"DE PROFUNDIS" 359
INDEX 397
PART I
OSCAR WILDE: THE MAN
OSCAR WILDE
THE MAN
The [Greek: synetoi], the connoisseurs, always recognised the genius of
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde from the very first moment when he
began to write. For many years ordinary people to whom literature and
literary affairs were not of, at anyrate, absorbing interest only knew
of Oscar Wilde by his extravagances and poses.
Then it happened that Wilde turned his powers in the direction of the
stage and achieved a swift and brilliant success. The English public
then began to realise that here was an unusually brilliant man, and the
extraordinary genius of the subject of this work would have certainly
been universally recognised in a few more years, when the shocking
scandals associated with his name occurred and Oscar Wilde disappeared
into oblivion.
A great change gradually took place in public opinion. Little by little
the feeling of prejudice against the work of Oscar Wilde began to die
away. The man himself was dead. He had expiated his crimes by a
prolonged agony of the most hideous suffering and disgrace, and people
began to wonder if his writings were in any way associated with the dark
side of his life and character, or whether they might not, after all, be
beautiful, pure, and treasures of the literature of our time. The four
comedies of Manners, "Lady Windermere's Fan," "The Ideal Husband," "A
Woman Of No Importance," "The Importance Of Being Earnest," everyone had
seen and laughed at. They were certainly absolutely without offence. It
was gradually seen that because a house was built by an architect of an
immoral private life that did not necessarily invalidate it as a
residence, that if Stephenson had ended his life upon the gallows people
would still find railways convenient and necessary. The truth gradually
dawned that Wilde had never in his life written a line that was immoral
or impure, and that, in short, the criminal side of him was only a part
of his complex nature, horribly disastrous for himself and his personal
life, but absolutely without influence upon his work.
Art and his aberration never mingled or overlapped. Everybody began to
realise the fact.
Opinion was also being quietly moulded from within by a band of literary
and artistic people, some of them friends of the late author, others
knowing him simply through his work.
The public began to ask for Wilde's books and found it almost
impossible to obtain them, for the "Ballad of Reading Gaol," published
while its author was still alive, had not stimulated any general demand
for other works.
It was after Oscar Wilde's death that his friends and admirers were able
to set to work at their endeavours to rehabilitate him as artist in the
mind of general prejudice. Books and monographs were written about Wilde
in English, French, and German. He was quoted in the leading Continental
reviews. His play "Salome" met with sudden and stupendous success all
over Europe, a famous musician turned it into an opera. A well-known
English man of letters, Mr Robert Harborough Sherard, published a final
official "Life" of the dead author, and Wilde's own "De Profundis"
appeared to startle, sadden, and thrill the whole reading world.
His plays are being revived, and an authoritative and exhaustive edition
of his writings is being issued by a leading publishing house.
There is no doubt about it, the most prejudiced and hostile critics must
admit it--in a literary sense, as a man of letters with extraordinary
genius, Oscar Wilde has come into his own. The time is, therefore, ripe
for a work of the present character which endeavours to "appreciate" one
of the strangest, saddest, most artistic and powerful brains of modern
times. Five years ago such a book as this would probably have been out
of place. When Balzac died Sainte-Beuve prefaced a short critical
article of fourteen pages, as follows:--
"A careful study of the famous novelist who has just been taken
from us, and whose sudden loss has excited universal interest,
would require a whole work, and the time for that, I think, has not
yet come. Those sort of moral autopsies cannot be made over a
freshly dug grave, especially when he who has been laid in it was
full of strength and fertility, and seemed still full of future
works and days. All that is possible and fitting in respect of a
great contemporary renown at the moment death lays it low is to
point out, by means of a few clear-cut lines, the merits, the
varied skill, by which it charmed its epoch and acquired influence
over it."
When Oscar Wilde died, and before the publication of "De Profundis,"
various short essays did, as I have stated, make an appearance. A longer
work seems called for, and it is that want which the present volume does
its best to supply.
"Oscar Wilde: The Man" is the title of the first part of this
Appreciation. In Mr Sherard's "The Story of an Unhappy Friendship," as
also in his careful and scholarly "Life," the many-sided nature of Oscar
Wilde was set forth with all the ability of a brilliant pen. But there
is yet room for another, and possibly more detached point of view, and
also a summary of the views of others which will assist the general
reader to gain a mental picture of a writer whose works, in a very short
time, are certain to have a general, as well as a particular appeal.
The scheme of a work of this nature, which is critical rather than
biographical, would nevertheless be incomplete without a personal study.
The study of Wilde's writings cannot fail to be enormously assisted by
some knowledge of synetoithe man himself, and how he was regarded by
others both before and after his personal disgrace.
Ever since his name was known to the world at all the public view of him
has constantly been shifting and changing. There are, however, four
principal periods during each of which Wilde was regarded in a totally
different way. I have made a careful analysis of each of these periods
and collected documentary and other evidence which defines and explains
them.
The first period of all--Oscar Wilde himself always spoke of the
different phases of his extraordinary career as "periods"--was that of
the "AEsthetic movement" as it is generally called, or the aesthetic
"craze" as many people prefer to name it still. New movements, whether
good or bad in their conception and ultimate result, always excite
enmity, hostility, and ridicule. In affairs, in religion, in art, this
is an invariable rule. No pioneer has ever escaped it. England laughed
at the first railway, jeered at the volunteer movement and laughed at
John Keats in precisely the same fashion as it ridiculed Oscar Wilde and
the aesthetic movement.
It is as well to define that movement carefully, for, though marred by
innumerable extravagances and still suffering from the inanities of its
first disciples, it has nevertheless had a real and permanent influence
upon English life. Oscar Wilde was, of course, not the originator of the
aesthetic movement. He took upon himself to become its hierophant, and to
infuse much that was peculiarly his own into it. The movement was begun
by Ruskin, Rossetti, William Morris, Burne-Jones, and a host of others,
while it was continued in the delicate and beautiful writings of Walter
Pater. But it had always been an eclectic movement, not for the public
eye or ear, neither known of nor popular with ordinary people.
Oscar Wilde then began to interest and excite England and America in the
true aims and methods of art of all kinds. It shows an absolute
ignorance of the late Victorian era to say that the movement was a
passing craze. To Oscar Wilde we owe it that people of refined tastes
but moderate means can obtain beautiful papers for the walls of their
houses at a moderate cost. The cheap and lovely fabrics that we can buy
in Regent Street are spun as a direct consequence of the movement;
harmony and delicacy of colour, beauty of curve and line, the whole
renaissance of art in our household furniture are mainly due to the
writings and lectures of Oscar Wilde.
It is not a crime to love beautiful things, it is not effeminate to care
for them. It is to the subject of this appreciation we owe our national
change of feeling on such matters.
This, briefly, is what the aesthetic movement was, such are its
indubitable results. Let us see, in some instances, how Wilde was
regarded in the period when, before his real literary successes, he
preached the gospel of Beauty in everyday life.
Let us take a Continental view of Wilde in his first period, the view of
a really eminent man, a distinguished scientist and man of letters.
The name of Dr Max Nordau will be familiar to many readers of this book.
But, if the book fulfils the purpose for which it was designed, then
possibly there will be many readers who will know little or nothing of
the distinguished foreign writer. Hard, one-sided, and bitter as his
remarks upon Wilde during the aesthetic movement will seem to most of
us--seem to me--yet they have the merit of absolute detachment and
sincerity. It is as well to insist on this fact in order that my
readers may realise exactly such value as the words may have, no less
and no more. The following short account of Dr Max Nordau's position and
achievements is taken from that useful dictionary of celebrities, "Who's
Who?" for 1907:--
"NORDAU, MAX SIMON, M.D. Paris, Budapesth; Officier d'Academie,
France; Commander of the Royal Hellenic Order of the St Saviour;
author and physician; President Congress of Zionists; Hon. Mem. of
the Greek Acad. of the Parnassos; _b._ Budapesth, 29th July 1849;
_y. s._ of Gabriel Suedfield, Rabbi, Krotoschin, Prussia, and his
2nd wife, _b._ Nelkin, Riga, Russia. _Educ._ Royal Gymnasium and
Protestant Gymnasium, Budapesth; Royal University, Budapesth;
Faculty of Medicine, Paris. Wrote very early for newspapers;
travelled for several years all over Europe; practised as a
physician for a year and a half, 1878-80, at Budapesth; settled
then at Paris, residing there ever since; _m._ Anna-Elizabeth, 2nd
_d._ of State-councillor Captain Julius Dons, Copenhagen, Denmark;
one _d._ _Publications_: Paris, Studien und Bilder aus dem wahren
Milliardenlande, 1878; Seifenblasen, 1879; Vom Kreml zur Alhambra,
1880; Aus der Zeitungswelt (together with Ferdinand Gross), 1880;
Paris under der dritten Republik, 1881; der Krieg der Millionen,
1882; Die conventionellen Luegen der Culturmenschheit, 1883;
Ausgewaehlte Pariser Briefe, 1884; Paradoxe, 1885; Die Krankheit des
Jahrhunderts, 1887; Seelenanalysen, 1891; Gefuehlskomoedie, 1892;
Entartung, 1893; Das Recht zu lieben, 1894; Die Kugel, 1895;
Drohnenschlacht, 1896; La funzione sociale dell arte, 1897; Doctor
Kohn, 1898; The Drones must Die, 1899: Zeitgenoessische Franzosen,
1901; Morganatic, 1904; Maha-Rog, 1905. _Recreations_:
foil-fencing, swimming. _Address_: 8, Rue Leonie, Paris."
Nearly all the modern manifestations of Art, implies Dr Max Nordau, in
"Degeneration," are manifestations of madness. Such a sweeping statement
is incredible and has not--nor will it have--many advocates, despite the
brilliant special pleading of its originator. In Oscar Wilde's case the
aphorism seems particularly misleading for the reason that there may
appear to be a considerable amount of truth in it.
That Wilde's _social_ downfall was due to a certain kind of elliptiform
insanity is without doubt. Mr Sherard has insisted on this over and over
again. He has spent enormous labour in researches into Wilde's ancestry.
His view is really a scientific view because it is written by an artist
who sees both sides of the question, has a judicial mind, and while
capable of appreciating the truths that science teaches us, is further
capable of welding them to the psychological truths which the intuition
of the artist alone evolves.
A certain definite and partial insanity alone can explain Wilde's life
in certain of its aspects. But when once his pen was in his hand, in his
real bright life of literature and art, this hidden thing entirely
disappears. Therefore, Dr Max Nordau's study seems to me fundamentally
wrong, though extremely interesting and not to be disregarded. To know
Oscar Wilde we must know what all sorts of people, whose opinion has
weight enough to secure a wide hearing, really thought about him.
