Beardsley by Margaret Armour which left Beardsley cold except for the
appearance of his own _Outline Profile Portrait of himself in line_,
“an atrocious portrait of me,” which he seems to have detested for some
reason difficult to plumb--it is neither good nor bad, and certainly
not worse than one or two things that he passed with approval at this
time for the _Book of Fifty Drawings_. It is a pathetically tragic
thought that the November of the exquisite _Pierrot of the Minute_ was
for Beardsley a month of terrible suffering. He had not left his room
for six weeks. Yet, for all his sad state, he fervently clings to the
belief that change will rid him of that gaunt spectre that flits about
the shadows of his room. “I still continue in a very doubtful state,
a sort of helpless, hopeless condition, as nobody really seems to know
what is the matter with me. I fancy it is only change I want, & that
my troubles are principally nervous.... It is nearly six weeks now
since I have left my room. I am busy with drawing & should like to be
with writing, but cannot manage both in my weak state.” He complains
bitterly of the wretched weather. “I have fallen into a depressed
state,” and “Boscombe is ignominiously dull.”
It was now that Beardsley himself saw, for the first time, the
published prints for the cover and the title-page of _Evelina_--of his
“own early designing.”
The _Savoy_ for December gives us some clue to the busy work upon
drawings in November of which he speaks, but some of the drawings that
now appeared were probably done somewhat before this time.
It was soon clear that the days of _The Savoy_ were numbered and the
editor and publisher decided that the December number must be the
last. The farewell address to the public sets down the lack of public
support as the sole reason; but it was deeper than that. Beardsley,
spurred to it by regret, put forth all his remaining powers to make it
a great last number if it must be so. For he drew one of the richest
and most sumptuous of his works, the beautiful _A Répétition of Tristan
and Isolde_--and he flung into the number all the drawings he now
made or had made for _Das Rheingold_, which included the marvellously
decorative _Frontispiece for the Comedy of The Rheingold_, that
“sings” with colour, and which he dated 1897, as he often post-dated
his drawings, revealing that he had intended the long-cherished book
for the following year; but the other designs for the Comedy are the
unimportant fragments _Flosshilde_ and _Erda_ and _Alberich_, which he,
as likely as not, had by him, as it was in October that he wrote
of “most of the illustrations being finished.” He now drew his two
portraits of musicians, the _Mendelssohn_ and the _Weber_; he somewhat
fumbles with his _Don Juan, Sganarelle, and the Beggar_ from that _Don
Juan_ of Moliere which he had ever been eager to illustrate; he gives
us the _Mrs. Margery Pinchwife_ from Wycherley’s _Country Wife_; he
very sadly disappoints us with his _Count Valmont_ from Laclos’ _Les
Liaisons Dangereuses_ for the illustration of which Beardsley had held
out such high hopes; and he ends with _Et in Arcadia Ego_.
[Illustration: A RÉPÉTITION OF “TRISTAN UND ISOLDE”]
[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE]
It does the public little credit that there was such scant support for
_The Savoy_ that it had to die. The farewell note to the last number
announces that _The Savoy_ is in future to be half-yearly and a much
higher price. But it was never to be. After all, everything depended on
Beardsley, and poor Beardsley’s sands were near run out.
Meantime Beardsley had been constantly fretting at the delay in the
appearance of _The Book of Fifty Drawings_ which he had completed
in September, in spite of the date 1897 on the cover-design--an
afterthought of Smithers, who as a matter of fact sent me an advance
copy at Beardsley’s request in December 1896.
The December _Savoy_, then, No. 8 and the last, saw Beardsley unload
all his Wagnerian drawings. Through the month he was toying with the
idea of illustrating translations of two of his favourite books, _Les
Liaisons Dangereuses_ by Laclos, and Stendhal’s _Adolphe_....
On a Sunday, early in December, he spent the afternoon “interviewing
himself for _The Idler_”--the interview that appeared in that magazine,
shaped and finished by Lawrence in March 1897.
