'In a small way, rather remarkable...'

A couple of weeks ago, it was Philip Larkin's centenary – and back in April Kingsley Amis's – and today comes the sesquicentenary of Max Beerbohm, born in Kensington on this day in 1872. His father was a Lithuanian-born grain merchant, his mother the sister of his father's first wife, and it was long surmised that Beerbohm must have Jewish blood (Ezra Pound refers to this, in typically charming philosemitic manner, in 'Hugh Selwyn Mauberley') – but, having looked into the matter, Max told a biographer: 'I should be delighted to know that we Beerbohms have that very admirable and engaging thing, Jewish blood. But there seems no reason for supposing that we have. Our family records go back as far as 1668, and there is nothing in them compatible with Judaism.' He also said: 'That my talent is rather like Jewish talent I admit readily... But, being in fact a Gentile, I am, in a small way, rather remarkable, and wish to remain so.' 
  The young Max received his early education at a day school run by a Mr Wilkinson, who gave him the only drawing lessons he ever had, and 'gave me my love of Latin and thereby enabled me to write English'. After Charterhouse it was Oxford, where he got to know, among many others, Oscar Wilde and William Rothenstein, who introduced him to Aubrey Beardsley and the Yellow Book circle. He was soon launched, too, as a writer, caricaturist and dandy. 'I was a modest, good-humoured boy,' he recalled. 'It was Oxford that made me insufferable.' In reality, he was the least insufferable of writers – a breed not known for their conspicuous sufferability. Indeed he is one of the few writers with whom I would, I think, have been happy to spend some time (who are the others? Keats, Chekhov, Beckett, Fernando Pessoa, Dr Johnson if I was feeling strong enough, Oscar Wilde ditto). Talking of Oscar, to mark this anniversary I'm going to link back to something I wrote some years ago about one of Beerbohm's lesser known but very remarkable creations, 'A Peep into the Past'. Here's the link...
  (The portrait of the young Max above is by his friend, the Dieppe-based painter Jacques-Emile Blanche.)

As You've Never Seen Him

This playful photograph (originally a bromide print) is titled 'Max - With apologies to all concerned'. Showing Max Beerbohm in 1916, parodically posed as Whister's Thomas Carlyle, it was taken by Filson Young, better known as a writer and journalist, among many other things. I came across it in the Introduction to a splendid volume of Max Beerbohm Caricatures (Yale University Press, 1997) that I picked up for a song at one of my regular charity shops. No fewer than 213 caricatures, with plentiful quotations from Max as well as useful commentary by one N. John Hall, an American academic - this is a book that is clearly going to give me a lot of pleasure. As did the wholly unexpected image of Max as Carlyle.

Birthday Beau

Born on this day in 1778 was the great George Bryan Brummell - 'Beau' Brummell - the man who applied himself as none before to the reform and perfection of masculine dress. As Max Beerbohm puts it in his essay on Dandyism, 'So to clothe the body that its fineness be revealed and its meanness veiled has been the aesthetic aim of all costume' - and it was Beau Brummell who most perfectly achieved that aim, at least for the male body. Turning his back on the extravagances and foppery of early 19th-century attire, Brummell got to work on the essentials. 'In certain congruities of dark cloth, in the rigid perfection of his linen, in the symmetry of his glove with his hand,' writes Beerbohm, 'lay the secret of Mr. Brummell’s miracles. He was ever most economical, most scrupulous of means. Treatment was everything with him.' And what he came up with was essentially the prototype and ideal form of what later generations were to standardise as the never-failing gentleman's suit (worn with a tie, alas, rather than the cravat favoured by Brummell). It might be argued that Brummell took things a little too far, with his five-hour toilet - one of the spectacles of fashionable London - and boots brightened with champagne, but he was, as Beerbohm proclaims, an artist obsessively dedicated to his art. Even so, he wasn't above risking a degree of sartorial disarray by playing a game of cricket. He even had one first-class match to his name - for Hampshire against an England side in 1807, when he scored 23 and 3, giving him a career average of 13. Sadly, it all went wrong for Brummell when he ran out of money and friends in high places, and he ended his days in poverty and syphilitic insanity in Caen. He was buried in the protestant cemetery there, which now lies under the university campus. For more on Brummell and Dandyism, here is a link to Beerbohm's sparkling essay.

At The Pines

A lucky find at Oxfam just now - one I had been hoping to get my hands on for a long time: At The Pines by the gloriously named Mollie Panter-Downes (surely an escapee from a Betjeman poem). Originally published in The New Yorker, this is an account of the respectable years of Swinburne, when he was living in the care of his friend, the now otherwise forgotten Theodore Watts-Dunton, in a villa in suburban Putney. Max Beerbohm's wonderful account of a visit to Number 2 The Pines says it all really - but I'm very glad to have this book. Seriously underpriced too - considering how long it's been unavailable - at a mere £1.99. A lucky find indeed.