done more than William Morris to make our homes artistic, and who is at
one with Ruskin in his effort that our lives should be beautiful; he had
a message to deliver, yet, by reason of his flippancy and his love of
paradox, he is not yet rated at his real worth. It is difficult for one
who is first of all a wit to make a serious impression on his listeners.
I think it is Gilbert who says, "Let a professed wit say, 'pass the
mustard,' and the table roars."
Wilde was a careful and painstaking workman, serious as an artist,
whatever he may have been as a man; and in the end he became a great
master of English prose, working in words as an artist does in color,
trying first one and then another until he had secured the desired
effect, the effect of silk which Seccombe speaks of. But he affected
idleness. A story is told of his spending a week-end at a country house.
Pleading the necessity of working while the humor was on, he begged to
be excused from joining the other guests. In the evening at dinner his
hostess asked him what he had accomplished, and his reply is famous.
"This morning," he said, "I put a comma in one of my poems." Surprised
and amused, the lady inquired whether the afternoon's work had been
equally exhausting. "Yes," said Wilde, passing his hand wearily over his
brow, "this afternoon I took it out again."
Just about the time that London had made up its mind that Wilde was
nothing but a clever man about town, welcome as a guest because of the
amusement he afforded, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" appeared in the
"Fortnightly Magazine" for February, 1891. London was at once challenged
and amazed. This essay opens with a characteristic statement, one of
those peculiarly inverted paradoxes for which Wilde was shortly to
become famous. "Socialism," he says, "would relieve us from the sordid
necessity of living for others"; and what follows is Wilde at his very
best.
What is it all about? I am not sure that I know: it seems to be a plea
for the individual, perhaps it is a defense of the poor; it is said to
have been translated into the languages of the downtrodden, the Jew, the
Pole, the Russian, and to be a comfort to them; I hope it is. Do such
outpourings do any good, do they change conditions, is the millennium
brought nearer thereby? I hope so. But if it is comforting for the
downtrodden, whose wants are ill supplied, it is a sheer delight for the
downtreader who, free from anxiety, sits in his easy-chair and enjoys
its technical excellence.
I know nothing like it: it is as fresh as paint, and like fresh paint it
sticks to one; in its brilliant, serious, and unexpected array of
fancies and theories, in truths inverted and distorted, in witticisms
which are in turn tender and hard as flint, one is delighted and
bewildered. Wilde has only himself to blame if this, a serious and
beautiful essay, was not taken seriously. "The Soul of Man Under
Socialism" is the work of a consummate artist who, taking his ideas,
disguises and distorts them, polishing them the while until they shine
like jewels in a rare and unusual setting. Naturally, almost every other
line in such a work is quotable: it seems to be a mass of quotations
which one is surprised not to have heard before.
Interesting as Wilde's other essays are, I will not speak of them; with
the exception of "Pen, Pencil and Poison," a study of Thomas Griffiths
Wainewright, the poisoner, they will inevitably be forgotten.
Of Wilde's poems I am not competent to speak: they are full of Arcady
and Eros; nor am I of those who believe that "every poet is the
spokesman of God." A book-agent once called on Abraham Lincoln and
sought to sell him a book for which the President had no use. Failing,
he asked Lincoln if he would not write an indorsement of the work which
would enable him to sell it to others. Whereupon the President, always
anxious to oblige, with a humor entirely his own, wrote, "Any one who
likes this kind of book will find it just the kind of book they like."
So it is with Wilde's poetry: by many it is highly esteemed, but I am
inclined to regard it as a part of his "literary wild oats."
After several attempts in the field of serious drama, in which he was
unsuccessful, by a fortunate chance he turned his attention to the
lighter forms of comedy, in which he was destined to count only the
greatest as his rivals. Pater says these comedies have been unexcelled
since Sheridan; this is high praise, though not too high; but it is
rather to contrast than to compare such a grand old comedy as the
"School for Scandal" with, say, "The Importance of Being Earnest." They
are both brilliant, both artificial; they both reflect in some manner
the life and the atmosphere of their time; but the mirror which Sheridan
holds up to nature is of steel and the picture is hard and cold; Wilde,
on the other hand, uses an exaggerating glass, which seems specially
designed to reflect warmth and fluffiness.
