CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF ^. G, Bailey Cornell University Library PR 5823.S55L7 1906a The life of Oscar Wilde; w"*! .f! '"'' 'X 3 1924 013 572 148 •«» Pi Cornell University M Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013572148 THE LIFE OF OSCAR WILDE THE LIFE OF OSCAR WILDE By ROBERT HARBOROUGH SHERARD With a Full Reprint of the famous Revolutionary Article, " Jacta Alea Est" which was written hy Jane Francesca Elgee, who afterwards became the mother of Oscar Wilde, and an ddditional Chapter con- tributed by one of the Prison- Warders, who held this Unhappy Man in Gaol ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS, FAC- SIMILE LETTERS, AND OTHER DOCUMENTS MITCHELL KENNERLEY NEW YORK igp6 TO T. M. WHO, IN THE EXTREME OF ADVERSITY, PROVED HIMSEL^THE TRUE FRIEND OF AN UNHAPPY MAN THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED " The heroes of literary as well as civil history have been very 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." Dr Samuel Johnson. Preface The 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 f eehng heart by a contemplation of the career of 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 faU, will not echo those further words of that great, good Dr Johnson, of whom it may be said that had his like been Uving, at the time of Wilde's catastrophe, the whole after-story of Wilde's hfe 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 fehcity 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 Uterary interest to observe one or two points of similitude in the characters of these two men. 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 natiures 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 vm Prefece 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 inclination, 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 to fortify their patience by reflecting that they feel only those afflictions from which his abilities did not exempt him ; or those who, in confidence of superior capacities or attainments, disregarded the common maxims of life, 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 ix Prefe.ce 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, like ninety-nine out of every hundred Frenchmen, for instance, has heard of his at- tainder, but knows nothing of his 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 round 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 publication. 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 malice. These floating rumours have not yet had the time to come together, to coagulate, and to Preface crystallise. 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 assume, 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 earlier record, to which reference has been made above, being no longer xi 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 yield to his own inclinations, 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 palliate the offence of so re- cording them by an exposition of their incidence upon others. The upward climb, 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 shall no longer be coaxed by a cunning elicitation of his sjmipathy for the teller of the story to listen to a tale against which prejudice, the voice of public 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 i^h, 1906. Xll CONTENTS PAGE Chapter i ..... i Chapter ii , 30 Chapter hi , 52 Chapter iv , 63 Chapter v , 83 Chapter vi . lOI Chapter vii 125 Chapter viii 159 Chapter ix , 192 Chapter x 224 Chapter xi , 245 Chapter xii , 266 Chapter xni , 282 Chapter xiv , 314 Chapter xv , 347 Chapter xvi , 370 Chapter xvii , 386 Chapter xvni • 403 Appendix "'^S- 427 Bibliography "■''•"" ".-. . 449 Index . 46'; Xlll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Portrait of Oscar Wilde . Sir William Wilde . Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital W. G. Wills .... I Merrion Square . I Merrion Square . PoRTORA Royal School Oscar Wilde as a Lad RUSKIN .... Caricature in Punch (Sunflower) Caricature in Punch (Salvation Army) I 6 TiTE Street Henri de R£gnier . Jean Joseph-Renaud Caricature by Harry Furniss Oscar Wilde's Writing In Memoriam — Lady Wilde Death Certificate — Constance Wilde XV Facing Title Facing page 23 85 87 87 lOI 103 I2S 177 257 283 287 345 355 367 375 List of Illustrations Reading Gaol . . . . Facing page zi1 Paul Adam ..... 403 MONS. DUPOIRIER .... 417 Bedroom in the Hotel d' Alsace . 419 Bill at the Hotel d' Alsace 421 Death Certificate — Oscar Wilde 423 Madame Dupoirier .... 42s Oscar Wilde's Grave » 426 XVI The Life of Oscar Wilde CHAPTER I The Necessity of carefully tracing Oscar Wilde's Descent — ^The Real Date of his Birth — Probable Cause of the Error — His Admission to Mr Carson — His Distinguished Kinships — His Early Tastes — Early Successes — Alcohol as a Preserver of Life — Possible Consequences of a Dangerous Delusion^ — William Wilde's Skill as a Surgeon — "The Man whose Throat he Cut " — ^Another Famous Operation — ^The Voyage of The Crusader^-A Successful First Book — His First Professional Earnings — A/Vhat he did with them — He Founds a Hospital — His Noble Charity — The Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital — Honours and Knight- hood — ^As a Land-Owner — His Literary Labours — ^Tri- butes to his Surgical Skill— "The Father of Modern Otology" — A Wife's Recognition — Other Traits of his Character. When Nature has bountifully endowed a man with every gracious gift which should ensure for him success and felicity in hfe ; 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 fortun- ate man suddenly discloses leanings, propensities, instincts, 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 physiological problem, how in one and the same man can be alhed, supreme in- telligence 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 united, as is so often the case, with pro- nounced moral degeneracy, his ascending lines, traced back to remote generations, display such soUd qualities of sane normality and civic excellence, that this unhappy man's aberration must appear one of those mahgnant, morbid developments which alarm and confound the psychologist when they unexpectedly produce themselves in a man's mentahty, 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 life, to investigate with more than usual care, his descent and affinities. In this way alone can it be hoped that some light 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 ways 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 course 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 Wilde of the task of telling the story of his Ufe consists in correcting the mistakes of those who have written about him, in refuting unfair aspersions on his character, and in nailing venomous lies to the counter of pubhc 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 born in 1856, but two years earlier. As this narrative proceeds negations of far greater importance will have to be put upon record. His life, indeed, like that of many men who have been made the victims of the unreasoning hatred of his countrymen, 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 immaturity; 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 younger 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 counsel : " 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 settles the matter.' " Mr Carson : ' You were born in 1854 — that makes you over forty ? ' "The Witness: 'Ah!'" This " Ah ! " sounded like a sarcastic note of admiration for the barrister's skill in arithmetic. How it was calculated to woimd the defending counsel will be indicated later. For months before Oscar Wilde was born his mother had earnestly desired that the child should be a girl.