The Art of Max Beerbohm
BY DAVID Low (of the Evening Standard).
ONE day many years ago, when I was a very little boy who should have been studying The Babes in the Wood, I came across a very funny drawing of Ooni Paul Kruger in a magazine called The Idler. It was so simple as to seem to have something in common with my own artless attempts at drawing. When one looked at the way that those whiskers and boots, that top hat, frock coat and umbrella had been drawn it was perfectly obvious that that was the right way to draw them, that it was the way in which one would wish to draw them, if only one could. I copied the thing several times on tissue-paper to see what the secret was, but all I dis• covered was that the fellovi who had done it could do it, and that I could not. Iri the corner was a microscopic signatUre " Max," It is a long time since " Kruger," but in the intervening years, thank heaven, Max has resisted the temptation to become an artist, and therefore he retains the most distinctive and pleasing quality of his drawing. This, the quality of naive discovery, has not been snowed under by traditional cliches and technical formulae, and he continues to express himself in simple terms of childlike freshness. I know that the misguided persons, who are unable to conceive of " drawing " as other than polished classical draughtsmanship, might hold that Max's performances are not good " drawings " ; but that is absurd. What is drawing if it is not the power of expression in lines ? Who can express himself better than Max ? There are too many draughtsman in the world who can make nicely-shaded pictures, faultless in proportion and perspective, of any object placed before them, but who, for all that, cannot adequately express even an old boot. They can make, I grant you, a charming study of the outer skin of the old boot, but its all-round " old-bootishness " eludes them. The orthodox draught of the classical school is too often rather watery— not enough spirit.
Max, on the other hand, is spirit neat. I recommend you to take a book of his caricatures with you into the National Portrait Gallery. Look round at the poor celebri- ties, all posed and painted as usual, and all looking so much like each other that you are almost convinced about Reincarnation. Then open the book and look at Max's representations of personalities, each separate, clear-cut and completely individual.
The truth is that a " free " technique like Max's is admirably suited to the rendering of personal character, for it permits to an unlimited degree the artistic " catch- as-you-can " involved in complete representation. Character, let it be remembered, does not reside exclu- sively in what the eye can see, but is apprehended through all the senses (yes, even tasting). Therefore, a complete likeness of an individual is only possible through the synthesis of what one sees, and the rest. There arc certain guiding principles for expressing what can be seen, but there are no guiding principles for expressing in graphic terms what can not be seen. One may draw, for example;- Mr. Lloyd George's outward appearance almost to formal recipe ; but to draw how Mr. Lloyd George looks, feels, smells, sounds, and tastes—in short, to draw the sort of man he is—involves certain difficulties. One has to exercise wit.
And when I say " wit," I do not mean humour, but wit. A propriety of thoughts and lines. Thoughts and lines adapted to the subject. Now consider Max's caricatures of Lord Balfour with the languid drooping figure ; of the Cecils with their beautifully bald heads, high shoulders, hanging hands and ill-fitting trousers ; of the King of Spain with his cheerful grin and his even more cheerful legs ; ofthe hairy swing of Mr. Bernard Shaw, and the sedate sit of Mr. Asquith. Consider the famous caricature of Mr. W. B. Yeats presenting Mr. George Moore to the Queen of the Fairies : the king dark scaffolding of Yeats, surmounted by two dank locks hanging over that angular white face ; the peculiar plumpnesses" of George Moore delicately emphasized in curved lines to the appearance of pink putty. Here is an instinct at work discovering what Mr. Roger Fry calls " the emotional elements inherent in natural form " and expressing the spiritual in terms of the material.
But it is in the combination of his artistic and his " literary " wit, of course, that Max reaches his highest as an interpreter of human character. For, as the world knows, he is a master of the caricature situation and the caricature caption. _ It is unfortunate that I must be dumb about the Max caricatures I like best, because these hang on the walls of a friend, unpublished and likely to remain so. But, picking at random, where would you find, for instance, a better example of the witty expression of witty thought than in this one : " Taut seul se re,tablir," showing a worried group including Hyndeman, Wells, Galsworthy, _Sydney Webb, Cunninghame Graham and others ? " Urgent conclave of Doctrinaire Socialists to decide on some means of inducing the Lower Orders to regard them once more as Visionaries only." There you are. It contains all the essential elements of good cari- cature. As, indeed, Max's works usually do.
Naturally, Max has the disadvantages, as well as the advantages, of his qualities. His wit is sometimes so cultured in derivation and so local in application as to make his caricatures almost private. Not that one would have " Max " popular in the million-sale sense. Heaven forbid ! No great caricaturist could be thoroughly popular, for to be thoroughly popular one must circumscribe oneself by the intelligence of the bonehead. • But, on the other hand, I doubt whether the wit of a great caricaturist need be as aristocratic as Max's. His col- lections sometimes have the air of having been designed for a small exclusive clientele. Caricatures of Gentlemen, for Gentlemen, by a Gentleman. When Culture walks hand in hand with Fashion, as it does when Max exhibits, the danger of its patronage is that one is encouraged to be not only a gentleman (which, of course, every caricaturist should be), but also a " gentleman " (which, of course, no caricaturist should be).
I have only met Max once, and then I did not have an opportunity to ask him whether he thought cari- caturists owed any duty to humanity. Perhaps not. But if they do, I feel that it must be " to soften the social scene with loving wit " for the benefit of a wider public. I rejoice that Max is once more to be bestowed like a blessing upon the readers of a weekly periodical. So be it. Mar vobiscum.
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