From The Critic: “A Yellow Bore”

ONE IS BEGINNING to dread the coming around of the quarters
of the year. Not because they mark the flight of time, but because
they announce the coming of The Yellow Book. To
know that every three months we are to have our peace
of mind disturbed by the appearance of this strange
compound of insolence and the commercial spirit has now,
with the third number, become little less than a bore. At first we
were amused; then, with the second number, we felt a mild curi-
osity to see if the editors could repeat their absurdities; they did,
and so curiosity was satisfied. Now we have no other emotion save
that of boredom in seeing Aubrey Beardsley‘s and Max Beer-
bohm‘s agonized vulgarities. In their efforts to attract attention
with the current issue of their Quarterly, the editors have stepped
over the boundary line of decency. Where is Mrs. Ormiston Chant
that she does not have the work suppressed? Mr. Beardsley’s
“Wagnerites” and Mr. Beerbohm’s “George IV.” are more in-
decent than any “living pictures” that were ever exhibited in a
public hall. These young men are evidently determined to see if
they cannot be suppressed into notoriety, as were Oscar Wilde and
George Moore, It is one thing to be indecent and another to be
dull. This number of The Yellow Book is both, and we confess
that we are very bored of Mr. Beardsley and Mr. Beerbohm. If
the former looks like his portrait of himself, and if he sleeps in a
catafalque, as he represents himself as doing, one is not surprised
that he dreams bad dreams—the only surprise is that he should put
them on paper. Mr. Beardsley speaks by the card when he says
that “tous les monsters ne sont pas en Afrique.”