[20] _Edgar Wilson and his Work_, by Arthur Lawrence, _The Idler_, July, 1899.
Once more I have not spoken at all of Miss Althea Gyles’s hectic visions which, in her illustrations for Wilde’s _The Harlot’s House_, probably reached the acme of the period’s realisation of the weird. She is of course really of the Irish symbolists, and not one of the nineties’ group at all; but, in her Wilde illustrations, she almost enters the same field as the men of the nineties. Her connection, too, with the firm of Smithers is another strong excuse for mentioning her work here. In _The Dome_ both her drawings and poems appeared, while in the December number for 1898 there is a note on her symbolism by W. B. Yeats. In all her drawings the fancy that seems to have such free flight is in reality severely ordered by the designer’s symbolism. Sometimes it is merely intriguing, as in drawings like ‘The Rose of God,’ where a naked woman is spread-eagled against the clouds above a fleet of ships and walled city, while in other designs the symbolism is full of suggestive loveliness, as in ‘Noah’s Raven.’ ‘The Ark floats upon a grey sea under a grey sky, and the raven flutters above the sea. A sea nymph, whose slender swaying body drifting among the grey waters is a perfect symbol of the soul untouched by God or by passion, coils the fingers of one hand about his feet and offers him a ring, while her other hand holds a shining rose under the sea. Grotesque shapes of little fishes flit about the rose, and grotesque shapes of larger fishes swim hither and thither. Sea nymphs swim through the windows of a sunken town, and reach towards the rose hands covered with rings; and a vague twilight hangs over all.’ This is explained to represent the search of man for the fleshly beauty which is so full of illusions for us all, while the spiritual beauty is ever far away. To this kind of interpretative design Oscar Wilde’s swan song, _The Harlot’s House_, lends itself admirably, and Miss Gyles’s black and white work here becomes inspired to the standard of Beardsley’s and Sime’s best work. The shadow effects illustrating the stanzas,
Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed A phantom lover to her breast, Sometimes they seemed to try and sing.