Wilde was the first to produce a play which depends almost entirely for
its success on brilliant talk. In this field Shaw is now conspicuous: he
can grow the flower now because he has the seed. It was Wilde who taught
him how, Wilde who, in four light comedies, gave the English stage
something it had been without for a century. His comedies are
irresistibly clever, sparkle with wit, with a flippant and insolent
levity, and withal have a theatrical dexterity which Shaw's are almost
entirely without. While greatly inferior in construction to Pinero's,
they are as brilliantly written; the plots amount to almost nothing:
talk, not the play, is the thing; and but for their author's eclipse
they would be as constantly on the boards to-day in this country and in
England as they are at present on the Continent.
The first comedy, "Lady Windermere's Fan," was produced at the St.
James's, February 22, 1892. Its success, despite the critics, was
instant: full of saucy repartee, overwrought with epigrams of the
peculiar kind conspicuous in the "Soul of Man," it delighted the
audience. "Punch" made a feeble pun about Wilde's play being tame,
forgetting the famous dictum that the great end of a comedy is to make
the audience merry; and this end Wilde had attained, and he kept his
audiences in the same humor for several years--until the end. Of his
plays this is, perhaps, the best known in this country. It was
successfully given in New York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere, only a year
or two ago. It might, I think, be called his "pleasant play": for a time
it looks as if a pure wife were going astray, but the audience is not
kept long in suspense: the plot can be neglected and the lines enjoyed,
with the satisfactory feeling that it will all come out right in the
end.
"A Woman of No Importance" is in my judgment the least excellent of his
four comedies; it might be called his "unpleasant" play: it is two acts
of sheer talk, in Wilde's usual vein, and two acts of acting. The plot
is, as usual, insignificant. A certain lazy villain in high official
position meets a young fellow and offers him a post as his secretary.
The boy, much pleased, introduces his mother, and the villain discovers
that the boy is his own son. The son insists that the father should
marry his mother, but she declines. The father offers to make what
amends he can, loses his temper, and refers to the lady as a woman of no
importance; for which he gets his face well smacked. The son marries a
rich American Puritan. This enables Wilde to be very witty at the
expense of American fathers, mothers, and daughters. Tree played the
villain very well, it is said.
Never having seen Wilde's next play acted, I once innocently framed this
statement for the domestic circle: "I have never seen 'An Ideal
Husband'"; and when my wife sententiously replied that she had never
seen one either, I became careful to be more explicit in future
statements. No less clever than the others, it has plot and action, and
is interesting to the end. Of all his plays it is the most dramatic. On
its first production it was provided with a splendid cast, including
Lewis Waller, Charles Hawtrey, Julia Neilson, Maude Millett, and Fanny
Brough. In the earlier plays all the characters talked Oscar Wilde; in
this Wilde took the trouble, for it must have been to him a trouble, to
conceal himself and let his people speak for themselves: they stay in
their own characters in what they do as well as in what they say. "An
Ideal Husband" was produced at the Haymarket early in 1895, and a few
weeks later, at the St. James's, "The Importance of Being Earnest."
Wilde called this a trivial comedy for serious people. It is clever
beyond criticism; but, as one critic says, one might as well sit down
and gravely discuss the true inwardness of a soufflé. In it Wilde fairly
lets himself loose; such talk there never was before; it fairly bristles
with epigram; the plot is a farce; it is a mental and verbal
extravaganza. Wilde was at his best, scintillating as he had never done
before, and doing it for the last time. He is reported to have said that
the first act is ingenious, the second beautiful, and the third
abominably clever. Ingenious it is, but its beauty and cleverness are
beyond praise. To have seen the lovely Miss Millard as Cecily, the
country girl, to have heard her tell Gwendolen, the London society queen
(Irene Vanbrugh), that "flowers are as common in the country as people
are in London," is a delight never to be forgotten.
Wilde was now at the height of his fame. That the licenser of the stage
had forbidden the performance of "Salome" was a disappointment; but
Sarah Bernhardt had promised to produce it in Paris, and, not thinking
that when his troubles came upon him she would break her word, he was
able to overcome his chagrin.
