From the very beginning Beardsley lived in books--saw life only through books--was aloof from his own age and his own world, which he did not understand nor care to understand; nay, thought it rather vulgar to understand. When he shook off the dust of the city from his daily toil, he lived intellectually and emotionally in a bookish atmosphere with Madame Bovary, Beatrice Cenci, Manon Lescaut, Mademoiselle de Maupin, Phèdre, Daudet’s Sappho and La Dame aux Camélias, as his intimates. He sketched them as yet with but an amateur scribbling. But he dressed for the part of a dandy in his narrow home circle, affecting all the airs of superiority of the day--contempt for the middle-class--contempt of Mrs. Grundy--elaborately cultivating a flippant wit--a caustic tongue. He had the taint of what Tree used to whip with contempt as “refainement”--he affected a voice and employed picturesque words in conversation. He pined for the day when he might mix with the great ones as he conceived the great ones to be; and he sought to acquire their atmosphere as he conceived it. Beardsley was always theatrical. He noticed from afar that people of quality, though they dressed well, avoided ostentation or eccentricity--dressed “just so.” He set himself that ideal. He tried to catch their manner. The result was that he gave the impression of intense artificiality. And just as he was starting for the race, this black hideous suffering had fallen upon him and made him despair. In 1890 had appeared Whistler’s _Gentle Art of Making Enemies_--Beardsley steeped himself in the venomous wit and set himself to form a style upon it, much as did the other young bloods of artistic ambition. As suddenly as the blackness of his two blank years of obliteration had fallen upon him a year after he came to town, so as he reached mid-1891, his nineteenth birthday, the hideous threat lifted from him, his courage returned with health--and his belief in himself. So far he had treated art as an amateur seeking recreation; he now decided to make an effort to become an artist. The sun shone for him. He determined to get a good opinion on his prospects. He secured an introduction to Burne-Jones. IV FORMATIVE PERIOD OF DISCIPLESHIP Mid-1891 to Mid-1892--Nineteen to Twenty THE “BURNE-JONESESQUES” On a Sunday, the 12th of July 1891, near the eve of his nineteenth birthday, Beardsley called on Burne-Jones. Beardsley being still a clerk in the city--his week-ends given to drudgery at the Insurance Office--he had to seize occasion by the forelock--therefore Sunday.