The German scientist said:
"The ego-mania of decadentism, its love of the artificial, its
aversion to nature, and to all forms of activity and movement, its
megalomaniacal contempt for men and its exaggeration of the
importance of art, have found their English representative among
the 'AEsthetes,' the chief of whom is Oscar Wilde.
"Wilde has done more by his personal eccentricities than by his
works. Like Barbey d'Aurevilly, whose rose-coloured silk hats and
gold lace cravats are well known, and like his disciple Josephin
Peladan, who walks about in lace frills and satin doublet, Wilde
dresses in queer costumes which recall partly the fashions of the
Middle Ages, partly the rococo modes. He pretends to have abandoned
the dress of the present time because it offends his sense of the
beautiful; but this is only a pretext in which probably he himself
does not believe. What really determines his actions is the
hysterical craving to be noticed, to occupy the attention of the
world with himself, to get talked about. It is asserted that he has
walked down Pall Mall in the afternoon dressed in doublet and
breeches, with a picturesque biretta on his head, and a sunflower
in his hand, the quasi-heraldic symbol of the AEsthetes. This
anecdote has been reproduced in all the biographies of Wilde, and I
have nowhere seen it denied. But it is a promenade with a sunflower
in the hand also inspired by a craving for the beautiful.
"Phrasemakers are perpetually repeating the twaddle, that it is a
proof of honourable independence to follow one's own taste without
being bound down to the regulation costume of the Philistine
cattle, and to choose for clothes the colours, materials and cut
which appear beautiful to oneself, no matter how much they may
differ from the fashion of the day. The answer to this cackle
should be that it is above all a sign of anti-social ego-mania to
irritate the majority unnecessarily, only to gratify vanity, or an
aesthetical instinct of small importance and easy to control--such
as is always done when, either by word or deed, a man places
himself in opposition to this majority. He is obliged to repress
many manifestations of opinions and desires out of regard for his
fellow-creatures; to make him understand this is the aim of
education, and he who has not learnt to impose some restraint upon
himself in order not to shock others is called by malicious
Philistines, not an AEsthete, but a blackguard.
"It may become a duty to combat the vulgar herd in the cause of
truth and knowledge; but to a serious man this duty will always be
felt as a painful one. He will never fulfil it with a light heart,
and he will examine strictly and cautiously if it be really a high
and imperative law which forces him to be disagreeable to the
majority of his fellow-creatures. Such an action is, in the eyes of
a moral and sane man, a kind of martyrdom for a conviction, to
carry out which constitutes a vital necessity; it is a form, and
not an easy form, of self-sacrifice, for it means the renunciation
of the joy which the consciousness of sympathy with one's
fellow-creatures gives, and it exacts the painful overthrow of
social instincts, which, in truth, do not exist in deranged
ego-maniacs, but are very strong in the normal man.
"The predilection for strange costume is a pathological aberration
of a racial instinct. The adornment of the exterior has its origin
in the strong desire to be admired by others--primarily by the
opposite sex--to be recognised by them as especially well shaped,
handsome, youthful, or rich and powerful, or as pre-eminent
through rank or merit. It is practised, then, with the object of
producing a favourable impression on others, and is a result of
thought about others, of preoccupation with the race. If, now, this
adornment be, not through misjudgment but purposely, of a character
to cause irritation to others, or lend itself to ridicule--in other
words, if it excites disapproval instead of approbation--it then
runs exactly counter to the object of the art of dress, and evinces
a perversion of the instinct of vanity.
"The pretence of a sense of beauty is the excuse of consciousness
for a crank of the conscious. The fool who masquerades in Pall Mall
does not see himself, and, therefore, does not enjoy the beautiful
appearance which is supposed to be an aesthetic necessity for him.
There would be some sense in his conduct if it had for its object
an endeavour to cause others to dress in accordance with his taste;
for them he sees and they can scandalise him by the ugliness, and
charm by the beauty, of their costume. But to take the initiative
in a new artistic style in dress brings the innovator not one
hair's breadth nearer his assumed goal of aesthetic satisfaction.
"When, therefore, an Oscar Wilde goes about in 'aesthetic costume'
among gazing Philistines, exciting either their ridicule or their
wrath, it is no indication of independence of character, but rather
from a purely anti-socialistic, ego-maniacal recklessness and
hysterical longing to make a sensation, justified by no exalted
aim; nor is it from a strong desire of beauty, but from a
malevolent mania for contradiction."
It is impossible to read the extracts quoted above--and only a few
paragraphs sufficient to show the trend of a much longer article have
been used--without realising its injustice and yet at the same time its
perfect sincerity. During the "first period," with which we are dealing
now, Wilde undoubtedly excited the enmity and ridicule of a vast number
of people. He knew that he had something to say which was worth
listening to. He knew also--as the genius always has known--that he was
superior in intellect to those by whom he was surrounded. His
temperament was impatient. He wanted to take the place to which he felt
he was entitled in a sudden moment. His quick Celtic imagination ran
riot with fact, his immeasurable ambition, his serene consciousness of
worth, which to usual minds and temperaments suggested nothing but
conceit, all urged him to display and extravagance in order to more
speedily mount the rostrum from which he would be heard.
Therefore, in this first period of this so astonishing a career, he went
far to spoil and obscure his message by the very means he hoped would
enable him to publish it widely. He invented a pose which he intended
should become a megaphone, whereas, in the effect, it did but retard
the hearing of his voice until the practical wisdom of what he wished to
say proved itself in concrete form.
Nor must we ever forget the man's constant sense of humour, a mocking
sprite which doubtless led him to this or that public foolishness while
he chuckled within at his own attitude and the dance he was leading his
imitators and fools. For Oscar Wilde had a supreme sense of humour. Many
people would like to deny him _humour_, while admitting his marvellous
and scintillating _wit_. That they are wrong I unhesitatingly assert,
and I believe that this will be proved over and over again in the
following pages.
Let us take another view of Wilde at this period. It was written after
his disappearance from public life, or rather when it was imminent and
certain. The words are those of Mr Labouchere, the _flaneur_ with an
intellect, the somewhat acid critic of how many changing aspects and
phases of English social life.
"I have known Oscar Wilde off and on for years," writes Mr Labouchere in
_Truth_. "Clever and witty he unquestionably is, but I have always
regarded him as somewhat wrong in the head, for his craving after
notoriety seemed to me a positive craze. There was nothing that he would
not do to attract attention. When he went over to New York he went
about dressed in a bottle-green coat with a waist up to his shoulders.
When he entered a restaurant people threw things at him. When he drove
in the evening to deliver his lectures the windows of his carriage were
broken, until a policeman rode on each side of it. Far from objecting to
all this, it filled him with delighted complacency. 'Insult me, throw
mud at me, but only look at me,' seemed to be his creed; and such a
creed was never acted upon by anyone whose mind was not out of balance.
So strange and wondrous is his mind, when in an abnormal condition, that
it would not surprise me if he were deriving a keen enjoyment from a
position which most people, whether really innocent or guilty, would
prefer to die rather than occupy. He must have known in what a glass
house he lived when he challenged investigation in a court of justice.
After he had done this he went abroad. Why did he not stay abroad? The
possibilities of a prison may not be pleasing to him, but I believe that
the notoriety that has overtaken him has such a charm for him that it
outweighs everything else. I remember, in the early days of the cult of
aestheticism, hearing someone ask him how a man of his undoubted capacity
could make such a fool of himself. He gave this explanation. He had
written, he said, a book of poems, and he believed in their excellence.
In vain he went from publisher to publisher asking them to bring them
out: no one would even read them, for he was unknown. In order to find a
publisher he felt that he must do something to become a personality. So
he hit upon aestheticism. It succeeded. People talked about him; they
invited him to their houses as a sort of lion. He then took his poems to
a publisher, who--still without reading them--gladly accepted them."
This is thoroughly unsympathetic, but no doubt it represents a mood with
some faithfulness. In criticising the work of critics one _must be a
psychologist_. Religion, the Christian religion at anyrate, teaches
tolerance. Its teachings are seldom obeyed. The four Hags of the
litany--let us personify them!--Envy, Hatred, Malice, and
Uncharitableness unfortunately intrude into religious life too often and
too powerfully. But the real psychologist, not the scientist (_vide_
Nordau) _is_ able to understand better than anyone else the motives
which have animated criticism at any given date. The psychologist more
than any other type of man or woman has learnt the lesson Charles Reade
tried to inculcate in "Put Yourself In His Place."
With a little effort, we can realise what _Truth_ thought when these
lines were written. We cannot blame the writer, we can only record his
words as a part of the general statement dealing with Oscar Wilde's life
and attitude during the "AEsthetic Period."
At this point the reader may possibly ask himself if the title given to
the book--"Oscar Wilde: an Appreciation"--is entirely justified. "The
writer of it," he may say to himself, "is giving us examples of hostile
criticism of Wilde's first period, and though he endeavours to explain
them, yet, in an appreciation, it rather seems that such quotations are
out of place."
I do not think that if the point of view is considered for a moment, the
stricture will be persisted in.
Eulogy, indiscriminating eulogy, is simply an _ex parte_ statement which
can have no weight at all. I shall endeavour to show, before this first
part of the book is completed, not only how those who attacked Wilde
were mistaken, not only how those who bestowed indiscriminate praise
upon him made an over-statement, but finally and definitely what Wilde
was as seen through the temperament of the writer, corrected by the
statements of other writers both for and against him.
I am convinced that this is the only scientific method of arriving at a
just estimation of the character of this brilliant and extraordinary
man. No summing up of the aesthetic period could be complete without
copious references to the great chronicler of our modern life--the
pages of Mr Punch.
_Punch_ has never been bitter. It has often been severe, but Mr Punch
has always, from the very first moment of his arrival among us,
successfully held the balance between this or that faction, and,
moreover, has faithfully reflected the consensus of public opinion upon
any given matter.
The extraordinary skill with which some of the brightest and merriest
wits have made our national comic paper the true diary of events cannot
be controverted or disputed. Follies and fashions have been criticised
with satire, but never with spleen. Addison said that the "appearance of
a man of genius in the world may always be known by the virulence of
dunces." _Punch_ has proved for generations that its kindly appreciation
or depreciation has never been virulent, but nearly always an accurate
statement of the opinion and point of view of the ordinary more or less
cultured and well-bred person.
It has always been a sign of eminence in this or that department of life
to be mentioned in _Punch_ at all. The conductors of that journal during
its whole career have always exercised the wisest discrimination, and
have always kept shrewd fingers upon the pulses of English thought. When
a politician, for example, is caricatured in _Punch_ that politician
knows that he has arrived at a certain place and point in public
estimation. When a writer is caricatured, either in line or words, he
also knows that he has, at anyrate, obtained a hold of this or that sort
upon the country.
Now those who would try to minimise the place of Oscar Wilde in the
public eye during the aesthetic period have only to look at the pages of
_Punch_ to realise how greatly that movement influenced English life
during its continuance.