About Christmas his edition of _Les Liaisons Dangereuses_ was taking
shape in his brain with its scheme for initial letters to each of the
170 letters, and ten full-page illustrations, and a frontispiece to
each of the two volumes; but it was to get no further than Beardsley’s
enthusiasm. At this Yuletide appeared _The Book of Fifty Drawings_,
in which for the first time were seen the _Ali Baba in the Wood_, the
_Bookplate of the Artist_, and the _Atalanta in Calydon_ with the
hound. This book holds the significant revelation of Beardsley’s own
estimate of his achievement up to this time, for he chose his fifty
best drawings; it holds therefore the amusing confession that he did
not always know what was his best work. It is interesting to note that
Beardsley includes the mediocre and commonplace _Merlin_ in a circle,
yet omits some of his finest designs. It is all the more interesting
in that Beardsley not only laid a ban on a considerable amount of his
early work, but made Smithers give him his solemn oath and covenant
that he would never allow to be published, if he could prevent it,
certain definite drawings--he particularly forbade anything from
the _Scrap Book_ then belonging to Ross, for he shrewdly suspected
Ross’s malicious thwarting of every endeavour on Beardsley’s behalf to
exchange good, and even late drawings, for these early commonplaces
and inadequacies. And Smithers to my certain knowledge had in my
presence solemnly vowed to prevent such publication. When Beardsley
was dead, it is only fair to Smithers to say that he did resist the
temptation until Ross basely overpersuaded him to the scandalous
betrayal. However that was not as yet.... Evidently, though the fifty
drawings were selected and decided upon in September, Beardsley changed
one October drawing for something thrown out, for the October _Ave
atque Vale_ appears; and it may be that the _Atalanta in Calydon with
the hound_, sometimes called _Diana_, and the Beardsley _Bookplate_
together with the _Self-portrait silhouette_ that makes the Finis to
the Iconography, may have been done as late, and replaced other
drawings. Beardsley dedicated the book of his collected achievement to
the man who had stood by him in fair weather and in foul from the very
beginning--Joseph Pennell. It was the least he could do.
[Illustration: ATALANTA--WITH THE HOUND]
[Illustration: BEARDSLEY’S BOOK PLATE]
December had begun with more hope for Beardsley--his lung gave him
little or no trouble; he “suffers from Boscombe more than anything
else.” And even though a sharp walk left him breathless, he felt
he could scarcely call himself an invalid now, but the walk made
him nervous. He is even looking forward to starting housekeeping in
London again, with his sister; he hungers for town; indeed would be
“abjectly thankful for the smallest gaieties & pleasures in town.”
And were it not that he was nervous about taking walks abroad, he was
becoming quite hopeful again when--taking a walk about New Year’s Eve
he suddenly broke down; he “had some way to walk in a dreadful state”
before he could get any help. And he began the New Year with the bitter
cry: “So it all begins over again. It’s so disheartening.” He had
“collapsed in all directions,” and it was decided to take him to some
more bracing place as soon as he was fit to be moved.
* * * * *
So ended the great _Savoy_ period! Beardsley’s triumphs seemed fated to
the span of twelve moons.
IX
THE GREAT PERIOD
ESSAYS IN WASH AND LINE
1897 to the End--Twenty-Five
II. THE AQUATINTESQUES
So ill-health like a sleuth-hound dogged the fearful man. Beardsley was
now twenty-four and a half years of age--the great _Savoy_ achievement
at an end.
The Yuletide of 1896 had gone out; and the New Year of 1897 came in
amidst manifold terrors for Aubrey Beardsley. All hopes of carrying on
_The Savoy_ had to be abandoned. Beardsley’s condition was so serious
at the New Year that he had to be moved from Pier View to a house
called Muriel in Exeter Road at Bournemouth, where the change seemed
to raise his spirits and mend his health awhile. He was very funny
about the name of his new lodgings: “I suffer a little from the name of
this house, I feel as shy of my address as a boy at school is of his
Christian name when it is Ebenezer or Aubrey,” he writes whimsically.
He began to find so much relief at Muriel, notwithstanding, that he was
soon planning to have rooms in London again--at Manchester Street.
[Illustration: THE LADY WITH THE MONKEY]
By the February he was benefited by the change, for he was “sketching
out pictures to be finished later,” and is delighted with Boussod
Valadon’s reproduction in gravure of his _Frontispiece_ for
Theophile Gautier’s _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, for which he was now
making the half-dozen beautiful line and wash drawings, in the style of
the old aquatint-engravers. These wonderful drawings done--scant wonder
that he vowed that Boussod Valadon should ever after reproduce his
works!--he employed the same craftsmanship for the famous _Bookplate
for Miss Custance_, later the wife of Lord Alfred Douglas, and he also
designed the _Arbuscula_ for Gaston Vuillier’s _History of Dancing_.