Only a year or two before, he had been in need, if not in abject
poverty. He was now in receipt of large royalties. No form of literary
effort makes money faster than a successful play. Wilde had two, running
at the best theatres. His name was on every lip in London; even the
cabbies knew him by sight; he had arrived at last, but his stay was only
for a moment. Against the advice and wishes of his friends, with "fatal
insolence," he adopted a course which, had he been capable of thought,
he must have seen would inevitably lead to his destruction.
To those mental scavengers, the psychologists, I leave the determination
of the exact nature of the disease which was the cause of Wilde's
downfall: it is enough for me to know that whom the gods would destroy
they first make mad.
The next two years Wilde spent in solitary and degrading seclusion; his
sufferings, mental and physical, can be imagined. Many have fallen from
heights greater than his, but none to depths more humiliating. Many
noble men and dainty women have been subjected to greater indignities
than he, but they have been supported by their belief in the justice or
honor of the cause for which they suffered.
Wilde was not, however, sustained by the consciousness of innocence, nor
was he so mentally dwarfed as to be unable to realize the awfulness of
his fate. The literary result was "De Profundis." Written while in
prison, in the form of a letter to his friend Robert Ross, it was not
published until five years after his death: indeed, only about one
third of the whole has as yet appeared in English.
"De Profundis" may be in parts offensive, but as a specimen of English
prose it is magnificent; it is by way of becoming a classic: no student
of literature can neglect this cry of a soul lost to this world, intent
upon proving--I know not what--that art is greater than life, perhaps.
Much has been written in regard to it: by some it is said to show that
even at the time of his deepest degradation he did not appreciate how
low he had fallen; that to the last he was only a _poseur_--a
phrase-maker; that, genuine as his sorrow was, he nevertheless was
playing with it, and was simply indulging himself in rhetoric when he
said, "I, once a lord of language, have no words in which to express my
anguish and my shame."
One would say that it was not the sort of book which would become
popular; nevertheless, more than twenty editions have been published in
English, and it has been translated into French, German, Italian, and
Russian.
It was inevitable that "De Profundis" should become the subject of
controversy: Oscar Wilde's sincerity has always been challenged; he was
called affected. His answer to this charge is complete and conclusive:
"The value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of
the man who expresses it."
For many years, indeed until quite recently, his name cast a blight over
all his work. This was inevitable, but it was inevitable also that the
work of such a genius should sooner or later be recognized.
Only a few years ago I heard a cultured lady say, "I never expected to
hear his name mentioned in polite society again." But the time is
rapidly approaching when Oscar Wilde will come into his own, when he
will be recognized as one of the greatest and most original writers of
his time. When shall we English-speaking people learn that a man's work
is one thing and his life another?
It is much to be regretted that Wilde's life did not end with "De
Profundis"; but his misfortunes were to continue. After his release from
prison he went to France, where he lived under the name of Sebastian
Melmoth: but as Sherard, his biographer, says, "He hankered after
respectability." It was no longer the social distinction which the
unthinking crave when they have all else: this great writer, he who had
been for a brief moment the idol of cultured London, sought mere
respectability, and sought it in vain.
Only when he was neglected and despised, miserable and broken in spirit,
sincere feeling at last overcame the affectation which was his real
nature and he wrote his one great poem, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." No
longer could the "Saturday Review" "search in vain for the personal
touch of thought and music": the thought is there, very simple and
direct and personal without a doubt: the music is no longer the
modulated noise of his youth. The Ballad is an almost faultless work of
art. What could be more impressive than the description of daybreak in
prison:--
At last I saw the shadowed bars,
Like a lattice wrought in lead,
Move right across the whitewashed wall
That faced my three-plank bed,
And I knew that somewhere in the world
God's dreadful dawn was red.
The life begun with such promise drew to a close: an outcast, deserted
by his friends, the few who remained true to him he insulted and abused.
He became dissipated, wandered from France to Italy and back again. In
mercy it were well to draw the curtain. The end came in Paris with the
close of the century he had done so much to adorn. He died on November
30, 1900, and was buried, by his faithful friend, Robert Ross, in a
grave which was leased for a few years in Bagneux Cemetery.