Let it be thoroughly understood--and very few people will attempt to
deny it--that _Punch_ has always been a perfectly adjusted barometer of
celebrity.
It is, therefore, not out of place, herein, to publish a bibliography of
the references to Oscar Wilde which, from first to last of that
cometlike career, appeared in the pages of Mr Punch. Such a list proves
immediately the one-sidedness of Dr Max Nordau's and Mr Labouchere's
views. From extracts I have given from the remarks of these two eminent
people the ordinary man might well be inclined to think that the
aesthetic movement and the doings of Oscar Wilde in his first period were
small and local things. This is not so, and the following carefully
compiled list will show that it is not so.
The list has been properly indexed and is now given below. Afterwards I
shall give a small selection from the witticisms of the famous journal
to support the bibliography.
Those students of the work of Oscar Wilde and his position in modern
life will find the references below of great interest. They date from
1881 to 1906, and those collectors of "Oscariana" and students of
Wilde's work will doubtless be able to obtain the numbers in which the
following articles, poems, and paragraphs have appeared.
1881
February 12, p. 62. Maudle on the Choice of a Profession.
" " p. 71. Beauty _Not_ at Home.
April 9, p. 161. A Maudle in Ballad. _To His Lily._
" 30, p. 201. The First of May. An AEsthetic
Rondeau. Substitution.
May 7, p. 213. A Padded Cell.
" " p. 215. Design for an AEsthetic Theatrical
Poster. "Let Us Live Up To It."
" 14, p. 218. The Grosvenor Gallery.
" " p. 220. Fashionable Nursery Rhyme.
" " p. 221. Philistia Defiant.
" 28, p. 242. More Impressions. _By Oscuro
Wildegoose._ La Fuite des Oies.
" " p. 245. AEsthetic Notes.
June 25, p. 297. AEsthetics at Ascot.
" " p. 298. _Punch's_ Fancy Portraits. No. 37,
"O. W."
July 23, p. 26. Swinburne and Water.
" " p. 29. Maunderings at Marlow. (_By Our
Own AEsthetic Bard._)
August 20, p. 84. "Croquis" by Dumb-Crambo
Junior.
" 20, p. 84. Too-Too Awful. _A Sonnet of
Sorrow._
September 17, p. 132. Impression De L'Automne.
(_Stanzas by our muchly-admired
Poet, Drawit Milde._)
October 1, p. 154. The AEsthete to the Rose. (_By
Wildegoose, after Waller._)
" 29, p. 204. Spectrum Analysis. (_After "The
Burden of Itys," by the Wild-Eyed
Poet._)
November 12, p. 228. A Sort of "Sortes."
" 19, p. 237. Poet's Corner; _Or, Nonsense
Rhymes on Well-known Names_.
" 26, p. 241. The Downfall of the Dado.
" " p. 242. Theoretikos. By Oscuro Wildegoose.
December 10, p. 274. "Impressions du Theatre."
" 17, p. 288. The Two AEsthetic Poets.
" 24, p. 289. Mr Punch's "Mother Hubbard"
Fairy Tale Grinaway Christmas
Cards.--(Second Series.)
" 31, p. 309. Mrs Langtry as "Lady Macbeth."
Almanack for 1882 (Dec. 6, 1881) (p. 5). More Impressions.
(_By Oscuro Wildegoose._) Des
Sornettes.
1882
January 7, p. 10. "A New Departure."
" " pp. 10, 11. Clowning and Classicism.
" " p. 12. In Earnest.
" 14, p. 14. Oscar Interviewed.
" " p. 16. AEsthetic Ladies' Hair.
" " p. 18. Murder Made Easy. _A Ballad a
la Mode. By "Brother Jonathan"
Wilde._ (With Cartoon.)
" " p. 18. To An AEsthetic Poet.
" " p. 22. Impression du Theatre.
February 4, p. 49. Sketches from "Boz." Oscar
Wilde as _Harold Skimpole_.
" 4, p. 58. A Poet's Day. Ariadne in Naxes;
Or, Very Like a Wail.
" " p. 49. Distinctly Precious Pantomime.
" 18, p. 81. Lines by Mrs Cimabue Brown.
March 11, p. 109. The Poet Wilde's _Unkissed Kisses_.
" " p. 117. Ossian (with Variations).
April 1, p. 153. A Philistine to An AEsthete.
" " p. 156. The Poet Wilde.
" 8, p. 168. Impression De Gaiety Theatre.
_By Ossian Wilderness._
" 22, p. 192. Likely.
November 4, p. 216. Not Generally Known.
" 25, p. 249. "What! No Soap!" Or, Pop
Goes The Langtry Bubble.
1883
March 31, p. 155. To Be Sold.
" " p. 156. Sage Green. (_By a Fading-out
AEsthete._)
May 12, pp. 220-1. Our Academy Guide. No. 163.--Private
Frith's View.--Members
of the Salvation Army, led by
General Oscar Wilde, joining in
a hymn.
September 1, p. 99. "The Play's (not) the Thing."
November 3, p. 209. Sartorial Sweetness and Light.
" 10, p. 218. Counter Criticism.
" 17, p. 231. Cheap Telegrams.
" " p. 238. Another Invitation to Amerikay.
" 24, p. 249. "And is this Fame?"
1884
June 14, p. 288. The Town. II.--Bond Street.
August 23, p. 96. The Town. No. XI.--"Form."
A Legend of Modern London.
Part I.
" 30, p. 105. A Legend of Modern London.
Part II.
1885
May 30, p. 253. Ben Trovato.
June 27, p. 310. Interiors and Exteriors. No. 13.
At Burlington House. The
"Swarry."
December 7, Almanack for 1886. The Walnut Season.
"Here Y' ar'. Ten a Penny.
All Cracked."
1887
December 10, p. 276. Our Booking-Office. _Woman's
World._
1889
January 5, p. 12. Our Booking-Office. Article in
_The Fortnightly_.
July 6, p. 12. Advertisement of _Blackwood's
Magazine_, containing "The
Portrait of Mr W. H." by Oscar
Wilde.
October 5, p. 160. Appropriate Subject.
1890
July 19, p. 26. Our Booking-Office. _Dorian Gray._
September 20, p. 135. Development.
Christmas Number. Punch Among the Planets.
1891
March 14, p. 123. Desdemona to the Author of
"Dorian Gray." (_Apropos of
his paragraphic Preface._)
" " p. 125. Wilde Flowers.
May 30, p. 257. Our Booking-Office. _Intentions._
1892
March 5, p. 113. A Wilde "Tag" to a Tame Play.
With Fancy Portrait. "Quite
Too-Too Puffickly Precious."
March 12, p. 123. Lord Wildermere's Mother-in-Law.
" " p. 124. Pathetic Description of the
Present State of Mr George
Alexander.
April 30, p. 215. Staircase Scenes.--No. 1, Private
View, Royal Academy.
June 25, p. 304. The Playful Sally.
July 2, p. 315. A Difficulty.
" 9, p. 1. A Wilde Idea; Or, More Injustice
to Ireland.
" 16, p. 16. On the Fly-leaf of an Old
Book.
" 16, p. 23. Racine, With the Chill Off.
1893
January 19, p. 29. "To Rome for Sixteen Guineas."
April 22, p. 189. The B. and S. Drama at the
Adelphi.
" 29, p. 193. Stray Thoughts on Play-Writing.
" " p. 195. The Premier at the Haymarket
last Wednesday.
May 6, p. 213. A Work--of Some Importance.
" 13, p. 221. Wilder Ideas; _Or, Conversation as
she is spoken at the Haymarket_.
" 27, p. 246. A Wylde Vade Mecum. (_By
Professor H-xl-y_)
June 3, p. 257. Second Title for the Play at the
Haymarket.
July 15, p. 13. An Afternoon Party.
" 15, p. 22. "The Play is Not the Thing."
" 29, p. 46. At The T. R. H.
August 26, p. 94. Still Wilder Ideas. (_Possibilities
for the next O. Wilde Play._)
December 30, pp. 304-5. New Year's Eve at Latterday Hall.
An Incident. Dorian Gray
taking Juliet in to Dinner.
1894
February 17, p. 73. "Blushing Honours."
March 10, p. 109. She-Notes. By Borgia Smudgiton.
July 21, p. 33. The Minx.--A Poem in Prose.
August 4, p. 60. Our Charity Fete.
October 13, p. 177. The O.B.C. (Limited).
" 20, p. 185. The Blue Gardenia. (_A Colourable
Imitation._)
" 27, p. 204. Morbidezza.
November 10, p. 225. The Decadent Guys. (_A Colour-Study
in Green Carnations._)
December 15, p. 287. The Truisms of Life. (Note 12.)
1895
January 12, p. 24. Overheard Fragment of a Dialogue.
" 19, p. 29. "To Rome for Sixteen Guineas."
" " p. 36. "A penny Plain--But Oscar
Coloured."
February 2, p. 54. A Wilde "Ideal Husband."
" " p. 60. A God in the Os-Car.
" 23, p. 85. The O. W. Vade Mecum.
March 2, p. 106. "The Rivals" at the A.D.C.
" " p. 107. The Advisability of Not Being
Born in a Handbag.
" 16, p. 121. The Advantage of Being Consistent.
April 6, p. 157. April Foolosophy. (_By One of
Them._)
" 13, p. 171. The Long and Short of It.
" " p. 177. Concerning a Misused Term; _viz._
_Art_, as recently applied to a
certain form of Literature.
1906
January 3, p. 18. Our Booking-Office. (R. H.
Sherard's "_Twenty Years in
Paris_.")
This list at least spells, and spelt, celebrity and a recognition of the
importance of the AEsthetic movement.
Especially did the American lecturing tour of Oscar Wilde excite the
comment and ridicule of _Punch_.
I quote some paragraphs from a pretended despatch from an "American
correspondent."
A POET'S DAY
(_From an American Correspondent_)
OSCAR AT BREAKFAST! OSCAR AT LUNCHEON!!
OSCAR AT DINNER!!! OSCAR AT SUPPER!!!!
"You see I am, after all, but mortal," remarked the Poet, with an
ineffable affable smile, as he looked up from an elegant but
substantial dish of ham and eggs. Passing a long, willowy hand
through his waving hair, he swept away a stray curl-paper with the
_nonchalance_ of a D'ORSAY.
After this effort, Mr WILDE expressed himself as feeling somewhat
faint; and, with a half-apologetic smile, ordered another portion
of
HAM AND EGGS
in the evident enjoyment of which, after a brief interchange of
international courtesies, I left the Poet.
The irresponsible but not ungenial and quite legitimate fun of this is
a fairly representative indication of the way in which the young
"Apostle of Beauty" was thought of in England during his American visit.
The writer goes on to tell how, later in the day, he once more
encountered the "young patron of Culture." It is astonishing to us now
to realise how even the word "culture" was distorted from its real
meaning and made into the badge of a certain set. At anyrate, Mr Punch's
contributor goes on to say that "Oscar" was found at the business
premises of the
CO-OPERATIVE DRESS ASSOCIATION.
