any other young man or group did his preaching.

VI

Harland shared his pulpit. He would not have found the same design for
it without Beardsley, nor would our Thursday nights, where a good deal
of that design was thought out and talked out, have been the same
without Beardsley. I would find it hard, even had there been no _Yellow
Book_, not to remember Harland and Beardsley together. For it was from
Mrs. Harland that we first heard of the wonderful youth, unknown still,
an insignificant clerk in some Insurance Company, who made the most
amazing drawings--it was she who first sent him to us that J. might look
at his work and help him to escape from the office he hated and from the
toils of Burne-Jones and the Kelmscott Press in which he was entangled.

[Illustration: Photograph by Frederick H. Evans
AUBREY BEARDSLEY]

He came, the first time, one afternoon in the winter dusk--a boy, tall
and slight, long narrow pale clean-shaven face, hair parted in the
middle and hanging over his forehead, nose prominent, eyes alight,
certain himself of the worth of his drawings, too modest not to fear
that other artists might not agree with him. The drawings in his little
portfolio were mostly for the _Morte d' Arthur_, with one or two of
those, now cherished by the collector, that have a hint of the Japanese
under whose influence he momentarily passed. J. enjoys the reputation,
which he deserves, of telling the truth always, no matter how unpleasant
to those to whom he tells it. Truth to Beardsley was pleasant and his
face was radiant when he left us. J. has also the courage of his
convictions, and all he said to Beardsley he repeated promptly to the
public in the first number of _The Studio_, a magazine started not as a
pulpit but as a commercial enterprise--started, however, at the right
moment to be kindled into life and steered toward success by the
enthusiasm and the energy of the Young Men of the Nineties.

Beardsley was bound to become known whether articles were written about
him or not. But J.'s was the first and made recognition come the sooner.
The heads of many young men grow giddy with the first success; at the
exultant top of the winding stair that leads to it, they no longer see
those who gave them a hand when they balanced on the lowest rung. But
Beardsley was not made that way. He kept his head cool, his eyesight
clear. He never forgot. Gratitude coloured the friendship with us that
followed, even in the days