Oscar Wilde did well at school, but he did still better at college,
where the competition was more severe. He entered Trinity on October
19th, 1871, just three days after his seventeenth birthday. Sir Edward
Sullivan writes me that when Oscar matriculated at Trinity he was
already "a thoroughly good classical scholar of a brilliant type," and
he goes on to give an invaluable snap-shot of him at this time; a
likeness, in fact, the chief features of which grew more and more
characteristic as the years went on.
"He had rooms in College at the north side of one of the older
squares, known as Botany Bay. These rooms were exceedingly grimy and
ill-kept. He never entertained there. On the rare occasions when
visitors were admitted, an unfinished landscape in oils was always on
the easel, in a prominent place in his sitting room. He would
invariably refer to it, telling one in his humorously unconvincing way
that 'he had just put in the butterfly.' Those of us who had seen his
work in the drawing class presided over by 'Bully' Wakeman at Portora
were not likely to be deceived in the matter....
"His college life was mainly one of study; in addition to working for
his classical examinations, he devoured with voracity all the best
English writers.
"He was an intense admirer of Swinburne and constantly reading his
poems; John Addington Symond's works too, on the Greek authors, were
perpetually in his hands. He never entertained any pronounced views on
social, religious or political questions while in College; he seemed
to be altogether devoted to literary matters.
"He mixed freely at the same time in Dublin society functions of all
kinds, and was always a very vivacious and welcome guest at any house
he cared to visit. All through his Dublin University days he was one
of the purest minded men that could be met with.
"He was not a card player, but would on occasions join in a game of
limited loo at some man's rooms. He was also an extremely moderate
drinker. He became a member of the junior debating society, the
Philosophical, but hardly ever took any part in their discussions.
[Illustration: Dr. Sir William Wilde]
"He read for the Berkeley medal (which he afterwards gained) with an
excellent, but at the same time broken-down, classical scholar, John
Townsend Mills, and, besides instruction, he contrived to get a good
deal of amusement out of his readings with his quaint teacher. He
told me for instance that on one occasion he expressed his sympathy
for Mills on seeing him come into his rooms wearing a tall hat
completely covered in crape. Mills, however, replied, with a smile,
that no one was dead--it was only the evil condition of his hat that
had made him assume so mournful a disguise. I have often thought that
the incident was still fresh in Oscar Wilde's mind when he introduced
John Worthing in 'The Importance of Being Earnest,' in mourning for
his fictitious brother....
"Shortly before he started on his first trip to Italy, he came into my
rooms in a very striking pair of trousers. I made some chaffing remark
on them, but he begged me in the most serious style of which he was so
excellent a master not to jest about them.
"'They are my Trasimene trousers, and I mean to wear them there.'"
Already his humour was beginning to strike all his acquaintances, and
what Sir Edward Sullivan here calls his "puremindedness," or what I
should rather call his peculiar refinement of nature. No one ever
heard Oscar Wilde tell a suggestive story; indeed he always shrank
from any gross or crude expression; even his mouth was vowed always to
pure beauty.
The Trinity Don whom I have already quoted about Oscar's school-days
sends me a rather severe critical judgment of him as a student. There
is some truth in it, however, for in part at least it was borne out
and corroborated by Oscar's later achievement. It must be borne in
mind that the Don was one of his competitors at Trinity, and a
successful one; Oscar's mind could not limit itself to college tasks
and prescribed books.
"When Oscar came to college he did excellently during the first year;
he was top of his class in classics; but he did not do so well in the
long examinations for a classical scholarship in his second year. He
was placed fifth, which was considered very good, but he was plainly
not, the man for the [Greek: dolichos] (or long struggle), though
first-rate for a short examination."
Oscar himself only completed these spirit-photographs by what he told
me of his life at Trinity.
"It was the fascination of Greek letters, and the delight I took in
Greek life and thought," he said to me once, "which made me a scholar.
I got my love of the Greek ideal and my intimate knowledge of the
language at Trinity from Mahaffy and Tyrrell; they were Trinity to me;
Mahaffy was especially valuable to me at that time. Though not so good
a scholar as Tyrrell, he had been in Greece, had lived there and
saturated himself with Greek thought and Greek feeling. Besides he
took deliberately the artistic standpoint towards everything, which
was coming more and more to be my standpoint. He was a delightful
talker, too, a really great talker in a certain way--an artist in
vivid words and eloquent pauses. Tyrrell, too, was very kind to
me--intensely sympathetic and crammed with knowledge. If he had known
less he would have been a poet. Learning is a sad handicap, Frank, an
appalling handicap," and he laughed irresistibly.
"What were the students like in Dublin?" I asked. "Did you make
friends with any of them?"