^ She often expressed her con- ' This fact, like every other fact recorded in this book, is given on unimpeachable authority. 5 The Life of Oscar Wilde viction that a daughter was going to be born to her. She used to tell friends of the things she was going to do " after my Uttle girl is born," and used to discuss the education she proposed to give to her daughter. When Oscar was born, 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. 1 Oscar Wilde was the second son and child, issue of the marriage between William Robert Wills Wilde, oculist and otologist (1815-1876), and of Jane Francesca Elgee, poetess and pam- phleteer (1826-1896), which was celebrated in Dublin 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 humanity. 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 literature, art, archaeology, and science, but in the public history of my own country, 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 synonym for folly. What I suffered then, and still suffer, is not for pen to write, or paper to record. My wife, always kind and gentle to me, rather than that I should hear the news from indifferent lips, 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 William Wilde), the surgeon, was a product of that intermixture 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 Wilde 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 ability 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 County. 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 clerg3m[ian ; another, Thomas Wilde, was a country physician. This Thomas Wilde married a Miss Fynn, who was related by descent to the eminent famihes of Surridge and Ouseley of Dunmore in the county 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 William Ouseley, was ' " To Hell or Connaught " was the alternative proposed by the EngUsh invaders to the Irish peasants whom they hunted off their lands Uke 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 Ouseley," and to use the hero's name as the title of the story. He declared that a book with such a title could not fail to appeal to the public. 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 living in the western province from hearsay from their parents. William Robert Wills Wilde was the son of Dr Thomas Wilde by his marriage with Miss Fynn. He was born 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 The Life of Oscar Wilde in the person of Paddy Walsh, afterwards im- mortahsed by the pupil in his Irish " Popular Superstitions." In the Dublin University Magazine the follow- ing account is given of youthful tastes which led to studies of which in later life he was to make such excellent use. " The delight 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 listen 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 around were castles, whose legends he learned, patterns, where he witnessed the strange mixture of pilgrimage, devotion, fun and frolic ; 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 pen." His professional studies commenced in 1832. As a medical student he acted as clinical clerk to Dr Evory Kennedy in the Lying-In-Hospital, and bbtained the annual prize there against several EngUsh 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 life. The idea was no doubt an erroneous one, according to modern medical science, and the delusion may very possibly have been the cause of much subsequent mischief in the young man's family. In a household the head of which attributes the saving of his life 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 hves of William 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 life, acts which had for him the most disastrous consequences, was done under the influence of liquor. 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 surface. 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 life, 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 la 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 life was to be saved. He happened to have a pair of scissors in his pocket ; he was fortunately not restrained by the modern 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 living 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 William Wilde of Dublin cut my throat." It was with similar readiness that Sir William 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 hol^ being got on it with a forceps by which it might have drawn from its place. The man was suffering terrible agony. Sir William 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 fertility of resource. Already as a young 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 found in the Messrs Curry ready and liberal publishers. For the copyright of this young 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 aU thy might." His reputation was already so good, that in the first year of his practice he earned in professional fees the sum of 5^400, 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 apphed 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 Victoria 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 account 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 indoor medical relief admit patients labouring under affections of the organs of sight and hearing there has not up to the present period existed in this country any special hospital for treating the diseases of the eye and ear. " The want of such an establishment, upon a scale so extensive as to afford general relief, 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- hshed in South Frederick Lane, and supported by its founder. Sir WiUiam 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 pubUc 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 number of patients reheved 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 received 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 oi £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 country." 