On this occasion the Poet, by special request, appeared in the
uniform of an English Officer of the Dragoon Guards, the dress, I
understand, being supplied for the occasion from the elegant
wardrobe of Mr D'OYLEY CARTE'S "Patience" Company.
Several ladies expressed their disappointment at the "insufficient
leanness" of the Poet's figure, whereupon his Business Manager
explained that he belonged to the fleshy school.
To accommodate Mr WILDE, the ordinary lay-figures were removed from
the showroom, and, after a sumptuous luncheon, to which the _elite_
of Miss ----'s customers were invited, the distinguished guest
posed with his fair hostess in an allegorical tableau, representing
_English Poetry extending the right hand to American Commerce_.
"This is indeed Fair Trade," remarked Mr Wilde lightly, and
immediately improvised a testimonial advertisement (in verse) in
praise of Miss ----'s patent dress-improver.
At a dinner given by "JEMMY" CROWDER (as we familiarly call him),
the Apologist of Art had discarded his military garb for the
ordinary dress of an
ENGLISH GENTLEMAN
in which his now world-famed knee-breeches form a conspicuous item,
suggesting indeed the Admiral's uniform in Mr D'OYLEY CARTE'S
"Pinafore" combination.
"I think," said the Poet, in a pause between courses, "one cannot
dine too well"--placing everyone at his ease by his admirable tact
in partaking of the thirty-six items of the _menu_.
The skit continues wittily enough, but it is not necessary to quote more
of it. The paragraphs sufficiently explain the attitude of Mr Punch,
which was the general attitude at the time.
It was hammered in persistently. "Oscar Interviewed" appeared under the
date of January 1882, and again, in the following extracts the reader
will recognise the same note.
"DETERMINED to anticipate the rabble of penny-a-liners ready to
pounce upon any distinguished foreigner who approaches our shores,
and eager to assist a sensitive Poet in avoiding the impertinent
curiosity and ill-bred insolence of the Professional Reporter, I
took the fastest pilot-boat on the station, and boarded the
splendid Cunard steamer, the _Boshnia_, in the shucking of a
peanut."
HIS AESTHETIC APPEARANCE
He stood, with his large hand passed through his long hair, against
a high chimney-piece--which had been painted pea-green, with panels
of peacock-blue pottery let in at uneven intervals--one elbow on
the high ledge, the other hand on his hip. He was dressed in a
long, snuff-coloured, single-breasted coat, which reached to his
heels, and was relieved with a sealskin collar and cuffs rather the
worse for wear. Frayed linen, and an orange silk handkerchief, gave
a note to the generally artistic colouring of the _ensemble_, while
one small daisy drooped despondently in his buttonhole.... We may
state that the chimney-piece, as well as the sealskin collar, is
the property of OSCAR, and will appear in his Lectures "on the
Growth of Artistic Taste in England."
HE SPEAKS FOR HIMSELF
"Yes; I should have been astonished had I not been interviewed!
Indeed, I have not been well on board this Cunard _Argosy_. I have
wrestled with the glaukous-haired Poseidon, and feared his
ravishment. Quite: I have been too ill, too utterly ill.
Exactly--seasick in fact, if I must descend to so trivial an
expression. I fear the clean beauty of my strong limbs is somewhat
waned. I am scarcely myself--my nerves are thrilling like throbbing
violins--in exquisite pulsation.
"You are right. I believe I was the first to devote my subtle
brain-chords to the worship of the Sunflower, and the apotheosis of
the delicate Tea-pot. I have ever been jasmine-cradled from my
youth. Eons ago, I might say centuries, in '78, when a student at
Oxford, I had trampled the vintage of my babyhood, and trod the
thorn-spread heights of Poesy. I had stood in the Arena and torn
the bays from the expiring athletes, my competitors."
* * * * *
LECTURE PROSPECTS
"Yes; I expect my Lecture will be a success. So does DOLLAR
CARTE--I mean D'OYLEY CARTE. Too-Toothless Senility may jeer, and
poor, positive Propriety may shake her rusty curls; but I am here
in my creamy lustihood, to pipe of Passion's venturous Poesy, and
reap the scorching harvest of Self-Love! I am not quite sure what
I mean. The true Poet never is. In fact, true Poetry is nothing if
it is intelligible. She is only to be compared to SALMACIS, who is
not a boy or girl, but yet is both."
And so forth, and so forth.
About the conversation and superficial manner of Oscar Wilde there must
have been something strangely according to formula. Among intimate
friends, friends who were sympathetic to his real ideals, his talk was
wonderful. That fact is vouched for in a hundred quarters, it is not to
be denied.
As I write I have dozens of undeniable testimonies to the fact, I myself
can bear witness to it on at least one occasion. But when Wilde was not
with people for whose opinion of him he cared much--really cared--his
odd perversity of phrase, his persistent wish to astonish the fools, his
extraordinary carelessness of average opinion often compelled him to
talk the most frantic nonsense which was only redeemed from mere
childish inversion of phrase by the air and manner with which it was
said, and the merest tinsel pretence of wit. The wittiest talker of his
generation, certainly the wittiest writer, gave the very worst of his
wit to the pressmen who pestered him but who, and this was the thing he
was unable to appreciate at its true value, represented him to the world
during this "first period."
The mock interviews in _Punch_ which have been quoted from are really no
very wide departures from the real thing. A year or two after the
AEsthetic movement was not so prominent in the public eye as was the
success of Wilde as a writer of plays, an actual interview with him
appeared in a well-known weekly paper in which he talked not much less
extravagantly than he was caricatured as talking in _Punch_. A play of
his had been produced and, while it was a complete and satisfying
success, it had been assailed in that unfortunately hostile way by the
critics to which he was accustomed.
He was asked what he thought about the attitude of the critics towards
his play.
"For a man to be a dramatic critic," he is said to have replied, "is as
foolish and inartistic as it would be for a man to be a critic of epics,
or a pastoral critic, or a critic of lyrics. All modes of art are one,
and the modes of the art that employs words as its medium are quite
indivisible. The result of the vulgar specialisation of criticism is an
elaborate scientific knowledge of the stage--almost as elaborate as that
of the stage-carpenter, and quite on a par with that of the
call-boy--combined with an entire incapacity to realise that a play is a
work of art, or to receive any artistic impressions at all."
He was told that he was rather severe upon the dramatic critics.
"English dramatic criticism of our own day has never had a single
success, in spite of the fact that it goes to all the first nights," was
his reply.
Thereupon the interviewer suggested that dramatic criticism was at least
influential.
"Certainly; that is why it is so bad," he replied, and went on to say:
"The moment criticism exercises any influence it ceases to be criticism.
The aim of the true critic is to try and chronicle his own moods, not to
try and correct the masterpieces of others."
"Real critics would be charming in your eyes, then?"
"Real critics? Ah, how perfectly charming they would be! I am always
waiting for their arrival. An inaudible school would be nice. Why do you
not found it?"
Oscar Wilde was asked if there were, then, absolutely no critics in
London.
"There are just two," he answered, but refused to give their names. The
interviewer goes on to recount his exact words:
"Mr Wilde, with the elaborate courtesy for which he has always been
famous, replied, 'I think I had better not mention their names; it might
make the others so jealous.'
"'What do the literary cliques think of your plays?'
"'I don't write to please cliques; I write to please myself. Besides, I
have always had grave suspicions that the basis of all literary cliques
is a morbid love of meat-teas. That makes them sadly uncivilised.'
"'Still, if your critics offend you, why don't you reply to them?'
"'I have far too much time. But I think some day I will give a general
answer, in the form of a lecture, in a public hall, which I shall call
"Straight Talks to Old Men."'
"'What is your feeling towards your audiences--towards the public?'
"'Which public? There are as many publics as there are personalities.'
"'Are you nervous on the night that you are producing a new play?'
"'Oh no, I am exquisitely indifferent. My nervousness ends at the last
dress rehearsal; I know then what effect my play, as presented upon the
stage, has produced upon me. My interest in the play ends there, and I
feel curiously envious of the public--they have such wonderful fresh
emotions in store for them.'
"I laughed, but Mr Wilde rebuked me with a look of surprise.
"'It is the public, not the play, that I desire to make a success,' he
said.
"'But I'm afraid I don't quite understand----'
"'The public makes a success when it realises that a play is a work of
art. On the three first nights I have had in London the public has been
most successful, and had the dimensions of the stage admitted of it, I
would have called them before the curtain. Most managers, I believe,
call them behind.'"
There are pages more of this sort of thing, and the earlier and
pretended interview in _Punch_ differs a little in period but very
little in manner from this real interview.
_Punch_ continued its gibes during the whole time of the first period.
Really witty parodies of Oscar Wilde's poems and plays appeared from
time to time. Pictures of him were drawn in caricature by well-known
artists. It was the same in almost every society. The band of
enthusiasts listened to the message, but gave more prominence to the
poses and extravagances which accompanied it. The message was obscured
and it was the fault of Oscar Wilde's eccentricity.
We are reaping the benefit of it all now, at present I am merely the
chronicler of opinion when the movement was in what the unobservant
thought was its heyday, but which has proved to be its infancy.
The chorus of dislike and mistrust was almost universal. At Oxford
itself, popularly supposed to be a stronghold of aestheticism at the
time, a debate on the question took place at the Union. A very
prominent undergraduate of the day, Mr J. A. Simon, of Wadham College,
reflected the bulk of Oxford opinion when he spoke as follows:--
"Mr J. A. Simon (Wadham) said he felt nervous, for it was an
extraordinary occasion for him to be on the side that would gain a
majority. He did not consider that the motion had at all the
meaning the mover gave it. He quite agreed with him as to the
advances made in the illustrated press, and other things, and that
many of these selected changes were good. The motion, however,
evidently referred to the movement headed by Oscar Wilde, and
represented by such things as the 'Yellow Book,' etc. He always
thought that the mover was most natural when he was on the stage
(applause) and they had all been given pleasure by his
impersonations (applause). He believed, though, that he had been
acting that night, and the speaker quoted from the speeches of
Bassanio passages which he considered described the way the mover
had led them off the scent. He intended to discuss the matter
seriously. As a book entitled 'Degeneracy' pointed out, the new
movement was the outcome of a craving for novelty, and the
absurdities in connection with it would do credit to a madhouse.