For sheer beauty of handling, these works reveal powers in Beardsley’s
keeping and reach which make the silencing of them by death one of
the most hideous tragedies in art. The music that they hold, the
subtlety of emotional statement, and the sense of colour that suffuses
them, raise Beardsley to the heights. It is a bewildering display of
Beardsley’s artistic courage, impossible to exaggerate, that he should
have created these blithe masterpieces, a dying man.
Suddenly the shadows were filled with terrors again. The bleeding had
almost entirely ceased from his lung when his liver started copious
bleeding instead. It frightened the poor distressed man dreadfully, and
made him too weak and nervous to face anything. A day or two afterwards
he was laughing at his fears of yesterday. A burst of sunshine makes
the world a bright place to live in; but he sits by the fire and dreads
to go out. “At present my mind is divided between the fear of getting
too far away from England, & the fear of not getting enough sunshine,
or rather warmth near home.” But the doctors had evidently said more
to Mrs. Beardsley than to her son, for his mother decided now and in
future to be by Beardsley’s side. Almost the last day of February saw
his doctor take him out to a concert--a great joy to the stricken
man--and no harm done.
In March he was struggling against his failing body’s fatigue to draw.
He also started a short story _The Celestial Lover_, for which he was
making a coloured picture; for he had bought a paint-box. March turned
cold, and Beardsley had a serious set-back. The doctor pursed a serious
lip over his promise to let him go up to town--to Beardsley’s bitter
disappointment. The doctor now urged a move to the South--if only even
to Brittany. Beardsley began to realise that the shadows in his room
were again haunted; “I fancy I can count my life by months now.” Yet a
day or two later, “Such blessed weather to-day, trees in all directions
are putting forth leaves.” Then March went out with cold winds, and
bleeding began again, flinging back the poor distracted fellow amongst
the terrors. He wrote from his bed and in pencil: “Oh how tired I am
of hearing my lung creak all day, like a badly made pair of boots....
I think of the past winter and autumn with unrelieved bitterness.” The
move to London for the South was at last decided upon, for the first
week in April--to the South of France by easy stages. He knew now that
he could never be cured, but he hoped that the ravages of the disease
could be prevented from becoming rapid.
On the 30th of March in a letter to his friend John Gray, now even more
eager to win him to the Church of Rome, he pleads that he ought to have
the right to beg for a few months more of life--“Don’t think me foolish
to haggle about a few months”--as he has two or three pictured short
stories he wants to bring out; but on the following day, Wednesday the
31st of March 1897, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church--on
the Friday after, the 2nd of April, he took the Sacrament which had to
be brought to him, to his great grief, since he could not go to the
Church. He was to be a Roman Catholic for near upon a twelvemonth.
From this day of his entering the Church of Rome he wrote to John Gray
as “My dear brother.”
There is something uncanny in the aloofness of Beardsley’s art from
his life and soul. His art gives no slightest trace of spiritual
upheaval. It is almost incredible that a man, if he were really going
through an emotional spiritual upheaval or ecstasy, could have been
drawing the designs for _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, or indeed steeping
in that novel at all, or drawing the _Arbuscula_. For months he has
been led by the friendship of the priest John Gray towards Holy Church;
yet it is not six months since he has put the last touches on _Under
the Hill!_ and drawn the designs for _Lysistrata_ and the _Juvenal!_
not five months since he has drawn his _Bookplate!_ And by the grim
irony of circumstance, he entered the Church of Rome in the same
month that there appeared in _The Idler_ his confession: “To my mind
there is nothing so depressing as a Gothic Cathedral. I hate to have
the sun shut out by the saints.” This interview in the March _Idler_
by Lawrence, one of the best interviewers of this time, who made the
framework and then with astute skill persuaded Beardsley to fill in
the details, was as we know from Beardsley’s own letters to his friend
John Gray, written by himself about the Yuletide of the winter just
departing. That interview will therefore remain always as an important
evidence by Beardsley of his artistic ideals and aims and tastes. It
is true that he posed and strutted in that interview; and, having
despatched it, was a little ashamed of it, with a nervous “hope I
have not said too many foolish things.” But it is a baffling tribute
to the complexity of the human soul that the correspondence with the
poet-priest John Gray proves that whilst John Gray, whose letters are
hidden from us, was leading Beardsley on his spiritual journey to
Rome, he was lending him books and interesting him in books, side by
side with lives of the saints, which were scarcely remarkable for their
fellowship with the saints.
