Creator
John Davidson
Title
A Full and True Account of the Wonderful Mission of Earl Lavender. . . with a Frontispiece by Aubrey Beardsley
Coverage
London:
Publisher
Ward and Downey,
Date
1895.
Subject
Inscribed by John Davidson to Aubrey Beardsley.
Description
Ordinarily, Beardsley was the one who added sexual innuendo and salacious imagery not found in the original text. When asked to provide a frontispiece for the picaresque fantasy known as Earl Lavender, by John Davidson (1857–1909), however, he had the opposite problem. Davidson’s novel described scenes of flagellation set in a place called “Underworld,” where correction was administered in the Whipping Room by the Lady of the Veil—a character intoning such decadently morbid pronouncements as “Life is a disease: the moment we are born we begin to die.” Davidson had usurped Beardsley’s prerogative to shock. In response, Beardsley produced for the firm of Ward and Downey a frontispiece that managed to make Davidson’s sadomasochism seem almost chaste, with a whip-wielding maiden who looked like a figure on a classical frieze, while encouraging viewers to focus instead on visual echoes between the whip and the candelabra on the mantel.
Source
From the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press