Part 7

It was about this New Year of 1894 that the extraordinary German, Reichardt, who had made a huge success of his humorous and artistic weekly, _Pick-Me-Up_, in rivalry with Punch, planned the issue of a monthly magazine which had as its secret aim, if successful, that it should become a weekly illustrated paper to “smash the _Graphic_ and _Illustrated London News_.” Struck by some article attacking the art critics written by me, he called me to the writing of the weekly review of Art Matters in this paper which was to be called _St. Paul’s_. Although at this time Beardsley was almost unknown to the general public, I suggested that the young artist should be given an opening for decorative work; and he was at once commissioned to make some drawings, to illustrate the Signs of the Zodiac--(remember, _St. Paul’s_ was to begin as a monthly!)--and to illustrate the subjects to which each page was to be devoted such as Music, Art, Books, Fashions, The Drama, and the rest of it. He drew the “_Man that holds the Water_ _Pot_” and the “_Music_,” but the paper did not appear in January--indeed not until March. Beardsley then became bored, and fobbed off the paper with a couple of drawings that were probably meant for Dent’s _Bon Mots_--however they may have been intended for _The Fashions_ and _The Drama_ pages of _St. Paul’s_. He made in all four which were to be used as headings and tail pieces. They did not greatly encourage Reichardt, who shrugged his shoulders and said that I “might have the lot.” They have never reached me! They have this value, however, that they reveal Beardsley’s craftsmanship at the New Year of 1894--they show him ridding himself of the “hairy line,” with a marked increase of power over line--they end his _Salome_ Japanesque phase.

It is somewhat curious that, whilst _The Man that holds the Water Pot_ is always printed awry in the collections of Beardsley’s works, the fourth drawing he made for _St. Paul’s_ seems to have been missed by all iconographists, and I now probably possess the only known print of it!

Before we leave _St. Paul’s_, it is interesting to note that at this time the line and decorative power of Beardsley’s work were rivalled by the beauty, quality, richness, and decorative rhythm of the ornamental headings which Edgar Wilson was designing for _St. Paul’s_ and other papers.

[Illustration: MESSALINA]

It was in the March of 1894 that Beardsley drew the _Poster for the Avenue Theatre_ which really brought him before a London public more than anything he had so far done--a success, be it confessed, more due to the wide interest aroused by the dramatic venture of the Avenue Theatre than to any inherent value in the Poster itself which could not be compared with the work of the Beggarstaff Brothers. Needless to say that it was at this same time that George Bernard Shaw was to float into the public ken with his play of _Arms and the Man_ at this same Avenue Theatre, hitherto so unlucky a play-house that from its situation on the Embankment under Charing Cross Bridge, it was cynically known to the wags as “The Home for Lost Seagulls.” I shall always associate Beardsley’s Avenue Theatre poster with Shaw’s rise to fame as it recalls Shaw’s first night when, being called before the curtain at the end of _Arms and the Man_, some man amongst the gods booing loud and long amidst the cheering, Shaw’s ready Irish wit brought down the house as, gazing upwards into the darkness, his lank loose figure waited patiently until complete silence had fallen on the place, when he said dryly in his rich brogue: “I agree with that gentleman in the gallery, but”--shrugging his shoulders--“what are we amongst so many?”

Beardsley’s decorations for John Davidson’s _Plays_ appeared about the April of this year; but, needless to say, did not catch the interest of a wide public.

* * * * *

Suddenly his hour struck for Aubrey Beardsley.

It was the publication of _The Yellow Book_ in the mid-April of 1894 that at once thrust Beardsley into the public eye and beyond the narrow circle so far interested in him.

London Society was intensely literary and artistic in its interests, or at any rate its pose, in the early ’nineties. Every lady’s drawing-room was sprinkled with the latest books--the well-to-do bought pictures and wrangled over art. The leaders of Society prided themselves on their literary and artistic salons. As a snowfall turns London white in a night, so _The Yellow Book_ littered the London drawing-rooms with gorgeous mustard as at the stroke of a magician’s wand. It “caught on.” And catching on, it carried Aubrey Beardsley on the crest of its wave of notoriety into a widespread and sudden vogue. After all, everything that was outstanding and remarkable about the book was Beardsley. _The Yellow Book_ was soon the talk of the town, and Beardsley “awoke to find himself famous.” Punch promptly caricatured his work; and soon he was himself caricatured by “Max” in the _Pall Mall Budget_; whilst the Oxford undergraduates were playing with Wierdsley Daubrey and the like. But it was left to Mostyn Piggott to write perhaps the finest burlesque on any poem in our tongue in the famous skit which ran somewhat thus:

’Twas rollog; and the minim potes Did mime and mimble in the cafe; All footly were the Philerotes And Daycadongs outstrafe....

