…so pleads Herbert Beerbohm Tree as the High Priest petitioning virtue in False Gods, a cobwebby tragedy by Eugene Brieux set in the upper reaches of the Nile during the Middle Empire.
But this time-honored question of restraint is not one which genealogists of the family ‘Tree’ would recognize—certainly not if bound by moderation or bond of matrimony. For instance, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, priest though he portrayed, was appealing enough to be patriarch to three families across two continents, with a composite of ten children—seven of whom were illegitimate. Evidently he didn’t walk about dressed like an ancient Egyptian priest all the time.
Having begun a personal resurgence of interest in Max Beerbohm (exhibition, article) it would be remiss not to also allude to the special role he had with regard to Oscar Wilde.
Max Beerbohm first met Oscar in 1888 while a student at Charterhouse School, but it was not a moment likely to engender an immediate affinity. For Max it was just a brief campus introduction. Whereas Oscar, now a decade removed from the callowness of college days, was about to seriously decamp for a term of decadent Bunburying.
If you have the opportunity to study Max Beerbohm’s satirical sketches in the current exhibitionMax Beerbohm: The Price of Celebrity (NY Public Library), it will not escape your notice how the writer and cartoonist ‘Max’, as he was familiarly known, was himself a consummate subject for caricature.
As we shall see, the idea of a Beerbohm burlesque was not lost on contemporary artists, nor, indeed, on Max either, for he caricatured himself more than any other subject.
Exhibition at the New York Public Library Through January 28, 2024
Celebrity became an international industry in the late nineteenth century, and the English artist, author, and dandy Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) was at the center of it.
From the 1890s through the 1920s, to be a celebrity meant the hope—and fear—of turning up in a drawing or a parody by “Max,” as he was known in both Britain and the U.S. His brilliant skewering of famous people in his visual caricatures and of their writing styles in his satirical works made him a celebrity himself. This was an idtity he enjoyed, but later shrank from. In essays and fiction, he explored the price in human terms of achieving and maintaining celebrity status in ways that still resonate with us now.
Max Beerbohm: The Price of Celebrity maps Beerbohm’s career in relation to the idea of celebrity, following him from his early days in the social and artistic circles of Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley through his late career as a radio performer on BBC broadcasts during World War II.
Drawn from across the Library’s collections, as well as loans from private and institutional collections, the exhibition includes rare original caricature drawings, manuscripts, photographs, books from Beerbohm’s library, and personal items, most on public display for the first time.
The exhibition is organized by The New York Public Library and curated by Margaret D. Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women’s Studies and Professor of Humanities, University of Delaware, and by Mark Samuels Lasner, Senior Research Fellow, University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press, with the assistance of Julie Carlsen, Assistant Curator, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library.