"They were worse even than the boys at Portora," he replied; "they
thought of nothing but cricket and football, running and jumping; and
they varied these intellectual exercises with bouts of fighting and
drinking. If they had any souls they diverted them with coarse
_amours_ among barmaids and the women of the streets; they were simply
awful. Sexual vice is even coarser and more loathsome in Ireland than
it is in England:--
"'Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.'
"When I tried to talk they broke into my thought with stupid gibes and
jokes. Their highest idea of humour was an obscene story. No, no,
Tyrrell and Mahaffy represent to me whatever was good in Trinity."
In 1874 Oscar Wilde won the gold medal for Greek. The subject of the
year was "The Fragments of the Greek Comic Poets, as edited by
Meineke." In this year, too, he won a classical scholarship--a
demyship of the annual value of £95, which was tenable for five years,
which enabled him to go to Oxford without throwing an undue strain on
his father's means.
He noticed with delight that his success was announced in the _Oxford
University Gazette_ of July 11th, 1874. He entered Magdalen College,
Oxford, on October 17th, a day after his twentieth birthday.
Just as he had been more successful at Trinity than at school, so he
was destined to be far more successful and win a far greater
reputation at Oxford than in Dublin.
He had the advantage of going to Oxford a little later than most men,
at twenty instead of eighteen, and thus was enabled to win high
honours with comparative ease, while leading a life of cultured
enjoyment.
He was placed in the first class in "Moderations" in 1876 and had even
then managed to make himself talked about in the life of the place.
The Trinity Don whom I have already quoted, after admitting that there
was not a breath against his character either at school or Trinity,
goes on to write that "at Trinity he did not strike us as a very
exceptional person," and yet there must have been some sharp eyes at
Trinity, for our Don adds with surprising divination:
"I fancy his rapid development took place after he went to Oxford,
where he was able to specialize more; in fact where he could study
what he most affected. It is, I feel sure, from his Oxford life more
than from his life in Ireland that one would be able to trace the good
and bad features by which he afterwards attracted the attention of the
world."
In 1878 Oscar won a First Class in "Greats." In this same Trinity
term, 1878, he further distinguished himself by gaining the Newdigate
prize for English verse with his poem "Ravenna," which he recited at
the annual Commemoration in the Sheldonian Theatre on June 26th. His
reciting of the poem was the literary event of the year in Oxford.
There had been great curiosity about him; he was said to be the best
talker of the day, and one of the ripest scholars. There were those in
the University who predicted an astonishing future for him, and indeed
all possibilities seemed within his reach. "His verses were listened
to," said _The Oxford and Cambridge Undergraduates' Journal_, "with
rapt attention." It was just the sort of thing, half poetry, half
rhythmic rhetoric, which was sure to reach the hearts and minds of
youth. His voice, too, was of beautiful tenor quality, and exquisitely
used. When he sat down people crowded to praise him and even men of
great distinction in life flattered him with extravagant compliments.
Strange to say he used always to declare that his appearance about the
same time as Prince Rupert, at a fancy dress ball, given by Mrs.
George Morrell, at Headington Hill Hall, afforded him a far more
gratifying proof of the exceptional position he had won.
"Everyone came round me, Frank, and made me talk. I hardly danced at
all. I went as Prince Rupert, and I talked as he charged but with more
success, for I turned all my foes into friends. I had the divinest
evening; Oxford meant so much to me....
"I wish I could tell you all Oxford did for me.
"I was the happiest man in the world when I entered Magdalen for the
first time. Oxford--the mere word to me is full of an inexpressible,
an incommunicable charm. Oxford--the home of lost causes and
impossible ideals; Matthew Arnold's Oxford--with its dreaming spires
and grey colleges, set in velvet lawns and hidden away among the
trees, and about it the beautiful fields, all starred with cowslips
and fritillaries where the quiet river winds its way to London and the
sea.... The change, Frank, to me was astounding; Trinity was as
barbarian as school, with coarseness superadded. If it had not been
for two or three people, I should have been worse off at Trinity than
at Portora; but Oxford--Oxford was paradise to me. My very soul seemed
to expand within me to peace and joy. Oxford--the enchanted valley,
holding in its flowerlet cup all the idealism of the middle ages.[3]
Oxford is the capital of romance, Frank; in its own way as memorable
as Athens, and to me it was even more entrancing. In Oxford, as in
Athens, the realities of sordid life were kept at a distance. No one
seemed to know anything about money or care anything for it.
