Part 5
Now, though the _Morte d’Arthur_ was in large part done before _The Studio_ eulogy by Pennell appeared in this April of 1893, otherwise the eulogy would never have been written, it is well to cast a glance at Beardsley’s art as it was first revealed to an indifferent public in _The Studio_ article. There are examples from the _Morte d’Arthur_, of which the very fine chapter-heading of the knights in combat on foot amongst the dandelion-like leaves of a forest, with their sword-like decoration, was enough to have made any reputation. The most mediocre design of the lot, a tedious piece of Renaissance mimicry of Mantegna called _The Procession of Joan of Arc entering Orleans_ was curiously enough the favourite work of Beardsley’s own choice a year gone by when he made it--so far had he now advanced beyond this commonplace untidy emptiness! Yet the writers on art seem to have been more impressed by this futility than by the far more masterly _Morte d’Arthur_ decorations. If the writers were at sea, the public can scarce be blamed. The _Siegfried Act II_ of mid-1892, which Beardsley had given to his patron Burne-Jones, shows excellent, if weird and fantastic, combination by Beardsley of his Japanesque and Burne-Jonesesque mimicry--it is his typically early or “hairy-line” Japanesque, hesitant in stroke and thin in quality. The _Birthday of Madame_ _Cigale_ and _Les Revenants de Musique_ show the Japanesque more asserting itself over the mock mediæval, and are akin to _Le Debris d’un Poète_ and _La Femme Incomprise_. But there was also a Japanesque in _The Studio_ which was to have an effect on Beardsley’s destiny that he little foresaw! There had been published in the February of 1893 in French the play called _Salome_ by Oscar Wilde, which made an extraordinary sensation in literary circles and in the Press. Throughout the newspapers was much controversy about the leopard-like ecstasy of Salome when the head of John the Baptist has been given to her on a salver: “J’ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan; j’ai baisé ta bouche.” Beardsley, struck by the lines, made his now famous Japanesque drawing, just in time to be included in _The Studio_ which was to appear in April. It was this design that, a few weeks later, decided Elkin Mathews and John Lane that in Beardsley they had found the destined illustrator of the English _Salome_, translated by Lord Alfred Douglas, which was soon to appear. In that _Salome_ was to be a marvellous significance for Aubrey Beardsley.
It is interesting to note in surveying the first number of _The Studio_, the rapid development of Beardsley’s art from the fussy flourishy design of this _Salome_ drawing to the more severe and restrained edition of the same design that was so soon to appear in the book. The hairy Japanesque line has departed.
Note also another fact: The title of the article published in _The Studio_ first number shows that in March 1893 when it was written at latest, Beardsley had decided to drop his middle name of Vincent; and the V forthwith disappears from the initials and signature to his work--the last time it was employed was on the indifferent large pencil drawing of _Sandro Botticelli_ made in 1893 about the time that _The_ _Studio_ was to appear, as Vallance tells us, having been made by Beardsley to prove his own contention that an artist made his figures unconsciously like himself, whereupon at Vallance’s challenge he proceeded to build a Sandro Botticelli from Botticelli’s paintings. Vallance is unlikely to have made a mistake about the date, but the work has the hesitation and the lack of drawing and of decision of the year before.
Above all, an absolutely new style has been born. Faked Mediævalism is dead--and buried. Whistler’s Peacock Room has triumphed. Is it possible that Beardsley’s visit to the Peacock Room was at this time, and not so early as 1891? At any rate Beardsley is now to mimic Whistler’s peacocks so gorgeously painted on the shutters on the Peacock Room as he had heretofore imitated Burne-Jones.