Beware the Yellow Bock, my son! The aims that rile, the art that racks, Beware the Aub-Aub Bird, and shun The stumious Beerbomax!

* * * * *

Then, as veep Vigo’s marge he trod, The Yallerbock, with tongue of blue, Came piffling through the Headley Bod, And flippered as it flew....

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF

_from “The Yellow Book” Volume III_

PAR LES DIEVX JVMEAVX TOVS LES MONSTRES NE SONT PAS EN AFRIQUE]

As one turns over the pages of _The Yellow Book_ today, it is a little difficult to recall the sensation it made at its birth. Indeed, London’s passions and whims, grown stale, are fantastic weeds in the sear and yellow leaf. But it _was_ a sensation. And that sensation flung wide the doors of Society to Aubrey Beardsley. He enjoyed his fame with gusto. He revelled in it. And the ineffable and offensive conceit that it engendered in the lad was very excusable and understandable. He was lionised on every hand. He appeared everywhere and enjoyed every ray of the sun that shone upon him. And the good fortune that his fairy godmother granted to him in all his endeavours, was enhanced by an increase of health and strength that promised recovery from the hideous threat that had dogged his sleeping and waking. His musical childhood had taught him the value of publicity early--the whole of his youth had seen him pursuing it by every means and at every opportunity. When fame came to him he was proud of it and loved to bask in its radiance. At times he questioned it; and sometimes he even felt a little ashamed of it--and of his Jackals. But his vogue now took him to the “domino room” of the Café Royal as a Somebody--and he gloried in the hectic splendour of not having to be explained.

It was now roses, roses all the way for Aubrey Beardsley; yet even at the publishing of the second volume of _The Yellow Book_ in July there was that which happened--had he had prophetic vision--that boded no good for the young fellow.

The deed of partnership between Elkin Mathews and John Lane fell in, and Elkin Mathews withdrew from the firm, leaving John Lane in sole possession of The Bodley Head--and _The Yellow Book_.

The parting of Elkin Mathews and John Lane seemed to bring to a head considerable feeling amongst the group of writers collected about The Bodley Head; this was to bear bitter fruit for Beardsley before a twelvemonth was out.

It was on the designs of this second volume of _The Yellow Book_ of July 1894 that Beardsley signed his “Japanesque mark” for the last time. Indeed these signed designs were probably done before June; for, in the _Invitation Card for the Opening of the Prince’s Ladies Golf Club_ on Saturday June 16th 1894, the “Japanesque mark” has given place to “AUBREY BEARDSLEY.”

Beardsley was to be seen everywhere. People wondered when he did his work. He flitted everywhere enjoying his every hour, as though he had no need to work--were above work. He liked to pose as one who did not need to work for a livelihood. As each number of the quarterly appeared, he won an increase of notoriety--or obloquy, which was much the same thing to Aubrey Beardsley; but as the winter came on, he was to have a dose of obloquy of a kind that he did not relish, indeed that scared him--and as a fact, it was most scandalously unfair gossip. Meanwhile the Christmas number of _Today_ produced his very fine night-piece _Les Passades_.

[Illustration: NIGHT PIECE]

Oscar Wilde was at the height of his vogue--as playwright and wit and man of letters. Beardsley’s artistic share in the _Salome_, with its erotic atmosphere and its strange spirit of evil, gave the public a false impression that Beardsley and Wilde were intimates. They never were. Curiously enough, the young fellow was no particular admirer of Wilde’s art. And Wilde’s conceited remark that he had “invented Beardsley” deeply offended the other. To cap it all, Beardsley delighted in the bohemian atmosphere and the rococo surrounding of what was known as the Domino Room at the Café Royal, and it so happened that Wilde had also elected to make the Café Royal his Court, where young talent was allowed to be brought into the presence and introduced. It came into the crass mind of one of Wilde’s satellites to go over to a table at which Beardsley was sitting, revelling in hero-worship, and to lead the young fellow into the presence, as Wilde had signified his condescension to that end--but the gross patronage of Wilde on the occasion wounded the young fellow’s conceit to the quick. It had flattered Beardsley to be seen with Wilde; but he never became an intimate--he never again sought to bask in the radiance.

To add to Beardsley’s discomfort, there fell like bolt from the blue a novel called _The Green Carnation_ of which Wilde and his associates were the obvious originals. The book left little to the imagination. The Marquis of Queensberry, owing to his son Lord Alfred Douglas’s intimacy with Wilde, was only too eager to strike Wilde down. Even if Queensberry had been inclined to hang back he could not very well in common decency have allowed the imputations of the book to pass by him without taking action. But he welcomed the scandal. He sprang at opportunity--and struck hard. With the reckless courage so characteristic of him, Queensberry took serious risks, but he struck--and he knew that the whole sporting world, of which he was a leader, would be behind him, as he knew full well that the whole of the healthy-minded majority of the nation would be solid in support of his vigorous effort to cut the canker out of society which was threatening public life under Wilde’s cynical gospel that the world had arrived at a state of elegant decay.

