His expulsion from _The Yellow Book_ was very bitterly resented by Beardsley. It hurt his pride and it humiliated him at the height of his triumph. And he writhed at the injustice inflicted upon him by the time selected to strike at him, besmirching him as it did with an association of which he was wholly innocent. And it must be confessed that _The Yellow Book_ at once became a stale farce played by all concerned except the hero, from the leading lady to the scene-shifter--_Hamlet_ being attempted without the Prince of Denmark. The trial and conviction of Oscar Wilde shook the young fellow even more thoroughly. Quite apart from the fierce feeling of resentment at the injustice of his being publicly made to suffer as though an intimate of a man in disgrace for whom he had no particular liking, Beardsley realised that his own flippant and cheaply cynical attitude towards society might, like Wilde’s, have to be paid for at a hideous price. The whole ugly business filled him with disgust; and what at least was to the good, the example of Wilde’s crass conceit humbled in the dust, knocked much of the cheap conceit out of Beardsley, to his very great advantage, for it allowed freer play to that considerable personal charm that he possessed in no small degree. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF MRS. PATRICK CAMPBELL _from “The Yellow Book,” Volume I_] His expulsion from _The Yellow Book_ placed Beardsley in a very awkward financial position. The income that he derived from his drawings for _The Yellow Book_ must have been but small at best; and it is a mystery how he lived. It has been said that he found generous patrons, and that of these not the least generous was one André Raffalovich, a man of wealth. But the sources of his means of livelihood must have been dangerously staunched by his expulsion from _The Yellow Book_. The strange part of Beardsley’s career is that the designs for volume V of _The Yellow Book_, printed for April, but suppressed at the last moment, ended his achievement in this phase and style and craftsmanship. When the blow fell, he was already embarking upon a new craftsmanship; indeed towards this development he markedly moves in the later _Yellow Book_ designs. Had Beardsley died in mid-1895, at twenty-three, he would have left behind him the achievement of an interesting artist; but not a single example of the genius that was about to astonish the world. * * * * *