No season, it is said, is so beautiful as the brief northern summer.
Three-fourths of the year is cold and dark, and the ice-bound
landscape is swept by snowstorm and blizzard. Summer comes like a
goddess; in a twinkling the snow vanishes and Nature puts on her robes
of tenderest green; the birds arrive in flocks; flowers spring to life
on all sides, and the sun shines by night as by day. Such a
summertide, so beautiful and so brief, was accorded to Oscar Wilde
before the final desolation.
I want to give a picture of him at the topmost height of happy hours,
which will afford some proof of his magical talent of speech besides
my own appreciation of it, and, fortunately, the incident has been
given to me. Mr. Ernest Beckett, now Lord Grimthorpe, a lover of all
superiorities, who has known the ablest men of the time, takes
pleasure in telling a story which shows Oscar Wilde's influence over
men who were anything but literary in their tastes. Mr. Beckett had a
party of Yorkshire squires, chiefly fox-hunters and lovers of an
outdoor life, at Kirkstall Grange when he heard that Oscar Wilde was
in the neighbouring town of Leeds. Immediately he asked him to lunch
at the Grange, chuckling to himself beforehand at the sensational
novelty of the experiment. Next day "Mr. Oscar Wilde" was announced
and as he came into the room the sportsmen forthwith began hiding
themselves behind newspapers or moving together in groups in order to
avoid seeing or being introduced to the notorious writer. Oscar shook
hands with his host as if he had noticed nothing, and began to talk.
"In five minutes," Grimthorpe declares, "all the papers were put down
and everyone had gathered round him to listen and laugh."
At the end of the meal one Yorkshireman after the other begged the
host to follow the lunch with a dinner and invite them to meet the
wonder again. When the party broke up in the small hours they all went
away delighted with Oscar, vowing that no man ever talked more
brilliantly. Grimthorpe cannot remember a single word Oscar said: "It
was all delightful," he declares, "a play of genial humour over every
topic that came up, like sunshine dancing on waves."
The extraordinary thing about Oscar's talent was that he did not
monopolise the conversation: he took the ball of talk wherever it
happened to be at the moment and played with it so humorously that
everyone was soon smiling delightedly. The famous talkers of the past,
Coleridge, Macaulay, Carlyle and the others, were all lecturers: talk
to them was a discourse on a favourite theme, and in ordinary life
they were generally regarded as bores. But at his best Oscar Wilde
never dropped the tone of good society: he could afford to give place
to others; he was equipped at all points: no subject came amiss to
him: he saw everything from a humorous angle, and dazzled one now with
word-wit, now with the very stuff of merriment.
Though he was the life and soul of every social gathering, and in
constant demand, he still read omnivorously, and his mind naturally
occupied itself with high themes.
For some years, the story of Jesus fascinated him and tinged all his
thought. We were talking about Renan's "Life" one day: a wonderful
book he called it, one of the three great biographies of the world,
Plato's dialogues with Socrates as hero and Boswell's "Life of
Johnson" being the other two. It was strange, he thought, that the
greatest man had written the worst biography; Plato made of Socrates a
mere phonograph, into which he talked his own theories: Renan did
better work, and Boswell, the humble loving friend, the least talented
of the three, did better still, though being English, he had to keep
to the surface of things and leave the depths to be divined. Oscar
evidently expected Plato and Renan to have surpassed comparison.
It seemed to me, however, that the illiterate Galilean fishermen had
proved themselves still more consummate painters than Boswell, though
they, too, left a great deal too much to the imagination. Love is the
best of artists; the puddle of rain in the road can reflect a piece of
sky marvellously.
The Gospel story had a personal interest for Oscar; he was always
weaving little fables about himself as the Master.
In spite of my ignorance of Hebrew the story of Jesus had always had
the strongest attraction for me, and so we often talked about Him,
though from opposite poles.
