own art but of every art and craft, and it was some time before one realised
that he attained this miraculous virtuosity by an absolute disdain for every
other form of human endeavour. He knew nothing of the great general or
millionaire or man of science, and he cared as little for them as for fishermen
or 'bus-drivers. The current of his talent ran narrow between stone banks, so
to speak; it was the bold assertion of it that interested Oscar.

One phase of Beardsley's extraordinary development may be recorded here. When I
first met him his letters, and even his talk sometimes, were curiously youthful
and immature, lacking altogether the personal note of his drawings. As soon as
this was noticed he took the bull by the horns and pretended that his style in
writing was out of date; he wished us to believe that he hesitated to shock
us with his "archaic sympathies." Of course we laughed and challenged him to
reveal himself. Shortly afterwards I got an article from him written with
curious felicity of phrase, in modish polite eighteenth-century English. He had
reached personal expression in a new medium in a month or so, and apparently
without effort. It was Beardsley's writing that first won Oscar to recognition
of his talent, and for a while he seemed vaguely interested in what he called
his "orchid-like personality."

They were both at lunch one day when Oscar declared that he could drink nothing
but absinthe when Beardsley was present.

"Absinthe," he said, "is to all other drinks what Aubrey's drawings are to
other pictures: it stands alone: it is like nothing else: it shimmers like
southern twilight in opalescent colouring: it has about it the seduction of
strange sins. It is stronger than any other spirit, and brings out the sub-
conscious self in man. It is just like your drawings, Aubrey; it gets on one's
nerves and is cruel.