Alexander Bassano (1829–1913)
Photograph of Max Beerbohm
Cabinet card, 1886
Item 2: Alexander Bassano. Photograph of Max Beerbohm (1886)
Where does a dandy come from? Baby, he was born this way. Beerbohm’s schoolboy dress prefigures his later immaculately tailored look. Seen here at age 14 but appearing younger, Beerbohm later added the ironic inscription, “Primavero flore juventae,” meaning “In the springtime flower of youth,” though his expression is already jaded. Around this time, Beerbohm started attending Charterhouse, an elite boarding school. There he explored his talents for writing and drawing, which he continued nurturing at Merton College, Oxford. He soon developed a personal and artistic style now identified as Camp, long before Susan Sontag defined this as “love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.” Beerbohm’s early self-caricatures exaggerated conventional signs of masculinity and femininity. The result was a distinctively queer public image, defying many Victorian social norms, as Beerbohm began his campaign to become a celebrity.
: Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The …
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