Renan I felt had missed Jesus at his highest. He was far below the
sincerity, the tenderness and sweet-thoughted wisdom of that divine
spirit. Frenchman-like, he stumbled over the miracles and came to
grief. Claus Sluter's head of Jesus in the museum of Dijon is a finer
portrait, and so is the imaginative picture of Fra Angelico. It seemed
to me possible to do a sketch from the Gospels themselves which should
show the growth of the soul of Jesus and so impose itself as a true
portrait.
Oscar's interest in the theme was different; he put himself frankly
in the place of his model, and appeared to enjoy the jarring antinomy
which resulted. One or two of his stories were surprising in ironical
suggestion; surprising too because they showed his convinced paganism.
Here is one which reveals his exact position:
"When Joseph of Arimathea came down in the evening from
Mount Calvary where Jesus had died he saw on a white stone a
young man seated weeping. And Joseph went near him and said,
'I understand how great thy grief must be, for certainly
that Man was a just Man.' But the young man made answer,
'Oh, it is not for that I am weeping. I am weeping because I
too have wrought miracles. I also have given sight to the
blind, I have healed the palsied and I have raised the dead;
I too have caused the barren fig tree to wither away and I
have turned water into wine ... and yet they have not
crucified me.'"
At the time this apologue amused me; in the light of later events it
assumed a tragic significance. Oscar Wilde ought to have known that in
this world every real superiority is pursued with hatred, and every
worker of miracles is sure to be persecuted. But he had no inkling
that the Gospel story is symbolic--the life-story of genius for all
time, eternally true. He never looked outside himself, and as the
fruits of success were now sweet in his mouth, a pursuing Fate seemed
to him the most mythical of myths. His child-like self-confidence was
pathetic. The laws that govern human affairs had little interest for
the man who was always a law unto himself. Yet by some extraordinary
prescience, some inexplicable presentiment, the approaching
catastrophe cast its shadow over his mind and he felt vaguely that the
life-journey of genius would be incomplete and farcical without the
final tragedy: whoever lives for the highest must be crucified.
It seems memorable to me that in this brief summer of his life, Oscar
Wilde should have concerned himself especially with the life-story of
the Man of Sorrows who had sounded all the depths of suffering. Just
when he himself was about to enter the Dark Valley, Jesus was often in
his thoughts and he always spoke of Him with admiration. But after all
how could he help it? Even Dekker saw as far as that:
"The best of men
That e'er wore earth about Him."
This was the deeper strain in Oscar Wilde's nature though he was
always disinclined to show it. Habitually he lived in humorous talk,
in the epithets and epigrams he struck out in the desire to please and
astonish his hearers.
One evening I learned almost by chance that he was about to try a new
experiment and break into a new field.
He took up the word "lose" at the table, I remember.
"We lose our chances," he said, laughing, "we lose our figures, we
even lose our characters; but we must never lose our temper. That is
our duty to our neighbour, Frank; but sometimes we mislay it, don't
we?"
"Is that going in a book, Oscar?" I asked, smiling, "or in an article?
You have written nothing lately."
"I have a play in my mind," he replied gravely. "To-morrow I am going
to shut myself up in my room, and stay there until it is written.
George Alexander has been bothering me to write a play for some time
and I've got an idea I rather like. I wonder can I do it in a week, or
will it take three? It ought not to take long to beat the Pineros and
the Joneses." It always annoyed Oscar when any other name but his came
into men's mouths: his vanity was extraordinarily alert.
Naturally enough he minimised Mr. Alexander's initiative. The
well-known actor had "bothered" Oscar by advancing him £100 before the
scenario was even outlined. A couple of months later he told me that
Alexander had accepted his comedy, and was going to produce "Lady
Windermere's Fan." I thought the title excellent.
"Territorial names," Oscar explained, gravely, "have always a _cachet_
of distinction: they fall on the ear full toned with secular dignity.