Beardsley was rapidly failing. On Wednesday, the 7th of April, a week
after joining the Church of Rome, he passed through London, staying
a day or two at the Windsor Hotel--a happy halt for Beardsley as his
friend John Gray was there to meet him--and crossed to France, where
on Saturday the 18th of April he wrote from the Hotel Voltaire, quai
Voltaire, in Paris, reporting his arrival with his devoted mother.
Paris brought back hope and cheerfulness to the doomed man. He loved to
be in Paris; and it was in his rooms at this hotel that in May he was
reading _The Hundred and One Nights_ for the first time, and inspired
by it, drew his famous _Cover for Ali Baba_, a masterpiece of musical
line, portraying a seated obese voluptuous Eastern figure resplendent
with gems--as Beardsley himself put it, “quite a sumptuous design.”
Beardsley had left Bournemouth in a state of delight at the prospect
of getting to the South of France into the warmth and the sunshine. He
felt that it would cure him and cheat the grave. In Paris he was soon
able to walk abroad and to be out of doors again--perhaps it had been
better otherwise, for he might then have gone further to the sun. There
was the near prospect also of his sister, Mabel Beardsley’s return
from America and their early meeting. He could now write from a café:
“I rejoice greatly at being here again.” And though he could not get a
sitting-room at the hotel, his bed was in an alcove which, being shut
off by a curtain, left him the possession by day of a sitting-room and
thereby rid him of the obsession of a sick room--he could forget he
was a sick man. And though the hotel was without a lift, the waiters
would carry him up stairs--he could not risk the climbing. And the
bookshops and print-shops of Paris were an eternal joy to him.
[Illustration: COVER DESIGN FOR “THE FORTY THIEVES”]
With returning happiness he was eating and drinking and sleeping
better. He reads much of the lives of the saints; is comforted by his
new religion; reads works of piety, and--goes on his way poring over
naughtinesses. But he has thrust the threatening figure of death out of
his room awhile--talks even of getting strong again quite soon.
But the usually genial month of May in Paris came in sadly for
Beardsley, and the sombre threat flitted back into the shadows of
his room again. He had the guard of an excellent physician, and the
following day he felt well again; but he begs Gray to pray for him.
A month to St. Germain-en-Laye, just outside Paris, was advised;
and Beardsley, going out to see the place, was delighted with its
picturesqueness--indeed St. Germain-en-Laye was an ideal place to
inspire him to fresh designs. The Terrace and Park and the Hotel itself
breathe the romance of the 18th and 17th centuries. Above all the air
was to make a new man of him.
The young fellow felt a pang at leaving Paris, where Gray had secured
him the friendship of Octave Uzanne and other literary celebrities. And
the railway journey, short as it was, to and fro, from St. Germain,
upset Beardsley as railway travelling always did. It cautioned care.
Before May was out, Beardsley moved out to St. Germain-en-Laye,
where he found pleasant rooms at the Pavilion Louis XIV, in the rue
de Pointoise. The place was a joy to him. But the last day of May
drove him to consult a famous physician about his tongue, which was
giving him trouble; the great man raised his hopes to radiant pitch by
assuring him that he might get quite rid of his disease even yet--if he
went to the mountains and avoided such places as Bournemouth and the
South of France! He advised rigorous treatment whilst at St. Germain.
However his drastic treatment of rising at cockcrow for a walk in the
forest and early to bed seems to have upset Beardsley’s creaking body.
The following day, the first of June, the bleeding of the lungs started
again and made him wretched. The arrival of his sister, however, was a
delight to him, and concerning this he wrote his delicious waggery that
she showed only occasional touches of “an accent which I am sure she
has only acquired since she left America.” His health at once improved
with his better spirits.
Beardsley read at St. Germain one of the few books by a living
genius of which we have any record of his reading, Meredith’s _Evan
Harrington_; it was about the time that the _Mercure_ published in
French the _Essay on Comedy_ which started widespread interest in the
works of Meredith.
