Victorian Secrets

Independent press dedicated to publishing books from and about the nineteenth century

The Cockney Who Sold the Alps: Albert Smith and the Ascent of Mont Blanc by Alan McNee

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The Cockney Who Sold the Alps: Albert Smith and the Ascent of Mont Blanc by Alan McNeeAs someone with an aversion to the outdoors, I prefer to experience nature vicariously. Preferably with a G&T in my hand. Had I been shuffling around in the nineteenth century, I’d have no doubt found my way to Albert Smith’s ‘Ascent of Mont Blanc’ show at London’s Egyptian Hall. Audiences were mesmerised by a diorama that gave the impression they were participating in an Alpine adventure – all from the safety of a plush seat in Piccadilly.

Smith, in full evening dress, would appear on the stage giving a ‘rattling and rapid description of the journey from town to Dover; then the run across the channel and the Continent, till in a few minutes he brought the audience to Switzerland itself’. The proscenium was designed to resemble a two-storey Swiss chalet, complete with shutters and balcony. Behind it lay rocks and a miniature lake, stocked with live fish. Alpine plants adorned the display, along with appropriate accoutrements, such as knapsacks, alpenstocks, and Swiss hats. As Smith described the journey, the Swiss chalet would rise of sight to make way for the painted canvases, depicting scenes along the way. The interval was marked by the arrival of St. Bernard dogs bearing boxes of chocolates for the children. In the second act, the images moved in a continuous descending panorama to give the impression of the ascent in progress.

Audiences loved it. The first performance took place on 15 March 1852, and it ran for seven seasons – a total of 2,000 shows. Alan McNee estimates that around 800,000 people watched ‘The Ascent of Mont Blanc’, placing it in the league of modern West End musicals. By the second season, The Times remarked that ‘the exhibition now seems to be one of the “sights of London” – like St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey and the Monument’. Initially sceptical of the show’s appeal, Thackeray later wrote to his daughters: ‘it was so amusing that you don’t feel a moment’s ennui during the whole performance – a thousand times more amusing than certain lectures and certain novels I know of’.

While many people were content to enjoy the ascent vicariously, others were inspired to pursue a hands-on approach. Smith’s show inspired ‘Mont Blanc mania’, encouraging participation in mountaineering as a popular pursuit. Tour operators such as Thomas Cook were quick to capitalise on the opportunity, conveying eager holidaymakers over to the continent. Smith might have spiced up the leisure time of the more affluent working classes, but not everyone was happy with this transformation. Leslie Stephen (more famous now as the father of Virginia Woolf) was horrified that the Alps were no longer the exclusive preserve of the upper middle class.

Smith’s own ascent of Mont Blanc is the most remarkable episode in this absorbing story. Rather portly in stature and no Bear Grylls, he nonetheless succeeded in scaling the highest peak in the Alps. Although he benefited from local guides, Smith was using equipment that would horrify a twenty-first-century mountaineer. And for much of the ascent, he was three sheets to the wind. He probably wasn’t drunk, as such, but had certainly consumed an inadvisable quantity of alcohol (even a small amount of booze intensifies the unpleasant effects of altitude). Of course, in the mid-nineteenth century, there were no dehydrated meals or sachets of high-energy gel – all the provisions for the ascent had to be carried by the party. And what an impressive list of provisions it was:

60 bottles of vin ordinaire
6 bottles of Bordeaux
10 bottles of St. George
15 bottles of St. Jean
3 bottles of Cognac
1 bottle of syrup of raspberries
6 bottles of lemonade
2 bottles of champagne
20 loaves
10 small cheeses
6 packets of chocolate		 6 packets of sugar
4 packets of prunes
4 packets of raisins
2 packets of salt
4 wax candles
6 lemons
4 legs of mutton
4 shoulders of mutton
6 pieces of veal
1 piece of beef
11 large fowls
35 small fowls

Clearly, an audacious attempt on an intimidating mountain was no reason to let culinary standards slip. Smith’s story shows how far you can get with determination, perseverance, and a large dose of chutzpah. John Ruskin, however, was unimpressed, noting with contempt that there had been a “Cockney ascent of Mont Blanc”.

