Beerbohm, Sir Max

Beerbohm, Sir Max (1872–1956). British writer, caricaturist, and broadcaster, born in London, the son of a German-born grain merchant. He studied at Oxford University, where he won a reputation as a dandy and wit that lasted throughout his life (although Kenneth Clark remarked that ‘I never heard him say anything amusing'). In 1892, when he was still an undergraduate, some of his drawings appeared in print for the first time (in the Strand magazine); he had drawn since childhood but had no formal training in art. William Rothenstein, whom he met in 1893, helped to introduce him to artistic and literary circles in London, and his ironic wit was usually directed at the absurd or pretentious in fashionable society. The first of his many books, Caricatures of Twenty-Five Gentlemen, was published in 1896. He usually worked in pen and ink, rapidly and from memory; he thought that ‘to sit down to write is a business requiring thought and conscience. Caricaturing, on the other hand, is pure instinct without any trouble at all. However, in spite of the spontaneity of the drawings themselves, he often thought about them in advance, taking notes on his subjects for future use—of Oscar Wilde, for example, he wrote: ‘Wax statue, huge rings, fat white hand, feather bed, pointed fingers, cat-like tread, heavy shoulders, enormous dowager'. In 1910 he married an American actress (who seldom understood his English humour) and settled at Rapallo in Italy, where he spent the rest of his life apart from the war years. His work remained Edwardian in spirit and ‘his life was passed mainly in humorous and leisurely contemplation, only interrupted by an occasional visit to England to supervise an exhibition of his drawings’ (DNB). One of these exhibitions, in 1923, caused a rare note of controversy in his career, for he withdrew some caricatures of the royal family after a number of critics had taken offence at them. He was knighted in 1939 and late in life he won a new audience with talks on BBC radio. His books include various collections of essays, but his best-known literary work is his only completed novel, Zuleika Dobson (1911), a satire on Oxford student life. In 1952 Osbert Lancaster painted a series of pictures showing scenes from the novel for the Randolph Hotel, Oxford.