,,the ,,art ,,of ,,aubrey ,,beardsley ,introduction by ,,arthur ,,symons ,,boni ,,and ,,liveright1 ,,inc4 ,,publishers -- ,,new ,,york #aiah ,illustration3 ,aubrey ,beardsley ,,contents ,preface ,aubrey ,beardsley by ,arthur ,symons ,,illustrations #a4 ,portrait of ,aubrey ,beardsley4 #b4 ,the ,litany of ,mary ,magdalen4 #c4 ,a ,portrait of ,aubrey ,beardsley4 ,by ,himself4 #d4 ,incipit ,vita ,nova4 #e4 ,sandro ,botticelli4 #f4 ,siegfried4 ,from ,the ,studio4 #g4 ,merlin4 ,from ,le ,morte d',arthur4 #h4 ,vignette4 ,from ,le ,morte d',arthur #i4 ,la ,beale ,isoud at ,joyous ,gard4 ,from ,le ,morte d',arthur4 #aj4 ,how ,queen ,guenever ,made ,her a ,nun4 ,from ,le ,morte d',arthur4 #aa4 ,of a ,neophyte and ,how the ,black ,art ,was ,revealed ,unto ,him4 #ab4 ,the ,kiss of ,judas4 #ac4 ,a ,suggested ,reform in ,ballet ,costume4 #ad4 ,baron ,verdigris4 #ae4 ,the ,woman in the ,moon4 #af4 ,the ,peacock ,skirt4 #ag4 ,the ,black ,cape4 #ah4 ,the ,platonic ,lament4 #ai4 ,enter ,herodias4 #bj4 ,the ,eyes of ,herod4 #ba4 ,the ,stomach ,dance4 #bb4 ,the ,toilette of ,salom4 #bc4 ,the ,dancer's ,reward4 #bd4 ,the ,climax4 #be4 ,the ,toilette of ,salom4 ,first ,drawing4 #bf4 ,john and ,salom4 #bg4 ,salom on ,settle4 #bh4 ,design for ,tailpiece4 #bi4 ,design for ,salom4 ,from ,the ,studio4 #cj4 ,design for the ,cover of ,the ,yellow ,book ,prospectus4 #ca4 ,night ,piece4 #cb4 ,portrait of ,mrs4 ,patrick ,campbell4 #cc4 ,title ,page ,ornament for ,the ,yellow ,book4 #cd4 ,comedy ,ballet of ,marionettes1 ,i4 ,from ,the ,yellow ,book4 ,vol4 ,,ii4 #ce4 ,comedy ,ballet of ,marionettes1 ,,ii4 ,from ,the ,yellow ,book4 ,vol4 ,,ii4 #cf4 ,comedy ,ballet of ,marionettes1 ,,iii4 #cg4 ,garons de ,caf4 ,from ,the ,yellow ,book4 ,vol4 ,,ii4 #ch4 ,the ,slippers of ,cinderella4 #ci4 ,portrait of ,mantegna4 ,from ,the ,yellow ,book4 ,vol4 ,,iii4 #dj4 ,the ,wagnerites4 ,from ,the ,yellow ,book4 ,vol4 ,,iii4 #da4 ,la ,dame ,aux ,camlias4 ,from ,the ,yellow ,book4 ,vol4 ,,iii4 #db4 ,madame ,rjane4 #dc4 ,portrait of ,balzac4 #dd4 ,design for ,frontispiece to ,an ,evil ,motherhood4 #de4 ,design for ,front ,cover of ,pierrot4 #df4 ,design for ,end ,paper of ,pierrot4 #dg4 ,design for ,end ,paper of ,pierrot4 #dh4 ,lysistrata4 #di4 ,an ,athenian ,woman4 #ej4 ,myrrhina4 #ea4 ,the ,dream4 #eb4 ,the ,baron's ,prayer4 #ec4 ,the ,rape of the ,lock4 #ed4 ,design for the ,prospectus of ,the ,savoy4 #ee4 ,another ,design for the ,prospectus of ,the ,savoy4 #ef4 ,cover ,design4 ,from ,the ,savoy ,no4 #a4 #eg4 ,contents ,page4 ,from ,the ,savoy ,no4 #a4 #eh4 ,the ,abb4 ,from ,under the ,hill4 #ei4 ,the ,fourth ,tableau of ,das ,rheingold4 #fj4 ,erda4 ,to illustrate ,das ,rheingold4 #fa4 ,flosshilde4 ,to illustrate ,das ,rheingold4 #fb4 ,the ,death of ,pierrot4 #fc4 ,ave ,atque ,vale3 ,catullus1 ,carmen1 ,cl4 #fd4 ,aubrey ,beardsley's ,book-,plate4 ,,aubrey ,,beardsley ,,an ,,essay ,,with ,a ,,preface ,,by ,,arthur ,,symons ,,preface ,it was in the summer of #ahie that ,i first met ,aubrey ,beardsley4 ,a publisher had asked me to form and edit a new kind of magazine1 which was to appeal to the public equally in its letterpress and its illustrations3 need ,i say that ,i am defining the ,savoy8 ,it was1 ,i admit1 to have been something of a rival to the ,yellow ,book1 which had by that time ceased to mark a movement1 and had come to be little more than a publisher's magazine4 ,i forget exactly when the expulsion of ,beardsley from the ,yellow ,book had occurred2 it had been sufficiently recent1 at all events1 to make ,beardsley singularly ready to fall in with my project when ,i went to him and asked him to devote himself to illustrating my quarterly4 ,he was supposed1 just then1 to be dying2 and as ,i entered the room1 and saw him lying out on a couch1 horribly white1 ,i wondered if ,i had come too late4 ,he was full of ideas1 full of enthusiasm1 and ,i think it was then that he suggested the name ,savoy1 finally adopted after endless changes and uncertainties4 ,a little later we met again at ,dieppe1 where for a month ,i saw him daily4 ,it was at ,dieppe that the ,savoy was really planned1 and it was in the cafe which ,mr4 ,sickert has so often painted that ,i wrote the slightly pettish and defiant ,editorial ,note1 which made so many enemies for the first number4 ,dieppe just then was a meeting-place for the younger generation2 some of us spent the whole summer there1 lazily but profitably2 others came and went4 ,beardsley at that time imagined himself to be unable to draw anywhere but in ,london4 ,he made one or two faint attempts1 and even prepared a canvas for a picture which was never painted1 in the hospitable studio in which ,m4 ,jacques ,blanche painted the admirable portrait reproduced in the frontispiece4 ,but he found many subjects1 some of which he afterwards worked out1 in the expressive opportunities of the ,casino and the beach1 lie never walked2 ,i never saw him look at the sea2 but at night he was almost always to be seen watching the gamblers at petits chevaux1 studying them with a sort of hypnotised attention for that picture of ,the ,little ,horses1 which was never done4 ,he liked the large1 deserted rooms1 at hours when no one was there2 the sense of frivolous things caught at a moment of suspended life1 en deshabill4 ,he would glance occasionally1 but with more impatience1 at the dances1 especially the children's dances1 in the concert room2 but he rarely missed a concert1 and would glide in every afternoon1 and sit on the high benches at the side1 always carrying his large1 gilt-leather portfolio with the magnificent1 old1 red-lined folio paper1 which he would often open1 to write some lines in pencil4 ,he was at work then1 with an almost pathetic tenacity1 at his story1 never to be finished1 the story which never