* * * * *
By his twenty-first birthday, then, Beardsley had practically done with the _Morte d’Arthur_; and it was only by the incessant prayers and supplications of Dent and the solemn urging of Frederick Evans to the young fellow to fulfil his word of honour and his bond, that Beardsley was persuaded, grudgingly, to make another design for it. He was wearied to tears by the book, and had utterly cast mediævalism from him before he was through it. He was now intensely and feverishly concentrated on the development of the Japanesque. And he was for ever poring over the Greek vase-paintings at the British Museum. And another point must be pronounced, if we are to understand Beardsley; with returning bodily vigour he was encouraging that erotic mania so noticeable in gifted consumptives, so that eroticism became the dominant emotion and significance in life to him. He was steeping himself in study of phallic worship--and when all’s said, the worship of sex has held a very important place in the earlier civilizations, and is implicit in much that is not so early.
It was indeed fortunate for Dent that he had procured most of the decorations he wanted for the _Morte d’Arthur_ in the young fellow’s first few months of vigorous enthusiasm for the book in the dying end of the year of 1892, to which half year the _Morte d’Arthur_ almost wholly belongs in Beardsley’s achievement. Dent was thereby enabled to launch on the publication of the parts in the June of 1893, about the time that Beardsley, changing his home, was to be turning his back on mediævalism and Burne-Jonesism for ever. It is obvious to such as search the book that the _Morte d’Arthur_ was never completed--we find designs doing duty towards the end again more than once--but Dent had secured enough to make this possible without offensive reiteration.
There appeared in the _Pall Mall Magazine_ for June 1893, drawn in April 1893, as the first _Studio_ number was appearing, a design known as _The Neophyte_, or to give its full affected name, “_Of a Neophyte, and how the Black Art was revealed unto him by the Fiend Asomuel_”; it was followed in the July number by a drawing of May 1893 called _The Kiss of Judas_--both drawings reveal an unmistakable change in handling, and the _Neophyte_ a remarkable firmness of andform, and a strange hauntingness and atmosphere heretofore unexpressed. Beardsley had striven to reach it again and again in his Burne-Jonesque frontispiece to the _Morte d’Arthur_ and kindred works in his “hairy line”; but the work of Carlos Schwabe and other so-called symbolists was being much talked of at this time, and several French illustrators were reaching quite wonderful effects through it--it was not lost on Beardsley’s quick mind, especially its grotesque possibilities.
[Illustration: “OF A NEOPHYTE AND HOW THE BLACK ART WAS REVEALED UNTO HIM”]
It is easy for the layman and the business man to blame Beardsley for shrinking from fulfilling his bond as regards a contract for a long sequence of drawings to illustrate a book; but it is only just to recognise that it requires a frantic and maddening effort of will in any artist to keep going back and employing a treatment that he has left behind him and rejected, and when he has advanced to such a handling as _The Neophyte_. This difficulty for Beardsley will be more obvious to the lay mind a little further on.
It is a peculiar irony that attributes Beardsley’s _Morte d’Arthur_ phase to 1893-94; for whilst it is true that it was from mid-1893 that the book began to be published, Beardsley had turned his back upon it for months--indeed his principal drawings had been made for it in late 1892, and only with difficulty could they be extracted from him even in early 1893! The second of the two elaborate drawings in his “hairy line” called _The Questing Beast_ is dated by Beardsley himself “March 8, 1893”--as for 1894, it would have been impossible for Beardsley by that time to make such a drawing. Even as it is, the early 1893 decorations differ utterly from the more mediæval or Burne-Jonesesques decorations of late 1892; and by the time the _Morte d’Arthur_ began to be given to the public, Beardsley, as we have seen, had completely rejected his whole Burne-Jones convention.
The two cover-designs for _The Studio No. I_ in April 1893 were obviously drawn at the same time as the design for the covers of the _Morte d’Arthur_--in the early Spring of 1893. They could well be exchanged without the least loss. They practically write Finis to the _Morte d’Arthur_ drawings. They make a good full stop to the record of Beardsley’s achievement in his twentieth year.