Smith’s successes were legion, but he didn’t get to the top without making a few enemies along the way.  His bumptiousness made him a divisive figure, and his relentless drive to seize every opportunity often gave the impression of a grasping and ruthless nature. He numbered William Makepeace Thackeray, George Augustus Sala, and Charles Dickens among his friends, but fell out with all of them at different times. Most notably, he made an enemy of Dickens after becoming embroiled in the unpleasantness surrounding Dickens’s affair with Ellen Ternan.

Although he died aged only 43, Albert Smith managed to pack much incident into his short life. He was robbed by highwaymen in Italy, narrowly escaped death in a hot air ballooning accident, and dodged arrest in Paris during the June Days Uprising of 1848. Ever the showman, he made good use of these events in his journalism and also on the stage. Even Queen Victoria described him as “inimitable”, an epithet that Dickens famously liked to apply to himself.
I must confess that I’d never heard of Smith before I received the proposal for this entertaining and enlightening book. I was delighted to meet him, albeit at a distance of 150 years. As a man, he’s hard to like, but as a showman he’s impossible to resist.

The Cockney Who Sold the Alps: Albert Smith and the Ascent of Mont Blanc by Alan McNee is available in paperback and Kindle editions.

The Excellent Doctor Blackwell: The Life of the First Woman Physician by Julia Boyd

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Cover of The Excellent Doctor Blackwell by Julia BoydEven Punch, a magazine frequently hostile to the emancipated woman, felt grudging admiration for Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910), the first woman doctor to be registered in Britain. From a 21st-century perspective, with women doctors now in the majority, it’s difficult to appreciate just how hard it was for these indefatigable pioneers, who encountered considerable hostility and even violence when pursuing their vocation.

Blackwell’s early years were less combative, growing up part of a  loving family in Bristol. Her father’s sugar refining business provided a good standard of living, although its reliance on slavery proved difficult to reconcile with his liberal politics. The liveliness of the household was tempered somewhat by the Blackwell grandparents, who are described as a “gloomy presence”. Blackwell Snr once nailed up all the cupboards, condemning them as “slut holes”, and his domineering behaviour was an early lesson in gender politics for Elizabeth and her sisters.

In 1828 the sugar refinery burned down and a series of poor business decisions exacerbated the repercussions. Relishing the prospect of a new start, and perhaps prompted by the political unrest that gripped Bristol, the Blackwells decided to emigrate to New York. Eleven-year-old Elizabeth seems to have accepted this momentous change philosophically, but it must have been disruptive for a girl approaching the ghastliness of adolescence.

Unfortunately, the Blackwells’ arrival coincided with the publication of Fanny Trollope’s mischievous Domestic Manners of the Americans, which did little to ease their transition into another culture, where those from the mother country were now viewed with suspicion. Notwithstanding this tension, the family soon established themselves in business and were able to move to prosperous Long Island. Any hopes of respectability were dashed, however, when Elizabeth’s Uncle Charles plunged into a bigamous marriage with the governess.

Renewed financial problems and the death of Mr Blackwell left the family penniless and struggling for survival. Like many women who found themselves in similar circumstances, the Blackwells had no option but to seek teaching work, despite having no liking for children. Aged only nineteen, Elizabeth Blackwell was stuck in a job she hated, and with no prospect of escape. A move to Kentucky made matters worse for the passionate opponent of slavery. There she was appalled when a young black girl was placed as a screen between her and a fire.

It was the publication of Margaret Fuller’s seminal work Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) that prompted Blackwell to think about her future direction. When a dying friend told her she would much rather consult a woman doctor, Blackwell started to seriously consider medicine as a career. While this decision seems straightforward, it was mainly thanks to a series of oversights that she realised her ambition, and her choice of profession remained deeply controversial during her lifetime.

Blackwell’s application to New York’s Geneva Medical College in 1847 was accepted in principle, although on the cunning proviso that the final decision rested with the students (who, it was assumed, would reject her outright). As it happened, there was only one voice of dissent and its owner was quickly beaten into submission. While this might appear a refreshingly enlightened episode, the students thought it all an elaborate hoax and were merely playing along. Before they knew what had happened, Blackwell had registered and her studies were underway. When she graduated, on 23 January 1849, the Dean marked the occasion with a speech to honour their unusual student’s achievement. He spoiled it, however, by adding that “Such cases must ever be too few to disturb the existing relations of society.”