could have been finished1 ,under the ,hill1 a new version1 a parody 7like ,laforgue's parodies1 but how unlike them1 or anything67 of the story of ,venus and ,tannhuser4 ,most of it was done at these concerts1 and in the little1 close writing-room1 where visitors sat writing letters4 ,the fragment published in the first two numbers of the ,savoy had passed through many stages before it found its way there1 and would have passed through more if it had ever been carried further4 ,tannhuser1 not quite willingly1 had put on ,abb's disguise1 and there were other unwilling disguises in those brilliant1 disconnected1 fantastic pages1 in which every sentence was meditated over1 written for its own sake1 and left to find its way in its own paragraph4 ,it could never have been finished1 for it had never really been begun2 but what undoubted1 singular1 literary ability there is in it1 all the same6 ,i think ,beardsley would rather have been a great writer than a great artist2 and ,i remember1 on one occasion1 when he had to fill up a form of admission to some library to which ,i was introducing him1 his insistence on describing himself as man of letters4 ,at one time he was going to write an essay on ,les ,liaisons ,dangereuses1 at another he had planned a book on ,rousseau4 ,but his plans for writing changed even more quickly than his plans for doing drawings1 and with less profitable results in the meantime4 ,he has left no prose except that fragment of a story2 and in verse only the three pieces published in the ,savoy4 ,here1 too1 he was terribly anxious to excel2 and his patience over a medium so unfamiliar1 and hence so difficult1 to him as verse1 was infinite4 ,we spent two whole days on the grassy ramparts of the old castle at ,arques-la-,bataille1 near ,dieppe2 ,i working at something or other in one part1 he working at ,the ,three ,musicians in another4 ,the eight stanzas of that amusing piece of verse are really1 in their own way1 a tour de force2 by sheer power of will1 by deliberately saying to himself1 ,i will write a poem1 and by working with such strenuous application that at last a certain result1 the kind of result he had willed1 did really come about1 he succeeded in doing what he had certainly no natural aptitude for doing4 ,how far was that more genuine aspect of his genius also an infinite capacity for taking pains8 ,the republication by ,mr4 ,lane1 the publisher of the ,yellow ,book1 of ,beardsley's contributions in prose and verse to the ,savoy1 its rival1 as ,mr4 ,lane correctly calls it1 with the illustrations which there accompanied them1 reopens a little1 busy chapter in contemporary history4 ,it is the history of yesterday1 and it seems already at this distance of half a century4 ,then1 what brave petulant outbursts of poets and artists1 what comic rivalries and reluctances of publishers1 what droll conflicts of art and morality1 what thunders of the trumpets of the press6 ,the press is silent now1 or admiring2 the publishers have changed places1 and all rivalries are handsomely buried1 with laudatory inscriptions on their tombstones4 ,the situation has its irony1 which would have appealed most to the actor most conspicuously absent from the scene4 ,beardsley was very anxious to be a writer1 and1 though in his verse there was no merit except that of a thing done to order1 to one's own order1 and done without a flaw in the process1 there was1 in his prose1 a much finer quality1 and his fragment of an unachieved and unplanned romance has a savour of its own4 ,it is the work1 not of a craftsman1 but of an amateur1 and in this it may be compared with the prose of ,whistler1 so great an artist in his own art and so brilliant an amateur in the art of literature4 ,beardsley too was something of a wit1 and in his prose one sees hard intellect1 untinged with sentiment1 employed on the work of fancy4 ,he wrote and he saw1 unimaginatively1 and without passion1 but with a fierce sensitive precision2 and he saw by preference things elaborately perverse1 full of fantastic detail1 unlikely and possible things1 brought together from the four corners of the universe4 ,all those descriptions in ,under the ,hill are the equivalent of his drawings1 and they are of especial interest in showing how definitely he saw things1 and with what calm minuteness he could translate what seemed a feverish drawing into oddly rational words4 ,listen1 for instance1 to this garden-picture3 ,in the middle was a huge bronze fountain with three basins4 ,from the first rose a many-breasted dragon and four little loves mounted upon swans1 and each love was furnished with a bow and arrow4 ,two of them that faced the monster seemed to recoil in fear1 two that were behind made bold enough to aim their shafts at him4 ,from the verge of the second sprang a circle of slim golden columns that supported silver doves with tails and wings spread out4 ,the third1 held by a group of grotesquely attenuated satyrs1 is centred with a thin pipe hung with masks and roses and capped with children's heads4 ,the picture was never drawn1 but does it want more than the drawing8 ,the prose of ,under the ,hill does not arrive at being really good prose1 but it has felicities that astonish1 those felicities by which the amateur astonishes the craftsman4 ,the imaginary dedication is the best1 the most sustained1 piece of writing in it1 but there is wit everywhere1 subtly intermingled with fancy1 and there are touches of color such as this3 ,huge moths1 so richly winged that they must have banqueted upon tapestries and royal stuffs1 slept on the pillars that flanked either side of the gateway1 and the eyes of all the moths remained open and were burning and bursting with a mesh of veins4 ,here and there is a thought or a mental sensation