But, though we none of us knew it nor guessed it who were gathered there--and the whole literary and artistic world was gathered there--this young fellow at twenty-three was to create within a year or so the masterpieces of his great period--the drawings for a new venture to be called _The Savoy_--and was soon to begin work on the superb designs for _The Rape of the Lock_, which were to thrust him at a stroke into the foremost achievement of his age. Before four years were run out, Beardsley was to be several months in his grave. As young Beardsley that day stumbled amongst the mounds of the dead, so was his life’s journey thenceforth to be--one long struggle to crawl out of the graveyard and away from the open grave that yawned for him by day and by night. He was to feel himself being dragged back to it again and again by unseen hands--was to spend his strength in the frantic struggle to escape--he was to get almost out of sight of the green mounds of the dead for a sunny day or two only to find himself drawn back by the clammy hand of the Reaper to the edge of the open grave again. Death played with the terrified man as a cat plays with a mouse--with cruel forbearance let him clamber out of the grave, out of the graveyard, even out into the sunshine of the high road, only maliciously to pluck him back again in a night. And we, who are spellbound by the superb creations of his imagination that were about to be poured forth throughout two or three years of this agony, ought to realise that Beardsley wrought these blithe and lyrical things between the terrors of a constant fight for life, for the very breath of his body, with the gaunt lord of death. We ought to realise that even as Beardsley by light of his candles, created his art, the skeleton leered like an evil ghoul out of the shadows of his room. For, realising that, one turns with added amazement to the gaiety and charm of _The Rape of the Lock_. Surely the hideous nightmares that now and again issued from his plagued brain are far less a subject for bewilderment than the gaiety and blithe wit that tripped from his facile pen! Beardsley knew he was a doomed man even on the threshold of manhood, and he strove with feverish intensity to get a lifetime into each twelvemonth. He knew that for him there would be few tomorrows--he knew that he had but a little while to which to look forward, and had best live his life to-day. And he lived it like one possessed. HALDANE MACFALL. AUBREY BEARDSLEY THE CLOWN, THE HARLEQUIN, THE PIERROT OF HIS AGE 1872-1898 I BIRTH AND FAMILY