Some time before October 1912 Mabel Beardsley, sister of Aubrey, entered a Hampstead nursing home, suffering from cancer of the uterus. One of her closest and most touching friendships at the time was with the artist and designer Charles Ricketts, surprisingly perhaps given Ricketts had felt, rightly or wrongly, that her brother Aubrey’s work had ruined any hope of his own success in the field of book illustration. Ricketts was to be one of Mabel’s most constant visitors during her stay.
At some stage Ricketts makes clear to Robert Ross (Wilde’s executor) his intentions to make Mabel a Beardsley doll, based upon Aubrey’s design for Mademoiselle de Maupin. This unlikely venture is confirmed by W. B. Yeats in a letter to his Irish patron telling of his visit to Mabel, and of the “four dolls dressed like people out of her brother’s drawings,” which “Ricketts had made….modelling the faces and sewing the clothes.”
In the last stage of her illness (Ricketts talks of a “very black” five months) Mabel was taken to live at 75 Lansdowne Road, the home of her mother-in-law, from where she was watched over by her friends, including Ricketts and Shannon who lived in Lansdowne House close by. Mabel died on May 8th 1916.
In a deeply touching letter to Ellen Beardsley, Mabel and Aubrey’s mother, Ricketts writes from Lansdowne House:
Dear Mrs Beardsley
Both Shannon and I are greatly moved by the death of your dear and sweet daughter. We had been told by Lady Scott that the end was near, but the loss is not less, and we shall ever remember her as a friend of rare and delicate charm and of her courage during the long trial of her illness. We sympathise in you and your great grief and understand the share you have had to bear in her long trial. I believe that memory with you will count as a reality, and that with time, when the first blackness of sorrow has passed away, that you will remember her brightness and wayward charm as of a pale ray of sun in the greyness of a life to which too little has been granted, and that you will find consolation in the affectionate remembrance of her friends.
Ever sincerely yours
C Ricketts
For a more detailed study of these events read Aubrey and the Dying Lady: A Beardsley Riddle, by Malcolm Easton. Secker & Warburg, London, 1972.