Aubrey Beardsley

AUBREY BEARDSLEY AT MENTONE, IN THE ROOM IN WHICH HE DIED.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

To those who are acquainted with Aubrey Beardsley's essays into the domain of literature no apology for this re-publication is needed—indeed Beardsley's most intimate friends have averred that if his master genius had been turned seriously towards the world of letters, his success would have been as undoubted there as it was in the world of art.

Admirers frequently have expressed a wish to see the literary remains of Beardsley. This volume, in which are gathered together various fragments and personalia, will, I trust, meet the case.

A few of my random recollections of Beardsley's association with "The Yellow Book" perhaps will not be amiss.

Until the publication of the first volume of "The Yellow Book" in 1894, Beardsley was practically unknown, his drawings for "Le Morte D'Arthur" and his marvellous designs illustrating "SalomÉ" constituting his artistic record. It was at this time, then, that one morning he, with Mr. Henry Harland and myself, during half an hour's chat over our cigarettes at the Hogarth Club, founded the much discussed "Yellow Book." Beardsley became Art Editor, whilst Mr. Harland accepted the post of Literary Editor.

Many will remember the sensation caused by the appearance of the first volume. Perhaps the Westminster Gazette and the Times were the most severe in their strictures, at any rate on the Art in general and on Beardsley in particular.

The Westminster Gazette said:

"Mr. Aubrey Beardsley achieves excesses hitherto undreamt of. He seems to have conceived the disagreeable idea of taking certain arrangements of lines invented by the Japanese, and specially suited to blithe and pleasant peaks of decoration, and applying them to the most morbid of grotesque. His offence is the less to be condoned because he has undoubted skill as a line draughtsman and has shown himself capable of refined and delicate work. But as regards certain of his inventions in this number, the thing called 'The Sentimental Education,' and that other thing to which the name of Mrs. Patrick Campbell has somehow become attached, we do not know that anything would meet the case except a short Act of Parliament to make this kind of thing illegal."

The Times said:

"'The Yellow Book' is, we suppose, destined to be the organ of the New Literature and the New Art. If the New Art is represented by the cover of this wonderful volume, it is scarcely calculated to attract by its intrinsic beauty or merit; possibly, however, it may be intended to attract by its very repulsiveness and insolence, and in that case it is not unlikely to be successful. Its note appears to be a combination of English rowdyism with French lubricity.... Sir Frederick Leighton, who contributes two graceful studies, finds himself cheek by jowl with such advanced and riotous representatives of the New Art as Mr. Aubrey Beardsley and Mr. Walter Sickert. On the whole the New Art and the New Literature appear to us to compare in this singular volume far from favourably with the old."

It may interest the Times critic to know that Sir Frederick Leighton was a great admirer of Beardsley's work. At one of Sir Frederick's periodical visits to the Bodley Head to see how the New Art and the New Literature were developing, he playfully suggested that if he was not "performing an R.A. duty he was doing a neighbourly one." He asked to see the originals of Beardsley's "Yellow Book" pictures (Vol. I.), and then remarked: "Ah! what wonderful line! What a great artist!" and then sotto voce, "if he could only draw." My retort was, "Sir Frederick, I am tired of seeing men who can only draw." "Oh! yes," said Sir Frederick, "I know what you mean, and you are quite right too."

There was indeed a universal howl against the cover and title-page designs, which it will be remembered were both the work of Beardsley. However the conductors of "The Yellow Book" were nothing daunted and proceeded to announce that for each volume in the future Mr. Beardsley would complete new cover and title-page designs. This was an entirely fresh idea, and has since been adopted by most of the leading illustrated magazines both in England and America.

An interesting and original contribution to Volume II. of "The Yellow Book," one which did not fulfil its object however, was a criticism of the contents of Volume I. by the late P. G. Hammerton. Mr. Hammerton, being merely an art critic and not a humorist, did not fulfil the commission quite in the spirit in which it was given him; the conductors of the quarterly desired criticism, even though adverse to themselves. I am sure that nothing would have delighted the two editors more than a good slating in their own pages, but Mr. Hammerton, always conscientious, found nothing but praise for its contents, especially for Beardsley's work.

Beardsley's defect as Art Editor was youth. He would not take himself seriously: as an editor and draughtsman he was almost a practical joker, for one had, so to speak, to place his drawings under a microscope, and look at them upside down. This tendency on the eve of the production of Vol. V., during my first visit to the United States, rendered it necessary to omit his work from that volume.

Beardsley was responsible for the art of the first four volumes, and it must be frankly confessed that, when he severed his connection with the magazine, the quarterly suffered an irretrievable loss.

