ABSTRACT
London, when Max Beerbohm arrived there in the ‘nineties, shortly before the downfall of Oscar Wilde, had many traps for one who wished to combine the wit, the dandy and the aesthete. Oxford had a much worse effect on Max Beerbohm even than Swinburne. A Christmas Garland was written before the first world war, which cracked the world of Max Beerbohm’s youth, with an enriching effect on his work. The various disasters and misfortunes associated with the names of Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley, Ernest Dowson and Lionel Johnson, and, at the close of this period, John Davidson and Richard Middleton, passed Max Beerbohm by.
