The Yellow Book

“ A few of my random recollections of Beardsley's association with "The Yellow Book" perhaps will not be amiss.
Until the publication of the first volume of "The Yellow Book" in 1894, Beardsley was practically unknown, his drawings for "Le Morte D'Arthur" and his marvellous designs illustrating "Salomé" constituting his artistic record. It was at this time, then, that one morning he, with Mr. Henry Harland and myself, during half an hour's chat over our cigarettes at the Hogarth Club, founded the much discussed "Yellow Book." Beardsley became Art Editor, whilst Mr. ”

“ The Yellow Ancient set earth's purest power spinning in a circle, and added the effect of fire and water thereto. Then there came forth grasses and trees, birds and beasts, and the tribes of the serpents and insects, fishes and turtles. The Wood Prince and the Mother of Metals combined light and darkness, and thus created the human race as men and women. ”

“ Design on frontispiece to, containing portrait caricatures of Sir Augustus Harris, and Oscar Wilde and Henry Harland, black and white; the same design in gold on the cloth cover. Reproduced in "Early Work," and again, with Aubrey Beardsley's letter to the Daily Chronicle on the subject, in "Under the Hill," 1904. (Property of John Lane, Esq.)
Design for Title-Page of the above-named. Black and white; reproduced in "Early Work."
89. The Yellow Book, 1894 and 1895.
I. Design for prospectus of the "Yellow Book": a woman examining books in a box at a bookstall: black on yellow paper. ”

“ Yellow has been supposed to symbolise that death is the end of human hopes, because falling leaves are sere; black is taken as the privation of light; and purple or violet also affected as a blending of joy with sorrow. ”

“ The yellow colour adopted is glaring, and from the æsthetic point of view not so good as a quiet mixed tint might have been; however, it gives a title to the publication and associates itself so perfectly with the title that it has a sufficient raison d'être, whilst it contrasts most effectively with black. Though white is lighter than any yellow, it has not the same active and stimulating quality. The drawing of the masquers is merely one of Mr. Aubrey Beardsley's fancies and has no particular signification. ”

“ According to Frank Chapman, the famous ornithologist at the Museum of Natural History in New York, the animals of the humid climate of the northwest are especially dark in color.
If you use yellow for the north color, yellow means laughter and mirth. Notwithstanding the fact that we use yellow as a sign for contagious disease, women suffragists and cowardice, a yellow light makes a gathering cheerful and merry; so in approaching the North Court you may sing.
The Indian names for the four courts are Too-le-ze, the east, for the south Too-winks, for the west Kor-le, and for the north Kon-win. ”

“ It could not be judged by any known standard, yet, although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been struck in The King in Yellow, all felt that human nature could not bear the strain, nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest poison lurked. ”

“ This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow. ”

“ Thereʼs a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
Thereʼs a little marble cross below the town,
Thereʼs a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,
And the Yellow God for ever gazes down. ”

“ Oh the wickedness, the hopeless damnation of a soul who could fascinate and paralyze human creatures with such words,—words understood by the ignorant and wise alike, words which are more precious than jewels, more soothing than music, more awful than death!
We talked on, unmindful of the gathering shadows, and she was begging me to throw away the clasp of black onyx quaintly inlaid with what we now knew to be the Yellow Sign. ”

“ Dreams of a distant city hid from sight,
The enchanted city of the sun and moon,
The golden market of the world's delight.
Pale as the dead are they that dwell herein,
Worn with vain strife and wrung with vain regret ”

“ And now, far away, over leagues of tossing cloud-waves, I saw the moon dripping with spray; and beyond, the towers of Carcosa rose behind the moon.
Death and the awful abode of lost souls, whither my weakness long ago had sent him, had changed him for every other eye but mine. And now I heard his voice, rising, swelling, thundering through the flaring light, and as I fell, the radiance increasing, increasing, poured over me in waves of flame. Then I sank into the depths, and I heard the King in Yellow whispering to my soul: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!" ”

