John Lane, now at The Bodley Head alone, had published volume III of _The Yellow Book_ in October 1894 and volume IV in the January of 1895. Beardsley had made the drawings for the April number, volume V; the blocks were also made, and a copy or so of the number bound, when, at the beginning of March, Queensberry’s arrest shook society. The public misapprehension about Beardsley being a friend of Oscar Wilde’s probably caused some consternation amongst the writers of _The Yellow Book_; but whatever the cause, John Lane who was in America was suddenly faced with an ultimatum--it was said that one of his chief poets put the pistol to his head and threatened that without further ado either he or Beardsley must leave _The Yellow Book_ at once. Now this cable announced that William Watson was not alone but had the alliance of Alice Meynell, then at the height of her vogue, with others most prominent in this movement. Into the merits of the storm in the teacup we need not here go. What decided John Lane in his awkward plight to sacrifice Beardsley rather than the poet was a personal matter, solely for John Lane to decide as suited his own business interest best. He decided to jettison Beardsley. The decision could have had little to do with anything objectionable in Beardsley’s drawings, for a copy was bound with Beardsley’s designs complete, and anything more innocent of offence it would be difficult to imagine. It may therefore be safely assumed that the revolt on John Lane’s ship was solely due to the panic set up by the Wilde trial, resulting in a most unjust prejudice against Beardsley as being in some way sympathetic in moral with the abhorred thing. No man knows such gusts of moral cowardice as the moralist. However, in expelling Beardsley _The Yellow Book_ was doomed--it at once declined, and though it struggled on, it went to annihilation and foundered. This ultimatum by cable to John Lane in America was a piece of cant that Lane felt as bitterly as the victim Beardsley. It grieved John Lane to his dying day, and he blamed himself for lack of courage in deserting the young fellow; but he was hustled, and he feared that it might wreck the publishing house which he had built up at such infinite pains. Above all he knew that Beardsley would never forgive him. But Lane blamed himself quite needlessly, as in all this ugly incident, in that he had shown lack of personal dignity in allowing himself to be thrust aside from captaincy of his own ship whilst he had been made responsible for the act of his mutineers which he had whole-heartedly detested. Lane would not be comforted. He never ceased to blame himself.