Books

Enoch Soames

To the Editor of St. Paul’s.

28 June 1895.
114 Cambridge Street.

          Sir,

No one more than myself welcomes frank, nay hostile, criticism, or enjoys more thoroughly a personal remark. But your art critic surely goes a little too far in last week’s issue of St. Paul’s, and I may be forgiven if I take up the pen of resentment. He says that I am “sexless and unclean”.
As to my uncleanliness, I do the best for it in my morning bath, and if he has really any doubts as to my sex, he may come and see me take it.
                    Yours obediently,

                                                               Aubrey Beardsley

¶ 1895. This letter was written in reply to the journalist Haldane MacFall, who later became a supporter of the artist and wrote a valuable, if wildly opinionated, study of his character and art.