Soon after this period, Mr. Arthur Symonds started "The Savoy," as a rival, to which Beardsley, again as Art Editor, contributed another fine series of drawings.

I well remember being interviewed in New York regarding the alleged decadence in Beardsley's work. I said then, and repeat now, that he merely lashed the follies of his time, that he was the Hogarth of his day, and that he had no more sympathy with decadence than Hogarth had for the vices depicted in "The Rake's Progress" and "Marriage À la Mode." Knowledge must never be confounded with sympathy. I will go farther, and declare that Beardsley, by his grotesque and powerful pictures of several hideous phases or life, dealt a death blow to decadence. Had he lived till now, it is quite possible that the Royal Academy might have justified its existence by recognising in him the greatest exponent of the most vital of the graphic arts—namely, Black and White. In support of this theory it may be well to point out that Mr. Harland is now the delight or millions by his charming love romances, and that "Max" in his brilliant weekly articles in the Saturday Review pleads eloquently for an intelligent drama.

It was not often that Beardsley took up his pen to write to the newspapers, preferring to allow the hostile and adverse criticism with which he was continually assailed to confute themselves. On two occasions, however, he did so, and the letters he wrote will be round included in this volume. The first, I think, with the accompanying illustration, explains itself. The second was the outcome of the following criticism by the DAILY Chronicle. March I, 1894, on the frontispiece of Mr. John Davidson's "Plays".

"AN ERROR OF TASTE"

"Mr. Beardsley has contributed a frontispiece À propos of 'Scaramouch in Naxos' in which one or two well-known faces of the day are to be recognised—an error or taste which is to be regretted."

The subjects of Beardsley's two portraits were Mr. Wilde and Sir Augustus Harris; the latter Beardsley considered his debtor by virtue of his having taken half a crown at Covent Garden Theatre without providing him with a seat.

Aubrey Beardsley was born on August 21, 1872, and died on March 16, 1898. During his short life he carried the art of Black and White further than any man since Albert DÜrer. On his death prophetic assurances were not wanting that the "Beardsley cult" or "craze," as it was generally called, was doomed to extinction with the death of its high priest, but so far from this anticipation being realised, his work now enjoys a greater appreciation and more intelligent sympathy than was granted to it, save by an esoteric few, during his lifetime.

Although it is impossible, with any degree of accuracy, to state to what extent Beardsley's popularity has increased during the last few years, evidence is not wanting to show that his following is both enthusiastic and loyal. This applies not only to Great Britain, but equally to America, whilst in Germany, France, Belgium, Russia and Holland, it is safe to affirm that his reputation is steadily growing, especially in Germany. Indeed, it is obvious to the most superficial observer that there is hardly a Black and White artist working to-day who has not in some subtle way been influenced by the master.

More than three-fourths of Beardsley's work passed through my hands, and to my knowledge he never used Chinese White. I am the fortunate possessor of the originals of over eighty of his principal drawings. I get applications from would-be purchasers of these from different parts of the world almost daily, but as yet I have withstood all temptations to part with these treasures, which I regard as the chief monument of the greatest, most brilliant, the wittiest, and the most lovable man it has ever been my privilege to know.

JOHN LANE.

THE BODLEY HEAD,

VIGO STREET, W.

July 1903.

CONTENTS

DEDICATION TO "UNDER THE HILL"
UNDER THE HILL
THE THREE MUSICIANS
THE BALLAD OF A BARBER
TRANSLATION OF CATULLUS: CARMEN CI
TABLE TALK OF AUBREY BEARDSLEY
TWO LETTERS OF AUBREY BEARDSLEY

ILLUSTRATIONS

AUBREY BEARDSLEY AT MENTONE, IN THE ROOM IN
WHICH HE DIED Frontispiece
THE ABBÉ
THE TOILET OF HELEN
THE FRUIT BEARERS
THE ASCENSION OF SAINT ROSE OF LIMA
FOR THE THIRD TABLEAU OF "DAS RHEINGOLD"
THE THREE MUSICIANS
THE THREE MUSICIANS
TAILPIECE TO "THE THREE MUSICIANS"
THE COIFFING
CUL-DE-LAMPE TO "THE BARBER"
ATE ATQUE VALE
TITLE-PAGE TO VOL. I. OF "THE YELLOW BOOK"
FRONTISPIECE TO "PLAYS" BY JOHN DAVIDSON
ARBUSCULA
PORTRAIT SKETCHES
L'ABBÉ MOURET