There is a story told of Dent’s anxieties over Beardsley’s exasperating procrastination in delivering the later drawings for the _Morte d’Arthur_ on the eve of its appearing in numbers. Dent called on Mrs. Beardsley to beg her influence with Beardsley to get on with the work. Mrs. Beardsley went upstairs at once to see Beardsley who was still in bed, and to remonstrate with him on Dent’s behalf. Beardsley, but half awake, lazily answered his mother’s chiding with:
There was a young man with a salary Who had to do drawings for Malory; When they asked him for more, he replied “Why? Sure You’ve enough, as it is, for a gallery.”
As Beardsley’s self chosen master, Watteau, had played with mimicry of the Chinese genius in his Chinoiseries, so Beardsley at twenty, faithful to Watteau, played with mimicry of the Japanese genius. And as Whistler had set the vogue in his Japanesques by adopting a Japanesque mark of a butterfly for signature, so Beardsley, not to be outdone in originality, now invented for himself his famous “Japanesque mark” of the three candles, with three flames--in the more elaborate later marks adding rounded puffs of candle-smoke--or as Beardsley himself called it, his “trademark.” To Beardsley his candles were as important a part of the tools of his craftsmanship as were his pen and paper and chinese ink; and it was but a fitting tribute to his light that he should make of it the emblem of his signature. But whether the “Japanesque mark” be candles or not, from the time he began to employ the Japanesque convention alongside of his mediævalism, for three years, until as we shall see he was expelled from _The Yellow Book_--his twentieth, twenty-first and twenty-second years--we shall find him employing the “Japanesque mark,” sometimes in addition to his name. So it is well to dwell upon it here.
The early “Japanesque mark” of Beardsley’s twentieth year (mid 1892 to mid-1893) was as we have seen, stunted, crude, and ill-shaped, and he employed it indifferently and incongruously on any type of his designs whether _Morte d’Arthur_ mediævalism or the Japanesque grotesques of his _Bon Mots_. And we have seen that it was in the middle of his twentieth year--he last used it in fact in the February of 1893--that he dropped the initial V for Vincent out of his initials and signature. He had employed A. V. B. in his Formative years. He signs henceforth as A. B. or A. Beardsley or even as Aubrey B.
In mid-1893, at twenty-one, we are about to see him launch upon his _Salome_ designs, as weary of the _Bon Mots_ grotesques as of the _Morte d’Arthur_ mediævalism; and we shall see his “Japanesque mark” become long, slender, and graceful, often elaborate--the V quite departed from his signature.
I have dwelt at length upon Beardsley’s “Japanesque mark,” or as he called it, his “trademark,” since his many forgers make the most amusing blunders by using the “Japanesque mark” in particular on forgeries of later styles when he had wholly abandoned it!
[Illustration]
From mid-1892 to mid-1893, Beardsley then had advanced in craftsmanship by leaps and bounds, nevertheless he was unknown at twenty-one except to a small artistic circle. The _Bon Mots_ grotesques, mostly done in the last half of 1892, began to appear, the first volume, _Sydney Smith and Sheridan_, in the April of 1893; the second volume at the year’s end, _Lamb and Douglas Jerrold_, in December 1893; and the third, the last volume, _Foote and Hooke_, in the February of 1894. The _Morte d’Arthur_ began to be published in parts in June 1893. The feverish creation of the mediæval designs in the late part of 1892 alongside of the _Bon Mots_ grotesques had exhausted Beardsley’s enthusiasm, and his style evaporated with the growth of his weariness--by mid-1893 he was finding the _Morte d’Arthur_ “very long-winded.” And what chilled him most, he found the public indifferent to both--yet Beardsley knew full well that his whole interest lay in publicity.
