Letters

To the Editor of the Daily Chronicle.

1 March 1894.
114 Cambridge Street.

          Sir,

In your review of Mr. Davidson’s plays, I find myself convicted of an error of taste, for having introduced portraits into my frontispiece to that book. I cannot help feeling that your reviewer is unduly severe. One of the gentlemen who form part of my decoration is surely beautiful enough to stand the test even of portraiture, the other owes me half a crown.

                    I am, yours truly,

Aubrey Beardsley

¶ 1894. The Daily Chronicle for 1 March 1894 printed a review of the Bodley Head edition of John Davidson’s Plays, which took Beardsley to task specifically for his inclusion of identifiable figures in the frontispiece. This letter appeared on the following day. The likenesses were recognisable caricatures of Oscar Wilde and Sir Augustus Harris, then Manager of Covent Garden, where Beardsley had a short time before paid his 2/6d for a seat, only to be told, much to his indignation, that none was available and that he would have to stand.