Aubrey Beardsley

Excerpt

Aubrey Beardsley was born on August 21st, 1872, at Brighton. He was a quiet, reserved child, caring little for lessons, though from an early age he shewed an aptitude for drawing. He began his education at a Kindergarten. He was seven years old when the first symptoms of delicacy appeared, and he was sent to a preparatory school at Hurstpierpoint, where he was remarkable for his courage and extreme reserve. Threatened with tuberculosis, he was moved for his health to Epsom in 1881. In March 1883 his family settled in London, and Beardsley made his first public appearance as an infant musical phenomenon, playing at concerts in company with his sister. He had a great knowledge of music, and always spoke dogmatically on a subject, the only one he used to say, of which he knew anything. He became attracted at this time by Miss Kate Greenaway's picture books, and started illuminating menus and invitation cards with coloured chalks, making by this means quite considerable sums for a child.

In August 1884 he and his sister were sent back to Brighton, where they resided with an old aunt. Their lives were lonely, and Beardsley developed a taste for reading of a rather serious kind—the histories of Freeman and Greene being his favourite works. He could not remain a student without creating, so he started a history of the Armada! In November of the same year he was sent to the Brighton Grammar School as a day boy, becoming a boarder in January 1885. He was a great favourite with Mr King, the house-master, who encouraged his tastes for reading and drawing by giving him the use of a sitting-room and the run of a library. This was one of the first pieces of luck that attended Beardsley throughout life. The head-master, Mr Marshall, I am told, would hold him up as an example to the other boys, on account of his industry. His caricatures of the masters were fully appreciated by them, a rare occurrence in the lives of artists. He cultivated besides a talent for acting, and would often perform before large audiences at the Pavilion. He organized weekly performances at the school, designing and illustrating the programmes. He even wrote a farce called "A Brown Study," which was played at Brighton, where it received serious attention from the dramatic critics of the town. He would purchase each volume of the Mermaid series of Elizabethan dramatists then being issued, and with his sister gave performances during the holidays. From the record of the "Brighton College Magazine," Beardsley appears to have taken a leading rôle in all histrionic fêtes, and to "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" he contributed some delightful and racy little sketches, the first of his drawings, I believe, that were ever reproduced.

In July 1888 he left school, and almost immediately entered an architect's office in London. In 1889 he obtained a post in the Guardian Life and Fire Insurance. During the autumn of that year the fatal hæmorrhages commenced; for two years he gave up his amateur theatricals and did little in the way of drawing....