Queensberry publicly denounced Wilde and committed acts which brought Wilde into public disrepute. There was nothing left to Wilde but to bring a charge of criminal libel against him or become a social pariah. On the 2nd of March 1895 Queensberry was arrested and charged at Marlbourgh Street; on the 9th he was committed for trial; and on the 3rd of April he was tried at the Old Bailey amidst an extraordinary public excitement. He was acquitted on the 5th of April amidst the wild enthusiasm of the people. Oscar Wilde was arrested the same evening.

On the 6th of April, Wilde, with Taylor, was charged at Bow Street with a loathsome offence; public interest was at fever pitch during the fortnight that followed, when, on the 19th of April Wilde and Taylor were committed for trial, bail being refused. A week later, on the 26th, the trial of Wilde and Taylor began at the Old Bailey. After a case full of sensations, on the 1st of May, the jury disagreed and the prisoners were remanded for a fresh trial, bail being again refused. A week later, on the 7th of May, Wilde was released on bail for £5,000; and it was decided to try the two men separately. Taylor was put on trial at the Old Bailey for the second time, alone, on May the 20th, and the next day was found “guilty,” sentence being postponed. The following day, the 22nd, the second trial of Wilde began at the Old Bailey, and on the 25th of May he also was found “guilty,” and with Taylor was sentenced to two years imprisonment with hard labour.

The popular excitement over this trial of Wilde reached fever heat. The fall of Wilde shook society; and gossip charged many men of mark with like vices. Scandal wagged a reckless tongue. A very general scare set in, which had a healthy effect in many directions; but it also caused a vast timidity in places where blatant effrontery had a short while before been in truculent vogue....

John Lane, now at The Bodley Head alone, had published volume III of _The Yellow Book_ in October 1894 and volume IV in the January of 1895. Beardsley had made the drawings for the April number, volume V; the blocks were also made, and a copy or so of the number bound, when, at the beginning of March, Queensberry’s arrest shook society. The public misapprehension about Beardsley being a friend of Oscar Wilde’s probably caused some consternation amongst the writers of _The Yellow Book_; but whatever the cause, John Lane who was in America was suddenly faced with an ultimatum--it was said that one of his chief poets put the pistol to his head and threatened that without further ado either he or Beardsley must leave _The Yellow Book_ at once. Now this cable announced that William Watson was not alone but had the alliance of Alice Meynell, then at the height of her vogue, with others most prominent in this movement. Into the merits of the storm in the teacup we need not here go. What decided John Lane in his awkward plight to sacrifice Beardsley rather than the poet was a personal matter, solely for John Lane to decide as suited his own business interest best. He decided to jettison Beardsley. The decision could have had little to do with anything objectionable in Beardsley’s drawings, for a copy was bound with Beardsley’s designs complete, and anything more innocent of offence it would be difficult to imagine. It may therefore be safely assumed that the revolt on John Lane’s ship was solely due to the panic set up by the Wilde trial, resulting in a most unjust prejudice against Beardsley as being in some way sympathetic in moral with the abhorred thing. No man knows such gusts of moral cowardice as the moralist. However, in expelling Beardsley _The Yellow Book_ was doomed--it at once declined, and though it struggled on, it went to annihilation and foundered.

This ultimatum by cable to John Lane in America was a piece of cant that Lane felt as bitterly as the victim Beardsley. It grieved John Lane to his dying day, and he blamed himself for lack of courage in deserting the young fellow; but he was hustled, and he feared that it might wreck the publishing house which he had built up at such infinite pains. Above all he knew that Beardsley would never forgive him. But Lane blamed himself quite needlessly, as in all this ugly incident, in that he had shown lack of personal dignity in allowing himself to be thrust aside from captaincy of his own ship whilst he had been made responsible for the act of his mutineers which he had whole-heartedly detested. Lane would not be comforted. He never ceased to blame himself.

His expulsion from _The Yellow Book_ was very bitterly resented by Beardsley. It hurt his pride and it humiliated him at the height of his triumph. And he writhed at the injustice inflicted upon him by the time selected to strike at him, besmirching him as it did with an association of which he was wholly innocent. And it must be confessed that _The Yellow Book_ at once became a stale farce played by all concerned except the hero, from the leading lady to the scene-shifter--_Hamlet_ being attempted without the Prince of Denmark.

