Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (24 August 1872 – 20 May 1956) was an English writer, humorist, and artist who used the name Max. He became famous in the 1890s as a fashion-conscious person and a humorist. From 1898 to 1910, he worked as the drama critic for the Saturday Review. In 1910, he moved to Rapallo, Italy. Later in life, he gained popularity through radio broadcasts. His most famous work is his only novel, Zuleika Dobson, published in 1911. His drawings, often made with pen or pencil and soft watercolor shading, are found in many public collections.
Early life
Henry Maximilian Beerbohm was born on May 27, 1872, at 57 Palace Gardens Terrace in London. This location now has a blue plaque to mark his birthplace. He was the youngest of nine children in a family led by Julius Ewald Edward Beerbohm, a grain merchant born in Lithuania with Dutch and German heritage. Julius was born in 1811 and died in 1892. Beerbohm’s mother was Eliza Draper Beerbohm, an Englishwoman born around 1833 and who died in 1918. She was the sister of Julius’s first wife. Some people in Britain believed the Beerbohm family had Jewish ancestry, but Beerbohm later told a biographer that there was no evidence of this. He noted that family records from 1668 showed no connection to Judaism.
Beerbohm had four half-siblings. One, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, was a famous stage actor when Beerbohm was a child. Other older half-siblings included Julius Beerbohm, an author and explorer, and Constance Beerbohm, also an author. His nieces were Viola, Felicity, and Iris Tree.
From 1881 to 1885, Beerbohm attended a day school in Orme Square, taught by Mr. Wilkinson. He was called “Max” his entire life and signed his drawings with that name. Wilkinson helped Beerbohm develop a love for Latin, which improved his English writing skills. Mrs. Wilkinson taught drawing, the only art lessons Beerbohm ever received.
Beerbohm studied at Charterhouse School and Merton College, Oxford, starting in 1890. At Oxford, he was the Secretary of the Myrmidon Club. He began writing during his school years. Through his half-brother Herbert, he met Oscar Wilde and others in Wilde’s social circle. In 1893, he met William Rothenstein, who introduced Beerbohm to Aubrey Beardsley and others in the literary and artistic group connected to The Bodley Head.
Although Beerbohm was not an enthusiastic student, he became well-known in Oxford’s social circles. He wrote articles and caricatures for London publications, which were widely appreciated. He later said, “I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It was Oxford that has made me insufferable.” In March 1893, he wrote an article about Oscar Wilde for the Anglo-American Times under the name “An American.” Later that year, his essay “The Incomparable Beauty of Modern Dress” was published in The Spirit Lamp, an Oxford journal edited by Lord Alfred Douglas.
By 1894, Beerbohm had developed a reputation as a dandy and humorist. He left Oxford without earning a degree. His essay A Defence of Cosmetics (The Pervasion of Rouge) was published in the first edition of The Yellow Book in 1894. At that time, Aubrey Beardsley was the art editor of the publication. Oscar Wilde once said of Beerbohm, “The gods have bestowed on Max the gift of perpetual old age.”
In 1895, Beerbohm traveled to the United States for several months as a secretary for his half-brother Herbert’s theatrical company. He was fired because he spent too much time editing business letters.
Writer and broadcaster
After returning to England, Beerbohm published his first book, The Works of Max Beerbohm (1896), which was a collection of his essays that had first appeared in The Yellow Book. His first piece of fiction, The Happy Hypocrite, was published in volume XI of The Yellow Book in October 1896. In 1898, after being interviewed by George Bernard Shaw, Beerbohm became the drama critic for the Saturday Review, a position he held until 1910. At that time, the Saturday Review was becoming more popular under its new owner, Frank Harris, who later became a close friend of Beerbohm.
Shaw, in his final article for the Saturday Review, gave Beerbohm the lasting nickname "the Incomparable Max" when he wrote, "The younger generation is knocking at the door; and as I open it there steps spritely in the incomparable Max."
In 1904, Beerbohm met the American actress Florence Kahn. They married in 1910 and moved to Rapallo, Italy, partly to avoid the social pressures and high cost of living in London. They stayed there for the rest of their lives, except during World War I and World War II, when they returned to Britain, and for occasional trips to England to participate in exhibitions of Beerbohm’s drawings.
During World War I (1914–1918), Beerbohm and his wife lived in a cottage owned by William Rothenstein, near Rothenstein’s home, Iles Farm, in Far Oakridge, Gloucestershire. Norman Jewson, an architect, noted Beerbohm’s neat appearance: "At first, I was surprised to see him, in the countryside during wartime, always perfectly dressed as if for a garden party at Buckingham Palace. But as I got to know him better, I realized he could not do anything else."
While living in Rapallo, Beerbohm was visited by many famous people of his time, including Ezra Pound, Somerset Maugham, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, and Truman Capote. Beerbohm never learned to speak Italian during the 50 years he lived in Italy.
From 1935 onward, Beerbohm occasionally appeared on the radio, where he talked about cars, carriages, and music halls for the BBC. His radio talks were published in 1946 as Mainly on the Air. His humor is shown in his caricatures, but his letters also contain a carefully balanced wit, gently criticizing the excesses of his time while remaining playful. His lifelong friend, Reginald Turner, who shared Beerbohm’s interest in beauty and had a sharp sense of humor, saved many of Beerbohm’s letters.