like that of the irritation of loveliness that can never be entirely comprehended1 or ever enjoyed to the utmost4 ,there are many affectations1 some copied from ,oscar ,wilde1 others personal enough1 such as the use of ,french words instead of ,english ones3 chevelure for hair1 and pantoufles for slippers4 ,i do not think that ,beardsley finally found a place for the word which he had adapted from the ,french1 papillions1 instead of papillons or butterflies2 it would have come amusingly1 and it was one of his pet words4 ,but his whole conception of writing was that of a game with words2 some obsolete game with a quaint name1 like that other favorite word of his1 spellicans1 for which he did find a place in the story4 ,taken literally1 this fragment is hardly more than a piece of nonsense1 and was hardly meant to be more than that4 ,yet1 beyond the curiosity and ingenuity of the writing1 how much there is of real skill in the evocation of a certain impossible but quite credible atmosphere6 ,its icy artificiality is indeed one of its qualities1 and produces1 by mere negation1 an emotional effect4 ,beardsley did not believe in his own enchantments1 was never haunted by his own terrors1 and1 in his queer sympathy and familiarity with evil1 had none of the ardors of a lost soul4 ,in the place of ,faust he would have kept the devil at his due distance by a polite incredulity1 openly expressed1 as to the very existence of his interlocutor4 ,it was on the balcony of the ,hotel ,henri ,,iv1 at ,arques1 one of those ,september evenings1 that ,i had the only quite serious1 almost solemn1 conversation ,i ever had with ,beardsley4 ,not long before we had gone together to visit ,alexandre ,dumas fils at ,puy1 and it was from talking of that thoughtful1 but entirely1 ,parisian writer1 and his touching1 in its unreal way so real1 ,dame aux ,camlias 7the novel1 not the play71 which ,beardsley admired so much1 that we passed into an unexpectedly intimate mood of speculation4 ,those stars up yonder1 whether they were really the imprisoning worlds of other creatures like ourselves2 the strange ways by which the soul might have come and must certainly go2 death1 and the future3 it was such things that ,i found him speaking1 for once without mockery4 ,and he told me then a singular dream or vision which he had had when a child1 waking up at night in the moonlight and seeing a great crucifix1 with a bleeding ,christ1 falling off the wall1 where certainly there was not1 and had never been1 any crucifix4 ,it is only by remembering that one conversation1 that vision1 the tone of awe with which he told it1 that ,i can1 with a great effort1 imagine to myself the ,beardsley whom ,i knew with his so positive intelligence1 his imaginative sight of the very spirit of man as a thing of definite outline1 transformed finally into the ,beardsley who died in the peace of the last sacraments of the ,church1 holding the rosary between his fingers4 ,and yet1 if you read carefully the book of letters to an unnamed friend1 which has been published six years after his death1 it will be seen that here too1 as always1 we are in the presence of a real thing4 ,in these naked letters we see a man die4 ,and the man dies inch by inch1 like one who slips inch by inch over a precipice1 and knows that the grasses at which his fingers tear1 clutching their feeble roots1 are but delaying him for so many instants1 and that he must soon fall4 ,we see a fine1 clear-sighted intellect set on one problem3 how to get well3 then1 how to get a little better2 and then1 how not to get worse4 ,he records the weather of each day1 and each symptom of his disease2 with a desperate calmness1 which but rarely deserts or betrays him4 ,to-day he feels better and can read ,laclos2 to-morrow he is not so well1 and he must hear no music4 ,he has pious books and pious friends for the days when he is driven back upon himself1 and must turn aside his attention from suffering which brings despair4 ,nothing exists any longer1 outside himself2 and there may be safety somewhere1 in a preservative girdle or in a friend's prayer4 ,he asks for both4 ,both are to keep him alive4 ,he meets at ,mentone someone who seems worse than himself1 and who yet lives on and does things4 ,my spirits have gone up immensely since ,i have known him4 ,a change of sky1 the recurrence of a symptom3 to-day1 alas1 there is a downpour and ,i am miserably depressed4 ,he reads ,s4 ,alphonsus ,liguori1 and it is mere physical exhaustion more than hardness of heart that leaves me so apathetic and uninterested4 ,he clings to religion as to his friend1 thinking that it may help him to keep himself in life4 ,he trains himself to be gentle1 to hope little1 to attack the sources of health stealthily4 ,a wonderful stretch of good health1 a few whole days of it1 makes him tremble at moments4 ,don't think me foolish to haggle about a few months1 he writes1 when he is hoping1 all the time1 that the end is less near than it seems4 ,he is received into the ,church1 makes his first confession1 makes his first communion4 ,it seems to him that each is a new clutch upon the roots of the grasses4 ,the whole book is a study in fear1 and by its side everything else that has been done1 imaginatively or directly1 on that fierce passion1 seems mere oratory or a talking beside the question4 ,here ,beardsley is1 as he is in his drawings1 close1 absorbed1 limited1 and unflinching4 ,that he should be so honest with his fear2 that he should sit down before its face and study it feature by feature2 that he should never turn aside his eyes for more than an instant1 make no attempt to escape1 but sit at home with it1 travel with it1 see it in his mirror1 taste it with the sacrament3 that is the marvellous thing1 and the sign