Anachronistic Decadence in an Antique Nineteenth-Century ‘Fairy Tale’: Walter Pater and Errol Le Cain’s Cupid and Psyche

Abstract

In 1977, Errol Le Cain (1941-1989) illustrated Walter Pater’s retelling of the story of ‘Cupid and Psyche’.[i] Le Cain was a British animator and children’s book illustrator who was born in Singapore, where he spent most of his childhood, as well as in India. He is best known for his illustrations of numerous fairy tales, such as Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, as well as Russian and Chinese folktales. In addition to these fairy tales, he also illustrated literary works such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) and Pater’s version of Cupid and Psyche. The story originates as a frame narrative in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass (second century CE), but Pater recontextualized it through his own translation in his only completed novel Marius the Epicurean (1885). For Le Cain’s illustrated version, the text, as translated and altered by Pater, was again shortened and adapted to better suit the intended younger audience. Although Le Cain’s work is set in the twentieth century, a clear decadent influence is evident in his ‘Cupid and Psyche’, While Pater was not a decadent writer per say, his work reflects aesthetic and decadent ideas.

[i] I am grateful to Maximilian Le Cain for granting permission to reproduce Errol Le Cain’s illustrations for Cupid and Psyche.