Everywhere the aristocratic feeling; one must have money, but must not
bother about it. And all the appurtenances of life were perfect: the
food, the wine, the cigarettes; the common needs of life became
artistic symbols, our clothes even won meaning and significance. It
was at Oxford I first dressed in knee breeches and silk stockings. I
almost reformed fashion and made modern dress æsthetically beautiful;
a second and greater reformation, Frank. What a pity it is that Luther
knew nothing of dress, had no sense of the becoming. He had courage
but no fineness of perception. I'm afraid his neckties would always
have been quite shocking!" and he laughed charmingly.
"What about the inside of the platter, Oscar?"
"Ah, Frank, don't ask me, I don't know; there was no grossness, no
coarseness; but all delicate delights!
"'Fair passions and bountiful pities and loves without pain,'"[4]
and he laughed mischievously at the misquotation.
"Loves?" I questioned, and he nodded his head smiling; but would not
be drawn.
"All romantic and ideal affections. Every successive wave of youths
from the public schools brought some chosen spirits, perfectly
wonderful persons, the most graceful and fascinating disciples that a
poet could desire, and I preached the old-ever-new gospel of
individual revolt and individual perfection. I showed them that sin
with its curiosities widened the horizons of life. Prejudices and
prohibitions are mere walls to imprison the soul. Indulgence may hurt
the body, Frank, but nothing except suffering hurts the spirit; it is
self-denial and abstinence that maim and deform the soul."
"Then they knew you as a great talker even at Oxford?" I asked in some
surprise.
"Frank," he cried reprovingly, laughing at the same time delightfully,
"I was a great talker at school. I did nothing at Trinity but talk, my
reading was done at odd hours. I was the best talker ever seen in
Oxford."
"And did you find any teacher there like Mahaffy?" I asked, "any
professor with a touch of the poet?"
He came to seriousness at once.
"There were two or three teachers, Frank," he replied, "greater than
Mahaffy; teachers of the world as well as of Oxford. There was Ruskin
for instance, who appealed to me intensely--a wonderful man and a most
wonderful writer. A sort of exquisite romantic flower; like a violet
filling the whole air with the ineffable perfume of belief. Ruskin has
always seemed to me the Plato of England--a Prophet of the Good and
True and Beautiful, who saw as Plato saw that the three are one
perfect flower. But it was his prose I loved, and not his piety. His
sympathy with the poor bored me: the road he wanted us to build was
tiresome. I could see nothing in poverty that appealed to me, nothing;
I shrank away from it as from a degradation of the spirit; but his
prose was lyrical and rose on broad wings into the blue. He was a
great poet and teacher, Frank, and therefore of course a most
preposterous professor; he bored you to death when he taught, but was
an inspiration when he sang.
"Then there was Pater, Pater the classic, Pater the scholar, who had
already written the greatest English prose: I think a page or two of
the greatest prose in all literature. Pater meant everything to me. He
taught me the highest form of art: the austerity of beauty. I came to
my full growth with Pater. He was a sort of silent, sympathetic elder
brother. Fortunately for me he could not talk at all; but he was an
admirable listener, and I talked to him by the hour. I learned the
instrument of speech with him, for I could see by his face when I had
said anything extraordinary. He did not praise me but quickened me
astonishingly, forced me always to do better than my best--an intense
vivifying influence, the influence of Greek art at its supremest."
"He was the Gamaliel then?" I questioned, "at whose feet you sat?"
"Oh, no, Frank," he chided, "everyone sat at my feet even then. But
Pater was a very great man. Dear Pater! I remember once talking to
him when we were seated together on a bench under some trees in
Oxford. I had been watching the students bathing in the river: the
beautiful white figures all grace and ease and virile strength. I had
been pointing out how Christianity had flowered into romance, and how
the crude Hebraic materialism and all the later formalities of an
established creed had fallen away from the tree of life and left us
the exquisite ideals of the new paganism....
"The pale Christ had been outlived: his renunciations and his
sympathies were mere weaknesses: we were moving to a synthesis of art
where the enchanting perfume of romance should be wedded to the severe
beauty of classic form. I really talked as if inspired, and when I
paused, Pater--the stiff, quiet, silent Pater--suddenly slipped from
his seat and knelt down by me and kissed my hand. I cried:
"'You must not, you really must not. What would people think if they
saw you?'
"He got up with a white strained face.
"'I had to,' he muttered, glancing about him fearfully, 'I had
to--once....'"
I must warn my readers that this whole incident is ripened and set in
a higher key of thought by the fact that Oscar told it more than ten
years after it happened.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Oscar was always fond of loosely quoting or paraphrasing in
conversation the purple passages from contemporary writers. He said
them exquisitely and sometimes his own embroidery was as good as the
original. This discipleship, however, always suggested to me a lack of
originality. In especial Matthew Arnold had an extraordinary influence
upon him, almost as great indeed as Pater.
[4] "Stain," not "pain," in the original.