17 The Life of Oscar Wilde 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 young 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 pubHshed what has been described as " one of the most chivalous literary efforts,'' his account 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 Qu€en, which was the first appointment of the kind made in Ireland. In 1857 he visited Stockholm, and was created a Chevaher of the Kingdom 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, heM for the installation of 18 The Life of Oscar Wilde new members of this Ord6r, and after the knights had left the hall, the genial Lord Carlisle, 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 Lytton 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 Dublin 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 William Wilde which was published in 1875, one year before his death, where reference is made to another honour which was won by him, the following passage occurs, which, read to-day, has a pe- ' culiarly pathetic interest. " In connection with the award of the Cun- ningham medal of the Royal Irish Academy in 1873 to Sir WiUiam Wilde, it is a remarkable fact, worthy of record, that within a few months of its presentation, his two sons, Wilham 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 William Wilde was too hospitable and too charitable a man to amass any large fortune such as would have been acquired by most men of his professional ability 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 William 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 I said, " one of the ould stock," he was able with i advice from the Catholic clergy to carry out 21 The Life of Oscar Wilde his plans without exciting discoijtent 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 founded the Dublin Quarterly Journal of Science. His life 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 .^/4 ^.^J^. J SIR WII.I.IAM WILIIK. To face page 23. 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 Khnik " (Wilde'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 dSnigrement, 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 dieductions inspired by genius). Another German autho- rity says of him : " auch in seinem lebhaften und praktischen Interesse fuer Taubstumnie erinnert uns 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 modern otology." Indeed, it appears that as an otologist he was even greater than as an ocuUst. At a recent conference of medical men in Zuerich when the great pioneers 23 The Life of Oscar Wilde of modern 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 pit5dng smile with which modern 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 men 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 WilHam 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 Uterary work. Perhaps the most interesting reference to his qualities 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 B6ranger, 24 The Life of Oscar Wilde which her husband had left uncompleted at the time of his death, and which Lady Wilde finished. She begins by saying what difiidence she feels to take up the pen which her husband had let fall, 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 concerned 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- tration 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 doudland 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 pleasure-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 25 The Life of Oscar Wilde 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 calUng 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, twinkling eyes ; his expedient brought the ocuUst to the door in a moment ; the rencontre ending in a hearty laugh at the success of the trick— which continued to afford much amuse- ment at Templerogue." Sir William Wilde died after a long iUness 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. All the Dublin papers pubUshed long obituary notices pi 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 qualities, 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 Wilham 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 public 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-Oculist-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 life 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 oil 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 nobility of character. Sir William Wilde left besides his legitimate children a number of natural offspring. One natural son of his was established by him as a surgeon-oculist 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 William 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 William had in this respect. At a dinner-party at which the Father was present, and which was held shortly after Sir William 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 Furniss has included him in his gdllery of " Ugly Men and Women." The qualification 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 -ffischylus — 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 Wilde 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 EUis " — Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, 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 from 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 facility 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 journeys 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 hterature was open to him." Lady Wilde was a wonderful classical scholar; she had the sheer dehght 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 William'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 ior poor Lqidy 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 Pronietheus Vinctus of ^schylus, 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-established. On what this reputation was based will appear hereafter. Lady Wilde was a brilliant talker : was there ever in the world a more brilliant conver- sationalist 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- cihties which in the aggregate are known as worldly wisdom. " My mother," writes Oscar Wilde, " who knew life as a whole, used often to quote to me Goethe's lines — written by Carlyle in 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 \yaiting for the morrow, — He knows you not, ye heavenly powers.' " They were the hues which that noble Queen of Prussia, whom Napoleon treated with such coarse brutaUty, used to quote in her humiliation and exile ; they were the lines my mother often 32 The Life of Oscar Wilde quoted in the troubles of her later life. 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 arid watching for the dawn." Yet the second verse, which seems to have been overlooked by Lady Wilde as well 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 implacability 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 well describes one trait of Speranza's character, and which is not easily translated into English, is Schwaermensch. 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 orderhness and the other domestic virtues. One feels that but for Speranza'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-Oculist-in-Ordinary would not have been allowed to go out into the streets of Dublin in the neglected condition which inspired Father Healy's mordant jibe. There was nothing of the Schwaermer in Oscar Wilde' s composition . He had no penchant for enthusiasm, exaltation he never displayed; and though as a writer he enrolled himself under that drapeau romantique des feunes guerriers of which Theophile 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 quaUties, it may be deduced from his life 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 born 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 beUeve 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 Italian origin, that the name Elgee is a corruption of the patron5niiic Alighieri which would have implied a descent from, or, at least, a kinship to, the immortal Dante, was but the outcome of a vivid and self- deceiving imagination . 