The newly qualified Dr Blackwell decided to move back to England, settling in London so as to gain valuable experience at metropolitan hospitals. While treating a baby infected with gonorrhoea, contaminated fluid squirted in Blackwell’s eye, leaving it sightless, disfigured and protruding. It was a cruel irony that a woman who probably remained a virgin should have her life blighted by a sexually transmitted disease. On that fateful day, her hopes of becoming a surgeon were dashed and she was obliged to wear a glass eye.

Determined to make a difference nonetheless, Blackwell returned to America with her sister Lucy and established the New York Dispensary for Poor Women and Children. Their insistence on treating black patients made the clinic a target for segregationists, and Blackwell found life tough. Meanwhile, her brother Henry married Lucy Stone, an impressive feminist who refused to take his name or to include the word “obey” in the marriage service. Henry himself became a proud feminist, publicly renouncing his masculine privileges. This extraordinary family was extended when brother Sam married Antoinette Brown, the first woman in America to be ordained a minister.

Although the Blackwells did so much to challenge convention, Elizabeth herself had no interest in the formal women’s rights movement and declined to be involved in Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. She enjoyed being a figurehead in the world of medicine, believing that to be a more effective contribution to female emancipation. It’s hard to disagree with her – a decade after her graduation, there were 200 women doctors practising in America. She also inspired Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman to qualify as a doctor in Britain. A certain George Eliot was so impressed that she sent a letter, expressing how much she would like to know Dr Blackwell. Florence Nightingale remained unconvinced, finding only a strong-minded woman who dared to contradict her.

In 1858 Blackwell became the first woman to be placed on the newly formed British Medical Register, which permitted the inclusion of doctors holding foreign degrees. The authorities were aghast to discover that they had failed to specifically exclude women, quickly closing the loophole. When Blackwell returned to England in 1869, there was still considerable hostility against women doctors. The opposition was led by Professor Robert Christison, whose sound scientific reasoning was that original sin rendered women unfit to practice medicine. Women who attempted to attend anatomy lessons had both mud and abuse hurled at them, although this loutish behaviour actually helped the cause of women doctors, who conducted themselves with dignity throughout.
Blackwell’s return to England also coincided with the passing of the third Contagious Diseases Act, legislation that allowed authorities to confine and forcibly treat prostitutes suspected of carrying venereal disease. Blackwell sensibly pronounced that the government should be addressing the causes of prostitution, rather than its effects. Although in many ways a moral conservative, Blackwell was outspoken on female sexuality, challenging the convenient misconception that women were sexless creatures. She was also ahead of her time in recognising the concept of marital rape, an abuse not outlawed until 1991.

Elizabeth Blackwell was a formidable woman whose outspoken and often idiosyncratic behaviour made her an uncomfortable role model for feminists. It is hard to overstate her achievements, however, and her impact on the course of social history is equalled by only a handful of luminaries. Julia Boyd’s superb biography reveals Blackwell as a complex, tenacious and often frustrating character whose extraordinary single-mindedness changed our world. Like all skilled biographers, Boyd celebrates Blackwell’s achievements without becoming overly deferential to her subject. We see Blackwell’s faults, but cannot fail to be cheered by her brilliance.

The Excellent Doctor Blackwell:The Life of the First Woman Physician by Julia Boyd is available in hardback

Hope and Glory: A Life of Dame Clara Butt

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Cover of Hope and Glory: A Life of Dame Clara ButtSir Thomas Beecham cheekily remarked that when she sang in Dover, Dame Clara Butt could be heard in Calais. If you’ve listened to her rousing performances of Hope and Glory on YouTube, you’ll know that he had a point. Standing an Amazonian 6’2″ tall, Dame Clara was a towering cultural icon of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, symbolising the glory of an empire on which the sun never set. She won fans all around the world, performing concerts in America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India, and commanding five-figure fees. With her entourage of 20 staff, she would sail the seven seas to reach her adoring public.