UNDER THE HILL

A ROMANTIC NOVEL

TO

THE MOST EMINENT AND REVEREND PRINCE

GIULIO POLDO PEZZOLI

CARDINAL OF THE HOLY ROMAN CHURCH
TITULAR BISHOP OF S. MARIA IN TRASTAVERE
ARCHBISHOP OF OSTIA AND VELLETRI
NUNCIO TO THE HOLY SEE
IN
NICARAGUA AND PATAGONIA
A FATHER TO THE POOR
A REFORMER OF ECCLESIASTICAL DISCIPLINE
A PATTERN OF LEARNING
WISDOM AND HOLINESS OF LIFE
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED WITH DUE REVERENCE
BY HIS HUMBLE SERVITOR
A SCRIVENER AND LIMNER OF WORLDLY THINGS
WHO MADE THIS BOOK

AUBREY BEARDSLEY

UNDER THE HILL

A ROMANTIC NOVEL

CHAPTER I

The AbbÉ Fanfreluche, having lighted off his horse, stood doubtfully for a moment beneath the ombre gateway of the mysterious Hill, troubled with an exquisite fear lest a day's travel should have too cruelly undone the laboured niceness of his dress. His hand, slim and gracious as La Marquise du Deffand's in the drawing by Carmontelle, played nervously about the gold hair that fell upon his shoulders like a finely-curled peruke, and from point to point of a precise toilet the fingers wandered, quelling the little mutinies of cravat and ruffle.

It was taper-time; when the tired earth puts on its cloak of mists and shadows, when the enchanted woods are stirred with light footfalls and slender voices of the fairies, when all the air is full of delicate influences, and even the beaux, seated at their dressing-tables, dream a little.

A delicious moment, thought Fanfreluche, to slip into exile.

The place where he stood waved drowsily with strange flowers, heavy with perfume, dripping with odours. Gloomy and nameless weeds not to be found in Mentzelius. Huge moths, so richly winged they must have banqueted upon tapestries and royal stuffs, slept on the pillars that flanked either side of the gateway, and the eyes of all the moths remained open and were burning and bursting with a mesh of veins. The pillars were fashioned in some pale stone and rose up like hymns in the praise of pleasure, for from cap to base, each one was carved with loving sculptures, showing such a cunning invention and such a curious knowledge, that Fanfreluche lingered not a little in reviewing them. They surpassed all that Japan has ever pictured from her maisons vertes, all that was ever painted in the cool bath-rooms of Cardinal La Motte, and even outdid the astonishing illustrations to Jones's "Nursery Numbers."

"A pretty portal," murmured the AbbÉ, correcting his sash.

As he spoke, a faint sound of singing was breathed out from the mountain, faint music as strange and distant as sea-legends that are heard in shells.

"The Vespers of Helen, I take it," said Fanfreluche, and struck a few chords of accompaniment, ever so lightly, upon his little lute. Softly across the spell-bound threshold the song floated and wreathed itself about the subtle columns, till the moths were touched with passion and moved quaintly in their sleep. One of them was awakened by the intenser notes of the AbbÉ's lute-strings, and fluttered into the cave. Fanfreluche felt it was his cue for entry.

CHAPTER II

Before a toilet that shone like the altar of Notre Dame des Victoires, Helen was seated in a little dressing-gown of black and heliotrope. The coiffeur CosmÉ was caring for her scented chevelure, and with tiny silver tongs, warm from the caresses of the flame, made delicious intelligent curls that fell as lightly as a breath about her forehead and over her eyebrows, and clustered like tendrils round her neck. Her three favourite girls, Pappelarde, Blanchemains and Loreyne, waited immediately upon her with perfume and powder in delicate flagons and frail cassolettes, and held in porcelain jars the ravishing paints prepared by ChÂteline for those cheeks and lips that had grown a little pale with anguish of exile. Her three favourite boys, Claud, Clair and Sarrasine, stood amorously about with salver, fan and napkin. Millamant held a slight tray of slippers, Minette some tender gloves, La PopeliniÈre—mistress of the robes—was ready with a frock of yellow and white, La Zambinella bore the jewels, Florizel some flowers, Amadour a box of various pins, and Vadius a box of sweets. Her doves, ever in attendance, walked about the room that was panelled with the gallant paintings of Jean Baptiste Dorat, and some dwarfs and doubtful creatures sat here and there lolling out their tongues, pinching each other, and behaving oddly enough. Sometimes Helen gave them little smiles.

CHAPTER III

She was quite delighted with Fanfreluche, and, of course, he sat next her at supper.