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 solidity 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 anything 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 Episcopalian clergyman ; she was not the daughter of Archdeacon Elgee. Yet these misstatements are reproduced in the authoritative biographical notices which have been published 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 born 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 feelings 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 district, 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 Physi- 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 Dublin. Lady Wilde had many distinguished relations. One of her uncles was Sir Charles Ormsby, Bart., who was a member of the last Irish Parliament. 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 Matmrin's most famous novel, " Melmoth the Wanderer," that he borrowed the name xmder 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'Elixir de longue Vie," Balzac gazettes Oscar Wilde's great-uncle with Moli^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 fut en effet le type du Don Juan de Molidre, du Faust de Goethe, du Manfred de Byron et du Melmoth de Maturin. Grandes images tracees par les plus grandes genies de r Europe." 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 ccmiparing 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 individiial 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 reverend Maturin. Quoi de plus grand, quoi de plus puissant relativement a la pauvre humanite que ce pdle et ennuy^ Melmoth ? " 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 very little 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 qualities and defects to their 40 The Life of Oscar Wilde posterity ; 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 briUiant man, who so many years after his death was to stand spqnsor 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 prefaces 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 rMame, 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 close of his life Mangan put on 41 The Life of Oscar Wilde record his impressions of this remarkable writer, Maturin, in whom Scott and Byron so thoroughly believed that the first oilered to edit his works after his death, 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 absurdities 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 prevailing admiration for the grotesqueness of Maturin' s romances ; their terrible and awe- inspiring nature impressed him profoundly. li^ 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 rhyme : — " ' 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 Aungier 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 wandered 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 worlds — 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 inclined 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 Autumn 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 feeling 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 bibliopolitan establishments wherewith that Paternoster Row of Dublin 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 intercourse between them and the Catholics and Nationalists. But once I had caught the National spirit, and all the literature 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 1847. She was at that time living with her parents at 34 Leeson Street, which is in a quarter which is the Bayswater of Dubhn. Hef most famous poem was entitled "A Million a Decade." These contributions were for the most part pubhshed in a small type column which pre- ceded the leading articles, and which appears to have been reserved for the efforts of amateur contributors, 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 EUis'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 Nationalism 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 four, and, indeed, describes her as " a woman of genius." At the time that that book was written the former Nationalist 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 erreur 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 Dublin at this very day, men who never abandoned the cause, and who will die as ardent Nationahsts 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 Nationahsts, 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 anonymity 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 " J acta 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 published in Dublin under date of Saturday, 2gth July 1848. The Nation, a weekly magazine journal of sixteen pages, of the size of the Petit Journal, which was pubhshed at sixpence, was then in its sixth volume. On the number preserved in the National Library of Ireland, in Dublin, 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 Museum. Lady Wilde's article was the second leader on the editorial page. The leading article, pre- sumably written by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy of the Villa Marguerite, Nice, was entitled " The Tocsin of Ireland," and is of that kind of pohti- D 49 The Life of Oscar Wilde cal, inflammatory writing which, once one has read it, is immediately forgotten. On this article Francesca Wilde's article follows. It is published anonymously, and fills rather more than two columns of the paper. As it is a docu- ment of essential interest in the archives of the family of the man with whom this volume 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 Duffy of the Villa Marguerite, Nice, contained much other matter which was calculated to incense the Castle. Amongst the topical articles which were published we find one on " Easy Lessons in Military 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 deaUngs 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." SI 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 ! " — Terrif5dng the Castle — " The Glorious Young Meagher ! " — 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 monumental 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 tyrant 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 hfe, 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 hfe 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 ! 