![This line-block reproduction of a pen-and-ink drawing is in portrait orientation. The image shows a frontally facing woman sitting on a bench, holding a young child on her lap in a garden before a forest. At the feet of the woman, and in the foreground, are small sproutings of flowers and plants. The bench is placed diagonally at the centre of the picture plane, going up towards the right, The seated woman is wearing a flowing gown with long sleeves and a square neckline. Around her skirt is a large floral patterned blanket or robe that is edged in fur. The woman has her arms bent up to hold the young child on her left knee. She is facing the viewer but turned slightly to the left of the page. She has on a crown with five points sticking up in ascending and then mirrored descending heights protruding from the back of her head. The same set of five points stick out horizontally from both sides of her head as well. Her hair falls past her shoulders in dark waves. On her forehead a band wraps horizontally around with a small ornamented disk at the front and centre. The young child on her lap is wearing a light coloured and collared robe with a small necktie loosely tied. The child faces to the left of the page and shows about a three-quarters profile. The child has short curly hair. Behind the child and to the right is a sack that is tied off with a tassel rope. To the right of the sack in the background is a piece of lattice. To the left of the child and woman is another piece of the lattice further back in the forest than the other. In front of the lattice on the left is a dark area with a bush of roses blooming. Trees fill the background across the top third of the page and only their trunks are visible within the frame. There is black darkness between the trunks in the background. The name “AUBREY BEARDSLEY” [caps] appears in the bottom right corner, framed within a single-lined border.](https://1890s.ca/wp-content/uploads/SAVOYV1_icon2_beardsley_christmas.jpg "SAVOYV1_icon2_beardsley_christmas")
![The proof of the cancelled cover image, in portrait orientation, combines Beardsley’s pen-and-ink design with letterpress. The title: “THE SAVOY” [caps] appears in the top quarter of the page, with the text “AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY” [caps, italics] centered below. One row down the text “No. 1” is aligned on the left side, with the text “Price 2/6 net” in the same line but aligned to the right. Centered in the line below is the text “January 1896.” A tall woman stands in the bottom left foreground, rising up two-thirds of the page to meet the bottom of the title. She is turned to the right and her face appears in two-thirds profile. She is dressed in a full-length gown with horizontal stripes and an overcoat with buttons of the same material on top. She has a white hood attached to her overcoat and dark voluminous hair worn down around her face. In her white-gloved hand is a riding crop at rest. In the central foreground a putto, or young cherub-like boy, appears naked apart from a striped overcoat, plumed hat, and bowed slippers. He is turned to the right with a hand on his hip and his other hand holding a tasseled staff that is taller than he is. He appears to be urinating on The Yellow Book, which appears in the grasses at the bottom of the image, just right of centre. Flowers and plants grow up along the bottom edge of the page in the foremost ground. A herm (a male head and torso on a pillar) stands to the left and in the background of the woman. An ornamented sundial sits in the mid-ground behind the putto. A deciduous tree protrudes taller than the rest of the forest in the central background. A pond is just in front of the forest in the mid-ground, with a Stowe rotunda emerging halfway behind trees to the right of the pond. The signature “AUBREY BEARDSLEY, 1896.” [caps] appears in the bottom right corner of the page, within a rectangular box. The page is surrounded by a double-lined rectangle.](https://1890s.ca/wp-content/uploads/beardsley_savoy_resized..jpg "Proof of Cancel Cover, Savoy vol. 1")
Aubrey Beardsley. Proof of original (cancelled) design for front cover of The Savoy, vol. 1, January 1896. Courtesy of Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library, Museums, and Press.
Leonard Smithers’ Subscription Form: The Life and Times of
Madame du Barry
1896
By Robert B. Douglas