Beerbohm’s best-known works include A Christmas Garland (1912), a humorous imitation of different writing styles; Seven Men (1919), which includes "Enoch Soames," a story about a poet who makes a deal with the Devil to learn how history will remember him; and Zuleika Dobson (1911), a satire of student life at Oxford. This was his only novel, but it was very successful.
Caricaturist
In the 1890s, while studying at Oxford University, Beerbohm showed talent for drawing people carefully. His usual style of drawing one person in a group scene, using pen or pencil with soft watercolor colors, was developed by 1896 and continued until about 1930. Unlike the heavier style of artists in Punch magazine, Beerbohm used simple lines and light touches. Beerbohm began his career as a professional caricaturist at age 20 when The Strand Magazine published 36 of his drawings of "Club Types" in 1892. He said this publication "dealt a great, almost mortal blow to my modesty." His first public display of caricatures was in a group show at the Fine Art Society in 1896; his first solo show was at the Carfax Gallery in 1901. Beerbohm explained his method for caricature: "The whole person must be melted down in a crucible and then, from the solution, fashioned anew. Nothing will be lost, but no part will be as it was before." He added, "The most perfect caricature is one that, on a small surface, with the simplest tools, most accurately exaggerates the unique traits of a person at their most characteristic moment, in the most beautiful way."
Beerbohm was influenced by French cartoonists such as "Sem" (Georges Goursat) and "Caran d'Ache" (Emmanuel Poiré). In 1913, The Times called him "the greatest of English comic artists," and others praised him as "the English Goya" and "the greatest… portrayer of personalities in the history of art." Beerbohm often struggled to draw hands and feet but excelled at drawing faces and the fancy clothing of men from that time, which inspired feelings of nostalgia. His collections of caricatures included Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen (1896), The Poets' Corner (1904), Fifty Caricatures (1913), and Rossetti and His Circle (1922). His work appeared in popular magazines of the era and was displayed regularly in London at the Carfax Gallery (1901–08) and Leicester Galleries (1911–57). At his home in Rapallo, he drew and wrote rarely, instead decorating books in his library. These items were sold at auction by Sotheby's in London on December 12 and 13, 1960, after the death of his second wife and literary executor, Elisabeth Jungmann.
Beerbohm’s Rapallo caricatures mostly focused on political, literary, and theatrical figures from the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. The court of Edward VII was a favorite subject for gentle mockery. Many of his later caricatures were of himself. Major collections of Beerbohm’s work are held at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; the Tate collection; the Victoria and Albert Museum; Charterhouse School; the Clark Library, University of California; and the Lilly Library, Indiana University. Places that keep both his artwork and personal papers include Merton College, Oxford; the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin; Princeton University Library; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; and the privately owned Mark Samuels Lasner collection.
Personal life
In 1910, Beerbohm married the actress Florence Kahn. Some people have suggested that he was not sexually active with men, though he was married. Others have claimed his marriage was not sexual, that he chose not to have sexual relationships, or that he was asexual.
David Cecil wrote that Beerbohm did not criticize homosexuality but did not engage in it himself. Cecil included a letter from Beerbohm to Robert Ross, a friend of Oscar Wilde, in which Beerbohm asked Ross to protect Reggie Turner from Lord Alfred Douglas, saying, "I really think Reg is at a rather crucial point of his career – and should hate to see him fall an entire victim to the love that dare not tell its name." Little is known about Beerbohm’s personal life.
Evelyn Waugh suggested Beerbohm may have had a marriage without a sexual relationship. He also noted that Beerbohm once commented on John Ruskin, saying it was surprising Ruskin married without knowing he was impotent. Waugh added that Beerbohm’s personal life was not important to his artistic value.
During Beerbohm’s lifetime, some people believed he was Jewish. Malcolm Muggeridge claimed Beerbohm was definitely Jewish, but Beerbohm said he was not. Both of Beerbohm’s wives were Jewish women of German origin. Florence Kahn was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, in an immigrant family and is described as American.
When George Bernard Shaw asked Beerbohm if he had Jewish ancestors, Beerbohm replied, "That my talent is rather like Jewish talent I admit readily… But, being in fact a Gentile, I am, in a small way, rather remarkable, and wish to remain so." In a poem, Ezra Pound, who later supported fascism and anti-Semitism, mocked Beerbohm as "Brennbaum," a Jewish artist.
The Maximilian Society
In 1939, Beerbohm was given a knighthood by King George VI. Some believed this honor was delayed because of Beerbohm’s humorous poem, "Ballade Tragique a Double Refrain," which he wrote in 1911 about the king’s parents. In August 1942, to celebrate Beerbohm’s seventieth birthday, the Maximilian Society was formed by a London drama critic in his honor. The society had seventy important male members, including J. B. Priestley, Walter de la Mare, Augustus John, William Rothenstein, Edward Lutyens, Osbert Lancaster, Siegfried Sassoon, Osbert Sitwell, Leonard Woolf, John Betjeman, Kenneth Clark, E. M. Forster, Graham Greene, and Laurence Housman. The group planned to add one new member each year on Beerbohm’s birthdays. At their first meeting, a banquet was held in his honor, and he received seventy bottles of wine.
Death
Beerbohm died on May 20, 1956, at Villa Chiara, a private hospital in Rapallo, Italy. He was 83 years old and had recently married Elisabeth Jungmann, his former secretary and companion. Beerbohm was cremated in Genoa, and his ashes were placed in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral in London on June 29, 1956. A relative of Beerbohm is Robert Beerbohm, an American comic book historian who lived from 1952 to 2024.