DESIGN FOR AN INVITATION CARD
Beardsley, I afterwards heard, egged on to it by the jackals about him, cudgelled his brains to try and write a withering Whistlerian reply; and after some days of cudgelling was vastly pleased with a laboriously hatched inspiration. It was a cherished and carefully nurtured ambition of the young fellow to rival Whistler in withering brevities to the Press. He wrote a letter to the editor of St. Paul’s; and the editor, Reichardt, promptly sent it on to me, asking if I had any objection to its being printed. The letter began clumsily and ungrammatically, but contained at the end a couple of quite smartly witty lines. It ran thus:
114 Cambridge Street
S. W.
June 28th
Sir, No one more than myself welcomes frank, nay, hostile criticism, or enjoys more thoroughly a personal remark. But your art critic surely goes a little too far in last week’s issue of St. Paul’s, & I may be forgiven if I take up the pen of resentment. He says that I am “sexless and unclean.”
As to my uncleanliness I do the best for it in my morning bath, & if he has really any doubts as to my sex, he may come and see me take it.
Yours &c
Aubrey Beardsley
This letter was read and shown to Beardsley’s circle amidst ecstatic delight and shrill laughter, and at last despatched.
I wrote to Reichardt that of course Beardsley had every right to answer my criticisms, but that I should expect my reply to be published—that I quite understood Beardsley’s business astuteness in seeking self-advertisement—but I was the last man in the world to allow any man to make a fool of me in print even to add stature to Beardsley’s inches. But I suggested that as Beardsley seemed rather raw at literary expression, and as I hated to take advantage of a clown before he had lost his milk teeth, I would give him back his sword and first let him polish the rust off it; advised him, if he desired to pose as a literary wit, that he obliterate mistakes in grammar by cutting out the whole of the clumsy beginning, and simply begin with “Your critic says I am sexless and unclean,” and then straight to his naughty but witty last sentence. I begged therewith to forward my reply at the same time, as follows:
A Public Apology to Mr. Aubrey Beardsley.