The kindness of Robert Ross to Oscar Wilde is one of the most touching
things in literary history. The time has not yet come to speak of it at
length, but the facts are known and will not always be withheld. Owing
largely to his efforts, a permanent resting-place was secured a few
years ago in the most famous cemetery in France, the Père Lachaise.
There, in an immense sarcophagus of granite, curiously carved, were
placed the remains of him who wrote:--
"Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none
to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike,
will have clefts in the rock where I may hide, and sweet valleys in
whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars
so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send
the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt; she
will cleanse me in great waters and with bitter herbs make me whole."
It is too early to judge Wilde's work entirely apart from his life: to
do so will always be difficult: we could do so the sooner if we had a
Dr. Johnson among us to speak with authority and say, "Let not his
misfortunes be remembered, he was a very great man."
[Illustration: MS. INSCRIPTION TO J. E. DICKINSON, FROM OSCAR WILDE]
XIII
A WORD IN MEMORY
To have been born and lived all his life in Philadelphia, yet to be best
known in London and New York; to have been the eldest son of a rich man
and the eldest grandson of one of the richest men in America, yet of so
quiet and retiring a disposition as to excite remark; to have been but a
few years out of college, yet to have achieved distinction in a field
which is commonly supposed to be the browsing-place of age; to have been
relatively unknown in his life and to be immortal in his death--such are
the brief outlines of the career of Harry Elkins Widener.
It is a curious commentary upon human nature that the death of one
person well known to us affects us more than the deaths of hundreds or
thousands not known to us at all. It is for this reason, perhaps, at a
time when the papers bring us daily their record of human suffering and
misery from the war in Europe, that I can forget the news of yesterday
and live over again the anxious hours which followed the brief
announcement that the Titanic, on her maiden voyage, the largest,
finest, and fastest ship afloat, had struck an iceberg in mid-ocean, and
that there were grave fears for the safety of her passengers and crew.
There the first news ceased.
The accident had occurred at midnight; the sea was perfectly calm, the
stars shone clearly; it was bitter cold. The ship was going at full
speed. A slight jar was felt, but the extent of the injury was not
realized and few passengers were alarmed. When the order to lower the
boats was given there was little confusion. The order went round, "Women
and children first." Harry and his father were lost, his mother and her
maid were rescued.
In all that subsequently appeared in the press,--and for days the
appalling disaster was the one subject of discussion,--the name of Harry
Elkins Widener appeared simply as the eldest son of George D. Widener.
Few knew that, quite aside from the financial prominence of his father
and the social distinction and charm of his mother, Harry had a
reputation which was entirely of his own making. He was a born student
of bibliography. Books were at once his work, his recreation, and his
passion. To them he devoted all his time; but outside the circle of his
intimate friends few understood the unique and lovable personality of
the man to whom death came so suddenly on April 15, 1912, shortly after
he had completed his twenty-seventh year.
[Illustration: HARRY ELKINS WIDENER]
His knowledge of books was truly remarkable. In the study of rare books,
as in the study of an exact science, authority usually comes only with
years. With Harry Widener it was different. He had been collecting only
since he left college, but his intense enthusiasm, his painstaking care,
his devotion to a single object, his wonderful memory, and, as he
gracefully says in the introduction to the catalogue of some of the more
important books in his library, "The interest and kindness of my
grandfather and my parents," had enabled him in a few years to secure a
number of treasures of which any collector might be proud.
Harry Elkins Widener was born in Philadelphia on January 3, 1885. He
received his early education at the Hill School, from which he was
graduated in 1903. He then entered Harvard University, where he remained
four years, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1907. It was while a
student at Harvard that he first began to show an interest in
book-collecting; but it was not until his college days were over that,
as the son of a rich man, he found, as many another man has done, that
the way to be happy is to have an occupation.
He lived with his parents and his grandfather in their palatial
residence, Lynnewood Hall, just outside Philadelphia. He was proud of
the distinction of his relatives, and used to say, "We are a family of
collectors. My grandfather collects paintings, my mother collects silver
and porcelains, Uncle Joe collects everything,"--which indeed he
does,--"and I, books."
