As suddenly as the blackness of his two blank years of obliteration had fallen upon him a year after he came to town, so as he reached mid-1891, his nineteenth birthday, the hideous threat lifted from him, his courage returned with health—and his belief in himself. So far he had treated art as an amateur seeking recreation; he now decided to make an effort to become an artist.
The sun shone for him.
He determined to get a good opinion on his prospects. He secured an introduction to Burne-Jones.
IV
FORMATIVE PERIOD OF DISCIPLESHIP
Mid-1891 to Mid-1892—Nineteen to Twenty
THE “BURNE-JONESESQUES”
On a Sunday, the 12th of July 1891, near the eve of his nineteenth birthday, Beardsley called on Burne-Jones.
Beardsley being still a clerk in the city—his week-ends given to drudgery at the Insurance Office—he had to seize occasion by the forelock—therefore Sunday.
The gaunt youth went to Burne-Jones with the light of a new life in his eyes; he had shaken off the bitter melancholy which had blackened his past two years and had kept his eyes incessantly on the grave; and, turning his back on the two years blank of fulfilment or artistic endeavour, he entered the gates of Burne-Jones’s house in the long North End Road in West Kensington with new hopes built upon the promise of renewed health.