placed beneath the picture. And there a watchman sleeps and dreams
of that portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire by Gainsborough,
stolen from its frame, lost for a quarter of a century, and then
rescued by one Colonel Patrick Sheedy (philanthropist and friend of
art), for a consideration, and sold to J. Pierpont Morgan, alumnus
of Harvard (and a very alert, alive and active man).


A short time ago, there shot across the artistic firmament a comet
of daring and dazzling brightness. Every comet is hurling onward to
its death: destruction is its only end: and upon each line and
tracery of the work of Aubrey Beardsley is the taint of decay.

To deny the genius of the man were vain--he had elements in his
character that made him akin to Keats, Shelley, Burns, Byron, Chopin
and Stephen Crane. With these his name will in brotherhood be
forever linked. He was one made to suffer, sin and die--a few short
summers, and autumn came with yellow leaves and he was gone. And the
principal legacy he left us is the thought of wonder as to what he
might have been had he only lived!

Aubrey Beardsley's art was the art of the ugly. His countenances are
so repulsive that they attract. The psychology of the looks, and
leers, and grins, and hot, hectic desires on the faces of his women
is a puzzle that we can not lay aside--we want to solve the riddle
of this paradox of existence--the woman whose soul is mire and whose
heart is hell. Many men have tried to fathom it at close range, but
we devise a safer plan and follow the trail in books, art and
imagination. Art shows you the thing you might have done or been.
Burke says the ugly attracts us, because we congratulate ourselves