'Style Should Be Oscillant'

The Sketch was an illustrated weekly journal in England published from 1893 to 1959. It doted on high society, royalty, gossip and the arts. The January 2, 1895, issue included an anonymous profile titled “A Few Words with Mr. Max Beerbohm,” accompanied by a photograph of Beerbohm as a boy wearing a sailor suit and a bowl haircut. He was twenty-two at the time of the article and was still a year away from publishing his first book, The Works of Max Beerbohm. The article begins: “Mr. Max Beerbohm left Oxford only last term to plunge into the delights of literature in London. In that short space of time, by his curious contributions to The Yellow Book, he has gained a more than merely esoteric fame. Indeed, he may be said to occupy in literature somewhat the same position as does Mr. Aubrey Beardsley in art.” The writer visits Beerbohm’s home on Hyde Park Place in London and speaks with him in the room where “[Alexander William] Kinglake wrote his famous history of the Crimean War.”…