Book-collecting soon became with him a very serious matter, a matter to
which everything else was subordinated. He began, as all collectors do,
with unimportant things at first; but how rapidly his taste developed
may be seen from glancing over the pages of the catalogue of his
library, which, strictly speaking, is not a library at all--he would
have been the last to call it so. It is but a collection of perhaps
three thousand volumes; but they were selected by a man of almost
unlimited means, with rare judgment and an instinct for discovering the
best. Money alone will not make a bibliophile, although, I confess, it
develops one.
His first folio of Shakespeare was the Van Antwerp copy, formerly Locker
Lampson's, one of the finest copies known; and he rejoiced in a copy of
"Poems Written by Wil. Shakespeare, Gent," 1640, in the original
sheepskin binding. His "Pickwick," if possibly inferior in interest to
the Harry B. Smith copy, is nevertheless superb: indeed he had two, one
"in parts as published, with all the points," another a presentation
copy to Dickens's friend, William Harrison Ainsworth. In addition he had
several original drawings by Seymour, including the one in which the
shad-bellied Mr. Pickwick, having with some difficulty mounted a chair,
proceeds to address the Club. The discovery and acquisition of this
drawing, perhaps the most famous illustration ever made for a book, is
indicative of Harry's taste as a collector.
One of his favorite books was the Countess of Pembroke's own copy of Sir
Philip Sidney's "Arcadia," and it is indeed a noble volume; but Harry's
love for his mother, I think, invariably led him, when he was showing
his treasures, to point out a sentence written in his copy of Cowper's
"Task." The book had once been Thackeray's, and the great novelist had
written on the frontispiece, "A great point in a great man, a great love
for his mother. A very fine and true portrait. Could artist possibly
choose a better position than the above? W. M. Thackeray." "Isn't that a
lovely sentiment?" Harry would say; "and yet they say Thackeray was a
cynic and a snob." His "Esmond" was presented by Thackeray to Charlotte
Brontë. His copy of the "Ingoldsby Legends" was unique. In the first
edition, by some curious oversight on the part of the printer, page 236
had been left blank, and the error was not discovered until a few sheets
had been printed. In a presentation copy to his friend, E. R. Moran, on
this blank page, Barham had written:--
By a blunder for which I have only myself to thank,
Here's a page has been somehow left blank.
Aha! my friend Moran, I have you. You'll look
In vain for a fault in one page of my book!
signing the verse with his _nom de plume_, Thomas Ingoldsby.
Indeed, in all his books, the utmost care was taken to secure the copy
which would have the greatest human interest: an ordinary presentation
copy of the first issue of the first edition would serve his purpose
only if he were sure that the dedication copy was unobtainable. His
Boswell's "Life of Johnson" was the dedication copy to Sir Joshua
Reynolds, with an inscription in the author's hand.
He was always on the lookout for rarities, and Dr. Rosenbach, in the
brief memoir which serves as an introduction to the Catalogue of his
Stevenson collection, says of him:--
"I remember once seeing him on his hands and knees under a table in a
bookstore. On the floor was a huge pile of books that had not been
disturbed for years. He had just pulled out of the débris a first
edition of Swinburne, a presentation copy, and it was good to behold the
light in his face as he exclaimed, 'This is better than working in a
gold mine.' To him it was one."
His collection of Stevenson is a monument to his industry and patience,
and is probably the finest collection in existence of that much-esteemed
author. He possessed holograph copies of the Vailima Letters and many
other priceless treasures, and he secured the manuscript of, and
published privately for Stevenson lovers, in an edition of forty-five
copies, an autobiography written by Stevenson in California in the early
eighties. This item, under the title of "Memoirs of Himself," has an
inscription, "Given to Isobel Stewart Strong ... for future use, when
the underwriter is dead. With love, Robert Louis Stevenson." The
catalogue of his Stevenson collection alone, the painstaking work of his
friend and mentor, Dr. Rosenbach, makes an imposing volume and is an
invaluable work of reference for Stevenson collectors.