People were eccentric in the hope that they would be taken to be
original (applause). It was not a development at all; it was but a
jerk or twitching, the work of a moment. Oscar Wilde had actually
signed his name to a most awful pun, as those who had seen 'The
Importance Of Being Earnest' would understand. The writer's many
epigrams were doubtless clever, for next to pretending to be drunk,
pretending to be mad was the most difficult (applause). The process
was to turn a proverb upside down, and there was the epigram. Then
Aubrey Beardsley's figures, if they showed anything, showed
extraordinary development; they certainly were not delicate; in
fact, he should call them distinctly indelicate. For one thing,
such creatures never existed, and it was a species of art that was
absolutely imbecile. Oscar Wilde, though, had said that until we
see things as they are not we never really live. But all he could
say was that he hoped he should never live (applause). It was
really not art at all, for art was nearly allied to nature,
although Oscar Wilde said that the only connecting link was a
really well-made buttonhole. That sort of thing was the art of
being brilliantly absurd (applause). It was insignificant to lay
claim to manners on the ground of personal appearance; such were
not manners but mannerisms. Aubrey Beardsley's figures were but a
mannerism of this sort (applause). A development must be new and
permanent, and the pictures referred to were not new, for similar
ones could be found on the old Egyptian monuments (applause). This
cult were not even original individually, for where one led all the
rest followed. Oscar Wilde talked about a purple sin: the others
did the same. By-the-by, that remark was not original, for scarlet
sins had been mentioned in very early days; it was indeed all of it
but a resuscitation of what was old and had been long left behind
by the rest of the world (applause). The movement was not
permanent, as might be seen by the aesthetic craze of fifteen years
ago. Velvet coats and peacock feathers were dying out, and soon it
would not be correct to wear the hair long (laughter). It was but a
phase; if everyone were to talk in epigrams it would be
distinguished to talk sense. He was in a difficulty, for if he got
a large majority against the motion, to be in a minority was just
what would please the aesthetes most. Therefore, let as few vote
against as possible (laughter). To be serious, he considered that
true art should give pleasure and comfort to people who were in
trouble or down in the world, and who, he asked, would be helped by
the art of either Aubrey Beardsley or Oscar Wilde? (applause). In
conclusion, he would ask the House to give the movers the
satisfaction of having as few as possible voting for them
(applause)."
"_Ars longa est!_ All know what once that meant;
But cranks corrupt so sickeningly have shindied
About _their_ ART of late, 'tis evident
The rendering now must be, 'Art is long-winded!'
For _Vita brevis_,--all true men must hope,
Brief life for such base Art--and a short rope!"
said a popular rhyme of the time. It sums up average opinion and may
fittingly close this summary of it during the "AEsthetic" period.
We are forced to admit that the general misunderstanding was partially
due to the fashion in which the new doctrines were presented. The thing
was well worth saying, but it was not said seriously enough. It was a
lamentable mistake, but it helps us to understand a certain aspect of
Oscar Wilde: the man.
THE SECOND PERIOD
At the time in which what I have called the "second period" may be said
to have begun, Wilde was emerging from the somewhat obscuring influences
of the AEsthetic movement and was in a state of transition.
He was then editing a magazine known as _The Woman's World_, and doing
his work with a conscientiousness and sense of responsibility which
shows us another side of him and one which, to the sane, if limited,
English temperament is a singularly pleasant one. He had moaned, money
must be earned, and he earned it faithfully under a discipline. It is a
speculation not without interest when we wonder to what heights such a
man might not have risen if a discipline such as this had been more
continuous.
"Lord of himself, that heritage of woe," sang Lord Byron, well aware
from personal experience of the constant dangers, the almost certain
shipwreck that the life of perfect freedom has for such as he was, and
for such a temperament as Wilde's also.
Oscar was living in a beautiful house at Chelsea, and it is a remarkable
instance of how surely the first period had merged into the second when
we find that the decorations of his home were beautiful indeed, but not
much like those he had preached about and insisted on in his aesthetic
lectures and writings.
There was an utter lack of so-called aesthetic colouring in the house
where Mr and Mrs Wilde had made their home. The scheme consisted,
indeed, of faded and delicate brocades, against a background of white or
cream painting, and was French rather than English.
Rare engravings and etchings formed a deep frieze along two sides of the
drawing-room, and stood out on a dull-gold background, while the only
touches of bright colour in the apartment were lent by two splendid
Japanese feathers let into the ceiling, while, above the white, carved
mantelpiece, a gilt-copper bas-relief, by Donaghue, made living Oscar
Wilde's fine verses, "Requiescat."
Not the least interesting work of art in this characteristic
sitting-room was a quaint harmony in greys and browns, purporting to be
a portrait of the master of the house as a youth; a painting which was a
wedding present from Mr Harper Pennington, the American artist.
The house could boast of an exceptionally choice gallery of contemporary
art. Close to a number of studies of Venice, presented by Mr Whistler
himself, hung an exquisite pen-and-ink illustration by Walter Crane. An
etching of Bastien Le Page's portrait of Sarah Bernhardt contained in
the margin a few kindly words written in English by the great
tragedienne.
Mrs Oscar Wilde herself had strong ideas upon house decoration. She once
told an inquirer that "no one who has not tried them knows the value of
uniform tints and a quiet scheme of colouring. One of the most effective
effects in house decoration can be obtained by having, say, the
sitting-room pure cream or white, with, perhaps, a dado of six or seven
feet from the ground. In an apartment of this kind, ample colouring and
variety will be introduced by the furniture, engravings, and carpet; in
fact, but for the trouble of keeping white walls in London clean, I do
not think there can be anything prettier and more practical than this
mode of decoration, for it is both uncommon and easy to carry out. I am
not one of those," continued Mrs Wilde, "who believe that beauty can
only be achieved at considerable cost. A cottage parlour may be, and
often is, more beautiful, with its unconsciously achieved harmonies and
soft colouring, than a great reception-room, arranged more with a view
to producing a magnificent effect. But I repeat, of late, people, in
their wish to decorate their homes, have blended various periods,
colourings and designs, each perhaps beautiful in itself, but producing
an unfortunate effect when placed in juxtaposition. I object also to
historic schemes of decoration, which nearly always make one think of
the upholsterer, and not of the owner of the house."
In conjunction with her husband, Mrs Wilde had also thought out the
right place of flowers in the decoration of a house. She would say: "It
is impossible to have too many flowers in a room, and I think that
scattering cut blossoms on a tablecloth is both a foolish and a cruel
custom, for long before dinner is over the poor things begin to look
painfully parched and thirsty for want of water. A few delicate flowers
in plain glass vases produce a prettier effect than a great number of
nosegays, and yet, even though people may see that something is wrong,
many do not realise how easily a charming effect might be produced with
the same materials somewhat differently disposed.
"A Japanese native room, for example, is furnished with dainty
simplicity, and one flower and one pot supply the Jap's aesthetic longing
for decoration. When he gets tired of his flower and his pot, he puts
them away, and seeks for some other scheme of colour produced by equally
simple means."
Oscar Wilde now began to take a definite place in the English social
world. His wit, his brilliance of conversation, his singular charm of
manner all combined to render him a welcome guest, and in many cases a
valued friend, in circles where distinction of intellect and charm of
personality are the only passports. He began to make money and to
indulge a natural taste for profusion and splendour. Yet, let it be said
here, and said with emphasis, that greatly as he desired, and acquired,
the elegances of life, increasing fortune found him as kind and generous
as before. It is a known fact that he gave away large sums of money to
those less fortunate in the effort to make an income by artistic
pursuits. His purse was always open to the struggling and the unhappy
and his influence constantly exerted on their behalf.
Suddenly all London was captured by the brilliant modern comedies he
began to write. Success of the completest kind had arrived, the poet's
name was in everyone's mouth. Curiously enough it is the French students
of Wilde's career who have paid the most attention to Wilde in this
second period. The man of society, the witty talker, the maker of
epigrams--Wilde at his apogee just before his fall--this is the picture
on which the Latin psychologists have liked to dwell.
"In our days, the master of repartee and the after-dinner speaker
is foredoomed to forgetfulness, for he always stands alone, and to
gain applause has to talk down to and flatter lower-class
audiences. No writer of blood-curdling melodramas, no weaver of
newspaper novels is obliged to lower his talent so much as the
professional wit. If the genius of Mallarme was obscured by the
flatterers that surrounded him, how much more was Wilde's talent
overclouded by the would-be-witty, shoddy-elegant, and
cheaply-poetical society hangers-on, who covered him with incense.
We are told that the first attempts of the sparkling talker were by
no means successful in the Parisian salons.
"In the house of Victor Hugo, seeing he must wait to let the
veteran sleep out his nap whilst others among the guests slumbered
also, he made up his mind to astonish them. He succeeded, but at
what a cost! Although he was a verse writer, most sincerely devoted
to poetry and art, and one of the most emotional and sensitive and
tender-hearted amongst modern wielders of the pen, he succeeded in
gaining only a reputation for artificiality.
"We all know his studied paradoxes, his five or six continually
repeated tales, but we are tempted to forget the charming dreamer
who was full of tenderness for everything in nature."
Thus M. Charles Grolleau, and there is much in his point of view. The
writer of "The Happy Prince" and "The House of Pomegranates" is a
different person from the paradoxical _causeur_ who went cometlike
through a few London and Paris seasons before disappearing into the
darkness of space.
And it was the encouragement and applause bestowed upon Oscar Wilde
during the second period that not only confirmed him in his
determination to live as the complete _flaneur_, but which prevented
even sympathetic critics from appreciating his work at its true worth.
The late M. Hugues Rebell, who knew him fairly intimately, said of him:
"It is true that Mallarme has not written much, but all he has done
is valuable. Some of his verses are most beautiful, whilst Wilde
seemed never to finish anything. The works of the English aesthete
are very interesting, because they characterise his epoch; his
pages are useful from a documentary point of view, but are not
extraordinary from a literary standpoint. In the 'Duchess of
Padua,' he imitates Hugo and Sardou; the 'Picture of Dorian Gray'
was inspired by Huysmans; 'Intentions' is a _vade mecum_ of
symbolism, and all the ideas contained therein are to be found in
Mallarme and Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. As for Wilde's poetry, it
closely follows the lines laid down by Swinburne. His most original
composition is 'Poems in Prose.' They give a correct idea of his
home-chat, but not when he was at his best; that, no doubt, is
because the art of talking must always be inferior to any form of
literary composition. Thoughts properly set forth in print after
due correction must always be more charming than a finely sketched
idea hurriedly enunciated when conversing with a few disciples. In
ordinary table-talk we meet nothing more than ghosts of new-born
ideas foredoomed to perish. The jokes of a wit seldom survive the
speaker. When we quote the epigrams of Wilde, it is as if we were
exhibiting in a glass case a collection of beautiful butterflies,
whose wings have lost the brilliancy of their once gaudy colours.
Lively talk pleases, because of the man who utters it, and we are
impressed also by the gestures which accompany his frothy
discourse. What remains of the sprightly quips and anecdotes of
such celebrated _hommes d'esprit_ as Scholl, Becque, Barbey
d'Aurevilly! Some stories of the eighteenth century have been
transmitted to us by Chamfort, but only because he carefully
remodelled them by the aid of his clever pen."