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 lips 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 martyrs in prison cells and felon chams ; 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 your 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 immortahty, never to lay down your arms, never to cease hostiUties, 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 living 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 English 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 country. You have never felt the pride, the dignity, the majesty of independence. You could never Uft up your head, to heaven and glory in the name of Irishman, for aU Europe read the brand of slave upon your brow. " Oh ! that my words could burn like 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 . Cotir age ! need I preach to Irishmen of courage ? Is it so hard a thing then to die ? Alas ! do we not all die daily of broken hearts and shattered hopes, and tortures of mind and body that make life a weariness, and of weariness worse even than the tortures ; for life 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 million of you have perished thus. Courage ! You will not now belie 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 pallid 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 truth, 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 felon — 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 terms to England. If she cajatulates even now at the eleventh hour, and grants the moderate, the just demands of Ireland, our arms shall not be raised to sever the golden link that unites the two nations. And the chances of success are all with us. There is a God-hke 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 froni 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 instrumeilts of despotism and tyranny — they will blush to re- ceive the purchase-money of England which hires them for the accursed and fratricidal work. Would a Sicilian have been found in the ranks of Naples ? Would a Milanese have been de- tected in the fierce hordes of Austria ? No ; for the Sicilians prize honour, 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 countrymen. And heaven forbid that in Ireland could be found a band of armed fratricides to fight against their own land for the flag of at foreign tyrant. 58 The Life of Oscar Wilde 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 jtheir honour. Pity for that brave soldiery whose Irish valour has made England illustrious, that they must stain honour, arid 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 discipline 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 ground against six miUions. 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 possession 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 English power; take it, destroy it, burn 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 tyranny 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 establish 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 possibility 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 hberty. 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, Uberty, country, have as sacred a meaning in our hearts and actions as they are holy on our Hps J that patriotism means not merely the wild irresistible force that crushed tyranny, 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 life depends on you ; for we have all lain dead. Hate, distrust, oppres- sion, disunion, selfishness, bigotry — these things are Death. We must crush all vices — anni- hilate aU evil passions — ^trample on them, as a triumphant Christ with his foot upon the 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 ! " 52 CHAPTER IV Lady Wilde's Nationalism — ^The Influence of a Single Book — Oscar Wilde's Similar Claim — ^Meeting between Mr Duffy and Mr Ellis — Speranza's Fine Gesture — Her Admiration for Mr Duffy — Pen-Portraits of Lady Wilde at Different Periods — How she clung to Youth — Her Fondness for Society — Eccentricities of Dress — Her Son's Resemblance to her — Her Literary Labours — A Letter to Mr O'Donoghue — 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 Dublin 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) Duffy. It would be difficult otherwise to understand these extreme measures, for the article is exactly of that class of revolutionary literature 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 Nationalist 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 ahmony 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 Williams' 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 literary 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-century 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 Nationahst 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 life 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 E 65 The Life of Oscar Wilde strangest book that he had ever r-^ad. It seemed to him that, in exquisite raiinent, and to the dehcate 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 cUng 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 repeated, 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 falUng day and the creeping shadows. . . . For years Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this book." This is, of course, silliness. Yet Oscar Wilde used to make the same siUy, 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 EUis " is well-known. It may, however, be repeated here, with the addition of Lady Wilde's owii 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 ElHs ' 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 DujflEy relates in his " Young Ireland " that " Mr Ellis, whom he had frequently requested to call upon him at The Nation of&ce, 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 Duffy 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 " J acta 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 dischargfed 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 Leeson Street, Monday. " My dear Sir, — I return with many thanks the volume of Cromwell which has been travelling about with me for the last four months, and shall feel obliged 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 telling you, now the pen is in my hand, how deeply impressed I felt by your opening lecture to your club. It was the subhmest teaching, and the style so simple from its very sublimity — 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 hfe. 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 live 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 living iii 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 crying out, " How ever am I to get through all these people." 