The terrace, made beautiful with a thousand vain and fantastical things, and set with a hundred tables and four hundred couches, presented a truly splendid appearance. In the middle was a huge bronze fountain with three basins. From the first rose a many-breasted dragon and four little loves mounted upon swans, and each love was furnished with a bow and arrow. Two of them that faced the monster seemed to recoil in fear, two that were behind made bold enough to aim their shafts at him. From the verge of the second sprang a circle of slim golden columns that supported silver doves with tails and wings spread out. The third, held by a group of grotesquely attenuated satyrs, was centered with a thin pipe hung with masks and roses and capped with children's heads.

From the mouths of the dragon and the loves, from the swans' eyes, from the breasts of the doves, from the satyrs' horns and lips, from the masks at many points, and from the childrens' curls, the water played profusely, cutting strange arabesques and subtle figures.

The terrace was lit entirely by candles. There were four thousand of them, not numbering those upon the tables. The candlesticks were of a countless variety, and smiled with moulded cochonneries. Some were twenty feet high, and bore single candles that flared like fragrant torches over the feast, and guttered till the wax stood round the tops in tall lances. Some, hung with dainty petticoats of shining lustres, had a whole bevy of tapers upon them devised in circles, in pyramids, in squares, in cuneiforms, in single lines regimentally and in crescents.

Then on quaint pedestals and Terminal Gods and gracious pilasters of every sort, were shell-like vases of excessive fruits and flowers that hung about and burst over the edges and could never be restrained. The orange-trees and myrtles, looped with vermilion sashes, stood in frail porcelain pots, and the rose-trees were wound and twisted with superb invention over trellis and standard. Upon one side of the terrace a long gilded stage for the comedians was curtained off with Pagonian tapestries, and in front of it the music-stands were placed.

The tables arranged between the fountain and the flight of steps to the sixth terrace were all circular, covered with white damask, and strewn with irises, roses, kingcups, colombines, daffodils, carnations and lilies; and the couches, high with soft cushions and spread with more stuffs than could be named, had fans thrown upon them.

Beyond the escalier stretched the gardens, which were designed so elaborately and with so much splendour that the architect of the FÊtes d'Armailhacq could have found in them no matter for cavil, and the still lakes strewn with profuse barges full of gay flowers and wax marionettes, the alleys of tall trees, the arcades and cascades, the pavilions, the grottoes and the garden-gods—all took a strange tinge of revelry from the glare of the light that fell upon them from the feast.

The frockless Helen and Fanfreluche, with Mrs. Marsuple and Claude and Clair, and Farcy, the chief comedian, sat at the same table. Fanfreluche, who had doffed his travelling suit, wore long black silk stockings, a pair of pretty garters, a very elegant ruffled shirt, slippers and a wonderful dressing-gown; and Farcy was in ordinary evening clothes. As for the rest of the company, it boasted some very noticeable dresses, and whole tables of quite delightful coiffures. There were spotted veils that seemed to stain the skin, fans with eye-slits in them, through which the bearers peeped and peered; fans painted with figures and covered with the sonnets of Sporion and the short stories of Scaramouch; and fans of big, living moths stuck upon mounts of silver sticks. There were masks of green velvet that make the face look trebly powdered; masks of the heads of birds, of apes, of serpents, of dolphins, of men and women, of little embryons and of cats; masks like the faces of gods; masks of coloured glass, and masks of thin talc and of india-rubber. There were wigs of black and scarlet wools, of peacocks' feathers, of gold and silver threads, of swansdown, of the tendrils of the vine, and of human hair; huge collars of stiff muslin rising high above the head; whole dresses of ostrich feathers curling inwards; tunics of panthers' skins that looked beautiful over pink tights; capotes of crimson satin trimmed with the wings of owls; sleeves cut into the shapes of apocryphal animals; drawers flounced down to the ankles, and flecked with tiny, red roses; stockings clocked with fetes galantes, and curious designs; and petticoats cut like artificial flowers. Some of the women had put on delightful little moustaches dyed in purples and bright greens, twisted and waxed with absolute skill; and some wore great white beards, after the manner of Saint Wilgeforte. Then Dorat had painted extraordinary grotesques and vignettes over their bodies, here and there. Upon a cheek, an old man scratching his horned head; upon a forehead, an old woman teased by an impudent amor; upon a shoulder, an amorous singerie; round a breast, a circlet of satyrs; about a wrist, a wreath of pale, unconscious babes; upon an elbow, a bouquet of spring flowers; across a back, some surprising scenes of adventure; at the corners of a mouth, tiny red spots; and upon a neck, a flight of birds, a caged parrot, a branch of fruit, a butterfly, a spider, a drunken dwarf, or, simply, some initials.