It has been complained against Beardsley that he broke his bond. This is a larger question and a serious question--but it _is_ a question. It depends wholly on whether he could fulfil his bond artistically, as well as on whether that bond were a just bargain. We will come to that. But it must be stressed that just as Beardsley had rapidly developed his craftsmanship and style during his work upon the mediævalism of the _Morte d’Arthur_, by that time he came near to the end of the book he had advanced quite beyond the style he had created for it; so also his next development was as rapid, and by the time he is at the end of his new Japanese phase in _Salome_ we shall see him again advancing so rapidly to a newer development of his style that he grew weary of the _Salome_ before he completed it, and threw in a couple of illustrations as makeweight which are utterly alien to the work and disfigure it. And yet these two drawings were made immediately after working upon this _Salome_, and were thrown in only out of a certain sense of resentment owing to the suppression of two designs not deemed to be circumspect enough. But Beardsley did not refuse to make new drawings in key with the rest--he had simply advanced to a new style quite alien to _Salome_, and he found he could not go back. This will be clearer when we come to the _Salome_.
So precisely with the _Morte d’Arthur_; even the last decorations he made were more akin to his Greek Vase style in _The Yellow Book_.
* * * * *
Before we leave the _Morte d’Arthur_, and the difficulties with Beardsley in which it ended, let us remember that artists and authors are often prone to ingratitude towards those who have led their steps to the ladder of Fame--and Beardsley was no exception. It was J. M. Dent who opened the gates for Beardsley to that realm which was to bring him the bays. Had it not been for Dent he would have died with his song wholly unsung--there would have been for him no _Studio_ “réclame,” no _Yellow Book_, no _Salome_, no _Savoy_. Dent, employing with rare vision the budding genius of the youth, brought forth an edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s immortal _Morte d’Arthur_ which is a triumph for English bookmaking--he gave us the supreme edition that can never be surpassed by mortal hands--he did so in a form within the reach of the ordinary man--and in the doing he made the much vaunted work of William Morris and his fellow-craftsmen appear second-rate, mechanical, and over-ornate toys for millionaires.
[Illustration: HEADPIECE FROM “LE MORTE D’ARTHUR”]
[Illustration: THE PEACOCK SKIRT
_from “Salome”_]
VI
THE JAPANESQUES
Mid-1893 to the New Year of 1894--Twenty-One
“SALOME”
Entered into the garden of his desire, by mid-1893 Beardsley was on the edge of manhood.
We have seen that a year or two gone by, Beardsley is said to have paid a visit to Whistler’s notorious Peacock Room at Prince’s Gate. He really knew Japanese art in but its cheapest forms and in superficial fashion, and the bastard Japanesque designs for the decoration of this mock-Japanesque room greatly influenced Beardsley without much critical challenge from him, especially the tedious attenuated furniture and the thin square bars of the wooden fitments. They appear in his designs of interiors for some time after this. His Japanesque _Caricature of Whistler_ on a seat, catching butterflies, is of this time.
Now, the Letter to his musical friend Scotson Clark, describing his visit to Whistler’s Peacock Room, is evidently undated, but it is put down to the year of 1891. It may be so. But I suspect that it was of the early part of 1893--at any rate, if earlier, it is curious that its effect on Beardsley’s art lay in abeyance for a couple of years, and then suddenly, in the Spring and Summer of 1893, his art and craftsmanship burst forth in designs of the _Salome_ founded frankly upon the convention of the superb peacocks on the shutters painted by Whistler for the Peacock Room. Why should this undisguised mimicry of Whistler have been delayed for two years?
But--as the slyly hung indecent Japanese prints upon his walls at this time revealed to the seeing eye--it was now to the work of the better Japanese masters that he chiefly owed his passing pupillage to Japan. The erotic designs of the better Japanese artists, not being saleable for London drawing-rooms, were low-priced and within Beardsley’s reach. His own intellectual and moral eroticism was fiercely attracted by these erotic Japanese designs; indeed it was the sexualism of such Japanese masters that drew Beardsley to them quite as much as their wonderful rhythmic power to express sexual moods and adventures. It was from the time that Beardsley began to collect such Japanese prints by Utamaro and the rest that he gave rein to those leering features and libidinous ecstasies that became so dominating a factor of his Muse. These suggestive designs Beardsley himself used to call by the sophisticated title of “galants.” The Greek vase-paintings were to add to this lewd suggestiveness an increased power later on.
