make it alive even for himself--he cannot fulfil a character in it or raise a single entity into life out of a fantastic Wardour Street of fine clothes--there is no body, far less soul, in the clothes. He is not greatly concerned with bringing people to life; he is wholly concerned with being thought a clever fellow with words. He is in this akin to Oscar Wilde. * * * * * It was whilst at Dieppe that the famous French painter Jacques Blanche made a fine portrait of Beardsley; and in this hospitable friend’s studio it was that Beardsley set up the canvas for the picture he was always going to paint but never did. And it was to Beardsley’s infinite delight that Symons took him to Puy to see the author of one of Beardsley’s chief literary loves, _La Dame aux Camélias_--Alexandre Dumas, fils. [Illustration: COVER DESIGN FROM “THE SAVOY” _NO. 1_] [Illustration: THE BILLET-DOUX] Charles Conder also painted a rather indifferent portrait of Beardsley in oils which seems to have vanished. But the two finest portraits of Beardsley the man are word-portraits by Arthur Symons and Max Beerbohm. Symons speaks of Beardsley at this time as imagining himself to be “unable to draw anywhere but in England.” This was not necessarily an affectation of Beardsley’s as Symons seems to think; it is painfully common to the artistic temperament which often cannot work at all except in the atmosphere of its workshop. He was now working keenly at _The Savoy_ drawings and the illustrations for his bowdlerised _Under the Hill_, to be produced serially in that magazine. The first number was due to appear in December 1895, and the rich cover-design in black on the pink paper of the boards, showed, in somewhat indelicate fashion, Beardsley’s contempt for _The Yellow Book_, but the contempt had to be suppressed and a second edition of the cover printed instead. Though the prospectus for _The Savoy_, being done late in the autumn of 1895, announced the first number for December, _The Savoy_ eventually had to be put off until the New Year; meantime, about the Yuletide of 1895, Beardsley commenced work upon the famous sequence of masterpieces for _The Rape of the Lock_, announced for publication in February, and which we know was being sold in March.