of his fundamental sincerity in life and art4 ,,aubrey ,,beardsley ,anima naturaliter pagana1 ,aubrey ,beardsley ended a long career1 at the age of twenty-six1 in the arms of the ,church4 ,no artist of our time1 none certainly whose work has been in black and white1 has reached a more universal1 or a more contested fame2 none has formed himself1 out of such alien elements1 a more personal originality of manner2 none has had so wide an influence on contemporary art4 ,he had the fatal speed of those who are to die young2 that disquieting completeness and extent of knowledge1 that absorption of a lifetime in an hour1 which we find in those who hasten to have done their work before noon1 knowing that they will not see the evening4 ,he had played the piano in drawing-rooms as an infant prodigy1 before1 ,i suppose1 he had ever drawn a line3 famous at twenty as a draughtsman1 he found time1 in those incredibly busy years which remained to him1 to deliberately train himself into a writer of prose which was1 in its way1 as original as his draughtsmanship1 and into a writer of verse which had at least ingenious and original moments4 ,he seemed to have read everything1 and had his preferences as adroitly in order1 as wittily in evidence1 as almost any man of letters2 indeed1 he seemed to know more1 and was a sounder critic1 of books than of pictures2 with perhaps a deeper feeling for music than for either4 ,his conversation had a peculiar kind of brilliance different in order but scarcely inferior in quality to that of any other contemporary master of that art2 a salt1 whimsical dogmatism1 equally full of convinced egoism and of imperturbable keen-sightedness4 ,generally choosing to be paradoxical2 and vehement on behalf of any enthusiasm of the mind1 he was the dupe of none of his own statements1 or indeed of his own enthusiasms1 and1 really1 very coldly impartial4 ,i scarcely except even his own judgment of himself in spite of his petulant1 amusing self-assertion1 so full of the childishness of genius4 ,he thought1 and was right in thinking1 very highly of himself2 he admired himself enormously2 but his intellect would never allow itself to be deceived even about his own accomplishments4 ,this clear1 unemotional intellect1 emotional only in the perhaps highest sense1 where emotion almost ceases to be recognizable1 in the abstract1 for ideas1 for lines1 left him with all his interests in life1 with all his sociability1 of a sort essentially very lonely4 ,many people were devoted to him1 but he had1 ,i think1 scarcely a friend1 in the fullest sense of the word2 and ,i doubt if there were more than one or two people for whom he felt any real affection4 ,in spite of constant ill-health he had am astonishing tranquility of nerves2 and it was doubtless that rare quality which kept him1 after all1 alive so long4 ,how far he had deliberately acquired command over his nerves and his emotions1 as he deliberately acquired command over brain and hand1 ,i do not know4 ,but there it certainly was1 one of the bewildering characteristics of so contradictory a temperament4 ,one of his poses1 as people say1 one of those things1 that is1 in which he was most sincere1 was his care in outwardly conforming to the conventions which make for elegance and restraint2 his necessity of dressing well1 of showing no sign of the professional artist4 ,he had a great contempt for1 what seemed to inferior craftsmen1 inspiration1 for what ,i have elsewhere called the plenary inspiration of first thoughts2 and he hated the outward and visible signs of an inward yeastiness and incoherency4 ,it amused him to denounce everything1 certainly1 which ,baudelaire would have denounced2 and1 along with some mere gaminerie1 there was a very serious and adequate theory of art at the back of all his destructive criticisms4 ,it was a profound thing which he said to a friend of mine who asked him whether he ever saw visions3 ,no1 he replied1 ,i do not allow myself to see them except on paper4 ,all his art is in that phrase4 ,and he attained1 to the full1 one certainly of his many desires1 and that one1 perhaps1 of which he was most keenly or most continuously conscious3 contemporary fame of a popular singer or a professional beauty1 the fame of ,yvette ,guilbert or of ,clo de ,mrode4 ,and there was logic in his insistence on this point1 in his eagerness after immediate and clamorous success4 ,others might have waited2 he knew that he had not the time to wait4 ,after all1 posthumous fame is not a very cheering prospect to look forward to1 on the part of those who have worked without recompense1 if the pleasure or the relief of work is not enough in itself4 ,every artist has his own secret1 beyond the obvious one1 of why he works1 it is generally some unhappiness1 some dissatisfaction with the things about one1 some too desperate or too contemptuous sense of the meaning of existence4 ,at one period of his life a man works at his art to please a woman2 then he works because he is tired of pleasing her4 ,work for the work's sake it always must be1 in a profound sense2 and1 with ,beardsley1 not less certainly than with ,blake or with ,rosetti4 ,but that other1 that accidental1 significant motive1 was1 with ,beardsley1 the desire to fill his few working years with the immediate echo of a great notoriety4 ,like most artists who have thought much of popularity he had an immense contempt for the public2 and the desire to kick that public into admiration1 and then to kick it for admiring the wrong thing or not knowing why it was admiring1 led him into many of his most outrageous practical jokes of the pen4 ,he was partly right and partly wrong1 for he was indiscriminate2 and to be indiscriminate is always to be partly right and partly wrong4 ,the wish to