That's how I get all the names of my personages, Frank. I take up a
map of the English counties, and there they are. Our English villages
have often exquisitely beautiful names. Windermere, for instance, or
Hunstanton," and he rolled the syllables over his tongue with a soft
sensual pleasure.
I had a box the first night and, thinking it might do Oscar some good,
I took with me Arthur Walter of _The Times_. The first scene of the
first act was as old as the hills, but the treatment gave charm to it
if not freshness. The delightful, unexpected humour set off the
commonplace incident; but it was only the convention that Arthur
Walter would see. The play was poor, he thought, which brought me to
wonder.
After the first act I went downstairs to the _foyer_ and found the
critics in much the same mind. There was an enormous gentleman called
Joseph Knight, who cried out:
"The humour is mechanical, unreal." Seeing that I did not respond he
challenged me:
"What do you think of it?"
"That is for you critics to answer," I replied.
"I might say," he laughed, "in Oscar's own peculiar way, 'Little
promise and less performance.' Ha! ha! ha!"
"That's the exact opposite to Oscar's way," I retorted. "It is the
listeners who laugh at his humour."
"Come now, really," cried Knight, "you cannot think much of the play?"
For the first time in my life I began to realise that nine critics out
of ten are incapable of judging original work. They seem to live in a
sort of fog, waiting for someone to give them the lead, and
accordingly they love to discuss every new play right and left.
"I have not seen the whole play," I answered. "I was not at any of the
rehearsals; but so far it is surely the best comedy in English, the
most brilliant: isn't it?"
The big man started back and stared at me; then burst out laughing.
"That's good," he cried with a loud unmirthful guffaw. "'Lady
Windermere's Fan' better than any comedy of Shakespeare! Ha! ha! ha!
'more brilliant!' ho! ho!"
"Yes," I persisted, angered by his disdain, "wittier, and more
humorous than 'As You Like It,' or 'Much Ado.' Strange to say, too, it
is on a higher intellectual level. I can only compare it to the best
of Congreve, and I think it's better." With a grunt of disapproval or
rage the great man of the daily press turned away to exchange
bleatings with one of his _confrères_.
The audience was a picked audience of the best heads in London, far
superior in brains therefore to the average journalist, and their
judgment was that it was a most brilliant and interesting play. Though
the humour was often prepared, the construction showed a rare mastery
of stage-effect. Oscar Wilde had at length come into his kingdom.
At the end the author was called for, and Oscar appeared before the
curtain. The house rose at him and cheered and cheered again. He was
smiling, with a cigarette between his fingers, wholly master of
himself and his audience.
"I am so glad, ladies and gentlemen, that you like my play.[10] I feel
sure you estimate the merits of it almost as highly as I do myself."
The house rocked with laughter. The play and its humour were a seven
days' wonder in London. People talked of nothing but "Lady
Windermere's Fan." The witty words in it ran from lip to lip like a
tidbit of scandal. Some clever Jewesses and, strange to say, one
Scotchman were the loudest in applause. Mr. Archer, the well-known
critic of _The World_, was the first and only journalist to perceive
that the play was a classic by virtue of "genuine dramatic qualities."
Mrs. Leverson turned the humorous sayings into current social coin in
_Punch_, of all places in the world, and from a favourite Oscar Wilde
rapidly became the idol of smart London.
The play was an intellectual triumph. This time Oscar had not only won
success but had won also the suffrages of the best. Nearly all the
journalist-critics were against him and made themselves ridiculous by
their brainless strictures; _Truth_ and _The Times_, for example, were
poisonously puritanic, but thinking people came over to his side in a
body. The halo of fame was about him, and the incense of it in his
nostrils made him more charming, more irresponsibly gay, more
genial-witty than ever. He was as one set upon a pinnacle with the
sunshine playing about him, lighting up his radiant eyes. All the
while, however, the foul mists from the underworld were wreathing
about him, climbing higher and higher.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Cfr. Appendix: "Criticisms by Robert Ross."