By mid-June Beardsley was greatly cheered; “everyone in the hotel
notices how much I have improved in the last few days”; but his sitting
out in the forest was near done. A cold snap shrivelled him, and
lowered his vitality; a hot wave raised his hopes, only to be chilled
again; and then sleep deserted him. On the 2nd of July he made a
journey into Paris to get further medical advice; he had been advised
to make for the sea and it had appealed to him. His hopes were raised
by the doctor’s confidence in the cure by good climates, and Beardsley
decided on Dieppe. Egypt was urged upon him, but probably the means
forbade.
[Illustration: ALI BABA IN THE WOOD]
Thus, scarce a month after he had gone to St. Germain in high hopes,
Beardsley on the 6th of July was ordered to Dieppe, whence he wrote of
his arrival on the 12th of July at the Hotel Sandwich in the rue Halle
au Blé. He was so favoured with splendid weather that he was out and
about again; and he was reading and writing. Fritz Thaulow’s family
welcomed him back. He scarcely dares to boast of his improved health,
it has seemed to bring ill-luck so often. But best of all blessings,
he was now able to work. It was in this August that he met Vincent
O’Sullivan, the young writer. Here he spent his twenty-fifth birthday.
Before the month was half through he was fretting to be back in Paris
for the winter. September came in wet and cold. He found this Hotel
rather exposed to the wind, and so was taken to more sheltered lodgings
in the Hotel des Estrangers in the rue d’Aguado, hoping that Dieppe
might still know a gentle September. Though the weather remained wet
and cold, he kept well; but caution pointed to Paris. His London doctor
came over to Dieppe on holiday, cheered him vastly with hopes of a
complete recovery if he took care of himself, and advised Paris for the
early winter. Beardsley, eager as he was for Paris, turned his back on
Dieppe with a pang--he left many friends. However, late September saw
him making for Paris with unfeigned joy, and settling in rooms at the
Hotel Foyot in the rue Tournon near the Luxembourg Gardens.
His arrival in his beloved Paris found Beardsley suffering again from
a chill that kept him to his room; but he was hopeful. The doctor
considered him curable still; he might have not only several years of
life before him “but perhaps even a long life.” But the scorching heat
of the days of his arrival in Paris failed to shake him free of the
chill. Still, the fine weather cheered him and he was able to be much
out of doors. Good food and turpentine baths aided; and he was--reading
the _Memoirs of Casanova!_ But he had grown cautious; found that seeing
many people tired him; and begs for some “happy and inspiring book.”
But as October ran out, the doctors began to shake solemn heads--all
the talk was henceforth of the South of France. “Every fresh person
one meets has fresh places to suggest & fresh objections to the places
we have already thought of. Yet I dare not linger late in Paris; but
what a pity that I have to leave!” Biarritz was put aside on account of
its Atlantic gales; Arcachon because pictures of it show it horribly
“Bournemouthy.” The Sisters of the Sacré Cœur sent him a bottle of
water from Lourdes. “Yet all the same I get dreadfully nervous, &
stupidly worried about little things.” However, the doctors sternly
forbade winter in Paris. November came in chilly, with fogs; and
Beardsley felt it badly. The first week of November saw his mother
taking him off southwards to the sun, and settling in the rooms at
the Hotel Cosmopolitain at Mentone which was to be his last place of
flitting.
Yet Beardsley left Paris feeling “better and stronger than I have ever
been since my school days”; but the fogs that drove him forth made him
write his last ominous message from the Paris that he loved so well:
“If I don’t take a decided turn for the better now I shall go down hill
rather quickly.”
At Mentone Beardsley felt happy enough. He liked the picturesque place.
Free from hemorrhage, cheered by the sunshine, he rallied again and
was rid of all pains in his lungs, was sleeping well, and eating well;
was out almost all day; and people noticed the improvement in him, to
his great glee. And he was busying himself with illustrations for Ben
Jonson’s _Volpone_, and was keenly interested in a new venture by
Smithers who proposed a successor to _The Savoy_ which he wished to
call _The Peacock_.
[Illustration: COVER DESIGN FOR “VOLPONE”]
The mountain and the sea suited Beardsley. “I am much happier and more
peaceful,” but “the mistral has not blown yet.”