Max Beerbohm – Page 3 – { feuilleton }

The Savoy magazine

Further retrievals from the depths of the Internet Archive (and thanks to Lord Cornelius Plum for the tip) come in the form of three bound editions of The Savoy magazine, a British art and literary periodical which ran for eight issues from January to December 1896. Aubrey Beardsley was art editor and chief illustrator, Arthur Symons the literary editor and the publisher was the heroic and duplicitous London pornographer Leonard Smithers whose patronage and, it should be noted, exploitation of Beardsley’s work kept the artist solvent during his last two years.

A thesis could be written (and no doubt has been) exploring the curious symbiosis between pornography publishers and the artistic avant garde. Smithers was a proud purveyor of what he called “smut” but he also complained about all the money he lost supporting poets and down-at-heel writers. Posterity can thank him for publishing Teleny, the classic early work of gay fiction attributed to Oscar Wilde, as well as Beardsley’s Lysistrata illustrations and The Savoy, a magazine founded in the fallout of the Wilde scandal when The Yellow Book dropped Beardsley from its staff in order to appease its more conservative contributors. The magazine’s run was short due to poor sales after WH Smith’s refused to stock it, worried again about the controversial nature of Beardsley’s art. (Speculative fiction magazine New Worlds faced similar problems with Smith’s in the late Sixties.) This seems astonishing to us now when looking at the world-class roster of contributors to the first issue, a list which included two future Nobel winners—George Bernard Shaw and WB Yeats—as well as Max Beerbohm, Ernest Dowson, Havelock Ellis, JM Whistler, Charles Shannon, William Rothenstein, and Beardsley writing and illustrating the first part of his erotic caprice, Under the Hill.

Beardsley’s illustrations are very familiar from book reproduction but it’s good to see them in the context in which they first appeared, and to be able to read some of the features. The later issues include pages of adverts which always fascinate for their contemporary detail.

• The Savoy: Volume 1 | Volume 2 | Volume 3

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Aubrey Beardsley archive
• The illustrators archive

Aubrey by John Selwyn Gilbert

Aubrey Beardsley photographed by Frederick Evans (1894).

I’ve been going through the Coulthart VHS library recently, transferring to DVD recordings which can’t be purchased or found online. Among these is a drama from the BBC’s Playhouse strand, Aubrey by John Selwyn Gilbert, broadcast in 1982. This follows the life of artist Aubrey Beardsley from the time of Oscar Wilde’s arrest in April 1895—which event resulted in Beardsley losing his position at The Yellow Book—through the foundation of The Savoy magazine, to his tubercular death in March 1898.

John Dicks as Aubrey.

Playhouse was a BBC 2 equivalent of Play for Today (which usually ran on BBC 1) and Aubrey like many other dramas of the period was shot on video in the studio. This was done for convenience as well as being cheaper than shooting on film, since scenes could be filmed using several cameras simultaneously. The drawback is that the image looks very harsh, and historical works such as this often seem unreal and artificial as a result. That aside, this was an excellent production with some great performances, especially Ronald Lacey as Leonard Smithers and Rula Lenska as Aubrey’s sister, Mabel. The details of Beardsley’s life are very accurate, down to his beloved Mantegna prints on the walls, and many of the scenes are arranged to correspond with his drawings, the production design being largely monochrome.

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Strange cargo: things found in books

The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects by Alexandra David-Neel & Lama Yongden, City Lights Books (1972).

One of the additional pleasures of buying old books besides finding something out-of-print (or, it has to be said, something cheap) occurs when those books still possess traces of their previous owners. A recent posting on The Other Andrew’s page concerned book inscriptions, something any book collector will be used to seeing. Less common are the objects which slip from the pages when you’ve returned home. There are several categories of these.

1: Bookmarks

I have a substantial collection of bookmarks proper, from embossed strips of leather to the more mundane pieces of card of the type that bookshops frequently give away. But I also make a habit of using odd inserts to mark a place as did the previous owners of these volumes. The City Lights book (above) came with a very fragile leaf inside it which may well be as old as the book. Another City Lights book I own, the Artaud Anthology from 1965, included a newspaper article about Artaud. Newspaper clipping inserts are discussed below.

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The art of George Sheringham, 1884–1937

Baptism of Dylan, Son of the Wave from The Cauldron of Anwn (c. 1902).

About the artist:

George Sheringham was born in London. He studied art first at the Slade School (1899–1901) before leaving for Paris, where he studied from 1904–1906. Chiefly known as a designer of stage sets and decorative artist he was also illustrator of works by Arthur Conan Doyle and Max Beerbohm. He was the author of Drawing in Pen and Pencil (1922) and Design in the Theatre (with James Laver, 1927). An invalid from 1932, he continued to paint flowers until his death.

About the work:

This striking series of paintings were commissioned by the 8th Lord Howard de Walden (Baron Seaford) to illustrate his Celtic poem, The Cauldron of Anwn. It has been suggested that they were part of a decorative sceme for de Walden and it is therefore likely that they were part of his remodelling on the interior of Seaford House in Belgravia which he undertook from 1902 onwards. The modifications at Seaford House included the panelling of the dining room and installation of an onyx staircase and frieze carved from marble imported from South America. No expense was spared and it is said that to ensure a supply of the right kind of marble, Baron Seaford bought the mine.

The series of The Cauldron of Anwyn reflects Sheringham’s interest in oriental ornamentation and also reflects modern approaches to book illustration. A close comparison can be drawn between Sheringham’s work and that of Edmund Dulac and Sheringham’s work is also suggestive of a more exotic continental approach to decoration. Sheringham had studied at the Slade School between 1899 and 1901 and in Paris between 1904 and 1906. The qualities of his work were recognised in Paris before they were in Britain and his first exhibits were at the Paris Salon. He was born and lived in London all his life and became well known as a decorative artist, applying his talents to costume and scenery design for various theatrical productions. He also illustrated many books including The Happy Hypocrite and Design in Theatre and this interest in intricate decoration was transposed into his interior design work.

• The Cauldron of Anwyn at ARC.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive