THE SCARLET PASTORALE
It is as likely as not that his attempt to paint The Comedy Ballet I in oils may have had something to do with its use as an advertisement for Geraudel’s Pastilles—as well as I can remember—which first appeared in Le Courier Français on February 17th, 1895. It was a wonderful decade for the poster, and this French firm offered handsome prizes and prices for a good artistic one; though, as a matter of fact, Beardsley’s posters were quite outclassed by those of far greater men in that realm—Cheret, the Beggarstaff Brothers, Steinlen, Lautrec, and others. Beardsley’s genius, as he himself knew full well, was essentially “in the small.”
For some unfortunate reason, but probably with good-natured intention of preventing Beardsley from suffering discredit at his dismissal from The Yellow Book, John Lane whilst in America during the summer started a well-meaning but quite fatuous theory, much resented by Beardsley, that the young fellow, so far from being the flower of decadence, was “a pitiless satirist who will crush it out of existence.... He is the modern Hogarth; look at his Lady Gold’s Escort and his Wagnerites.... The decadent fad can’t long stand such satire as that. It has got to go down before it.” Scant wonder that the Daily Chronicle asked dryly: “Now, why was Mr. Lane chaffing that innocent interviewer?” This apology for his art bitterly offended Beardsley, who knew it to be utterly untrue, but who still more resented this desire to show him as being really “quite respectable.” As a matter of fact, Beardsley had nothing of the satirist in him; had he wanted to satirise anything he would have satirised the respectabilities of the middle-class which he detested, not the musicians and the rich whom he adored and would have excused of any sin. Look through the achievement of Beardsley and try to fling together a dozen designs that could be made to pass for satire of the vices of his age! It became a sort of cant amongst certain writers to try and whitewash Beardsley by acclaiming him a satirist—he was none. A dying satirist does not try to recall his “obscene drawings.”
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At a loose end, on his expulsion from The Yellow Book, Beardsley drifted somewhat. He now turned his attention to a literary career, and began to write an erotic novel which he meditated calling Venus and Tannhäuser—it was to emerge later in a much mutilated state as Under the Hill—a sly jest for Under the Venusburg or Mons Veneris. He completely put behind him the Greek vase-painting phase of his drawings for The Yellow Book, and developed a new craftsmanship which was to create his great style and supreme achievement in art.
The smallness of the page of The Yellow Book had galled him by compelling upon him a very trying reduction of his designs to the size of the plate on the printed page; the reduction had always fretted him; it was become an irk. It compelled him largely to keep to the line and flat black masses of his Greek Vase phase longer than his interest was kept alive by that craftsmanship. His developments were uncannily rapid as though he knew he had but a short way to go.
ATALANTA
Baron Verdigris was the transition from the Morte d’Arthur phase to the Yellow Book or Greek Vase phase; the Mrs. Whistler as The Fat Woman was the transition from his Greek vase stage; Black Coffee the end of the Greek Vase stage. Rid of the cramping limitations of The Yellow Book page and its consequent disheartening reduction, Beardsley was now to develop a freer use of his line and reveal a greater love of detail employed with a realistic decorative beauty all his own.
He was still living in his house in Pimlico at 114 Cambridge Street, with his sister, when expelled from The Yellow Book. It was about this time that he met the poet John Gray who had been in the decadent movement and became a Roman Catholic priest—the friendship soon became more close and ripened into a warm brotherly affection. It was to have a most important effect on Beardsley’s life. Gray published Beardsley’s letters, which begin with their early acquaintance, and were soon very frequent and regular; these letters give us a clear intimate insight into Beardsley’s spiritual life and development from this time. Beardsley begins by calling him affectionately “My dear Mentor,” from which and from the letters we soon realise that Gray was from the first bent on turning the young fellow’s thoughts and tastes and artistic temperament towards entering the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed, soon we find Gray priming the young fellow with arguments to refute his “Anglican” friends.