SYMONS, Arthur. Aubrey Beardsley.

The ‘Diabolic Beauty’ of Beardsley’

SYMONS, Arthur. Aubrey Beardsley. London: Unicorn Press. 1898.

4to. Publisher’s cream cloth-backed boards with dark grey-brown paper sides, spine and upper board lettered in gilt; offsetting to half-title; pp. 32, [33–56], with half-title; 3 portrait plates and 6 plates after drawings by Beardsley (of which one in colour) included in pagination; spine somewhat soiled, a few scuffs to boards, some wear to corners and extremities; a very good copy; undated autograph letter from Symons (addressed ‘Dear Sirs’) on notecard adhered on left-hand side to front free endpaper, gift inscription to ‘J.S. Cotton’ dated 20 April 1899, bookplate of Albert Louis Cotton to front pastedown; three early booksellers’ catalogue clippings to front pastedown (a fourth loosely inserted).

First edition in book form of this monograph on Beardsley by Arthur Symons, founding editor of The Savoy, including for the first time Beardsley’s drawings ‘Le Débris d’un Poète’ and ‘The Mirror of Love’, this copy with an apologetic autograph note by Symons.

Arthur Symons (1865–1945) produced The Savoy with Beardsley as art director and Leonard Smithers as publisher. Beardsley had been ‘recently fired from the Yellow Book at the time of the Oscar Wilde trials because of his daring illustrations for Salomé. Designed to surpass the Yellow Book as the principal avant-garde periodical of the 1890s, the first issue of The Savoy appeared in January 1896. With its eighth number in December, the periodical – which had contained the work of such contributors as Yeats, Ellis, Conrad, Shaw, Verlaine, Dowson, Max Beerbohm, and Symons – ceased publishing. Despite its sudden demise, the periodical had propelled Symons to the centre of London literary circles’ (ODNB).

The text of Aubrey Beardsley had previously appeared in the Fortnightly Review (1898); here, Symons reflects fondly on Beardsley’s work for The Savoy (the young artist had chosen the magazine’s name), his artistic process, and the genius of his work.

‘At times he attains pure beauty, has the unimpaired vision […] From the first it is a diabolic beauty, but it is not yet divided against itself. The consciousness of sin is always there, but it is sin first transfigured by beauty, and then disclosed by beauty; sin, conscious of itself, of its inability to escape itself, and showing in its ugliness the law it has broken’ (p. 23).

Adhered to the front free endpaper is an undated note on card from Arthur Symons, written at his home at 21 Chandos Road, Buckingham: ‘Dear Sirs, Excuse my too hasty conclusion. After what you say I don’t doubt you are right, of course. I would not on any account say a word on the subject to Mr. Ireland. Pray accept my apologies, & believe me faithfully yours, Arthur Symons’. The Mr Ireland to whom Symons refers here is most likely Alexander Ireland (1810–1894), correspondent of Symons, publisher of the Manchester Examiner, and author of the Book-Lover’s Enchiridion (1883). Ireland had died four years before the publication of this work; it is therefore likely that the note was inserted by Albert Louis Cotton at a later date. His uncle, James Sutherland Cotton, was editor of the literary periodical The Academy, and Symons covered for him as editor during the summer of 1890 – Symons’s ‘first such opportunity for gainful employment – having been put in touch with him via a letter of introduction from the poet John Addington Symonds (Selected Letters, p. 55).

Provenance:
1. Undated autograph letter signed ‘Arthur Symons’ on notecard adhered to front free endpaper.

2. Gift inscription to J[ames] S[utherland] Cotton from John ?Crowther to front free endpaper, dated 20 April 1899. Cotton, notable for his writings on Indian life and history, died in 1918 with no children.

3. Seemingly passed by descent to Albert Louis Cotton (1874–1936), educated at Balliol College, Oxford and author of ‘The Kelmscott Press and the New Printing’ in which he deems Charles Ricketts’s Vale Press as the primary successor to Morris’s Kelmscott Press in terms of typographic quality (The Contemporary Review 74:8 (1898), pp. 221–231). Cotton’s parents, Sir Henry John Stedman Cotton and Lady Mary Cotton, were friends and photographic subjects of Julia Margaret Cameron; her famous ‘Albert Louis Cotton Album’ of sixty-five reduced albumen prints (now at Dimbola Lodge Museum, Isle of Wight), containing photographs of several members of the Cameron Family and of Henry Cotton, is named for Albert.

Cotton appears to have owned several works by Beardsley, including an extra-illustrated copy of Wilde’s Salome presented to Frances Pierrepont Barnard by Beardsley and John Lane (Parke-Bernet, 3–5 May 1939, lot 1157).

Samuels Lasner 130; see Gertner Zatlin 952, 957.

SKU: 2124715