Although from humble origins as a trawlerman’s daughter, everyone knew that Clara was destined for a glittering career. Queen Victoria felt strongly enough to actually pay for some of her studies, and Clara became a firm friend of the royal family. Success turned her into a formidable woman, but Clara worked tirelessly to raise funds for good causes, and was honoured with a damehood for raising morale during the dark days of World War One.

Clara’s incredible talent brought her much joy, but she also suffered great tragedy in her personal life, losing two of her children and enduring crippling back pain. She sought solace in Theosophy, travelling to India, where she met Mahatma Gandhi and the socialist reformer Annie Besant. Even when diagnosed with a virulent form of spinal cancer, she immediately planned a final tour of Australia (most of us would take to our beds with some hard drugs). She died with great courage, in the same week as both George V and Rudyard Kipling, and the world was a sadder place without her.

I knew very little about Dame Clara before receiving the proposal for this biography, but was immediately captivated by the story of this extraordinary woman. One hundred years ago she was a household name and rarely out of the newspapers, but now she is known mainly by music aficionados. Working on the biography of Eugen Sandow last year made me realise that celebrity is ephemeral and even megastars are seldom remembered much beyond their own lifetime. Dame Clara is certainly one who should be celebrated all over again.

Hope and Glory: A Life of Dame Clara Butt by Maurice Leonard is available in print, Kindle and EPUB editions.

Below the Fairy City: A Life of Jerome K. Jerome

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Cover of Below the Fairy City: A Life of Jerome K. JeromeI must confess to never having given much thought to the man behind Three Men in a Boat, one of the funniest books in the English language. When the manuscript for a biography of Jerome K. Jerome arrived on my desk, I expected to read about a lively and carefree man who never took life very seriously.  Instead, I discovered a complex, often dark, figure who was frustrating, comic and challenging in equal measure.

Many of his opinions seem painfully misguided to the modern reader, but Jerome was always prepared to admit he was wrong after reaching a better understanding of a thorny issue. He never really got to grips with the New Woman, but Jerome was a tireless campaigner for the animal welfare movement, and was always ready to champion the underdog, even if it landed him in court.

Jerome’s tenacity and lugubriousness can be ascribed in part to his difficult upbringing in Walsall with his Micawberish father and God-fearing mother. Living under the constant threat of poverty and damnation, the young Jerome was an enigmatic child who craved security and recognition. His life was transformed by a momentous move to the Fairy City of London, where a formative encounter with Charles Dickens influenced his choice of profession. Like his mentor, Jerome was forever associated with his comic creations, and never taken seriously as a diverse and innovative author.

Although famous primarily for his tale of jolly chaps larking about on the Thames, Jerome wrote seven other novels and was also a prolific journalist, essayist and dramatist, leaving behind a prodigious quantity of work, belying his famous quote “I like work. It fascinates me. I could sit and look at it for hours.” One of his most unusual books is Weeds: A Story in Seven Chapters, a shocking (for the time) and painful account of how adultery destroys a new marriage. Such was its force that the publisher seems not to have released it to the reading public. Had Jerome been associated with this novella during his lifetime, he might have earned a very different reputation.

Jerome K. Jerome’s complexity, idiosyncrasies and exquisite wit are all conveyed with great skill by Carolyn Oulton, and it was astonishing to me that this was the first biography of him in many decades, and the only one to delve into his early life. I hope other readers enjoy it as much as I did.

Below the Fairy City: A Life of Jerome K. Jerome by Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton

Love Well the Hour: The Life of Lady Colin Campbell by Anne Jordan

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Cover of Love Well The Hour: The Life of Lady Colin Campbell by Anne JordanLast year I reviewed Victorian Sex Goddess: Lady Colin Campbell and the Sensational Divorce Case of 1886. My only criticism was that the book focused very much on the court case, and there was little to satisfy the curious mind as to Gertrude Campbell’s subsequent career.  Fortunately, Anne Jordan has just published Love Well the Hour: The Life of Lady Colin Campbell, thereby giving this redoubtable woman more sustained consideration.

