spontaneously than anyone who ever held pencil. Beardsley's precocity
was simply marvellous. He seemed to have an intuitive understanding
not only of his own art but of every art and craft, and it was some
time before one realised that he attained this miraculous virtuosity
by an absolute disdain for every other form of human endeavour. He
knew nothing of the great general or millionaire or man of science,
and he cared as little for them as for fishermen or 'bus-drivers. The
current of his talent ran narrow between stone banks, so to speak; it
was the bold assertion of it that interested Oscar.
One phase of Beardsley's extraordinary development may be recorded
here. When I first met him his letters, and even his talk sometimes,
were curiously youthful and immature, lacking altogether the personal
note of his drawings. As soon as this was noticed he took the bull by
the horns and pretended that his style in writing was out of date; he
wished us to believe that he hesitated to shock us with his "archaic
sympathies." Of course we laughed and challenged him to reveal
himself. Shortly afterwards I got an article from him written with
curious felicity of phrase, in modish polite eighteenth-century
English. He had reached personal expression in a new medium in a month
or so, and apparently without effort. It was Beardsley's writing that
first won Oscar to recognition of his talent, and for a while he
seemed vaguely interested in what he called his "orchid-like
personality."
They were both at lunch one day when Oscar declared that he could
drink nothing but absinthe when Beardsley was present.
"Absinthe," he said, "is to all other drinks what Aubrey's drawings
are to other pictures: it stands alone: it is like nothing else: it
shimmers like southern twilight in opalescent colouring: it has about
it the seduction of strange sins. It is stronger than any other
spirit, and brings out the sub-conscious self in man. It is just like
your drawings, Aubrey; it gets on one's nerves and is cruel.
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