The Reception of Aubrey Beardsley’s Works in Ada Leverson’s Novels of the 1910s

This article examines the reception of Aubrey Beardsley's graphic and literary works in two novels by Ada Leverson. Reminiscences of Aubrey Beardsley and his works characterize the evolution of love of the amateur artist Harry de Freyne in The Limit (1911). French spelling of Harry de Freyne’s name alludes to the troubadour tradition. He painted the only portrait of Valentia, in which she resembles the heroine of Rossetti and Burne-Jones in the painting Love among the Ruins (titled Love among the Roses in the novel). Entangled in love and financial affairs, Harry plans to make a black-and-white sketch of Valentia in a rose garden, this reminding rose gardens from Aubrey Beardsley's works, where they symbolize both depravity and beauty. The mention of Beardsley's drawings emphasizes Ada Leverson's ironic attitude toward her character, who suffered a fiasco in both love and art. The portrait of Valentia remained the only work of Harry de Freyne as he was banished from his beloved's ‘rose garden’. In Ada Leverson's postwar novel Love at Second Sight (1916), as in The Limit, the main character (Edith) has a husband (Bruce Ottley) and a lover (Aylmer Ross). Beardsley's illustrations for Oscar Wilde's Salome are contrasted with Post-Impressionism and Futurism as vibrant and vivid expressions of emotion. In his discussion with Aylmer Ross about modern art, Arthur Coniston dismisses both old and new artists as ‘poseurs’, but pays tribute to the intellect and talent of Aubrey Beardsley. Having returned from war, Aylmer, an intellectual and conservative, while praising Beardsley's talent, criticizes him for the inappropriateness of some of his imagery. Ada Leverson continues to interpret Beardsley as a symbol of the 1890s (as in her parody play The Scarlet Parasol and the pastiche Dickens Up to Date; Or Fiction Repeats Itself), but within the new context of 20th-century art.