CHAPTER IV

It is always delightful to wake up in a new bedroom. The fresh wall-paper, the strange pictures, the positions of doors and windows, imperfectly grasped the night before, are revealed with all the charm of surprise when we open our eyes the next morning.

It was about eight o'clock when Fanfreluche awoke, stretched himself deliciously in his great plumed four-post bed, murmured "What a pretty room!" and freshened the frilled silk pillows behind him. Through the slim parting of the long flowered window curtains, he caught a peep of the sun-lit lawns outside, the silver fountains, the bright flowers, the gardeners at work, and beneath the shady trees some early breakfasters, dressed for a day's hunting in the distant wooded valleys.

"How sweet it all is," exclaimed the AbbÉ, yawning with infinite content. Then he lay back in his bed, stared at the curious patterned canopy above him and nursed his waking thoughts.

He thought or the "Romaunt de la Rose," beautiful, but all too brief.

Of the Claude in Lady Delaware's collection.[1]

Of a wonderful pair of blonde trousers he would get Madame Belleville to make for him.

Of a mysterious park full of faint echoes and romantic sounds.

Of a great stagnant lake that must have held the subtlest frogs that ever were, and was surrounded with dark unreflected trees, and sleeping fleurs de luce.

Of Saint Rose, the well-known Peruvian virgin; how she vowed herself to perpetual virginity when she was four years old[2]; how she was beloved by Mary, who from the pale fresco in the Church of Saint Dominic, would stretch out her arms to embrace her; how she built a little oratory at the end of the garden and prayed and sang hymns in it till all the beetles, spiders, snails and creeping things came round to listen; how she promised to marry Ferdinand de Flores, and on the bridal morning perfumed herself and painted her lips, and put on her wedding frock, and decked her hair with roses, and went up to a little hill not far without the walls of Lima; how she knelt there some moments calling tenderly upon Our Lady's name, and how Saint Mary descended and kissed Rose upon the forehead and carried her up swiftly into heaven.

Of the "Bacchanals of Sporion."[3]

Of Morales' Madonnas with their high egg-shaped creamy foreheads and well-crimped silken hair.

Of Rossini's "Stabat Mater" (that delightful dÉmodÉ piece of decadence, with a quality in its music like the bloom upon wax fruit).

Of love, and of a hundred other things.

Then his half-closed eyes wandered among the prints that hung upon the rose-striped walls. Within the delicate curved frames lived the corrupt and gracious creatures of Dorat and his school, slender children in masque and domino smiling horribly, exquisite letchers leaning over the shoulders of smooth doll-like girls and doing nothing in particular, terrible little Pierrots posing as lady lovers and pointing at something outside the picture, and unearthly fops and huge bird-like women mingling in some rococo room, lighted mysteriously by the flicker of a dying fire that throws great shadows upon wall and ceiling.

Fanfreluche had taken some books to bed with him. One was the witty, extravagant, "Tuesday and Josephine," another was the score of "The Rheingold." Making a pulpit of his knees he propped up the opera before him and turned over the pages with a loving hand, and found it delicious to attack Wagner's brilliant comedy with the cool head of the morning.[4] Once more he was ravished with the beauty and wit of the opening scene; the mystery of its prelude that seems to come up from the very mud of the Rhine, and to be as ancient, the abominable primitive wantonness of the music that follows the talk and movements of the Rhine-maidens, the black, hateful sounds of Alberic's love-making, and the flowing melody of the river of legends.

But it was the third tableau that he applauded most that morning, the scene where Loge, like some flamboyant primeval Scapin, practises his cunning upon Alberic. The feverish insistent ringing of the hammers at the forge, the dry staccato restlessness of Mime, the ceaseless coming and going of the troup of Niblungs, drawn hither and thither like a flock of terror-stricken and infernal sheep, Alberic's savage activity and metamorphoses, and Loge's rapid, flaming tongue-like movements, make the tableau the least reposeful, most troubled and confusing thing in the whole range of opera. How the AbbÉ rejoiced in the extravagant monstrous poetry, the heated melodrama, and splendid agitation of it all!

[1] The chef d'oeuvre, it seems to me, of an adorable and impeccable master, who more than any other landscape-painter puts us out of conceit with our cities, and makes us forget the country can be graceless and dull and tiresome. That he should ever have been compared unfavourably with Turner—the Wiertz of landscape-painting—seems almost incredible. Corot is Claude's only worthy rival, but he does not eclipse or supplant the earlier master. A painting of Corot's is like an exquisite lyric poem, full of love and truth; whilst one of Claude's recalls some noble eclogue glowing with rich concentrated thought.