pater le bourgeois is a natural one1 and1 though a little beside the question1 does not necessarily lead one astray4 ,the general public1 of course1 does not in the least know why it admires the right thing to-day though it admired the wrong thing yesterday4 ,but there is such a thing as denying your ,master while you are rebuking a servant-girl4 ,beardsley was without the very sense of respect2 it was one of his limitations4 ,and this limitation was an unfortunate one1 for it limited his ambition4 ,with the power of creating beauty1 which should be pure beauty1 he turned aside1 only too often1 to that lower kind of beauty which is the mere beauty of technique in a composition otherwise meaningless1 trivial1 or grotesque4 ,saying to himself1 ,i can do what ,i like2 there is nothing ,i could not do if ,i chose to1 if ,i chose to take the trouble2 but why should ,i offer hard gold when an ,i4,o4,u4 will be just the same8 ,i can pay up whenever the money is really wanted1 he allowed himself to be content with what he knew would startle1 doing it with infinite pains1 to his own mind conscientiously1 but doing it with that lack of reverence for great work which is one of the most sterlizing characteristics of the present day4 ,the epithet fin de sicle has been given1 somewhat loosely1 to a great deal of modern ,french art1 and to art which1 in one way or another1 seems to attach itself to contemporary ,france4 ,out of the great art of ,manet1 the serious art of ,degas1 the exquisite art of ,whistler1 all1 in such different ways1 so modern1 there has come into existence a new1 very modern1 very far from great or serious or really exquisite kind of art1 which has expressed itself largely in the ,courrier ,franais1 the ,gil ,blas ,illustr1 and the posters4 ,all this art may be said to be what the quite new art of the poster certainly is1 art meant for the street1 for people who are walking fast4 ,it comes into competition with the newspapers1 with the music-halls2 half contemptuously1 it popularises itself2 and1 with real qualities and a real measure of good intention1 finds itself forced to seek for sharp1 sudden1 arresting means of expression4 ,instead of seeking pure beauty1 the seriousness and self-absorption of great art1 it takes1 wilfully and for effect1 that beauty which is least evident1 indeed least genuine2 nearest to ugliness in the grotesque1 nearest to triviality in a certain elegant daintiness1 nearest also to brutality and the spectacular vices4 ,art is not sought for its own sake1 but the manual craftsman perfects himself to express a fanciful1 ingenious1 elaborate1 somewhat tricky way of seeing things1 which he has deliberately adopted4 ,it finds its own in the eighteenth century1 so that ,willette becomes a kind of petty1 witty ,watteau of ,montmartre2 it parodies the art of stained glass1 with ,grasset and his followers2 it juggles with iron bars and masses of shadow1 like ,lautrec4 ,and1 in its direct assault on the nerves1 it pushes naughtiness to obscenity1 deforms observation into caricature1 dexterity of line and handling being cultivated as one cultivates a particular1 deadly bottle in fencing4 ,and this art1 this art of the day and hour1 competes not merely with the appeal and the popularity of the theatrical spectacle1 but directly with theatrical methods1 the methods of stage illusion4 ,the art of the ballet counts for much1 in the evolution of many favorite effects of contemporary drawing1 and not merely because ,degas has drawn dancers1 with his reserved1 essentially classical mastery of form4 ,by its rapidity of flight within bounds1 by its bird-like and flower-like caprices of color and motion1 by that appeal to the imagination which comes from its silence 7to which music is but like an accompanying shadow1 so closely1 so discreetly1 does it follow the feet of the dancers71 by its appeal to the eyes and to the senses1 its adorable artificiality1 the ballet has tempted almost every draughtsman1 as the interiors of music-halls have also been singularly tempting1 with their extraordinary tricks of light1 their suddenness of gesture1 their triumphant tinsel1 their fantastic humanity4 ,and pantomime1 too1 in the ,french and correct1 rather than in the ,english and incorrect1 sense of that word1 has had its significant influence4 ,in those pathetic gaieties of ,willette1 in the windy laughter of the frivolities of ,chret1 it is the masquerade1 the ,english clown or acrobat seen at the ,folies-,bergre1 painted people mimicking puppets1 who have begotten this masquerading humanity of posters and illustrated papers4 ,and the point of view is the point of view of ,pierrot-- le subtil gnie ,de sa malice infinie ,de pote-grimacier-- ,verlaine's ,pierrot gamin4 ,pierrot is one of the types we live1 or of the moment1 perhaps1 out of which we are just passing4 ,pierrot is passionate2 but he does not believe in great passions4 ,he feels himself to be sickening with a fever1 or else perilously convalescent2 for love is a disease1 which he is too weak to resist or endure4 ,he has worn his heart on his sleeve so long1 that it has hardened in the cold air4 ,he knows that his face is powdered1 and1 if he sobs1 it is without tears2 and it is hard to distinguish1 under the chalk1 if the grimace which twists his mouth awry is more laughter or mockery4 ,he knows that he is condemned to be always in public1 that emotion would be supremely out of keeping with his costume1 that he must remember to be fantastic if he would not be merely ridiculous4 ,and so he becomes exquisitely false1 dreading above all things that one touch of nature which would ruffle his disguise1 and leave him defenceless4 ,simplicity1 in him1 being the most laughable thing in the world1 he becomes learned1 perverse1 