Max Beerbohm

Book Reviews, Volume 32:1, 1988 MAX BEERBOHM Max Beerbohm. Rossetti and His Circle. Introduction by N. John Hall. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987. $19.95 Rossetti and His Circle is the consummate fusion of Beerbohm's talents as visual artist and ironic chronicler. In a series of twentythree drawings of scenes wholly invented, but plausible, he wittily illustrated the mythical and spiritual force, the idealism as well as the absurdity, of the eccentric poet-painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and of his equally peculiar assortment of friends and acquaintances. What distinguish this volume from Beerbohm's other albums of caricatures are a subtlety of representation-(a greater attention to portraiture and composition rather than distortion to convey the message) and an implied narrative (the scenes are arranged chronologically, from DGR's childhood in his father's house to the year of his death, in which Oscar Wilde bore the torch of pre-Raphaelitism to benighted America). Moreover, the series is drawn with such vividness that we accept its validity as unquestioningly as we do that of the sketches of courtroom artists. Beerbohm's interpretation of the myth of Rossetti, like Browning 's conception of Renaissance Italy, imposes itself upon us, displacing the judicious pondering of graver historians. The most remarkable thing about the present edition of this book is that we have had to wait sixty-five years for it to appear. While there has been a steady stream of appreciations of Beerbohm's achievement as writer and caricaturist and most of his major prose is still in print, this is the first generally available reprinting of his masterly narrative in caricature. To be sure, that delay has in part been due to the high cost of quality color reproduction, a thing absolutely essential to do justice to the original pictures in possession of the Tate Gallery. But what a glorious justice it is! To those who think of his line drawings, however clever, or recall the crude comic-book tints of The Poets' Corner (1904; reprinted 1943), the charm Beerbohm displays here as a watercolorist is astounding. Owners of the 1922 edition will immediately acknowledge that the delicacy of coloring in these reproductions , apart from being truer to the originals in preserving the quality of the washes, reduces the blatancy of the visual contrasts. Flesh tones, for example, are more uniform: Browning and George Augustus Sala are no longer sanguine, compared to a sallow DGR. Russets and greens are restored to their original auburns and blues. And plate #20, "Quis Custodiet Ipsum Custodem?", a loving evocation of a pre- Raphaelite interior replete with oriental screen, circular mirror, and portraits of "stunners" on the wall, now glows with golden under91 Book Reviews, Volume 32:1, 1988 statement. Indeed, the fidelity of the present volume renders the earlier edition a paint-by-number production. The somewhat larger size of reproduction also brings out better the details of the original drawings . This edition, then, presents a truer aspect of Beerbohm's artistry. But alas, what the passage of time has restored in one regard, it has effaced in another. Even when it originally appeared, the work was fairly esoteric, the legend of Rossetti's aesthetic adventure having very little currency in a nation exhausted by the Great War. To republish Rossetti and His Circle without defining its context or identifying its characters would have been unthinkable. Professor Hall has diligently worked back to Beerbohm's sources, both documentary and graphic, distilling his findings into an informative and conversational commentary "to provide," in his words, "some of the record without which the reader may miss Max's point." Too often those who have written about Beerbohm's caricatures have treated their subjects casually or allusively , assuming a knowledge by no means common. Hall endeavors to supply that knowledge and has succeeded to the extent of making the events and personages familiar. Yet "point" is precisely what may be missed under the avalanche of gossip and anecdote that constitutes the commentary, which makes little reference to the visual aspect of the drawings themselves. The reader (for one must "read" these drawings just as surely as one does Hogarth's) longs for...