were when cut in glasses “at Goodyears” in the Royal Arcade; just as he had found that fabrics, gossamer or silk or brocade, were as decorative as were flat black masses; just as he found intensely musical increase in the orchestration of his line as he admitted nature into his imagination; so now he came still nearer to nature with the pencil, and his Satyr as a terminal god illumined by the volume of atmosphere and lit by the haunting twilight, like his Greek column against the sky, took on quite as decorative a form as any flatness of black or white in his Japanesque or Greek Vase-painting phases. But as his skilled fingers designed the new utterance to his eager spirit, the fragile body failed him--at last the unresponsive pencil fell from his bloodless fingers--his work was done.

As the young fellow lay a-dying on the 7th of March, nine days before he died he scribbled with failing fingers that last appeal from the Hotel Cosmopolitain at Mentone to his friend the publisher Leonard Smithers that he himself had put beyond that strange man’s power to fulfil--even had he had the will--for “the written word remains,” and, printed, is scattered to the four winds of heaven:

Jesus is our Lord & Judge

Dear Friend, I implore you to destroy all copies of Lysistrata & bad drawings. Show this to Pollitt and conjure him to do same. By all that is holy--all obscene drawings.

Aubrey Beardsley. In my death agony.

But this blotting out was now beyond any man’s doing. The bitter repentance of the dying Beardsley conforms but ill with the canting theories of such apologists as hold that Beardsley was a satirist lashing the vices of his age. Beardsley had no such delusions, made no such claims, was guiltless of any such self-righteousness. He faced the stern facts of his own committing; and almost with the last words he wrote he condemned the acts of his hands that had sullied a marvellous achievement--and he did so without stooping to any attempt at palliation or excuse. His dying eyes gazed unflinchingly at the truth--and the truth was very naked. The jackals who had egged him on to base ends and had sniggered at his obscenities, when his genius might have been soaring in the empyrean, could bring him scant comfort as he looked back upon the untidy patches of his wayfaring; nor were they the likely ones to fulfil his agonised last wishes--indeed, almost before his poor racked body was cold, they were about to exploit not only the things he desired to be undone, but they were raking together for their own profit the earlier crude designs that they knew full well Beardsley had striven his life long to keep from publication owing to their wretched mediocrity of craftsmanship.

On the sixteenth day of the March of 1898, at twenty-five years and seven months, his mother and his sister by his side, the racked body was stilled, and the soul of Aubrey Beardsley passed into eternity. The agonised mother who had been his devoted companion and guardian throughout this long twelvemonth of flitting flight from death, together with his beloved sister Mabel Beardsley, were with him to the end. They were present at the Cathedral Mass; and “there was music.” So the body of Aubrey Beardsley was borne along the road that winds from the Cathedral to the burial place that “seemed like the way of the Cross--it was long and steep and we walked.” They laid him to rest in a grave on the edge of the hill hewn out of the rock, a sepulchre with an arched opening and a stone closing it, so that they who took their last walk beside him “thought of the sepulchre of The Lord.”

Hail and Farewell!

[Illustration: AVE ATQVE VALE]

A KEY TO THE DATES OF WORKS BY AUBREY BEARDSLEY ACCORDING TO THE STYLE OF HIS SIGNATURE

PUERILIA

Mid-1888 he comes to town

JUVENILIA

Mid-1889 to Mid-1891, blank of achievement

FORMATIVE PERIOD--BURNE-JONESESQUES

Mid-1891 to Mid-1892

During these three periods, up to Mid-1892, Beardsley signs with three initials A. V. B.

MEDIÆVALISM AND THE HAIRY-LINE JAPANESQUES

The _Morte d’Arthur_ and _Bon Mots_

Mid-1892 to Mid-1893. Begins the “Japanesque mark”--the _stunted_ mark.

In the Spring of 1893, with the coming of “The Studio,” and the ending of this period, Beardsley cuts the V out of his initials and out of his signature. He now signs A. B. or A. BEARDSLEY or AUBREY B. in ill-shaped “rustic” capitals, when he does not employ the “Japanesque mark,” even sometimes when he does employ it.

“SALOME”

Mid-1893 to the New Year 1894. The “Japanesque mark” becomes longer, more slender, and more graceful.

“THE YELLOW BOOK” OR GREEK VASE PERIOD

This ran from the New Year 1894 to Mid-1895; and in the middle of this _Yellow Book_ period, that is, in Mid-1894, he signs the “Japanesque mark” for the last time.

THE GREAT PERIOD

I. “_The Savoy_” and II. “_The Aquatintesques_” Mid-1895 to Yuletide 1896 1897

From Mid-1895 Beardsley signs in plain block capitals, right up to the end--the only difference being that in the last phase of the _Aquatintesque line and wash_ work with the few line drawings of this time, that is from Mid-1896, he signs as a rule only the initials A. B. in plain block capitals, but now usually _in a corner of his design_, either in or without a small square label.

“AUBREY BEARDSLEY” HAS BEEN DESIGNED BY ROBERT S. JOSEPHY AND PRINTED UNDER HIS SUPERVISION BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS BINGHAMTON NEW YORK

Transcriber's Notes:

Repetative heading for - The Key to dates...- has been removed.

Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.

Perceived typographical errors have been changed.