intellectualising his pleasures1 brutalising his intellect2 his mournful contemplation of things becoming a kind of grotesque joy1 which he expresses in the only symbols at his command1 tracing his ,giotto's ,o with the elegance of his pirouette4 ,and ,beardsley1 with almost more than the ,parisian's deference to ,paris1 and to the moment1 was1 more than any ,parisian1 this ,pierrot gamin4 ,he was more than that1 but he was that3 to be that was part of what he learnt from ,france4 ,it helped him to the pose which helped him to reveal himself3 as ,burne-,jones had helped him when he did the illustrations to the ,morte d',arthur1 7,ill4 #g-aj7 as ,japanese art helped him to free himself from that influence1 as ,eisen and ,saint-,aubin showed him the way to the ,rape of the ,lock4 7,ill4 #ec7 ,he had that originality which surrenders to every influence1 yet surrenders to absorb1 not to be absorbed2 that originality which1 constantly shifting1 is true always to its centre4 ,whether he learnt from ,m4 ,grasset or from ,mr4 ,ricketts1 from an #ahcj fashion-plate1 or from an engraved plate by ,hogarth1 whether the scenery of ,arques-la-,bataille composed itself into a pattern in his mind1 or1 in the ,casino at ,dieppe1 he made a note of the design of a looped-up window-blind1 he was always drawing to himself1 out of the order of art or the confusion of natural things1 the thing he wanted1 the thing he could make his own4 ,and he found1 in the ,french art of the moment1 a joyous sadness1 the service to ,god of ,mephistopheles1 which his own temperament and circumstances were waiting to suggest to him--4 ,in more ways than one do men sacrifice to the rebellious angels1 says ,st4 ,augustine2 and ,beardsley's sacrifice1 together with that of all great decadent art1 the art of ,rops or the art of ,baudelaire1 is really a sacrifice to the eternal beauty1 and only seemingly to the powers of evil4 ,and here let me say that ,i have no concern with what neither he nor ,i could have had absolute knowledge of1 his own intention in his work4 ,a man's intention1 it must be remembered1 from the very fact that it is conscious1 is much less intimately himself than the sentiment which his work conveys to me4 ,so large is the sub-conscious element in all artistic creation1 that ,i should have doubted whether ,beardsley himself knew what he intended to do1 in this or that really significant drawing4 ,admitting that he could tell exactly what he had intended1 ,i should be quite prepared to show that he had really done the very contrary4 ,thus when ,i say he was a profoundly spiritual artist1 though seeming to care chiefly for the manual part of his work2 that he expresses evil with an intensity which lifted it into a region almost of asceticism1 though attempting1 not seldom1 little more than a joke or a caprice in line3 and that he was above all1 though almost against his own will1 a satirist who has seen the ideal2 ,i am putting forward no paradox1 nothing really contradictory1 but a simple analysis of the work as it exists4 ,at times he attains pure beauty1 has the unimpaired vision2 in the best of the ,salom 7,ills4 #ae-bi7 designs here and there afterwards4 ,from the first it is a diabolic beauty1 but it is not yet divided against itself4 ,the consciousness of sin is always there1 but it is sin first transfigured by beauty1 and then disclosed by beauty2 sin1 conscious of itself1 of its inability to escape itself1 and showing in its ugliness the law it has broken4 ,his world is a world of phantoms1 in which the desire of the perfecting of mortal sensations1 a desire of infinity1 has over-passed mortal limits1 and poised them1 so faint1 so quivering1 so passionate for flight1 in a hopeless and strenuous immobility4 ,they have the sensitiveness of the spirit1 and that bodily sensitiveness which wastes their veins and imprisons them in the attitude of their luxurious meditation4 ,they are too thoughtful to be ever really simple1 or really absorbed by either flesh or spirit4 ,they have nothing of what is healthy or merely animal in their downward course towards repentance2 no overwhelming passion hurries them beyond themselves2 they do not capitulate to an open assault of the enemy of souls4 ,it is the soul in them that sins1 sorrowfully1 without reluctance1 inevitably4 ,their bodies are faint and eager with wantonness2 they desire more pleasure than there is in the world1 fiercer and more exquisite pains1 a more intolerable suspense4 ,they have put off the common burdens of humanity1 and put on that loneliness which is the rest of saints and the unrest of those who have sinned with the intellect4 ,they are a little lower than the angels1 and they walk between these and the fallen angels1 without part or lot in the world4 ,here1 then1 we have a sort of abstract spiritual corruption1 revealed in beautiful form2 sin transfigured by beauty4 ,and here1 even if we go no further1 is an art intensely spiritual1 an art in which evil purifies itself by its own intensity1 and the beauty which transfigures it4 ,the one thing in the world which is without hope is that mediocrity which is the sluggish content of inert matter4 ,better be vividly awake to evil than1 in mere somnolence1 close the very issues and approaches of good and evil4 ,for evil itself1 carried to the point of a perverse ecstasy1 becomes a kind of good1 by means of that energy which1 otherwise directed1 is virtue2 and which can never1 no matter how its course may be changed1 fail to retain something of its original efficacy4 ,the devil is nearer to ,god1 by the whole height from which he fell1 than the average man who has not recognised his own need to rejoice or to repent4 ,and so a profound spiritual corruption1 instead of being a more immortal thing than the