The trial and conviction of Oscar Wilde shook the young fellow even more thoroughly. Quite apart from the fierce feeling of resentment at the injustice of his being publicly made to suffer as though an intimate of a man in disgrace for whom he had no particular liking, Beardsley realised that his own flippant and cheaply cynical attitude towards society might, like Wilde’s, have to be paid for at a hideous price. The whole ugly business filled him with disgust; and what at least was to the good, the example of Wilde’s crass conceit humbled in the dust, knocked much of the cheap conceit out of Beardsley, to his very great advantage, for it allowed freer play to that considerable personal charm that he possessed in no small degree.

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF MRS. PATRICK CAMPBELL

_from “The Yellow Book,” Volume I_]

His expulsion from _The Yellow Book_ placed Beardsley in a very awkward financial position. The income that he derived from his drawings for _The Yellow Book_ must have been but small at best; and it is a mystery how he lived. It has been said that he found generous patrons, and that of these not the least generous was one André Raffalovich, a man of wealth. But the sources of his means of livelihood must have been dangerously staunched by his expulsion from _The Yellow Book_.

The strange part of Beardsley’s career is that the designs for volume V of _The Yellow Book_, printed for April, but suppressed at the last moment, ended his achievement in this phase and style and craftsmanship. When the blow fell, he was already embarking upon a new craftsmanship; indeed towards this development he markedly moves in the later _Yellow Book_ designs. Had Beardsley died in mid-1895, at twenty-three, he would have left behind him the achievement of an interesting artist; but not a single example of the genius that was about to astonish the world.

* * * * *

_The Yellow Book_ phase of Beardsley’s art is very distinct from what went before and what was to come after. There are two types: a fine firm line employed with flat black masses of which the famous _Lady Gold’s Escort_ and _The Wagnerites_ are the type, and of which The Nightpiece is the triumph--and a very thin delicate line, generally for portraiture, to define faintly the body to a more firmly drawn head--of which the _Mrs. Patrick Campbell_ is the type and _L’Education sentimentale_ a variant--whilst the three remarkable _Comedy-Ballets of Marionettes I, II, and III_, show white masses used against black.

Beardsley employed his “Japanesque mark” for the last time in mid-1894 in the July volume, No. 2, of _The Yellow Book_. The _Plays of John Davidson_, several _Madame Réjanes_, the fine _Les Passades_, the _Scarlet Pastorale_, and the _Tales of Mystery and Wonder_ by Edgar Allan Poe, are all of the early 1894 _Yellow Book_ phase.

But in the third volume of _The Yellow Book_, the fanciful and delightful portrait of _The Artist in bed_, “_Par les dieux jumeaux tous les monstres ne sont pas en Afrique_,” and the famous _La Dame aux Camélias_ standing before her dressing table, advance his handling in freedom and rhythm; as does the exquisite _The Mysterious Rose Garden_, which Beardsley described as “the first of a series of Biblical illustrations, and represents nothing more nor less than the _Annunciation_”--indeed he could not understand the objections of the prudish to it and resented its being misunderstood! The _Messalina with her Companion_ is of this later _Yellow Book_ phase; and the _Atalanta without the hound_ of the suppressed Fifth Volume is a fine example of it.

The beautifully wrought _Pierrot Invitation Card_ for John Lane; the remarkable wash drawings _A Nocturne of Chopin_ from the suppressed Volume Five, and the _Chopin, Ballade III Op. 47_ of _The Studio_, all drawn on the eve of his expulsion from _The Yellow Book_, show Beardsley advancing with giant strides when the blow fell; and in the double-page _Juvenal_ of the monkey-porters carrying the Sedan-chair, he foreshadows his new design. But the surest test of the change, as well as the date of that change, is revealed by an incident that followed Beardsley’s expulsion from _The Yellow Book_; for, being commissioned to design a frontispiece by Elkin Mathews for _An Evil Motherhood_, Beardsley promptly sent the rejected _Black Cape_, of the suppressed Fifth Volume, direct to the printers; and it was only under the dogged refusal of Elkin Mathews to produce it that Beardsley made the now famous design of the _Evil Motherhood_ in which he entirely breaks from _The Yellow Book_ convention and craftsmanship, and launches into the craftsmanship of his Great Period.

[Illustration: THE MYSTERIOUS ROSE GARDEN

_from “The Yellow Book” Volume IV_]

It was about the time of Beardsley’s expulsion from _The Yellow Book_ that trouble arose in America over the piracy of one of Beardsley’s _Posters_ for Fisher Unwin, the publisher. Beardsley had made a mediocre poster for _The Pseudonym Library_, a woman in a street opposite a book shop; but followed it with the finest _Poster_ he ever designed--a lady reading, seated in a “groaning-chair,” a scheme in black and purple, for _Christmas Books_--all three of _The Yellow Book_ phase.

* * * * *

There happened at this time soon after his expulsion from _The Yellow Book_, in mid-1895, a rather significant incident in young Beardsley’s life--an incident that dragged me into its comedy, and was to have a curious and dramatic sequel before three years were passed by.