However, Morris had frequently of late expressed to Vallance his troubled state in getting “suitable illustrations” for his Kelmscott books--he was particularly plagued about the reprint he was then anxious to produce--_Sidonia the Sorceress_. Vallance leaped at the chance of getting the opening for young Beardsley; and at once persuaded Beardsley to make a drawing, add it to his portfolio, and all being ready, on a fine Sunday afternoon in the early summer of 1892, his portfolio under his arm, Beardsley with Vallance made their way to Hammersmith and entered the gates of the great man. Morris received the young man courteously. But he was about to be asked to swallow a ridiculous pill. We have seen that up to this time the portfolio was empty of all but mediocrity--a Burne-Jonesesque or so at best. To put the froth on the black trouble, Vallance had evidently never thought of the utter unfitness of Beardsley’s scratchy pen-drawn Japanesque grotesques for the Kelmscott Press; whilst Beardsley probably did not know what the Kelmscott Press meant. He was soon to know--and to achieve. Can one imagine a more fantastic act than taking this drawing to show to Morris? Imagine how a trivial, cheap, very tentative weak line, in grotesque swirls and wriggles, of Sidonia the Sorceress with the black cat appealed to Morris, who was as serious about the “fat blacks” of his Kelmscott decorations as about his first-born! Remember that up to this time Beardsley had not attempted his strong black line with flat black masses. Morris would have been a fool to commission this young fellow for the work, judging him by his then achievement. Let us go much further, Beardsley himself would not have been sure of fulfilling it--far less any of his sponsors. And yet!----