Disgusted with _The Yellow Book_, Beardsley put his immediate past and influences behind him for ever, and went straight back to his beloved master Watteau, the one master who inspired all his highest achievement. His meeting Conder in the autumn greatly accelerated this return to the master of both. And with the brighter prospect now opening out before him, vigour came back to him, and the autumn and the early winter saw him wonderfully free from the terror that had again begun to dog his steps. Having hurriedly sold the house at 114 Cambridge Street and removed to 10 and 11 St. James’s Place, S. W., in the July of 1895, Beardsley in the late summer and early autumn was at Dieppe. Eased now from money cares by his contract with Smithers, and with _The Savoy_ due to appear in December, he went back to his early inspiration from the 18th century, and at once his art burst into full song. Arthur Symons was at Dieppe in the autumn and there discovered Beardsley immersed in his work for _The Savoy_; but finds him now more concerned with literary aspirations than with drawing. He was hard at work upon his obscene novel _Venus and Tannhäuser_, the so-called _Under the Hill_, and was keenly interested in verse, carrying the inevitable portfolio about with him under his arm wherever he went and scribbling phrases as they came to him. [Illustration: ON DIEPPE BEACH (THE BATHERS)] [Illustration: THE ABBE] The black portfolio, carried under his arm, led to the waggery of a city wit that whilst Beardsley had turned his back upon the city he could not shake off the habits and atmosphere of the Insurance clerk for he always entered a room cautiously as if expecting to be kicked violently from behind and looked as if he had “called in on behalf of the Prudential.”