Yet during all the time of his success, when he was receiving flattery
enough, celebrity enough, money enough to turn the head of a far
stronger-willed man than he was, there is abundant evidence of a
frequent aspiration after better things. Serene and lofty moods came to
him now and again and found utterance in his words or writings.
From the very beginning of his career he had been in the public eye. Now
he had, it seemed, come into his own. The years of ridicule and
misrepresentation, the years of the first period, were over and done
with. A real and solid popularity seemed to be his. Yet, just as he had
spoilt and obscured his aesthetic message by those eccentricities which
the Anglo-Saxon mind will not permit in anyone who comes professing to
teach it, so now Oscar Wilde was to spoil the triumphs of the second
period by a mental intoxication that led him step by step to ultimate
ruin and disgrace.
At this moment let us sum up the results at which we have arrived in the
study of this complex character. We are all of us complex, but Wilde was
more strangely compounded than the ordinary man in exact proportion as
his intelligence was greater and his power beyond the general measure.
This much and no more.
We have seen that the great fault of Wilde's career up to this period
was that of an unconquerable egoism. He was complex only because such
mighty gifts as those with which he was dowered were united to a
temperament naturally gracious, kindly, and that of a gentleman in the
best sense of the word, while both were obscured by a self-appreciation
and confidence which reached not only the heights of absurdity but
surely impinged upon the borders of mental failure. As he himself said
over and over again after his downfall, he had nobody but himself to
blame for it. Generous-hearted, free with all material things, kind to
the unfortunate, gentle to the weak--Oscar Wilde was all these things.
Yet, at the same time, he committed the most dreadful crimes against the
social well-being; without a thought of those his influence led into
terrible paths, without a thought of those nearest and dearest to him,
he deliberately imposed upon them a horror and a shame with an
extraordinary and almost unparalleled callousness and hardness of heart.
Bound up in the one man were the twin natures of an angel of light and
an angel of dark. It is the same with all men, but never perhaps in the
history of the world, certainly never in the history of literature, is
there to be found a contrast so astonishing. It is not for the writer
of this study to hold the balance and to say which part of his nature
predominated. Opinion about him is still divided into two camps, and
this book is a statement from which everyone can draw his own
conclusion, and does not attempt to do more than provide the materials
for doing so. Yet, the explanation of it all, if explanation there is,
seems simple enough. There was an extraordinary and abnormal divorce
between will-power and intelligence. Heavy indulgence grew and grew and
gradually obscured the finer nature until he imagined his will was
supreme and his wishes the only law. The royal intellect dominated the
soul and grew by what it fed on, until it unseated the reason, and Wilde
fell never to rise again, except only in his work.
At the end of the second period came the frightful exposure and scandals
which sent the author into prison. It is no part of this book to touch
upon these scandals or to do more than breathe the kindly hope that
Wilde was unconscious of what he did, and was totally incapable of
realising its enormity.
The third period, in this attempt at chronicling the various phases of
his life and temperament, might be said to have begun on the day of his
arrest, when his long agony and punishment were to begin. Greatly as he
deserved a heavy punishment, not so much as for what he did to himself
but because of the corrupting influence his life and association with
others had upon a large section of society, it is yet a moot point
whether he did not suffer for others and was made their scapegoat. The
true history of this terrible period cannot be written and never will be
written. Yet, those who know it in its entirety will say that Wilde bore
the penalty for the transgressions of many other people in addition to
the just punishment he received for his own.
Few nobler things can be said of any man than this. Let it be eternally
placed to his credit that he made no endeavour to lighten his own
punishment by implicating others. In more than one instance the betrayal
of a friend would undoubtedly have lessened the cumulative burden of the
indictment brought against him. He betrayed none of his friends.
THE THIRD PERIOD
This beautiful thread of brightness in the dark warp and woof of Wilde's
life at this moment must not be forgotten by those who would estimate
his character. It is one of the few relieving lights in the blackness
with which the third period opens. And yet, there is still something
that can be said for Wilde at this time which certainly provides the
student with another aspect of him. It is the way in which he met his
fate and was prepared to endure his punishment, although it would have
been simple for him to have avoided it. To avoid the consequences of
what he had done, inasmuch as the ruin of his career is concerned, was,
of course, impossible. That, indeed, was to be the heaviest part of his
penalty. Yet, had he so chosen, imprisonment and the frightful agony of
the two years need never have been his portion. A French critic writing
of him in the _Mercure de France_ takes an analytical view of this fact,
which I do not think is the true one, though, nevertheless, it is
interesting. He says: "Neither his own heedlessness nor the envious and
hypocritical anger of his enemies, nor the snobbish cruelty of social
reprobation were the true cause of his misfortunes. It was he himself
who, after a time of horrible anguish, consented to his punishment, with
a sort of supercilious disdain for the weakness of human will, and out
of a certain regard and unhealthy curiosity for the sportfulness of
fate. Here was a voluptuary seeking for torture and desiring pain after
having wallowed in every sensual pleasure. Can such conduct have been
due to aught else but sheer madness?"
That is all very well, but it does not bear the stamp of truth. It is
an interesting point of view and nothing more. The conduct of Wilde when
he at last came athwart the horror of his destiny, when he realised what
all the world realised, that he must answer for his sins before the
public justice of England, was not unheroic, nor without a fine and
splendid dignity. At this time I would much prefer to say, and all the
experiences of those around him confirm it, that Wilde knew that it was
his duty to himself to endure what society was about to mete out to him.
To say that he was a mere gloomy and jaded voluptuary who wished to
taste the pleasures of the most horrible and sordid pain, is surely to
talk something perilously like nonsense, though full of one of those
minute psychological presumptions so dear to a certain type of Latin
mind.
Let it be remembered that Oscar Wilde refused to betray his friends, and
in the light of that fact, let us see whether his motive for remaining
in England to "face the music," as his brother, William Wilde, expressed
it, was not something high and worthy in the midst of this hideous wreck
and bankruptcy of his fortune. A friend who was with him then, his
biographer, and a man of position in English letters, said that when the
subject of flight was discussed, he declared to Wilde that, in his
opinion, it was the best thing he could do, not only in his own
interests but in those of the public too. This self-sacrificing friend
offered to take all the responsibility of the flight upon his own
shoulders and to make all the arrangements for it being carried out.
It must be remembered that, at the time Wilde was out on bail, and it
has since been proved, with as much certainty as anything of the sort
can be proved, that he was not watched by the police, and that even
between the periods of his first and second trials, if he had secretly
left the country and sought a safe asylum on the Continent, everybody
would have felt relieved and the public would have been spared a
repetition of the horrors which had already filled the pages of the
newspapers to repletion. After the collapse of the action Oscar Wilde
brought against Lord Queensberry, he was allowed several hours before
the warrant for his arrest was executed in order that he might leave the
country. "But imitative of great men in their whims and fancies, he
refused to imitate the base in acts which he deemed cowardly. I do not
think he ever seriously considered the question of leaving the country,
and this, in spite of the fact that the gentleman who was responsible
for almost the whole of the bail, had said, 'it will practically ruin me
if I lose all that money at the present moment, but if there is a
chance, even after conviction, in God's name let him go.'"
Whatever Wilde's motive was for staying to "face the music," we cannot
deny that it was fine. Either he felt that he must endure the punishment
society was to give him because he had outraged the law of society, or
else he was unwilling to ruin the disinterested and noble-minded man--a
gentleman who had only the slightest acquaintance with him--who had
furnished the amount of his bail.
Let these facts be written to his credit and considered when the readers
of this memoir pass their judgment upon his character.
At the beginning of this third period public opinion which, but a short
time ago, had simply meant a chorus of public adulation, except for a
minority of people who either envied his successes or honestly
reprobated his attitude towards art and life, was now terribly bitter,
venomous, and full of spleen and hatred.
Society, however much society was disposed to deny the fact, had set up
an idol in their midst. It was partly owing to the senseless and
indiscriminate adulation of its idol that its foundations were
undermined and that it fell with so resonant a crash. When it was down
society assailed it with every ingenuity of reprobation and hatred that
it knew how to voice and use.
Nothing was too bad to be said about the erstwhile favourite who, let it
be remembered, was not yet adjudged guilty but who, if ever a man was,
was denied the application of the prime principle of English criminal
law, which says that every man accused is to be deemed innocent until
guilt has been proved against him. People gloated over the downfall.
When Wilde was first arrested and placed in Holloway, and before he was
admitted to bail, the more scurrilous portion of the press was full of
sickening pictures, both in line and words, of the fallen creature's
agony.
Contrasts were drawn by little pens dipped in venom, and the writer of
this memoir has in his possession a curious and saddening collection of
the screeds of those days, a collection which shows how innate the
principle of cruelty is still in the human mind despite centuries of
civilisation and the influence of the Cross, which forbids gladiators to
slay each other in the arena but allows a more subtle and terrible form
of savage sport than anything that Nero or Caligula ever saw or
promulgated.
It is unnecessary to quote largely from the productions which disgraced
the English press at this time. One single article will serve to prove
the point. Let those who read it learn tolerance from this mock sympathy
and cruel dwelling upon the tortures of one so recently high in public
popularity and esteem, still presumably innocent by English law, and yet
placed under the vulgar microscope of the morbid-minded and the lovers
of sensation at any cost.
"Figuratively speaking but yesterday Oscar Wilde was the man of the
hour, and to him, and him alone, we looked for our wit, our
epigrams, and our learned and interesting plays. But what a change!
To-day, Oscar Wilde, the wit, the epicure, is gone from his world,
and is languishing in a dreary cell in Holloway Prison. In short,
Mr Wilde, in a moment of weak-headedness, walked over the side of
the mountain of fame and fell headlong from its height to the
morass below, to lie there forgotten, neglected and abused.
"Yes, although I have little or no sympathy with Oscar Wilde I
cannot but help feeling for him in his altered circumstances. He is
a man who from his very infancy has been nursed in the lap of
luxury, and has systematically lived on the fat of the land. Mr
Wilde's residence in Tite Street was elegantly and luxuriously
furnished. His rooms at the Cadogan Hotel were all that comfort
could desire. His room, or rather cell, in Holloway Prison is
altogether undesirable, is badly furnished, ill-lighted, and
uncomfortable. Picture to yourself this change--yes, a change
effected within twenty-four hours--and then you can imagine what
the mental and physical sufferings of a man of the Oscar Wilde
temperament must be. It is in this sense alone that my sympathy
goes out towards him, and I feel as a man for another man who has
been suddenly snatched from the lap of indolent, free livelihood
and suddenly pitched foremost into the icelike crevasse of a
British prison cell.
"I will now describe in as few words as I possibly can, but with
absolute accuracy and detail, the cell in which Mr Wilde spends his
time and the manner in which he lives. The cell in which Oscar is
incarcerated is not an ordinary one--that is, it is not one that is
used by any condemned or ordinary prisoner under remand. The cell
is known in prison _parlance_ as a 'special cell,' for the use of
which a fee is payable to the authorities, and is the same one as
was occupied by a certain well-known Duchess some few months back
when she was committed by the Queen's Bench Judges for contempt of
court. The prison authorities only supply the 'cell,' the prisoner
himself has to find his own furniture, which he usually hires, by
the advice of one of the warders, from a local firm who have a
suite they keep for the use of this 'special cell' in Holloway.
When Mr Wilde arrived at the prison last Saturday week afternoon
this 'cell' was vacant. He promptly gave orders for the furniture
to be brought in, and in an incredibly short space of time the cell
was furnished, and the distinguished prisoner took possession of
his apartment. I will first describe the room, and then take one
typical day in the prison routine, which will clearly show the
kind of life that Mr Wilde is compelled to live.
"Now to the cell. The room is situated at the far end of the east
wing of the prison, and is entered from the long passage which runs
from the head warder's rooms past the convict cells, and terminates
at the door which protects Oscar from the common herd, and helps to
make him secure. The door is an ordinary prison cell door,
possessing spyholes and flaptrap, and large iron bars and locks.
The cell itself is about 10 ft. broad, 12 ft. long, and 11 ft.
high. The walls are not papered but whitewashed, and the light by
which the room is supplied is obtained through an iron-barred
window in the wall placed high up and well out of the prisoner's
reach. A small fireplace is also fixed securely at the end of the
room, but it is seldom lit, as the room is well heated by hot-water
pipes. Now to the furniture in the room. Just on the right-hand
side of the window is placed a table made of hard, white wood. No
cloth covers it, but at the back is placed a looking-glass, whilst
on the table itself is a water jug and a Bible. Near the table and
almost under the window is an arm-chair, in which Oscar spends most
of his time. But more of this anon. In the corner near the
fireplace is placed a small camp bedstead, which is so small that
it seems almost an impossibility that so massive a form as that of
Oscar could recline with any ease upon so small a space. No feather
bed is upon the iron supports, and the sleeper is compelled to
repose upon hard--probably too hard--mattresses. The bed is
supplied with sheets, blankets, and a cover quilt, made up of
patches of all colours of the rainbow. This quilt is not pretty,
and most considerably upsets the artistic being of a man like
Wilde. A small table on the other side of the room, another chair,
and a small metal washing stand, go to make up all the furniture
the room possesses. No carpet is on the floor, but the boards are
kept scrupulously clean. This I think briefly comprises a
description of Mr Wilde's residential and sleeping compartment. Now
to his daily routine and the life he is compelled to lead. He is
awakened by a warder at six o'clock, and whether he likes it or
not, is compelled to get up. After washing himself in cold
water--hot is not permitted--and using ordinary common soap, Mr
Wilde dresses himself, and to do him justice, he turns himself out
very neat and span considering he has no valet to wait upon him. At
seven o'clock one of the convicted prisoners enters Mr Wilde's
cell, cleans up the room, makes the bed, and generally tidies up
the place. For this service the prisoner receives 1s. per week, and
it usually takes him quite half-an-hour per day to get through his
work. Truly a munificent remuneration, but then prison
regulations, whenever reasonable, are on the side of liberality. At
half-past seven o'clock Wilde's breakfast, usually consisting of
tea, ham and eggs, or a chop, toast and bread and butter, arrives
from a well-known restaurant in Holloway. Of course Mr Wilde pays
for the food, and, within reason, can eat and drink what he
pleases.
"At nine o'clock Mr Wilde is compelled to leave his cell, and
proceed to the exercising yard of the prison, and for one hour he
is compelled to walk at regulation pace round a kind of tower
erected in the centre of the yard. After exercise the distinguished
prisoner returns to his cell, and the daily newspapers are brought
to him, for which he also pays. Mr Wilde sits during the time he is
in his cell in the chair by the window, and then reads his papers.
He, however, has moments of very low-spiritedness, and becomes
almost despondent in the moods. The sketch in this issue represents
him seated in his favourite chair, with a paper in his hand, and,
after an interview with his solicitor, Mr Wilde is very fond, when
his active brain is working too deeply, to push back his hair from
off his forehead and then leave the hand on the head, and, as if
staring into vacancy, sit for hours in this position thinking
deeply. But, to continue, at twelve o'clock Mr Wilde's lunch
arrives from the restaurant, for which he pays. It consists of a
cut off the joint, vegetables, cheese, and biscuits and water, or
one glass of wine. After lunch he is again taken to the exercise
ground for an hour, and then sent back to his cell. Still seated in
his chair, he still reads his papers, and thinks out improbable
problems. Sometimes one of his friends comes to see him. On these
occasions he brightens up, but after the visits of his solicitor he
is visibly very low-spirited and morose. At six o'clock Mr Wilde's
dinner--for which he pays--arrives. It consists usually of soup,
fish, joint, or game, cheese, and half-a-pint of any wine he
chooses to select. The dinner finished, Mr Wilde sits again in his
chair, and the agony he endures at not being allowed even a whiff
at his favourite cigarette must to him be agony indeed. At eight
o'clock a warder enters his room and places a lamp on the table to
light the room. At nine o'clock the same warder again enters the
room and gives Oscar five minutes to undress himself and get into
bed. He complies willingly but with a sigh. When he is safely in
bed the warder removes the lamp, bolts and locks the door, and
leaves Oscar to sleep or remain awake thinking, just as he pleases.
Oscar, however, does not sleep much. He is out of bed most of the
night, and in unstockinged feet paces the room in apparently not
too good a mood. Yes, poor Oscar, I do pity you."
So much for popular kindness!
The trial, at which the accused man was admitted by everyone to have
comported himself with a dignity and resignation that had nothing of
that levity and occasional pose which must be allowed to have
characterised his attitude during the two former ordeals, came to a
close. Wilde was sentenced to prison for two years' hard labour.
During the trial, of course, no comment was permissible, though there
were not wanting some papers who committed contempt of court. When,
however, the sentence had been pronounced and Wilde as a man with a
place in society--I am using the word society here not in its limited
but its economic sense--had ceased to exist, then the thunders of the
important and influential journals were let loose.
_The Daily Telegraph_ which, to do it justice, had never been
sympathetic to Wilde in his days of prosperity and fame, came out with a
most weighty and severe condemnation. The article, from which I am about
to quote an extract, certainly represented the opinion of the country at
the time--as _The Daily Telegraph_ has nearly always represented the
mass of opinion of the country at any given moment. To the sympathisers
with Wilde this article will seem unnecessarily cruel and severe. But to
those who have taken into account the best that has been written herein
about him during this terrible third period, and who have realised that
the writer simply states facts and does not desire to comment on them,
the article will seem only a natural and dignified expression of a truth
which was hardly controvertible.
"No sterner rebuke could well have been inflicted on some of the
artistic tendencies of the time than the condemnation on Saturday
of Oscar Wilde at the Central Criminal Court. We have not the
slightest intention of reviewing once more all the sordid incidents
of a case which has done enough, and more than enough, to shock the
conscience and outrage the moral instincts of the community. The
man has now suffered the penalties of his career, and may well be
allowed to pass from that platform of publicity which he loved into
that limbo of disrepute and forgetfulness which is his due. The
grave of contemptuous oblivion may rest on his foolish ostentation,
his empty paradoxes, his insufferable posturing, his incurable
vanity. Nevertheless, when we remember that he enjoyed a certain
popularity among some sections of society, and, above all, when we
reflect that what was smiled at as insolent braggadocio was the
cover for, or at all events ended in, flagrant immorality, it is
well, perhaps, that the lesson of his life should not be passed
over without some insistence on the terrible warning of his fate.
Young men at the universities, clever sixth-form boys at public
schools, silly women who lend an ear to any chatter which is
petulant and vivacious, novelists who have sought to imitate the
style of paradox and unreality, poets who have lisped the language
of nerveless and effeminate libertinage--these are the persons who
should ponder with themselves the doctrines and the career of the
man who has now to undergo the righteous sentence of the law. We
speak sometimes of a school of Decadents and AEsthetes in England,
although it may well be doubted whether at any time its prominent
members could not have been counted on the fingers of one hand;
but, quite apart from any fixed organisation or body such as may or
may not exist in Paris, there has lately shown itself in London a
contemporary bias of thought, an affected manner of expression and
style, and a few loudly vaunted ideas which have had a limited but
evil influence on all the better tendencies of art and literature.
Of these the prisoner of Saturday constituted himself a
representative. He set an example, so far as in him lay, to the
weaker and the younger brethren; and, just because he possessed
considerable intellectual powers and unbounded assurance, his
fugitive success served to dazzle and bewilder those who had
neither experience nor knowledge of the principles which he
travestied, or of that true temple of art of which he was so
unworthy an acolyte. Let us hope that his removal will serve to
clear the poisoned air, and make it cleaner and purer for all
healthy and unvitiated lungs."
It was the duty of a great journal to say what it said. Yet,
nevertheless, a certain wave of sorrow seemed to pass over the press
generally, and hostile comment on the _debacle_ was not unmingled with
regret for the unhappy man himself. The doctrines he was supposed to
have preached to the world at large were sternly denied and thundered
against. His own fate was, in the majority of cases, treated with a
sorrowful regret.
Yet, nobody realised at all that in condemning what was supposed to be
the teaching and doctrine of Oscar Wilde, they were condemning merely
supposititious deduction from his manner of life, which could not be in
the least substantiated by any single line he had ever written.
All through this first part of the book I have insisted upon the fact
that the man's life and the man's work should not be regarded as
identical. To-day, as I write, that attitude has taken complete
possession of the public mind. As was said in the first few pages of the
memoir, the whole of Europe is taking a sympathetic and intelligent
interest in the supreme art of the genius who produced so many beautiful
things. The public seems to have learned its lesson at last, but at the
beginning of what I have called the third period it was unable to
differentiate between the criminal, part of whose life was shameful, and
the artist, all of whose works were pure, stimulating, and splendid. I
quote but a few words from the printed comments upon Wilde's downfall.
They are taken from the well-known society paper _Truth_, and the writer
seems to strike only a note of wonder and amazement. The horrible fact
of Wilde's conviction had startled England, had startled the writer, and
a writer by no means unsympathetic in effect, into the following
paragraphs:--
"For myself, I turned into the Lyceum for half-an-hour, just to
listen, when the performance was actually stopped by the great
shout of congratulation that welcomed the first entrance of 'Sir
Henry.' Yet, through all these cheers I seemed to hear the dull
rumble of the prison van in which Oscar Wilde made his last
exit--to Holloway. While the great actor-manager stood in the
plenitude of position bowing and bowing again, to countless friends
and admirers, again there rose before my eyes the last ghastly
scene at the Old Bailey--I heard the voice of the foreman in its
low but steady answer, 'Guilty,' 'Guilty,' 'Guilty,' as count after
count was rehearsed by the clerk. I heard again that last awful
admonition from the judge. I remembered how there had flitted
through my mind the recollection of a night at St James's, the
cigarette, and the green carnation, as the prisoner, broken,
beaten, tottering, tried to steady himself against the dock rail
and asked in a strange, dry, ghostlike voice if he might address
the judge. Then came the volley of hisses, the prison warders, the
rapid break-up of the Court, the hurry into the blinding sunshine
outside, where some half-score garishly dressed, loose women of the
town danced on the pavement a kind of carmagnole of rejoicing at
the verdict. 'He'll 'ave 'is 'air cut regglar _now_,' says one of
them; and the others laughed stridently. I came away. I did not
laugh, for the matter is much too serious for laughter.
"The more I think about the case of Oscar Wilde, my dear Dick, the
more astounding does the whole thing seem to me. So far as the man
himself is concerned, it would be charitable to assume that he is
not quite sane. Without considering--for the moment--the moral
aspect of the matter, here was a man who must have known that the
commission of certain acts constituted in the eye of the Law a
criminal offence. But no thought of wife or children, no regard, to
put it selfishly, for his own brilliant prospects, could induce him
to curb a depraved appetite which led him--a gentleman and a
scholar--to consort with the vilest and most depraved scum of the
town."
Although, as I have said, printed comment was in one way reserved and
not ungenerous, the public and spoken comment on the case was utterly
and totally cruel. Those readers who remember the period of which I am
writing will bear me witness as to the universal chorus of hatred which
rose and bubbled all over the country.
This was natural enough.
One cannot expect mob law to be tolerant or to understand the myriad
issues and influences which go to make up any given event. The public
was right from its own point of view in all it said. To give instances
from personal recollection or the personal recollection of others of
this terrible shout of condemnation and hatred would be too painful for
writer and reader alike.
While in prison Oscar Wilde wrote his marvellous book "De Profundis."
The reader will find that work very fully dealt with in its due place in
this work. It is not, therefore, necessary to say very much about it in
this first part of the volume which I have headed "Oscar Wilde: the
Man." It may not be out of place, however, to say that grave doubts were
thrown upon the truth of the statement that the book was written in
prison. Upon its publication rumours were circulated that the author
wrote "De Profundis" at his ease in Paris or in Naples, and finally the
rumours crystallised in a letter which was sent to _The St James's
Gazette_, the gist of which was as follows:--
"I have very strong doubts that it was written in prison, and the
gentleman who asserts that he received the MSS. before the
expiration of the sentence in Reading Gaol ought to procure a
confirmatory testimony to a proceeding which is contrary to all
prison discipline. If there is one thing more strictly carried out
than another it is that a prisoner shall not be allowed to handle
pen, ink, and paper, except when he writes the letter to his
friends, which, until the Prison Act, 1899, was once every three
months. Each prisoner can amuse himself with a slate and pencil,
but not pen and ink. It is now, and was, absolutely forbidden by
the prison authorities.
"As was seen in Adolf Beck's case, where nine petitions appear in
the Commissioner's Report (Blue Book), a prisoner's liberty,
fortune, reputation, and life may be at stake, but he must tell his
story on two and a half sheets of foolscap. Not a scrap of paper is
allowed over the regulation sheets. In a local prison Oscar Wilde
could apply for the privilege of a special visit or a letter, and
probably would receive it, but as the official visitors of
prisoners are simply parts of a solemn farce, and there is no such
stereotyped method as giving a prisoner the slightest relief in
matters affecting the intellect, I have grave doubts that such
facilities were given as supplying pen, ink and paper to write 'De
Profundis.'
"If it was otherwise the following process would have had to be
gone through, either an application to the official prison visitor
(possibly Major Arthur Griffiths) for leave to have pen, ink and
paper in his cell, which would be refused. By the influence of
friends, or the statement of his solicitors that they required
special instructions in reference to some evidence, his case, or
his property, leave might be granted, but not for journalistic or
literary purposes. Had Oscar Wilde's sentence been that of a
'first-class misdemeanant' he could have had those privileges, but
I never heard that his sentence was mitigated in this respect.
"Or, he might have applied to the visiting magistrates. In either
case there would be a record of such facilities, and the Governor
of Reading Gaol, the chaplain, and other officials can satisfy the
public as well as the Prison Commissioners. If the book was written
in prison then it is clear the officials made a distinction between
Oscar Wilde and other prisoners.
"There is some glamour about books written in prisons. The
'Pilgrim's Progress' is a prison book, but Bedford Gaol was a
pretty easy dungeon. Under the old _regime_ such men as William
Corbett, Orator Hunt, and Richard Carlile, conducted their polemic
warfare in prison. The last Chartist leader (the late Mr Ernest
Jones) used to tell how he wrote the 'Painter of Florence' and
other poems in a London gaol while confined for sedition. It was a
common subject of conversation with his young disciples how, as ink
was denied in Coldbath Street Prison, he made incisions in his arm
and wrote his poetry in his own blood. We believed it then, but as
we grew older that feeling of doubt made us sceptical. Thomas
Cooper's prison rhyme, the 'Purgatory of Suicides,' and his novel,
the 'Baron's Yule Feast,' were written during his two years'
imprisonment in Stafford Gaol for preaching a 'universal strike' as
a means of establishing a British Republic.
"As 'De Profundis' is likely to be a classic, is it not as well to
have this question thrashed out at the beginning and not leave it
to the twenty-first century?"
The editor of "De Profundis" replied in a short letter saying, in
effect, that he was not concerned to add anything to his definite
statement in the preface of the book, a course with which everyone will
be in agreement. To answer a busybody throwing doubts upon the statement
of an honourable gentleman is a mistake. The matter, however, went a
little further and was eventually set finally at rest.
In _The Daily Mirror_ a facsimile of a page of the manuscript written on
prison paper was reproduced, and Mr Hamilton Fyfe accompanied the
letterpress by informing the public that he had seen the whole of the
manuscript of "De Profundis." It was written on blue foolscap paper with
the prison stamp on the top. There were about 60,000 words, of which
altogether not more than one-third were published in the English
edition. The explanation of the fact that the prisoner was allowed to
write in his cell is perfectly simple.
Oscar Wilde handed this roll of paper to Mr Robert Ross on the day of
his release, and gave him absolute discretion as to printing it. He had
written most of it during the last three months of his two years'
sentence. It was during the last half-year of his term that Wilde was
allowed the special privilege of writing as much as he pleased. His
friends represented to the Home Office that a man who had been
accustomed to use his brain so continually was in danger of having his
mind injured by being unable to write for so long a time as two years.
Dr Nicholson, of Broadmoor, who was consulted on the point, said he
thought this danger was quite a real one. So the necessary permission
was given, and Wilde could write whatever he liked.
Later on the prison regulations were relaxed again. As a rule, prisoners
are not allowed to take away with them what they have written in their
cells. Strictly, the MS. of "De Profundis" ought to have remained among
the archives of Reading Gaol.
The authorities realised, however, that to enforce this rule in Wilde's
case would have been harsh and unreasonable, so when (in order to defeat
the intentions of the late Lord Queensberry and his hired bullies) he
was removed from Reading to Wandsworth Prison, on the evening before his
release he took the MS. with him; and he had it under his arm when he
left the gloomy place next morning a free man.
This statement, and the facsimile printed above, should make it
impossible henceforward for anyone to suggest, as many have been
suggesting quite recently, that there is any doubt about the whole of
the book having been written by Oscar Wilde during the time he was in
prison.
The development of Oscar Wilde during his incarceration has, of course,
been summed up and stated for all time by himself in the marvellous
pages of "De Profundis." Yet, there are various accounts of that time of
agony which do but go to show what a really purifying and salutary
influence even the awful torture he underwent had upon the unhappy man.
By those who knew him in prison he is described as living a life which,
in its simple resignation, its kindly gentleness, its sweetness of
demeanour, was the life of a saint. No bitterness or harsh word ever
escaped him. When opportunity occurred of doing some tiny and furtive
kindness that kindness was always forthcoming. Those who rejoiced at the
fact of Wilde's imprisonment may well pause now when the true story of
it has filtered through various channels and is generally known. He
himself told Monsieur Andre Gide a strange and pathetic story of those
silent, unhappy hours.
He speaks of one of the Governors under whose rule he lay in durance,
and says that this gentleman imposed needless suffering upon his unhappy
charges, not because of any inherent cruelty or contravention of the
rules for prison discipline, but because he was entirely lacking in
imagination.
On one occasion, during the hour allowed for exercise, a prisoner who
walked behind Wilde upon the circular pathway of the yard addressed him
by name, and told him that he pitied him even more than he pitied
himself, because his sufferings must be greater than his. Such a sudden
word of sympathy from an unknown fellow-convict gave the poor poet an
exquisite moment of pleasure and pain. He answered him appropriately
with a word of thanks. But one of the warders had been a witness of the
occasion, and the matter was reported to the Governor. Two convicts had
been guilty of the outrage of exchanging a few words. The unknown
convict was taken first before the Governor. It is a prison regulation
that the punishment is not the same for the man who speaks first and the
man who answers him. The first offender has to pay a double penalty. The
Convict X., when before the Governor, stated that he was the culprit and
that he had spoken first. When afterwards Wilde was taken before the
martinet, he very naturally told him that he himself was the principal
offender. The Governor stated that he was unable to understand the
matter at all. He grew red and uneasy, and told Wilde that he had
already given X. fifteen days' solitary confinement. He then stated that
as Wilde had also confessed to be the principal offender he should award
him fifteen days' solitary confinement also!
This touching incident shows both Wilde and the unknown convict in a
noble light, but the gentle way in which Oscar told of the incident to
the French journalist is even a greater tribute to the innate dignity of
his character, so long obscured by the exigencies of his life, so
beautifully laid bare when he had paid his debt to society.
There are other anecdotes extant which confirm the above. All go to show
that the third period brought out the finest traits in Wilde's
character. We have in this period another and most touching side of the
complex temperament of this great genius, this extraordinary and unhappy
man. Much will have to be said on this point when the criticism of "De
Profundis" is reached.
Meanwhile, I close the "third period" with a sense that here, at
anyrate, there is nothing to be said which is not wholly fragrant and
redolent of sincerity.
THE FOURTH PERIOD
It is with a sense of both reluctance and relief that I enter upon a
short account of the fourth period, insomuch as this or that incident
during it throws a light upon the character of him of whom we speak.
With a relief, because it is a far happier and more gracious task to
endeavour to criticise and appreciate the literary works of a great
genius than it is to chronicle facts in the life of a most unhappy man
which may help to elucidate the puzzle of his personality.
With reluctance, because the fourth period is again one of almost
unadulterated gloom and sadness. I shall be as brief as possible, and
too much already has been written about the last days of Oscar Wilde
after his release from prison.