Quite apart from robustly defending herself against a syphilitic and irascible husband, Gertrude Campbell made a stand for wronged wives everywhere.  Whilst she wasn’t a feminist in the modern sense of the word, Gertrude successfully challenged the idea that a woman separated from her husband should retire from public life and lead a nun-like existence.  Rather than pursue the alimony to which she was entitled, she forged a successful career as a writer and remained truly independent for the rest of her life.  She was a prolific journalist, mainly for the Saturday Review, also writing a novel and a book on fishing.  Her pioneering enthusiasm for sports was cruelly curtailed by the onset of rheumatoid arthritis.

Gertrude’s life story is fascinating in itself (see previous post for a summary), but this biography goes much further in revealing a wealth of information on the position of women in late-Victorian society, thereby illuminating the reasons why Gertrude was so remarkable in her willingness to defy convention.

Anne Jordan’s biography is well researched, and written in a clear, engaging style.  She conveys the complexity of this tenacious and intelligent woman who is so often defined only by her part in a notorious divorce trial.

Fellow Kindlers can download the book for just under a fiver, which is an absolute bargain.

Love Well The Hour: The Life of Lady Colin Campbell by Anne Jordan

Victorian Sex Goddess: Lady Colin Campbell and the Sensational Divorce Case of 1886

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Cover of Lady Colin Campbell Victorian Sex Goddess by G H FlemingAlthough “Victorian Sex Goddess” is a rather sensational title for a book, this account of the redoubtable Lady Colin Campbell by G H Fleming is refreshingly understated. I’m sure few writers could resist the temptation to ham up one of the most dramatic court cases in British legal history. He mainly allows the case to speak for itself, but includes a plethora of seemingly insignificant details which both delight and enlighten the reader.

Lady Colin Campbell was born Gertrude Blood in 1857 and enjoyed a liberal upper-middle-class upbringing. She developed into an attractive, intelligent and urbane woman. Unfortunately, she was also impulsive, agreeing to marry Lord Colin Campbell MP just three days after they met on holiday in Scotland. A whirlwind romance ensued, followed by elevation into high society. Marital felicity was not to be her lot, however. Lord Colin, it appeared, had knowingly infected her with syphilis. The delicate state of his lower portions meant that they had initially refrained from sexual relations, but after a few months, Lord Colin handed his wife a note from his doctor stating that intercourse would be beneficial to his health. Hardly a billet-doux. As a husband’s conjugal rights were paramount, she consented.

Unsurprisingly, Lord Colin’s illness overshadowed the marriage, and the relationship quickly broke down. He was an irascible patient and frequently violent towards his nurses. Lady Colin, understandably, kept her distance and tried to build an independent life for herself. It is hard to imagine that she would have agreed to marry Lord Colin had she know the full truth regarding his medical background and the risk it posed to her. Of course, it was unseemly for a woman to be even vaguely aware of such matters. As she tried to estrange herself from him, he simply asserted his legal mastery over her and endeavoured to force her to leave the marital home. Had she done so, she could not have sued for maintenance, which would have left her destitute. Wives were unable to take this action until the passing of the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1886. Furthermore, choosing this course would have suggested that the blame lay with her and placed her in an invidious position.

The law did partially come to Lady Colin’s rescue. During a court hearing in March 1886, the judge was convinced that Lord Colin had infected her with syphilis and granted a decree of separation, a decision that was upheld on appeal. Lady Colin moved in with her parents, and the recently passed Married Women’s Property Act meant that she retained control over her own modest financial resources. Before 1882, they would have been automatically ceded to her husband on marriage.

Lord Colin was outraged by her defiance and pledged to ruin her reputation in a full divorce trial, knowing that her behaviour would be viewed by many to be unwifely. He accused her of adultery with a Duke, a General, a surgeon, and London’s fire chief (not at the same time), whilst she countered with charges of adultery and cruelty. At that time, wives could not divorce their errant husbands on grounds of adultery alone – it had to be “aggravated” by cruelty or desertion, this double standard having been enshrined in law by the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857. Lady Colin’s counsel argued that Lord Colin knowingly infecting her with syphilis constituted cruelty.

