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!
Most of this talk of Beardsley’s line was sheer literary cant, but
happened to coincide with a reality. It is in the achievement of his
line that Beardsley steps amongst the immortals, uttering his genius
thereby. But the mere fact that any writer instances the _Salome_
drawings in proof of the wonderful achievement of Beardsley’s line
condemns him as a futile appraiser. Beardsley, by intense and dogged
application and consummate taste, mastered the pen-line until this,
the most mulish instrument of the artist’s craftsmanship, at last
surrendered its secrets to him, lost its hard rigidity, and yielded
itself to his hand’s desire; and he came to employ it with so exquisite
a mastery that he could compel it at will to yield music like the clear
sustained notes of a violin. His line became emotional--grave or gay.
But he had not achieved that complete mastery when he undertook, nor
when he completed, the _Salome_, wherein his line is yet hesitant,
thin, trying to do too much, though there is music in it; but it is
stolen music, and he cannot conjure with it as can the genius of Japan.
Lived never yet a man who could surpass the thing he aped. There lies
the self-dug grave of every academy. Set the _Salome_ against the
genius of Japan, and how small a thing it is! Something is lacking. It
is not great music, it is full of reminiscences. It fails to capture
the senses. It is “very clever for a young man.” In _Salome_ he got
all that he could from the Japanese genius, an alien tongue; and in
_The Stomach Dance_, the finest as it is the only really grossly
indecent drawing of the sequence, he thrust the mimicry of the Japanese
line as far as he could take it. By the time he had completed the
_Salome_ he was done with the Japanese mimicry. At the Yuletide of
1893 and thereafter, he turned his back upon it. He had discovered
that line alone has most serious limitations; it baulked him, its keen
worshipper, as he increased in power. And as a matter of fact, it is
in the coruscating originality of his invention, in the fertility of
arrangement, and in the wide range of his flippant fantasy that the
_Salome_ designs reveal the increase of his powers as they reveal
the widening range of his flight. He has near done with mimicry. He
was weary of it, as he was weary of the limitations of the Japanese
conventions, before he had completed the swiftly drawn designs with
feverish eager address in those few weeks of the late autumn; and
by the time he came to write Finis to the work with the designs for
the Title Page and List of Contents, he was done with emptiness--the
groundless earth, the floating figures in the air, the vague intersweep
of figures and draperies, the reckless lack of perspective--all are
gone. Thereafter he plants his figures on firm earth where foothold is
secure, goes back a little way to his triumphs in the _Morte d’Arthur_,
and trained by his two conflicting guidances, the Japanesque and the
mediævalesque, he creates a line that is Beardsley’s own voice and
hand--neither the hand of Esau nor the voice of Jacob. When Beardsley
laid down the book of _Salome_ he had completed it with a final
decoration which opened the gates to self-expression. When Beardsley
closed the book of _Salome_ he had found himself. His last great
splendid mimicry was done. And as though to show his delight in it he
sat down and drew the exquisite _Burial of Salome_ in a powder-box in
the very spirit of the eighteenth century whose child he was.
_Salome_ finished, however, was not _Salome_ published. Elkin Mathews
and John Lane realised that the drawings could not appear without
certain mitigations, though, as a matter of fact, there were but two
gross indecencies in them. Both men were anxious to achieve public
recognition for the gifted young fellow, and they knew him to be
“difficult.” However, Gleeson White was consulted and he consulted me
amongst others as an outside and independent opinion. Being greatly
pleased by the suggestions that I made, Gleeson White put them forward,
and told me they were warmly welcomed by the two troubled men who
would have had to bear the brunt of the obloquy for any mistake or
indiscretion. It was agreed to the satisfaction of all concerned that
Beardsley should not touch the originals but should make alterations
on the few offending proofs and that new blocks should then be made
from the altered proofs, which, when all is said, required but little
done to them, thereby preserving the original drawings intact. Thus
the publication would offend no one’s sense of decorum--however much
they might exasperate the taste. Odd to say, one or two ridiculously
puritanical alterations were made whilst more offensive things were
passed by! By consequence, the _Title Page_, and _Enter Herodias_
were slightly altered simply to avoid offence to public taste; but I
was astonished to find, on publication, that of the only two drawings
that were deliberately and grossly obscene, _The Stomach Dance_
appeared without change--was accepted without demur by the public
and in silence by the censorious--indeed the lasciviousness of the
musician seems to have offended nobody’s eye; while the _Toilette of
Salome_, a fine design, which only required a very slight correction,
had been completely withdrawn with the quite innocent but very
second-rate design of _John and Salome_, and in place of the two
had been inserted the wretched _Black Cape_ and Georgian _Toilette_
which were not only utterly out of place in the book but tore the
fabric of the whole design to pieces, and displayed in Beardsley a
strain of inartistic mentality and vulgarity whereby he was prepared
to sacrifice a remarkable achievement to a fit of stupid spleen and
cheap conceit--for it was at once clear that he resented any attempt
to prevent his offending the public sense of decency even though his
supporters might suffer thereby. Now, whether the public were canting
or not, whether they were correct or not, Beardsley would not have been
the chief sufferer by his committing flagrant indecencies in the public
thoroughfare, and some of the drawings were deliberately indecent. The
public were canting in many ways; but they were also long-suffering,
and Beardsley’s literary advisers were solely concerned with the young
fellow’s interests. Besides vice has its cant as well as virtue. In any
case, the mediocre _Black Cape_ and the better Georgian _Toilette_,
quite apart from their intrinsic merit in themselves as drawings, were
an act of that utter bourgeois philistinism which the young fellow so
greatly affected to despise, committed by himself alone. He who will
thus fling stones at his own dignity has scant ground on which to
complain of stone-throwing by the crowd.
[Illustration: THE STOMACH DANCE
_from “Salome”_]
The interpolated _Black Cape_ and the _Second Toilette_ we may here
dismiss as having nothing to do with the case; and what is more, they
are wholly outside the _Salome_ atmosphere. Of the pure _Salome_
designs, incomparably the finest are _The Stomach Dance_ and the
_Peacock Skirt_. Yet, so faulty was Beardsley’s own taste at times,
that he considered the best drawings to be _The Man in the Moon_, the
_Peacock Skirt_, and _The Dancer’s Reward_--it should be noted by
the way that Beardsley showed by his _Book of Fifty Drawings_ that
his title was _The Man in the Moon_ not as the publishers have it,
_The Woman in the Moon_. But it is in _The Climax_, one of the less
noteworthy designs, that we discover Beardsley’s forward stride--for
though the lower half is so wretchedly done that it scarce seems to
be by the same hand as the upper half, the purification of the line as
compared with the fussy, fidgety futilities and meaninglessness of his
flourishes and “hairy line” in the same subject, and practically of the
same design, drawn but a year before and shown in _The Studio_ first
number, make us realise not only how rapidly he is advancing towards
ease and clearness of handling, but it also makes us sympathise with
the young fellow’s bitter distaste to carrying on a sequence of designs
in a craftsmanship which he has utterly outgrown.