“ With his hand on the arm of his friend, he walked abstractedly the whole of the terrace. Here a great arc light threw a stream of pallid blue upon the motley coloring displayed upon a big hoarding. In the centre of the hoarding, well displayed, was the terrible placard disclosing the grinning features of Nostalgo.
"By Heaven!" Jack exclaimed, "there is no getting away from the features of that grinning devil. I know as well as if I had seen it down in black and white that the awful experiences which have so changed you lately have to do with that yellow face." ”

“ About a month later they really did meet one evening on Blackcliff Hill, and this time without the Squire's wife.
Blackcliff Hill was a smooth, round chalk rising, covered with gorse and bramble and springy turf, a broad expanse of green slopes and hollows without a peak or a suggestion of grandeur or barrenness, a hill like a hundred other hills, with a soft fresh breeze that lingered over it without ruffling its surface. ”

“ One sighs for the young men of the days of Gautier and Hugo, the young men with red waistcoats who made asses of themselves at first nights and on the barricades, young men with romance in their hearts and passion in their blood, fearlessly sentimental and picturesquely everything. ”

“ Farrell stood staring, mute and distracted, upon this piteous piece of poor humanity. Its contrast with the woman he had known and loved appalled him. His jaw fell open, his nails scored into his palms, his eyes bulged beneath his brows. The face rested, white and withered, among the frillings of her gown; unaccustomed lines picked out the cheeks; the mouth was drawn pitifully small and pinched with suffering. Even as he looked she seemed to his scared gaze to shrink and shrivel under pain. ”

“ If I have lingered a little over this description of the Glandier, it is not because I have reached the right moment for creating the necessary atmosphere for the unfolding of the tragedy before the eyes of the reader. Indeed, in all this matter, my first care will be to be as simple as is possible. I have no ambition to be an author. An author is always something of a romancer, and God knows, the mystery of “The Yellow Room” is quite full enough of real tragic horror to require no aid from literary effects. I am, and only desire to be, a faithful “reporter.” ”

“ A skylark soared up through the clouds to praise
The sun's eternity.
Hope seemed to flash a moment in his eyes;
And, knowing him so well, I know he thought—
"How fair the legend through the ages brought,
That still to live is Death's most sweet surprise!" ”

“ Not only are we aware of particular yellows, but if we have seen a sufficient number of yellows and have sufficient intelligence, we are aware of the universal yellow; this universal is the subject in such judgments as "yellow differs from blue" or "yellow resembles blue less than green does." And the universal yellow is the predicate in such judgments as "this is yellow," where "this" is a particular sense-datum. ”

“ She is there, shedding about her the perfume of the lady in black. At last, I see her, in the silence of her chamber. Since the fatal hour of the mystery of The Yellow Room, we have hung about this invisible and silent woman to learn what she knows. Our desires, our wish to know must be a torment to her. Who can tell that, should we learn the secret of her mystery, it would not precipitate a tragedy more terrible than that which had already been enacted here? ”

“ Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow!
It is not a color.
It is summer!
It is the wind on a willow,
the lap of waves, the shadow
under a bush, a bird, a bluebird,
three herons, a dead hawk
rotting on a pole—
Clear yellow! ”

“ And in the woods stand snowdrops, half asleep,
With drooping heads—sweet dreamers so long lost.
Spirit, arise! for crimson flushes creep
Into the cold grey east, where clouds assemble
To meet the sun: and earth hath ceased to weep. ”

“ Won't it be funny to run across something yellow in this dismal blue country?"
"There are worse colors than yellow in this country," asserted the Glass Cat, in a spiteful tone.
"Oh; do you mean the pink pebbles you call your brains, and your red heart and green eyes?" ”

“ Again, if in the vegetable world green almost universally colours the leaves, yellow has more to do with the flowers. The flowers we love best are yellow: the cowslip, the daffodil, the crocus, the buttercup, half the daisy, the honeysuckle, and the loveliest rose. Yellow, too, has its turn even with the leaves; and what an artist he shows himself when, in autumn, he 'lays his fiery finger' upon them, lighting up the forlorn woodland with splashes—pure palette-colour of audacious gold! ”

