Now whilst loving this man for it, one rather blinks at Vallance’s enthusiasm. On what drawings did his eyes rest, and wherein was he overwhelmed with the revelation? Burne-Jones has a little puzzled us in the summer; and now Vallance! Well, there were the futile “puerilia”—the Pied Piper stuff—which one cannot believe that Beardsley would show. There was the Burne-Jonesesque Hamlet from the Bee just published. Perhaps one or two other Burne-Jonesesques. He himself can recall nothing better. In fact Beardsley had not done anything better than the Hamlet. Then there was the Scrap Book! However, it was fortunate for the young Beardsley that he won so powerful a friend and such a scrupulous, honourable, and loyal friend as Aymer Vallance.
On St. Valentine’s Day, the 14th of February 1892, before the winter was out, Vallance had brought about a meeting of Robert Ross and Aubrey Beardsley at a gathering at Vallance’s rooms. Robert Ross wrote of that first meeting after Beardsley was dead, and in any case his record of it needs careful acceptance; but Ross too was overwhelmed with the personality of the youth—Ross was always more interested in personality than in artistic achievement, fortunately, for his was not a very competent opinion on art for which he had the antique dealer’s flair rather than any deep appreciation. But he was a powerful friend to make for Beardsley. Ross had the entrance to the doors of fashion and power; he had a racy wit and was at heart a kindly man enough; and he had not only come to have considerable authority on matters of art and literature in the drawing-rooms of the great, but with editors. And he was doing much dealing in pictures. Ross, with his eternal quest of the fantastic and the unexpected, was fascinated by the strange originality and weird experience of the shy youth whom he describes as with “rather long hair, which instead of being ebouriffé as the ordinary genius is expected to wear it, was brushed smoothly and flatly on his head and over part of his immensely high and narrow brow.” Beardsley’s hair never gave me the impression of being brown; Max Beerbohm once described it better as “tortoise-shell”—it was an extraordinary colour, as artificial as his voice and manner. The “terribly drawn and emaciated face” was always cadaverous. The young fellow seems gradually to have thawed at this forgathering at Vallance’s, losing his shyness in congenial company, and was soon found to have an intimate knowledge of the British Museum and National Gallery. He talked more of literature and of music than of art. Ross was so affected by the originality of the young fellow’s conversation that he even attributed to Beardsley the oft-quoted jape of the old French wit that “it only takes one man to make an artist but forty to make an Academician.”
It is well to try and discover what drew the fulsome praise of Beardsley’s genius from Ross at this first meeting—what precisely did Ross see in the inevitable portfolio which Beardsley carried under his arm as he entered the room? As regards whatever drawings were in the portfolio, Beardsley had evidently lately drawn the Procession of Joan of Arc in pencil which afterwards passed to Frederick Evans, a work which Beardsley at this time considered the only thing with any merit from his own hands, and from which he could not be induced to part for all Ross’s bribes, though he undertook to make a pen-and-ink replica from it for him, which he delivered to Ross in the May of 1892. The youngster had a truer and more just estimate of his own work than had his admirers.
It is well to note at this stage that by mid-1892, on the eve of his twentieth year, Beardsley was so utterly mediocre in all artistic promise, to say nothing of achievement, that this commonplace Procession of Joan of Arc could stand out at the forefront of his career, and was, as we shall soon see, to be widely exploited in order to get him public recognition—in which it distinctly and deservedly failed. He himself was later to go hot and cold about the very mention of it and to be ashamed of it.
We have Ross’s word for it at this time that “except in his manner,” his general appearance altered little to the end. Indeed, if Beardsley could only have trodden under foot the painful conceit which his rapidly increasing artistic circle fanned by their praise and liking for him, he might have escaped the eventual applause and comradeship of that shallow company to whom he proceeded and amongst whom he loved to glitter, yet in moments of depression scorned. But it is canting and stupid and unjust to make out that Beardsley was dragged down. Nothing of the kind. The young fellow’s whole soul and taste drew about him, he was not compelled into, the company of the erotic and the precious in craftsmanship. And Robert Ross had no small share in opening wide the doors to him.
But it is well and only just to recognise without cant that by a curious paradox, if Beardsley had been content to live in the mediæval atmosphere of the Æsthetic Movement into which his destiny now drifted him, for all its seriousness, its solemnity, and its fervour, his art and handling would have sunk to but recondite achievement at best. It was the wider range of the 18th century writers, especially the French writers—it was their challenge to the past—it was their very inquisition into and their very play with morals and eroticism, that brought the art of Beardsley to life where he might otherwise have remained, as he now was, solely concerned with craftsmanship. He was to run riot in eroticism—he was to treat sex with a marked frankness that showed it to be his god—but it is only right to say that the artist’s realm is the whole range of the human emotions; and he has as much right to utter the moods of sex as has the ordinary novelist of the “best seller” who relies on the discreet rousing of sexual moods in a more guarded and secret way, but who does rely on this mood nevertheless and above all for the creation of so-called “works that any girl may read.” The whole business is simply a matter of degree. And there is far too much cant about it all. Sex is vital to the race. It is when sex is debauched that vice ensues; and it is in the measure in which Beardsley was to debauch sex in his designs or not that he is alone subject to blame or praise in the matter.
Whilst Beardsley in voice and manner developed a repulsive conceit—it was a pose of such as wished to rise above suspicion of being of the middle-class to show contempt for the middle-class—he was one of the most modest of men about his art. A delightful and engaging smile he had for everyone. He liked to be liked. It was only in the loneliness of his own conceit that he posed to himself as a sort of bitter Whistler hating his fellowman. It increased his friendliness and opened the gates to his intimate side if he felt that anyone appreciated his work; but he never expected anyone to be in the least artistic, and thought none the less of such for it. He would listen to and discuss criticism of his work with an aloof and open mind, without rancour or patronage or resentment; and what was more, he would often act on it, as we shall see. Beardsley was a very likeable fellow to meet. When he was not posing as the enemy of the middle-classes he was a charming and witty companion.
Meantime, in the late Spring or early Summer of 1892, Beardsley after a holiday, probably at Brighton, called on Burne-Jones again, and is said by some then to have made his attempt on Watts, so icily repelled. However, to Burne-Jones he went, urged to it largely by the ambition growing within him and fostered strenuously by Vallance and his friends, to dare all and make for art.
Burne-Jones received him with characteristic generosity. And remember that Beardsley was now simply a blatant and unashamed mimic of Burne-Jones, and a pretty mediocre artist at that. We shall soon see a very different reception of the youth by a very different temperament. Burne-Jones, cordial and enthusiastic and sympathetic, gave the young fellow the soundest advice he ever had, saying that Beardsley “had learnt too much from the old masters and would benefit by the training of an art school.” From this interview young Beardsley came back in high fettle. He drew a caricature of himself being kicked down the steps of the National Gallery by the old masters.
This Summer of 1892 saw Beardsley in Paris, probably on a holiday; and as probably with an introduction from Burne-Jones to Puvis de Chavannes, who received the young fellow well, and greatly encouraged him, introducing him to one of his brother painters as “un jeune artiste Anglais qui fait des choses etonnantes.”