Grasshopper

"The last time I saw Aubrey Beardsley," wrote a critic, "was in the summer of 1896 ... he was then seriously ill, indeed not expected to live, but he was in high spirits. . . . Although it was a day of brilliant sunshine, the curtains were drawn, and the room lighted by many tall candles. Aubrey Beardsley, clad in a yellow dressing gown, and wearing red slippers turned up at the toes, was working. As I entered he waved, laughed his gay laugh, then coughed horribly. . . ."

Beardsley died the next year in France of the disease that made him cough so horribly that sunny morning. Many of his drawings were left to the late John Lane, publisher of the Yellow Book, who at that time had an office-boy named Mitchell Kennerley. Mr. Kennerley has put on sale in the Anderson Galleries, Manhattan, of which he is president, a number of the drawings which Beardsley sold to John Lane.

Illustrations for Poe, illustrations for Oscar Wilde, illustrations for the Yellow Book--marvelously adroit and facile pen and inks. "Salome," epicene and sleepy, the "Woman In the Moon," "Venus" in a modern gown, Pierrots, Sapphos, gigolos, whatnots. None of Beardsley's more obscene drawings are part of the sale.

Someone has called Beardsley "an inspired grasshopper." It is a poor metaphor. Few grasshoppers prefer candles to the sun. Very thin, very long-handed, long-nosed, always a flower in his buttonhole, he infuriated William Morris by his somewhat ambiguous drawings for an Arthurian poem. Other people liked him better; his drawings in the Yellow Book caused critical thunderstorms. Esthetes strove to imitate in prose and verse the Beardsley gift for wistful evilness. His friends denied that he was obscene; in that denial they took from him his character and his curse. There could be nothing dirtier than certain prints of his which had to be cut in half to be published, but even these truncated figures are perfumed with the touch of a sophisticated and poetic mind.

In the town of Brighton, Eng., where middle-class Londoners go for weekends, Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was born in 1872. At eleven he was a musical phenomenon; he played the piano in a concert with his sister. Also he wrote. Also he drew. Also he sold insurance. Friends, seeing that he was too lazy to be a pianist, begged him to take up art. He was encouraged by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Puvis de Chav annes. He borrowed from Japanese art its use of the single line and its penchant for ornamental perversions. He dressed neatly in an ordinary fashion. He read everything. He learned quickly and forgot quickly. His black and white drawings were better than any Englishman's have ever been. He was the rage.

"Arty" art has fallen into disrepute. In these days even such decorative sophisticates as Max Beerbohm steal their stencils from humanity. Aubrey Beardsley, before he died, ceased to laugh quite so gayly or wave so wildly. He joined the Roman Catholic Church and begged that all his bad and, above all, his obscene drawings, should be destroyed. " 'Fourmi!' quoted a biographer, ' n'insulte pas ces divines cigales!'"