Aubrey Beardsley

by Haldane Macfall

It was on the designs of this second volume of The Yellow Book of July 1894 that Beardsley signed his “Japanesque mark” for the last time. Indeed these signed designs were probably done before June; for, in the Invitation Card for the Opening of the Prince’s Ladies Golf Club on Saturday June 16th 1894, the “Japanesque mark” has given place to “AUBREY BEARDSLEY.”

Beardsley was to be seen everywhere. People wondered when he did his work. He flitted everywhere enjoying his every hour, as though he had no need to work—were above work. He liked to pose as one who did not need to work for a livelihood. As each number of the quarterly appeared, he won an increase of notoriety—or obloquy, which was much the same thing to Aubrey Beardsley; but as the winter came on, he was to have a dose of obloquy of a kind that he did not relish, indeed that scared him—and as a fact, it was most scandalously unfair gossip. Meanwhile the Christmas number of Today produced his very fine night-piece Les Passades.

NIGHT PIECE

Oscar Wilde was at the height of his vogue—as playwright and wit and man of letters. Beardsley’s artistic share in the Salome, with its erotic atmosphere and its strange spirit of evil, gave the public a false impression that Beardsley and Wilde were intimates. They never were. Curiously enough, the young fellow was no particular admirer of Wilde’s art. And Wilde’s conceited remark that he had “invented Beardsley” deeply offended the other. To cap it all, Beardsley delighted in the bohemian atmosphere and the rococo surrounding of what was known as the Domino Room at the Café Royal, and it so happened that Wilde had also elected to make the Café Royal his Court, where young talent was allowed to be brought into the presence and introduced. It came into the crass mind of one of Wilde’s satellites to go over to a table at which Beardsley was sitting, revelling in hero-worship, and to lead the young fellow into the presence, as Wilde had signified his condescension to that end—but the gross patronage of Wilde on the occasion wounded the young fellow’s conceit to the quick. It had flattered Beardsley to be seen with Wilde; but he never became an intimate—he never again sought to bask in the radiance.

To add to Beardsley’s discomfort, there fell like bolt from the blue a novel called The Green Carnation of which Wilde and his associates were the obvious originals. The book left little to the imagination. The Marquis of Queensberry, owing to his son Lord Alfred Douglas’s intimacy with Wilde, was only too eager to strike Wilde down. Even if Queensberry had been inclined to hang back he could not very well in common decency have allowed the imputations of the book to pass by him without taking action. But he welcomed the scandal. He sprang at opportunity—and struck hard. With the reckless courage so characteristic of him, Queensberry took serious risks, but he struck—and he knew that the whole sporting world, of which he was a leader, would be behind him, as he knew full well that the whole of the healthy-minded majority of the nation would be solid in support of his vigorous effort to cut the canker out of society which was threatening public life under Wilde’s cynical gospel that the world had arrived at a state of elegant decay.

Queensberry publicly denounced Wilde and committed acts which brought Wilde into public disrepute. There was nothing left to Wilde but to bring a charge of criminal libel against him or become a social pariah. On the 2nd of March 1895 Queensberry was arrested and charged at Marlbourgh Street; on the 9th he was committed for trial; and on the 3rd of April he was tried at the Old Bailey amidst an extraordinary public excitement. He was acquitted on the 5th of April amidst the wild enthusiasm of the people. Oscar Wilde was arrested the same evening.

On the 6th of April, Wilde, with Taylor, was charged at Bow Street with a loathsome offence; public interest was at fever pitch during the fortnight that followed, when, on the 19th of April Wilde and Taylor were committed for trial, bail being refused. A week later, on the 26th, the trial of Wilde and Taylor began at the Old Bailey. After a case full of sensations, on the 1st of May, the jury disagreed and the prisoners were remanded for a fresh trial, bail being again refused. A week later, on the 7th of May, Wilde was released on bail for £5,000; and it was decided to try the two men separately. Taylor was put on trial at the Old Bailey for the second time, alone, on May the 20th, and the next day was found “guilty,” sentence being postponed. The following day, the 22nd, the second trial of Wilde began at the Old Bailey, and on the 25th of May he also was found “guilty,” and with Taylor was sentenced to two years imprisonment with hard labour.

The popular excitement over this trial of Wilde reached fever heat. The fall of Wilde shook society; and gossip charged many men of mark with like vices. Scandal wagged a reckless tongue. A very general scare set in, which had a healthy effect in many directions; but it also caused a vast timidity in places where blatant effrontery had a short while before been in truculent vogue....

John Lane, now at The Bodley Head alone, had published volume III of The Yellow Book in October 1894 and volume IV in the January of 1895. Beardsley had made the drawings for the April number, volume V; the blocks were also made, and a copy or so of the number bound, when, at the beginning of March, Queensberry’s arrest shook society. The public misapprehension about Beardsley being a friend of Oscar Wilde’s probably caused some consternation amongst the writers of The Yellow Book; but whatever the cause, John Lane who was in America was suddenly faced with an ultimatum—it was said that one of his chief poets put the pistol to his head and threatened that without further ado either he or Beardsley must leave The Yellow Book at once. Now this cable announced that William Watson was not alone but had the alliance of Alice Meynell, then at the height of her vogue, with others most prominent in this movement. Into the merits of the storm in the teacup we need not here go. What decided John Lane in his awkward plight to sacrifice Beardsley rather than the poet was a personal matter, solely for John Lane to decide as suited his own business interest best. He decided to jettison Beardsley. The decision could have had little to do with anything objectionable in Beardsley’s drawings, for a copy was bound with Beardsley’s designs complete, and anything more innocent of offence it would be difficult to imagine. It may therefore be safely assumed that the revolt on John Lane’s ship was solely due to the panic set up by the Wilde trial, resulting in a most unjust prejudice against Beardsley as being in some way sympathetic in moral with the abhorred thing. No man knows such gusts of moral cowardice as the moralist. However, in expelling Beardsley The Yellow Book was doomed—it at once declined, and though it struggled on, it went to annihilation and foundered.