What followed was a forensic examination of an upper-class marriage. The case stretched over eighteen days during the final weeks of 1886 and saw a procession of more than fifty witnesses and a barrage of revelations concerning both parties. Fleming has carefully assembled a transcript from over forty newspaper reports and presented it with illuminating, yet unobtrusive, commentary. Fortunately, the quality broadsheets of the day tended to quote considerable chunks of court cases verbatim. The nineteenth-century tabloids, on the other hand, were obsessed with Lady Colin’s sexuality, one describing her as a “sex-goddess”, and another declaring that she possessed “the unbridled lust of Messalina and the indelicate readiness of a common harlot.”

Some witnesses extolled Lady Colin’s intellectual virtues, which actually did her more harm than good. The gentlemen of the jury (for there were no ladies at that time) were likely to be unimpressed by a woman defying her conventionally prescribed role. Her involvement in good causes also counted against her, the prosecution thundering that: “A married woman with a husband is better employed looking after him than in attending forty charitable concerts in the course of a year.” Although Lady Colin’s QC described how unbearable life with her husband had become, public opinion decreed that she should submit to him unquestioningly. Lord Colin was clearly upholding a husband’s right to behave badly with impunity, whilst his wife was far ahead of her time in believing there were limits to what she should reasonably be expected to tolerate.

The jury took some considerable time to reach a verdict, but eventually cleared both Campbells of adultery. As that was the only grounds for divorce at the time, they had to content themselves with a legal separation. Although her reputation had taken a considerable battering, Lady Colin was officially exonerated and she smiled as she left court. Lord Colin (or at least his father) was landed with a legal bill of £20,000 and soon departed for an undistinguished career at the Bar in Bombay.

Lady Colin did a much better job of reinventing herself, although she never quite escaped the notoriety of having been part of the longest-running divorce case ever seen. She found herself a modest apartment and embarked upon a varied and prolific career in journalism, also writing several novels and a play. She espoused such causes as the introduction of cycle lanes and equal smoking rights for women. She could easily have settled for a quiet life of penitence and reflection, but instead continued to push the boundaries. Lord Colin died of pneumonia in 1885, leaving Lady Colin free to marry, an opportunity of which she declined to avail herself. Debilitating rheumatism left her increasingly reclusive and she died in 1911 at the age of 53. Ahead of her time, as ever, she opted for cremation over the more traditional burial.

As this book focuses on the trial and its background, there is only brief consideration given to her subsequent career. Happily, a spot of Googling has shown that a full-length biography by Anne Jordan is forthcoming. Lady Campbell should be remembered for more than just her unfortunate choice of husband.

Lady Colin Campbell: Victorian Sex Goddess by G H Fleming

Aubrey Beardsley by Matthew Sturgis

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When Aubrey Beardsley died in 1898, he was aged just 25.  Although his career was tragically short, his work epitomises the Fin de Siècle, with its decadent, and sometimes shocking, figures.  Beardsley was born in Brighton in 1872, in the home of his maternal grandparents.  Although his immediate family moved to London soon afterwards, he retained his affinity with Brighton, attending the Grammar School while staying with his aunt.  His school days are described as being unusually happy, and he benefited from the tutelage of the dynamic and progressive headmaster Ebenezer Marshall.  Marshall pushed both pupils and teachers to achieve their full potential, and he had the reputation of a slave driver: “He refused to countenance the establishment of a ‘staff room’, considering that his teachers should be out among their pupils, not skulking in a den consuming tea and digestive biscuits.”

Beardsley’s development was also influenced by his faith.  He attended a small, understated church in the Hanover area of Brighton, two streets from where I live.  My initial delight at discovering this fact was tempered by the biographer’s description of a “poor area of mean two-storey terraces.”  Although the exterior of the church is unremarkable, resembling a medieval barn, the interior features decorations and stained glass by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Burne-Jones.  Burne-Jones greatly influenced Beardsley’s early work and also became his champion.  He urged him to devote his evenings to studying at art school while continuing to earn a living as an insurance clerk, a job he despised.  Beardsley’s illustrations for Malory’s Morte D’Arthur were thought to be highly derivative of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but they also demonstrated his rare talent.  William Morris, however, was distinctly unimpressed, fulminating that “a man ought to do his own work”.