“ The mingling of white and black, of virtue and vice, of joy and grief, the mirror of the soul that is neither good nor evil, the medium being, the lukewarm creature that God spueth out, grey can only rise by the infusion of a little purity, a little blue; but can, when thus converted to pearl grey, become a pious hue, and attempt a step towards Heaven, an advance in the lower paths of Mysticism.
Yellow: considered by Sister Emmerich as the colour of idleness, of a horror of suffering, and often given to Judas in mediæval times, is significant of treason and envy. ”

“ You know people are always calling yellow things golden, even when they are not at all the colour of gold, which, even unalloyed, is not a bright yellow. That shows that delightful yellows are not very positive, and that, as aforesaid, they need gleaming materials to help them. The light bright yellows, like jonquil and primrose, are scarcely usable in art, save in silk, whose gleam takes colour from and adds light to the local tint, just as sunlight does to the yellow blossoms which are so common in Nature. ”

“ Yellow with birdfoot-trefoil are the grass-glades;
Yellow with cinquefoil of the dew-grey leaf:
Yellow with stonecrop; the moss-mounds are yellow;
Blue-necked the wheat sways, yellowing to the sheaf.
Green-yellow, bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle;
Sharp as a sickle is the edge of shade and shine:
Earth in her heart laughs looking at the heavens,
Thinking of the harvest: I look and think of mine.
* * *
This I may know: her dressing and undressing
Such a change of light shows as when the skies in sport
Shift from cloud to moonlight; or edging over thunder
Slips a ray of sun ”

“ All homage and all worship at thy feet,
O lady sweet!
Yet dreams are strong:
Their wordless wish suffices
To win them Paradises
Of sun and song.
Delight our waking life can never know
The dreams bestow. ”

“ As the shapes of monsters of ever varying and increasing dreadfulness flit through one's dreams, the images of those I loved crept round me, with stark yet well-known features, their limbs borrowing death's rigid outline, as they mocked my recognition of them with soundless semblances of mirth. They began to wind their arms about me in fierce embraces of burning and supernatural life. Gradually the contact froze. They bound me in an icy prison. ”

“ The scarlet sunsets scorn him, a laggard and a recreant; behind them lie arrogant cities, plains of peril, and all the tingling adventure of the sea. The very nights are big with reproach, in their tame freedom from the watch-fire, the war-whoop, the stealthy ambuscade; and every hedgerow is a boundary, every fence another bond. ”

“ Layout 2
⁠Record Sixteen
⁠Yellow
⁠A Two-dimensional Shadow
⁠An I Incurable Soul
I have not written for several days; I don’t know how many. All my days are alike. All are of one color, yellow, like dry, overheated sand. Not a patch of shade, not a drop of water, only an infinity of yellow sand. I cannot live without her, but she, since she disappeared that day so mysteriously in the Ancient House . . . ”

“ The flowering season of Fortune's Yellow is a very short one, but it comes so early, and the flowers have such incomparable beauty, and are so little like those of any other Rose, that its value is quite without doubt. ”

“ Splashing and foaming
On the shores of other countries.
It is a Yellow River.
The yellow is a reflection
Of the sun
That shines upon the people,
Though sometimes
It is due to the gold
That lies within the man. ”

“ Lights are lit—the foreground is empty—corpses piled everywhere.
Excellent, Yellows. All are slaughtered.
Tramp. Chuck it, General!
Yellow Leader. The victory of the Yellows. The victory of justice and progress. Ours is the path between the two blades of grass. The world belongs to us Yellows. I proclaim myself Ruler of the Universe.
Chrysalis. I—I—I——
Yellow Leader (on his knees) . Most righteous god of the Ants—thou knowest that we fight only for justice, our victory, our national honour, our commercial interests. ”