Aubrey Beardsley

by Haldane Macfall

The mountain and the sea suited Beardsley. “I am much happier and more peaceful,” but “the mistral has not blown yet.”

So, in this November of 1897 Beardsley wrought for the Cover of Volpone one of the most wonderful decorative designs that ever brought splendour of gold on vellum to the cover of any mortal’s book. He also made a pen drawing for the Cover of a prospectus for Volpone, which was after his death published in the book as a Frontispiece, for which it was in no way intended and is quite unfitted, and concerning which he gave most explicit instructions that it should not appear in the book at all as he was done with the technique of it and had developed and created a new style for the book wholly unlike it. All the same, it might have been used without hurt to the other designs, or so it seems to me, as a Title Page, since Volpone is lettered on a label upon it. Nevertheless Beardsley never intended nor desired nor would have permitted that it should appear in the body of the book at all; for it is, as he points out, quite out of keeping with the whole style of the decorations. It was only to be employed as an attraction on the Prospectus. But in this Prospectus Cover for Volpone his hand’s skill reveals no slightest hesitation nor weakness from his body’s sorry state—its lines are firmly drawn, almost to mechanical severity. And all the marvellous suggestion of material surfaces are there, the white robe of the bewigged figure who stands with hands raised palm to palm suppliant-wise—the dark polished wood of the gilt doorway—the fabric of the curtains—the glitter of precious metals and gems.

In a letter to “dear Leonardo” of this time he sent a “complete list of drawings for the Volpone,” suggested its being made a companion volume to The Rape of the Lock, and asked Smithers to announce it in The Athenæum. Besides the now famous and beautiful Cover, he planned 24 subjects, as Smithers states in his dedication of Volpone to Beardsley’s mother, though the fine initials which he did execute are, strangely enough, not even mentioned in that list. He reveals that the frontispiece is to be, like the design of the prospectus, Volpone and his treasure, but that is to be in line and wash—obviously in the style of The Lady and the Monkey—yet strangely enough, the remaining 23 subjects he distinctly puts down as being in “line”! And it is in this letter that he promises “a line drawing for a Prospectus in a few days,” stating especially that it will be a less elaborate and line version of the Frontispiece—and that it is not to appear in the book. We have the line drawing for the Prospectus—and we can only guess what a fine thing would have been this same design treated in the manner of The Lady and the Monkey or the Initials. That, in this list, 23 of the 24 designs were to be in line is a little baffling in face of the fact that the Initials were in the new method, line with pencil employed like a wash, and that Beardsley himself definitely states, as we shall see in a letter written on the 19th of this month, that the drawings are a complete departure in method from anything he had yet done, which the Initials certainly were.

On the 8th of December, Beardsley wrote to “friend Smithers,” sending the Cover Design for Volpone and the Design for the Prospectus of Volpone, begging for proofs, especially of the Design for the Prospectus, “on various papers at once.” Smithers sent the proofs of the two blocks with a present of some volumes of Racine for Beardsley’s Christmas cheer. The beautiful Miniature edition of The Rape of the Lock, with Beardsley’s special Cover-design in gold on scarlet, had just been published—the “little Rapelets” as Beardsley called them.

However, these 24 designs for the Volpone were never to be. But we know something about them from a letter to Smithers, written on the 19th of December, which he begins with reference to the new magazine of The Peacock projected by Smithers, of which more later. Whilst delighted with the idea of editing The Peacock, Beardsley expresses fear lest the business and turmoil of the new venture may put the Volpone into second place, and he begs that it shall not be so, that there shall be no delay in its production. He evidently sent the Initials with this letter, for he underlines that Volpone is to be an important book, as Smithers can judge from the drawings that Beardsley is now sending him—indeed the Initials were, alas! all that he was ever destined to complete—the 24 illustrations were not to be. That these Initials were the designs sent is further made clear by the remark that the new work is a complete, “a marked departure as illustrative and decorative work from any other arty book published for many years.” He pronounces in the most unmistakable terms that he has left behind him definitely all his former methods. He promises the drawings to be printed in the text by the first week in January, and that they shall be “good work, the best I have ever done.”

On the morrow of Christmas, Beardsley was writing to Smithers, urging on the production of the Prospectus for Volpone; and it is interesting to find in this Yuletide letter that the fine drawing in line and wash, in his aquatint style, of The Lady and the Monkey, was originally intended for the Volpone and not for the set of the Mademoiselle de Maupin in which it eventually appeared; but was cast out of the Volpone by Beardsley as “it will be quite out of keeping with the rest of the initials.” So that the style of the Initials was clearly the method he had intended to employ for his illustrations.

What his remarkable creative fancy and dexterity of hand designed for the illustrations to Volpone only The Lady and the Monkey and the Initials can hint to us—he was never to create them.

The sunshine and the warmth, the picturesque surroundings of the place, the mountains and the sea, brought back hope to the plagued fellow; and again he clambered out of the grave. Languor and depression left him. He was on the edge of Yuletide and had known no cold or chill; indeed his only “grievance is mosquitoes.” He would weigh himself anxiously, fearful of a set-back at every turn.

******

Now, a fantastically tragic fact of Beardsley’s strange career—a fact that Max Beerbohm alone of all those who have written upon Beardsley has noticed—was the very brief period of the public interest in him. Beardsley arose to a universal fame at a bound—with The Yellow Book; he fell from the vogue with as giddy a suddenness. With the last number of The Savoy he had vanished from the public eye almost as though he had never been. The Press no longer recorded his doings; and his failure to keep the public interest with The Savoy, and all its superb achievement, left but a small literary and artistic coterie in London sufficiently interested in his doings to care or enquire whether he were alive or dead or sick or sorry, or even as to what new books he was producing. The Book of Fifty Drawings seemed to have written Finis to his career. Nobody realised this, nor had better cause to realise it, than Leonard Smithers. It had been intended to continue The Savoy in more expensive form as a half-yearly volume; but Smithers found that it was hopeless as a financial venture—it had all ended in smoke. Smithers was nevertheless determined to fan the public homage into life again with a new magazine the moment he thought it possible. And the significance of the now very rare “newspaper cutting” had not been lost upon Beardsley himself. So it had come about that Smithers had planned the new magazine, to be called The Peacock, to appear in the April of 1898, to take the place of The Savoy; and had keenly interested Beardsley in the venture. For once Beardsley’s flair for a good title failed him, and he would have changed the name of The Peacock to Books and Pictures, which sounded commonplace enough to make The Peacock appear quite good when otherwise it seemed somewhat pointless.