It is to the eternal credit of Arthur Symons as friend and critic that he did not encourage Beardsley in his literary aspirations, but turned him resolutely to the true utterance of his genius. It is in splendid contrast with a futile publication of Beardsley’s “Table Talk” that others published.
In Under the Hill Beardsley reveals his inability to see even art except through French spectacles. He cannot grasp the German soul, so he had to make Tannhäuser into an Abbé—it sounded more real to him. The book is a betrayal of the soul of the real Beardsley—a hard unlovely egoism even in his love-throes, without one noble or generous passion, incapable of a thought for his fellows, incapable of postulating a sacrifice, far less of making one, bent only on satisfying every lust in a dandified way that casts but a handsome garment over the basest and most filthy licence. It contains gloatings over acts so bestial that it staggers one to think of so refined a mind as Beardsley’s, judged by the exquisiteness of his line, not being nauseated by his own emotions. It is Beardsley’s testament—it explains his art, his life, his vision—and it proves the cant of all who try to excuse Beardsley as a satirist. A satirist does not gloat over evil, he lashes it. Beardsley revelled in it. Nay, he utterly despised as being vulgar and commonplace all such as did not revel in it.
THE THREE MUSICIANS
from “The Savoy” No. 1.
TAILPIECE TO “THE THREE MUSICIANS”
The story of Venus and Tannhäuser, bowdlerised as Under the Hill—by which Beardsley slyly means what he calls the Venusberg, for even Beardsley feared to write the Mons Veneris,—he seemed undecided as to which to call it—the story was without consequence, without cohesion, without unity; it was the laboured stringing together of little phrases, word pictures of moods, generally obscene moods and desires such as come to plague a certain type of consumptive whose life burns at fever heat in the troubled blood. We know from Arthur Symons that Beardsley was for ever jotting down passages, epithets, newly coined words, in pencil in odd moments during this month at Dieppe. He gives us a picture of Beardsley, restless, unable to work except in London, never in the least appealed to by nature. Beardsley never walked abroad; Symons never saw him look at the sea. When the night fell, Beardsley came out and haunted the casino, gazing at the life that passed. He loved to sit in the large deserted rooms when no one was there—to flit awhile into the room where the children danced—the sound of music always drew him to the concerts. He always carries the inevitable portfolio with him and is for ever jotting down notes. He writes in a little writing room for visitors. He agonises over a phrase—he pieces the over-polished sentences and phrases together like a puzzle, making them fit where best they can. He bends all his wits to trying to write verse. He hammers out the eight stanzas of The Three Musicians with infinite travail on the grassy ramparts of the old castle, and by dogged toil he brings forth the dainty indecencies, as later he chiselled and polished and chiselled the translation from Catullus. The innate musical sense of the fellow gives the verse rhythm and colour. But Beardsley failed, and was bound to fail, in literature, whether in verse or prose, because he failed to understand the basic significance of art. He failed because he tried to make literature an intellectual act of mimicry instead of an emotional act—he failed because all academism is a negation of art, because he mistook craftsmanship as the end of art instead of the instrument for emotional revelation. As Symons puts it, “it was a thing done to order,” in other words it was not the child of the vital impulse of all art whatsoever, he could not or did not create a make-believe whereby he sought to transmit his emotions to his fellows, for he was more concerned with trying to believe in his make-believe itself. It was not the child of emotional utterance, like his drawings—it was a deliberately intellectual act done in a polished form. We feel the aping of Wilde, of Whistler, of the old aphorists, like Pope, of the eighteenth century Frenchman. He uses his native tongue as if it were obsolete, a dead language—he is more concerned with dead words than with live. He tries to create a world of the imagination; but he cannot make it alive even for himself—he cannot fulfil a character in it or raise a single entity into life out of a fantastic Wardour Street of fine clothes—there is no body, far less soul, in the clothes. He is not greatly concerned with bringing people to life; he is wholly concerned with being thought a clever fellow with words. He is in this akin to Oscar Wilde.
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It was whilst at Dieppe that the famous French painter Jacques Blanche made a fine portrait of Beardsley; and in this hospitable friend’s studio it was that Beardsley set up the canvas for the picture he was always going to paint but never did. And it was to Beardsley’s infinite delight that Symons took him to Puy to see the author of one of Beardsley’s chief literary loves, La Dame aux Camélias—Alexandre Dumas, fils.