It is well to keep in mind that the winter of 1891 closed down on Aubrey Beardsley in a middle-class home in Pimlico, knowing no one of note or consequence except Burne-Jones. His hand’s skill was halting and his craftsmanship hesitant and but taking root in a feeling for line and design; but the advance is so marked that he was clearly working hard at self-development. It was as the year ran out, some six months after the summer that had brought hope and life to Beardsley out of the grave that, at the Christmastide of 1891, Aymer Vallance, one of the best-known members of the Morris group, went to call on the lonely youngster after disregarding for a year and a half the urgings of the Reverend C. G. Thornton, a parson who had known the boy when at Brighton school. Vallance found Beardsley one afternoon at Charlwood Street, his first Pimlico home, and came away wildly enthusiastic over the drawings that Beardsley showed him at his demand. It is to Vallance’s credit and judgment that he there and then turned the lad’s ambition towards becoming an artist by profession--an idea that up to this time Beardsley had not thought possible or practicable. Now whilst loving this man for it, one rather blinks at Vallance’s enthusiasm. On what drawings did his eyes rest, and wherein was he overwhelmed with the revelation? Burne-Jones has a little puzzled us in the summer; and now Vallance! Well, there were the futile “puerilia”--the _Pied Piper_ stuff--which one cannot believe that Beardsley would show. There was the Burne-Jonesesque _Hamlet_ from the _Bee_ just published. Perhaps one or two other Burne-Jonesesques. He himself can recall nothing better. In fact Beardsley had not done anything better than the _Hamlet_. Then there was the _Scrap Book_! However, it was fortunate for the young Beardsley that he won so powerful a friend and such a scrupulous, honourable, and loyal friend as Aymer Vallance.