* * * * *
It was a fortunate thing for Beardsley that Dent who had begun to publish the _Morte d’Arthur_ in parts in the June of 1893, as it had called attention to his illustrations; for, Elkin Mathews and John Lane now commissioned the young fellow to decorate the Englished edition of Oscar Wilde’s _Salome_, translated by Lord Alfred Douglas. The young fellow leaped at it--not only as giving him scope for fantastic designs but even more from the belief that the critics hotly disputing over Wilde’s play already, he would come into the public eye. Elkin Mathews and John Lane showed remarkable judgment in their choice, founding their decision on the Japanesque drawing that Beardsley had made--either on reading the French edition, or on reading the widespread criticisms of the French editon by Wilde published in the February of 1893--illustrating the lines that raised so hot a controversy in the Press, “j’ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan; j’ai baisé ta bouche,” which as we have seen had appeared as one of the several illustrations to Pennell’s appreciation of “A New Illustrator” at the birth of _The Studio_ in the April of 1893, soon thereafter.
Beardsley flung himself at the work with eager enthusiasm, turning his back on all that he had done or undertaken to do. Whatever bitterness he may have felt at his disappointment with John Lane, a year before, was now mollified by the recognition of his art in the commission for _Salome_.
Now, it should be realised that Elkin Mathews and John Lane, at the Sign of the Bodley Head in Vigo Street, were developing a publishing house quite unlike the ordinary publisher’s business of that day--they were encouraging the younger men or the less young who found scant support from the conventional makers of books; and they were bent on producing _belles lettres_ in an attractive and picturesque form. This all greatly appealed to Beardsley. He was modern of the moderns. The heavy antique splendour and solemnities of the Kelmscott reprints repulsed him nearly as much as the crass philistinism of the hack publishers.
On the other hand, Elkin Mathews and John Lane took Beardsley rather on trust--the _Morte d’Arthur_ and the _Bon Mots_ were far from what they sought. And again let us give them the credit of remembering that Beardsley was but little known.
It would be difficult to imagine a man less competent to create the true atmosphere of the times and court of King Herod than Oscar Wilde--but he could achieve an Oxford-Athenian fantasy hung on Herodias as a peg. It would be as difficult to imagine a man less competent than Aubrey Beardsley to paint the true atmosphere of the times of King Herod--but he knew it, and acted accordingly. What he could do, and did do, was to weave a series of fantastic decorations about Wilde’s play which were as delightfully alien to the subject as was the play. Beardsley imagined it as a Japanese fantasy, as a bright Cockney would conceive Japan; he placed his drama in the Japan of Whistler’s Peacock Room; he did not attempt to illustrate the play by scenes, indeed was not greatly interested in the play, any more than in the _Morte d’Arthur_, but was wholly concerned with creating decorative schemes as a musician might create impressions in sound as stirred in his imagination by the suggestion of moods in the play--and he proceeded to lampoon the writer of it and to make a sequence of grotesques that pronounced the eroticism of the whole conception. The Wardour-Street jumble-sale of Greek terminal gods, Japanese costumes, and all the rest of it, is part of the fun. Beardsley revels in the farce. But his beheaded John the Baptist is without a touch of tragic power.
It was a habit of Beardsley’s champions, as well as an admission, if reluctantly granted, by his bitterest assailants, throughout the Press, to praise Beardsley’s line. What exactly they meant, most would have been hard put to it to explain--it was a sort of philistine literary or journalistic concession to the volapuk of the studios. As the fact of line is perhaps more obvious in the _Salome_ drawings than in the _Savoy_, since the _Salome_ designs are largely line unrelated to mass, there are even so-called critics to be found who place the _Salome_ drawings at the topmost height of Beardsley’s achievement to this day!