gross and pestiferous humanity of ,hogarth or of ,rowlandson1 is more nearly1 in the final and abstract sense1 moral1 for it is the triumph of the spirit over the flesh1 to no matter what end4 ,it is a form of divine possession1 by which the inactive and materialising soul is set in fiery motion1 lured from the ground1 into at least a certain high liberty4 ,and so we find evil justified of itself1 and an art consecrated to the revelation of evil equally justified2 its final justification being that declared by ,plotinus1 in his treatise ,on the ,nature of ,good and ,evil4 ,but evil is permitted to remain by itself alone on account of the superior power and nature of good2 because it appears from necessity everywhere comprehended and bound1 in beautiful bands1 like men fettered with golden chains1 lest it should be produced openly to the views of divinity1 or lest mankind should always behold its horrid shape when perfectly naked2 and such is the supervening power of good1 that whenever a glimpse of perfect evil is obtained we are immediately recalled to the memory of good by the image of the beautiful with which evil is invested4 ,in those drawings of ,beardsley which are grotesque rather than beautiful1 in which now all the beauty takes refuge1 is itself a moral judgment4 ,look at that drawing called ,the ,scarlet ,pastorale4#a ,in front1 a bloated harlequin struts close to the footlights1 outside the play1 on which he turns his back2 beyond1 sacramental candles have been lighted1 and are guttering down in solitude1 under an unseen wind4 ,and between1 on the sheer darkness of the stage1 a bald and plumed ,pierrot1 holding in his vast1 collapsing paunch with a mere rope of roses1 shows the cloven foot1 while ,pierrette points at him in screaming horror1 and the fat dancer turns on her toes indifferently4 ,need we go further to show how much more than ,gautier's meaning lies in the old paradox of ,mademoiselle de ,maupin1 that perfection of line is virtue8 ,that line which rounds the deformity of the cloven-footed sin1 the line itself1 is at once the revelation and the condemnation of vice1 for it is part of that artistic logic which is morality4 ,beardsley is the satirist of an age without convictions1 and he can but paint hell as ,baudelaire did1 without pointing for contrast to any contemporary paradise4 ,he employs the same rhetoric as ,baudelaire1 a method of emphasis which it is uncritical to think insecure4 ,in that terrible annunciation of evil which he called ,the ,mysterious ,rose-,garden1 the lantern-bearing angel with winged sandals whispers1 from among the falling roses1 tidings of more than pleasant sins4 ,the leering dwarfs1 the monkeys1 by which the mystics symbolised the earthlier vices2 those immense bodies swollen with the lees of pleasure1 and those cloaked and masked desires shuddering in gardens and smiling ambiguously at interminable toilets2 are part of a symbolism which loses nothing by lack of emphasis4 ,and the peculiar efficacy of this satire is that it is so much the satire of desire returning upon itself1 the mockery of desire enjoyed1 the mockery of desire denied4 ,it is because he loves beauty that beauty's degradation obsesses him2 it is because he is supremely conscious of virtue that vice has power to lay hold upon him4 ,and1 unlike those other acceptable satirists of our day1 with whom satire exhausts itself in the rebuke of a drunkard leaning against a lamp-post1 or a lady paying the wrong compliment in a drawing-room1 he is the satirist of essential things2 it is always the soul1 and not the body's discontent only1 which cries out of these insatiable eyes1 that have looked on all their lusts1 and out of these bitter mouths1 that have eaten the dust of all their sweetness1 and out of these hands1 that have laboured delicately for nothing1 and out of these feet1 that have run after vanities4 ,they are so sorrowful because they have seen beauty1 and because they have departed from the line of beauty4 ,and after all1 the secret of ,beardsley is there2 in the line itself rather than in anything1 intellectually realised1 which the line is intended to express4 ,with ,beardsley everything was a question of form3 his interest in his work began when the paper was before him and the pen in his hand4 ,and so1 in one sense1 he may be said never to have known what he wanted to do1 while1 in another1 he knew very precisely indeed4 ,he was ready to do1 within certain limits1 almost anything you suggested to him2 as1 when left to himself1 he was content to follow the caprice of the moment4 ,what he was sure of was his power of doing exactly what he proposed to himself to do3 the thing itself might be ,salom or ,belinda1 ,ali ,baba or ,rjane1 the ,morte d',arthur or the ,rheingold or the ,liaisons ,dangereuses2 the design might be for an edition of a classic or for the cover of a catalogue of second-hand books4 ,and the design might seem to have no relation with the title of its subject1 and1 indeed1 might have none3 its relation was of line to line within the limits of its own border1 and to nothing else in the world4 ,thus he could change his whole manner of working five or six times over in the course of as many years1 seem to employ himself much of the time on trivial subjects1 and yet retain1 almost unimpaired1 an originality which consisted in the extreme beauty and the absolute certainty of design4 ,it was a common error1 at one time1 to say that ,beardsley could not draw4 ,he certainly did not draw the human body with any attempt at rendering its own lines1 taken by themselves2 indeed1 one of his latest drawings1 an initial letter to ,volpone1 is almost the first in which he has drawn a nude figure realistically4 ,but he could draw1 with extraordinary skill1 in