It was soon clear that the days of _The Savoy_ were numbered and the editor and publisher decided that the December number must be the last. The farewell address to the public sets down the lack of public support as the sole reason; but it was deeper than that. Beardsley, spurred to it by regret, put forth all his remaining powers to make it a great last number if it must be so. For he drew one of the richest and most sumptuous of his works, the beautiful _A Répétition of Tristan and Isolde_--and he flung into the number all the drawings he now made or had made for _Das Rheingold_, which included the marvellously decorative _Frontispiece for the Comedy of The Rheingold_, that “sings” with colour, and which he dated 1897, as he often post-dated his drawings, revealing that he had intended the long-cherished book for the following year; but the other designs for the Comedy are the unimportant fragments _Flosshilde_ and _Erda_ and _Alberich_, which he, as likely as not, had by him, as it was in October that he wrote of “most of the illustrations being finished.” He now drew his two portraits of musicians, the _Mendelssohn_ and the _Weber_; he somewhat fumbles with his _Don Juan, Sganarelle, and the Beggar_ from that _Don Juan_ of Moliere which he had ever been eager to illustrate; he gives us the _Mrs. Margery Pinchwife_ from Wycherley’s _Country Wife_; he very sadly disappoints us with his _Count Valmont_ from Laclos’ _Les Liaisons Dangereuses_ for the illustration of which Beardsley had held out such high hopes; and he ends with _Et in Arcadia Ego_. [Illustration: A RÉPÉTITION OF “TRISTAN UND ISOLDE”] [Illustration: FRONTISPIECE] It does the public little credit that there was such scant support for _The Savoy_ that it had to die. The farewell note to the last number announces that _The Savoy_ is in future to be half-yearly and a much higher price. But it was never to be. After all, everything depended on Beardsley, and poor Beardsley’s sands were near run out. Meantime Beardsley had been constantly fretting at the delay in the appearance of _The Book of Fifty Drawings_ which he had completed in September, in spite of the date 1897 on the cover-design--an afterthought of Smithers, who as a matter of fact sent me an advance copy at Beardsley’s request in December 1896. The December _Savoy_, then, No. 8 and the last, saw Beardsley unload all his Wagnerian drawings. Through the month he was toying with the idea of illustrating translations of two of his favourite books, _Les Liaisons Dangereuses_ by Laclos, and Stendhal’s _Adolphe_.... On a Sunday, early in December, he spent the afternoon “interviewing himself for _The Idler_”--the interview that appeared in that magazine, shaped and finished by Lawrence in March 1897.