As Beardsley’s self chosen master, Watteau, had played with mimicry of the Chinese genius in his Chinoiseries, so Beardsley at twenty, faithful to Watteau, played with mimicry of the Japanese genius. And as Whistler had set the vogue in his Japanesques by adopting a Japanesque mark of a butterfly for signature, so Beardsley, not to be outdone in originality, now invented for himself his famous “Japanesque mark” of the three candles, with three flames--in the more elaborate later marks adding rounded puffs of candle-smoke--or as Beardsley himself called it, his “trademark.” To Beardsley his candles were as important a part of the tools of his craftsmanship as were his pen and paper and chinese ink; and it was but a fitting tribute to his light that he should make of it the emblem of his signature. But whether the “Japanesque mark” be candles or not, from the time he began to employ the Japanesque convention alongside of his mediævalism, for three years, until as we shall see he was expelled from _The Yellow Book_--his twentieth, twenty-first and twenty-second years--we shall find him employing the “Japanesque mark,” sometimes in addition to his name. So it is well to dwell upon it here. The early “Japanesque mark” of Beardsley’s twentieth year (mid 1892 to mid-1893) was as we have seen, stunted, crude, and ill-shaped, and he employed it indifferently and incongruously on any type of his designs whether _Morte d’Arthur_ mediævalism or the Japanesque grotesques of his _Bon Mots_. And we have seen that it was in the middle of his twentieth year--he last used it in fact in the February of 1893--that he dropped the initial V for Vincent out of his initials and signature. He had employed A. V. B. in his Formative years. He signs henceforth as A. B. or A. Beardsley or even as Aubrey B. In mid-1893, at twenty-one, we are about to see him launch upon his _Salome_ designs, as weary of the _Bon Mots_ grotesques as of the _Morte d’Arthur_ mediævalism; and we shall see his “Japanesque mark” become long, slender, and graceful, often elaborate--the V quite departed from his signature. I have dwelt at length upon Beardsley’s “Japanesque mark,” or as he called it, his “trademark,” since his many forgers make the most amusing blunders by using the “Japanesque mark” in particular on forgeries of later styles when he had wholly abandoned it! [Illustration]