what is after all the essential way3 he could make a line do what he wanted it to do1 express the conception of form which it was his intention to express2 and this is what the conventional draughtsman1 ,bouguereau1 for instance1 cannot do4 ,the conventional draughtsman1 any ,academy student1 will draw a line which shows quite accurately the curve of a human body1 but all his science of drawing will not make you feel that line1 will not make that line pathetic1 as in the little1 drooping body which a satyr and a ,pierrot are laying in a puff-powder coffin1 in the tail-piece to ,salom4 7,ill4 #bh47 ,and then1 it must never be forgotten1 ,beardsley was a decorative artist1 and not anything else4 ,from almost the very first he accepted convention2 he set himself to see things as pattern4 ,taking freely all that the ,japanese could give him1 that release from the bondage of what we call real things1 which comes to one man from an intense spirituality1 to another from a consciousness of material form so intense that it becomes abstract1 he made the world over again in his head1 as if it existed only when it was thus re-made1 and not even then1 until it had been set down in black line on a white surface1 in white line on a black surface4 ,working1 as the decorative artist must work1 in symbols almost as arbitrary1 almost as fixed1 as the squares of a chess-board1 he swept together into his pattern all the incongruous things in the world1 weaving them into congruity by his pattern4 ,using the puff-box1 the toilet-table1 the ostrich-feather hat1 with a full consciousness of their suggestive quality in a drawing of archaic times1 a drawing purposely fantastic1 he put these things to beautiful uses1 because he liked their forms1 and because his space of white or black seemed to require some such arrangement of lines4 ,they were the minims and crotchets by which he wrote down his music2 they made the music1 but they were not the music4 ,in the ,salom 7,ills4 #ae-bi7 drawings1 in most of the ,yellow ,book 7,ills4 #cc1 #cd1 #ce1 #cg1 #dj1 #da7 drawings1 we see ,beardsley under this mainly ,japanese influence2 with1 now and later1 in his less serious work the but half-admitted influence of what was most actual1 perhaps most temporary1 in the ,french art of the day4 ,pierrot gamin1 in ,salom itself1 alternates1 in such irreverences as the design of ,the ,black ,cape1 7,ill4 #ag7 with the creator of the noble line1 in the austere and terrible design of ,the ,climax1 7,ill4 #bd7 the ornate and vehement design of ,the ,peacock ,skirt4 7,ill4 #af47 ,here we get pure outline1 as in the frontispiece2 a mysterious intricacy1 as in the border of the title-page and of the table of contents2 a paradoxical beauty of mere wilfulness1 but a wilfulness which has its meaning1 its excuse1 its pictorial justification1 as in ,the ,toilette4 7,ill4 #bb74 ,the ,yellow ,book and the first drawings for the ,savoy1 7,ills4 #ed-eg7 a new influence has come into the work1 the influence of the ,french eighteenth century4 ,this influence1 artificial as it is1 draws him nearer1 though somewhat unquietly nearer1 to nature4 ,drawings like ,the ,fruit ,bearers1 in the first number of the ,savoy1 with its solid and elaborate richness of ornament1 or ,the ,coiffing1 in the third number1 with its delicate and elaborate grace1 its witty concentration of line2 drawings like the illustrations to the ,rape of the ,lock1 7,ill4 #ec7 have1 with less extravagance1 and also a less strenuous intellectual effort1 a new mastery of elegant form1 not too far removed from nature while still subordinated to the effect of decoration1 to the instinct of line4 ,in the illustrations to ,ernest ,dowson's ,pierrot of the ,minute1 7,ills4 #de-dg7 we have a more deliberate surrender1 for the moment1 to ,eisen and ,saint-,aubin1 as yet another manner is seen working itself out4 ,the illustrations to ,mademoiselle de ,maupin1 seemed to me1 when ,i first saw them1 with the exception of one extremely beautiful design in colour1 to show a certain falling off in power1 an actual weakness in the handling of the pen4 ,but1 in their not quite successful feeling after natural form1 they did but represent1 as ,i afterwards found1 the moment of transition to what must now remain for us1 and may well remain1 ,beardsley's latest manner4 ,the four initial letters to ,volpone1 the last of which was finished not more than three weeks before his death1 have a new quality both of hand and of mind4 ,they are done in pencil1 and they lose1 as such drawings are bound to lose1 very greatly in the reduced reproduction4 ,but1 in the original1 they are certainly1 in sheer technical skill1 equal to anything he had ever done1 and they bring at the last1 and with complete success1 nature itself into the pattern4 ,and here1 under some solemn influence1 the broken line of beauty has reunited2 the care is over1 and the trouble has gone out of this no less fantastic world1 in which ,pan still smiles from his terminal column among the trees1 but without the old malice4 ,human and animal form reassert themselves1 with a new dignity1 under this new respect for their capabilities4 ,beardsley has accepted the convention of nature itself1 turning it to his own uses1 extracting from it his own symbols1 but no longer rejecting it for a convention entirely of his own making4 ,and thus in his last work1 done under the very shadow of death1 we find new possibilities for an art1 conceived as pure line1 conducted through mere pattern1 which1 after many hesitations1 has resolved finally upon the great compromise1 that compromise which the greatest artists have made1 between the mind's outline and the outline of visible things4 #a ,this drawing is not reproduced in this volume4 ,illustrations3 see above4