His growing reputation led Beardsley into the fashionable world inhabited by the likes of the literary hostess Ada Leverson, whom Oscar Wilde described as ‘The Sphinx of Modern Life’ and ‘the wittiest woman alive’.  Commissions came flooding in, including one to illustrate George Egerton’s seminal Keynotes.  When Punch later parodied the work as ‘She-Notes’ by Borgia Smudgiton, Beardsley’s fame was assured.  Although apparently heterosexual, Beardsley enjoyed the homosexual milieu, and also had a tendency to go out “dressed up as a tart”.  His fascination with both androgyny and sexuality in general outraged some areas of society.  One publisher, fearful of legal action, took to examining the pictures with a magnifying glass, sometimes spotting non-existent obscenities and missing some of the more obvious sexual imagery.

In 1893, Arthur Symons published an article on ‘The Decadent Movement in Literature’, thus crystallising ideas of what decadence comprised, and establishing a movement that could be both followed and attacked.  The most famous embodiment of the decadent period was The Yellow Book, first published in April 1894.  The yellowness was a deliberate ploy to link it with French novels, which were produced in distinctive yellow wrappers.  French novels had a reputation for being scandalous and outre, qualities Beardsley and his colleagues wanted to emulate.  The chief object of The Yellow Book was to protest against “the story picture” in art and “sloppy sentimentalism and happy endings” in literature.  As his biographer writes, Beardsley had established himself at the “vortex of modernity”.  His work encompassed the New Drama, the New Woman and the New Art – movements Punch referred to collectively as the ‘New Newness’.  The Yellow Book was referred to as a “mighty glow of yellow”, as though “the sun had risen in the West.”  Not all responses were as enthusiastic, however,  the Spectator denouncing the “jaundiced-looking indigestible monster.”  Granta thought is no more than “a collection of semi-obscene, epicene, sham erotic and generally unimportant literary and artistic efforts,” and others demanded an Act of Parliament to “make this sort of thing illegal.”  The controversy, unsurprisingly, fanned the flames of publicity and ensured high sales for the first edition.

Beardsley’s name soon became inextricably linked with The Yellow Book and decadence in general.  Although this made him a figurehead for all that was new and exciting, it also made him a target for the inevitable backlash.  Decadence became the symbol for all that was wrong with society, and the overtly sexual nature of Beardsley’s creations was seen as an expression of its malaise.  Burne-Jones declared his former protégé’s drawings to be “immoral”, and his family were appalled.  Beardsley had been careful to avoid any formal association with Oscar Wilde, although he saw him socially.  Being linked with such a notorious figure was a dangerous business.  Unfortunately, Wilde’s arrest for gross indecency found him with a yellowback novel under his arm, which was assumed to be The Yellow Book. Also, Beardsley had been unable to resist the temptation of illustrating Wilde’s controversial play Salome.  His perceived association with Wilde was disastrous, with so many luminaries lobbying for his downfall, including Mrs Humphry Ward, described here as an “indefatigable busybody”.

Beardsley was forced to retrench and his former brightness was dimmed.  A sporadic sufferer of tuberculosis, his health started to decline and the overwhelming sense of his own mortality prompted a period of religious contemplation and an eventual conversion to Catholicism.  He spent some time convalescing in France, not far from the diminished Oscar Wilde, who was masquerading under the guise of Sebastian Melmoth.  Beardsley deliberately avoided him in the street, still painfully aware of the dangers of being seen with a disgraced figure.  He increasingly clung to his faith and tried to distance himself from some of his most graphic work, pleading with his publisher to destroy it.  Fortunately for posterity, his publisher recognised his talent and quietly disregarded his request.  We’ll never know what Beardsley would have achieved had he enjoyed a longer span on this mortal coil.  However, he inadvertently left a lasting legacy and was a defining figure of the Fin de Siècle.  Matthew Sturgis’ biography does justice to the life and work of the man and is also lavishly illustrated with some of his key works.  There is much to interest both the general reader and those with a more detailed knowledge of the period.

Aubrey Beardsley by Matthew Sturgis