It was in the March of 1894 that Beardsley drew the _Poster for the Avenue Theatre_ which really brought him before a London public more than anything he had so far done--a success, be it confessed, more due to the wide interest aroused by the dramatic venture of the Avenue Theatre than to any inherent value in the Poster itself which could not be compared with the work of the Beggarstaff Brothers. Needless to say that it was at this same time that George Bernard Shaw was to float into the public ken with his play of _Arms and the Man_ at this same Avenue Theatre, hitherto so unlucky a play-house that from its situation on the Embankment under Charing Cross Bridge, it was cynically known to the wags as “The Home for Lost Seagulls.” I shall always associate Beardsley’s Avenue Theatre poster with Shaw’s rise to fame as it recalls Shaw’s first night when, being called before the curtain at the end of _Arms and the Man_, some man amongst the gods booing loud and long amidst the cheering, Shaw’s ready Irish wit brought down the house as, gazing upwards into the darkness, his lank loose figure waited patiently until complete silence had fallen on the place, when he said dryly in his rich brogue: “I agree with that gentleman in the gallery, but”--shrugging his shoulders--“what are we amongst so many?” Beardsley’s decorations for John Davidson’s _Plays_ appeared about the April of this year; but, needless to say, did not catch the interest of a wide public. * * * * * Suddenly his hour struck for Aubrey Beardsley. It was the publication of _The Yellow Book_ in the mid-April of 1894 that at once thrust Beardsley into the public eye and beyond the narrow circle so far interested in him. London Society was intensely literary and artistic in its interests, or at any rate its pose, in the early ’nineties. Every lady’s drawing-room was sprinkled with the latest books--the well-to-do bought pictures and wrangled over art. The leaders of Society prided themselves on their literary and artistic salons. As a snowfall turns London white in a night, so _The Yellow Book_ littered the London drawing-rooms with gorgeous mustard as at the stroke of a magician’s wand. It “caught on.” And catching on, it carried Aubrey Beardsley on the crest of its wave of notoriety into a widespread and sudden vogue. After all, everything that was outstanding and remarkable about the book was Beardsley. _The Yellow Book_ was soon the talk of the town, and Beardsley “awoke to find himself famous.” Punch promptly caricatured his work; and soon he was himself caricatured by “Max” in the _Pall Mall Budget_; whilst the Oxford undergraduates were playing with Wierdsley Daubrey and the like. But it was left to Mostyn Piggott to write perhaps the finest burlesque on any poem in our tongue in the famous skit which ran somewhat thus: