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TRANSFERRED TO HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY ^3Yf 3 .3^./OS- P^=^ I S I! i LIBIV^Ry OF THE I HARYAIVP UNION AGIFT IN-MEMOK>'OF RpBERT- FIELDS SIMES A-B>iae5< LL-B'AXO-A-M-issa i 1901 S ^i?S Ktiiw £^g^ TRANSFERRED TO HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY THE LIFE OF OSCAR WILDE By ROBERT HARBOROUGH SHERARD WiiA a Full ReprnU of the Jamous Revolutionary ' Article, "Jada Alea EH" which mu written bjf Jane Francetca Elgee, who afterwards became the mother of Oscar Wilde, and an addiiional Chapter con- tributed by one of the Prison- Warders, who held this Unhapw Man in Gaol ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS, FAC SIMILE LETTERS, AND OTHER DOCUMENTS MITCHELL KENNERLEY NEW YORK 1906 zo M ^'b'i^h.Ka- \o^ HARVARD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY TO T. M. WHO, IN THB BXTRSMB OP ADVBRSITY, PROVKO HIMSELF THB TBUB PEIBND OF AW UNHAPPY MAN THIS BOOK 18 DEDICATED " The heroes of literary as well as civil history have been veiy often no less remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they have achieved; and volumes have been written only to enumerate the miseries of the learned, and relate their un- happy lives and untimely deaths. "To these mournful narratives, I am about to add the life of .. . a man whose writings entitle him to an eminent rank in the classes of learning, and whose misfortunes claim a degree of compassion not always due to the unhappy, as they were often the consequences of the crimes of others rather than his own." De Samubl Johnson. Preface Tee extract from the introductory passage of Dr Johnson's "Life of Richard Savage" which appears on one of the fly-leaves of this book sets forth in a manner singularly appropriate the impression which is produced on every thinking head and feeling heart by a contemplation of the career ol Oscar Wilde. Who, that follows his ascension to that " eternity of fame/* of which he speaks in " De Profundis/' and watches his sudden and head- long fall^ will not echo those further words of that great, good Dr Johnson, of whom it may be said that had his Uke been Uving, at the time of Wilde's catastrophe, the whole after-story of ^^de's Ufe would assuredly have been a less pitiful one. " That affluence and power, advantages ex- trinsic and adventitious, and therefore easily separable from those by whom they are pos- sessed, should very often flatter the mind with expectations of felicity which they cannot give, raises no astonishment : but it seems rational to hope that intellectual greatness should pro- duce better effects ; that minds qualified for vii Preface great attainments should first endeavour their own benefit ; and that they who are most able to teach others the way to happiness should^ with most certainty, follow it themselves/' At the same time this must not be taken to convey that any close comparison can be in- stituted between Richard Savage and Oscar Wilde, either in point of capacity and perform- ance, or of character, or indeed, except in re- spect of their vicissitudes, of career. It may, however, be of literary interest to observe one or two point^of similitude in the characters of these twtfmen^ One reads of Richard Savage as to his choice of friends : " His time was spent in prison for the most part in study, or in receiving visits ; but some- times he diverted himself with the conversation of criminals ; for it was not pleasing to him to be much without company ; and though he was very capable of a judicious choice, he was often contented with the first that offered." It will be seen in the course of this book that even in prison Oscar Wilde took pleasure in the society and conversation of criminals. " The smaller natures and the meaner minds" still appealed to him, and he underwent punishment rather than forego their whispered exchange of words. And it will further be seen in the narrative viii Prefeicc of his prison life how truly it might be written of him what Dr Johnson wrote of Savage : "... But here, as in every other scene of his life, he made use of such opportunities as oc- curred to him of benefiting those who were more miserable than himself, and was always ready to perform any office of humanity to his fellow- prisoners.** And, generally, of both it is equally true, that : '' Whatever was his predominant incUnation, neither hope nor fear hindered him from com- plying with it ; nor had opposition any other effect than to heighten his ardour, and irritate his vehemence." With equal appositeness can the moral which Dr Johnson draws from his narrative be ap- plied to this story also : " This relation will not be wholly without its use, if those who languish under any part of his sufferings shall be enabled tq fortify their patience by reflecting that they feel only those aflBictions from which his abilities did not exempt him ; or those who, in confidence of superior capacities or attainments, disregarded the common maxims of Ufe, shall be reminded that nothing will supply the want of prudence ; and that negligence and irregularity long con- tinued will make knowledge useless, wit ridicu- lous, and genius contemptible." It is not, indeed, to point afresh this moral is Preface that the present book has been written. The age desiderates no such lessons, resents them rather. Life is to-day ordered by a reconcilement of inclination and interest with the requirements of the written and unwritten laws. He sets out on a futile task who seeks to teach conduct from example however striking, for our present in- dividualism will brook no such guidance. The purpose of this book is another and a threefold one. It is to give an authoritative record of the career of a remarkable man, of remarkable gifts and achievements; it is to give an account of the author's books and other works to that large section of the world which ignores his writings, which, Uke ninety-nine out of every htmdred Frenchmen, for instance, has heard of his at- tainder, but knows nothing of bis distinction ; it is further to remove the false impressions, the misstatements of fact, the lying rumours, which, although the grave in Bagneux churchyard closed upon him only one bare lustre since, have gathered roimd his name and story in a cloud of misrepresentation of astonishing magnitude. It is, indeed, this last purpose which may be allowed to plead the opportunity of the present pubUcation. It is now not too late to establish fact, to refute falsehood and to present a story freed from the supercharges of error or of maUce. These floating rumours have not yet had the time to come together, to coagulate, and to Preface ciystallise. Rumour can yet be unmasked as rumour^ legend has not yet hardened into history, posthumous pasquinade has not yet dried on the tombstone. It was one of the dead wit's sayings that of all the disciples of a man it is always Judas who writes his biography. In the present instance this paradox has less truth than ever. The writer was in no sense the disciple of Oscar Wilde ; he was indeed as strongly antagonistic to most of his principles, ethical, artistic, and philosophical, as he was warmly disposed to him for his many endearing qualities and captivating graces. His qualifications arise from the facts that for the period of sixteen years preceding Oscar Wilde's death he was intimately ac- quainted with him, that his friendship with him —of which elsewhere a true record exists — ^was continuous, and uninterrupted save by that act of God which puts a period to all human com- panionships, that he was with him at times when all others had withdrawn, and that for the very reason that he was not in sympathy with any of the affectations which towards others Oscar Wilde used to assimie, the man as he truly was, the man as God and Nature had made him, was perhaps better known to him than to most of his other associates. The method of treatment which was adopted in that earUer record, to which reference has been made above, being no longer Preface imperative here, has been abandoned, with all the more alacrity on the part of the author that he has ever been in complete concordance with the general preference of objective to subjective treatment in the matter of biography. To-day, what three years ago was utterly impossible, he may 5aeld to his own incUnations, because to-day it has become admissible that a biography of Oscar Wilde can be written and made public. The writer has no longer to seek how to arouse interest in his subject through the graduated emotions of curiosity, pity, amazement and sympathy. It is open to him to record facts, without having to paUiate the offence of so re- cording them by an exposition of their incidence upon others. The upward cUmb, the attain- ment, the joys of conquest, the catastrophe, the precipitation, and the horrors of the abyss may now be depicted upon his canvas in plain fashion. The reader shall see them as they were ; he shaU no longer be coaxed by a cimning ehcitation of his sympathy for the teller of the story to Usten to a tale against which prejudice, the voice of pubUc opinion, and his own con- ception of what it is seemly and expedient for him to hear are ever prompting him to close his ears. Robert Harborough Sherard. January 14IA, 1906. zii CONTENTS Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter Cbapxer Charter yii Chapter viii Chapter Chapter Chapter Chapter xii Chapter xiii Chapter xiv Chapter xv Chapter xvi Chapter xnt Chapter xtiii ^^''ttMDIX BtlUOGRAPBY hutx I II III IV ▼1 IX X XI I 30 63 83 lOI "S '59 192 224 266 282 314 347 370 386 403 427 449 46s xui List of Illustrations Reading Gaol . . . . Fadngpagt '377 Paul Adam . . . . . 1 403 MONS. DUPOIRIXR . . . . 1 417 Bedroom in the Hotel d'Alsace . f 419 Bill at the Hotel d'Alsace •» 4«i Death Certificate — Oscar Wilde n 4*3 Madame Dupoirisr . »i 4*5 Oscar Wilde's Grave rt 4*6 XVI The Life of Oscar Wilde CHAPTER I Tbe Neoewty of carefully tradng Oscar V^ilde's Descent — ^The Raal Date of his Birth— Ptobable Cause of the Error— His Admiwion to fiCr Carson — ^His Distinguished Kinships — His Early Tastes — Early Successes — Alcohol as a Preserver of life — ^PoastUe Consequences of a Dangerous Delusion — William Wilde's Skill as a Surgeon— "The Man whose Throat he Cut " — ^Another Famous Operation — ^The Voyage of Th$ Crusad$r—A Successful First Book— His First Professional Earnings — ^What he did with them — He Fannds a Hospital — His Noble Charity — The Royal Victoria Ejre and Ear Hospital — Honours and Knight- hood— As a Land-Owner — ^His Literary Labours — ^Tri- boles to his Surgical Skill— "The Father of Modem Otology*'— A Wile's Recognition— Other Traits of his Character. When Nature has bountifully endowed a man with every gracious gift which shoidd ensure for faiin success and felicity in Ufe ; when she has made him the fit subject for the boundless admiration or the unrestrained envy of his con- temporaries, and when this favoured and fortim- ate man suddenly discloses leanings, propensities, nstincts, which, rapidly developing into passions he appears utterly powerless to bridle, precipitate him amidst the exuberant exultation of his The Life of Oscar Wilde enemies and the stone-eyed dismay of his friends into an abyss of disgrace and misery, it becomes more particularly the duty of an equitable bio- grapher to inquire if either heredity, or parental example, or early training and environment can in any degree help the world to understand the formidable ph3rsiological problem, how in one and the same man can be aUied, supreme in- teUigence with reckless imprudence, a remark- able respect for society with an utter defiance of social observances, and the most refined hedonism with a taste for the coarsest frequent- ations. In the case of Oscar Wilde, the problem, when his descent and kinship have been studied, becomes even more intricate and perplexing. For while in his immediate parentage will be discovered people whose incontestable genius was imited, as is so often the case, with pro- nounced moral degeneracy, his ascending Unes, traced back to remote generations, display such solid qualities of sane normahty and civic excellence, that this tmhappy man's aberration must appear one of those malignant, morbid developments which alarm and confound the psychologist when they unexpectedly produce themselves in a man's mentaUty, no less than as by the sudden development in the body of The Life of Oscar Wilde malignant and morbid growths the practitioner is confounded and alarmed. It therefore becomes necessary, before pro- ceeding to the account of the strange vicissitudes of his Ufe^ to investigate with more than usual care^ his descent and afi&nities. In this way akme can it be hoped that some hght may be thrown upon the disquieting problem which his career discloses. It is an investigation, which, when the laws of atavism shall, with the progress of science^ be better understood, may enable an enlightened posterity to judge a most remarkable man, in many wa3rs an ornament to humanity, with the justice which was refused to him in his lifetime, and will continue to be refused to his memory as long as the mediaeval obscurantism, from which we are only just beginning to emerge, still enswathes the minds of men. So important is the object to be attained by this investigation — for what purpose can tran- scend the attainment of justice ? — ^that if in its com:se personal considerations are ousted, and the pious reverence due to the dead may appear to be disregarded, these sacrifices cannot but be considered as imperatively imposed. Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was bom at No. i Merrion Square, in the city of Dub- lin, on the i6th October 1854. So great a part 3 The Life of Oscar WUde of the task of telling the story of his life consists in correcting the mistakes of those who have written about him, in refuting imf air aspersions on his character, and in nailing venomous Ues to the counter of pubUc opinion, that particular attention may be called to the date of his birth. In such biographical notices of him as exist, the year in which this unhappy man was ushered into a world where he was to suffer so greatly is given as 1856. He was not bom in 1856, but two years earUer. As this narrative proceeds negations of far greater importance will have to be put upon record. His Ufe, indeed, Uke that of many men who have been made the victims of the unreasoning hatred of his countr5mien, might be almost told in a series of denials of cur- rent lies concerning his character and his deeds. As to the particular inaccuracy, however, to which attention is drawn above, it probably arose from his own misstatement. He professed an adoration for youth ; his works contain many almost rhapsodical eulogies of physical and mental inunaturity; and no doubt that as he himself drew nearer to what he satirised in his plays as " the usual age," he gave as the year of his birth a date which made him appear two years younger than he really was. A friend of his, on one occasion, endeavoured to point out 4 The Life of Oscar Wilde to him that a man might derive far greater satisfaction in giving out his age as more ad- vanced than it really was^ in posturing as old in years while yowiger in fact, in hugging to his heart the secret reserve of days. But he refused to admit it. In his cross-examination by Mr Carson during the trial of Lord Queensberry he was forced to admit the truth as to the date of his birth. The following remarks were then exchanged between the prosecutor and the Marquess's coimsel : •' Mr Carson : ' You stated your age as thirty- nine. I think you are over forty ? ' **The Witness : ' I am thirty-nine or forty. You have my birth-certificate and that setties the matter.' ** Mr Carson : ' You were bom in 1854 — that makes you over forty ? ^ "The Witness: 'Ahl'" This " Ah I " sounded like a sarcastic note of admiration for the barrister's skill in arithmetic. How it was calculated to wound the defending counsel will be indicated later. For months before Oscar Wilde was bom his mother had eamestiy desired that the child should be a girl.^ She often expressed her con- * This tact, like every other fact recorded in this book, is OQ nnimpeschable authority. S The Life of Oscar Wilde viction that a daughter was going to be bom to her. She used to tell friends of the things slie was going to do " after my little girl is bom," and used to discuss the education she proposed to give to her daughter. When Oscar was bom, her disappointment was great. She refused to admit that her new child was a boy. She used to treat him, to speak of him as a girl, and as long as it was possible to do so, she dressed him like one. To pathologists these facts will appear of importance. Oscar Wilde was the second son and child, issue of the marriage between William Robert Wills Wilde, ocuhst and otologist (1815-1876), and of Jane Francesca Elgee, poetess and pam- phleteer (1826-1896), which was celebrated in DubUn in 1851. For his parents he ever felt the deepest af- fection and respect. For his mother in parti- cular this affection reached the degree of vener- ation. In filial piety and love he gave a noble example to himianity. The feelings which he entertained towards his mother and father are expressed in language of lofty eloquence in the book, " De Profundis," which he wrote while a prisoner in Reading Gaol, during the last six months of his confinement there. He has referred to his mother's death, and he adds : 6 The Life of Oscar Wilde " No one knew how deeply I loved and honoured her. Her death was terrible to me ; but I, once a lord of language^ have no words in which to express my anguish and my shame. She and my father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured^ not merely in hterature, art, archaeology, and science, but in the pubUc history of my own coimtry, in its evolution as a nation. I had disgraced that name eternally. I had made it a low byword among low people. I had dragged it through the very mire. I had given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to foes that they might turn it into a s3nionym for folly. What I suffered then, and still suffer, is not for pen to write, or paper to record. My wife, alwa3rs kind and gentle to me, rather than that I should hear the news from indifferent Ups, travelled, ill as she was, all the way from Genoa to England to break to me herself the tidings of so irreparable, so irredeemable, a loss.'' Mr WiUiam Wilde (afterwards. Sir WiUiam Wilde), the surgeon, was a product of that tntermixture of races in Ireland of which, speak- ing at a meeting of the British Association held in Belfast, he said : '' I think that there cannot be a better fusion of races than that of the Saxon with the Celt." His grandfather, Ralph Wilde, 7 The Life of Oscar WUde was the son of a Durham business-man^ and to- wards the middle of the eighteenth century was sent over to Ireland to seek his fortunes. The region which was selected for him for the exer- cise of his abiUty was that Connaught which Cromwell's soldiers described as the alternative to Hell^ . . Here, after a while, he became land-agent to the Sandford family. He settled in Castlerea, in the county of Roscommon, where he married a Miss O'Flyn, the daughter of a very ancient Irish family which gave its name to a district in Roscommon, still known as O'Flyn's G)imty. Ralph Wilde had several children. One of them, Ralph Wilde, who was a distinguished scholar, and who like his grand- nephew, Oscar Wilde, won the distinction of the Berkeley Gold Medal at Trinity College, Dublin^ became a clergyman ; another, Thomas Wilde, was a country physician. This Thomas Wilde married a Miss F3ain, who was related by descent to the eminent famiUes of Surridge and Ouseley of Dunmore in the coimty of Galway. The Ouseleys were most distinguished people. Sir Ralph Ouseley, Bart., who was a very famous Oriental scholar, was British Ambassador to Persia. His brother, Sir WiUiam Ouseley, was 1 " To Hell or Connaught '' was the alternative proposed by the EngUah invaders to the Irish peasants whom they hunted ofE their lands like wild beasts. 8 The Life of Oscar Wilde secretary to Lord Wellesley in India. General Sir Ralph Ouseley won great distinction in the Peninsular War. His brother was a famous preacher and writer of theological works^ of which the most famous is the book entitled " Old Christianity/' Of this kinsman Oscar Wilde used to relate many anecdotes. He ap- peared to be much impressed by the sonority and suggestiveness of his name : Gideon Ouseley. On one occasion speaking of titles of novels he recommended to a friend to write a book of which the hero should bear the name of '' Gideon Onseley/' and to use the hero's name as the title of the story. He declared that a book with sach a title could not fail to appeal to the pubUc. Gideon Ouseley, Methodist, was the John Wesley of Ireland. His sermons in the Irish language, addressed to people at the fairs and markets, are still preserved in the memory of people Uving in the western province from hearsay from their parents. WiUiam Robert Wills Wilde was the son of Dr Thomas Wilde by his marriage with Miss Fynn. He was bom in Castlerea in 1815, and received his education at the Royal School, Banagher. It is, however, reported of him that '' fishing occupied more of his attention than school studies, for which he had an admirable teacher 9 The Life of Oscar WUde in the person of Paddy Walsh^ afterwards im- mortalised by the pupil in his Irish " Poptdar Superstitions." In the DubUn University Magazine the follow- ing account is given of youthful tastes which led to studies of which in later Uf e he was to make such excellent use. ** The deUght of the fisher lad was to spend his time on the banks of the lakes and rivers within his reach^ talk Irish with the people, and Usten to the recital of the fairy legends and tales ; his knowledge of which he so well turned to account in the ' Irish Popular Superstitions.' His taste for antiquarian research was early exhibited, and much fostered by his repeated examinations of the cahirs, forts and caves of the early Irish which exist in the vicinity of Castlerea, as well as by visits to the plain of Ruthcragan, the site of the great palace and cemetery of the chieftains of the West. In the district aroimd were castles, whose legends he learned, patterns, where he witnessed the strange mixture of pilgrimage, devotion, fun and froUc ; cockfights for which Roscommon was then famous ; and the various superstitions and ceremonies connected with the succession of the festivals of the season — ^all these made a deep impression on the romantic nature of young Wilde, and many of them have lO The Life of Oscar Wilde been handed down to posterity by his facile I>en." His professional studies commenced in 1832. As a medical student he acted as cUnical clerk to Dr Evory Kennedy in the Lying-In-Hospital, and obtained the annual prize there against several English and Irish competitors. In study- ing for this examination he so overworked him- self that his health broke down^and afever setting in his hfe was for some time despaired of. He was actually suffering from the fever which went so nigh to kill him, on the very day of the ex- amination. The case, indeed, was despaired of, until Dr Robert Greaves having been sent for, an hourly glass of strong ale was prescribed as the only remedy from which any results might be expected. It was held at the time that it was, indeed, the administration of this stimulant which saved his hfe. The idea was no doubt an erroneous one, according to modem medical science, and the delusion may very possibly have been the cause of much subsequent mischief in the yotmg man's family. In a household the head of which attributes the saving of his hfe to the use of alcohol in copious doses the practice of temperance will naturally enough be looked for in vain ; and it is no doubt at home that those habits of drinking were fostered which were to II The Life of Oscar Wilde make such havoc in the Uves of WilUam Wilde's two sons. As to which it should be added here that although Oscar Wilde was in no sense a hard drinker^ and never by his most intimate friends was once seen in a state of intoxication, it is on record that every single foolish and mad act which he did in his Ufe, acts which had for him the most disastrous consequences, was done under the influence of Uquor. It is one of the most damnable qualities of alcohol that where in a man any morbid tendency either physical or moral exists, which, sober, he can keep under complete control, the use of strong drink will bring it to the siuiace. The French doctors say of alcohol that it gives the coup de fouet (the lash of the whip) to any disease either of the body or of the brain which may be present in a sub- acute state in a man who indulges in strong drink. No doubt that, because in his home in Merrion Square, Oscar Wilde had always heard the virtues of alcohol celebrated as a drug which on a famous occasion had saved his father's Ufe, he did not attach importance to the teach- ings of later and more advanced science, which would have taught him that in his case the poison might produce results the most disastrous. William Wilde is still remembered as a surgeon of particular resource and courage. Even as a 12 The Life of Oscar Wilde medical apprentice he displayed these qualities. It is related of him on reaching the parish church in Cong^ in the County Mayo, one Sunday morning, he found the place in a state of huge commotion. It appeared that a small boy of about five years of age, having swallowed a piece of hard boiled potato, which had stuck in his throat, was in the act of choking. The young medical student, with the readiness which after- wards distinguished him amongst his contem- poraries, saw at a glance that an immediate operation must be effected if the child's hfe was to be saved. He happened to have a pair of scissors in his pocket ; he was fortimately not restrained by the modem terror of using any instrument which had not been rendered anti- septic ; and he boldly cut into the boy's throat. The operation was entirely successful, and the child recovered. He may be Uving still, for when he was last heard of, in Philadelphia in 1875, he was a middle-aged man, who took a particular pride and pleasure in showing people a scar on his neck " where," as he used to say, " the famous Sir WiUiam Wilde of Dublin cut my throat." It was with similar readiness that Sir WiUiam once saved the sight of a Dublin fisherman, who was brought to him with a darning-needle embedded up to the head in his 13 The Life of Oscar Wilde right eye. The flapping of a sail in which the needle was sticking had driven it in with terrible force. An ordinary operation was out of the question ; there was not enough of the head protruding to allow of any hold being got on it with a forceps by which it might have drawn from its place. The man was suffering terrible agony. Sir WiUiam saw at once what was the only means of extracting the needle. He sent for a powerful electro-magnet, by the help of which in the shortest time the steel bar was extracted. There are on record many similar instances of his energy, courage and fertiUty of resource. Already as a yoimg man he distinguished himself in the field of letters. While still a medical student he sailed in charge of a sick gentleman on board the yacht Crusader, visiting many places in the Mediterranean and in the East, during a cruise which lasted many months. The account of this cruise he published on his return to Ireland. He fotmd in the Messrs Ciury ready and Uberal pubUshers. For the copyright of this yoimg man's book they paid him a sum of ^^250. The speculation was a profitable one for them. The first edition con- sisted of 1250 copies of the book, which was issued in two volumes at 28s. This edition was 14 The Life of Oscar Wilde sold out immediately ; a second edition was as rapidly disposed of ^ and other editions followed. The book has long since been out of print. The young man continued his medical studies in London^ Berlin and Vienna, and finally started in medical practice in July 1841, selecting as special branches, those of oculist and otologist. He took as the motto of his professional career, the words : " Whatever thou hast to do, do it with all thy might." His reputation was already so good, that in the first year of his practice he earned in professional fees the sum of £400, which it appears, is an amount very rarely reached by the fees of a surgeon in his first year. This money he devoted in its entirety to the charitable purpose of founding a hospital where the poor could be treated for eye and ear dis- eases. At that time no such institution existed in the Irish capital. He did more than this. He appUed the first thousand pounds of his professional earnings to his noble purpose. To him in this manner the city of DubUn and the whole country of Ireland owe the foundation of St Mark's Ophthalmic Hospital,^ which for sixty- four years has rendered such inestimable services to the suffering Irish poor, and which increases 'Since its amalgamation with the National Eye and Ear Infirmary, Molesworth Street, Dublin, this institution has become known as the Royal ^^ctoria Eye and Ear Hospital. 15 The Life of Oscar Wilde in usefulness every year of its existence. The last annual report gives a record of benevolent activity which few hospitals, which started with resources so meagre, can show. It is a noble institution, the foundation stone of which was the noble sacrifice of a noble man. The follow- ing extract from the first annual report, issued in 1844, gives an interesting accoimt of its first establishment. " Although most of the large hospitals in this city and the several infirmaries, poorhouses, and other institutions in Ireland which afford indodr medical rehef admit patients labouring under affections of the organs of sight and hearing there has not up to the present period existed in this coimtry any special hospital for treating the diseases of the eye and ear. '* The want of such an estabUshment, upon a scale so extensive as to afford general reUef, has long been felt by the poor, and is generally acknowledged by the upper classes of society. .... In the year 1841 a dispensary for treating the diseases of these organs was estab- Ushed in South Frederick Lane, and supported by its founder, Sir William Wilde for twelve months ; at the end of which time, finding the number of apphcants and the consequent ex- penditure far exceeding what was originally con- 16 The Life of Oscar Wilde templated, or what could be supported by in- dividual exertion, and not wishing to apply for public aid for the sum required to defray its expenses, he determined to try the experiment of making it support itself, by a monthly sub- scription from each of the patients. This plan succeeded fully, and since September 1842 the patients have each paid a small monthly sum during the period of their attendance, which has defrayed the expenses of the medicine. In this way, 1056 persons were treated during the year ending September 1843, and the total nimiber of patients relieved with medicine, medical ad- vice, or by operation, from the commencement of that institution to the ist March 1844, was 2075. Paupers have, however, at all times recdved advice and medicine gratuitously. The sum paid by each patient is but sixpence per month, and this system of partial payments has been found to work exceedingly well. It has produced care, regularity and attention, and in- duced a spirit of independence among the lower orders of society worthy of countenance and support, while the annual sum of £50 received in this way is in itself a sufficient guarantee. . . that its benefits are appreciated by the poor, numbers of whom seek its advantages from distant parts of the coimtry." B 17 The Life of Oscar WUde Through a Mr Grimshaw, a dentist, William Wilde obtained the use of a stable in Frederick Lane, which was to form the nucleus of the hospital, which afterwards developed into such a splendid institution. Having provided a few fixtures, the yoimg surgeon commenced his gratuitous labours, which he continued through- out the whole of his career. An inscription in the front of the hospital records the name of its founder, and in the hall stands a bust of Sir William Wilde, which was purchased by direc- tion of the head surgeon at the sale of the effects of William Wilde, his eldest son, after his death in Cheltenham Terrace, Chelsea. In 1848 he pubUshed what has been described as " one of the most chivalous Uterary efforts,'* his accoimt of "The Closing Years of Dean Swift's Life." Two years after his marriage with Miss Jane Francesca Elgee, that is to say in 1853, he was appointed Surgeon-Oculist-in-Ordinary to the Queen, which was the first appointment of the kind made in Ireland. In 1857 he visited Stockholm, and was created a Chevalier of the Kangdom of Sweden, and was, further, decorated with the Order of the Polar Star. Seven years later, at the conclusion of a chapter of the Knights of St Patrick, held for the installation of 18 The Life of Oscar Wilde new members of this Order, and after the knights had left the hall, the genial Lord Carhsle, Viceroy, from his place on the throne addressed the great surgeon, beckoning to him to approach, and said : " Mr Wilde, I propose to confer on you the honour of knighthood, not so much in re- cognition of your high professional reputation, which is European, and has been recognised by many countries in Europe, but to mark my sense of the services you have rendered to Statistical Science, especially in connection with the Irish Census." There was nothing of the cynic in Lord Carlisle, and his remarks to William Wilde were sincere as a compliment. One can imagine the mental reservations that say Lord Beaconsfield or Lord L3rtton would have made had they been in Lord Carlisle's place and had they been called upon to announce the impending honour to the man who had distinguished himself by his labours on behalf of the Irish Census. For no document more than an Irish Census Report contains so scathing an indictment of Castle rule ; nothing that Speranza ever wrote constituted a more violent appeal to Irish NationaUsts ; no Fenian denunciation of the Sassenach has ever exceeded in bitterness of reproach the simple total of numerals which William Wilde's labours com- 19 The Life of Oscar Wilde pelled the British Government to lay before the people of Europe. For the rest, the honour of knighthood ap- pears to be distributed with greater largesse in Ireland than even in England or Scotland, and it really seems that it is in DubUn a distinction for a professional man not to have received the tap of the viceroy's sword. Wilde's acceptance of the honour was resented in some places, for it was thought that the husband of Speranza ought not to have taken favours from the Castle, just as some years later Speranza's acceptance of a pension from the British Government which she had so fiercely attacked in her youth, was also resented. In a biographical notice of Sir WiUiam Wilde which was pubhshedin 1875, one year before his death, where reference is made to another honour which was won by him, the following passage occiu^, which, read to-day, has a pe- cuUarly pathetic interest. " In connection with the award of the Cun- ningham medal of the Royal Irish Academy in 1873 to Sir William Wilde, it is a remarkable fact, worthy of record, that within a few months of its presentation, his two sons, William and Oscar, were each awarded a medal of Trinity College — the former (who has just been called 20 The Life of Oscar Wilde to the Irish bar) by the College Philosophical Society for ethics and logic, and the latter (who is now (1875) a distinguished scholar at Oxford) for the best answering on the Greek drama/* Sir WiUiam Wilde was too hospitable and too charitable a man to amass any large fortmie such as would have been acquired by most men of his professional abihty and European reputa- tion, but at the time of his death he was in the comfortable position of a substantial landowner. " Some years ago,'* says a notice of him, " Sir WiUiam Wilde became a proprietor in the county of Mayo, where he has most successfully carried out schemes of improvement, and has shown that he can reclaim land and profitably carry on farming operations, which is what few of even resident proprietors can boast. Finding a portion of the ancestral estate of the O'Flyns (from whom he is maternally descended) for sale in the Land Estate Court, he became the purchaser. The portion in cultivation was covered by a wretched pauper tenantry, numbers of whom it became necessary to remove to en- able those remaining to have a means of com- fortable existence. Understanding somewhat of the language of the people, and being, as they said, " one of the ould stock,*' he was able with advice from the CathoUc clergy to carry out 21 The Life of Oscar WUde his plans without exciting discontent or in- volving the sacrifice of large sums of money and he gave an ample tenant right to those that remained on the property over twelve years ago. The reclamation that followed, with the ad- dition of erecting a residence for himself in a most picturesque situation, has converted a locality characterised only a few years ago by the usual evidences of neglect, into one of the most attractive and charming spots in the country. In fact, Mayhera House, near Cong, with the surrounding grounds and estate, may be fairly claimed as one of the numerous triumphs of the enterprising proprietor." He wrote many works on Irish history and archaeology, and was engaged on a biographical work at the time of his death. He foimded the Dtdblin Quarterly Journal of Science. His Ufe is one long record of beneficent activity. He carried out to the end the motto which he had taken for his guide at the outset of his career. He is recognised as one of the greatest surgeons of the last century, and the recognition is universal. And it should be remembered that the reputation of a great surgeon cannot be disturbed by the discoveries of posterity as is the case with men, who as doctors, have ob- tained in one age the fame of great luminaries 22 SIR WII.I.IAM WII.DK. To face pagf 'iJ. The Life of Oscar Wilde of science, and who, as knowledge progresses, reveal themselves to a mocking world to have been the veriest merry-andrews. " Wilde's Arbeitsfeld war die KUnik " (WUde's field was the operating-room), says of him a great German writer on surgery. Elsewhere in German medical books of the highest authority, the Irish surgeon is referred to in the most eulo- gistic terms. Now praise from German scientific men, who for the most part seem to hold that light can come from nowhere in the world but a German university-town, and who have too often distinguished themselves by a manifesta- tion of envy and a spirit of almost feminine dAiigrement, is the sincerest praise that a British subject may ever hope to reap. One writer describes Wilde as, " ein Meister in genialer Schlussfolgerungen " (a master in deductions inspired by genius). Another German autho- rity sa3rs of him : " auch in seinem lebhaften und praktischen Interesse fuer Taubstumme erinnert ims Wilde an Itard " (in his strong and practical interest in deaf mutes also, Wilde re- minds us of Itard). Schwarze describes him as "the father of modem otology.'* Indeed, it appears that as an otologist he was even greater than as an oculist. At a recent conference of medical men in Zuerich when the great pioneers 23 The Life of Oscar Wilde of modem surgery were being discussed in a lecture, only three British surgeons were named, and these were Graves, Stokes, and Wilde. In Dublin medical circles he is still spoken of with the highest respect. Most contemporary doctors of his day would now be mentioned with the pitying smile with which modem physicians refer to all their predecessors whose studies were com- pleted before the year 1889 swept away the clouds which had obscured the vision of the meo who profess to heal. Mr J. B. Story, F.R.C.S.I., who was senior surgeon of the St Mark's Ophthal- mic Hospital, and who since its transformation into the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital is continuing the work of Sir William Wilde at that splendid institution, is most eloquent in the praise of his predecessor's skill and science. He also holds that Sir William was greater as an aural surgeon than as an eye-doctor, but in both fields he considers him to have been one of the most distinguished surgeons that Great Britain has yet produced. The same unanimity of praise is accorded to his literary work. Perhaps the most interesting reference to his quaUties as a writer on the special subjects which he chose is contained in a passage which occurs in the preface which his wife. Lady Wilde, wrote to the life of B^ranger, 24 The Life of Oscar WUde which her husband had left uncompleted at the time of his death, and which Lady Wilde finished. She b^ins by sa3ang what diffidence she feds to take up the pen which her husband had let faU^ so strongly does she feel her inferiority to him, and goes on to say : " There was probably no man of his generation more versed in our national literature, in all that ooDcemed the land and the people, the arts, architecture, topography, statistics, and even the legends of the country ; but, above all, in his favourite department, the descriptive illus- traticm of Ireland, past and present, in historic and prehistoric times, he has justly gained a wide reputation, as one of the most learned and accurate, and at the same time one of the most popular writers of the age on Irish subjects . . . in the misty cloudland of Irish antiquities he may especially be looked upon as a safe and steadfast guide/' His charitableness and compassion for human suffering were such that although he was a fdeasure-loving man he was ever ready, at a moment's notice, to leave the gayest and happiest social reunion to attend to the wants of some patient who might be in need of his gratuitous assistance. An anecdote in Fitzpatrick's '' Life of Lever/' communicated to the biographer by as The Life of Oscar WUde John Lever, the novelist's nephew, illustrates this benevolent trait in the great surgeon's character. " On one occasion he (Lever) wanted Wilde to come and meet at dinner some friends he had assembled, and calling at Merrion Square was told that the doctor could not possibly appear. Being denied several times, my uncle at last put his handkerchief in bandage form over his merry, twinkUng eyes; his expedient brought the oculist to the door in a moment ; the rencofUre ending in a hearty laugh at the success of the trick — which continued to afford much amuse- ment at Templerogue." Sir WilUam Wilde died after a long illness on Wednesday, 19th April 1876, and was buried at Mount Jerome cemetery. His hearse was followed to the grave by a large and representa- tive procession. The principal mourners were Mr W. Wilde, Mr Oscar Wilde, and the Rev. Mr Noble. AU the Dublin papers published long obituary notices of the man, and the whole country deplored his loss. How pleasant it would be if this man's memory could be left undisturbed as that of one who was great and good, if nothing needed to be said which may tarnish in some degree a reputation so nobly won. Alas ! the exigencies of this 26 The Life of Oscar Wilde biography exact, in justice to its immediate subject, a closer investigation into the moral composition of one who, together with many sterling quaUties, may have transmitted to his son certain leanings, instincts, passions, which shall help us to understand the dismaying pro- blem of that son's conduct of his life. It may be briefly then stated that together with a high reputation as a man of science and as a kind-hearted, genial and charitable man. Sir William Wilde had also the evil repute of being a man of strong, unbridled passions, in the gratification of which no sense of social or pro- fessional responsibility could restrain him. A characteristic anecdote of a stinging retort made to him by a veterinary surgeon whom he once met, while out riding in Phoenix Park, is still told, and pubUc opinion ever held that the veterinary surgeon's critique was just and right. One of these patients, a Miss Travers, indeed brought an action against the Surgeon-Octilist-in-Ordinary, but the woman's sanity appeared doubtful, and the case was dis- missed. His son Oscar used to relate of his mother as an instance of her noble serenity to- wards Uf e how, when she was nursing his father on his dying bed, each morning there used to come into the sickroom the veiled and silent 27 The Life of Oscar Wilde figure of a woman in deep mourning who sat and watched but never spoke^ and at nightfall went away^ to return on the following morning. It may be noted as a significant fact that the son seemed to see no aspersion on his father's reputation in this story. It appeared to him to be an apt illustration of his mother's nobiUty of character. Sir WilUam Wilde left besides his legitimate children a number of natural offspring. One natural son of his was estabUshed by him as a surgeon-octdist in a practice in Lower Baggot Street, about two hundred yards from his wife's home. The man died some years ago^ but is still remembered as the son of Sir WUUam Wilde. Another trait in his character which it may be worth while to note, because this character- istic was undoubtedly transmitted to one of his sons, namely to Oscar's brother, was his great neglect of himself. He was very shabby and careless about his appearance. He used to be spoken of as one of the untidiest men in Ireland. An anecdote is told of Father Healy which illustrates the reputation that Sir WiUiam had in this respect. At a diimer-party at which the Father was present, and which was held shortly after Sir WiUiam Wilde had been knighted, an Englishman who had just crossed from Holy- 28 The Life of Oscar Wilde head was complaining of the sea-passage he had been through. " It was, I think," he said, " the dirtiest night I have ever seen." " Oh," said Father Healy, " then it must have been wild." The portraits of Sir William which exist, showing him at different ages, reveal, as few physiognomies can do, an extraordinary mixture of intellectuality and animalism, of benevolence and humanity with bestial instinct. Mr Harry Fumiss has included him in his gallery of " Ugly Men and Women." The quaUfication is hardly a just one. As to the upper part of his face. Sir William was remarkably handsome. No one with such a forehead and such eyes could be called ugly. But the lower part of his face and especially the almost simian mouth are very bad. In his son Oscar the same extraordinary con- trast between the upper and lower parts of his face was to be observed. He had the forehead and eyes of a genius, or an angel. His mouth was ugly, almost abnormal, and such as to justify the accuracy if not the charitableness of his strong enemy, the Marquess of Queensberry, in an inhuman jest about his personal appear- ance, which he made just after the poor man's conviction. 29 CHAPTER II Oscar Wilde's Mother — Her Gift for Languages — Oscar's Ex- treme Linguistic Facility — Lady Wilde's Scholarship— The Consolations of ^schylus — Her Serenity — Her Schwaermerei — Oscar's Dissimilarity in this Respect — ^The Preponderating Maternal Influence— Probable Physiologi- cal Consequences — ^The Elgee's Italian Descent — ^Arch- deacon Elgee — " One of the Saints of the Wexford Calendar " — Lady WUde not his Grand-daughter — An In- cident of 1798 — ^Dr Kingsbury — ^Lady Wilde's Distin- guished Relations — ^The Rev. Charles Maturin — ^Balzac's Tribute to Maturin — ^How he stood Sponsor to Oscar — Clarence Mangan's Description of Maturin — ^Francesca Elgee's Nationalism — "Speranza" and "John Fenshaw Ellis" — Sir Charles Gavan Dufiy, Revolutionary — ^The Villa Marguerite, Nice — His Journal The Nation — ^Number 304 — " Jacta Alea Est " — Other Contents of Number 304. There can be no doubt that irom his mother, for whom he ever felt so great a love and so deep a reverence, Oscar Wilde inherited many of those admirable gifts and graces which so distinguished him amongst his contemporaries. Even as Lady Wilde, Oscar had an astonishing faciUty for learning languages. ** My favourite study," she once related, ''was languages; I succeeded in mastering two European languages before my eighteenth year." It is on record that Oscar Wilde was able to learn the difficult German 30 The Life of Oscar Wilde language in an incredibly short time. We are informed in " The Story of the Unhappy Friend- ship," that " during the railway joume5rs which he took in England in connection with his lec- turing tour in the winter of 1883-1884, carrying a small pocket-dictionary and a volume of Heine with him, one book in each pocket of his fur- lined overcoat, he taught himself German so thoroughly that afterwards the whole of German literature was open to him." Lady Wilde was a wonderful classical scholar ; she had the sheer delight in Latin and Greek literature that true scholars manifest ; and made of the Roman orators or the Greek tragedians her favourite reading. A lady once called at No. i Merrion Square and found Sir WilUam's house in the possession of the bailiffs. '* There were two strange men,*' this lady relates, " sitting in the hall, and I heard from the weeping servant that they were ' men in possession.' I felt so sorry for poor Lady Wilde and hurried upstairs to the drawing-room where I knew I should find her. Speranza was there indeed, but seemed not in the least troubled by the state of affairs in the house. I found her lying on the sofa reading the Prometheus Vinctus of iEschylus, from which she began to declaim passages to me, with exalted enthusiasm. She would not let me slip 31 The Life of Oscar Wilde in a word of condolence^ but seemed very anxious that I should share her entire admiration for the beauties of the Greek tragedian which she was reciting/* Of Oscar Wilde's scholarship nothing need be said here. His reputation in that respect is well-estabUshed. On what this reputation was based will appear hereafter. Lady Wilde was a briUiant talker : was there ever in the world a more brilliant conver- sationahst than Oscar Wilde ? Lady Wilde's serenity and tolerance reached a level to which none but great philosophers have attained. This tolerance and resignation she taught to her son, as some mothers teach their sons those imbe- cilities which in the aggregate are known as worldly wisdom. '* My mother," writes Oscar Wilde, " who knew Ufe as a whole, used often to quote to me Groethe's Unes — ^written by Carlyle vin a book he had given her years ago, and translated by him, I fancy, also : — " * Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the midnight hours Weeping and waiting for the morrow, — He knows you not, ye heavenly powers.' "They were the Unes which that 'noble Queen of Prussia, whom Napoleon treated with such coarse brutaUty, used to quote in her humiUation and exile ; they were the lines my mother often 33 The Life of Oscar Wilde quoted in the troubles of her later Ufe. I absolutely declined to accept or admit the enormous truth hidden in them. I could not understand it. I remember quite well how I used to tell her that I did not want to eat my bread in sorrow, or to pass any night weeping and watching for the dawn." Yet the second verse, which seems to have been overlooked by Lady Wilde as weU as by Queen Louisa, was one from which, had it been taught him also, the prisoner might have derived consolation. Goethe here formulates the law of predestination with the implacabiUty of a Calvin or a Mahomet. ** Ihr fuehrt ins Leben ihn hinein Und laesst den Armen schuldig werden Dann uebergiebt Ihr ihn dem Pein Denn jede Schuld raecht sich auf Erden." It is always a dangerous thing to mutilate a thought. A German word which weU describes one trait of Speranza's character, and which is not easily translated into EngUsh, is Schwaermerisch. This adjective describes a state of gushing exaltation, a somewhat too ready enthusiasm, a capacity for discovering romance in what is trite and commonplace. The word conveys mild and tolerant censure, and generally suggests that the c 33 The Life of Oscar Wilde person to whom it is applied is too much taken up in daydreams to give much attention to orderliness and the other domestic virtues. One feels that but for Sx)eranza's Schwaermerei there would have been no bailiffs ever to be found in the hall of the fine house in Merrion Square, and that the Surgeon-Octdist-in-Ordinary would not have been allowed to go out into the streets of DubUn in the neglected condition which inspired Father Healy's mordant jibe. There was nothing of the Schwaermef in Oscar Wilde's composition. He had no penchant for enthusiasm, exaltation he never displayed ; and though as a writer he enrolled himself imder that drapeau romantique des jeunes guerriers of which Th6ophile Gautier speaks, as a man of the world he avoided romance. He was for precision, for the absolute, for rule and proof. He was at one and the same time a perfect gram- marian and an excellent logician. And that, in spite of the restraint of his reason, he gave way to promptings so illogical as those that led to his catastrophe shows that at times, and under certain conditions, his reason failed him. While he inherited from his mother many distinguished quahties, it may be deduced from his Ufe that the preponderating maternal influ- ence in his composition was responsible also for 34 The Life of Oscar Wilde that abnormality of conduct which was the direct cause of his downfall. It is a matter of common observation among physiologists that where a child is bom to a couple in which the woman has the much stronger nature and a great mental superiority over the father the chances are that that child will develop at certain critical periods in his career an extra- ordinary attraction towards persons of its own sex. This fact is one of Nature's mysteries. Those who beheve in a Divine Creation of the world should reverently bow their heads before what they cannot understand and ought to take to be a divine dispensation. At any rate, the wisdom of Nature may be presumed greater than that of the Ecclesiastical Courts. It is held in Ireland amongst people who knew the Elgee family that Lady Wilde's assertion that her ancestors were of ItaHan origin, that the name Elgee is a corruption of the patronymic Alighieri which would have impUed a descent from, or, at least, a kinship to, the immortal Dante^ was but the outcome of a vivid and self- deceivingimagination. Her conversation afforded many instances of this habit of self-delusion. Things that she wished to be facts soon became invested in her mind with the soUdity of such. Her day-dreams embodied themselves. For this 35 The Life of Oscar Wilde her characteristic of Schwaermerei accounts also. Her sons never repeated the legend of any Florentine descent, though Willy, at least, was not averse to boast of his relationships. Oscar, on the other hand, apart from his occasional references to the cousin who had so sonorous a name, Gideon Ouseley, and to that other cousin. Wills, who combined with dramatic genius a mass of genial eccentricity, never spoke of his relations. He had an instinctive horror of an3rthing approaching to self-aggrandisement, which he used to describe as the worst form of vulgarity. According to Lady Wilde, the Alighieri who first settled in Ireland and whose name was corrupted into Elgee was her great- grandfather. This man's son was the famous Archdeacon Elgee of Wexford. Here another negation is necessary. Lady Wilde was not the daughter of an EpiscopaUan clergjmian ; she was not the daughter of Archdeacon Elgee. Yet these misstatements are reproduced in the authoritative biographical notices which have been pubUshed about her. In a letter which she wrote on loth August 1893 to Mr D. J. O'Donog- hue of Dublin, the author of an admirable " Life of Mangan," she writes, referring to one of these biographical errors : — " In the sketch given of myself I regret that I was not named as Grand- 36 The Life of Oscar Wilde daughter of Archdeacon Elgee of Wexford. The Archdeacon is one of the saints of the Wexford Calendar^ and the people are always pleased to connect me with him. My father was eldest son of Archdeacon Elgee, and he was not a clergy- man." Jane Francesca Elgee was bom in Wexford in 1826 of a Protestant and Conservative family. Her paternal grandfather, the Archdeacon re- ferred to above, was a most distinguished man. He was a Rector of Wexford ; and Lady Wilde used to tell an anecdote about him to illustrate his kindly character and the impulsive feehngs of the Irish people. During the Revolution of 1798 a band of rebels had entered Wexford Church where the Archdeacon was celebrating the sacrament with a number of his parishioners. The clergyman was dragged from the altar, and was about to be put to death by the pikes of the infuriated Irish, when one of them, striking up the weapons which had already been turned upon his devoted breast, implored his comrades to spare a man who once had done an act of great kindness to his family. He related this act of charity — one of hundreds for which the Rector was famous — and spoke with such elo- quence that not only did the rebels, who had been committing many acts of great cruelty in 37 The Life of Oscar Wilde the district3 spare his life, but they also resolved that none of his belongings should be touched^ and a guard was placed at the rectory to protect the lives and the property of all its dwellers. Her mother was a Miss Kingsbury who was the grand-daughter of Dr Kingsbury, who in his day was president of the Irish College of Ph3^i- cians, and the intimate friend of Dean Swift. His son, Dr Thomas Kingsbury, the father of Sarah Kingsbury, who was Lady Wilde's mother, was a Commissioner in Bankruptcy and the owner of the well-known mansion, lisle House, in DubUn. Lady Wilde had many distinguished relations. One of her uncles was Sir Charles Ormsby, Bart., who was a member of the last Irish ParUament. She was first cousin to the Sir Robert M'Clure who was famous as an ex- plorer, and who is best known as " the seeker of the N.-W. passage." Her only brother, Judge Elgee, was a distinguished member of the American bar. She was also a grand-niece of the famous writer, the Rev. Charles Maturin. Of this kinship Oscar Wilde was in his heart very proud. When he left prison it was from the hero of this Charles Maturin's most famous novel, " Melmoth the Wanderer," that he borrowed the name under which he was to drag out the remaining agony of his years. Possibly 38 The Life of Oscar Wilde what most endeared to him the memory of this great-grand-uncle was that the mighty Balzac, for whom his admiration was unlimited, had ex- pressed his high approval of the famous novel. In his " L'EUxir de longue Vie/' Balzac gazettes Oscar Wilde's great-uncle with MoU^re, with Goethe and with Byron, as one of the greatest geniuses of Europe. He refers as follows to Melmoth and to its author^ Maturin : — " II flit en effet le type du Don Juan de Moli&re, du Faust de Goethe, du Manfred de Byron et du Melmoth de Maturin. Grandes images trac^es par les plus grandes g£nies de I'Evirope." One needs to know the estimation which Oscar Wilde held of Balzac as an artist and a thinker to understand with what grati- fication these lines of highest tribute to his kinsman must have filled him. But besides Balzac there was another great intellect which had confessed to the power which Maturin and his hero had exercised over him. In W. M. Thackeray's " Goethe in his Old Age " we find the following reference to them : — *' I felt quite afraid before them, and recollect comparing them to the eyes of the hero of a certain romance called " Melmoth the Wan- derer," which used to alarm us boys thirty years ago ; eyes of an individual who had made 39 The Life of Oscar Wilde a bargain with a certain person^ and at an ex- treme old age retained those eyes in all their awful splendour." Charles Baudelaire^ the poet, for whom Oscar Wilde's admiration was so intense, wrote thus of Melmoth : — " Cel6bre voyageur Melmoth, la grande crea- tion satanique du r6v6rend Maturin. Quoi de plus grand, quoi de plus puissant relativement i la pauvre humanity que ce p^e et ennuy£ Mehnoth ? " In the house in Merrion Square was a fine bust of Charles Maturin. It is either a cast of one executed at the request of Sir Walter Scott, and formerly preserved at Abbotsford, or from a mask impression taken after his death. Though, of course, the portrait of an older man (than when Melmoth was written) years seemed to have told vefy Uttle on his face if we compare it with the strikingly youthful countenance that appears in the New Monthly Magazine. In this Charles Maturin we find that mixture of genius and insanity which manifested it also in the lad who was brought up in reverent con- templation of his bust, and in whole-hearted admiration of his life and work. Kinsmen by affinity no less than kinsmen by consanguinity can transmit their quahties and defects to their 40 The Life of Oscar Wilde postaity ; and there can be no doubt whatever that Oscar Wilde's nature was greatly moulded by the strong influence that Maturin exercised over his mother. This being an indisputable fact it becomes necessary to seek some further information on the subject of this strange and brilliant man, who so many years after his death was to stand sponsor to the most unhappy of his kinsmen. The best account of Charles Maturin as a man is to be found in the pages of that excellent biography of " Clarence Mangan, the Irish Poet," by R. J. O'Donoghue, to which reference has been made above. Mr O'Donoghue jMrefaces Mangan's description of Maturin with some comments of his own, and the whole passage may be quoted here. Particular attention may be requested to the account of Maturin's ec- centricities of dress. They may explain much in Oscar's peculiarities in the same respect. Oscar Wilde was accused because of them of a vulgar desire for r/clatpte, for self-advertisement. To Charles Maturin a more lenient age accorded his foibles, just as to Balzac was granted his monkish cowl, to Van Dyck his court array, and to Barbey d'Aurevilly his cloak of red samite. The following is Mangan's description with O'Donoghue's prefatory remarks : — ** Towards the dose of his life Mangan put on 41 The Life of Oscar Wilde record his impressions of this remarkable writer, Maturin, in whom Scott and Bjnron so thoroughly beUeved that the first offered to edit his works after his deaths and the latter used all his in- fluence successfully to get a hearing for his plays. Numerous stories are related of him. His genius was of the untamed, uncultivated kind. His works are those of a madman, glowing with burning eloquence and deep feeling, but full of absiurdities and inconsistencies. His Irish tales, such as * The Wild Irish Boys/ and ' The Milesian Chief/ are made almost un- readable by a vicious and ranting style. When- ever Maturin was engaged in literary work he used to place a wafer on his forehead to let those who entered his study know that he was not to be disturbed. Mangan had more than the prevaiUng admiration for the grotesqueness of Maturin's romances ; their terrible and awe- inspiring nature impressed him profotmdly. He felt a kind of fascination for this lonely man of genius, whom at one period he might have called in his own words, " * The Only, the Lonely, the Earth's Companionless One? ' " He opens his sketch, which is very character- istic of his style, with the humorous rh3ane : — " * Maturin, Maturin, what a strange hat you're in ? ' 42 The Life of Oscar Wilde " ' I saw Maturin but on three occasions, and on all these within two months of his death. I was then a mere boy ; and when I assure the reader that I was strongly imbued with a belief in those doctrines of my church which seem (and only seem) to savour of what is theologi- cally called '' exclusiveness/' he will appreciate the force of the impulse which urged me one morning to follow the author of Melmoth into the porch of St Peter's Church in Aimgier Street, and hear him read the burial service. Maturin, however, did not read, he simply repeated ; but with a grandeur of emphasis, and an impressive power of manner that chained me to the spot. His eyes, while he spoke, continually wahdered from side to side, and at length rested on me, who reddened up to the roots of my hair at being even noticed by a man that ranked far higher in my estimation than Napoleon Bona- parte. I observed that, after having concluded the service, he whispered something to the clerk at his side, and then again looked steadfastly at me. If I had been the master of sceptres — of wwlds — I would have given them all that moment to have been put in possession of his remark. ** * The second time I saw Maturin he had been just officiating, as on the former occasion, 43 The Life of Oscar Wilde at a funeral. He stalked along York Street with an abstracted, or rather distracted air, the white scarf and hat-band which he had received remaining still wreathed round his beautifully- shaped person, and exhibiting to the gaze of the amused and amazed pedestrians whom he almost literally encountered in his path, a boot upon one foot, and a shoe on the other. His long pale, melancholy, Don Quixote, out-of-the-world face would have incUned you to believe that Dante, Bajazet, and the Cid had risen together from their sepulchres and clubbed their features for the production of an effect. But Maturin's mind was only fractionally pourtrayed, so to speak, in his countenance. The great Irishman^ like Hamlet, had that within him, which passed show, and escaped far and away beyond the possibility of expression by the clay lineament. He bore the " hunderscars " about him, but they were graven, not on his brow, but on his heart. " ' The third and last time that I beheld this marvellous man I remember well. It was some time before his death, on a balmy Autimm evening, in 1824. He slowly descended the steps of his own house, which, perhaps, some future Transatlantic biographer may thank me for informing him was at No. 42 York Street,* > 41 is generally given as the number. 44 The Life of Oscar Wilde and took his way in the direction of Whitefriar Street, into Castle Street, and past the Royal Exchange into Dame Street, every second person staring at him and the extraordinary double- belted and treble-caped rug of an old garment — neither coat nor cloak — which enveloped his person. But here it was that I, who had tracked the footsteps of the man as his shadow, discovered that the feeUng to which some in- dividuals, rather over sharp and shrewd, had been pleased to ascribe this '^ affectation of singularity '' had no existence in Maturin. For, instead of passing along Dame Street, where he would have been " the observed of all observers," he wended his way along the dark and forlorn locality of Dame Lane, and having reached the end of this not very classical thoroughfare, crossed over to Anglesea Street, where I lost sight of him. Perhaps he went into one of those bibUopoUtan estabUshments wherewith that Paternoster Row of DubUn then abounded. I never saw him afterwards. ... An inhabitant of one of the stars dropped upon our planet could hardly feel more bewildered than Maturin habitually felt in his consociation with the beings around him. He had no friend, com- panion, brother ; he and the '' Lonely Man of Shiraz '' might have shaken hands and then — 45 The Life of Oscar Wilde parted. He — ^in his own dark way — ^understood many people ; but nobody understood him in any way.' " Till the age of eighteen Francesca Elgee de- voted herself entirely to study and reading. " Till my eighteenth year, I never wrote any- thing/' she relates, " Then, one day, a volume of ' Ireland's Library,' issued from The Nation office by Mr Duffy, happened to come my way. I read it eagerly, and my patriotism was kindled/' This volume was D' Alton Williams' book, " The Spirit of the Nation." " Till then," says Lady Wilde, " I was quite indifferent to the National movement, and if I thought about it at all, probably had a bad opinion of its leaders. For my family was Protestant and Conservative, and there was no social intercoiuse between them and the Catholics and NationaUsts. But once I had caught the National spirit, and all the Uterattu-e of Irish songs and sufferings had an enthralling interest for me, then it was that I discovered that I could write poetry. In sending my verses to the editor of The Nation I dared not have my name pubUshed, so I signed them ' Speranza,' and my letters ' John Fenshaw EUis,' instead of Jane Francesca Elgee." 46 The Life of Oscar Wilde Lady Wilde did not commence contributing to The Nation in 1844, as her biographers state. Her first contributions appeared in that journal in i847« She was at that time living with her parents at 34 Leeson Street, which is in a quarter which is the Bayswater of DubUn. Her most famous poem was entitled ''A MiUion a Decade/' These contributions were for the most part published in a small type column which pre- ceded the leading articles, and which appears to have been reserved for the efforts of amateur ocmtributors, answers to correspondents, etc. Later on, however, that is to say in 1848, the honours of large type and prominent position were accorded to Speranza's poems and John Fenshaw Ellis's prose. The girl's poetry has no particular merit either of expression or of thought, and, indeed, compared unfavourably with similar verse con- tributed by three other young women, whose NationaUsm was of a more sincere type. These were known to the readers of The Nation as "Eva," "Mary," and "Thomasine." In his book, " My Life in Two Hemispheres," Sir Charles Gavan Duffy speaks of Speranza as the most gifted of the fotu:, and, indeed, describes her as " a woman of genius." At the time that that book was written the former NationaUst editor, 47 The Life of Oscar Wilde the Revolutionary of 1848, was living in opulence and luxury at the Villa Marguerite in Nice ; decked with a British title and enriched with British gold. His sympathies would naturally tend rather to the one of the four women who like himself had abandoned the cause of National- ism as une eneur de jeunesse when that cause had become a desperate one and a more profitable field for enthusiasm and activity offered itself. Among the martyrs of 1848, not among those who had the fortune to die then, but amongst the poor, broken old men, who are dragging out penurious existences in DubUn at this very day, men who never abandoned the cause, and who will die as ardent NationaUsts as they were when Duffy and Speranza fired them into acts which sent them into confinement in British gaols, neither Speranza nor Duffy are remembered, as Nationalists, with great esteem. The Fenian editor, O'Leary, states that "Speranza" was of the four poetesses on The Nation, the one who was considered the least talented, that Eva was held to be the most sincere and the most gifted. " Eva " was Miss Eva Mary Kelly. " Mary " was Miss Ellen Downing. As to " Thomasine " her anon3anity has not been pierced. The great effect produced by Francesca Elgee 48 > The Life of Oscar Wilde — it is to be noted as characteristic that she ob- jected to the beautiful but unromantic name of Jane and never used it — ^was when she de- nounced herself in open court as the authoress of the famous article " Jacta est Alea/' for the publishing of which the future Sir Charles Duffy of the Villa Marguerite^ Nice, was being prosecuted. This article appeared in No. 304 (printed 304) of The Nation which was pubUshed in DubUn under date of Satm-day, 29th July 1848. The Nation^ a weekly magazine journal of sixteen pages, of the size of the Petit Journal ^ which was published at sixpence, was then in its sixth volume. On the nxunber preserved in the National Library of Ireland, in DubUn, there is written upon the front page in ink the following words : " This is The Suppressed Number. I believe it is the only copy which escaped, and that was not seized and carried to the Castle." This statement appears to be erroneous, for other copies are in existence, including one at the British Museiun. Lady Wilde's article was the second leader on the editorial page. The leading article, pre- smnably written by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy of the Villa Marguerite, Nice, was entitled " The Tocsin of Ireland," and is of that kind of politi- D 49 The Life of Oscar Wilde cal, inflammatory writing which, once one has read it, is iijomediately forgotten. On this article Francesca Wilde's article follows. It is published anonymously, and fills rather more than two colunms of the paper. As it is a docu- ment of essential interest in the archives of the family of the man with whom this volimie deals it is reproduced in extenso in the following chapter, just as it was printed in The Nation, with the misprints italicised. The 304th number of the revolutionary paper, edited by the future Sir Charles Gavan Duf^ of the Villa Marguerite, Nice, contained much other matter which was calculated to incense the Castle. Amongst the topical articles which were pubUshed we find one on " Easy Lessons in MiUtary Matters " by a veteran, which deals with such subjects as " Organisation," " Arms." Elsewhere in this journal the young Nationalist, who had been inflamed by the editorials of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, was instructed "How to Break Down a Bridge, or Blow One Up," " How to buy and try a Rifle" ; and valuable topical information was also given on " Casting Bullets." It may be added that Francesca Elgee had no dealings with the other people, apart from Duffy, who were active in agitation. In a 50 The Life of Oscar Wilde letter to Mr O'Donoghue, dated 13th November 1888^ she writes : '' I can give no information as to the workers of '48. Sir Charles Duffy would be the best authority. His address is the Villa Marguerite^ Nice^ France." S» CHAPTER III JACTA ALEA EST Lady Wilde's Appeal to Arms — ^The Famous Article in The Nation — A Specimen of Revolutionary Literature — " A Hundred Thousand Muskets 1 "—Terrifying the Castle — " The Glorious Young Meagher I " — An Exact Tran- script from the Copy in the National Library of Ireland. " The Irish Nation has at length decided. England has done us one good service at least. Her recent acts have taken away the last miser- able pretext for passive submission. She has justified us before the world, and ennobled the timid, humble supplication of a degraded, in- sulted people, into the proud demand for inde- pendence by a resolved, prepared, and fearless Nation. " Now, indeed, were the men of Ireland cowards if this moment for retribution, combat, and victory, were to pass by unemployed. It finds them slaves, but it would leave them in- famous. *' Oh ! for a hundred thousand muskets guttering brightly in the Ught of heaven, and the moniunental barricades stretching across 52 The Life of Oscar Wilde each of our noble streets, made desolate by England — circling round that doomed Castle, made infamous by England, where the foreign tj^ant has held his council of treason and ini- quity against our people and our country for seven hundred years. " Courage rises with danger, and heroism with resolve. Does not our breath come freer, each heart beat quicker in these rare and grand moments of human Ufe, when all doubt, and wavering, and weakness are cast to the winds, and the soul rises majestic over each petty obstacle, each low, selfish consideration, and, flinging off the fetters of prejudice, bigotry, and egotism, bounds forward into the higher, di- viner Ufe of heroism and patriotism, defiant as a conqueror, devoted as a martyr, omnipotent as a Deity ! "We appeal to the whole Irish Nation — ^is there any man amongst us who wishes to take one further step on the base path of sufferance and slavery ? Is there one man that thinks that Ireland has not been sufficiently insulted, that Ireland has not been sufficiently degraded in her honour and her rights, to justify her now in fiercely turning upon her oppressor ? No I a man so infamous cannot tread the earth ; or, if he does, the voice of the coward is stifled in 53 The Life of Oscar Wilde the clear^ wild^ ringing shout that leaps from hill to hill^ that echoes from sea to sea^ that peals from the hps of an uprisen Nation — ' We must be free ! * " In the name then of your trampled, insulted, degraded country ; in the name of all heroic virtues, of all that makes life illustrious or death divine ; in the name of your starved, your exiled, your dead; by your mart5n:s in prison cells and felon chains ; in the name of God and man ; by the listening earth and the watching heaven, I call on you to make this aspiration of your souls a deed. Even as you read these weak words of a heart that yet palpitates with an enthusiasm as heroic as your own, and your breast heaves and yoiu' eyes grow dim with tears as the memory of Ireland's wrongs rushes upon your soul — even now lift up your right hand to heaven and swear — ^swear by your un- dying soul, by your hopes of immortality, never to lay down your arms, never to cease hostilities, till you regenerate and save this fallen land. " Gather round the standard of your chiefs. Who dares to say he will not follow, when O'Brien leads ? Or who amongst you is so ab- ject that he will grovel in the squalid misery of his hut, or be content to be flung from the ditch side into the Uving tomb of the poorhouse, 54 The Life of Oscar Wilde rather than charge proudly Uke brave men and free men, with that glorious young Meagher at their head, upon the hired mercenaries of their enemies ? One bold, one decisive move. One instant to take breath, and then a rising ; a rush, a charge from north, south, east and west upon the EngUsh garrison, and the land is ours. Do your eyes flash, do your hearts throb at the prospect of having a country ? For you have had no coimtry. You have never felt the pride, the dignity, the majesty of independence. You could never Uft up your head to heaven and gloiy in the name of Irishman, for all Europe read the brand of slave upon your brow. " Oh ! that my words could burn Uke molten metal through your veins, and light up this ancient heroic daring which would make each man of you a Leonidas — each battle-field a Marathon — each pass a Thermopylae . Courage I need I preach to Irishmen of courage ? Is it so hard a thing then to die ? Alas I do we not all die daily of broken hearts and shattered hopes, and tortures of mind and body that make Ufe a weariness, and of weariness worse even than the tortures; for Ufe is one long, slow agony of death. " No ! it cannot be death you fear ; for you have braved the plague in the exile ship of the 55 The Life of Oscar Wilde Atlantic, and plague in the exile's home beyond it ; and famine and ruin, and a slave's life, and a dog's death ; and hundreds, thousands, a miUion of you have perished thus. Courage 1 You will not now beUe those old traditions of humanity that tell of this divine God-gift with- in us. I have read of a Roman wife who stabbed herself before her husband's eyes to teach him how to die. These million deaths teach us as grand a lesson. To die for Ireland ! Yes ; have we not sworn it in a thousand passionate words by our poets and orators — ^in the grave resolves of councils, leagues and confederations. Now is the moment to test whether you value most freedom or life. Now is the moment to strike, and by striking save, and the day after the victory it will be time enough to count your dead. " But we do not provoke this war. History will write of us — that Ireland endured wrongs unexampled by any depotism — sufferings un- equalled by any people — her life-blood drained by a vampire host of foreign masters and officials — ^her honour insulted by a paid army of spies — her cries of despair stifled by the armed hand of legalised ruffianism — ^that her peasants starved while they reaped the corn for their foreign lords, because no man gave them bread — that 56 The Life of Oscar Wilde her palUd artisans pined and wasted^ because no man gave them work — that her men of genius^ the noblest and purest of her sons, were dragged to a felon's cell, lest the people might hear the voice of triUh, and that in this horrible atrophy of all mental and physical powers^ this stagna- tion of all existences, whoever dared to rise and demand wherefore it was that Ireland, made so beautiful by God, was made the plague spot of the universe by man — ^he was branded as a fdon — ^imprisoned, robbed, tortured, chained, exiled, murdered. Thus history will write of us. And she will also write, that Ireland did not start from this horrid trance of suffering and despair until 30,000 swords were at her heart, and even then she did not rise for vengeance, only prepared to resist. No — ^we are not the ag- gressors— ^we do not provoke this terrible war — Even with six million hearts to aid us, and with all the chances of success in our favour we still offer teiTOs to England. If she capitulates even now at the eleventh hom-, and grants the moderate, the just demands of Ireland, our arms shall not be raised to sever the golden Unk that unites the two nations. And the chances of success are all with us. There is a God-like strength in a just cause — ^a desperate energy in men who are fighting in their own land for the possession 57 The Life of Oscar Wilde of that land. A glowing enthusiasm that scorns all danger when from success they can look on- ward to a future of unutterable glory and happiness for their country. Opposed to us are only a hired soldiery, and a paid police, who mere trained machines even as they are, yet must shudder (for they are men) at the horrible task of butchery, under the blasphemed name of duty to which England summons them. Brothers many of them are of this people they are called upon to murder — sons of the same soil — ^fellow-countrymen of those who are heroic- ally, struggling to elevate their common country. Surely whatever humanity is left in them will shrink from being made the sad instruments of despotism and t3n:anny — ^they will blush to re- ceive the purchase-money of England which hires them for the accursed and fratricidal work. Would a SiciUan have been found in the ranks of Naples ? Would a Milanese have been de- tected in the fierce hordes of Austria ? No ; for the SiciUans prize honom-, and the stately Milanese would strike the arm to the earth that would dare to offer them Austrian gold in pay- ment for the blood of their own cotmtrymen. And heaven forbid that in Ireland could be found a band of armed fratricides to fight against their own land for the flag of a foreign tyrant. 58 The Life of Oscar WUde But if, indeed, interest or coercion should tempt them into so horrible and unnatural a position, pity, a thousand times pity for those brave officers who vaunt themselves on their honom-. Pity for that brave soldiery whose Irish valour has made England illustrious, that they must stain honour, and fame, and profession, and their brave swords, by lending them to so in- famous a cause. Ah ! we need not tremble for a nation filled with a pure and holy enthusiasm, and fighting for all that human nature holds dear ; but the masters of those hired mercen- aries may well tremble for their cause, for the consciousness of eternal infamy will unnerve every arm that is raised to uphold it. *' If the government, then, do not come for- ward with honest, honourable and liberal con- cessions, let the war active and passive com- mence. They confide in the discipHne of their troops — we in the righteousness of our cause. But not even a burning enthusiasm — ^which they have not — ^added to their discipline, could make a garrison of 30,000 men hold their grotmd against six millions. And one thing is certain — that if the people do not choose to fight the garrison, they may starve them. Adopt the Milan method — ^let no man sell to them. This passive warfare may be carried on in every 59 The Life of Oscar Wilde village in Ireland^ while more active hostilities are proceeding through all the large towns and cities. But^ to gain ]X)ssession of the capital should be the grand object of all efforts. Let every line converge to this point. The Castle is the key -stone of EngUsh power; take it, destroy it, bum it — ^at any hazard become masters of it, and on the same ground from whence proceeded all those acts of insult and infamy which aroused the just retribution of a people's vengeance, establish a government in whom the people of all classes can place con- fidence. " On this pedestal of fallen t5n:anny and cor- ruption raise a structure of nobleness that will at once give security and prestige of time- honoured and trusted names to our revolution. For a people who rise to overthrow a despotism will estabUsh no modification of it in its place. If they fight it is for absolute independence ; and as the first step in a revolution should be to prevent the possibihty of anarchy, the men elected to form this government ought at once to take the entire progress and organisation of the revolution under their protection and authority. It will be their duty to watch that no crime be suffered to stain the pure flag of Irish Uberty. We must show to the world that 60 The Life of Oscar Wilde we are fitted to govern ourselves ; that we are, indeed, worthy to be a free nation, that the words union, liberty, country, have as sacred a meaning in our hearts and actions as they are holy on our Hps ; that patriotism means not merely the wild irresistible force that crushed t5n:anny, but reconstruction, regeneration, heroism, sacrifice, sublimity ; that we have not alone to break the fetters of Ireland, but to raise her to a glorious elevation — defend her, liberate her, ennoble her, sanctify her. "Nothing is wanting now to complete our regeneration, to ensure our success, but to cast out those vices which have disgraced our name among the nations. There are terrible traditions shadowing the word Liberty in Ireland. Let it be our task, men of this generation — descendants of martyrs, and sufferers, and heroes, to make it a glad evangel of happiness — a reign of truth over fictions and symbols — of intellect over pre- judice and conventionalism — of humanity over tyranny and oppression. Irishmen ! this re- surrection into a new Ufe depends on you ; for we have all lain dead. Hate, distrust, oppres- sion, dismuon, selfishness, bigotry — ^these things are Death. We must crush aU vices — anni- hilate all evil passions — ^trample on them, as a triumphant Christ with his foot upon the 6i The Life of Oscar Wilde serpent, and then the proud hallelujah of Free- dom will rise to heaven from the lips of a pure, a virtuous, a regenerated, a God-blessed people ; and this fair land of ours, which now affrights the world with its misery, will be one grand temple, in which we shall all kneel as brothers — one holy, peaceful, loving fraternity — sons of one common country — children of one God — heirs together of those blessings purchased by our blood — ^a heritage of freedom, justice, inde- pendence, prosperity and glory 1 " 62 CHAPTER IV Lady Wilde's Nationalism — ^The Influence of a Single Book — Oicar Wilde's Similar Claim— Meeting between Mr Dufiy and Mr Ellis — Speranxa's Fine Gesture — ^Her Admiration for Mr Duffy— Pen-Portraits of Lady Wilde at Different Pieriods — How she dung to Youth — Her Fondness for Society — ^Eccentricities of Dress — ^Her Son's Resemblance to her — Her literary Labours — A Letter to Mr CDonoghue— Brief Summary of Conclusions. It was probably rather by the other contents of No. 304 of The Nation than by the article ''Jacta Alea Est/' that DubUn Castle was alarmed, and deemed it advisable to order the confiscation of this number, the suppression of the journal, and the arrest and arraignment of Mr (afterwards Sir Charles) Dufiy. It would be difficult otherwise to imderstand these extreme measures, for the article is exactly of that class of revolutionary Uterature which is usually read with gratification by those in power. There is no mischief to be feared from rhapsodical generalities. On the other hand, the papers giving practical advice to the malcontents on subjects so subversive as the destruction of bridges and the manipulation of fire-arms cer- tainly warranted action. However that may be, 63 The Life of Oscar Wilde it has generally been conceded to Lady Wilde that with her pen she made the Castle tremble : she stepped at once to the front as an ardent Nationahst and patriot ; and of none of her writings were her sons perhaps more proud than of the article which is given in the preceding chapter. Her Nationalism was, of course, not sincere. It could not be. She had been trained as a Protestant and a Conservative. Her re- lations, those of whom she was most proud, were beneficed dignitaries under the British Crown, just as later her husband was to become by appointment, warrant and viceregal favour, a dependent of British Royal favour, and she her- self during the last six years of her life was to draw from the Civil List a small alimony of imperial silver. No patriotism, no national spirit can be fired in man or woman by the perusal of a single book ; and of D' Alton WiUiams' work it may be said that it inspires nothing but ennui. It is not in this way that the Joans of Arc are driven forth to battle. It is, of course, probable that it was the perusal of this book which suggested to the young woman that evils existed, that here was a field for her Uterary activity, and that her spasmodic Nationalism was the result. It showed the young woman's practical sense that this National- 64 The Life of Oscar Wilde ism was only spasmodic; for as we look back on the period of more than half-a-centnry which has elapsed since she first manifested its spirit^ we observe that it has not been the worldly wise amongst Irish men and women who have espoused the National cause. For the true Nationalist there have been the galleys, the rifle, the scaffold, and, as a set-off from the de- rision of the worldly wise, the mute gratitude of the voiceless people and a martyr's crown. Lady Wilde's crassa Minerva did not allow her to cling to a cause of which she was so soon to discover that it was a hopeless one. Her Nationalism, if whim it were, she readily aban- doned, and she did not go through Ufe explaining that the perusal of a single book had entirely changed the current of her thoughts, her pur- poses and aims. This was one of the mistakes that was made by her son, Oscar. It pleased him to say that some single book, which had come into his hands when he was a young man, had thus revolutionised his entire mentality; and he attributed to the influence of this book all the things that seemed to have been prompted in him by what was not common-sense. In a passage in " The Picture of Dorian Gray," he describes how the hero of that novel fell under the influence of a single book. *' It was the « 65 The Life of Oscar Wilde strangest book that he had ever read. It seemed to him that^ in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb show before him. ... It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense seemed to ding about its pages, and to trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as it was of complex refrains, and move- ments, elaborately rq)eated, produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the faUing day and the creeping shadows. . . . For years Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this book." This is, of course, siUiness. Yet Oscar Wilde used to make the same silly, self-deceiving state- ment about himself, and attributed to some '' poisonous book '' which he had once read many of the abnormahties of his conduct. In this, no doubt, he was prompted by the story which he had heard at home as a boy, how the mother whom he so admired and so loved had been prompted to action and to an entire renunciation of early principles and creeds by the reading of a single book. The fact that the influence of this book 66 The Life of Oscar Wilde had been of the briefest was entirely over- looked. The story of the first meeting between the editor of The Nation and *' John Fenshaw Ellis " is well-known. It may, however, be repeated here, with the addition of Lady Wilde's own account of how it was that having long refused to let Mr Duffy call upon her she finally gave him permission to do so. "After a while," she relates, "Mr Duffy wished me to call at the office, and again ' Mr Ellis ' had to excuse himself from doing it. One day my nurse came into my room and found The Nation on my table. Then she accused me of contributing to it, declaring the while that such a seditious paper was fit only for the fire. The secret being out in my own family there was no longer much motive for concealment, and I gave my editor permission to call upon me. Even then, as Sir Charles Duffy has since told me he scarcely knew who ' Speranza ' might be, and great was his surprise, therefore, when I stepped out from an inner room." Sir Charles Duffy relates in his " Yoimg Ireland " that " Mr EUis, whom hehad frequently requested to call upon him at The Nation office, pleaded that there were difficulties which ren- dered this course inpracticable. Finally, Mr 67 The Life of Oscar Wilde Ellis asked the editor to call at 34 Leeson Street. Going to the house DufEy states that he was met by Sir George Smith, publisher to Dublin University, who presented him to Miss Jane Francesca Elgee, whom he describes as a tall girl, whose stately carriage and figure, flashing brown eyes, and features cast in an heroic mould seemed fit for the genius of poetry or the spirit of the revolution." After the suppression of The Nation, most of the leaders of the revolutionary movement were transported for treason-felony ; while Mr (after- wards Sir Charles) Duffy was put on trial for sedition. The attorney-general quoted from the article " Jacta Alea Est " in support of the charge, and declared that that article was sufficient to convict the prisoner at the bar. " I am the culprit, if culprit there be," cried a voice from the gallery of the court, and a young woman rose to her feet. It was Jane Francesca Elgee who by this fine gesture endeared herself for ever to the Irish Nation. The result was to trouble the minds of the jury ; they disagreed ; and the editor of The Nation was discharged to pursue his career more profitably to himself in another hemisphere. Speranza's admiration for this man appears to have been very great. The following is one 68 The Life of Oscar Wilde of the many letters she wrote to him after her identity had been disclosed. " 34 Lbbson Strbbt, Monday. ** My dear Sir, — I return with many thanks the volmne of Cromwell which has been travelUng about with me for the last four months, and shall feel obUged for the two others when you are quite at leisure, though not even Carlyle can make this soulless iconoclast interesting. It is the only work of Carlyle's I have met with in which my heart does not go along with his words. " I cannot forbear teUing you, now the pen is in my hand, how deeply impressed I felt by your opening lecture to your club. It was the sublimest teaching, and the style so simple from its very subUmity — ^it seemed as if truth passed directly from your heart to ours, without the aid of any medium — at least I felt that every- where the thoughts struck you, nowhere the words, and this in my opinion is the perfection of composition. It is soul speaking to soul. I never felt the dignity of your cause so much as then — ^to promote it any way seemed an object that would ennoble a Ufe. Truly, we cannot de- spair when God sends us such teachers. But you will wish me away for another four happy 69 The Life of Oscar Wilde months if I write you such long notes. So I shall conclude with kind compliments to Mrs Duffy, and remain, yours very sincerely, " Francesca Elgee. " I only read your lecture — some time or other I would like to hear you." A year or two before she died in the dismal house in Oakley Street, Chelsea, which her son William and his family shared with her, and of which her son Oscar paid the rent. Lady Wilde said to a young Irish poet : " I must go and Uve up Primrose Hill ; I was an eagle in my youth." By various writers various pictures have been given of this extraordinary woman at various periods in her life. There are many people still Uving in Dublin who remember No. i Merrion Square when it was the salon of the capital. On reception nights the crush of people in the drawing-rooms upstairs used to be so great that it was a familiar spectacle that of Lady Wilde elbowing her way through the crush and aying out, '* How ever am I to get through all these j)eople." As her beauty departed from her with the advance of years. Lady Wilde used to darken the rooms in which visitors saw her. Stories 70 The Life of Oscar Wilde got about that the purpose of this was to conceal some disfiguring mark on her face ; but the fact was merely that she did not wish people to notice the difference that Time had wrought on the features and complexion of the beautiful " Speranza " of 1848. A Miss Corkran gives the following accoimt of a call she paid to Lady Wilde at No. i Menion Square, an account which is not characterised by much sympathy or kindness : — " I called at Merrion Square late in the after- noon^ for Lady Wilde never received anyone until 5 P.M., as she hated strong hghts; the shutters were closed, and the lamps had pink shades, though it was full daylight. A very tall woman — she looked over six feet high — she wore that day a long crimson silk gown which swept the floor. The skirt was voluminous, underneath there must have been two crinoUnes, for when she walked there was a peculiar swaying, sweUing movement, like that of a vessel at sea, with the sails filled with wind. Over the crimson silk were floimces of Limerick lace, and round what had been a waist an Oriental scarf embroidered with gold was twisted. The long, massive, handsome face was plastered with powder. Over her blue-black, glossy hair was a gilt crown of laurels. Her 71 The Life of Oscar Wilde throat was bare, so were her arms, but they were covered with quaint jewellery. On her broad chest was fastened a series of large minia- ture brooches, evidently family portraits . . . this gave her the appearance of a walking family mausolem. She wore white kid gloves, held a scent-bottle, a lace handkerchief , and a fan. Lady Wilde reminded me of a tragedy queen at a suburban theatre." Lady Wilde was very popular in Dublin with the people. It is related that " they used to cheer her when she was on her way to the drawing-rooms at the Castle"; just because some years previously she had urged a hundred thousand musketeers to march upon that very Castle, and to vnpe it off the face of Ireland. In the story of *' An Unhappy Friendship " we find the following reference to Lady Wilde at home in her son WilUam's house in Park Street, Grosvenor Square, in 1883 : — '* During the first days of my stay there Oscar Wilde took me to a reception at his mother's house. . . . I was presented as having a volume of poems in the press, and was graciously received. Later on, as I was standing talking to Anna Kingsford, Lady Wilde, holding some primroses in her hand, crossed the drawing-room, repeating ; * Flowers for the poet ! Flowers 72 The Life of Oscar Wilde for the poet ! ' It was for me that they were intended, for she came up to me and decorated my coat with the posy." Lady Wilde was at that time about fifty- seven years of age. She had by then entirely renounced her natural, feminine, and pathetic endeavours to conceal the march of Time. Her receptions were in broad daylight, the deceptive flambeaux with their pink-shades had been put away till nightfall. She was a strikingly hand- some woman. Citaitquelqu'un. Her voice had a peculiar power and a peculiar charm. She seemed happy ; poverty and disaster had not yet come upon her ; her sons were both full of promise and achievement. There were to be noticed few of the peculiarities of dress to which Miss Corkrflui calls attention. Yet her black silk bodice was as covered with large old- fashioned medallions as is with orders on Garter nights the brochette of the diplomat whose back has been supple all through life. Her clinging to youth, her efforts to mask the advance of age, her horror for the stigmata of physical decay were all characteristics which she transmitted to her son Oscar. His books are full of rhapsodical eulogies of youth ; he never tires of satirising and condemning matiuity and old age. In the same way her fondness for 73 The Life of Oscar Wilde large, showy and curious articles of jewellery, which, especially amongst the Jews, is a trait which often characterises men and women of genius, was directly transmitted to this son. The gradual descent of this woman in the social scale is one of the pathetic stories of Uterary history. This ex-revolutionary had for the society of the wealthy, the titled, the dis- tinguished, the same pronounced hking which was noticed in Oscar Wilde also. As long as it was possible for her to do so, indeed imtil at last broken down by disappointment and illness she finally took to the bed where she breathed her last after an agony of many months, she held her drawing-rooms. But the imperial da}^ of Merrion Square, even the semi-aristocratic reunions of Park Street, were of the past. In the dingy house in Oakley Street, fit scene for the unsp>eakable tragedies that Time held in its lap, the gatherings were the shabby-genteel burlesque of a Uterary salon. Miss Hamilton has given a picture of such a reception in this house, which shows us Lady Wilde just before she resigned herself to desolation and soUtude : — " I had an invitation," writes Miss Hamilton, ** to her Saturday ' At Homes,' and on a dull, muggy December day, I reached the house. The hour on the card said, ' From five to seven,' 74 The Life of Oscar Wilde and it was past five when I knocked at the door. The bell was broken. The narrow hall was heaped with cloaks^ waterproofs, and umbrellas, and from the door — for the reception- rooms were on the ground-floor^ame a confus- ing buzz of voices. Anglo-Irish and American, Irish literary j)eople, to say nothing of a sprink- ling of brutal Saxons, were crowded together as thickly as sardines in a box. Red-shaded lamps were on the mantelpiece, red curtains, veiled doors and windows; and through this darkness visible I looked vainly for the hostess. Where was she ? Where was Lady Wilde ? Then I saw her — a tall woman, slightly bent with rheumatism, fantastically dressed in a trained black and white checkered silk gown ; from her head floated long, white tulle streamers, mixed with ends of scarlet ribbon. What glorious dark eyes she had I Even then, a]>d she was over sixty, she was a strikingly handsome woman. Though I was a perfect stranger to her, she at once made me welcome, and introduced me to someone she thought I would like to know. She had the art de faire un salon. If anyone was discovered sitting in a comer un- noticed. Lady Wilde was sure to bring up some- one to be introduced, and she never failed to speak a few happy words, which made the 75 The Life of Oscar Wilde stranger feel at home. She generally pre- faced her introductions with some remarks such as * Mr A., who has written a delightful poem/ or Miss B., who is on the staff of * The Snap-dragon/ or ' Mrs C, whose new novel everyone is talking about/ As to her own talk it was remarkably original^ sometimes daring^ and always interesting. Her talent for talk was infectious ; everyone talked their best. There was tea in the back room, but no one seemed to care about eating and drinking. Some forms of journalism had no attraction for her. * I can't write/ I heard her say, ' about such things as Mrs Green looked very well in blacky and Mrs Black looked very well in green.' '' Miss Hamilton also relates the following characteristic anecdote about Lady Wilde. '* When I was at Oakley Street one day, I asked what time it was, as I wanted to catch a train. " ' Does anyone here,' asked Lady Wilde, with one of her lofty glances, * know what time it is ? We never know in this house about Time.' " This/' adds Miss Hamilton, " it seems to me, ^ws'a key to the way in which Lady Wilde 'looked at things. Trifles, everyday trifles, she ^considered quite beneath her; and yet trifles V 76 The Life of Oscar Wilde make up the stun of human life. She had a horror of the ' miasma of the commonplace ' ; her eyes were fixed on ideals, on heroes, ancient and modem — ^and thus she missed much that was l3dng near her, * close to her feet,' in her fervent admiration of the dim, the distant and the unapproachable." The great caricaturist Dickens, whose notice few of his distinguished contemporaries escaped, seems to have studied some of Lady Wilde's peculiarities from afar, and the results of his observations may be found here and there in his books. After her marriage " Speranza," abandoning poetry and the Young Ireland Movement of which she had smig : — " We stand in the light of a dawning day With its glory creation flushing ; And the life-currents up from the pris'ning clay, Through the world's great heart are rushing. While from peak to peak of the spirit land A voice unto voice is calling : ' The night is over, the day is at hand, And the fetters of earth are falling ! ' " turned to prose. In a letter dated from Oakley Street in '88 she writes to Mr D. J. 0*Donoghue the fol- lowing accoimt of her Uterary and joumahstic labours. n The Life of Oscar Wilde ''Dear Sir, '' In answer to the inquiries contained in your note I have to state that I contributed to many periodicals in London, amongst others to The University Magazine^ Tinsley's Magazine, The Burlington Magazine, The Woman*s World, The Queen, The Lady's Pictorial, The Pall Mall Gazette, and others whose names I cannot now recall. The more important writings of recent years are : — ' Driftwood from Scandinavia ' (Bentley, i vol. 1867) ; ' Ancient Irish Legends * (Ward and Downey, 2 vols. 1887) ; The American Irish, a pohtical pamphlet, Dublin. '* But I have recently devoted myself more to hterature than to poUtics. Nationahty was certainly the first awakener of any mental power of genius within me, and the strongest sentiments of my intellectual Uf e, but the present state of Irish affairs requires the strong guiding hand of men, there is no place any more for the more passionate aspirations of a woman's nature." In another letter to Mr O'Donoghue she states : " Also I did not write in 1844 for The Nation, nor did I write ' The Chosen Leader.' " The following is a Ust of the best known among the books of Lady Wilde — " Poems by 78 The Life of Oscar Wilde • Speranza/ " 1871 ; " Driftwood from Scan- dinavia," 1884 ; *' Ancient Legends, Mystic Channs and Superstitions of Ireland," (2 vols. 1887) ; *' Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland," 1890 ; " Social Studies," 1893. " She further," wrote The Times biographer of her after her death, " translated several French and German works, and was the author of ' Ugo Bassi,' a tale of the Italian Revolution m verse, published in 1857 ; * The First Tempta- tion,' 1863 ; * The Glacier Land,' adapted from Dumas ; ' The Wanderer and his Home,' adapted from Lamartine; and 'Pictures from the First French Revolution,' 1865-1875. In 1880 she issued the concluding portion of her husband's • Memoir of B6ranger.' " She was never photographed ; and the only portraits which survive are engravings from pictures. Many of her writings were never pubhshed. Her poems are still read ; and that there is still a demand for her two books, " Ancient Cures," and " Ancient Legends," is shown by the fact that these two books were included in the recently-issued catalogue of a large new book- lending enterprise. Both these books, however, according to Lady Wilde's own statement, were largely taken 79 The Life of Oscar Wilde from materials collected by, or for her husband. " He would employ very many people/' she related once, " schoolmasters in the villages chiefly, who could speak both Irish and English^ to investigate and collect all the local traditions^ superstitions, etc., of the j)easantry. When he died a great amount of material had been col- lected, much of which I have pubUshed in the last year or so in the volumes entitled ' Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland,' and * Ancient Legends of Ireland/ Sir WiUiam had a passion for such research ; and in recognition of his services the Royal Irish Academy gave him its gold medal." This detailed investigation into the immediate parentage and remoter afl&nities and relation- ships of Oscar Wilde has afforded us many data which will go towards enabling the student of his life to understand some points in his complex character as well as a few of his peculiarities. Of these some came to him by direct inheritance, in his blood, so to say ; others were the result of that instinctive imitation of their parents and such of their kinsfolk as are held up as examples for their reverence and admiration which all children practise. Psychological influences have also been indicated. It may be well in conclusion to sum up under 80 The Life of Oscar Wilde their different headings certain characteristics of his which we are now able to trace back to their source. Under " direct inheritance," or ''transmission by blood/' may, perhaps, be dassed his literary capacity, his gifts of poetry, languages, of ready mastery of difficult studies, his love of the beautiful, the soimd common- sense of his normal periods, his family and personal pride, and his moral courage in the face of danger, but also an indifference to the dangers of alcoholism, an aversion from failure, physical, social and mental, an exaggerated esteem, on the other hand, for wealth, titles and social success, a tolerance for moral laxness. The instinctive imitation of childhood may explain his love for eccentricity in dress, his professions of an adoration for youth and a hatred for old age, his claim that th^perusual of a single book entirely revolutionised his mentality. This rough classification is only advanced tentatively, as a suggestion, and with all due awe for the complex mysteries of the human soul. The psychology of an Oscar Wilde is not to be resolved into elemental factors by human intelligence. But the few data arrived at may render the problem of that psychology less bewildering, and at the same time, because of r 8i The Life of Oscar Wilde the very dimness of the Ught which they cast, impress us with the magnitude and the obscurity of the problem. Now it is not right or lawful for man to judge or to condemn that which he cannot understand. When God withholds His Ught either on the acts or on the motives of a fellow man it means nothing more than this, that He reserves the judging of that man's acts and thoughts for His own supreme tribunal. 82 CHAPTER V Oicar ^M^lde's Christening— The Selection of his Names — His Later Dislike of them — ^No. i Meirion Sqnare — ^The Merrion Sqnare Jarvey — Oscar Wilde and the Cab-drivers — Oscar and lus Brother — Oscar's Sister — His Poem on her Death — His Early Upbringing — His Precocity — His Knowledge of French — ^His Home-Life— An Artificial Atmosphere— Dangerous Environment — Six William Wilde's Love of Nature — Oscar's Abhorrence from Nature — His Enunciations on the Subject — Oscar WOde's Writings, Sincere, not Paradoxical. Such was the parentage of the child who was born on i6th October 1854, at No. i Merrion Square, in the motimful city of Dublin ; whose advent, because he was a boy, was a disappoint- ment to his mother, and who for a long time after his birth was treated as a girl, talked to as a girl, dressed as a girl. His father did not share his wife's caprice, and for his second son selected names of singular viriUty. These names were so chosen as to proclaim to the world the lad's dose association by blood with the history of Ireland. Oscar is good Celtic, it is a name closely connected with Irish legend and record. And here another negation is necessary. Oscar Wilde was not the god-son of the Duke of 83 The Life of Oscar Wilde Ostergotland^ although Speranza allowed it to be understood that it had been after this princely friend of the family that the boy was called. People Uving in DubHn who remember the christening and all the circumstances connected with that ceremony have stated that at the time of Oscar's birth the Wildes were not acquainted with the gentleman who is now the King of Sweden. The m5rth was one of those Schwaermereien on the part of Lady Wilde, to which reference has already been made. It is certain that before Oscar's birth the personality of the poet-prince must have greatly occupied Speranza's thoughts for the personal resemblance between Oscar Wilde and the King of Sweden was one which struck everyone who knew the two men. More particularly was this resem- blance a striking one between the prince as a student at Upsala and Oscar Wilde as a student at Oxford. On page 39 of Dr Josef Linck's biography of " King Oscar" (" Konimg Oscar," Adolf Bonnier, Stockholm) there appeared a portrait of the young duke, which vividly reminds one of Oscar Wilde at the same age. However, it appears to be the fact that the child's name was chosen by his father, who wanted him to have a good ancient Irish name. For the same reason he also caused his son to 84 Photo by Elliot Jt Fry. \V. G. WILLS, PAINTKR AND DRAMATIST. COUSIN TO OSCAR WILDE. face pag9 b6. The Life of Oscar Wilde be christened Fingal and O'Flaherty ; the latter from those "wild O'Flahertys" from whom Cronciwell's soldiers in an addendmn to the Litany prayed God to deliver them. At the same time the additional name of Wills was bestowed upon the boy. The motive of this selection was the same. It was to affirm his Irish nationality. The Wills family were wealthy connty people who had been settled for over three hmidred years in Ireland. It was a General Wills of this family, who, with General Carpenter, crushed the legitimate hopes of the loyal party at the Battle of the Boyne. With this family the Wildes were closely connected, and in a near degree Oscar Wilde was cousin to that gifted man, W. G. Wills, the dramatist, painter and poet. On the two cousins the wonderful of dramaturgy had descended to- gether with an alUed strain of eccentricity, which, however, differed in its developments in the two favoured yet unhappy kinsmen. The second son of William Wilde by his marriage to Jane Francesca Elgee was accord- ingly christened, Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wills Wilde. In his youth and early manhood he was proud of these sounding patronymics. Later on he discarded the use of them. They irritated him. To refer to them was to pro- 85 The Life of Oscar Wilde voke his great anger. They classified him; they labelled him ; they wrote him down as de son village ; and this was intolerable to him, to his cosmopolitan sense^ to his disdain for partisanships^ politics and protestations. He had a strong aversion from what was local in interest, from what was outrS and self-assertive ; and in all these ways his Irish Christian names offended his taste. For the rest Oscar Wilde never wiUingly placed himself on the losing side in any division of men. Irishmen and Irish matters have always been as mipopular in the London society to which he aspired, as they are in lower spheres of the Anglo-Saxon Mob ; and although Oscar Wilde never denied his nation- aUty he took particular care not to let it trans- spire. In some circles in Dublin it is held that he was an ardent Irish patriot, that the mantle that Speranza wore in '48 had descended upon his broad shoulders, that it was this very pride as an Irishman which prevented him from fleeing from a British Court of Justice when the opportimity offered itself to him so to do. If this was so he was able to dissimulate here also with astonishing skill. It was amongst luxurious siuroundings that the child was reared. His father's house is one of the best houses in the best part of Dublin — 86 / The Life of Oscar Wilde and good houses in the Irish capital are very good indeed. They are mute witnesses^ as are also the fine broad streets to-day, of former opulence and splendour. There are few houses in London or other big Eng^h cities which can compare in comfort, ampUtude, elegance and decoration with a very large number of the DubUn bourgeois palaces. No. i Merrion Square, which is a comer house, is situated in one of the pleasantest and most convenient parts of the town. From the front the windows overlook the Merrion Square Gardens ; there is a large garden at the back, and on the right is Lincoln Place. The house, which is now occupied by a dentist, is painted red on the Lincoln Place front, and the windows which look out on this side are of an Oriental style of architecture. It is a big, soUd, substantial bourgeois house which makes some pretensions to originaUty and artisticness. It looks the ideal residence for a successful pro- fessional man who stands well at court, but it hardly strikes one as the fit dweUing-place for a revolutionary poetess, or as the birthplace of a man of genius who over shifting, Uf ting deeps and by circuitous routes was to come to a death- bed so forlorn and sombre. No tablet yet records the fact that in this house was bom the author of "The Soul of Man,'* or of " De Profundis" ; 87 The Life of Oscar Wilde but on the tablets of the people's memory that record is engraved. Just opposite the house, at the comer of the gardens, is a cab-stand, and amongst the drivers is an elderly man who, when he sees any stranger looking up at No. i Merrion Square, touches his hat and says that his honour is no doubt looking at the house where " Sir Oscar Wilde '* was bom. The stranger may answer that he did not know that the poet had been knighted also, and then the jarvey sa3rs that " Sure and he was," that he was a great poet besides, and that as a lad, he had often driven the gentleman. He speaks of it with pride, as a thing to be remembered, and he has nothing but good things to say of the young man who was kind and genial, and who paid handsomely for each " set-down." Oscar Wilde was alwa3rs a good friend to cab-drivers. At the time of his trial he was known as " one of the best riders in Chelsea" amongst the cabmen. He must, in his opulent days, have spent many hundred pounds a year in cabs. At one period he used to take a cab by the day, and the first address that he used to give to the driver was the Biu'lington Arcade where there was a florist's shop, where every day he fetched for himself a buttonhole flower costing half-a- guinea, and another costing half-a-crown for his 88 The Life of Oscar Wilde cabman for the day. The Dublin cabman does not recollect that his yoimg patron had any partiality for buttonhole flowers, but he re- members that even in those da3rs, Oscar Wilde would not drive in a cab which was drawn by a white horse, as he considered this most unlucky. For the rest, he speaks of the young man, as of all the Wilde family, with respect and regret. " It was a sad day," he says, " when they went across the water." As children the brothers William and Oscar were great friends ; and Oscar Wilde in after Ufe frequently spoke of their mutual attachment. " I had a toy bear," he once related, " of which I was very fond indeed, so fond that I used to take it to bed with me, and I thought that nothing could make me more unhappy than to lose my bear. Well, one day Willy asked me for it ; and I was so fond of Willy that I gave it to him, I remember, without a pang. Afterwards, however, the enormity of the sacrifice I had made impressed itself upon me. I considered that such an act merited the greatest gratitude and love in return, and whenever Willy crossed me in any way I used to say : " Willy, you don't deserve my bear. Give me back my bear." And for years afterwards, after we had grown up, whenever we had a slight quarrel, I used to 89 The Life of Oscar Wilde say the same : " Willy, you don't deserve my bear. You must give me back my bear." He used to laugh at this recollection. A third child was bom to Lady Wilde, the daughter she had longed for. '' She was like a golden ray of sunshine dancing about our home/' Oscar Wilde used to say of this sister. She did not live to reach womanhood ; her loss was the greatest grief that Lady Wilde knew until. . . . One of Oscar Wilde's most beautiful poems, a Requiescat, which appears in his first volume of poems, is dedicated to the girl's memory. He writes of her : — " She hardly knew She was a woman. So softly she grew." There is one verse which renders a thought which must have come to all who mourn the dead : — " Cofi&nboard, heavy stone, Lie on her breast. I vex my heart alone ; She is at rest." Already as a very small boy Oscar gave proof of great cleverness. A great noveUst of Irish birth relates how as a boy he accompanied his mother to call on Lady Wilde, who was just then staying at a country house on the borders 90 The Life of Oscar Wilde of Mayo and Galway, where Sir William Wilde had an estate. The caller asked Lady Wilde about the boys, and she answered : " Willy is all right, but Oscar is wonderful, wonderful. He can do anything.'* He was then nine years of age. In an article which Ernest La Jeunesse wrote about him after his death in Paris, the French critic referring to Wilde's wonderful knowledge and capacity said : " II savait tout." Indeed, few men have so impressed their con- temporaries with the feeling of omniscience. In a biographical notice of Oscar Wilde, which appeared in 1891, is the following passage, refer- ring to his early education. . " The son of two remarkable people, Mr Wilde had a remarkable upbringing. From his earliest childhood his principal companions were his father and mother and their friends. Now wandering about Ireland with the former in quest of archaeological treasures, now listening in Lady Wilde's salon to the wit and thought of Ireland, the boy, before his eighth year had learnt the ways to ' the shores of old romance.' had seen all the apples plucked from the tree of knowledge, and had gazed with wondering eyes into ' the younger day.' This upbringing suited his idiosyncrasy ; indeed, with his tempera- ment it is impossible to conceive what else could 91 The Life of Oscar Wilde literary career in England this was not a good thing. The most successful writer knows only the tongue in which he writes. Linguistic attainment spoils the mother-language for the unilingual reader. The average Englishman cannot " follow " the writer who at times thinks in a tongue which is not his own. He revolts against similes^ deductions^ points of view which are not English. The man whose books translate well into foreign languages is not likely to be very highly appreciated in his own country. That is why, perhaps^ it has been said that posterity begins at the frontier. There are exceptions of course. Gerard de Nerval's translation of Goethe's " Faust " was such a beautiful work that Goethe himself wrote to the French poet to compliment him on the authorship of the French " Faust." But " Faust " is in itself an exception. It is what the Germans call a " Weltstueck/' a term, by the way, which they have also appUed to " Salom6." Shakespeare reads badly in foreign translations even where the son of Hugo, under Victor Hugo's guidance, writes the version. Dickens never appealed to foreign nations in any degree equivalently to his wonderful in- fluence on his countrymen. It was an artificial atmosphere in which the 94 The Life of Oscar Wilde ladj Oscar, was reared. It is wonderful that he escaped that taint of precocity for which the English dictionary has another and a less euphonious term. It is more wonderful still that imtil his inherent madness broke out he escaped the taint of moral laxness which infected the air of his father's house. Here high think- ing did not go hand in hand with plain living. The house was a hospitable one ; it was a house of opulence and carouse ; of late suppers and deep drinking ; of careless talk and example. His father's gallantries were the talk of Dublin. Even his mother, although a woman of spotless life and honour, had a loose way of talking which might have been full of danger to her sons. A sajdng of hers is still remembered in Dublin, which gives an echo of the way in which her attitude of revolt against the accepted and the conmionplace prompted her to mischievous talk. " There has never been a woman yet in this world who wouldn't have given the top off the milkjug to some man if she had mrt the right one." The mother's salon, the father^ supper-table were frequented by boozy anc boisterous Bohemians, than whom no city more than Dubhn furnishes stranger specimens. How free was the conversation which went on there in the presence of the two lads may be 95 The Life of Oscar Wilde gathered from a remark which Oscar Wilde once made to a fellow-undergraduate at Trinity College. "Come home with me/* he said, "I wstfit to introduce you to my mother. We have founded a Society for the Suppression of Virtue." This statement, of course, partook of the nature of those remarks as to which a Prefect of Police in Paris once asked Charles Baudelaire, the poet, why a man of his genius often spoke in so fooUsh a way. " Pour 6tonner les sots," answered Baudelaire. " It was to astonish fools," without any doubt, that Oscar Wilde so spoke on that occasion, for there was no cleaner-Uved young man than he. But his words show the prevaihng moral atmosphere at home, and the dangers to which he was exposed. And no doubt also that having been exposed all through his youth to the contagion of im- moraUty his powers of resistance against moral disease had been so weakened that when the attack came he had not the strength to over- come it. There is a great analogy between physical and mental diseases. This record should teach a lesson to parents which they would do well to lay to heart. By his father as a lad he was taught to admire the beauties of Nature, but it did not appear in after Ufe that he shared Sir William's en- 96 The Life of Oscar Wilde thusiasm. Though he wrote much and well about flowers and birds and the beauties of the land imder the moving seasons^ he used to describe the coimtry as " rather tedious '* ; and to the end remained a dweller in cities. Atmospheric effects^ the planets and the stars, the lights on land and s^, though he recognised their utility for poetical description, certainly never aroused emotions within him. Of Sir William, on the other hand, it is related that one night after everybody had retired to rest in the house which he owned at Howth, at the seaside near Dublin, a terrific storm having broken out overhead, he dragged a reluctant guest from his bed and up to the top of the house, there to admire with him the wonderful effects of the Ughtning flashes over the sea. " He kept me there for nearly an hour," related this guest afterwards, '' and showed the greatest enthusiasm for the spectacle. I was far from sharing his excitement. It was drenching wet, and we were both lightly clad. Yet he kept appealing to me to join him in saying that it was the most wonderful night that I had ever spent." Oscar held that the monotony of tife spent amidst rustic surroundings was fatal to artistic production. ''One can only write in dties," he wrote in a letter to one of his friends, G 97 The Life of Oscar Wilde " the country hanging on one walls in the grey mists of Corot, or the opal mornings that Daubigny has given us/' In the same letter^ he speaks of '* the splendid whirl and swirl of life in London." His dishke for Nature and the natural Ufe as contrasted to artificiality; and that mode of existence which claims to be the outcome of the highest civilisation developed as he grew older. The utterances of Vivian (through whose mouth Oscar Wilde speaks) where he decries Nature in "The Decay of L}dng'' are not so much brilliant paradox. They are the sincere expressions of Oscar Wilde's feeUng on the subject. The passage from the first essay in " Intentions '* may be quoted here. " Vivian : Enjoy Nature ! I am glad to say that I have entirely lost that faculty. People tell us that Art makes us love Nature more than we loved her before ; that it reveals her secrets to us ; and that after a careful study of Corot and Constable we see things in her that had escaped our observation. My own experience is that the more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities^ her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely 98 The Life of Oscar Wilde unfinished condition. Nature has good in- tentions^ of course, but, as Aristotle once said, she cannot carry them out. When I look at a landscape, I cannot help seeing all its defects. It is fortunate for us, however, that Nature is so imperfect, as otherwise we should have had no art at all. Art is our spirited protest, our gallant attempt to teach Nature her proper place. As for the mfinite variety of Nature, that is a pure myth. • . . " A little lower down, Vivian continues : — "But Nature is so uncomfortable. Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects. Why even Morris's poorest workman could make you a more comfortable seat than the whole of Nature can. ... If Nature had been comfortable mankind would never have invented architecture, and I prefer houses to the open air. In a house we all feel of the proper proportions. Everything is sub- ordinated to us, fashioned for our use and our pleasure. Egotism itself, which is indoor Ufe." People have been wont to point to " Inten- tions" as masterpieces of paradox. The truth is that these essays contain in paradoxical form Wilde's most orthodox creeds. The vigour with which he enunciates his opinions proceeds, no 99 The Life of Oscar Wilde doubt, from the knowledge that there is much pretence, not to say hjrpocrisy, in the general definitions of what is good and beautiful. This hypocrisy stirred his indignation and gave impetus to his pen. What ordinary man or woman of the world really cares for Nature in preference to urban haunts ? What sincerity is there in the gushing rhapsodies about the beauties of the country to which it is fashionable to give utterance. How many times does the London dame or squire look up to the stars ? zoo CHAPTER VI Pdrtora Royal School — Its Sectarian Character — Prompt Dis- Dlnsioiimeiit — Oscar's Ptofidency — Incapacity for Arith- metic— His Appearance as a Boy — His Precocity in a Dangenms Talent — His Fondness for Dress — His Unpopularity — His Eager Thirst for Knowledge — His excellent Character — ^Bdatriculation at T.C.D. — ^His Re- potation there— The Berkeley Gold Medal— The Classical Scholarship— His Marks— Why he left T.C.D.— He goes to Oxford — ^A Tnming-Point in his Life — ^The Possible Dangers of a Student's Life — ^His University Achieve- ments— -' Not a Reading Man." The school which was selected for Oscar Wilde by his parents was a school founded by an English prince, the father of that *' Pretender " whom one of the bo3^s ancestors had helped to overthrow. Possibly it was Speranza's great detestation of the "soulless iconoclast/' Crom- well^ that prompted her to send her sons to be alumni in a house of which Eang Charles was the founder, patron and benefactor, Portora Royal School, Enniskillen. Motives of economy may also have dictated this choice ; for compared with the fees of an EngUsh pubUc school, the charges at Portora are very small. There are three terms in the year, and the fees for each boarder — " a considerable reduction being made loz The Life of Oscar Wilde in the case of brothers" — are only £17, los. per term. According to the present synopsis of the course of instruction the work of the higher forms is mainly directed towards pre- paration for the universities, and especially for Trinity College, DubUn. The school is under the government of The Fermanagh Protestant Board of Education, of which the Right Rev. The Lord Bishop of Clogher, D.D., is the Chairman, and amongst the members of which are the Rector of Enniskillen and another Church of England clergyman. It is a sectarian school; for we notice amongst the provisions of the "Course of Instruction" there that: " ReUgious training is regarded as of supreme importance. The boarders are regularly instructed in Divinity, and on Sundays attend the respective Protestant churches in charge of responsible masters." From what precedes it is easy to imagine the bias with which English and Irish history must have been taught in this school, what Whiggish principles must have been instilled hour by hour into the pupils' minds, and what the prevailing opinion among Oscar's pastors and masters on Irish Nationalism, and the doings of the Young Ireland Party may have been. For instance, one may fancy the views of the Lord Bishop of Clogher, D.D., 102 OXAR WII.DE AS A IAD. (FROM A RF.D CHALK DRAWING.) To face pajv IttS. The Life of Oscar Wilde on " The Glorious young Meagher." At first bewilderment must have come to the lad, who had been trained to admire his mother for the part she had taken in a movement which to the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop and the rest of The Fermanagh Protestant Board of Education must have appeared in much the same light as did to the Lord Archbishop of Munster the proceedings of John of Leyden and the other Anabaptists in 1536. Bewilderment would give place to an insight into the insincerity of most poUtical professions, and from this to C3niicism and general disbelief would be but one step. " If the gods of our faith be Uars, in whom shall we trust ? " Oscar went to this school when he was eleven years old. Lady Wilde's description of him as a wonderful boy who could do anything seems to have been justified by his early achievements at Portora. In 1868 he was already very high up in the school ; he had, indeed, already reached the third class in his first year. It is recorded of him that he got " quicker into a book than any boy that ever lived." At the same time he was a great d\mce in the mathematical class. He has been described by a schoolfellow of his, who is now a most distinguished man, as "absolutely incapable of mathematics." In 103 The Life of Oscar Wilde arithmetic he was hopelessly bad, and, as by the regulations of the school a certain proficiency in arithmetic was an indispensable qualification for the winning of certain prizes for scholarship, it was a usual thing to see young Oscar Wilde, on the eve of entering some examination, being coached in the elements of mathematical science by one of the jimior masters. This early incapa- city for figures explains much of the reckles^ess of his after life. The careful and parsimonious of this world are by instinct mathematicians, at least as far as the four great rules are concerned. It is recorded of most spendthrifts, on the other hand, that the faculty of calculation is an element lacking in their mental composition. Has the world's history any record of an extravagant mathematician ? Oscar Wilde was a big boy, very tall for his age, and distinctly heavy of build. One of his schoolfellows says that '" he used to flop about ponderously." He was not popular with the other boys. For one thing, he never played any games. In later Ufe he used to say that he objected to cricket because the attitudes as- sumed were so indecent. He never rowed on the lake ; and he had for the musketry instructor and the drill sergeant contempt mingled with pity. His manner was very reserved, and he 104 The Life of Oscar Wilde used to keep aloof from the other boys. Another characteristic which made for his unpopiilarity amongst his schoolfellows^ just as in later life it raised up against him so many implacable enemies^ was the extraordinary gift he had of saying trenchant tttngs^bout others. He was a very cleveFboy at giving nicknames. He was the ironical sponsor to the whole school from the Rev. William Steele, D.D., the headmaster, down to the smallest boy in class ib. As a man, few wits have ever said cleverer and at the same time more biting things about their con- temporaries. This capacity of his and his ruthless exercise thereof account for much of the hatred that is still aUve against him years after his lonely death. Of one very famous contemporary Irish writer he remarked : "He has no enemies, but he is intensely disUked by his friends.'' Of the son of a famous pianist he once said, when the fact of this parentage was stated to him : ** Well, I am glad that he has managed to survive it." Of an extra- ordinary Russian Jew who at various times essayed to fill in modem London the r61e of a Maecenas, a HeUogabalus, and other less worthy parts, and who hated Oscar Wilde with an intensity of hatred that almost made him interesting, he declared : " He came to London 105 The Life of Oscar Wilde in the hopes of founding a salon. He has succeeded only in opening a restaurant." He used to use this man's name as the symbol of ugliness. " As ugly as '' was an expression constantly in his mouth. He described him as a " foetus in a bottle." In " Intentions " one finds many compUments^ h rebours, addressed to various of the prominent writers of the time. We are told that Hall Caine writes at the top of his voice; that Rudyard Kipling reveals Ufe " by splendid flashes of vulgarity " ; that as one turns over the pages of one of James Payn's novels, ''the suspense of the author becomes quite unbearable " ; that Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty ; and that Marion Crawford has immolated himself on the altar of local colour. These remarks are all very clever, but they are not gratifying to the people about whom they were made, and would not tend to increase the satirist's number of friends. But Oscar Wilde seemed to go out of his way to offend people, not individuals alone, but whole sections of society. What soUdtor, for instance, being present at the performance of his comedy, "The Importance of Being Earnest," and hearing his sneer at the social standing of the profession, as it was put into Lady Brackneirs mouth, but would feel a personal io6 The Life of Oscar Wilde grievance against the author for a gratuitous slight ? These are the words referred to : ''Lady Bracknell: — Uarkhy, Markby & Ifarkby ? A firm of the very highest position in their profession. Indeed, I am told that one of the Mr Markbys is occasionally to be seen at dinner-parties/' Elsewhere every stockbroker gets an un- necessary wound to his self-esteem. Indeed, few of the professions escape the lash of satire which seems prompted merely by the contempt of a man professing to voice aristocratic and d^^ant society, and its alleged disdain for men and women who have to work for a Uving. He carried his imprudence to the extent of in- sulting journalists with tedious insistence, thus foaling the very trumpets of modem reputation. There are many points in Oscar Wilde's career which allow of a comparison between him and the great Napoleon ; and this deUberate deUght in provoking enmities, this sheer reckless and uncharitable combativeness, is not the least striking characteristic common to both. In both men it arose from a delusion as to the extent of their powers, froma spirit of prepotence, from a most imprudent contempt of the aggregate force of the individual adversaries whom they so joyfully and so wilfully raised 107 The Life ot Oscar Wilde up against themselves. This policy of mischi^ did not succeed in the hands of Napoleon ; it was therefore not likely to be more successful in the hands of Oscar >^de. The latter was fond of reading the '' Maximes '' of the Due de la Rochefoucault, and might have remembered to his advantage that the epigranunatist said that the man who thinks that he can do without society makes a mistake, but that the man who thinks that society cannot do without him makes a still greater mistake. Although he is remembered at Portora as having been very clever in giving nicknames to others, none of his schoolfellows can recall what was his own particular soubriquet. He seems to have been generally known as '' Oscar." As to his brother, Willy, he was known as " Blue- Blood.'' He was not a tidy boy ; he had inherited some of the paternal carelessness about his appearance, and having one day been re- monstrated with for the umber of his neck and hands, declared very proudly that his skin was dark, not because it was dirty, but because of the blue blood in the veins of the Wildes. This anecdote might have been left unrecorded, but for the fact that it shows that the Wilde bo3rs held a high opinion of their social standing, and I may explain Oscar's subsequent determined \ io8 The Life of Oscar Wilde efforts to establish himself in London society^ as also his contempt, referred to above, for people whose blood was not blue, and who had to work for their maintenance. And here it may once more be repeated that the exigencies of this biography make it impossible to discard any fact, on which friendship or reverence might plead for silence, when that fact can serve to throw Ught upon the complex problem of the character which we are engaged in studying. Already in those days young Oscar Wilde showed that fondness for distinguished attire which ever marked him in life. He is re- membered at Portora as the only boy there who used to wear a top hat. " It was always a very fashionable hat, of the latest style.'* All the boys at Portora were provided, by school r^ulations as to the outfit, with one Black Silk Hat, but this was for Sunday wear only. Oscar never discarded his. He was always very well dressed, and wore his hair long. '* He had a good wisp of hair I " is said of him still in Emiiskillen. He did not appear to be very friendly with his orother Willy. " He was very superior in his manner towards Willy.** The latter was much more poptdar with the boys. The little boys at Portora, especially, had the greatest afiection for Willy Wilde. Even in 109 The Life of Oscar Wilde those early days he had all the charming talents de socUU which afterwards won him much success. He used to tell stories to the children^ and he used to play the piano for them. Oscar was considered exceedingly clever in literature — ^that is tc say in his knowledge of books. At the same time the future author of " Intentions " never showed any superiority in composition. " He never stood out in essays/' remarks one of his masters, who adds : " Oscar Wilde was never looked upon as a formidable competitor by the boys who went in for examina- tions in Portora school." His conduct was imiformly good. There was not a breath of a complaint about him in any way, except some short time before he left the school, when, as one of his schoolfellows relates, " he got into an awful row with the headmaster. He had cheeked old Steele something awful." That there was nothing of the decadent about Oscar Wilde in his school-days is the Jbianimous declaration of many men who were boys at school with him. He was a great reader, and assimilated what he read in a remarkable manner. He used to get through a book with a speed that astonished everybody; and what he had read thus rapidly, he used to remember. He read nothing but English books, and these no The Life of Oscar Wilde were generally classical novels. He displayed no particular ef&dency in French in those days. He had a great fondness for handsome books and choice editions. " When he came so pro- minently before the world as an aesthete/' relates a Don at T.C.D, "we all tried to remember any indication that he had given as a lad of a taste for beautiful things^ and the only thing that we could recall in this connection was that he always had most expensive copies of class- books. He had^ for instance^ a beautiful large paper edition of ^schyltis.*' During his last year at Portora^ when he was a lad of sixteen, his eager thirst for knowledge and his great receptivity were matters of observation and comment. Often when Mr Purser was instruct- ing the class m history or in geography Oscar Wilde would contrive by means of some cleverly put question to lead the master into a dis- quisition on some topic on which he desired to gain information. The subject in hand would be forgotten; the master, ever prompted by his pupil, would unbosom himself of his store of learning. Sometimes the whole of the horn: would be thus absorbed. At other times the master would bring the discussion back to the subject of the lesson, and then it was a sight to see the lad, all alert, thinking and planning HI The Life of Oscar Wilde ! I how, next day, he could turn the master once more on to the question in which he needed instruction — questions often as obstruse as the relative definitions of nominalism and realism. In arithmetic he made no progress at all while at school, and many boys remember the | efforts which Mr Purser used to make to cram i him with the elementary rules. It was, perhaps, in the competition for the Gold Medal which is the great distinction at Portora that Oscar Wilde displayed his peculiar capacity for mastering the contents of a classical book. " In the viva voce/' says one of his competitors, " which was on the Agamemnon of ^schylus, he simply walked away from us all/' He gained 25 per cent, higher marks in this examination than the nearest to him. In October 1871 Oscar Wilde matriculated i at Trinity College, Dublin. In the matricula- tion examination where he obtained the second place his marks in the various subjects were as follows: (The maxim nmnber of marks obtainable in each subject was 10.) Greek, Two Papers — 8, 8. Latin, Two Papers — 8, 7. Latin Composition — ^4. English Composition — 5. History— 8. Arithmetic — 2. iia The Life of Oscar Wilde His total was thus 50. The total obtained by another Portora boy, the gentleman who is now the Junior Bursar of Trinity College, and who ranks as one of the most distinguished classical scholars in the country, was 65. On the second day of the examination, where the subjects were the Higher Classics, Oscar Wilde obtained 46 marks ; whilst the boy who had so outstripped him on the previous day in the rudiments only obtained 36 marks. Oscar Wilde's neglect of the rudiments was always a feature of his character. He is registered on the matriculation book of Trinity College in the following terms and under the headings given : — MATRICULATION ENTRY Jokmmn MmUi Prasisdor Primmius Dim Msnsii A4mi$$ormm Nimtinm Qualiimiu Fidsi ProfsssumM Oct 10 OKar Wilde P. I. C. PmiMS P^mm QuaiiUii$t NmiMtMium Loem Astsiu Anni Wm. PhyacUn Dublin 16 He was at that time just within six days of his seventeenth birthday. At this time of his life, therefore, Oscar Wilde displayed side by side, with a brilliant capacity for reading and understanding the classics, a not quite first-rate knowledge of the elements of classical knowledge. He was undistinguished in Latin composition, which exacts this mastery of the rudiments, a 2x3 The Life of Oscar Wilde mediocre in English composition^ and un- satisfactory in arithmetic. It is related of Emile Zola, it may be remembered, that he was rejected at his examination for the baccalaureat de^ee for inefficiency in composition. During his year's attendance at Trinity College, Dublin, his conduct was irreproachable. "He left this College," says one of the Dons who was a fellow-student of his, " with the very highest character." Beyond the foolish remark of his, that invitation of a fellow-undergraduate to come to his father's house, which has been quoted above, not a single thing is remembered against him. It was for this reason, no doubt, that no official cognisance was taken by Trinity College, Dublin, of his public disgrace; his name was not deleted on any of the honourable records on which his capacity, excellence and industry had inscribed it. At Portora Royal College, on the other hand, a resolution was taken by The Fermanagh Protestant Board of Education in virtue of which the inscription of honour of his name on the stone tablets of the schoolhouse would have been erased, when, mirahUe dictu, it transpired that outraged Nature herself had forestalled The Fermanagh Pro- testant Board of Education in the execution of this salutary sacrifice. The slab on which 114 The Life of Oscar Wilde Oscar Wilde's name was inscribed in letters of gold had cracked right across the ill-reputed words : Nature had effaced the name. In a less enUghtened place, amongst the ignorant and superstitious Irish who are not Protestants, the circumstance might have been hailed as a miracle. He was considered a highly gifted, amiable young man, likely to win a high place as a scholar. In the various college examinations he con- tinually distinguished himself. He was first out of fourteen in the First Rank in the Michaelmas Prize Examination 1872 ; in Hilary Term he was third of the First Rank. The gentleman, now a Privy Councillor, who was Solicitor General under the last Tory Administration, was an undergraduate of the same standing as Oscar Wilde, and with the other junior freshman, competed in the same examinations. He did not, however, emerge from the Second Rank. In later life these two men were to be once more in fierce competition, the fiercest competition, perhaps, that has ever been waged in the Old Bailey Court between a witness for the prosecu- tion and a counsel for the defence ; and here too Oscar Wilde was to hold the superior rank. It has been stated that the barrister has admitted that imtil towards the very end of his cross- es The Life of Oscar WUde examination of the prosecutor he felt that he had had the worst of it all along. He was just about to sit down when an answer of fatal insolence and folly brought the whole of Wilde's splendid defence of himself crumbUng to the ground^ gave an opening to his more patient adversary^ and exposed him to devastation and ruin. This cross-examination of Oscar Wilde in the Queensbeny trial is still eageriy studied by advocates as a lesson how a barrister should act when brought face to face with a hostile witness of such consununate readiness^ power and nerve. The barrister's tritunph in this case was a complete one ; but the reason for that was rather because the witness had become intoxicated with his own trimnph throughout, lost his head in consequence of this^ and in an imprudent moment destroyed the whole effect of his previous answers. The report teaches what patience can do^ and a knowledge of the rudiments ; and in that sense is a triumph for the counsel. He might well have lost his head. He did not. He waited and watched, and in the words of a barrister who was sitting in court at his side, " pounced like a hawk,*' upon the witness when the long-waited-for oppor- tunity arose. Amongst certain men, prominent at Trinity zi6 The Life of Oscar Wilde G>llege, Oscar Wilde was held '' an average sort of man/' and surprise was expressed when he came to the front. Such surprise can only have proceeded from that innocency and ignor- ance of the things of this world which are the most beautiful traits in the character of the deeply learned. Success in the worlds the acclaim of the populace do not go to the modest and retiring scholar. It is an age of advertise- ment, and even the greatest talents must con- form to the commercial exigencies of the hour. One may see any day in any of the big public libraries, the shabby, hungered, half-bUnded man of great learning and knowledge elbowed by the secretary of some popular novelist who is collecting iacts for his master. The secretary is well-dressed, well-fed, and shines with the reflected light of his employer, who, very pro- baUy, earns in one hour more than the great scholar can gain in a week of laborious days and nights. In a letter written by Lady Wilde to Mr O'Donoghue she begs him not to omit to mention in writing a biographical notice of her that both her sons were Gold MedaUists, '' a distinction," she said, ** of which they are both very proud.'' Oscar's gold medal was the Berkdey Medal. This prize was founded by "7 The Life of Oscar Wilde the famous Bishop Berkeley, who denied the existence of matter, and of whom Lord B5rron wrote that when he said that there was no matter it really was no matter what he said. It was possibly from a desire to be consistent with his principles that the Bishop left so small a sum for the purpose of this prize that the Berkeley Gold Medal is not materially one of much value. As a distinction, however, it is highly prized. The subject in which candidates were examined in 1874 was " The Fragments of the Greek Comic Poets, as edited by Meineke," and the prize was won by Oscar Wilde. It will illustrate to what financial straits the poor man was put even at a time when his name was in everybod3^s mouth, that in 1883 after his successful visit to Paris, and while he was lecturing all over England, he was obUged to go to the magistrate at Marlborough PoUce Court to make a statutory declaration con- cerning the loss of a pawn-ticket which was the voucher for Bishop Berkeley's gold medal. In the books of Trinity College there is no record of the marks earned by the various competitors who entered for the Berkeley Prize in 1874. The mere fact that this was won by Oscar Wilde is registered in the records of the college. With regard, however, to the scholar- Z18 The Life of Oscar Wilde ship which Oscar Wilde had won in the previous year full particulars of his various markings are to be fotmd. They are of some interest, as illustrating the state of his mental capacity in the different subjects in which the candidates were examined. Oscar Wilde's marks in the various subjects were the following. In each case lo was the maximum number of marks obtainable. Viva Voce Thucydides — 8. Viva Voce Tacitus — 7^. Greek Prose Composition — ^5. (The examiner in this subject was Mr Stack, " a notoriously hard marker." The best marks given were 6}, which were obtained by Joseph King, who, however, only got the last place but one among the selected candidates. He was ninth, while Oscar Wilde was sixth.) Greek Translation — 7. (This was the best mark given.) Greek Tragedians (Questions on) — 7. Latin Comedians (Questions on)— 7. Latin Prose Translation on Paper — 6. Latin Prose Composition — 3^. Demosthenes — 5. Ancient History — 7. Greek Verse (Passages on Paper) — 5. Greek Verse Composition. — i. (Here Mr Wm. Roberts was the examiner. He was a " character as a 'Varsity Don," a very hard examiner. In this subject most of the candidates scored no better than Oscar Wilde, some got no marks at all, a plump duck's egg figures against their names in the Trinity record. One or two got two marks. Messrs Montgomery and L. C. Purser, who were first and second in the final classification, each got five marks.) 119 The Life of Oscar Wilde Greek Viva Voce (Mr Tyrell, examiner) — 6. Latin Viva Voce (Mr T5n:ell, examiner) — 5 J. Translation from Latin Poets — j{. English Composition — 6, (This was the highest number of marks scored in this subject by any of the candidates.) Latin and Greek Grammar — ^4. In the final result Oscar Wilde got the sixth place out of ten selected candidates. Joseph King, who was considered the cleverest man in the college was placed ninth. The following is the complete Ust of selected candidates in their order of merit. Malcolm Montgomery. Louis Claudb Purser. Richard Hbnnessy. Thomas Corr. GoDDARD Henry Orpen. Oscar Wilde. William Ridgeway. George Thomas Vanston. Joseph King. Arthur M'Hugh. An examination of the marks obtained by Oscar Wilde sets forth that while still weak in the rudiments he had made great progress in English composition. He was to make still greater pro- gress in the event. The Trinity College Scholarships, Uke the Gold Medal, lack in that materialism which the Bishop denied. They carry with them no great Z20 The Life df Oscar Wilde emolmnent. A T.C.D. scholar obtains rooms in coU^e at half the usual fees charged to students. He has no fees to pay for tuition, and he gets his dinners for nothing. But there is no income attached to the position. " Oscar Wilde never held his scholarship at Trinity College/' one learns, " as he preferred to go to Oxford, where better things are to be won." In the following year, accordingly, he went to Oxford, won a demyship at Magdalen College, of the annual value of £95, tenable for five years, and matriculated at Magdalen on 17th October. He writes in " De Profundis " of his entrance into the English University, as the great turning- point of his Ufe. " I want to get to the point,'* he writei, " when I shall be able to say quite simply, and without affectation, that the two great turning-points in my Ufe were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison." It is possible that when he wrote those lines he was thinking that if he had never been sent to Oxford, the extraordinary latent madness which had brought him to the terrible place where he sat, might never have been roused into fatal activity. For there is no use den3dng it : Oxford, which is the finest school in the world for the highest culture, is also the worst training- xai The Life of Oscar Wilde ground for the lowest forms of debauchery. It ^ all depends on the character of the student^ his early home-trammg, his natural pro})ensities, his ph5rsical state, his religious belief. Oxford produces side by side the saint, the sage, and the depraved libertine. She sends men to Parnassus or to the public-house, to J^tium or the lenocinium. The Dons ignore the horrors which are going on under their very eyes. They are wrapped up in the petty concerns of the University hierarchy ; they are of men the most unpractical and least worldly; while possibly their deep classical studies have so famiUarised them with certain pathological manifestations that they really fail to understand the horror of much that is the common jest of the under- graduates. Oxford has rendered incalculable services to the Empire, but she has also fostered and sent forth great numbers of men who have Contributed to poison EngUsh society. It is very possible that if Sir Wilham Wilde had not sent his second son to Oxford, but had left him in Ireland, where certain forms of perversion are totally unknown, and where vice generally is regarded with a universal horror which contrasts most strongly with the mischievous tolerances that EngUsh society manifests towards it, Oscar would now be Hving in Dublin, one of the Ughts 122 The Life of Oscar Wilde of Trinity College, one of the glories of Ireland, a scholar and a gentleman of universal reputa- tion. Let any Oxford man who remembers his imdergraduates days, who remembers the things that used to be jested about there, and the common talk at the wines about this man or that, ask himself when he has condemned Oscar Wilde whether ahna mater may not have been to blame, in part if not in toto, for the tremendous and terrible metamorphosis that was worked in Oscar Wilde's character, admitting that the young man, who left Trinity College with a spotless reputation, really did develop in so short a time into the dangerous maniac such as he afterwards came to be considered The man who approaches the study of this extraordinary degeneration of character (admitting the common aspect of the Oscar Wilde of later years to be justified) in a scientific spirit and without bias, cannot fail to feel the gravest suspicion that Oscar Wilde was to a very large extent a victim of the Oxford educational system, of the Oxford environment. To the same dangers as those to which he succumbed any impressionable lad is exposed, who, starting with no strong moral sense, his native virtue weakened by evil example at home, is immersed in a year-long course of study, in which in the finest language 123 The Life of Oscar Wilde that the world has ever voiced men and women are glorified who in the present day would be considered monsters fit only for the stake^ and where in almost divine poetry are celebrated passions and acts which society and the church now point to as the very abomination of de- solation. In a pathetic letter which Oscar Wilde wrote to a friend of his after his release from prison he said : '' I have still difficulty in understanding why the frequentation of Sporus should be considered so much more criminal than the frequentation of MessaUna." It is^ more- over^ a well-established pathological fact that the men in whom certain aberrations develop with the most hideous fecundity are men of great scholarship whose moral sense has been warped by studies in which they have come to identify their environment with that of the men and women of antiquity. In scholarship Oscar Wilde progressed with surprising rapidity. His career as a student was a most successful one. He took a First Class in Moderations in the Honours School (Trinity Term 1876), and two year later, in Trinity Term 1878, he took a First Class in the " Honour Finals.*' Yet he was never a reading man, and was rarely to be seen at his books. 124 IN.ot.. /.•; FJl'of X- Frii. Tc f'tce 1*0- ;t 125. CHAPTER VII Oscar ^^^de at Oxford — John Ruskin— The Extent of his Inflnence on Oscar Wilde — Ruskin's Sodalism — Oscar \^^lde as a Social Reformer — His Imniense Influence Abroad — Osbar as an Undergraduate — His Rooms at Magdalen —^ His Appearance — He is "Ragged" — His Physical and Moral Courage — His Leanings to Catholicism — His Journey in Greece — ^The Effect upon him — Early Writings if Ftose and Verse — " Ravenna " — ^The Irony of Fate— 7 Ravenna " Symbolical of his own Career. During some part of Oscar Wilde's first term at Oxford — that is to say, during one month in Michaebnas Term 1874 — John Ruskin, Slade Professor of Fine Arts, was lecturing twice a week in the Oxford Museum on the " iEsthetic and Mathematic schools of Art in Florence/' This was the second course of lectures deUvered by Ruskin during that term, and this course was divided into eight lectures, classified under three separate titles. The first three lectures (Series A) dealt with (i) Amolfo, (2) Cimabue, (3) Giotto. This series described the "iEsthetic Schools of 1300." The next series of three lectures (Series B), treated of the " Mathematic Schools of 1400," and the various lectures ex- pounded, (4) Brunelleschi, the architect of the 125 The Life of Oscar Wilde Pitti Palace in Florence, (5) Querela, and (6) Ghiberti. The " Final EflForts of .Esthetic Art in Florence" formed the subject of the two concluding lectures (Series C), and these treated of (7) Angelico, and (8) BotticeUi. Oscar Wilde was a constant attendant at these lectures, and there can be no doubt that they produced a very strong impression on his mind, as, indeed, Rusldn's discourses did on every man who heard them. They must have opened up a new field of interest to the young Irishman, have afforded him new subjects on which to talk, and have suggested to him, by the spectacle of the great enthusiasm which Mr Ruskin aroused, the opportunism of a minor apostolate in a creed so obviously popular and successful. But there does not appear to be any grounds for sa3ang, as has so often been said, that Oscar Wilde was greatly influenced by Mr Ruskin. It was not "" probable that this would be so seeing that the whole period of Ruskin's pubUc appearances that term did not exceed twenty-four dsiys, and that in that period it is not possible for one man to influence another to the extent of tinging his whole psychology. Oscar Wilde was a man of extraordinary receptivity, but even to him it would have been impossible to absorb Ruskin's teachings and example so that these should 126 The Life of Oscar Wilde have any permanent effect on his character, in so short a period. At that time he was fresh at Oxford ; a hundred things presented themselves every day to divert his attention ; his mentality was in no way prepared to receive the master's teachings ; and altogether it seems as absurd to state that Ruskin influenced the whole of his character and his Ufe by means of the eight lectures which Oscar Wilde attended as a fresh- man during his first term in Oxford^ as it was incredible that the perusal of a single book could pervert the mental composition of a man. These matters have to be looked at from a scientific point of view ; the plain facts have to be considered and the evidence that can be adduced. There is no trace of any Ruskin influence in Oscar Wilde's after life^ and it would be a psychological miracle if there had been. It is true that the young man was brought into personal contact with the master^ and that he was one of the " ardent young men " who gathered round Mr Ruskin in his practical demonstrations of the Gospel of Labour. In one of the notices of Oscar Wilde's early life we find the following reference to this : '' The influence of Ruskin was so great that Mr Wilde, though holding games in abomination, and detesting violent exercise, might have been seen 127 The Life of Oscar Wilde on grey November mornings breaking stones on the roadsides — ^not imbribed^ however ; * he had the honour of filling Mr Ruskin's especial wheelbarrow/ and it was the great author of 'Modem Painters* himself who taught him how to trundle it." Mr E, T. Cook in his very able monograph, " Some Aspects of Mr Ruskin's Work," which is one part of his " Studies in Ruskin/' gives the following account of the " road-digging experiment," referred to above. " No pro- fessor, I suppose, has had more power of personal influence over his pupils, or has used it more for good, than Mr Ruskin. One of the methods which he adopted for gathering a circle of ardent young men around him, and impregnating them with his spirit, was the subject of much sarcastic comment. This was the famous road-digging experiment. No one was more ative to the amusing side of the affair than Mr Ruskin himself. The road which his pupils made is, he has been heard to admit, about the worst in the three kingdoms, and for any level places in it he gives the credit to his gardener, whom he incontinently summoned from Brantwood. Neverthdess the experiment, even from the point of view of road-making, was by no means barren. An inch of practice is worth a yard of 128 The Life of Oscar Wilde preaching ; and Mr Raskin's road-digging at Hincksey gave a powerful stimulus to the Gospel of Labour^ of the same kind as the later and independent stimulus of Count Tolstoi ; of whom Mr Ruskin has spoken gratefully in recent years as his successor. But the fact is that most of the Oxford road-diggers were attracted to the work, not for its own sake, but for the reward of it — ^the reward of the subsequent breakfast-party and informal talks in Mr Ruskin's rooms at Corpus. It was in Mr Ruskin's Oxford Lectures and these supplementary enforcements of their teaching that the seeds were sown or watered, of that practical interest in social questions which is the * Oxford movement of to-day.' " It would be an insult to the lofty intellect of Oscar Wilde, inmiature as he then was, receptive as he always was, to suppose that the socialism of Mr Ruskin, that Tolstoism d'avant la lettre, which enangers and disgusts every true reformer, had any influence upon him whatever, and that the author of that magnificent plaidoyer, " The Soul of Man Under SociaUsm," did not fully realise the grotesqueness of these bourgeois buffooneries. One has the highest respect for Mr Ruskin ; but what opinion is Ukely to be held by anyone who knows the real condition of the ^ ]^^ T^^ 1 139 0 » ff-wL.r c The Life of Oscar WUde poor in the three kingdoms of England^ Scot- land, and Ireland who is invited to admire the Slade Professor of Fine Art haranguing in the following terms an audience of young bourgeois and aristocrats, greasy and replete with unctuous breakfast, dad in warm clothing, opulent and perky : — ** I tell you that neither sound art, poUcy, nor religion can exist in Eng- land until, neglecting, if it must be, your own pleasure-gardens and pleasure-chambers, you resolve that the streets which are the habitation of the poor, and the fields which are the play- grounds of their children, shall be again restored to the rule of the spirits whosoever they are in earth and heaven, that ordain and reward, with constant and conscious felicity, all that is decent and orderly, beautiful and pure." This is the kind of talk that gets Social Reformers into Whig Cabinets and raises statues to them by subscription of the middle classes. It does not deceive the people for a single moment, and it does not for a single moment deceive those who instinctively or by long observation understand the wants of the people and know what wrongs of theirs ought to be redressed. It would not deceive Oscar Wilde, who intuitively rather than by observation, for he recoiled from any sights that might distress his aesthetic 130 The Life of Oscar Wilde taste^ so fully understood the problem of the poor. It is among some of his friends an abiding regret that he was not spared a few years longer^ so that in the depth of his despair he might have seen the wonderful triumph that Germany has prepared for him, might have watched the crowds flocking to the theatre to see ** Salom^ " played, might have hstened to the frantic enthusiasm which this play never fails to evoke, might a little later on have realised that it had been given to him by this play to stimulate to the highest expression of his wonderful art the composer Richard Strauss, whom the cognoscenti hail as the greatest maestro who ever lived. Amongst other of his friends the regret will be greater that it never came to his knowledge that all over Europe amongst the poor, oppressed and outcast, his name is rever* enced as that of an apostle of the liberties of man. No writing on the social question, perhaps, has produced a profounder impression than his on the continent, where '' The Soul of Man'' has been translated into every tongue. Amongst the very poorest and most forlorn, and most desperate of the helots of Europe, the Jews of Russia and Poland, Oscar Wilde, known to them only as the author of this essay, is re- garded in the light of a prophet, a benefactor, a X31 The Life of Oscar WUde saint. In many of the awful kennels in Warsaw and Lublin^ in Kieff and Libau his portrait is pinned to the wall. Such is the interest taken in him that recently, his friend, the author of ''Oscar Wilde/' ^^The Story of an Unhappy Friendship/' received from a Jewish gentleman living in the East End of London a request that he should furnish his correspondent with bio- graphical details about Oscar Wilde, to be pre- fixed in form of a preface to a new edition of the Yiddish translation of " The Soul of Man," such particulars having been eagerly asked for from the Jewish proletariat all over Poland and Russia. Mr Ruskin left for Venice at the end of Michaelmas Term 1874, and did not return to Oxford till a year later, when he deUvered a series of twelve lectures on " The Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds,'* during the month of November. During 1876 he did not lecture at all, and it was not till Michaelmas 1877 that he was seen again as Slade Professor of Fine Art. Under the circumstances it is nonsense to assert that his influence on Oscar Wilde extended any further than what is indicated in Walter Hamilton's most interesting book, "The iEsthetic Movement in England," in the chapter which treats of Oscar Wilde. " But unfortunately," he writes, " Mr Ruskin 132 The Life of Oscar Wilde left for Venice at the end of Mr Wilde's first term ; not, however, before he had inoculated a number of the yoimg collegians with artistic tastes. Mr Wilde occupied some fine old wainscoted rooms over the river in that college which is thought by many to be the most beautiful in Oxford. These rooms he had decorated with painted ceihngs and handsome dados, and they were filled with treasures of art picked up at home and abroad ; and here he held social meet- ings, which were attended by numbers of the men who were interested in art, or music, or poetry, and who for the most part practised some one of these in addition to the ordinary collegiate studies/' It was at this time, therefore, that a rdle was forced upon the young man, which he had no natural quaUfications to play ; it was here that the curtain rose on that tragi-comedy in which his fine intellect was to lend itself to grotesque performances until, just before a period was put to his existence, he really foimd himself. It was from these reunions in Magdalen that dated that virtuosity in music and painting and the decorative arts which he was forced to assiune by the hazards of Ufe, his own necessities and the folly of his contemporaries. He knew little about music, and little about 133 The Life of Oscar Wilde painting^ and in the matter of furniture, tapestries, wall-papers and architecture he was 4^9 more of a connoisseur than is any man who can assimilate the current modes and the chatter of the arbiters. During a long period of his Ufe this pose which had been forced upon him must have galled his native rectitude. Face to face with himself he must have felt that it was an unworthy part for a man of his great intellect and wonderful gifts to play. Perhaps it was from this feeling that in some V respects he was playing a double-faced rdle that proceeded that curious self-accusing manner, which all his intimates noticed in him, and which filled them with astonishment. It is a ^ fact that music bored him ; it is a fact that he had no knowledge of any instrument ; it is probable that he could with difficulty distinguish one tune from another. Yet he was forced to posture as a connoisseur , and to speak and write about musicians and music with the air of one who was profoundly versed in all the technique of the art. A friend of his relates that the rare occasion on which he saw Oscar ^^lde angry with him was once when he had frequently repeated in his presence a phrase from one of Oscar's essays, a phrase which had struck him by its effectiveness so that he had the pleasure 134 The Life of Oscar Wilde in repeating it that actors have in mouthing a "g^" which has caught the popular ear. This phrase was : " a splendid scarlet thing by Dvorak." At the third repetition of these words, Oscar Wilde flew into a veritable passion and rebuked the friend for wishing to ridicule him. It has always been held by the man who relates this story that Oscar's anger was caused by the suspicion that his friend knew that his claim to write about Dvorak or any other com- poser was a mere pretence, and that He cleverly veiled his ignorance by the use of sonorous and effective phrases. Mr Hamilton quotes the following passage as given by " one who was acquainted with Mr Wilde at Oxford " as descriptive of his life there : " He soon began to show his taste for art and china, and before he had been at Oxford very long, his rooms were quite the show ones of the college and of the imiversity too. He was fortunate enough to obtain the best situated rooms in the college, on what is called the kitchen staircase, having a lovely view over the river Cherwell and the beautiful Magdalen walks, and Magdalen bridge. His rooms were three in number, and the walls were entirely panelled. The two sitting-rooms were connected by an arch, where folding doors had at one 135 The Life of Oscar Wilde time stood. His blue china was supposed by connoisseurs to be very valuable and fine, and there was plenty of it. The panelled walls were thickly hung with old engravings — chiefly en- gravings of the fair sex artistically clad as nature clad them. He was hospitable, and on Simday nights after " Conmion Room " his rooms were generally the scene of conviviality, where under- graduates of all descriptions and tastes were to be met, drinking punch, or a *' B. and S.," with their cigars. It was at one of these entertainments that he made his well-known remark, " Oh, would that I could live up to my blue china ! " His chief amusement was riding, though he never used to hunt. He was generally to be met on the cricket-field, but never played himself; and he was a regular attendant at his college barge to see the May eight-oar races, but he never used to trust his massive form to a boat himself." At this time he had not yet adopted those eccentricities of costume which a few years later attracted universal attention to his person. The portraits which exist of him as an undergraduate of Oxford represent him comfortably and soberly attired in a tweed suit, a flannel shirt, with a tie unassumingly gathered into a knot imder his txuTi-down collar. In the winter he used to wear an ordinary grey ulster. His hair which 136 The Life of Oscar Wilde was brushed back from his forehead was not too long. The best known photograph of Oscar Wildcat this period — that is tosay in 1878 — ^is the " amateurish and therefore faithful *' picture of him taken by a man who was then a well-known character in Oxford, whose name was Guggen- heim. This man used to be known as " Gug " by the undergraduates. He was a kind of Hans Breitmann^a typicalstage-German, with tasselled smoking-cap, carpet sUppers, and a long-stenuned china pipe. His studio was in the " High," and he had a reputation for taking " College groups '* in an effective manner. Oscar Wilde attempted while an under- graduate to render himself proficient in painting, but nothing that he ever painted has survived. There is a story that for a period during vacation he studied art in Paris ; and it is remembered at Oxford that being once asked by a Magdalen celebrity, as a joke, what he would do if his means suddenly failed him and if he were to be thrown on his own resources, he answered : ** I should live in a garret and paint beautiftd pictures." However, no one at Oxford, who knew him in those days, can remember seeing him paint, and a suspicion existed that he cotdd not paint at all, and that his remark was only the outcome of the deception which he had resolved to prac- 137 The Life of Oscar Wilde tise. It is qmte probable, though^ that he may have attempted painting^ and being dissatisfied with his progress preferred to " talk pictures " instead of painting them. // passa sa vie d se purler, and not with reference to pictures alone. Not in his dress, therefore, at that time, but in his conversation and manners rather did he assume that " dangerous and deUghtful dis- tinction of being different from others," of which he writes in his remarkable essay on Thomas Griffiths Wainewright ("Pen, Pencil, and Poison," fn " Intentions"), Yet, such as it was, his affecta- tion irritated the undergraduates, and on one oc- casion, at least, they manifested their displeasure with the brutality which these over-fed yoimg ^npn^ sometimes display. Oscar was once "ragged" at Oxford. Some eight healthy yoimg PhiUstines waylaid the "blue china cove " while out walking, fell upon him, bound him with cords and dragged him up a hill, trailing him along the ground. He was much hurt and bruised, but he did not resist, for that was useless ; nor did he protest with a single word. When at last they released him at the top of the hill he simply flicked the dust off his coat with the air of a Regency beau flipping the grains from his tabatiSre off his lace jabot, and looking at the prospect said : " Yes ; the view 138 The Life of Oscar WHde from this hill is really very charming/' Courage •, was not wanting to him, either physical or moral . ) Indeed very few men have displayed either ^ quality in a more remarkable degree. During the period that he was out on bail between his first and second trials his moral courage sur* prised and impressed all who beheld him. He refused to avoid the impending danger by flight ; with heroism he faced the awful prospect that lay before him. With regard to physical courage it is on record that while a young man in London he assisted a man, a friend, to escape from the police, and in the furtherance of this object ex- erted great physical strength, holding a door against a number of constables, while the fugitive was clambering out of the window to safety and freedom. In Paris he once expressed his desire to learn the use of the rapier so that he might be able to impose silence at the point of the sword on the slanderers who were attacking his re- putation. The fact is that Oscar Wilde was really a man of action. In this respect he resembles many great Irishmen who have found for their energies no other outlet than that of writing. This aspect of Oscar's character is held by certain of his friends who had the op- portunity of studjdng his nature at first hand. In other times and under other circumstances 139 The Life of Oscar WUde he might have been one of the greatest men of action of the world. Possibly the fact that his smrotmdings did not permit him to give play to this desire for action^ but pinned him down to the writing-table, generated not only that indolence and indifference which characterised him, but fostered also that pessimism which in the end killed him. " Cette tristesse et ce comique d'etre un honune," of which Octave Mirbeau speaks, and which make for despair, are felt by none so keenly as by men who, burning to do, are by circimastance condemned to in- activity. The men who banished Napoleon to St Helena could have found in the torture-house of the kings no infliction more cruel. During his stay in Oxford Oscar Wilde contri- buted various poems and prose writings to maga- zines pubUshed in DubUn, notably to the T.C.D. pubHcation, Kottabos, and The Irish Monthly. His first contribution to Kottabos appeared in Vol. ii. (1877) where it may be found on page 268. It is a poem headed : B/ ah/i0ymon epqtos angos (The Rose of Love and with a Rose's Thorns) and begins : " My limbs are wasted with a flame. . . ." 140 The Life of Oscar Wilde This poem appears under another title in his first volume of collected poems. On page 298 of the same volume of KoUabos is to be found a poem, adapted from the Greek, entitled " Threnodia " (Eur. Hec. 444-483), and described as a " song sung by captive women of Troy on the sea-beach at Aulis, while the Achaeans were then storm-bound thro' the wrath of dishonoured Achilles, and waiting for a fair wind to bring them home." The first strophe is as follows : — " O Fair Wind blowing from the sea ! Who through the dark and mist dost guide The ships that on the billows ride, Unto what land, ah, misery ! Shall I be borne, across what stormy wave Or to whose house a purchased slave ! " This Threnody was very judiciously omitted from his volume of poems. In the same volume we find on page 320, " A fragment from the Agamemnon of ^schylus " ; and on page 331, a poem beginning, " Two crowned Kings." All these poems are signed with his full initials, "O. F. O. F. W. W./' which shows that he had not yet come to regard with disfavour those patronymics which proclaimed his Irish descent and aggressively asserted his nationality. The same signature is found to a poem pubUshed on page 56 of the third volume of Kottabos (1881), 141 The Life of Oscar Wilde entitled "Wasted Days'' ("From a Picture Painted by Miss V. T/'). This poem is signi- ficant^ because we find here the first indications that he was assuming a mode of writing about physical quaUties which later on was to be brought up in evidence against him. Almost the very words are here employed which were re- peated in a letter^ the writing of which^ after it had been made public^ may nearly be said to have precipitated his ruin. This poem begins : " A fair slim boy not made for this world's pain, Pale cheeks whereon no kiss has left its stain. Red miderlip drawn in for fear of Love " — and so on. ^ It is on page 476 of the fifth volume of The Irish Monthly that one of the earliest published ^.4Jjose writings of Oscar Wilde is to be found. This was written in 1877 in Rome. It describes the Tomb of Keats, that Keats who was after- wards to inspire the writer with one of the noblest sonnets in the EngHsh language.* The short article is headed with a quotation from some guide-book : " As one enters Rome from the Via Ostiensis by the Porta San Paolo the first object that meets the eye is a marble pyra- mid which stands close at hand on the left/' "This tomb/' writes the young Oxonian, 1 On the sale of the love-letters of Keats. 142 The Life of Oscar Wilde " had been supposed to be that of Remus. It really was that of one Caius Cestius, a Roman gentleman of small note who died about 30 B.C." " Yet/' he continues, " though we cannot care much for the dead man who Ues in lonely state beneath it, and who is only known to the world through his sepulchre, still this pyramid will be ever dear to the eyes of all English-speaking people, because at evening its shadow falls on the tomb of one who walks with Spenser, and Shakespeare, and B3nron, and Shelley, and Eliza- beth Barrett Browning, in the great procession of the sweet singers of England." Speaking of the jK>et's Ukeness he says in a note : — " I think that the best representation of the poet would be a coloiured bust, like that of the young Rajah of Koolapoor at Florence, which is a lovely and Ufelike work of art." He concludes : — " As I stood beside the mean grave of this divine boy I thought of him as of a Priest of Beauty slain before his time ; and the vision of Guide's San Sebastian came before my eyes as I saw him at Genoa, a lovely brown boy, with crisp, clustering hair and red Ups, bound by his evil enemies to a tree and, though pierced with arrows, raising his eyes with divine, impassioned 143 The Life of Oscar Wilde gaze towards the Eternal Beauty of the opening heavens. And thus my thoughts shaped them- selves to rhyme." Here follows the poem on the death of Keats, which here is entitled " Heu Miserande Puer." This description of Oscar Wilde's feeUngs by the grave of Keats is of special interest when it is remembered that after his release from prison he assmned the name of Sebastian. No doubt Guido's picture came before his eyes in his cell in Reading Gaol, and he felt of himself that though pierced with arrows his eyes were still fixed on the heavens, which during his confinement, as is very clearly shown in " De Profundis,'* had, indeed, opened before his gaze, reveaUng to him beauties of which he had never dreamed before. To The Irish Monthly he contributed various poems. In vol. iv. (1876), on page 594, we find a poem headed " The True Knowledge," be- ginning : *' Thou knowest all — I seek in vain What lands to till or sow." In vol. V. of the same pubUcation are various pieces which afterwards appeared in the col- lected poems. We find on page 415 the poem 144 The Life of Oscar Wilde which in his volume is entitled " Sonnet on Ap- proaching Italy/' and which begins : •• I reached the Alps ; the soul within me burned." This sonnet is here entitled " Salve Satumia Tellus/' On page 755 we find the poem '* Vita Nuova," as in his volume it is called^ beginning : •• I stood by the unvintageable sea." In The Irish Monthly this poem is entitled Oorror Arpoi«T09. Amongst other contributions to this volume of The IrishMonthly is his poem " Lotus Leaves," beginning : *' There is no peace beneath the noon." It is stated that it was " impelled by Ruskin's lectures " that " Mr Wilde visited Italy.*' This is of doubtful exactness. If Mr Ruskin's dis- courses had inspired him with the desire to study the painters about whom the Slade Professor lectured, Oscar Wilde would have fotmd the finest specimens of their art much nearer home. He very probably went to Italy for the same reason that takes many young Oxonians abroad, whose means are not stinted, and who are fond of travelling. There is amongst the writers of biographical notices often a desire to do what a K 145 The Life of Oscar Wilde French popular idiom describes as "chercher midi a quatorze heiires/' to attribute to all kinds of influences the most conmionplace acts of the people of whom they treat* Cook & Sons and the other tourists' agencies take many more people to Italy than ever Ruskin's lectures will send there. The greatest of men have often the simplest motives for their ordinary acts. In the same notice we read^ what is much more to the point, that " In Florence he became aware of the spiritual element in art, and tiuned wistfully towards that reUgion which had in- spired the great ItaUan painters. During this mood he produced some fine poems, notably that entitled * Rome Un visited,' which won high praise from Cardinal Newman ; but the last wave of the ebbing tide of the Tractarian Move- ment, though it Ufted him off his feet, did not carry him away." It is quite true that at this time of his Ufe he had some desire to join the Church of Rome. If he did not do so it was because his faith was never ardent. In later years it abandoned him altogether. He was a tolerant Agnostic. In " De Profundis" he writes : — ** Rehgion does not help me. The faith that otners give to what is unseen I give to what one can touch and look at. My gods dwell in 146 The Life of Oscar Wilde temples made with hands. . . . When I think about reUgion at all I feel as if I would Uke to found an order for those who cannot beUeve : the Confraternity of the Faithless one might caU it." Another consideration which may have re- strained him was that these reversions to Rome were much too conmion amongst Oxford imder- graduates, and that the suspicion lurked in the minds of worldly men that in many cases they were simply caused by a desire for personal advertisement, a wish to do something different from others, to ipater les contemporains : various motives which to a man of Oscar Wilde's good taste would appear eminently reprehensible. Towards the very end of his life he often ex- pressed the wish that he had sought refuge in the arms of the church which the spirit of Calvin does not infect. He is reported to have said more than once that if he had become a Roman Catholic when he was a young man he would never have fallen. He would certainly have suffered less at the hands of his new co-reUgion- aries. Indeed, it is difficult to imderstand why those who inspire themselves from the teachings of Calvin — that is to say the very large majority of Englishmen and women — and who should therefore accept his doctrine of the predestina- 147 The Life of Oscar Wilde tion of man to sin, of the futility of striving against its promptings, should with greater ferocity than any other sect p-oclaim the entire responsibiUty of the man who has sinned, and exact from him the uttermost suffering that mortal penance can inflict. " Nous tenons," writes Calvin, " que le p6ch6 originel est une corruption r6pandue par nos sens et affections en sorte que la droite inteUigence et raison est pervertie en nous, et sommes comma pauvres aveugles en t^n^bres, et la volont6 est sujette k toutes mauvaises cupidit6s, pleine de r6beUion et adonn^e au mal ; bref, que nous sommes pauvres captifs detenus sous la tyrannic du p^ch6 : non pas qu'en malfaisant nous ne soyons pouss6s par notre volont6 propre, telle- ment que nous ne saurions rejeter ailleurs la faute de tons nos vices, mais pour ce qu'^tant issus de la race maudite d'Adam, nous n'avons pas une seule goutte de vertu k bien faire et toutes nos facult6s sont vicieuses." It was the last act of friendship of a friend whose devotion to poor Wilde is the one beautiful thing in the terrible spectacle that humanity afforded in the final tragedy of that man's life, that on his deathbed Oscar Wilde was baptised into a kindUer creed than the one expounded above. Before the breath had left his body 148 The Life of Oscar WUde pardon had entered into the death chamber ; and to his friends remains the supreme consolation that shrived and sung he was carried to his grave. What would have been his obsequies if this friend had not been by his side at the last? In 1822. an event took place in connection with^which it may truly be said that " a new influence entered his life/' This was his journey ^^ipece with the party which accompanied John Pentland Mahafiy. Of this journey it has been said that it contributed to make a '' healthy Pagan " of the man who was hesitating whether to join the Church of Rome. Wilde himself de- clared that the lesson he learned during his travels in Hellas was that it was very right for the Greek gods to be in the Vatican. " Helen,'' he declared, " took precedence of the Mater Dolorosa ; the worship of sorrow gave place again to the worship of 'beauty." It is very much to be doubted whether for these fine phrases there was any foundation whatever in fact; whether the relative claims of Paganism and of CathoUc Christianity ever troubled the young traveller's head at all. The influence to which reference is made above was much simpler and much more important. It was the result that might have been expected when an impres- 149 The Life of Oscar Wilde sionable lad, deeply read in classical literature, re- ceived visual evidence of the actual existence of the beautiful things of which he had read. For / the first time the true call of the Parthenon I would reveal itself to his ears. Things which had ! been in his mind but words, words, words, be- came tangible and living reaUties. It was then, i no doubt, that for the first time his true enthusi- asm for Beauty was aroused. It could hardly 1>e otherwise seeing in whose company he was privil^ed to travel, and who the man was who was at his side to expound to him the marvels that Greece unfolds at every step. The full account of this journey in Greece is given in Professor Mahaffy's wonderful book, " Rambles in Greece," which was one of the favourite books of Monsieur Ernest Renan. Those who are in- terested in Oscar Wilde should not fail to read this book carefully, for though it bears no re- ference to his name, every page of it is significant to the man who tries to form a just appreciation of his extraordinary character. It allows one to assert without fear of contradiction that after his return from Greece, his apostolate in the cause of Beauty was no longer dictated by a sense of opportunism. Many writers allude to the wonderful beauty of ancient times, but for the most part their writings have the stamp of 150 The Life of Oscar Wilde artifiaality. When Oscar speaks of the beauty, for instance, of a Tanagra statuette he knov^ what he is talking about. In many minds the suspicion lurks that in everything on which he wrote and spoke he was apt to use words which had a fine sound and which conveyed an artistic suggestion so as to create an impression of his knowledge. It has been thought that the catalogues of Museums, the price-lists of jewellers and other artificers lay at his hand when he was writing, so as to enable him to heap up dazzling piles of coruscating words, which to him were words and nothing else. Zola practised this deception, and so did Victor Hugo, but never Oscar Wilde in his references to classical anti- quity. Take the example quoted above. He frequently refers in his writings, as he frequently referred in his talk, to Tanagra statuettes. Those who ever proclaimed the man an impostor have been heard say that of Tanagra statuettes he knew no more than any man who has access to dictionary or encyclopaedia. Now, during the many days that he spent in Athens with Pro- fessor Mahaffy and his friends, the Museums at Athens were sedulously visited, and particular attention seems to have been paid to these statuettes, which in 1877 had only recently been unearthed in Tanagra in Boeotia. With what The Life of Oscar Wilde attention " these little figures of terra cotta^ often delicately modelled and richly coloured both in dress and limbs*' were then studied appears very clearly from Mahaify's book. In Chapter III. of the " Rambles in Greece," under the heading, " Athens — The Museums," we find several pages devoted to a learned and inter- esting description of these figurines. There can be no doubt that on his return from Greece there was no man in England better entitled and better quaUfied to talk and write about Tanagra statuettes than Oscar Wilde. And the same proof could be given of the genuine knowledge which he possessed of all the other beauties of antique times. When, during the visit to Paris in 1883, he was heard to say that he had passed hours in the Louvre in admiration before the Venus of Milos, people shrugged their shoulders and charged him with posturing affectation. Anyone who reads Mahaffy's book, and thus gathers under what guidance Oscar's eyes were opened to the admiration of Greek statuary, by what teaching his critical sense of this form of Art was created and fostered, will understand that his sincerity could in no way be called into account any more than his profound knowledge of the subject. The man was steeped in the glories that were Greece. Those wonderful 152 1 1 The Life of Oscar Wilde passages in '' De Profundis " in which he writes with such facility and eloquence of the classic days were inspired by no readings from a prison Lempri^re. They came to him as naturally as came to him those other passages which refer to the horrors, commonplaces of the life which he was leading. ** For the Greek gods, in spite of the white and red of their fair fleet limbs, were not really ^rhat they appeared to be/' Such are the opening words of a passage of great beauty vrhich it can be maintained was written as simply and with no more straining for effect than, for instance, the passage beginning : *' I am completely penniless and absolutely homeless." It is not possible here, although it would be of paramount scientific interest, to inquire too closely into the question whether with this awakening of enthusiasm for the beauties of antique Greece the latent tendency towards perversion was not also developed. If danger there be in a classical education to lads who have certain hereditary instincts and abnor- malities of temperament, certainly no more powerful means for breaking down such re- sistance as reUgious education, training, and example might oppose could have been found X53 The Life of Oscar Wilde than this journey in Greece. That remarkable writer, Henri de R6gnier, in his study of Oscar Wilde, which appears in his volume, " Figures et Caract6res," directly attributes his downfall to the fact that he had so steeped himself in the Ufe of gone-by days that he did not realise the world in which he was actually living. The re- sult would be that the laws of modem society would not restrain his powerful impulses. " Je n'insisterai pas sur les causes d'une pareille .aventure," writes Henri de R6gnier. "On les connatt. M. Wilde croyait vivre en ItaUe au temps de la Renaissance ou en Gr6ce au temps de Socrate. On Ta puni d'une erreur chronologi- que, et durement, 6tant donn6 qu'il vivait k Londres oix cet anachronisme est, para!t-il^ frequent." There can be little doubt that the views enunciated above will by a more en- Ughtened posterity be accepted in palliation of the things with which his name is so cruelly associated. That will be when men have at- tained to some scientific comprehension of mental pathology. At present even the pathology of the body is only just emerging from ignorance^ superstition and charlatanism. The deUghts of the tour in Greece were so great — ^how great they must have been will appear to anyone who reads Mahaffy's wonderful 154 I The Life of Oscar Wilde book — that Oscar Wilde failed to return toOxford by the date when it was required of him to do. , The Dons of Magdalen fined him forty-five pounds for this breach of discipline. The money was, however, returned to him when in the following year he so greatly distinguished himself by taking a First Qass m the '* Honour Finals," and by winning Hlie Newdigate Prize for EngUsh Verse. Tbo poemwhich he sent in for this competition was a poem entitled / " Ravenna." It is considered by many of Oscar / Wilde's admirers as a very fine piece of work, and it certainly shows a tremendous advance on the work which is to be found in the magazines, to which reference has been made above. By a curious coincidence, in which the ancients might have seen a manifestation of the dread irony of the gods, a fortuitous circumstance had equipped ^ him admirably for success in this poetical tourney. A triumph residted ; both he himself and his friends may have considered the circumstance a piece of rare good fortime. When we review his whole career we may ask ourselves if, indeed, it was for his happiness that this triumph was won, and that in consequence he turned with confidence to the pursuit of that career of letters which when it is pursued side by side with the quest of pleasure and excitement leads inevitably 155 The Life of Oscar Wilde to physical and mental ruin. The fortuitous circumstance referred to is described in the following terms by Mr Hamilton : — " During a vacation ramble in 1877 he started for Greece. Visiting Ravenna by chance on the way he obtained material for a poem on that ancient dty ; and singularly enough * Ravenna,' was afterwards given out as the topic for the Newdigate competition, and on the 26th Jime 1878 the Newdigate prize poem ' Ravenna ' by Oscar Wilde of Magdalen, was recited in the theatre, Oxford.'* The poem was, as is usual, pubUshed by Messrs T. Shrimpton & Sons. The original edition is very rare, and high prices are obtained for copies. Many forged editions have been issued which can be distinguished from the original by the fact that on title and cover pages the University Arms are generally missing. The poem has been reprinted in extenso in Mr Mosher's collected edition of Wilde's poems, pubUshed in Portland, M€bss?: a very beautiful volume. The poem contains some beautiful lines, and anyone who remembers the extraordinary musical beauty of Oscar Wilde's voice will readily understand that, as is recorded in a con- temporary account of the recital of " Ravenna " by its author, "it was listened to with rapt 156 J 1 I 5 The Life of Oscar Wilde attention and frequently applauded" by the crowded audience. Here are the opening lines: " O lone Ravenna ! many a tale is told Of thy great glories in the days of old : Two thousand years have passed since thou didst see Caesar ride forth to royal victory. Mighty thy name when Rome's lean eagles flew From Britain's isles to far Euphrates blue ; And of the peoples thou wast noble queen, Till in thy streets the Goth and Hun were seen." So far the listening competitors may have wondered at their defeat. Immediately after- wards, however, they would be forced to admit that a true poet had revealed himself. " Discrowned by man, deserted by the sea. Thou sleepest, rocked in lonely misery ! No longer, now upon the swelling tide, Pine-forest Uke, thy myriad galleys ride ! For where the brass-peaked ships were wont to float, The weary shepherd pipes his mournful note ; And the white sheep are free to come and go Where Adria's purple waters used to flow." How many of those who were present in the Sheldonian on that June afternoon and ap- plauded the handsome youth as he recited in the most melodious of voices his effective lines realised that they were listening to what was a very allegory of the startling omtrasts that were to mark the poet's Ufe. Greatness was to come 157 The Life of Oscar Wilde to him^ and upon greatness^ desolation and lonely ruin were to follow. The man, though he knew' it not, was telling the story of his own sj^endours to come, and of the misery that was to follow upon them. 158 CHAPTER VIII Oscar Wilde in Maaqnerade— A Professor of iEsthetica—The Object Porsaed — ^The /Esthetic Movement — Oscar Wilde's Siege of London — ^His Success and his Failure— The Testi- mony of an Eye-Witness — Society's Attitude towards him —Possible Explanation of this Attitude— Oscar Wilde's Repartee — ^Whistler in the same Dilemma — Wilde's Vohime of " Pbems " — the Dress of the Cinderella Muse — In what the " Pbems " greatly triumphed — " Howell and James "—The Friendship of Edmund Yates— The Ad- miration and R^;ard of Sarah Bernhardt — ^The " Poems " and the Critics— The ''Poems" and a Professional Humorist — The "Pbems" in America — Oscar Wilde saib lor the Sutes— A Seod-off in the " World "—What Oscar may have felt. On ist May in this year 1878 Oscar Wilde ap- peared at a fancy-dress ball at Headington Hill given by Mrs Morrell. He presented himself in the costume of Prince Rupert^ and his fine and striking appearance was commented upon in the social chronicles of the time. For some period of his life subsequent to this event he was to be seen figuring in masquerade. Later on Society forced him to assume another travesti, which in its essential features was not dissimilar to the one he had assumed when he went up to London in the rdle of a " Professor of iEsthetics and Art critic/' as Foster describes him in his Alumni 159 The Life of Oscar Wilde Oxonienses. The more one studies the lives of great men the more does the certitude impress itself upon one that our human destinies are ruled by a power of which a mocking irony is the prime characteristic. The ancients dis- covered it long ago ; the modem world is be- ginning to perceive it. For some part of his life Oscar Wilde masqueraded in defiance of Society^ and then later on Society made him masquerade in defiance of himself. An authoritative writer, who, however, throughout Oscar Wilde's career was his sternest critic and censor, declared at the time of his dovmfall that Oscar Wilde had been heard to explain that the reason why he assumed that costume which it pleased him to describe as the " aesthetic costtime " was merely to attract at- tention to his personality. He adds that Oscar Wilde had said that for months he had tried in vain to find a pubUsher for his collected poems, and that having failed to do so, because he was an unknown man, he determined to make him- self known, and had hit upon the device of apH pearing in public in an extraordinary dress. He adopted as the " aesthetic costume " a velvet coat, knee-breeches, a loose shirt with a turn- down collar, and a floating tie of some unusual shade, fastened in a LavaUi/re knot, and he not i i6o ^1 The Life of Oscar Wilde unfrequently appeared in public carr3dng in his hand a Uly or a sunflower, which he used to contemplate with an expression of the greatest admiration. Let it be added to this that he. wore his hair long, and was clean-shaven as to his feice ; and when it is remembered how striking a form and what memorable features were his already by Nature it will be understood what attention his appearance must have attracted. One might find other and more charitable ex- planations for this self-travesty ; perhaps with all the more justification that commerical in- stinct does not appear to have been very strong in Oscar Wilde. He was a young man at the time ; he was by nature and atavism incUned to Schwaermerei ; he may have thought that the costume suited him ; he may have wished to set Society at defiance at the prompting of that Anarchist spirit which was within him, as it is within all men who are really great. For the rest, whatever the man's motives were, that he gave effect to his plan shows that he possessed great moral courage. It is by no means every man who has the strength of mind to make a laughing-stock of himself in the eyes of London. The London gamins are pitiless ; and on each of his walks abroad the young " aesthete " must have veritably run the gauntlet. It may further L i6i The Life of Oscar Wilde be noted that many men and women of ap- • proved capacity have shown and do show this curious love of self-advertisement; ^t has al- ways been the malady of the great/; in recent years it has grown into an epideitmc. The ad- vance of conunerdaUsm may accoimt for it. Conrnierdalism has made it clear that the only met hod, by which a man can call attention to the excellence of his wares is by persistent puffery. Artists, actors, writers, philosophers and politicians have equally wares to sell — in this age every man who is not independent is a tradesman of sorts — ^and one can hardly blame them if they adopt the means for selling these wares which succeed in other branches of trade. The public, moreover, is gradually becoming so accustomed to these methods that far from re- garding with suspicion the man of letters who by the eccentricity of his costume, the length of his hair, the frequency or the rarity of per- sonal mentions and portraits of him which appear in the papers, is the carrier of his own advertising boards, the importunate distributor of personal leaflets, it gives more and more its exclusive attention to the person who most loudly shouts his wares. This is the case in England and America. In the Latin countries and in Germany where art is still regarded in 162 The Life of Oscar Wilde much the same light as religion these tricks would fail of their desired effect. But in Eng- land we are a commercial nation^ and as Doctor Johnson never tired of pointing out to Bos^^ell, we must be dealt with by commercial methods. There is no call in this biography to give any extended description of that aesthetic movement in England with which Oscar Wilde for a short period of his Ufe, and for motives which are not quite clear to us, associated himself. Anyone who is curious on the subject of one of those crazes which sent the British public once more into what Carlyle called a " bottomless abyss of deliriimi and confusion and nameless distrac- tion" * should read Walter Hamilton's excellent and most interesting book : " The iEsthetic Movement in England/' to which already fre- quent reference has been made, and from which material yet remains to be drawn. It is the work of a man who was not uns5anpathetic with the movement, and who had for the leaders and ^ " Carlyle once observed to my father : Upon the whole, the British publ?.c, with its contagious enthusiasms, reminds me of nothing so much as the Gadarene swine. There they are quietly grubbing and grunting in search of what pignuts or other aliments may present themselves for their sustenance and comfort, when suddenly the devil enters into them, up go their tails into the sky, and away they go, plunging into bottomless abysses of delkium and confusion and nameless distraction " (" Random Reminiscences,'* by Charles H. £. Brookfield). 163 The Life of Oscar Wilde camp-followers of it esteem^ admiration, or tolerance. And side by side with Mr Hamilton's book, the volumes of Punch for the years 1880-1883 may be turned over. It is from the satirist that one learns most of social life ; and Juvenal and Saint Simon are the best historians. "The .Esthetes," wrote Mr Hamilton, "are they who pride themselves upon having found out what is the really beautiful in nature and art, their faculties and tastes being educated up to the point necessary for the full appreciation of such quaUties ; whilst those who do not see the true and the beautiful — the outsiders in fact — are termed Philistines." Even at the height of the craze there was a very considerable proportion of the public in England which did not even know the meaning of the word aesthetic. It was usual enough to hear people express the surmise that as anaes- thetic was something which sent you to sleep^ an aesthetic must be something which. . . . The movement was generally associated with sun- flowers, certain pecuUar shades in pottery and tissues, a languid demeanour, and a certain angularity of furniture and attitude. The penalty for this craze is still being paid by an innocent posterity in the enormities of cheap and tawdry accessories which are forced upon 164 / ^:-**^ /^ OSCAR WILDE. *. y^e^. " 0, I feel jtLst as happy as a bright Sunflower 1 " Lays of Chsri^ MinHrtUy. ^thete of iEsthetes 1 What 's in a name? The poet is Wildb, But his poetry 's tame. CARICATURE KKPRODICED 15V TEKMISSION OI THE PROPRIETORS OF "PUNCH.' To fact i^agt 165. The Life of Oscar Wilde the ignorant public by the manufacturers under the sacred name of Art, never so ruthlessly pro- faned. As usual, certain men who put them- selves forward as active agents of the movement, of the reform, attained to popularity and wealth ; certain tradesmen, commercial or self-styled artistic, emerged from poverty and obscurity by supplying the properties of the burlesque which England was enacting. The sincere men who had initiated all this enthusiasm remained, as usual, in the backgroimd, and continue to-day in the same serene solitude and silence the work they then began. For his part in popularising their theorie§;f-one might almost say in burles- quing themy-Oscar Wilde derived a certain and wide notoriety, leaped into the pubUc eye, found a publisher for his poems^ iand, in the event, en- gagements to lecture in the three kingdoms and in America. On the other hand, he started his artistic career amidst the suspicion of his con- temporaries. This suspicion still cUngs to his name. The pubUc memory is tenacious. The public mind does not readily accord to one man the right to play more than one part in life. It is diffident of versatility. UniversaUty of genius it blankly refuses to admit. The funny man can never get people to take him seriously. Sydney Smith has described this. The Hanswurst must 165 The Life of Oscar Wilde be Hanswurst till the end of the chapter. There can be no doubt that Oscar Wilde's early ec- centricities created an erroneous impression con- cerning his capacities which for years militated, and in certain quarters still militates against the reputation which his high genius entitled him to enjoy. Fame is not to be violated with im- punity ; and when the claims of the Pont d' Arcole were denied, could the peacock's feather and the sunflower prevail ? The pose, such as it vras, was eminently successful. If notoriety were sought after, it was gained to the fullest extent. Punch celebrates week in week out the eccentricities of the school. On the parts played in this circum- stance by both Du Marnier and Bumand Mr Hamilton's most interesting book can be con- sulted. There can be no doubt that all the time when Oscar Wilde was thus mununing and masquer- ading the bitterness at his heart was great. Knowing what was in him ; feeling the flame of the genius that burned within ; conscious of the part that he might have been playing on the stage of the world, to none more than to himself can his notoriety, acquired as it was and kept alive by such means, have appeared despic- able and a matter for regret. /At the same time it helped him to some extent to gain that entr/e i66 The Life of Oscar Wilde into London society which when he left Oxford and went to the metropolis was his immediate object. The lion-himters with which the capital abounds were not sorry to be able to produce at their tables and during their receptions the man about whom England was speaking, and of whom the comic papers made weekly sp)ort. In this way he certainly achieved some part of his purpose, which, otherwise, might altogether have failed of effect. For in a world where the first question that is asked about a new-comer is: " What has he got ? '* and the next is : " Who is he ? '* the younger son of an Irish professional man, with the very smallest of incomes was doomed by the very nature of things to utter failure of his social ambitions. In addition to this the reputation of his brother Willy, who had preceded him to London, was already a damaging one ; and there is no doubt that Oscar's subsequent animosity towards his brother was caused by his remembrance of the extent to which he had been a stumbling-block in his early path, when the conquest of social London was the aim of his endeavours. But for the curiosity which attached to his name it is certain that none of the doors through which he desired to pass would ever have opened before him. As it was, he had the moderate social success which 167 The Life of Oscar W^de London accords en passant to those who can divert its stagnant ennui. But he was never popular in society ; he was mistmstedand mis- understood; andin the end he was disliked. ICs \ superiority was too crushing. The men and V women who gathered round him wishing to Haugh had the disagreeable surprise of finding that the buffoon's bladder was weighted with lead, and that the point of his wit left an in- tolerable sting behind it. A letter is in exist- ence written by a lady who belongs to the highest English nobility, and who saw him in those early days in London. She appreciated his qualities to the full, but she also was forced to admit that as far as winning the suffrages of what is known as good society in London he failed utterly. " I knew him/' so runs the letter, " first at a Huxley dinner, just after he left Oxford. I was then old enough to be his mother, but I thought I had never met so wonderful and brilliant a creature. . . . Even you,'* she adds, addressing the person to whom this letter was written, " seem hardly to know how the ordinary run of English society hated him. I was never allowed to ask him to our house. How unconscious he must have been of this hatred when he thought that society would stand by him. . . . Pocm- i68 The Life of Oscar Wilde thing, that he should have represented an aristocrat to the howling crowd is most curious." One has to remember that England is a com- mercial country where worth, merit, character, quality, genius are estimated only by the amoimt of money which a man earns or possesses. The only poet who is allowed to show consciousness of STjperiority is the poet who can show from royalties earned by his books an income superior to that enjoyed by the people whom he wishes to impress with his superiority. Our noveUsts rank according to the amount of shiUings or pounds they receive per thousand words. In England the poor man is not allowed to show pride. Assumption of superiority which in the man of genius is inevitable is resented in English society when that man of genius is not able to show the actual cash value of his talents. That the younger son of a Dublin oculist, who was reported to have a bare two hundred a year, derived from land in Ireland, should try to impress London society ; should show superi- ority and act with arrogance, was such an offence against the first precepts of English Society and the Church of England catechism that the hatred and indignation of his contemporaries can only be too readily believed. It requires a man more versed in psychology than is the ordinary man 169 The Life of Oscar Wilde of the world to understand that a man of genius is proud because he is conscious of his superiority, because he cannot help but feel this superiority^ and feeling it cannot help but show it, guard himself against this as carefully as he may. When Andr6 Chenier waiting his turn at the guillotine struck his head against the uprights of the in- strument of punishment and infamy and cried out : " And yet there were great things here ! *' the mob roared with laughter. The mob always laughs when the man whom it has degraded yet claims any kind of pre-eminence. Oscar Wilde in these early days of the attempted Conquest of London displayed a pride which impressed the onlookers as arrogance. He figured as the tnaitre ; he assiuned the office of arbiter^ and he was, perhaps, too young and inexperienced to carry the burthen of the part. He used to re- late with some gusto certain of the retorts which he had made during this period. They display that quaUty which Rabelais describes as outre- Guidance, which where it does not subjugate ex- cites inextinguishable enmity. One of these stories also shows his readiness of repartee. One day arriving very late at a luncheon party his hostess mildly remonstrated with him for the delay, pointing to the clock in support of her rebuke. ** And what, madam,'' he answered, 170 The Life of Oscar Wilde '* do you think that that little dock knows of what the great golden sun is doing ? '* The re- tort was an able one ; but none the less would that hostess feel that as an excuse for her burned enir/es and the inconvenience of her other guests ; it was hardly the amende honorable which she was entitled to expect^ and in her heart there would be a feeUng of grudge against the wit. This anecdote enables one to institute a com- parison between the readiness and powers of repartee of Oscar Wilde and the same quaUties in that rival of his, Whistler. Whistler has al- ways been considered as far superior in this respect to Oscar A^lde, and tourneys of repartee are quoted in which invariably the younger man was defeated. Yet on a similar occasion, Whistler, arriving late for limch and being chidden therefore, foimd nothing better to do, or to say, than to fix his eyeglass firmly in his eye, to stare around the room and to cry, " Ha I Ha ! Lunch ! Lunch I Lunch I Bunch ! Bunch ! Bunch I '' The hearers laughed and found the wit divine ; but when the thing had crystallised it must have appeared to the hostess even a more pitiful excuse than the one which had been tendered by Oscar Wilde. During his early years in London Oscar Wilde did not live with his mother and Willy. He 171 The Life of Oscar WUde I occupied lodgings in unfashionable districts. i For some months he lived in a couple of furnished 2 rooms in Salisbury Street, ofE the Strand, in the ^ very Bohemia of letters. It was not till later that he moved to Charles Street, Grosvenor Square, which was his address during the last j period of his bachelor da}^. His income was a very small one, and the struggle to figure as a man of the world was constant. By mortgaging 1 ' and selling his property in Ireland, by the help j of friends and by anonymous literary work, he was just able to maintain himself. If hopes of wealth ever came to him they proceeded from . the fact that a rich friend, a lady, had bestowed . upon him a large quantity of shares in Keeley's ^^ Perpetual Motion Engine, a fraud in which she had invested very largely, and in which she had the greatest confidence. At one time when | , Oscar's name was most prominently before • ^ London as the darling of London society his I entire assets consisted of a sheaf of these worth- ' . i less green papers. * If his desire in assuming the masquerade of the - " aesthetic costume " was to influence a publisher to accept the risk of printing his poems, success here, at least, awaited him. He found in David Bogue, who was at that time in business as a high-class publisher in St Martin's Lane, a 17a The Life of Oscar Wilde commercial man ready to produce his book in the best style. In the AthefUBum for 2nd July 1881 the book was annoimced in the following terms : — Now ready. Crown Svo. Price 10s. 6d. POEMS. By OSCAR WILDE PRINTED ON DUTCH HANDMADE PAPER AND HANDSOMELY BOUND IN PARCHMENT This advertisement to anyone who knows the difficulties that the yoimg aspiring poet has in finding a publisher for his works is a plain certi- ficate of success. The price at which the volume was offered, the paper on which it was printed, and the parchment in which it was boimd are all so many tributes to the skill with which the young man had impressed his personality on business London. It is not in this livery — ^this court dress rather — ^that the Cinderella Muse goes to the Palace of Fame, unless, indeed, a fairy godmother has intervened. The irony of things shows itself once more on this page of the Athenaufn. As one glances down the list of David Bogue's announcements one notices among the other new books which he was issuing at the same time as Oscar Wilde's poems the following works : " Music and 173 The Life of Oscar Wilde Morals/' by Haweis; "Conscious Matter," by W. Stewart Duncan ; and (here one can almost perceive the sardonic laughter of the immortals) " How to Make the Best of Life," by J. Mortimer Granvile. This volume of poems consisted mainly of reprints of verses which Oscar Wilde had con- tributed to various periodicals, Kottabos, The Dublin University Magazine, The Irish Monthly, and certain London periodicals and journals. After leaving Oxford he had published poems in different weekly and monthly papers. Ed- mund Yates, who had a great esteem for him, and was always his literary and social protector, had opened to him the pages of Time and the columns of The World. Much of his most effective verse had appeared in The World. Of these poems, which have now been reprinted, and are open to the judgment, nothing need be said in criticism in this place beyond the fact that they appealed very strongly to the public of the day, and that four editions were readily sold in a few weeks. Many found great delight in them. The great and beautiful Ellen Terry, to whom the yoimg poet dedicated two of the sonnets in this book, was charmedby his tributes ; and what better success could a poet desire than having hymned Ellen Terry to win a smile of 174 The Life of Oscar Wilde approval from her lips? Of the two sonnets, " To Portia," and " To Queen Henrietta Maria," which appeared in this book, the one which gave most pleasure to the wonderful and great- hearted artist to whom they were addressed was the latter. This is it : — QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA In the lone tent, waiting for victory, She stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain, like some wan lily overdrenched with rain, The clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguined day, War's ruin and the wreck of chivalry To her proud soul no common fear can bring. Bravely she tarrieth for her Lord, the King, Her soul a-fiame with passionate ecstasy. O Hair of Gold! O Crimson Lips ! O Face ! Made for the luring and the love of man, With thee I do' forget the toil and stress. The loveless road that knows no resting-place. Time's straitened pulse, the soul's dread weariness, My freedom and my Ufe republican. This sonnet then achieved what many sonnets of far greater beauty have failed to achieve. It appealed to the lady to whom it was inscribed. It is still remembered as a tribute by one upon whom tributes have been rained down like the dew of heaven. For the rest this supreme artist Uke many other of the greatest women of the day has always had admiration for the poet and pity for the man. In the spring of 1905 175 The Life of Oscar Wilde while England was still wondering whether it would be right and seemly to pronounce the name of the man who, although he had written " De Profundis/' had yet ten years previously been convicted of conduct for which he had paid the utmost penalty of the law and the further penalty of some years of lingering agony and a miserable death, at that time, then. Miss Terry had the courage, speaking publicly at Frascati's at a meeting of the Gallery First Nighters' Club, to include the name of Oscar Wilde amongst a list of men whom she used to see at the Lyceum in the old triumphant days. " In the gallery and pit at the dear old Lyceum," she said, " there used to be seen faces of many men who had won or were about to win distinction in the world — ^the Bmne-Joneses ; the Justin McCarthys ; Alfred Gilbert, the great sculptor ; the late Oscar Wilde ; the poet O'Shaughnessy." The reference was a courageous one ; the act was worthy of the woman. Its quotation here serves another purpose. It enables us to gather that in the da)^ when Oscar Wilde was writing his verse he was not a prosperous man. The young man whose circiun^tances force him to go to the pit or the gallery of the theatre d la mode will find difficulty in storming the fortresses of the British aristocracy. For the "limitless 176 J '1 j( The Life of Oscar Wilde ambition " of his, of which he used to speak as a young man, aimed at the very highest social success. The upper middle-class from which he sprung filled him with disdain. He used to speak with contempt of Bayswater as the stronghold of all that was common and vulgar, and to be avoided. " A Bayswater view of things'* — ^he could find nothing more scathing than that. When in the end he found that the higher aristocracy, while willing enough to be amused by him, did not readily yield to his ad- vances, he came to speak with some contempt of the old nobility. *' They are nothing but exaggerated farmers," he used to say. Amongst the modem souches he had some acquaintances, and, perhaps, because of their greater affability, these found no more valorous defender than Oscar Wilde. It was an imprudent thing for anyone to venture to joke on the nobility of the big brewers, for he happened to have some friends among men who had risen to the ranks of the aristocracy by the ladder of heaped-up barrels of beer. It is a fact that social success always impressed Oscar Wilde. The man who made money and " got on " in Ufe enjoyed his regard ; for the failure he had nothing but ab- horrence. Intimate friends of his have won- dered to hear him speaking with praise of very M 177 The Life of Oscar WUde common fellows who by reason of a little com- mercial cmming had reached to reputation and prosperity. In this respect he was essentially a worldly man^ and, so considered, one wonders whether the Anarchist doctrines to which he later 3delded did not result from his vexation at the small amount of real social success to which he attained as a young man. In only a very few good houses in London was he taken seriously, or invited as an honoured guest. Literary history affords few more distressing pictures than these early years of Oscar Wilde, where we see a man of supreme superiority wast- ing his time and humiUating himself in running after the worthless favours of men and wom^i so entirely his inferiors. In the artistic world, however, his success was incontestable. He en- joyed from an early age the friendship and ap- proval of many men of high distinction. He was the associate of Whistler ; he sat at the feet of George Meredith ; he was the companion of the Pre-RaphaeUtes ; and he proclaimed a sympathy for Swinburne which the elder poet did not reciprocate. In later Ufe he did not often refer to these dsiys, and when he did so it was to talk of the arcana of London rather than of its heights. He had anecdotes to tell of an extraordinary 178 The Life of Oscar Wilde man named Howell^ who seems to have exploited the naive Pre-Raphaelites in a pitiless and con- stant manner, and who had had many amusing passages of arms with Whistler. For the clever- ness of this man Oscar Wilde seemed to have some admiration. He used to quote as a witty sa3dng of Howell's a retort that he once made when a group of artists, anxious to get rid of him, had ofiered to pay his passage out to Australia. " Who," said Howell, " would go to Australia, if he had the money to go with ? " He found that it was a very clever invention on the part of Howell, being asked one day by Whistler whether he had ever happened to ride in cab No. I in London to have answered : " No, but a few da5^ ago I drove home in cab No. 2." He seems to have watched with poignant in- terest the career of that imfortunate artist Solomons, who, as Fate would have it, survived Oscar Wilde by some years, and died under circumstances not more tragic than those which attended the death of the man who used to express such pity for his terrible Ufe. That even at the time when *' Patience " had been nmning for some months and Bogue was announcing his poems at the price of half-a-guinea he had not imposed himself on true London society is made clear by a note which Edmimd Yates, his friend^ 179 The Life of Oscar Wilde inserted in The World as a preliminary announce- ment of these poems. It appeared in the number for 6th July 1881, and runs as follows : " People who, hearing of Mr Oscar Wilde, ask who he is and what he has done, will now be able to learn, as a volume of Mr Wilde's collected poems will shortly be published/' That Edmund Yates had a sincere admiration for Oscar Wilde will be all the more readily understood when it is recorded that many of Wilde's poems which appeared in The World had brought to the editor from different parts of the world letters of high conmiendation from the readers of that journal. One incident especially appealed to Yates. It came to his knowledge that a copy of The World containing Wilde's poem Ave ImperatHx had been received by a mess of British ofl&cers in one of the regiments which followed Lord Roberts on his march to Kandahar, and that these men had been struck with the truth and beauty of the picture which the poet had drawn of the very spot where they were encamped. Sarah Bemhardt's admiration for and friendship with the young poet would also impress that most Parisian of Londoners, Edmund Yates. Sarah always had a high regard for Oscar Wilde. She used to say that she had been charmed with the courtesy of his manner, and with his kindness of 180 The Life of Oscar Wilde heart. " Most men who are civil to actresses and render them services," she used to say, "have an arrih^e-pens^e. It was not so with Oscar Wilde. He was a devoted attendant, and did much to make things pleasant and easy for me in London, but he never appeared to pay court." In other words Sarah had discovered amongst the young men of London one who was an EngUsh gentleman in every sense of that much misused term. And this may be put on record here once and for all. Oscar Wilde was the beau id^al of an English |;entleman. That is to say the sane Oscar Wilde. What he may have been when his epileptiform fits took him it is for the outcasts to say who saw him on these rare and mournful occasions. Oscar Wilde's volume of poems received with enthusiasm by the pubUc found Uttle favour with the critics. The book was roundly abused. The Saturday Review^ which in those days had still some importance as an arbiter in Uterature, contemptuously disposed of the book in a few sentences at the end of an article on " Recent Poetry." This review appears in the number for 23rd July 1881. It begins: "Mr Wilde's verses belong to a class which is the special terror of the reviewers, the poetry which is neither good nor bad, which calls for neither praise nor z8z The Life of Oscar Wilde ridicule, and in which we search in vain for any personal touch of thought or music." Lower down, " The great fault of all such writing as this is the want of Uterary sincerity which it displa}^. For instance, Mr Wilde brings into his verse the names of innumerable birds and flowers, because he likes the sound of their names, not because he has made any observa- tion of their habits. He thinks that the meadow- sweet and the wood-anemone bloom at the same time, that that shy and isolated flower, the harebell 'breaks across the woodlands in masses,' ' Uke a sudden flush of sea,' and that owls are commonly met with in mid-ocean.'* Strong exception is next taken to the sensual tone of the poems, and the review concludes with the following: "This book is not with- out traces of cleverness, but it is marred everj^where by imitation, insincerity, and bad 1 taste." ; This reviewer was no doubt sincere, for we ' find in his comments the repetition of much that^ j so far, we have heard raised up in blame against the young poet. We have* heard him spoken of as '' an average sort of man " ; we know that his educational weakness was a neglect of ; the rudiments — ^in this case he is blamed for a lack of the botanical and zoological rudiments ; 182 t 1 I The Life of Oscar Wilde and we have already seen him charged with imitation of others. Moreover, he is here once more rebuked for that imprudent manner of his of talking about the physical beauties of man and woman which later on was to render him such signal disservice. It was a habit gained from his classical training and his en- thusiasm for the Uterature of the ancients ; but it was a literary habit which in modem days was fraught with considerable danger. The Athenaum gave him the place of honour in its number for 23rd July 1881. The long review of his poems occupied its first page. The review is a very careful one, well-written, as are all the reviews in that periodical which stands first amidst the critical papers of the world. It was evidently the work of a man who was not biassed either for or against the young poet, and who had very conscientiously prepared himself for his task as the critic of the book. The review was an unfavourable one. It begins: " Mr Wilde's volmne of poems may be regarded as the evangel of a new creed. From other gospels it differs in coming after, instead of be- fore, the cult it seeks to estabUsh." " We fail to see however," continues the reviewer, after an exposition of Oscar Wilde's teachings, " that the apostle of the new worship has any distinct 183 The Life of Oscar Wilde message." Lower down, " Turning to the exe- cution of the poems there is something to ad- mire. Mr Wilde has a keen perception of some aspects of natural beauty. Single lines might be extracted which convey striking and accurate pictures. The worst faults are artificiality and insincerity, and an extravagant accentuation of whatever in modem verse most closely ap- proaches the estilo cuUo of the sixteenth century." An able and scientific, if not very charitable^ requisitoire bearing out the charges in this in- dictment follows. The charge of imitation is particularly insisted upon. " The sonnet on the ' Massacres of the Chris- tians in Bulgaria ' reflects Milton's sonnet on the ' Massacres in Piedmont.' The ' Garden of Eros * recalls at times Mr Swinburne — ^at times Alexander Smith. In the descriptions of flowers which occur in the poem last named there is a direct and reiterated imitation of Shakespeare. * Some violets lie That will not look the gold sun in the face For fear of too much splendour ' — reminds one of the * Pale primroses That die unmarried ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength.' 184 The Life of Oscar Wilde Mr wade's ' Budding marjoram, which but to kias Would sweeten Cytheraea's lips ' — and his ' Meadow-sweet Whiter than Juno's throat ' brings back the ' Violets dim. But sweeter than the Uds of Juno's eyes Or Cytheraea's breath/ And the ' rustling bluebells ' — ^rustling bluebells is a vile phrase — ^that come ' Almost before the blackbird finds a mate, And overstay the swallow ' are but the daffodils ' That come before the swallow dares/ '' Traces of this kind of imitation abound, and there is scarcely a poet of high mark in the present century whose influence is not per- ceptiUe/' The conclusion is not an inspiring one : "Work of this nature has no element of en- durance^ and Mr Wilde's ix>ems, in spite of some grace and beauty as we have said, will, when their temporary notoriety is exhausted, find a place on the shelves of those only who hunt after the curious in Uteratiure. They may, perhaps, serve x85 The Life of Oscar Wilde as an illustration in some chapter on the revival in the nineteenth century of the Gongorism of the sixteenth." Against the charge of imitation Wilde's warm- est friends will not be able — ^were they desirous of so doing — ^to defend him. He was essentially an artist^ and the artist is essentially imitative. Art is imitation. The only original creation which is not the reproduction of anything else of which we know is the creation of the world, and on that circumstance the data are too vague for us to be quite certain that here too imitation did not overhang the labour. Models were certainly not lacking, or the astronomers have misled us. There has never been a writer yet against whom charges of plagiarism have not been brought. Of those charges MoUdre briefly and wittingly exonerated himself. MoUdre was in the right. The artist is entitled to appropriate for his own treatment the thoughts, the conceptions of others. It is not the highest form of Uterary art, but it gives pleasiu^e, and it is a tribute to the man from whom the borrowing took place. It seems that it would be as unfair to say that a prima donna who sings us the Jewel Song out of " Faust " ought not to be Ustened to because we have heard other prime danne sing that song before she came upon the stage. It is one of i86 The Life of Oscar Wilde the most detestable axioms of commercial Philis- tinism that the exclusive right in a thought or a comparison belongs to the man who first voiced them. In the RepubUc of Letters and amongst true artists no such proprietary instinct prevails. It is the true artist's greatest joy to feel that he has given forth fecundating atoms which shall breed beauty in ages to come. Most of the reviews were equally unfavour- able. In some^ private enmity was allowed to show itself. The notice which appeared in Punch may be humorous^ it is certainly not marked with courtesy. As a specimen of the kind of criticism of himself^ which Oscar Wilde had provoked, some extracts from this notice may be quoted. It commences thus : — " Mr Lambert Streyke in The Colonel pub- lished a book of poems for the benefit of his followers and his own ; Mr Oscar Wilde has followed his example.*' As Mr Hamilton points out, the character of Lambert Streyke, in Btu*nand's adaptation The Colonel^ is that of a paltry swindler, who shamming aesthetic tastes imposes upon a nimiber of rather silly ladies, and is finally exposed by The Colonel. The review continues : *' The cover is con- summate, the paper is distinctly precious, the binding is beautiful, and the type is utterly too. 187 The Life of Oscar Wilde ' Poems/ by Oscar Wilde, that is the title of the book of the aesthetic singer, which comes to us arrayed in white vellum and gold. There is a certain amount of originaUty about the binding, but that is more than can be said for the inside of the volume. Mr Wilde may be aesthetic, but he is not original. This is a volume of echoes, it is Swinbmne and water, while here and there we notice that the author has been reminiscent of Mr Rossetti and Mrs Browning.*' The poems were commercially a great success, and this success pleased Oscar Wilde very much. He used to speak with pride of the fact that his volume of poems had run into four editions in as many weeks. For the rest, as his powers developed he came to look upon this early work in the hght of a pech^ de jeunesse. Certainly the author of " Keats' Love-letters " and other of his later poems could not help but be critical towards the verse contained in this volume. Yet such as it is it has outUved the various periods of notoriety which brought their author's name so prominently before the world. Re- cently repubUshed in America by Mr Mosher of Portland a large and constant demand for the book continues. Already at the time of its original pubUcation the American edition met with great success. In i88 The Life of Oscar Wilde a paragraph in The World for 9th November 1881 we read : " Mr Oscar Wilde has arranged to leave England next month for America where he wiU deUver lectures on Art subjects. Mr Wilde's volimie of poems, which has had a very large sale in America, will have prepared the way for him and no doubt insured him a brilUant reception in that country. I hear that Mr Wilde is also making arrangements for bringing out an original play before he leaves London.'* The play here referred to is " Vera," a Nihilist drama. It was not produced until much later in America, where it met with instant failure. The great objection to the play was the fact that it contains only one female role, that of Vera, the NihiUst heroine. This drama has been printed, and can be obtained in London, with various annotations. It was not, as amiably represented by Edmund Yates, as the author of a successful volume of poems that Oscar Wilde received encouragement to go to America to lecture. It was suggested to him that a good deal of curiosity existed in that coimtry in " the ^Esthetic Movement and School,*' that his personality aroused interest, and that a profitable lecturing campaign might be carried out there. At the same time he was anxious to produce " Vera,** which he had not 189 The Life of Oscar WUde been able to place upon the stage in London. He had no arrangement with any impresario when he left England. Major Pond afterwards undertook to " run him " in the States ; that is to say after his appearance at the Chickering Hall and his success there. He sailed on board the Arizona on Saturday, 24th December 1881, his original intention being to deliver one lecture on the " Recent Growth of Art in England," and he proposed to be absent for three or four months. A few days be- fore his departure there appeared in The World, under the heading " The Lights of London," a sketch of him by H. B., described as " Ego Upto Snufl&bus Poeta," with certain humorous verses attached, of which the following may be quoted : " Albeit nurtured in democracy And liking best that state Bohemian Where each man borrows sixpence and no man Has aught but paper collars ; yet I see Exactly where to take a liberty. Better to be thought one, whom most abuse For speech of donkey and for look of goose, Than that the world should pass in silence by. Wherefore I wear a sunflower in my coat Cover my shoulders with my flowing hair Tie verdant satin round my open throat. Culture and love I cry, and ladies smile, And seedy critics overflow with bile While with my Prince long Sykes's meal I share." 190 ^ The Life of Oscar WUde The parody meant to be friendly, but there can be no doubt that it aroused bitter feelings of self-reproach in Oscar Wilde's mind. Of self- reproach, but also of indignant revolt against the order of things which in these modem days condemns a man of action to inactivity, who^ if he would emerge from the stagnant obscurity to which the world condenms him, must play the part of pantaloon. Vital, full of genius and of that physical energy which is the genius of the body, fitted for any part that the world has ever yet bestowed upon a man, he found himself at twenty-seven years of age crossing the Atlantic in masquerade, to amuse, to be laughed at, and in his bitter humiUation to appear to take pleasure in the part. In the whole of his mournful career few periods can have been more full of suffering. We reach here the heights of tragedy to which Shakespeare attains in '^ King Lear." Higher heights, for the king was here a youth. We are to remember too that the man was a man of genius, and that being so he could aot help but know it. 191 CHAPTER IX Oscar Mode's Remark about the Atlantic — He is Interviewed — ^His Personal Appearance— Alleged Resemblance to Irving — Oscar Wilde and the Actors — How Irving once recalled Wilde's look — Oscar's Lecture at the Chickering Hall— The Opinion of New York--Oscar Wilde at Boston — ^The Harvard Students — A Fiasco of Burlesque — ^The Gentleman and the Boors — ^Boston's Tribute to the Gentle- man— His Lecturing Tour — ^His Varied Fortunes — ^Dif- ferent Impressions of Oscar Wilde — Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman — Oscar \^^lde's Kindness — ^His £ff<»rts on behalf of an English Friend — He Rescues a Starving Chicago Sculptor— Oscar Wilde and the Moncton Y^.CA.— The Bunco Steerers — ^American Dry Goods — " Robert Els- mere " as a Top-Dressing — ^The Production of " Vera " — A Paragraph in Punch — ^What America did for Oscar Wilde. The next thing that London heard about Oscar Wilde was that on arriving in New York he had declared himself disappointed with the Atlantic. This remark of his was seized upon by his critics as a further proof of the man's intolerable conceit and arrogance. As a matter of fact it was the very simple expression of the feeling with which most people who cross the Atlantic for the first time look back on the passage when that voyage has been performed during fine weather. One expects a tumultuous sea, a succession of awe- inspiring spectacles^ great heights, and ab3rsmal 192 The Life of Oscar Wilde depths of surging waters ; and^ when the sea is cahn — ^well, it is cakn. The man could not say the simplest thing without exciting malevolent criticism. Before he landed Oscar Wilde was^ as is usual in America with visitors of distinction^ " inter- viewed" by various reporters who had come out to meet the Arizona. The report which appeared in the New York Herald gives, as he himself declared, the best account of what he said, and may therefore be reproduced here. " Men may come and men may go, but it is not every day that an apostle (thwaite) of xsthetidsm comes to the shores of America. It was for this reason that the Herald reporter met Mr Oscar Wilde at the first available place — namely, quarantine. "Mr Wilde was not at all adverse to the American process of interviewing, and began by informing the reporter that he had come to the United States * to lecture on the Renaissance ' which he defined as the ' revival of the intimate study of the correlation of all the arts.' '' • I shall lecture,' said Mr Wilde, a Uttie reservedly, ' in Chickering Hall on the Renais- sance. My future movements will depend en- tirely upon the results of my lectiu'e in a business n 193 The Life of Oscar WUde sense. I have come here with the intention of producing upon the American stage a play which I have written^ and which I have not^ for reasons, been able to produce in London. It is exceedingly desirable that it should be produced with a cast of actors who shall be thoroughly able to represent the piece with all the force of its original conception.' " ' But/ said the reporter, ' do you not intend to produce a volume of poems while you are in America ? ' ** ' No, I shall not, certainly for some time to come, publish another volume, but I hardly care to say what the future may develop.' " * You will certainly lecture, however ? ' said the reporter. " ' I certainly shall, but I do not know if I shall lecture in other cities besides New York. It will depend entirely upon what encourage- ment I find in the acceptance of my school of philosophy.' " *Do you, then, call ** aesthetidsm " a philo- sophy ? ' asked the reporter. " * Most certainly it is a philosophy. It is the study of what may be found in art. It is the pursuit of the secret of life. Whatever there is in all art that represents the eternal truth is an expression of the great underlying truth. So 194 The Life of Oscar Wilde far aestheticism may be held to be the study of truth in art/ y " ' iEsthetidsan/ said the reporter, ' has been understocc^in America to be a bUnd groping after something which is entirely intangible. Can you, the exponent of aestheticism, give an interpretation which shall serve to give a more respectable standing to the word ? ' " ' I do not know,' said Mr Wilde, * that I can give a much better definition than I have al- ready given- But whatever there has been in poetry since the time of Keats, whatever there has been in art that has served to devolve the underlying principles of truth ; whatever there has been in science that has served to show to the individual the meaning of truth as expressed to humanity — ^that has been an exponent of aestheticism/ *' And so the two augurs parted, and without a smile. Of Oscar Wilde's personal appearance at the time of his landing in New York it may be re- corded that when the late Sir Henry Irving ar- rived in America on his first visit to the States it was generally said that he much reminded people of Wilde. In Frederic Daly's mono- graph, ** Henry Irving," we find the following passage in the chapter describing the reception 195 The Life of Oscar WUdc given to the great actor on his landing in New York :— *' But the only unkind thing said of Mr Irving on his arrival was that he resembled Mr Oscar Wilde. 'The figure was muscular^ as the aesthete's was, and the face was long and a trifle like his ; but there was far more strength in it, and it was more refined and manly.' Thus there was a dash of bitterness in Mr Irving's first American cup, though the writer who com- mended the chaUce to his Ups was not without a desire to sweeten the draught." At the time of Sir Henry's first visit to America, Oscar Wilde had not yet shown him- self. He was still masquerading and mmnming ; and if there is one person in the world for whom the hardworking and conscientious actor, the sincere artist, has a dislike, it is the man who acts, as an amateur, by grimace and posture on the stage of Ufe. Oscar Wilde's worst enemies were amongst the actors, and the spirit that prompted this resentment was not always the natural and excusable feeling that vexed Henry Irving when he, the conscientious artist, found himself compared to a man as to whom he did not then understand on what he based his claims to rank as an artist. The same feeling was shown by Coquelin the younger, who is of 196 The Life of Oscar Wilde modem actors one of the most hardworking^ and in " The Story of an Unhappy Friendship " we find in this connection the following reference : " I had invited him to lunch with me at Paillard's to meet CoqueUn cadet. . . . Coquelin cadet was not greatly impressed by my friend ; and I imagine that, as a general rule, Oscar Wilde did not have much success with actors. These may have thought his affectation, harmless as it was, an infringement on their own rights — a trespass on their domain." When catastrophe came upon him there were two actors who most zealously worked to com- plete his downfall ; but in both cases there was personal animosity. It is difiicult to trace any resemblance between Oscar Wilde in 1881 and Henry Irving some years later. Yet, on one occasion, one who knew both men did notice the most striking and ex- traordinary likeness. This man was attending one night the performance of the " Lyons Mail " in the beautiful Prince of Wales' Theatre in Birmingham. In the scene where Lesurques, having been denounced by the witnesses from the inn, makes his pathetic appeal to one of the women to speak the word which admitting her mistake shall absolve him from the horrible charge which has been brought against him^ 197 The Life of Oscar Wilde and the witness tnms mournfully but resolutely away, Lesurques' face assumed a look of agony and horror, as the vista of what lay before him opened out — sl look in which the blood rushed to the face and made it turgid and vultuous, there was at the same time a distending of the eyeballs, which seemed about to leap from th^ sockets, a twisting and contortion of the mouth roughly kneaded into a mass of agony by torturing hands, while the face lengthened as though by two crushing and simultaneous blows on each cheek it had been flattened downwards. The look of unspeakable anguish and dismay was cast sideways at the woman in whose silence Lesurques read his ruin, shame,' and death. The spectator to whom reference has been made fell back in his chair from excess of emotion at the sight of a piece of acting so consummate. At that moment Irving presented the exact facial' picture of Oscar Wilde, as looking sideways at the foreman of the jury from his place in the dock in the Old Bailey he listened to the verdict that meant to him ruin, shame, and death. The lecture at Chickering Hall was a great success. We read in the New York World the following account of Oscar Wilde's tUbiU before the American pubHc : — '' It is seldom that Chickering Hall has con* 198 The Life of Oscar Wilde tained so fine an audience as that which gathered there last evening (Monday, 9th January 1882) to see Mr Oscar Wilde, and to listen to his ex- position of those pecuUar views which have dis- tinguished him from everyday folk in England. And Bfr Wilde was well worth seeing, his short breeches and silk stockings showing to even better advantage upon the stage than in the gilded drawing-rooms, where the young apostle has hitherto been seen in New York. No sun- flower, nor yet a lily, dangled from the button- hole of his coat; indeed, there is room for reasonable doubt as to whether his coat had even one button-hole to be put to such artistic use. But judging his coat by the laws of the Philistines it was a well-fitting coat and looked as though it had been made for the wearer as a real coat and not as a mere piece of decorative drapery. Promptly at eight o'clock the young lecturer came upon the stage, and with the briefest possible introduction from Colonel Morse Mr Wilde began his lectiire/' In the New York review. The Nation, appeared at the end of that week a long article analysing the lecture and giving the impressions of the audience.^ It was written by a representative man, who admits at the very outset of his re- > Reprinted in the Appendix. 199 The Life of Oscar Wilde marks that Oscar Wilde's lecture was a success. Yet his conclusion was that " Mr Wilde was essentially a foreign product and can hardly succeed in this country. What he has to say is not new, and his extravagance is not extra- vagant enough to amuse the average American audience. His knee-breeches and long hair are good as far as they go ; but Bimthome has really spoiled the pubUc for Wilde." He was not taken seriously by many. An intimate friend of his relates that the only re- ference which he ever heard Oscar Wilde make to the coarse things of Uf e was in connection with this lecture. " As soon as it was over," he said, '' a number of fashionable young men who had been present, and who met me at the club to which I went that night, wished to take me out to the night-houses of New York. * Of course,' they said, * after lecturing on Art and Culture, you will want to go and see the girls.' " From a commercial point of view the lecture was a decided success, and at once a proposal was made to Oscar Wilde by that enterprising lecture-agent, the late Major Pond, who offered to " run him " for a series of lectures throu^ the States. It has been generally understood that this series of lectures was very successful, that Oscar Wilde's progress through the States 200 The Life of Oscar Wilde was a triumphant one, and that the venture re- sulted in great financial benefit to himself and his impresario. Major Pond, however, himself stated, during his last visit to England and at a time when he had visited Hall Caine at Greeba Castle to endeavour to persuade the novelist to undertake a lecture-tour under his manage- ment, that Oscar Wilde's lectures had not been successful, and that he had abandoned the tour before the entire Ust of towns arranged for had been visited. This statement was made, how- ever, at a time when everybody who had any- thing to say in detriment to Oscar Wilde was only too ready to give utterance to it. At the same time the Major was speaking to two men whom he knew to be friends of Wilde — ^which allows it to be supposed that he was speaking the truth ; and another thing is that Major Pond had been speaking very freely about the different men whom he had " run," and the financial re- sults which had been obtained. The first town that Oscar Wilde visited after leaving New York was Boston, where from the very nature of the place and the bent of its in-, habitants he might have been assured of a large and attentive audience. The audience was, in- deed, large, but it was not a representative one. It was mainly composed of the curious who had 201 The Life of Oscar WUde been attracted by the announcement that a number of Harvard students, dressed up in a burlesque of the " aesthetic costume/' intended to be present, and most probably would " guy " the lecturer. A large audience congregated to see the fun, but the prominent Bostonians stayed away. The masqueraders waited until Oscar Wilde had stepped upon the platform, and then trooped in in single file, each assuming a demeanour more absurd than that of the man who followed him. There were sixty youths in the procession, and all were dressed in swallow- tail coats, knee-breeches, flowing wigs and green ties. They all wore large lilies in their button- holes, and each man carried a huge sunflower as he Umped along. Sixty front seats had been reserved for the Harvard contingent, and it was amidst shouts of laughter that they filed into their places. The effect that they had wished to produce was, however, spoiled to some extent by the fact that Oscar Wilde had for that occasion discarded his pecuhar costume and appeared in ordinary evening-dress, so that those of the audience to whom his usual appearance was not familiar entirely missed the point that the Harvard students wished to make. The young men behaved with Uttle deconmi. Though they did not " guy *' the lecturer, whose counter- 202 The Life of Oscar Wilde manoeuvre had somewhat abashed them, they took the opportunity of such pauses as occurred during the lecture when Oscar Wilde paused to drink water, to applaud in a most vigorous and derisive manner. Oscar Wilde, however, triumphed in the end, as an EngUsh gentleman i j \ always will triumph in a contest with boors. \\^ ' On the following day there appeared in that y , y excellent paper, The Boston Evening Transcript / ^ ' • ^' • (2nd February 1881) the following account of the 1 , lecture, which shows with what tact and success '* '* *^ ^ . the young foreigner turned the tables on the men who had tried to discomfit him : — ** Boston is certainly indebted to Oscar Wilde for one thing — the thorough-going chastening of the superabounding spirits of the Harvard fresh- man. It will be some time, we think, before a Boston assemblage is again invaded by a body of college youths, massed as such, to take pos- session of the meeting. This is not unimportant, ; for if the thing should grow into a practice and ' succeed, an3rthing in the way of pubUc enter- tainments here must finally be done with the leave only of the youngest and most ill-bred class of Harvard students. Whether in his first off-hand observation, or in the pointed remarks scattered through his address, or in the story he told of the Oxford boys and Mr Ruskin, nothing ao3 The Life of Oscar Wilde could have been more gracious, more dignified, more gentle and sweet, and yet more crushing, than the lecturer's whole demeanouir to them, and its influence upon the great audience was very striking. A goodly number of the latter, it seemed to us, had gone there to see the fun, in hopes of a jolly row ; but the tide of feeling was so completely turned by Mr Wilde's cour- teous and kindly dignity that even this portion of the audience took sides with him, and hissed down every attempt on the part of the rougher element to disconcert or interrupt the speaker by exaggerated and ill-timed applause. Mr Wilde achieved a real triumph, and it was by right of conquest, by force of being a gentleman in the truest sense of the word. His nobility not only obliged him — ^it obliged his would-be mockers — ^to good behaviom:. He crowned his triumph, and he heaped coals of fire upon those curly and wiggy heads, when he, with simplicity and evident sincerity, made them an offer of a statue of a Greek athlete to stand in their gymnasium, and said he should esteem it an honour if they would accept it. This really seemed to stun the boys, for they even forgot to recognise the offer with applause. It was a lovely though sad sight, to see those dear silly youths go out of the Music Hall in slow procession, 204 The Life of Oscar Wilde hanging their heads meekly^ and trjdng to avoid observation^ followed by faint expressions of favour from their friends^ but also with some hisses. A lady near us said, ' How mortified I should be if a son of mine were among them I ' We think that everyone who witnessed the scene on Tuesday evening must feel about it very much as we do, and that those who came to scoff, if they did not exactly remain to pray, at least, left the Music Hall with feelings of cordial liking, and perhaps, ta their own sur- prise, of respect for Oscar Wilde." " Courteous and kindly dignity '' : that was, perhaps, the trait in Oscar Wilde's character which won him such enthusiastic friendships, and so fervent a following of admirers. The conduct of these Harvard lads was re- membered at the time when it was the popular thing to heap abuse on Oscar Wilde, and in 1895 many of the baser American prints retold the story, but gave the beau rSle to the lads who had been so sorely discomfited. Some Rochester students who had imitated the pranks of Har- vard also came in for conmiendation when to have flouted Oscar Wilde at any time in his career was supposed to entitle a man to social recog- nition and gratitude. But Rochester did not^ in fact, come off any better in the encounter 205 The Life of Oscar WUde between brains and manners with stupidity and boorishness than Harvard had done. By his lecture and especially by his demeanour in the course of its dehvery Oscar Wilde won many friends in Boston ; and that city of learning having set the seal of its high approval both on the lecturer and the lecture, the respectful at- tention of cultured Americans throughout the States was, at least, ensured to him. Some of the Boston ladies expressed the highest en- thusiasm for the handsome young poet. Oscar Wilde's behaviour towards them only increased the respect with which he had come to be re- garded. " Oh, Mr Wilde," said to him at a reception by a young lady, "you have been adored in New York, but in Boston you will be wor- shipped." " But I do not wish to be worshipped," said Oscar. A circumstance which made for such success as he enjoyed during his lecture-tour was the support given by the Irish-Americans to the son of Speranza. Certain remarks in his lectures in which England and EngUsh society were scath- ingly criticised appealed strongly to this section of his audiences. " To disagree with three- fourths of all England on all points is one of the ao6 The Life of Oscar Wilde first elements of sanity/' is one of these remarks. But for the Americans^ in general^ there was such praise in some of his sayings as may have satis- fied the ahnost morbid national self-conscien- tiousness of that country. '' It is rather to you/' he said, in the course of his lecture on the English Renaissance, " that we turn to perfect what we have begun. There is something Hellenic in your air and world. You are yoimg ; ' no hungry generations tread you down/ and the past does not mock you with the ruins of a beauty, the secret of whose creation you have lost. Love art for its own sake, and then all things that you need will be added to you." The Americans called this '* taffy," but they liked it. From Boston he went to Omaha, where he lectured on "Decorative Art." In the course of the lecture he described American furniture as " not honestly made and out of character." This remark may not have pleased his audience, but it was a plain expression of the truth, and that he made it shows that he had an observant eye, and even in the matter of household furni- ture could tell bad workmanship from good. Only last year there was pubUshed in London a book by J. Morgan Richards, one of the keenest American business men Uving, who speaking 207 The Life of Oscar Wilde about the various kinds of goods which American commerce had imsuccessfully tried to introduce into England^ specially refers to American furniture, which he describes in almost the very words which the young sesthete used in his lecture in Omaha. When in an obituary notice of Oscar Wilde that wonderful writer, Ernest La Jeimesse, said of him, // savait tout (he knew everything), he advanced a proposition which Oscar Wilde's admirers could support with nimierous arguments and illustrations. " Wherever he went in the States," says Mr Walter Hamilton, "' he created a sensation, and it was gravely asserted that he had been induced to cross the Atlantic in order to work up an interest in " Patience," the satire of that opera not having been sufficiently understood in the States except by reading people. Such an idea had probably never entered his head ; he is scarcely the man to condescend to become an advertising mediimi for a play which professes to ridicule nearly everything he holds sacred in art or poetry, but his visit did certainly have a most beneficial effect upon the success of the piece, which, beyond a certain point, had created Uttle interest amongst middle-class Americans, whose ideas of cultiure are only awakened by an oc- casional visit to Europe." Mr Hamilton in his 208 The Life of Oscar Wilde commendable enthusiasm for Oscar Wilde is here rather too severe both on the middle-class Americans and on Gilbert and SuUivan's operetta. The middle-class Americans are cer- tainly not lacking in culture; in this respect^ indeed, they show themselves superior to the middle-classes of Europe. And as to '' Patience " the main idea of that amusing and inspiriting piece is one which men have appreciated ever since stage-plays first existed. It is a theme which has been handled by most dramatists. It is Mouse's Tartuffe treated in Gilbert's kindly and humane manner. It would appeal to anyone who had never heard of Oscar Wilde or of the ** aesthetic movement." This shght opera -bouffe parodies in advance the great movement that is still going on in France — the struggle between the inteUectuels and the miUtary party. It is very much more than an amusette, though as such, thanks to SuUivan's deUghtful music, it takes the highest place amongst pieces of its kind. Louisville was another dty which he visited, and where he lectured on '* Decorative Art." Some offence was taken here at his description of American houses as ** illy designed, decorated shabbily, and in bad taste ** ; but on the whole the reception was a favourable one, and the local o aog The Life of Oscar Wilde papers were filled with flattering articles about the lecturer. His experiences were varied. In some cities he had a fine welcome, and a large audience ; in other places he was received with indifference, or even ridicule, and the takings at the door of the lecture-hall were not suflftcient to cover Major Pond's expenses. At Denver he lectured to a very rough audience, and he used to relate that the week previously a man had been shot in the pubUc room in which he lectmred there, while he had turned his back on the crowd for the purpose of examining a chromo-hthograph. " Which shows," Oscar Wilde used to add, "that people should never look at chromo- lithographs." " From the States he went to Canada, visiting Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Kingston, and Tor- onto ; in the latter city he was present at a Lacrosse match between the Torontos and the St Regis Indians, which he pronounced a charm- ing game, quite ahead of cricket in some respects. His lecture in the Grand Opera House, Toronto, was attended by iioo persons, and wherever he went his movements and lectures created great interest." " Charming " was at that time his favourite word to express his approval. Later on he 210 The Life of Oscar Wilde adopted the word " amazing " to describe any- thing very good. The opposite feeling was expressed by the word "tedious," which he retained till the end of his hfe. He proceeded from Canada to Nova Scotia, lecturing at HaUfax on 8th October 1882, and on the following day. The subjects of his lectures were " The Decorative Arts " and " The House Beautiful.'' The following account of his personal appearance was given by a writer in the Halifax Morning Herald, who prefaces his article by referring to the " winning and poUte friendli- ness" with which he was received by Oscar WUde. " The apostle had no lily, nor yet a sunflower. He wore a velvet jacket which seemed to be a good jacket. He had an ordinary necktie, and wore a linen collar about number eighteen on a neck half-a-dozen sizes smaller. His legs were in trousers, and his boots were apparently the product of New York art, judging by their pointed toes. His hair is the colour of straw, slightly leonine, and when not looked after, goes climbing all over his features. Mr Wilde was communicative and genial ; he said he found Canada pleasant, but in answer to a question as to whether European or American women were the more beautiful he dexterously evaded his azi The Life of Oscar Wilde querist : " That I cannot answer here, I shall wait till I get in mid-ocean, out of sight of both countries. Your women are pretty, especially in the South, but the prettiness is in colour and freshness and bloom, and most of your ladies will not be pretty in ten years.' " ' I beUeve you discovered Mrs Langtry ? ' A look of rapture came to Oscar's face, and with a gesture, the first of the interview, he said : ' I would rather have discovered Mrs Langtry than have discovered America. Her beauty is in outUne perfectly moulded. She will be a beauty at eighty-five. Yes; it was for such ladies that Troy was destroyed, and well might Troy be destroyed for such a woman.' " He, on that occasion, expressed his opinion that Poe was the greatest American poet; and of Walt Whitman, he said that '* if not a poet, he was a man who sounds a strong note, perhaps neither prose nor poetry, but something of his own that is grand, original and imique." It would seem from the account of The Morn- ing Herald reporter that Oscar Wilde during his Canadian tour had been dyeing his hair, for never at any time could its natural colour have been described as the colour of straw. It was of a pecuharly rich brown, a very beautiful colour, and it was opulent and abundant. During his 212 The Life of Oscar WUde lecture - tours Oscar Wilde always carried a " make-up " box with him. As he was playing a part he seemed to feel that he might enUst all the advantages that actors assiraie. The reference to the absence of gestures on his part is interesting. This struck other people who met Oscar Wilde in the States, elsewhere than on the lecture-platform. Some people male- volently spoke of it as affected languor : one very prominent American statesman used to describe a visit he paid to Oscar in his hotel in Boston, where he found him lying on a sofa smoking cigarettes, and he said that he had been most unfavourably impressed by seeing a yoimg man in such a state of " slackness." This gentleman who was a person of very great im- portance in the States seems to have expected to find Oscar Wilde " hustUng " round his room. It did not occur to him, nor to the other people who blamed Oscar for affected languidness, that the exertion of lecturing to large audiences night after night, in addition to the filling of innumer- able social engagements, nought make it necessary for the young man to rest himself whenever op- portunity to do so offered itself. Poor Oscar Wilde ! The simplest things he did were turned into reproaches against him. For every act of his an evil motive was uncharitably devised. 213 ;o.33 The Life of Oscar Wilde Caiine de Monsieur de Balzac." In all these points Oscar Wilde imitated the master with whose industry and enthusiasm for Hterary art he was endeavouring to imbue himself. He dressed much after the fashion of the fops of 1848, he wore noticeable jewellery, and he carried a stick which was the repUca of Balzac's canne. This was a stick of ivory with the pummel set with turquoises. The costume was the outward sign of a very laudable effort. It can be to nothing but the credit of any writer to wish to imitate Balzac ; and if by adopting his pecuUarities a man might hope to attain to any degree of his powers of production and style, one would Hke to see the whole Republic of Letters curled as to the hair, bejewelled, dad in 1848 costiunes, and carrying ivory sticks with turquoise-stone pmnmels. But Paris did not understand the suggestion tof Oscar Wilde's dress, and did not beUeve that a man who seemed to talk so flippantly had any real artistic strivings in him. Oscar forgot that not any more in Paris than in London, in London than in Berlin, are men prone to a charitable interpretation of any act of fellow man. He was labelled a poseur when he was only trying by dressing a part to enter into the very spirit of the man whom he wished to imitate in his excellent qualities. ^34 The Life of Oscar Wilde Many of the greatest actors which the stage has ever produced would have failed utterly to re- present the parts in which they most triumphed, had they not been allowed to " dress the parts." Paris might have understood this, but preferred to disbelieve that any such strivings animated the young man. Yet at that very time he was actually inspiring himself from Balzac's example, and at no period in his Ufe, except, perhaps, when he was writing " De Profundis/' did he more sternly discipline himself to that constant labour which, as Balzac said, is the law of art. During those months at the Hotel Voltaire he wrote that great play ** The Duchess of Padua," which some of his admirers rank with the Elizabethan master- pieces. This play was originally written for Mary Anderson, and while Oscar was yet in Paris the manuscript was sent to her for her perusal. She declined it, greatly to the author's secret discomfiture. Mary Anderson probably saw that it was not Ukely to succeed as a play for the stage. This opinion proved itself in the event to be a right one. The " Duchess " has been tried twice in two different languages and has failed each time. The first performance was given in New York in the early nineties. It gained a great succSs d'esHme, but it never came to be considered a paying piece. Only last year 235 The Life of Oscar Wilde negotiations were being made between a beauti- ful young American actress^ who was anxious to mount the play and take the part of the Duchess, and a lady who owns the American acting rights. The negotiations fell through on other grounds but those of terms ; and when it is recorded that the only fee demanded by the holder of the copjnight for the right of perform- ance was five pounds a week, it will be under- stood at what a low figure the financial pos- sibilities of the play were estimated in the American theatrical world. But the play for all that had warm admirers. Indeed, it was at the suggestion of her mother that the young Ameri- can actress referred to above had desired to mount the " Duchess of Padua/' In a letter to one of Oscar Wilde's friends this lady wrote : — '' Many years ago I saw a performance (in New York) of Oscar Wilde's play * The Duchess of Padua ' with Laurence Barrett and Mina Gale in the leading rdles. The play made a decided impression on me, and I have often wondered why it has not been revived." This play has not been published in England, but an excellent German translation by Doctor Max Meyerfeld of Berlin appeared more than a year ago. This version was produced in De- cember 1904 at one of the leading theatres in 236 The Life of Oscar Wilde Hamburg. It was not a success, and after three nights was withdrawn. It cannot be said that justice was done to it, nor that it had a fair trial. The translation is excellent. Doctor Meyerfeld has rendered Oscar Wilde's verse in German verse of quite equal merit, nor has he in any way sacrificed the original to the neces- sities of translation. The German play is in itself a fine piece of literature. The acting was, however, deplorable. The man who played the part of Guido was suffering from influenza, and for this reason made a burlesque of the last act. In this act the great scene is where the Duchess finding Guido asleep in his prison addresses him in impassioned language. The Duchess's fine tirade was at the Hamburg theatre constantly interrupted by the snufiling, sneezing, and cough- ing of the sleeping hero. The Duchess was her- self by no means word-perfect. But the climax of misfortune was reached on the night of the third performance when the actor who played the part of the Cardinal suddenly went mad on the stage and had to be removed vi et armis to a limatic asylum. The Ofiicial Receiver in Oscar Wilde's bankruptcy then intervened, questioning the right of the poet's literary executors to give Dr Meyerfeld the right to produce the play in Germany; and under the circumstances the ^37 The Life of Oscar Wilde Doctor thought it advisable to withdraw it from the stage.* His version was enthusiastically reviewed in The Daily Chronicle by William Archer, who saluted Oscar Wilde as having revealed himself in this play a dramatic poet of very high rank. It was this play which Oscar Wilde was writing at the time when the Paris men of letters were regarding him with suspicion as a literary char- latan. As an artist, and as an intellect, there were not more than three men in the Paris literary world of that day who were the equals of this literary charlatan. Some of his finest verse was also written at this time, notably " The Sphynx," over which he laboured with the appli- cation of Flaubert, but perhaps with better re- sults. This piece has been published several times. The original edition was issued in a beautiful form in September 1894 by Messrs Elkin Matthews and John Lane. It is a master- piece of the poetry which is not spontaneous. The inspiration came from Poe through Baude- laire. Both these poets were at that time ex- ercising upon Oscar Wilde as strong an influence as in another way was Balzac. In the " Harlot's 1 " The Duchess of Padua " was revived earl^r this jrear in Berlin. It was killed by the critics, and its ill-fated per- formance resulted in a heavy finanaal loss to the devoted Meyerfeld. «38 The Life of Oscar Wilde House/' a poem which he wrote at the same time, Oscar Wilde was more himself. As to the publication of this poem we find in the ex- cellent bibliography which is appended to the translation of Andr6 Gide's monograph on Wilde the following note : — " The original publi- cation of ' The Harlot's House ' has not yet been traced. The approximate date is known by a parody on the poem, called ' The PubUc House/ which appeared in The Sporting Times of 13th June 1885. In 1904 a privately printed edition, on folio paper, with five illustrations by Althea Gyles, was issued by the Mathurin Press, London. In 1905 another edition was privately printed in London, 8 pp., wrappers." It was a short lyrical poem. The poet is standing in the street outside the house of the Scarlet Woman and looks up at the windows of which the blinds are drawn down. It is night, and on the blinds appear the '' silhouettes " of the dancing figures, the '^ marionettes " within. In this poem Oscar Wilde overcame his objection to the use of words ending in ** ette " for which he professed a real artistic horror. The last lines of the poem in which he speaks of the dawn fleeing down the street like a frightened girl are very beautiful. Perhaps the tone of the whole thing, Uke that of " The Sphynx," is not " robust," but, as we 239 The Life of Oscar Wilde have said^ Oscar Wilde was then impregnated with the essence of Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mai. To those who came to know him intimately in those dzys in Paris he appeared one of the most gifted as also one of the best of men. He was then in the height of his intellectual powers. The fiend of his insanity never betrayed its presence by the faintest indication. His refine- ment and chastity of speech and Ufe seemed to show how well he had schooled himself in the example of the great artist whom he had set up above him as his master. He was the most delightful companion that a man could meet. More than personal magnetism emanated from his joyous personality. Men used to wonder what this quality was in him that seemed to stimulate in those who came near him every desirable faculty. To-day, when the scientists speak of radio-activity, men might wonder whether in human beings also this principle did not exist so that such men as possess this quality can as readily affect those who approach them as substances which are brought into the proximity of radium are affected. A distinguished man was heard to wonder whether there be not sexes of the intellect. " Most men would then appear to have female intellects ; the very rare, the geniuses, having male intellects. From the con- 240 The Life of Oscar Wilde tact of the two, great thoughts spring off. I know/' he added '* that my brain never seems to live nor to be so fertile as it does when I am in the company of Oscar Wilde." His geniality was another trait that endeared him to all who saw him in private life. His joyousness of life was as exhilarating as a draught of generous wine. He seemed a happy man. His happiness made others feel the folly of despondency and pessimism. His gratitude to his Maker for his creation was revealed in the intense delight he took in every little thing that is good and pleasant in the world. As to his morality we read in " The Story of an Unhappy Friendship.'* " The example of his purity of life iji such a city as Paris, of his absolute decency of language, of his conversation, in which never an improper suggestion intruded, the elegance and refinement which endowed him, would have compelled even the most perverse and dissolute to some re- straint. The companionship of Oscar Wilde, in the days in which I lived in his intimacy, would have made a gentleman, at least outwardly, of a man of bad morals and unclean tongue." He used to live in great luxury, dining every evening, when he had money, at the most fashionable Parisian restaurants. He preferred Bignon's in the Avenue de rOp6ra, but he some- Q 341 The Life of Oscar Wilde times went to the Caf6 de Paris, which was quite 9s expensive, or, when he felt inclined for the Latin Quarter, to Foyot's or to Lavenue's. At this last place he used to meet John Sargent the painter, and Paul Bourget ; and in the albimi at that caf^ John Sargent one day sketched his portrait with that of Bourget and another friend. With Bourget he had some relationship, and the two used frequently to meet at the Caf6 d'Orsay, which has long since disappeared. Although Bourget has never written anj^hing about Wilde it was obvious in those days that he was impressed by the man's genius ; his constant deference and the things which he said about him were proof of that. He was not always prosperous. The funds which he had brought with him from America, not a large amount, had been exhausted ; his work produced nothing, and his expenses were heavy. His resources during that period in Paris were derived from the final disposal of his property in Ireland. There was a small estate called the Red Island which at that time was being melted into gold. There were times when he was very pressed for money, when the fashion- able restaurants had to be abandoned. During these periods he used to take his meals in his hotel, and it was at his hotel that with no 242 The Life of Oscar Wilde splendour he was forced to entertain the poet^ Rollinat^ for whose book ** La Main de Tropp- mann '' he professed a great admiration. The macabre was then greatly preoccup3dng his mind^ but that it never corrupted his bounding optim- ism his whole subsequent career establishes. Mary Anderson's refusal of the '' Duchess of Padua " was a great disappointment to him. He had hoped from the proceeds of that play to be able to continue his luxurious life of literary activity in Paris. But, as there was nothing to be looked for from this soiurce, and as the lawyers in Ireland declared it impossible to squeeze any more gold out of the barren acres of the Red Island, the Paris days had to be brought to an end. He returned to England in the summer of 1883 under the necessity of finding a means of gaining his livelihood. An important journal then published an article concerning his position, achievements and prospects, the tone of which is best explained by the title under which it appeared : " Exit Oscar." Edmund Yates re- butted this article in the next number of The World, and said that in any case Oscar's exit was a very briUiant one after the great artistic and social successes which he had enjoyed in Paris. The fact was, however, that his position at that time was a very difiicult one. Yet with MS The Life of Oscar Wilde great courage and a never-failing dignity he faced the situation^ and, in the event, came through it triumphantly. An American firm of lecture- agents which had a branch in London approached him immediately on his retmn to London and, having no option in the matter, he came to terms with them. It was under their auspices that he lectured one afternoon in the Prince's Hall, Piccadilly, before a moderate audience. He was at that time living in two small rooms at the top of a house in Charles Street, Grosvenor Square. To outward appearance he was very prosperous, and must have continued to stir the gall of the envious. He smoked Parascho cigarettes, and was sometimes to be seen dining in the grill-room of the Caf6 Royal with Whistler. But the meal was ever a frugal one, and the wine which accompanied the modest grill was slways a claret chosen from the very top of the Ust. «44 CHAPTER XI Oicar Wilde oq the Lecture-Platform — His Provincial Audi- ences— ^What the People hoped to see — ^What they saw — And heard — Two Pen Pictures by Provincials — ^How Psople of Refinement considered him — ^The Opinion of a Distinguished Woman — Oscar Wilde released from this Penance — ^His Marriage with Constance Lloyd — ^The Ex- traordinary Wedding — ^Dresses — ^The Foreboding of Cer- tain—Oscar Wilde's New Home— His Straightened Cir- cumstances— Some Fine Writings — ^His Failure as a Lecturer— The Dublin Rasoo — ^A Ptophet in his own Country— The Caution of Th$ Fr§mmm*s Joumal-^Tbib Wildes* P&verty— His Two Sons. Immediately after the lecture in the Prince's Hall Oscar Wilde commenced to visit various provincial towns in different parts of the kingdom to give his address on " The House Beautiful/' under a contract with a firm of lecture-agents. The labour was not distasteftil to him^ and the fees earned in this way were at that time his sole resource. He was so poor in the autumn of 1883 that he was frequently obUged to have recourse to the pawnbrokers^ and just before his first lecture in London, a friend accompanied him to Marlborough Street Police Court to swear to the loss of a pawn-ticket before the magistrate. The same friend remembers a day, at about the »4S The Life of Oscar Wilde same time^ when he was entirely devoid of funds, and for once, at least, could have written himself down, impransus, as he retired to bed. Under no other drciunstances would he have brought himself to associate his name with the enterprise of those provincial lectures, so clear was it made to him that its success was expected not from the value and the interest of the address, but from the notoriety attaching to his name as the eccentric " aesthete/' The great majority of the people who came to his lectures paid the en- trance fee with no other purpose than to stare at the man who was reported to have a strange passion for sunflowers and liUes. Everybody had heard of " the aesthetic movement," very few even knew the meaning of the adjective. It was to imbeciles of this calibre that this scholar was forced by his necessity to discourse. His lectures were not successful in any degree, nor can the speculation have been a very pro- fitable one to the agents who had engaged upon it. People were vastly disappointed to find that his appearance, dresS, and manners were no different from those of any gentleman. The ad- vertisements of these lectures which appeared in some provincial town were calculated to arouse the highest expectations of the morbidly curious. A show was promised ; the subject-matter of the 246 The Life of Oscar Wilde lecture was not referred to. On certain news- paper files in different parts of the country one may still read display advertisements^ running down whole columns, after some such fashion of vulgarity as this : — HE IS COMING!!! HE IS COMING!!! HE IS COMING!!! WHO IS COMING??? WHO IS COMING??? WHO IS COMING??? OSCAR WILDE!!! OSCAR WILDE!!! OSCAR WILDE!!! THE GREAT ^ESTHETE!!! THE GREAT ^ESTHETE!!! THE GREAT iESTHETE!!! It was in this way that it was brought to the public notice that a gentleman of rare scholarship and great erudition designed to address a meeting on a subject on which, at least, from a careful study of its masters and extensive reading and observation he was adequately quaUfied to speak. One day in Charles Street one of his friends picked up a provincial newspaper which 247 The Life of Oscar Wilde was lying on his table. Oscar Wilde, whose manners were always gentle and urbane, flushed red, and violently snatched it from his hands. " Do not look at that ! " he cried, crushing the paper up and flinging the ball into the fire. His friend, had, however, noticed an advertisement similar in tone to the one of which a part is given above. Nobody felt more keenly the de- gradation of these exhibitions than the potential author of " The Soul of Man Under Socialism *' himself. Although his want of money was pressing at this time he indignantly refused to appear in " aesthetic costimie," in spite of the fact that for such an additional attraction a much higher fee would have been paid to him. In view of his refusal the agents, who were well aware that it was the person of Oscar Wilde and not at all what he might have to say about beautiful houses that would attract the sight- seers of the provinces, were obliged to conceal the fact that no spectacle was to be afforded. The references to '* the great aesthete " in the advertisements contained the suggestion that something laughable was to be on exhibition^ and when the audience discovered that instead of watching the antics, and listening to the patter, of a buffoon, they were expected to lend ear to a disquisition deUvered by a scholar which 248 The Life of Oscar Wilde invited their minds to ascend to a plane of in- accessible height they were not slow to express their disappointment and disapproval. On several occasions the room emptied itself during the progress of the lecture. It will be of interest to put on record here — ^in spite of the vulgarity of their style — two pen- pictures of him drawn at the time in different places by two provincial journalists^ for they will show first what the audience had expected to see, and secondly how they were impressed by his appearance and delivery. They are repre- sentative of opinions expressed throughout the coimtry. This is the first : — " We were informed by the advertisement pamphlet that this gentleman has, since the publication of his book of poems in 1890, devoted his time to public addresses. So, as poets do not often come before the public personally, we were naturally anxious to see what a poet-lecturer was like. With imaginary visions of celebrated poets in mind we were anxiously awaiting the appearance of Mr Wilde upon the plat- form, when the curtain was drawn asunder, and in walked not a Tennyson, but a Long-fellow. For the first quart d^heure we could not erase the impression from our minds that the subject of the lecture was not ' the house beautiful,' but ' the man beautified.' This cheveux de frise — ^he gets very warm on the subject of friezes — ^proved at a glance how highly the lecturer estimated the power of capillary attraction, for his head seemed surrounded with a perfect halo of artificially- arrayed curls, which, if removable, would doubtless fetch a figurative sum at an auction sale as a most admirable substitute for a lady's bonnet. Joking apart, no gentleman would con- tradict a lady who said that Mr Wilde could rejoice in the 249 The Life of Oscar Wilde pofisession of a hairy haad wliich at once stamps him as a master of artistic decoration. His collar had evidently been made to an original design, which has no doubt been deposited at South Kensington and the pattern patented, or it must have been in the market long ago. His necktie was neither tied nor untied, but, like the clerical collar, puzded one to know where it b^^ and how it ended. His cu& were equaDy aesthetic and ' took one by the collar.' Mr Wilde's theory as to the harmonious arrangement of colours in art decoratum is that our backgrounds should consist of tertiary or neutral tints, relieved by small objects or ornaments of rich primary colour or bright appearance. The man beautified was accord- ingly arrayed in the neutral tints of black and white, with the rich relief in the shape of ared silk handkerchief peeping out from the left side of his vest, and a massive watch-chain pendant, which appeared like the name-label on a bunch of keys, inasmuch as no one else had one just like it. In (not on) those marvellous members of the human body, the hands, were held a pair of white silk gloves, which if the owner did not know to be useful at all events feii to be beautiful. Tall and graceful, and presenting a youthful appearance, he delivers his lecture with dear, distinct articulation, never hesitating for a word, nor striving after flights of eloquence, but handling his subject with an amount of assurance and self-possession that gives you the impression that he must be quite as high an authority as Morris or Ruskin, whom he quotes to agree or disagree with. . . . The closing part of his lecture on art education drew forth repeated applause, and, in fact, the whi^ of it was sufficiently interesting to gain for him unbroken attention during the hour and a half which his lecture occupied.** This is how the second provincial journalist wrote : — " Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetic — ^the ine&ble — ^the exponent of the principle of eternal loveliness has visited us and is — human. He is not an angd after alll Nor is he a deity springing to us out of the dark past. His food must have been other than the nectar'd sweets the poets love to write about ; in fact he can be sem, and heard, and handled, lor he is a — ^man. This revelation will come as an unwdoome surprise to many. One so delightfully out of S3rmpathy with 350 The Life of Oscar Wilde tkm age, with such ineffable yearnings towazds the romantic past, with such inexpresable aspirations towards the beauteous future, when the essential ugliness of to-day shall only be re- membered as a hideous dream, such a man cannot be-— ought not to be— one of us. So I am sure many think. I believe it was Mrs Browning who describes how sad we feel when we find our cherished idols simply to be day ; but I can confess to no such revelation of feeling when Mr Oscar Wilde stepped cm to the platform and I discovered he had no wings. Mr Oscar Wilde is tall, well-proportioned, with a poet's hair, and — shall I say it — a mildly epicurean countenance. In his appearance there was nothing Byronic, or Bulwerian, or Carlylean, or Ruskinesque ; a little that savoured of Count d'Orsay, Beau Brummel, and more that suggested the tradi- tional diner-out. His dress had few peculiarities, being ordinary evening-dress, a very wilderness of shirt-front, re- tieved by a half-concealed scarlet handkerchief, deftly placed inside his vest. His pose and manner might have been artistic, but were not particularly effective. His voice is a moderately pleasing one, with an occasional lisp to give it an aristocratic tone. His action — ^what little there was of it — ^was striking. He spoke entirely extempore, not even availing himself of the use of notes. For very much more than an hour he addressed his audience. There was no hesitation, and there was no fire. Only once there was an approach to pathos, and as far as I could detect only one quotation from the poets, excepting an extract he gave in the form of a letter — I think-— of John Keats. He came to speak to us on an important subject. And here I must say, that if his lecture had been called the ' Home Beautiful,' instead of the ' House Beautiful,' I should have been better pleased. Englishmen — especially such as would go and hear such a discourse as Oscar Wilde's — do not care much for their " houses," they care everything for their homes. An Englishman never says he is going to his ' house,^ but always that he is going ' home.' A house to an English- man is an empty building. The same building filled with furniture, and all sorts of lovely things — ^plus wife and children — becomes a home." On people of refinement the impression pro- duced was, of course, a different one. Many 25» The Life of Oscar WUde people in many parts of the country remembering him as he appeared to them twenty-two years ago speak regretfully of his fate. Over women his personality seems to have exercised a great influence. " I can remember him/' writes a lady of refinement and culture from a Midland town, " as though I had seen him yesterday. My mother was delighted with his appearance ; she often afterwards spoke of his hair and his hands and his tie — oh ! his tie, how it impressed us all. For my part, though I was only a girl then, I felt he was saying things which nobody present could understand, and it seemed to me at times as though he knew it also. I felt it was a pity he should have had to come here at all, for I suppose it was necessity that drove him on to the lecture-platform. Many of the things he said have remained familiar in my mind ever since. I never see a big curtain-pole without thinking of what he said about the sins of the upholsterer, and I know that I never drink a cup of tea at a railway refreshment-room without remembering how he described the cup out of which he drank his coffee at the hotel in San Francisco, where he contrasted the crockery of the Chinese in the Chinese quarter of that city, with the domestic vessels used by the Europeans. It was a real distress to me to sit in that lecture-room as* The Life of Oscar Wilde lookiiig at this wonderful youth and listemng to his profound and beautiful words, while the rest of the audience were either gazing with dismay and surprise, or showing how bored they were. The room was not half-full to begin with, and during the whole course of the lecture people kept getting up and going out. But he seemed quite indifferent to the mood of his audience, his mamier, if I may use the term in such a connection, was quite business-Uke. It was as if he was saying to himself, ' I am here to say cer- tain things, and I shall go on speaking until I have said them/ He began speaking the moment he came on the stage, and when he had said his last word he walked o£E as if anxious to catch a train and get away from us all.'' Those amongst his provincial audiences who listened to him, and who attempted to be critical, were in the habit of saying that his weakness as a lecturer was in a tendency to exaggeration. Some Joseph Prud'homme of the provinces sagely remarked: ''He pronounces as dicta, with the authority of an oracle, principles which are essentially debateable.'* The most favourite criticism, however, of Oscar Mode's lecture on " The House Beautiful " — a criticism which can be found in similar phrase- ology in contemporary prints all over the «S3 The Life of Oscar Wilde country, and not in the provinces alone — was to the effect that : " Mr Oscar Wilde seems to ignore the deeply-rooted prejudice that aestheti- dsm if not symboUc of weakness and effeminacy^ is, at least, the antithesis of that moral and in- tellectual robustness which we, in this age, are accustomed to respect." From this bondage, from these chains, which to such an artist must have been galling indeed, Oscar Wilde was to be rescued by the gentle and beautiftd Constance Lloyd. To her for some time past he had been paying attentions ; it was during the course of his lecture-tour that he was able to visit DubUn and ask her to become his wife. Constance Lloyd admired him and loved him ; she put her hand into his. She was wealthily connected ; she was assured of a good income on her marriage by her grandfather, who had instituted her to be his heiress. The marriage took place on the 29th of May 1884 ; we find the following announcement of it in The Times for 31st May : " On 29th May, at St James's Church, Paddington, by the Rev. Walter Abbott, Vicar, Oscar, younger son of the late Sir Wilham Wilde, M.D., of Dublin, to Constance Mary, only daughter of the late Horace Lloyd, Esq. Q.C." Edmund Yates gave a friendly notice of the occurrence in The World for 4th ^54 The Life of Oscar Wilde June 1884 : — " Mr Oscar Wilde's wedding went o£f with more simple effect than the large crowd who thronged the chm*ch had possibly come out to see. Owing to the illness of Mr John Horatio Lloyd, the bride's grandfather, the ceremony was meant to be of rather a private character, and only the near relatives were asked to meet at Lancaster Gate after the service. There is only this much to be recorded about it : that the bride, accompanied by her six pretty brides- maids, looked charming ; that Oscar bore him- self with calm dignity ; and that all most intim- ately concerned in the affair seemed thoroughly pleased. A happy Uttle group of intitnes saw them off at Charing Cross." Yet the baroque and the bizarre were not wanting in this wedding which sealed a union which was to end in such unhappiness. It appeared that Oscar Wilde felt it incumbent on him as a " Professor of Esthetics " to give such directions as to the dresses of his bride and bridesmaids as might impress the onlookers with the fact that it was no ordinary wedding that they were attending. A brief description of these dresses will establish this suggestion. '' The bride's rich creamy satin dress was of a deUcate cowslip tint ; the bodice, cut square and somewhat low in front, was finished with a high Medici collar ; «S5 The Life of Oscar Wilde the ample sleeves were puffed ; the skirt, made plain, was gathered by a silver girdle of beautiful workmanship, the gift of Mr Oscar Wilde ; the veil of saffron-coloured Indian silk gauze was embroidered with pearls and worn in Marie Stuart fashion ; a thick wreath of m5n^e leaves, through which gleamed a few white blossoms, crowned her fair frizzed hair ; the dress was ornamented with clusters of m3nlle leaves ; the large bouquet had as much green in it as white. The six bridesmaids were cousins of the bride. Two dainty Uttle figures, that seemed to have stepped out of a picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds, led the way. They were dressed in quaintly- made gowns of Surah silk, the colour of a ripe gooseberry ; large pale yellow sashes round their waist ; the skirts faUing in straight folds to the ankles displayed small bronze, high-heeled shoes. Large red silk Gainsborough hats decked with red and yellow feathers shaded the damsels' golden hair ; amber necklaces, long yellow gloves, a cluster of yellow roses at their throats, a bouquet of white liUes in their hands, com- pleted the attire of the tiny bridesmaids. The four elder bridesmaids wore skirts of the same red Surah silk, with over-dresses of pale blue tnousseline de laine, the bodices made long and pointed; high crowned hats trinuned with 2S6 Pholo ly Eischgilz, 1 6, THE STREET. f^agc 257, The Life of Oscar Wilde cream-coloured feathers and red knots of ribbon, lilies in their hands, amber necklaces and yeUow roses at their throats made up a sufficiently picturesque ensemble. One of the ladies present wore what was described as a " very aesthetic costume." It was composed of " an under- dress of rich red silk with a sleeveless smock of red plush, a hat of white lace trimmed with clusters of red roses imder the brim and roimd the crown." This gaudy and displeasing picture must be recalled. It proves as nothing else could prove the entire confidence of Constance Lloyd in the artistic pretensions of her husband. No woman who was not bUndly convinced of the superiority of her bridegroom's taste would have consented to such a masquerade. It may have occurred to some of the on- lookers that a tmion so initiated could not contain the elements of happiness. Where the woman is entirely h3q)notised and sub- jugated her marriage is not often a happy one for her. On the day of his wedding Oscar Wilde took his yoimg wife over to Paris, and the first weeks of the honeymoon were spent in that city. They occupied a suite of rooms at the Hotel Wagram in the rue de RivoU. They both seemed to be radiantly happy. Oscar was a gallant and de- » «S7 The Life of Oscar Wilde voted husband^ and Constance seemed to be swathed in rapturous delight. If ever her husband left her alone to go out with any friend, a few minutes after his departure a messenger would arrive at the hotel bearing for the bride a bouquet of exquisite flowers together with a note couched in language of such impassioned adoration that it charmed her soUtude and made her happy even though her loved one was away. Mrs Wilde's dowry enabled the young couple to take the lease of a good house in Tite Street, Chelsea, which was the last home of his own that Oscar was to possess. It was decorated under the direction of Whistler, and was sub- stantially furnished. At the very top of the house a work-room had been installed for Oscar Wilde, the furniture of which was painted red. But he never used this room. The Uttle writing that he ever did at home was done in a small study which was to the right of the entrance passage. Mrs Wilde's income at that time was not large — she did not come into her grand- father's fortune until much later, and it became immediately necessary for Oscar to find re- munerative employment. He turned to jouma- Usm for U velihood, «and he accepted occasional engagements on the lecture-platform. He was a constant contributor of anon}anous work to «S8 The Life of Oscar Wilde The World and The Pall Mall Gazette. Much of his writings at this time have been traced, and were recently being hawked round the London publishing-houses by speculators in his notoriety. It was a disservice to his reputation, it would appear, which would concern these Uterary re- surrection-men but little. The work was poor ; it was the hack-work, currente calamo, of a man who had no heart in his labours ; and " poorer stuff,'' said one London publisher to whom this volume was offered, *' I never read in my life." Yet at the same time he was writing those ex- quisite fairy-stories, which were afterwards re- published in a volume by David Nutt. " The Happy Prince and Other Tales '* (1888) ; a volume which many of his admirers look upon as his best and most characteristic prose work. There are no fairy-stories in the English language to compare with them. The writing is quite masterly; the stories proceed from a rare and opulent imagination; and while the tales that are told interest the child no less than the man of the worid there underUes the whole a subtle philosophy, an indictment of society, a plea for the disinherited, which make of this book and of the " House of Pomegranates " (1891) two veritable requisitoires against the social S3^tem, as crushing as '' The Soul of Man/' And yet «59 The Life of Oscar Wilde as one reads these tales the lesson that the author wishes to teach never forces itself upon him. Unlike Lewis CarroU and Hans Andersen Oscar Wilde tells a story which a child can read with pleasure and interest, and without that un- comfortable feeling that moral medicine is being administered to him in Uterary preserves. If Oscar Wilde had had hopes that the lecture- platform would afford a source of income to him he was doomed to disappointment. In January 1885 he deUvered at the Gaiety, DubUn, under the management of Mr Michael Gunn, two afternoon lectures. The first, given on the afternoon of Monday, 5th January, was on "Dress" (Beauty — ^Taste — Ugliness in Dress); and the second, on Tuesday, treated of "The Value of Art in Modem Life." Of both these lectures a resume appears at the end of this volxune. The enterprise was a disastrous failure. DubUn was indifferent to the son of Speranza, indifferent to the son of Sir WiUiam Wilde, in- different to the briUiant Trinity College man who had so distinguished himself and his country at Oxford, and to the poet and lecturer who had set two worlds talking. We find in The Free- man's Journal for 6th January the following prefatory remarks to its notice of the lecture on " Dress '' :— s6o The Life of Oscar WUde " Although the fact of the lecture takmg place was fully announced for da)^ in advance the attendance was hardly satisfactory. At most^ about 500 persons were present, chiefly in the dress circle and stalls. But the audience though not large was highly inteUigent, critical and appreciative of the matter and style of the lecturer. Evidently people have ceased to re- gard Mr Wilde as the eccentric apostle of a momentarily fashionable craze, to be seen, heard and laughed at." A highly appreciative account of the lecture followed, but that afternoon the attendance was very much smaller. Possibly the high prices charged for admission frightened the pubUc. Mr Gunn was asking 21s., 30s., and 42s. for private boxes, and proportionate prices for the rest of the house. At that time nuUin/e performances of a pantomime were being given at the Gaiety, and it is related that a gentleman accompanied by two boys came by mistake into the theatre, sat down and listened patiently for some time to Oscar's discourse, and finally got up ex- claiming: "What's aU this? When's the pantomime going to begin ? " In the following month there appeared in The Dublin University Review, of all publications the one in which the greatest deference ought to have been paid to s6i The Life of Oscar Wilde the Berkeley Medallist^ son of Sir \^lliam Wilde^ and a frequent contributor to its pages, two sarcastic and cutting notices of his lecture. These are they : — " We confess that before a visit to the Gaiety Theatre dispelled the illusion we had thought that the re-appearance of Mr Oscar Wilde before a DubUn audience would have excited, very general interest among his fellow-dtizens. In- deed, in spite of the fact that Mr Wilde, like the elephant Jumbo, with whose notoriety his popularity was contemporaneous, has ceased to attract the sympathy and the shillings of the pubUc, we feel bound to express our belief of the talents of that gentleman, and our regret that they have not latterly been more usefully employed. The indifference with which the lecturer was received cannot fairly be ascribed to any faUing oi! in the quality of the lectures, which formed not only a complete exposition of Mr Wilde's pecuhar philosophy of art, but were in themselves instructive and suggestive. However, a few more lectures as unfortunate, from a commercial point of view, as those re- cently deUvered in this dty will materially remedy this defect, and will help to restore Mr Wilde to pubUc favour. Meanwhile he will not regret the decrease on his receipts, for as 26a The Life of Oscar Wilde he stated in his second lecture : ' True Art is economical/ " In the same number of the official organ of T.C.D. appears a letter on Sir Noel Paton's picture " Lux in Tenebris." " It is pretty enough/' says the writer, "but it no more realises the idea of a spiritual light shining in the moral darkness of the world than would, let us say, a picture of Mr Oscar Wilde preaching about dress-improvers at the Gaiety.'* This was Dublin's salute to the most talented man to whom she had ever given birth. For the rest, although in Ireland one finds little of that horror against the mention of Oscar Wilde's name which still lingers in England, in certain quarters, where one would least expect to find it, it persists. In the summer of last year a gentleman being desirous of purchasing a photo- graph of Oscar Wilde as a child, and of getting information as to the early life of Speranza, sent an advertisement embodying his requirements to The Freeman* $ Journal, where, if anywhere in Ireland, Lady Wilde's memory ought to have been revered. The advertisement was eventu- ally inserted, but not for several days, during which the manager was communicating with the editor — ^the acting-editor not having dared to assume so grave a responsibility — as to whether 263 The Life of Oscar Wilde an advertisement referring to Lady Wilde and her son could be allowed to appear in the journal ! Mr Whistler's attack on Oscar Wilde — ^the de- tails of which can be found set out in " The Gentle Art of Making Enemies " — did much to reduce still lower any chances of success as a lecturer which remained to Oscar Wilde. Whistler made it public that Oscar Wilde's lecture on the English Renaissance was mainly made up from facts and opinions which he, Whistler, had supplied to the lecturer. It would have been just as easy for that admirable actor, Hermann Vezin, to have rushed into print and to have declared that Oscar's manner on the stage was the result of some training in elocution and gesture which he had given him before he commenced his lecture- tour. But then Hermann Vezin is not only a great artist, he is a true and loyal friend. This source of income having failed there were periods of real poverty in the elegant house in Tite Street. A lady who hved near the Wildes has recorded that at that time she was frequently called upon by Mrs Wilde to lend her money, even small sums such as the purchase of a pair of boots might demand. At the same time the expenses of the manage were increasing. In June 1885 and again in November 1886 a son was bom to them. Stray writings for the papers, 264 The Life of Oscar WUde and an occasional signed contribution to the reviews could not produce the income which was necessary to supplement the wife's allow- ance, and in the end Oscar Wilde turned to journalism for a living for himself and his family. a6s CHAPTER XII Oscar Vfilde in Fleet Street— Editor of The Woman's Worid^ Pegasus in the Plough — His Loyalty to his Employers — The Industrious Apprentice — ^Lady Wilde and Constance Wilde as Contributors — ^A Severe Editor — A Kindly Critic — His List of Contributors — His Later Attacks on Journalists — The Possible Explanation of this Attitude — His Consistency in the Matter— Oscar Wilde and Af 'dur^f Magadna — Oscar Wilde and Lb Journal — Ifis Contribu- tions to The Daily CkromcU—Tke Disinterestedness of this Work. It was at this time in his career that he came to be seen, periodically, in that Fleet Street of which, afterwards, he was to speak with such acerbity and contempt. A firm of publishers of Ludgate HiU — ^the Messrs Cassell & Co. — had come to the conclusion that his reputation as a leader of fashion and an arbiter of the elegancies might be turned to pro- fitable account on behalf of a certain monthly publication, issued from their printing-presses, which at that time enjoyed no high degree of public favour. The beUef was held in La Belle Sauvage Yard that the name of Oscar Wilde printed in large letters upon the cover of this magazine — to be styled afresh : The Woman* s 266 The Life of Oscar Wilde World — would attract the attention and the custom also of the fashionable women to whom it was supposed to appeal^ bringing in the train of their patronage that multitude of purchasers^ who ensiire commercial success. In this beUef these printers proposed to him the direction of The Woman* s World: the terms offered were what in his straitened circumstances, with the fresh charges upon him, he could not with prudence refuse, and the bargain was struck. If, after a prolonged test, the adventure did not result in satisfaction, it was not because the new editor failed in vigilance or assiduity, but be- cause London society, in the sense of fashionable people, had not yet come under the sway of his influence. His connection with The Woman^s World lasted from October 1887 to September 1889. The amusing spectacle was thus afforded during this period, of a scholar, a critic, an artist acting as overseer and salesman of such pro- ductions of the pen as treat of the chatter of the shops, the commonplaces of tiring-room and pantry, the futiUties of changing modes. '' Are Servants a Failure?" "Fancy Dresses for Children," "Typewriting and Shorthand for Women," are the titles of some of the papers for which the future author of " The Soul of Man 267 The Life of Oscar Wilde Under Socialism " and of " De Profundis " had to arrange^ of which when written to approve, and which he had to send out to the world under his imprimatur. The history of the for- lorn makeshifts and expedients to which neces- sity often constrains the most gifted men of letters affords no example more apposite than this part of Oscar Wilde's Ufe. It reminds one of the experiences of Charles Baudelaire^ the poet^ when a committee of French provincial shareholders had brought him away from Paris, from the writing of the Fleurs du Mai and the translating of Edgar Allan Poe, to edit a local paper. If Charles Baudelaire, however, failed from the very outset, because he despised his work and approached his task in that spirit, it must be said of the Irish poet-editor that he very earnestly did his best for his employers. An apprentice to journalism, he displayed all those qualities of industry, punctuality, and ardour which, as Hogarth would have us beUeve, lead men to high honours and great wealth in the city of London. It was in the irony of things that a career thus entered upon should have led him, if not to Tyburn, at least to the Old Bailey and the Bankruptcy Court. Baudelaire's first inquiry on entering the office of the provincial newspaper which he was 268 The Life of Oscar Wilde to publish^ was as to where the ''editorial brandy- bottle " Mras kept. Wilde, was, perhaps, even more a slave to the nicotine habit, than Baudelaire, to alcohol, yet he very cheerfully accommodated himself to the strict rule im- posed by Messrs Cassell & Co., that no smoking is allowed, under any pretext, in any part of their buildings. He seemed to take real pleasure in the hours which he spent in La Belle Sauvage Yard, because of the opportxmities which were there afforded him of meeting Wemyss Reid, the editor of The Speaker, a man of great scholarship and refinement, for whom he had a great ad- miration. He used to take the underground railway from Sloane Square to Charing Cross, and thence walk up the Strand and Fleet Street to his office. The days had not yet come when he could declare that " he never walked." He was always dressed with elegance and care, presenting in his appearance a strong contrast to the types which are sometimes to be seen in that part of London. His regularity was at that time remarked upon. He was, no doubt, making a strong effort to subject himself to discipline. At the same time, no doubt, the interest and dignity of his position appealed to his histrionic nature. He walked, an editor, amongst the proletarians of the press. He had the satis- 969 The Life of Oscar Wilde faction of showing that the part of jotimalist could be dressed by the tailors of Bond Street, the hatters and glovers of Piccadilly^ and adorned by the florists of the Burlington Arcade — ^at a time, too, when he was, perhaps, one of the very poorest editors in London. It appeared to his friends, at times, that he enjoyed the dignity, as well the meagre patronage of his editorial office. He was once heard to say, with some pride in his tones, speaking of his power of remunerating contributors : " I pay a guinea a page, no matter if most of the space is occupied by illustrations or not." That he had the interests of his employer at heart was shown by the fact that he never allowed feeUngs of friendship to interfere with the impartial per- formance of his duty as an editor. He was frequently applied to for commissions by needy Bohemian acquaintances, but where he con- sidered that a man was not fitted to write for his periodical, he told him so. Lady Wilde and his wife contributed one or two articles each to The Woman's World during Oscar Wilde's editor- ship, but in every case the article on its own merits was well worthy of acceptance, and would have earned the fee paid from any editor in London. In the volume for 1889 we find from Lady Wilde's pen a collection of ** Irish Peasant The Life of Oscar WUde Tales." There are five of these tales, " A Night with the Fairies," " A L^end of Shark," " Fairy Help," " The Western Isles," and " St Patrick and the Witch." G>nstance Wilde's contribution during this year to the magazine of which her husband was editor is an illustrated, well " documented " paper on "Mu£k," a good specimen of the ** Museum-made " article. It may be said that since the magistrate, Brillat-Savarin, wrote his "Physiologie du Goftt," and showed that a cookery-book can be made a work of literary art, never has Uterary skill been put in stranger fashion at the service of the cx>mmonplaces of domestic life than appears in the pages of The WomatCs World under Oscar Wilde's editorship. " Que diable allait-elle faire dans cette galore ? " might be asked of Uterature. The magazine was too admirable to succeed. Its style was too refined for the people to whom the subjects treated of appealed, and those people who might have deUghted in the style were kept aloof by the subjects. Oscar Wilde's personal contributions to this periodical — apart from certain articles on special literary subjects — ^took the form of a monthly causcrie, published under the title of ''Some Literary Notes." Considerable care and in* 971 The Life of Oscar Wilde dustry were expended by the editor on these articles. They usually occupied five pages of The Woman's Worlds and were quite the most interesting literary criticism then appearing in London. But what student of contemporary Uterature was going to himt out these " literary notes " between an article on " The Gymnasium for Girls/' by Mrs L. Ormiston Chanty and a paper on '* Field-Work for Women/' by Ouida. Oscar Wilde's criticisms are always kindly^ and full of instruction, which is just what criti- cism, if it is to have any value, should be. These pages are filled with dicta and epigram on the art of Uterature, which no future compiler of a complete edition of his works should fail to collect. In the important matter of obtaining the services of distinguished people as contributors to his magazine, without possessing a free hand in fixing the scale of remuneration, Wilde was remarkably successful. During the first six months of i8^ he obtained for The Woman's World contributions from Oscar Browning, E. Nesbit, Annie Thomas, Ella Hepworth Dixon, Amy Levy, Ouida, Carmen Sylva, Blanche Roosevelt, the G)untess of Portsmouth, St HeUers, Gleeson White, Miss OUve Schreiner, Lady Sandhiu:st, Miss F. L. Shaw, Miss Marie 273 The Life of Oscar Wilde Corelli^ Arthur Symons, and Mrs Crawford. Marie Corelli's contribution was a long article on Shakespeare's mother, which at the present rates in the literary RiaUo could probably be disposed of by an efficient agent for twenty times the amount which the editor of The Woman's World was enabled to offer. It should be added that Oscar Wilde was an editor whom it was not easy to please. He would tolerate no slovenliness of writing. In the matter, for instance, of punctuation he was scrupulous in the extreme. If anywhere on a printed or manuscript page laid before him a poor little comma had intruded where it had no right to be, or one had deserted its post, his flashing glance would immediately turn to the spot. One of his stories was that his hostess in a country house having asked him at dinner how he had spent the day he had answered: *' I have been correcting the proofs of my poems. In the morning, after hard work, I took a comma out of one sentence." '' And in the afternoon ? " " In the afternoon, I put it back again.'' He was here jesting at what was a marked characteristic of his literary technique. During all this time, apart from his editor- ship, he was a frequent contributor to the weekly and daily press, as well as to the s 273 The Life of Oscar WUde magazines. He wrote anonymously for The Pall MaU Gazette, in whose columns he revealed him- self as a brilliant paragraphist, who did not dis- dain the piquancy of personalities ; he contri- buted much to The World under Yates's editor- ship; his name is to be found imder many magazine articles which have long since been forgotten. One remembers^ for instance^ an article on *' London Models '' which appeared in The English Illustrated Mc^azine (vol. vi. 1888-1889), which is a good specimen of purely journalistic work. It was not till a year or two later that he began to speak with such detestation of jouma- Usts. It is possible that it had taken him just so long to discover that the reputations which are made by newspapers have no real foundation in the hearts of the people^ that interviews and paragraphs^ and the whole gamut of periodical puffery, although they may make a person notorious, do not bestow upon him that popu- larity which is associated with the substantial benefices of fame. It is an experience which most public men have made; and those who have expected great results from the persistent clamour of the journalists, do often, when dis- appointed in these expectations, manifest ran- cour and resentment towards those whom at an 274 The Life of Oscar Wilde earlier date they fostered. From a very early stage in his career Oscar Wilde had been one of the men in England whose names were most widely known — ^he himself once said that a year or two after he came to London his name was a household word throughout the coimtry — but naturally as long as his reputation rested alone on this foimdation he got nothing from it but such enjoyment as vanity might thence derive, and it is possible, what has been noticed in many other instances, that a peevish resent- ment arising from his disappointment prompted him to that contumely of journalists which un- fortunately he continued to display long after real service to the pubUc had brought true fame and its tangible rewards. In the days of his own connection with the periodical press he sometimes used to speak in praise of certain of the characteristics of journa- lism. After the appointment of his brother William Wilde to the staff of The Daily Tele- graph he was heard to say : " There is a great fascination in journalism. It is so quick, so swift. Willy goes to a Duchess's ball, he shps out before midnight, is away for an hour or two, returns, and as he is driving home in the morning, can buy the paper containing a full account of the party which he has just left." Like every- •75 The Life of Oscar Wilde body else in England he expressed the greatest admiration for the work which his brother did in reporting the judicial proceedings of the Pamell commission. Yet in 1891, a bare year after he had turned his back on Fleet Street, he wrote that passage on British journalism which occurs in " The Soul of Man Under SodaUsm/' which aroused against him the terrible hatred, suppressed at the time, which blazed forth at the time of his fall. One extract from this passage will suffice here. " In cen- turies before ours the pubUc nailed the ears of joumahsts to the pump. That was quite hid- eous. In this century joumahsts have nailed their own ears to the keyhole. That is much worse.'* This vituperation of joumahsts was a constant feature of his conversation during the next few years. He frequently requested his brother not to dare speak to him of his " vile gutter friends from Fleet Street.*' He never missed an opportunity of insulting the press in his plays. If there was ever any truth in the statement which has been frequently made that at one time in his hfe Oscar Wilde thirsted after news- paper notoriety with the eagerness of which certain contemporary writers afford so painful an example, it is a fact that when '* The Ideal 376 The Life of Oscar Wilde Husband '' was being written he had entirely set his face against it. In January 1895 he was approached by the Messrs M'Clure, of M^Clure^s Magazine^ who were anxious to publish about him an article in the form of an interview. It should be stated that this magazine was already at that time a great power in the United States, and that the foremost writers and celebrities in other walks of life in all parts of the world had been glad to avail themselves of a publicity so beneficial and far-reaching. The writing of this article was to be done by one of Wilde's oldest friends, whose name was widely known in America in connection with work of this kind. The request of the Messrs M'Clure was answered by Oscar Wilde in a letter which he wrote from Ute Street to this friend, in which he said that he did not like the tone of his editor's letter — that to speak of wishing for " Oscariana " was an impertinence — ^that he understood that it was usual that a fee should be paid to the person interviewed, and that he would in no way assist in the production of the article unless he first received a cheque for £20. As at that time such a sum was of no importance to him whatever, and as in any other way he would have been glad to assist his old Mend in his work, this letter affords good proof that personal advertisement 277 The Life of Oscar Wilde by newspaper publicity had become entirely distasteful to him. He was consistent in this dislike until the end. It occurred to some of his friends who watched him during his second Trial at the Old Bailey that the way in which on the posters of the newspapers his name was placarded all over London afforded him some satisfaction, and a remark of his on the subject is on record ; ^ but this may be explained by that natural and pathetic prompting that moves every poor mortal to endeavour to find in any great personal disaster some scrap of consolation. In his greatest distress, at a time when he needed money most badly, after his ruin had been consummated, he refused the most sub- stantial offers from the proprietors of newspapers, and not only from those who merely wished to trade in the notoriety of his name. After his release from prison, while he was living in Bemeval, it was suggested to Femaud Xau, the proprietor of Le Journal^ one of the prin- cipal papers in Paris, that Oscar Wilde could write effective articles on various questions of 1 " The town was placarded with his name ; and one niEht, alluding to this, I said : ' Well, yon have got yonr name bdore the public at last.' He laughed, and said : ' Nobody can pre- tend now not to have heard it. - ' Oscar Wilde. The Story of an Unhappy Friendship ' - * .78 The Life of Oscar Wilde literature and art on which his authority was uncontested. Xau agreed to place his name on his list of contributors, which included many of the leading politicians and all the foremost literary celebrities of France. The terms he offered as remuneration were the same as those paid to the first writers. There was here no suggestion at all that Oscar Wilde's collabora- tion was desired because the scandal which at- tached to his name would appeal to the morbid- minded, and create a profitable sensation. It was a plain, business-like offer from a very shrewd business-man to a writer of eminent and recognised capacity. It was a proposal which most authors of high standing and Euro- pean reputation would have taken as a compli- ment. Yet, although at that time Oscar Wilde was in sad difficulties through want of money, he declined the offer without one moment's consideration. This refusal was cotuteously worded ; it was with scathing contempt that he repelled any approaches from the traffickers in sensation. It is reported that when, just previ- ous to his release from Reading Gaol, the Gover- nor informed him that the correspondents of an American paper who had been waiting in Reading for some dasrs past were prepared to pay him a very large fee for the privilege of 279 The Life of Oscar WUde being allowed to interview him on the subject of his prison experiences he expressed his sur- prise that any one should venture to make such proposals to a gentleman. Some time previous to this release he had been speaking to a person in the prison about his future prospects. He had said that poverty awaited him outside the prison-gates. His friend said that " by writing an article or two for the monthhes he would be able to earn an immediate supply of money.*' " Ah/* said Oscar Wilde, " I remember when one editor of the Nineteenth Century used to come to my house and soUcit an article, and now I suppose he wouldn't accept one were I to offer it for nothing." This friend in relating this conversation adds : '' I endeavoured to make as Ught of his troubles as possible, and assured him that all he required was pen, ink and paper. * My friend,' he said — he repeated these words on several occasions — ' You do not know the world as well as I do. Some people might read what I chose to write out of morbidness, but I don't want that, I wish to be read for Art's sake, not for my notoriety.' " His only contributions to journalism, after he left prison, were the long letters which he wrote under the title of " The Case of Warder Martin," on " Some Cruelties of Prison Life," and the letter 280 The Life of Oscar Wilde "Don't Read This if you wish to be Happy To-Day." These appeared in The Daily Chronicle on Friday, 28th May 1897, and on 24th March 1898, respectively. Of these letters it need only be said of them that they were written from a pure spirit of philanthropy. No self-interest prompted its author to take pen in hand. It is a fact, which should be recorded here, that when he wrote the first letter he was extremely doubt- ful whether the editor would venture to publish it. It should be added in proof that gain was not his motive, that although a friend, the editor of one of the most important reviews in London, would, as he knew, have paid almost any fee for this contribution, he preferred to give it to the world through the agency of a daily paper, be- cause he considered first that this exposure of abuses and cruelty should not be delayed one day longer than could be avoided, and secondly that the wider pubUcity of a newspaper with a great circulation would more effectively arouse public opinion. The amount of the fee paid to him, if any fee was paid, is not known, but it certainly did not exceed if indeed it reached the foison of the simis which out of a meagre purse, at a time of great need, he gave away to his poor comrades in misfortime, those who had been prisoners with him in Reading Gaol. 281 CHAPTER XIII Some Traits of his Chancter--08car Wilde in Matteis of Money — ^His Extreme Delioacy of Feeling — Oscar WUde as a Talker — ^The Testimony of a Gentleman of Letters — And of a lian of Action — Oscar Wilde as a Bian of Action — ^The Reasons of his Popularity — His Small Actual Ro* duction — ^His Tmmense Real Ontpnt — ^The Value of his Work— The Testimony of a Scholar — *'The Picture of Dorian Gray" — ^How it was Written— The Refutation of a Charge — Wilde and Henley^ Although during the first years of his married life Oscar Wilde's difficulties were often very great^ not on one single occasion in the whole of his life — even in the starveling years after his release from prison— did he obtain or attempt to obtain resources by any means unworthy of proper pride, of self-respect, of deUcacy. He loved money for the pleasures that it conunands ; but he did not love it enough to let it soil his lordly hands. In this respect his pride reached to arrogance. In money matters he was the soul of honour — another point in his character which in a commercial country and amongst the Bohemians of art and letters would win Uttle recognition. His generosity was unbounded. " I have no sense of property," he used to say ; 282 ^ r " ic "7 •/ ~ ^ " I I The Life of Oscar Wilde bat he did not add that for the property of others he had a respect as stem as to his own belongings he was totally indifferent. ^* Friends always share/' he wrote to a man at Reading, who had been good to him. He was praying his acceptance of a sum of money, for the man had lost his employment. This man, just before Oscar Wilde's release, had begged him, knowing that the prisoner was penniless, and greatly con- cerned as to his position, to accept the loan of five pounds which he had saved up. With the most deUghtful badinage did C. 3.3. refuse the offer. He pretended that to a man of his extravagance such a sum would be useless. All this was so as to refuse without hurting the feeUngs of his friend a stun of money which to a working-man meant much. In the end he said that if things came to the worst and he did wake up one morning to find himself without a breakfast he would write for the five pounds and " buy a sandwich with it." The man said : •' And a cigar." " I hardly think that it would run to that," said Oscar, " but if there is any- thing oVer I will buy a postage stamp and write to acknowledge the money." His generosity even was misconstrued. Gifts which had been made by him out of sheer kindness of heart were represented as bribes for nameless piuposes. «83 The Life of Oscan Wilde Towards his mother his liberality knew no limits. For years before his fall he maintained her in the affluence which she enjoyed. During the eight years 1884-1891, although the total of his published work was not great, and judged by its quantity alone the man may be considered not to have greatly progressed, his development of those qualities and talents which were his especial distinction was as astoimding as it was deUghtful. Those years were to the people who came into contact with him memorable as a succession of the rarest intellectual banquets. His spendthrift genius kept open house. He spoke, and those who heard him wondered why the whole world was not listening. There never can have been in the world's history a talker more delightful. A great lady said of him to Henri de R6gnier that when Oscar Wilde was speaking it seemed to her that a luminous aureole surrounded his noble head. This remark is also repeated and confirmed by the testimony of Jean Joseph- Renaud. Henri de R^gnier, that gentilhomme de lettres in the republic of literature, the elegant and delicate writer of the daintiest prose in the French language, the poet of distinction, the noveUst of refinement, pays in his book of essays 284 The Life of Oscar Wilde Figures et Caractires a tribute to Oscar Wilde which (for nobility always does compel) he made public at a time when to write in praise of him was to court obloquy and foul sus- picion. Writing of the impression which in those days Oscar Wilde produced in Paris he says: — '' He pleased^ he amused^ he astounded. People grew enthusiastic about him ; people were fanatics where he was concerned.*' It should be noted that Henri de R^gnier speaks here of the highest Parisian society, the milieu in which he himself, an elegant man of the world, moves. He describes the dinner at which the lady referred to above made her memorable pronouncement. " The dinner, elegant and pro- longed, was held in a luxurious room, brilliantly lighted. Scented violets were banked up on the cloth. In the cut-crystal glasses champagne sparkled ; fruits were being peeled with knives of gold. M. Wilde was speaking. There had been invited to meet him certain guests who were not talkative, and who were disposed to listen to him with pleasure. Of this conversation and of others I have kept a vivacious and lasting remembrance. M. Wilde spoke in French with an eloquence and a tact which yrere far from common. His expressions were embellished S85 The Life of Oscar Wilde with words which had been most judiciously ^ected. As a scholar of Oxford, M. Wilde could as easily have employed Latin or Greek. He loved the Greek and Roman antiquities. His causerie was all purely imaginative. He was an incomparable teller of tales ; he knew thousands of stories which linked themselves one to the other in an endless chain." Henri de R^gnier here remarks what anyone who with due attention reads Oscar Wilde's fairy stories will observe : — " This*' (by telling stories) "was his way of saying everything, of expressing his opinion on every subject : it was the figurative hypocrisy of this thought '* (the way in which he veiled his thoughts) . . . " One might not press M. Wilde too closely for the meaning of his allegories. One had to enjoy their grace and the unexpected turns he gave to his narratives, without seeking to raise the veil of this phantasmagoria of the mind which made of his conversation a kind ^of ' Thousand and One Nights ' as spoken. " The gold-tipped cigarette went out and Ughted itself again incessantly in the Ups of the story-teller. As his hand moved with a slow gesture the scarahtBus of his ring threw off its green Ughts. The face kept Changing its ex- a86 JEAN JOSEPH- RENAU I), TRANSLATOR OF "INTENTIONS,** AND AUTHOR OF A MOST INTERESTING MONOGRAPH ON OSCAR WILDE. MONSIEUR RENAUn IS THE BEST GENTLEMAN FENCER IN FRANCE. To face )ntge 287. The Life of Oscar Wilde pression with the most amusing mimicry^ the voice flowed on miceasingly^ dragging a little^ alMrays equal. '' M. Wilde was persuasive and astonishing. He excelled in giving a certificate of truth to what was improbable. The most doubtful statement when uttered by him assumed for the moment the aspect of indisputable truth. Of fable he made a thing which had happened actually^ from a thing which had actually happened he drew out a fable. He listened to the Scheherazade that was prompting him from within, and seemed himself first of all to be amazed at his strange and fabulous inventions. This particular gift made of M. Wilde's conver- sation something very distinct amongst contem- porary causeries. It did not, for instance, re- semble the profound and precise ingenuity of M. St^phane Mallarm6, which explained facts and things in a manner so deUcate and exact. It had nothing of the varied, anecdotic talk of M. Alphonse Daudet with his striking aperfus on men and things. Nor did it resemble in any way the paradoxical beauty of the sayings of M. Paul Adam, or the biting acridity of M. Henri Becque. M. Wilde used to tell his stories Uke ViUiers de TIsle-Adam told them. . . . M. Wilde charmed and amused, and he gave one the 187 The Life of Oscar WUde impression that he was a happy man — at ease in Ufe." This is the impression of Oscar Wilde as re- corded by a man of letters who is also a man of the world, member of the best and most re- fined society in Paris. We are able to give in contrast another picture of Wilde in Paris, as a causeur, by another man of letters of high dis- tinction, Monsieur Jean Joseph-Renaud, whose testimony should be of special value in England. Jean Joseph-Renaud is one of the finest athletes in France. There is nothing morbid, nor de- cadent, nor pessimistic about him. He can box, both in the EngUsh and the French styles ; he is a sportsman in every sense of the word, and he has the distinction of being the best gentle- man fencer in France. He is well known amongst EngUsh swordsmen, and has given them cause to remember him. Those who witnessed his performances at the tournament at the Crystal Palace a year or two ago will be able to confirm the statement that there is nothing morbid, nor effete, about Jean Joseph-Renaud, and that what he says about Wilde is sincere and from the heart. The following true account of his first meeting with Oscar Wilde, and of the effect which he produced upon the company in that house in Paris has been described by a 288 The Life of Oscar Wilde great English novelist^ who is at the same time our sternest literary critic, as masterly in its truthful representation of the man described. It shows us Wilde wishing at any cost to '' amaze/' and having failed in his first manner readily adopting another mode in which he triumphed, carrying all before him. The passage is from the preface to Monsieifr Jean Joseph- Renaud's excellent translation of '' Intentions.'' Renaud was a mere lad when he first met Wilde at the house of some of Mrs Wilde's relations in Paris. This is what he writes : — " When, an hour late, Mr Wilde entered the drawing-room, we saw a tall gentleman, who was too stout, who was clean-shaven, and who differed from any AuteuU bookmaker, by clothes in better taste than a bookmaker wears, by a voice which was exquisitely musical, and by the pure blue Hght, almost Uke that of a child's eyes, which shone in his look. In his bulky cravat of greenish silk an amethyst sparkled with a subdued light ; his grey gloves, which were so fine as to be almost transparent, moulded his graceful hands ; an orchid was shriveUing itself up in his button-hole. Without Ustening to the names of the people who were introduced to him he sat down, and with an air of ex- haustion begged Madame Lloyd to order the T 289 The Life of Oscar Wilde shutters of the dining-room to be dosed and candles to be lighted. He said that he could not possibly stand the light of day. . . . '' The table decorations had to be altered, be- cause the mauve flowers would have brought him bad luck. Then, as soon as the hars d'ctuvres had been served he took definite pos- session of the conversation. What a disappoint- ment awaited us. He spoke 'pretentiously/ asked questions, and did not wait for the replies, or addressed himself to people with too great directness ; ' You have never seen a ghost ? No I Oh 1 Now you, Madame, yes, you, Madame, your eyes seem to have contemplated ghosts. . . .' Then he declared that one night in a bar each table was put in its place, and the floor was swept, not by waiters, but by * the angels of the close of the day.' His British accent reminded us of Sarah Bernhardt. ... He next began to tell us, speaking almost in whispers, as though he were telling us secrets, and using mysterious phrases, some poetical and simple tales . . . about a young fisherman who pretends every night as he returns from the sea to have seen syrens ; one day he really does see a syren, but when he comes home he does not say so . . . about a sculptor who with the bronze of a statue of ' Pain Which Lives for Ever' moulds 290 The Life of Oscar Wilde the statue of ' Pleasure which Lasts but for one Moment/ Next he returned to what was macabre, and described at length the sensations which a visit to the Morgue in the different capitals of the world prociu-es to a man. We found in M. Wilde the hoaxing cynicism of Baudelaire and ViUiers de T Isle- Adam as it appeared through an English medium. Already that fashion of amazing people seemed much out of date^ and to this audience of intelligent bourgeois it was successful only in the bad sense of the word. The poet noticed this. He kept silent during the rest of the meal. But later on in the drawing-room^ while coffee was being served^ the conversation having turned on the success of a French comedy in England and Germany, he gently suggested that oiu* prodigious theatri- cal instinct explains many of our acts ; French foreign politics, for instance, are theatrical ; they aim rather at the finest attitude, the most striking phrases, the most effective gestiu-es^ than at any practical successes. He then ex- amined our history at length, from Charles X. up to modem times, from a paradoxical point of view. His conversation transformed itself, he displayed extraordinary knowledge and wit. Men, deeds, treaties, wars passed under re- view with appreciations, unsuspected, amusing, 2gt The Life of Oscar Wilde exact. He made them glitter mider the light of his words, even as a jeweller awakes new lights in his gems. " He then went on to talk about Lady Bless- ington and Disraeli. "To tell us of the pains of love of Lady Blessington he Uttle by Uttle raised himself to a lofty and intoxicating l3nicism ; his fine voice hymned, grew tender, rang out, Uke a viol, in the midst of the emotional silence. This EngUshman, who just before had appeared grotesque, reached, reached with simplicity, ay, surpassed, the expressive power of the most admirable odes of humanity. Many of us were moved to tears. One had never thought that the words of man could attain to such splendour. And this took place in a drawing-room, and the man who was speaking never spoke otherwise than as a man speaks in a drawing-room. We could understand that a great lady had said of him : ' When he is speaking I see round his head a luminous aureole.' " Many Parisians who heard him in those days found apt the comparison which an English friend of his writing in the Gauhis had traced between his sayings and the largesse of his wit and the jewels of Buckingham at the Court of France. " Ses mots," so ran the phrase, " se 292 The Life of Oscar Wilde r6pandaient autour de lui comme autour de Buckingham, k la cour de France, se r^pandaient les bijoux par calcul mal attach^ au poiupoint scintillant." Padraic Colum, the young Irish poet, to whom his admirers look for such great things, describes in one of his poems in a very striking way how treasures for the future are laid up in the minds of men by the words of a teacher. " But what avail my teaching slight ? Years hence in rustic speech, a phrase As in wild earth a Grecian vase." To Oscar Wilde, the talker, posterity will owe a great debt. His voice was inimitable, though in itself an imitation. He had robbed Sarah Bernhardt of her golden voice, but he put the larceny to such a usethat the crime becamean act of social virtue. The most wonderful things said in the golden voice of the most wonderful woman : that was the conversation of Oscar Wilde. To have heard him speak has made the fortune of in- numerable Uttle men. There are homunculi triumphing in the drawing-rooms of the two hemispheres, who only faintly echo his manner. The smallest small change from his royal store- house has made hundreds appear rich. Out of the tatters of his imperial mantle, which dis- 293 The Life of Oscar Wilde aster dragged in the mire, many writers, many speakers, have cut for themselves resplendent robes in which they strut their small parades and enjoy their tiny triumphs. One constantly sees in modem Uterature books which bear upon the face of them the proof that the author's whole equipment was that he " remembers to have heard Oscar Wilde speaking." One of the most successful books which has appeared in France during the last fifteen years, a work which is hailed as an artistic masterpiece, and which at the same time is a huge commercial success, is just Wilde talking. '* II passa sa vie i se parler," and the irony of the gods sentenced him to the silence of the tomb in the two most fruitful years of his life, when his genius had reached its apogee I It was in his wonderful conversation that he found an issue for the bubbling energy of his brain, for his supreme activity. For we have alwa)^ to remember that Oscar Wilde was a man of action, condenmed by the social order of things to inactivity. It is, probably, because Jean Joseph-Renaud, himself a man of action, recognises this energy in Oscar Wilde also that he has espoused his cause and his defence with ardour so zealous. To the man of action ab- solute inactivity is ph3rsically impossible, and 294 The Life of Oscar Wilde as he must be doing he will perform antics rather than do nothing. Many of the apparent buifooneries which in his youth were reproached against Oscar Wilde were the result merely of a chafing exuberance. He sought^ indeed^ saner outlets, and his misfortime was that circum- stances ever barred the way. It is a fact that at one time not long after his marriage he was seriously considering the question of presenting himself as a candidate for ParUament. It is deeply to be regretted that his poverty prevented the reaUsation of this project. In a poUtical career there was no height to which he could not have aspired. He had every one of the gifts that would have made of him in diplomacy an ornament and a treasure to the State. He would have filled the House of Commons with delight. He was a bom orator. This he attri- buted himself to his nationality. Speaking of the Irish, he once said, referring to himself, in that self-accusing way which was one of the pathetic traits of his character : " We are too poetical to be poets. We are a nation of bril- Uant failures, but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks." He had all the compelling power of great orators. He could move his audience by the sheer beauty of his tones. We have heard Renaud's testimony. Here is another 295 The Life of Oscar WUde instance : when he was lecturing in Dublin the audience was not at all sympathetic. His open- ing remark^ " Let there be nothing in your houses which was not a joy to the man who made it/' was received with ironical laughter. He immediately went off into a eulogy of Ireland^ and gradually worked his hostile audience into sympathy which reached the culminating point of enthusiasm when he declared in accents which fiUed many eyes with tears : " When the heart of a nation is broken, it is broken in music/* It was by his manner of speaking to women and children that he won such undying admirations from them. A charming scene is related by an Irish poet who was lunching once at Oakley Street with Oscar Wilde. Amongst the guests was a pretty girl, who was barely seventeen years old, and who had come up to town for her first season. When Oscar came in the girl exclaimed : " Oh ! Mr Wilde, where are your curls ? " " Oh ! " said Oscar, " I never wear them after the season is over." " But, Mr Wilde, yom* curls are real ones ! ** " Oh ! No ! I keep them in a bandbox at home. I will put them on and wear them for you the next time you come.'* It was all so prettily said, with such kindness 296 The Life of Oscar Wilde and humanity that that girl^ remembering the encotmter^ and having come to know how other men would have spoken^ could not help but think of the poor gentleman with grateful tenderness. At a dinner given by Mr Frank Harris in honour of the Princess of Monaco^ one of our most distinguished novelists^ who had been estranged from Oscar Wilde during ten years, was introduced to him afresh. " That night," he relates, " Oscar Wilde's conversation was of the most extraordinary brilliancy. He subju- gated us all. For my part I found him most delightful, and thought with regret of all the pleasure which I had missed during the ten years in which we had avoided each other." On the morning after that dinner, the Princess sent her portrait to Oscar Wilde, and on it she had written the words : " Au vrai Art, A Oscar Wilde." In prison he seems to have preserved his power of repartee. There are things on record which were there spoken in the watchful whispers of those who are dumb by law and under penalty, and which scintillate with wit. When freedom released his tongue his friends found that he had never been more briUiant. Ernest La Jeunesse in an article which reaches that high point of 297 The Life of Oscar Wilde literary excellence that it may be said of it that it is a tribute to the great man about whom it was written, gives a striking picture of this d3dng eloquence. " He is hatmted with a foreboding of deaths which in the end will kill him. He then tells all his stories in one breath : it is the bitter yet dazzling final piece of a display of superhuman fireworks. Those, who, at the end of his life, heard him unravel the skein of gold and jewelled threads, the strong subtleties, the psychic and fantastic inventions with which he proposed to sew and embroider the tapestry of the plays and poems which he was going to write, those who saw him proud and indifferent, affronting extinction and coughing or laughing out his ultimate phrasings, will keep the remembrance of a sight at once tragic and lofty, the sight of a man damned yet impassive, who refuses to perish altogether." Another picture of Oscar Wilde as a talker, at this time in his life when the voice was so soon to be hushed, is given by one who had known him for years, and who saw him in those last days. It was not a friend. " Of course, he had his bad moments, moments of depression and sense of loss and defeat, but they were not of long duration. It was part of 298 The Life of Oscar Wilde his pose to luxuriate a little in the details of his tragic circumstances. He harrowed the feeUngs of many of those whom he came across ; words of woe poured from his Ups ; he painted an image of himself, destitute, abandoned, starving even (I have heard him use the word after a very good dinner at Paillard's) ; as he proceeded he was caught by the pathos of his own words, his beautiful voice trembled with emotion, his eyes swam with tears ; and then suddenly, by a swift, indescribably brilUant, whimsical touch, a swallow*wing flash on the waters of eloquence, the tone changed and rippled with laughter, bringing with it his audience, reUeved, delighted, and bubbling into uncontrollable merriment. He never lost his marvellous gift of talking ; after he came out of prison he talked better than before. Everyone who knew him really before and after his imprisonment is agreed about that." » He had the delightful way of speaking to the poor, to inferiors as society calls them, which distinguishes gentlemen. Amongst this class he enjoyed great popularity. He is still remem- bered by them. In a recent letter a gentleman writes : " By a queer coincidence my cook was once in his service. She has nothing but good I From an article signed " A " in The St Jameses Gax$tU, 299 The Life of Oscar Wilde to say of him and of * his sweet face/ " One could adduce hundreds of similar testimonies. In Reading Gaol he was the most popular prisoner, not only with the prisoners but with the warders. At Bemeval Monsieur " Sebastian Melmoth" was the coqueluche of the village. The peasants adored him ; the village children loved him; and the coast - guardsmen were Melmoth's men to a man. He had eminently that quality of ingratiating himself with the humble, without sacrificing a tittle of his dignity, to which the Germans give the name of "leutselig." There is no English equivalent for this word ; " affable " does not render it. The French spoke of him as un homme doux. He was a kind-hearted gentleman, nothing more. It is possible that a pathologist would have seen in the extraordinary briUiancy of Oscar Wilde's talk, in its imceasing flow and the ap- parently inexhaustible resoiu*ces of wit and knowledge on which he drew, the prodromes of the disease of which he died. The cause of his death was jneningitis^ which is an inflammation of the brain, and it is possible that for many years before this disease killed him it may have existed in a subacute and chrcmic state which might account for the almost feverish energy of his cerebration. But to the ordinary man 300 The Life of Oscar WUde no saner, no serener, speaker ever appeared. He seemed at all times master of himself ; it was, indeed, this perfect maestria of his powers of conversation which so astounded those who approached him. When one comes to think of the matter why should not Oscar Wilde's friends be satisfied that his memory should go down to the after-ages as that of one of the most brilliant talkers who ever lived ? There are men high in humanity's Walhalla who left little behind them but the echoes of their voice. The greatest philosophers, the men who gave new religions to the world, did not write; they talked. Did Christ write, did Mahound write, did Socrates write ? If Oscar Wilde had had the fortune to find amongst his associates a disciple who would have taken the trouble to record his teachings — for he was always teaching — ^when he spoke, he would have been remembered in the world's history as one of the wisest of philosophers. He was the head of a new school of philosophy ; his philosophy had in its tenets the real secret of human happiness, and what grander eulogy can there be for any school than that ? He was an optimist who understood to the very extremest extent why mankind is prone to pessimism. He felt keener than most men the horrors of life, the cruelties of the world, the desperate sufferings 301 The Life of Oscar Wilde that social injustice inflicts^ and yet he had found a way to happiness out of all these evil things. Nobody could listen to him without being benefited. His talk was a cry of Sursum Corda. He taught you to know evil, and by deriding it to enjoy good. What reason was there that he should write at all ? Yet he was alwa)rs blaming himself for his indolence. He had acquired Carlyle's table for his study, and sometimes sitting at it, toying with his pen, he used to say : '' I ought to be putting black upon white, black upon white." Those years may have appeared barren to himself, who was always self-accusing ; and those who meastu-e genius by its output may point to his small production when they deny the genius of Oscar Wilde. Yet there are many who find that what he did write during that period of his life was sufficient to give him a very high place in English Uterature and amongst the philosophers of the world. These deny that he was in the right when he once said plaintively : " I have put my genius into my life ; into my books I have put my talents only." The effect that has been produced by his essay " The Soul of Man," which originally appeared in The Fortnightly Review in February 1891, has been described. It brings hope and comfort to 302 The Life of Oscar Wilde thousands of the world's most cruelly disin- herited. Who shall say what has been the wide-spreading and most beneficial influence of that marvellous book " Intentions '' ? Let one testimony be quoted. It is that of a man of the very highest scholarship and learning in England, whose bent has led him specially to study the religions and the philosophical s}^tems of the world. " My experience may be interesting," he writes in a letter. '' After taking a high degree in Classics at Cambridge, and then reading literature and science, for mere love of beauty and truth, I happened after about six years of this, to come across ' Intentions.' This first reading showed me something different from any other writer ; I seemed to see the meaning of literature and art as I never had before ; in fact he taught me the secret I had always missed. I said: 'Never man spoke like this man.' It was a revelation ; more so than when I read Plato. I secured all his books I could. Every friend of mine with any culture or insight seems to have the same experience on reading him. This is really a remarkable fact, and when my first judgment of him, as the best of them all, was always inviting reconsideration in my own mind, as too remarkable to be true, I found others holding the same judgment. ... I have 303 The Life of Oscar Wilde always had what I don't like to call an infalliUe taste in art and literature — ^my friend . . . can say something as to that — ^but I mention this ab- sm^dly egoistic belief simply because at first I had at times a lurking suspicion that my taste must be wrongs because of my estimate of Wilde. But I have never found reason to alter it." The name of the friend whom the writer quotes as his surety is^ indeed, a patent of critical taste in Uterature, scholarship and art. " Intentions," " The Soul of Man," his Fairy- stories " The Happy Prince," and " The House of Pomegranates " : it was in these books that his philosophy was expounded. The only other work of importance which he published during this period — ^that is to say, from the date of his marriage until 1892, when he came to popularity and its dangers — ^was his novel " The Picture of Dorian Gray." This story was written to the order of the proprietors of Lippincot^s Monthly Magazine, an American periodical which in 1890 was publishing a complete novel by some author of repute as a supplement to the other contents. Oscar Wilde was one of the men who were in- vited by the editor to contribute a complete tale. When to a Uterary artist is given an order to produce a work of a certain length in a certain time, the result is rarely, from the point of view 304 The Life of Oscar Wilde o£ art, a satisfactory one. The book must from its very nature smack of artificiality. It is the manufactured article, not the spontaneous crea- tion of art. Oscar Wilde was at that time when the order reached him in considerable financial embarrassment, and people who saw him then, remember how delighted he was, poor fellow, with an order, which promised him a welcome emolument. It is not conceivable that under these circumstances he would deliberately write a book of corrupt morals, calculated to pervert. He was too anxious to fill the contract with satisfaction to the proprietors of the magazine. It would have been a disaster to him if the editor of Lippincott's had refused the manuscript on the groimd that the work was an immoral one, unfit for publication in the pages of a household magazine. This entirely disposes of the absurd charge that in writing " Dorian Gray *' Oscar Wilde set himself the task of producing a corrupt book. There are people who found it so. This was one of the charges which were brought against him at the trial. He defended himself with splendid folly. If he had simply stated the facts he would have found the defence far more effective with an Old Bailey jury. " I was poor," he might have said, " at the time when I was asked to write that book. If the manuscript u 305 The Life of Oscar Wilde had dissatisfied the editor and he had returned it I could not have enforced payment if the book was an immoral one and I had deUberately written it so. Therefore it is absurd to say that I wrote it as an immoral book." It is difficult to understand what grounds there are for so quahfying this book. It seems to any man of the world who reads it that the author is almost too emphatic in his homily against vice. He thumps his cushion with such vigour that he really jars upon one's nerves. One wonders what these vices may be which call forth such vigour of denunciation. He reminds one of Calvin, if one could associate Calvin with any- thing that is graceful and deUcate. The book might be described as silly, as obviously intended to ^paier les sots, for one knows of all the nasty littie vices of silly Uttie men, and the contem- plation of them certainly does not excite one to any feeling of tragic horror. The whole thing is entirely artificial. It is Uterature, not life, and that is perhaps the cruellest thing that one says about a work which professes to be a novel. How purely Oscar Wilde in those days looked upon this book, not as the exposition of any particular creed of his, but as an article of commerce, produced to order, for payment, for the middle«class market, is shown by the 306 J The Life of Oscar Wilde fact that when he was arranging to issue the book in volume form^ and it was pointed out to him that the length of the manuscript did not reach the tare exacted by the trade for goods of that kind, he willingly supplied sufficient ad- ditional matter to make up the required weight. Works of art are not thus produced. The book was a commercial speculation ; he wanted money for it, and from it, and he was much too level- headed a man to spoil his chances of a financial success by publishing anything which would fatally damn the book. If there be such hideous immorality in the book as certain per- ceive, Oscar Wilde must have written it im- ccmsdously . His particular mania was decidedly epileptiform; and a characteristic of those maladies is that the sufferers do things, being entirely unconscious that they are doing them. In this case " Dorian Gray '* would be the best documentary evidence of the poor man's irre- sponsibility for the mad acts which later dis- figured his career. The whole pother about ** Dorian Gray " is only an exemplification of the sa3dng of the French argousin : " Give me three lines of any man's writing and I wiU hang him." The book was not very weU received. It was not at the time a commercial success. The reviewers were not enthusiastic. In the 307 [ i The Life of Oscar Wilde AthetkBum for 27th June 1891 we find the following brief notice of this book : — " Mr Oscar Wilde's paradoxes are less weari- some when introduced into the chatter of society than when he rolls them off in the course of his narrative. Some of the conversations in his novel are very smart, and while reading it one has the pleasant feeling, not often to be enjoyed, of being entertained by a person of decided abiUty. The ideas of the book may have been suggested by Balzac's 'Peau de Chagrin/ and is none the worse for that. So much may be said for the 'Picture of Dorian Gray/ but no more, except, perhaps, that the author does not appear to be in earnest. For the rest, the book is unmanly, vicious (though not exactly what is called improper) and tedious." In November of the same year there appeared the first number of The Bookman, a Uterary organ which specially appeals to the middle- classes, and where books are mainly considered from the bookseller's point of view. The editor, Dr Robertson NicoU, is a very shrewd man, who would have been the last person in the world to allow a book of patent immorality to be noticed in his columns. Yet not only did he allow it to be reviewed, at length, but he en- trusted the reviewing of it to no less a person 308 The Life of Oscar WUde than Walter Pater, which meant that every lover of Uterature in the world almost would read the review of " Dorian Gray/' Walter Pater's review is finely written, but it hardly en- ables one to ascertain what was his true opinion of the book. What he says about its author himself is, perhaps, more interesting and may be quoted : — " There is always something of an excellent talker about the writings of Mr Oscar Wilde ; and in his hands, as happens so rarely with those who practise it, the form of dialogue is justified by its being really alive. His genial laughter- loving sense of life and its enjoyable intercourse goes far to obviate any crudity that may be in the paradox, with which, as with the bright and shining truth which often imderlies it, Mr Wilde startling his ' countrjonen ' carries on, more per- haps than any other writer, the briUiant critical work of Matthew Arnold. 'The Decay of L3dng,' for instance, is all but miique in its half humorous, yet wholly convinced, presentment of certain valuable truths of criticism. G>nversa- tional ease, the fluidity of life, felicitous ex- pression are qualities which have a natural alliance to the successful writing of fiction ; and side by side with Mr Wilde's ' Intentions ' (so he entitles his critical efforts) comes a novel, 309 The Life of Oscar Wilde certainly original^ and affording the reader a fair opportunity of comparing his practice as a creative artist with many a precept he has de- nounced as critic concerning it/* Lower down Walter Pater says : " A true Epicureanism aims at a complete though har- monious development of man's entire organism. To lose the moral sense therefore, for instance^ the sense of sin and righteousness, as Mr Wilde's hero — ^his heroes are bent on doing as speedily, as completely as they can — ^is to lose, or lower organism, to become less complex, to pass from a higher to a lower degree of development. . . . Dorian himself, though certainly a quite tmsuc- cessful experiment in Epicureanism, in Ufe as a fine art is (till his inward spoiling takes visible effect suddenly, and in a moment, at the end of his story) a beautiful creation. But his story is also a vivid, though carefully considered ex- posure of the corruption of a soul, with a very plain moral, pushed home, to the effect that vice and crime make people coarse and ugly. . . ." It is one of the strangest things in Uterary history that this book should have been indicted as an immoral work wilfully written to corrupt the reader. Oscar Wilde was indignant with his critics^ and in The Daily Chronicle for 2nd July 1890, 310 The Life of Oscar Wilde and The Scots Observer for 12th July, 2nd August, and i6th, he published certain "replies" to these criticisms. One of his remarks has often been quoted. He said that he did not wish to become a popular novelist. " It is far too easy," he said. The Scots Observer, which afterwards became The National Observer, was under the direction of Mr Henley, who was considered an arbiter in matters of Uteratture. Oscar Wilde had considerable admiration for this man. He is reported to have said : " The Essays of the Renaissance are my Golden Book. I never travel without them. But it is the very flower of the Decadence. The last trum- pet should have sounded at the moment it was written." A man who was present said : " But Bfr Wilde, won't you give us time to read them ? " " Oh, for that," said Oscar WUde, " you will have time in either world." After his first meeting with Henley during which while the editor of The Scots Observer was grim and sardonic and said nothing, while Oscar was ex- ceptionally brilliant, he said : '' I had to strain every nerve in conversation to equal Henley." Henley afterwards remarked of Wilde : ''He is the sketch of a great man." Oscar's brilliant endowments had won him many enemies. He was widely envied. But 3" The Life of Oscar Wilde his detractors had the sop of consolation that in the commercial sense of the word he was not successful. They were able to point to a very great number of writers^ journalists and novelists who were making very much larger incomes than Oscar Wilde. This was not difficult, for he was majdng no income at all. In a commercial country where repute goes by earnings, and talent is estimated by what it produces in actual hard cash, it was an easy matter under these circum- stances for Oscar's enemies to deny that he had any talent at all. They did not fail to take advantage of the opportunity. Until the end of 1891 it was the common comment on him that he had advertised himself into notoriety by posturings of various kinds, but that there was really nothing in him ; that the public had '' no use for him," and, that but for his wife's income he would have found his social level long since. These statements gave pleasure and solace to the jealous. The time was close at hand when Oscar Wilde was to show them that he under- stood as well as any man the secret of great popularity, and that he could make money with his pen. After the brilliant success of his first play, '* Lady Windermere's Fan," it was no longer open to people to say that the public would have none of him. It created great heart- 31a The Life of Oscar Wilde bomings in London^ much hypertrophy of the gall-bladders. Yet, if his enemies could only have foreseen to what disaster success was to hurry him, none more eagerly than they would have joined in the frantic applause with which every night his theatre rang. 313 CHAPTER XIV A $mus MifabUis—" Lend Arthur Savile's Grime »— Mrs WUde's Copy— Lady Windermere's Fan — ^The Prmmhr^—Oscax V^lde before the Curtain — Comments on His Attitude — The Obvious Explanation — *^ A Woman of no Import- ance " — " An Ideal Husband *'— Some Criticisms— A New Departnre— -'< The Importance of being Earnest" — ^Its Reception — The Critics Disarmed — ^Ita Sapematnral Qevemess— What that Portended— Oscar Wilde's P^- chopathia — The Causes of its Pariodical Outbreak — The Unconsciousness of the Afficted — ^A Document from Hall Caine's Collection — The Corruption of London — ^Pacts afterwards Ranranbered — The New Hedonists — Then and Now — Oscar V^lde in Paris — Two Pen-Pictures of him — Octave IGrbeau and de Rfegnier. The year 1892 was the annus mirabilis of our poor hero's Ufe. It was to put within his grasp those things which seemed desirable to him^ the things for which he had laboured so long^ amidst such disappointments, and with efforts so varied. He was not to know then, nor were his delighted friends to know what success was to bring in its train, nor what would be the dreadful effect of the intoxicating draught of triumph which at last he was able to raise to his lips in the golden beaker of popular fame. The year began auspiciously for him, for in January the foremost organ of EngUsh criticism, 3»4 The Life of Oscar WUde the AthefUBum, which had steadily censured his work in the past^ reviewed in a flattering and advantageous manner another collection of short stories : " Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories/' which had been published in the previous July by Messrs Osgood, M'llvaine & Co. These stories were meant to teach nothing ; they were amusettes merely, intended to interest and amuse, ''pot-boilers'' as the argot of the craft calls them. When Oscar Wilde wrote dpropos of the reviews of " Dorian Gray " that he had no wish to become a popular noveUst because that was far too easy he was indulging in no vainglorious boast. Ne faict ce tour qui veuUy could not be said to him. It was a posi- tive fact that had he chosen to write marketable stu£f there was nobody in London who could have produced a more saleable and more popular "line" of fictional reading-matter. He could invent amusette stories by the hundreds. Many of his friends have heard him to do it. When he was living in Charles Street, Grosvenor Square, his brother Willy, who used to virite stories for the papers and the magazines, often came to him in the mornings, while Oscar was still in bed, and would say : '* Oscar, I want the plot of a story or two. Yates is asking me for some." Then Oscar, still puffing his cigarette, would 3«S The Life of Oscar Wilde begin to invent stories. One morning, a friend of his recalls, he thus invented the plots of six short stories for his brother in less than half-an- hour. The stories were afterwards written, and proved very popular. He furnished many other men with the ideas which Nature had refused to them. He equipped many writers with their entire stock-4n-trade. The mere eavesdropper at his door showed that he could foimd a Uterary ' \t>^ ^ I reputation and a fortune on such fragments of r'\^ k/^ I Oscar Wilde's conversation, as, straining his Y->< ,-^^ i ears, he was able to overhear. In ** Lord Arthur Savile's Crime," he gives a specimen of this kind of work. It is not an exaggeration to say that had he chosen he could have produced a volume of, at least, equal merit every month of his life. But he despised work of that kind. " It was far too easy." Still the elements of popularity and of financial reward were there. Here, for instance, is the opinion of the AthefUBum referred to above. Now the Athe-^ naum's opinions have an undoubted effect on the trade, and it is in the hands of the retail bookseller that the fame and fortune of literary craftsmen rest in our commercial England. " Mr Oscar Wilde's Uttlebook of stories," so runs this review, which appeared in the number for 23rd January 1892, "is capital. They are 316 The Life of Oscar Wilde delightfully humorous, witty, and fresh, sparkling with good things, full of vivacity and well put together." " ' The Canterville Ghost ' is a first-rate ghost story, told partly from the point of view of the ghost himself — b, most refreshing novelty — ^and partly from that of the American family who have bought the ancestral home of the Canter- villes. ' Lord Arthur Savile's Crime * is a very good story, too, told in a vein of drollery which is quite distinctive. These two pieces will bear reading aloud — a decidedly severe test." As late as last year there was on sale in one of the second-hand book-shops in London a copy of this book, which was inscribed : — " Constance from Oscar, July, '91." It was the copy which he had presented to his wife. In this volume the following passages were marked in pencil, no doubt by the author himself, wishing to call attention to certain parts of the book which Sterne, had he been the writer, would probably have printed on purple patches. It will give a taste of the quahty of this book if we reproduce three passages so marked. '* Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is so different. 317 The Life of Oscar Wilde Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildenstems play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlet has to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast." " And yet it was not the mystery, but the comedy of suffering that struck him ; its ab- solute uselessness, its grotesque want of meaning. How incoherent ever3rthing seemed ! How lack- ing in all harmony! He was amazed at the discord between the shallow optimism of the day and the real facts of existence. He was still very young." It was perhaps not, after all, to draw the at- tention of his wife to the purple patches in his book that Oscar Wilde made those pencil-marks in this volume. It was, perhaps, in one of those lucid moments of foreboding which come to certain men. He may have foreseen the part that was to be forced upon him to play ; have felt in advance the absolute uselessness of the suffering which he was to undergo; and have detected behind the shallow optimism of the day what were the real facts of existence. In the concluding words of the third passage we also detect a strange application to his own case as the future was to reveal it. " The great piles of vegetables looked like 318 The Life of Oscar Wilde masses of jade against the morning sky^ like masses of green jade against the pink petals of some marvellous rose. Lord Arthur felt curi- ously affected^ but could not tell why. There was something in the dawn's loveliness that seemed to him inexpressibly pathetic^ and he thought of all the days that break in beauty and that set in storm.'' The time was, however, now at hand when his apparent optimism and that mask of strong confidence in himself which gave such umbrage to his rivals were to receive at the hands of the British pubUc their fullest warranty. It was on the night of 20th February that there was pro- duced at the St James's theatre the new and original play in four acts, " Lady Winder- mere's Fan," by Oscar Wilde. The performance announced itself as a success even before the curtain had risen on the first act. The house was full, the audience was a friendly one. Still, London Society was yet unconquered. The audience, if friendly, was not a briUiant one. It was la grande Bohhne that came to judge of Oscar Wilde as a dramatist." " Never," says a contemporary writer, '' did audience at a premise appear less brilliantly attired. The duchesses, countesses, and other grandes dames whose foibles and follies were to be held up over the S19 The Life of Oscar Wilde footlights were absent. Amongst the ladies present whose toilettes were noticed were Mrs Bram Stoker * in a wonderful evening wrap of striped brocade/ Mrs Jopling-Rowe 'becom- ingly arrayed in shrimp-pink^ Ughtly accented with black/ Mrs Pinero, Miss Julia Neilson, and Miss Florence Terry. Mrs Oscar Wilde was there^ and we read that * she looked charming in her pale-blue brocaded gown made after the fashion of Charles I/s time^ with its long tabbed bodice^ slashed sleeves^ and garniture of old lace and pearls.' Amongst other distinguished people in the audience were^ Mrs Langtry, Mrs Campbell-Praed, Mr Bancroft, Mrs Hare, Mr Charles Matthews, Mr Inderwick, Dr Playfair, Mr Luke Fildes, Mr Forbes-Robertson, and Mr Oswald Crawford.** The success of the play was never in doubt, and here again Oscar Wilde's peculiar genius triumphed. He established the falsity of that axiom, "The play is the thing," which the greatest of dramatists laid for the guidance of future playwrights. His play was not the thing, to which he had paid attention, on which he had labomred. His story was of the kind which has always tempted t3n:o dramatists. It was only another version of "The Wife's Secret." For the first night or two of " Lady Windermere's 320 The Life of Oscar Wilde Fan," the secret of Mrs Erlynne's identity was kept from the audience until the d/nouement^ which was, of course, the greatest mistake that the playwright could have committed. Mrs £rl3nuie is Lady Windermere's mother, a de- classie who is supposed to be dead, but whom Lord Windermere befriends for her daughter's sake. From this proceeds the entanglement. In a caricature of Oscar Wilde which appeared in the following number of Punch he was re- {NPesented as leaning on a pedestal with his elbow propped upon volumes of " Odette," " Fran- dllon/' and " Le Supplice d'Une Femme," to make room for which a bust of Shakesp)eare has been dethroned. At his feet is a volume of Sheridan's comedies* The suggestion was, of course, that he had drawn his inspiration from these various works. Many other plays in which the donn/e is almost identical with that of " Lady Windermere's Fan " might have been dted. The question was not there. It was by his way of treating a time^ld subject that he scored his great success. His dialogue was wonderful because it was he himself talking all the time. As he never failed to charm and de* light, almost to the point of mental intoxication, those who were privileged to listen to him, there was no reason that his success should have been The Life of Oscar Wilde any smaller here. For the rest, the play was beautifully produced. The dresses and decora- tions were magnificent, and the acting far from being — as Oscar Wilde once put it — " a source of danger in the perfect representation of a work of art/' made a play of what risked at one time to be classed only as a spoken extravaganza. At the end of the performance in answer to the enthusiastic calls of the audience Oscar Wilde came in front of the curtain. He was carrying a half-smoked cigarette in his hand. He made a curious speech, in which he said that he was pleased that they had enjoyed themselves, which was what he could say of himself. The carrying of a cigarette, and the tone of the speech were most adversely commented upon by the critics. Clement Scott in Monday's Daily Tele- graph was severe on the breach of maimers committed, " when undeterred by manager^ unchecked by the public voice, unreprimanded by men, and tacitly encouraged by women, an author lounges in front of the f ootUghts without any becoming deference of attitude, takes no trouble to fling aside his half-smoked cigarette, and proceeds to compliment the audience on its good sense in liking what he himself has con- descended to admire/' In Truth the chastise- ment administered was much more severe. 32« The Life of Oscar Wilde These are some extracts from the article which appeared in that jomnal : — " It is strange that the legitimate Irish suc- cessor to Joe Miller should have forgotten one of the stalest stories of his native DubUn. There was once on a time a row in a DubUn gallery. 'Throw him over! Turn him out/ were the cries vociferously yelled by the gods. But dur- ing the lull there came a reproving voice : ' Be aisy bhoys I Don't waste him. Spile a fiddler with him I ' They were dangerously near spoil- ing a fiddler with Oscar Wilde last Saturday night. No one was quite prepared for his last move in calm effrontery, deUberately planned and gratuitously offensive. It took the whole audience aback. But when the meaning of the whole thing dawned upon those present, when it was discovered that the so-called dramatist was calmly pu£Bng himself between the whiffs of a cigarette in a pubUc playhouse I could see the fists and toes of countless men nervously twitch- ing. They wanted to get at him. Luckily for Oscar the well-known pittites and gallery boys do not patronise the St James's Theatre, else that famous speech woidd never have been finished without serious damage to Mr Alex- ander's property." In Punch of the following week the incident 3«3 The Life of Oscar Wilde was the subject of an article illustrated with the caricature referred to above, and entitled " A Wilde ' Tag ' to a Tame Play/' where Oscar Wilde's gaucherie was humorously and not too unkindly satirised. y For that his conduct was nothing but a gaucherie it needs not charity to beUeve. It is obvious. The man was under the shock of a great joy. He had temporarily lost his head. He did not know what he was doing. We have .jail read of the strange antics which dramatic authors have performed under similar emotion. Daudet, for instance, used to go rushing along the streets of Paris like a madman. In Oscar's case emotion would be all the more overwhelming that the verdict of the audience that night meant for him rescue from all the forlorn makeshifts and hazardous expedients of his career, release from poverty, popular affirmation of a talent which his detractors had persistently denied, all those things in fact, which artists may dis- dain but for lack of which they perish. He was a bulky, full-blooded man ; the blood rushed to his head, and he was unconscious of what he was doing. As to the cigarette, well, it was half- smoked. It had not been lighted for the pur- pose of the entry. He was such a habitual smoker that probably he did not even know that 3^4 The Life of Oscar Wilde he had a cigarette in his hand. Such smokers notice nothing except when they are not smok- ing. As to his remarks, it was the bafouiUage of a man who was not master of himself. Pos- sibly he remembered vaguely in his confusion that the Latin dramatists used to put into the mouths of the actor who spoke last a message to the audience to applaud. Poor Oscar's classical training played him unconsciously a nasty trick. His " Vos Plaudite " was taken as an offence. The thing is so obvious. Is it probable that a man who had been struggling for years for success, popularity and money from his pro- fession woidd deUberately insult his audience and ruin the prospects which had shown them- selves so rosy ? The man was not a fool, and it seems as unlikely — ^unless we are to consider him suffering that night from one of the attacks of his epileptiform malady — that he would have acted as he did from a deliberate and calculated wish to treat his patrons with insolent arrogance, as that he purposely made a corrupt and im- moral book of his novel. For the rest, the London pubUc took no notice of the incident. The author's private manners did not concern it at all. There was a good play to be seen at the St James's Theatre, and London went to see it. The opinion, then expressed, 3*5 The Life of Oscar Wilde has been ratified since. The play has frequently been revived, and each time with increased suc- cess. It is playing this year in America before enthusiastic houses. On the Continent, with the exception, perhaps, of Italy, this play meets with Uttle approval. For the French it is choses vues ; the Germans speak of it as a Gartenfnauer comedy, which means something that appeals only to the public in a certain en- vironment. As he drove home radiant that night Oscar Wilde could say to himself : " I am the author of * Lady Windermere's Fan.' " No doubt that he did say it. May it be hoped that no fore- boding came to trouble his tranquil joy, no fore- boding of the times so close at hand when he might be called by no other name than that. Three years of prosperity and triumph were to be accorded to him. The period of want was over ; he was acknowledged one of the first playwrights on the EngUsh stage ; his income sprang from nothing to several thousands a year. During this period of three years he pro- duced successfully three other plays. On 19th April 1893 was performed his " A Woman of No Importance." On this occasion he was blamed for not responding to the cry of the audience for a speech. This time, however, he 326 The Life of Oscar Wilde had kept his head^ for such emotions as had moved him on the night of his first success come to a man once only in life. " A Woman of No Importance '* frequently played since, formerly as by the author of " Lady Winder- mere's Fan/' and now under the author's real name, has continued to please and amuse the English-speaking audiences of two worlds. In 1895 he produced two plays of a very different character. The one, *' An Ideal Husband," was first brought out on 3rd January. The Times critic wrote of this per- formance : — " ' An Ideal Husband ' was brought out last night with a similar degree of success to that which has attended Mr Wilde's previous pro- ductions. It is a similar degree of success due to similar causes. For ' An Ideal Husband ' is marked by the same characteristics as ' Lady Windermere's Fan ' and * A Woman of No Im- portance.' There is a group of well-dressed men and women on the stage talking a strained inverted but rather amusing idiom, while the action, the dramatic motive springs from a con- ventional device of the conunonest order of melodrama." The AthetuBum's criticism may also be quoted in part. It endeavours to explain Oscar Wilde's 327 The Life of Oscar Wilde dramaturgical process^ and to account for his undeniable success. '* One of the constituent elements of wit is the perception of analogies in things apparently dis- parate and incongruous. Accepting this as a canon^ and testing it by the pretensions of Oscar Wilde in his latest play, the writer might be pro- nounced the greatest of wits, inasmuch as he perceives analogies in things absolutely anta* gonistic. His presumable end is gained, since a chorus of laughter attends his propositions or paradoxes. It requires, however, gifts of a kind not usually accorded to humanity to think out a statement such as * High intellectual pleasures make girls' noses large ! ' ' Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast. . .* * All reasons are absurd,' and the Uke." An intimate friend of Oscar Wilde's remembers talking of this criticism with the playwright. " It is not very difficult, Oscar," he said, " to see what suggested to you the statements which the critic finds so weird. When you wrote that about girls' noses you had probably in mind the connection between the pains of thought and that French expression which describes the lengthening of the nose as an outward physical sign of mental perplexity or chagrin, faire un nez. As to the remark about dull people being 3^8 The Life of Oscar Wilde brilliant at breakfast you obviously meant that nervous, high-strung people, people of pleasure, of thought, of midnight labours are, in fact, at their worst at breakfast time, when by contrast with them the eupeptic, healthy, people not of nervous temperaments appear at their best." " You are quite right," said Oscar, '* but you overlook the third statement complained of. All reasons are absiurd I " Till then Oscar Wilde's success as a playwright had been great ; yet he had not so far shown even a small part of the splendid service which it was in his power to render to the gaiety of our nation. In the early part of January he devoted a fortnight to the writing of a comedy of the farcical order to which he gave the name of " The Importance of Being Earnest " : this was produced for the first time on 14th February at the St James's Theatre. The author described this piece himself as a " trivial comedy for serious people." He is reported also to have said of it that " the first act is ingenious, the second beautiful, the third abominably clever." As a matter of fact, the whole is abominably clever, while, perhaps, also both ingenuity and beauty are lacking. The plot certainly displays none of the former quality and beauty, except in the abstract sense which appUes to any work of art 329 The Life of Oscar Wilde which is dose to perfection of its kind^ has, of course, nothing to do, in that galire. Clever it is beyond praise, because here once again we have Oscar Wilde joking as only Oscar Wilde could joke. It is an extravaganza spoken by Oscar through the mouths of a number of men and women. " Almost every sentence of the dialogue," said The Times critic next morning, " bristles with epigram of the now accepted pattern, the manufacture of this being apparently conducted by its patentee with the same facility as * the butterwoman's rank to market.' '* " Yet frivolous, saucy, and impertinent as Mr Wilde's dialogue is," wrote the Athenaum critic, '' and imcharacteristic also, since every personage in the drama says the same thing, it is, in a way, diverting. The audience laughs consumedly, and the critic, even though he should chafe, which is surely superfluous, laughs also id spite of himself. There is, moreover, a grave serenity of acquiescence in the most mon- strous propositions that is actually and highly humorous." The writer of " At The Play " in the March number of The Theatre found the " new trivial comedy 'a bid for popularity in the direction of farce.' Stripped of its * Oscarisms ' — ^regarded 330 The Life of Oscar Wilde purely as a dramatic exercise — ^it is not even a good specimen of its class." The critic in Truth fairly surrendered at last. *' I have not the sUghtest intention of seriously criticising Mr O. Wilde's piece at the St James's," he writes under the heading of " The Importance of Being Oscar," " as well might one sit down after dinner and attempt gravely to discuss the true inwardness of a sauffU. Nor, unfortunately, is it necessary to enter into details as to its wildly farcical plot. As well might one, after a success- ful display of fireworks in the back garden, set to work laboriously to analyse the composition of a Catherine Wheel. At the same time I wish to admit, fairly and frankly, that ' The Importance of Being Earnest ' amused me very much." The public never had a moment's hesitation about the play. Each audience laughed as never has audience laughed before in a theatre where the work of an EngUsh writer of comedy has been performed. Oscar Wilde had transplanted to London the exuberant gaiety of Paris, without appealing by even the faintest suggestion to that fumier of which Heine spoke as being the soil on which all French comedy and farce thrive. The play is a clean play, a play of the " knock- about " farcical order, with this tremendous dis- tinction that the knock-about here is not a 331 The Life of Oscar WUde physical conflict^ but a perpetual tussle of wit and repartee. It was aptly described as a " fantastic farce." We had here the true Oscar, or rather one of the true Oscars, full of roUicking, boyish, extravagant humour, turning to mirth all things. . . . Many people who had all along been hostile to him as a man and as a writer, who '' had seen nothing in his works,'" and had professed to be bored by his more serious comedies, became Wilde's men heart and soul after having witnessed this play. A great Irish writer remarked recently that after he had seen " The Importance of Being Earnest " in Dublin, he began to look forward with impatience to the day when Oscar Wilde's ashes should be brought from Bagneux cemetery back to his native land, and a statue to the great dramatist should be raised on the banks of the Anna Liffey. And these were the words of a C3mical man of the world, ever chary of praise. After that night at the St James's Theatre London felt itself, indeed, the imperial city which is under tribute to no other nation for its enjoy- ments as for its wants. One may fancy what would have been the f eeUng of the Romans if one day a dramatist had risen up amongst them who rendered their arena free of Greece. Our pride was flattered ; we could hurl back the re- 33« The Life of Oscar Wilde proach of national dulness ; we foresaw with pleasurable and gratified anticipation the return to the English stage of the laurel-wreath that centuries ago had been wrested from us by the foreigner. We felt that we could close our front*door and put out a notice to the Ibsens^ the Scribes^ the Sardous^ the Mosers, the Brissons^ the Capuses, and the rest that we thanked them kindly for their calls, but that we needed nothing that day or on any subsequent day. Alas f not one of those who witnessed that wonderful premiire at the St James's Theatre — unless, indeed, somewhere in the stalls or boxes there may have been seated in observation some acute pathologist — did realise that the very brilliancy which so deUghted him was but a s)anptom of a cruel mental disease. The clever- ness displayed appeared to the dazzled audience supemattu-al. It was so indeed. As one may see in the drcus-ring clowns and acrobats who perform prodigious feats because before they come into the arena they have stimulated to the uttermost their nerves and muscles, and for a short time, indeed, do appear to be capable of deeds of skill and daring which no ordinary man might with impunity attempt ; as one sees in the Indian bazaar the feeble fakir, frenzied with drugs, running a tigerish course of devastation 333 The Life of Oscar Wilde and murder : so here too an agency was at work which had forced the genius of the man who so impressed us vnth its splendour over the narrow border-line of which Dryden speaks. From circumstances which so soon afterwards became matters of pubUc knowledge and dismay there can be no doubt that it was a diseased brain which had fashioned for deUght and laughter these splendid and exuberant imaginings. It will be remembered that in the early part of 1892 Oscar Wilde suddenly passed from a precarious and troubled existence, from which sheer penury was not alwa3rs absent, to a height of prosperity and prospects of great wealth and power. Even the strongest heads have been known to turn under such a shock. In Oscar Wilde's case we have a man, who by predis- position and atavism on both sides of his family was one least prepared to withstand a shock so powerful. Ph5^ical causes contributed to in- flame what may be described as the psychical traumatism caused by this blow. He was ever a man fond of the pleasures of the table, of wines and spirits, and the use of the narcotic, tobacco. Till that point in his career absence