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 Ostar 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 account of a call she paid to Lady Wilde at No. i Merrion 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 lights; 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 crinolines, for when she walked there was a peculiar swa5dng, swelling movement, like that of a vessel at sea, with the sails filled with wind. Over the crimson silk were flounces 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 afms, 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 DubMn 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 wipe it off the face of Ireland. In the story of " An Unhappy Friendship " we find the following reference to Lady Wilde at hope in her son William'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. C'Staitquelqu'un. Her voice had a peculiar power and a pecuUar 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 Corkran calls attention. Yet her black silk bodice was as covered with large old- fashioned medalhons 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 tr9,nsmitted to her son Oscar. His books are full of rhapsodical eulogies of youth ; he never tires of satirising and condemning maturity 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 literary history. This ex-revolutioiiary had for the society of the wealthy, the titled, the dis- tinguished, the same pronounced liking which was noticed in Oscar Wilde also. As long as it was possible for her to do so, indeed until 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 days 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 unspeakable tragedies that Time held in its lap, the gatherings were the shabby-genteel burlesque of a literary 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 solitude : — " 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 — came a confus- ing buzz of voices. Anglo-Irish and American, Irish literary people, 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 ! Even then, and 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 corner 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 black, and Mrs Black looked very weU 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, was a key to the way in which Lady Wilde looked at things. Trifles, everyday trifles, she considered quite beneath her ; and yet trifles 76 The Life of Oscar Wilde make up the sum of human Ufe. She had a horror of the ' miasma of the commonplace ' ; her eyes were fixed on ideals, on heroes, ancient and modern — and thus she missed much that was Ijdng 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 sung : — " We stand in the light of a dawning day With its glory creation flushing ; And the life-currents up from the pris'ning clay, Throtigh 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. O'Donoghue the fol- lowing account of her literary and journalistic 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 literature than to politics. NationaKty was certainly the first awakener of any mental power of genius within me, and the strongest sentiments of my intellectual life, 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 hst 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 Charms 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 aft«r her death, " translated several French and German works, and was the author of ' Ugo Bassi,' a tale of the Itahan Revolution in 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 B^ranger.'" She was never photographed; and the only portraits which survive are engravings from pictures. Many of her writings were never published. 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 peasantry. When he died a great amount of material had been col- lected, much of which I have published in the last year or so in the volumes entitled ' Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland,' and ' Ancient Legends of Ireland.' Sir William 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 affinities 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 sotirce. Under " direct inheritance," or " transmission by blood," may, perhaps, be classed his literary capacity, his gifts of poetry, languages, of ready maistery of diificult studies, his love of the beautiful, the sound 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 alcohohsm, 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 the 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 intelhgence. But the few data arrived at may render the problem of that psychology less bewildering, and at the same time, because of F 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 light 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 Oscar Wilde's Christening — ^The Selection of his Names — His Later Dislike of them — No. i Merrion Square — ^The Merrion Square Jarvey — Oscar Wilde and the Cab-drivers — Oscar and his 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 — Sir William Wilde's Love of Nature — Oscar's Abhorrence frcim Nature — His Enunciations on the Subject — Oscar Wilde'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 mournful city of Dubhn ; 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 virility. These names were so chosen as to proclaim to the world the lad's close 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 living in Dublin 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 myth 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 meu. 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" (" Konung 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 1)1/ Elliot i Fru. W. G. WILLS, PAINTER AND DRAMATIST. COUSIN TO OSCAR WILDE. To face page Ht. The Life of Oscar Wilde be christened Fingal and CFlahertX; the latter from those " wild O'Flahert^ " from whom Cromwell's soldiers in an addendum 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 county people who had been settled for over three hundred 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 outr& and self-assertive ; and in all these ways his Irish Christian names offended his taste. For the rest Oscar Wilde never willingly placed himself on the losing side in any division of men. Irishmen and Irish matters have always been as unpopular 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- ality 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 shoiilders, that it was this very pride as an Irishman which prevented him from fleeing from a British Court of Justice when the opportunity 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 surroundings 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 English cities which can compare in comfort, amplitude, elegance and decoration with a very large number of the Dublin bourgeois palaces. No. i Merrion Square, which is a corner 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, solid, substantial bourgeois house which makes some pretensions to originality 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 dwelling-place for a revolutionary poetess, or as the birthplace of a man of genius who over shifting, lifting 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 born 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 corner 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 born. The stranger may answer that he did not know that the poet had been knighted also, and then the jarvey says 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 always 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 Burlington 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 young patron had any partiality for buttonhole flowers, but he re- members that even in those days, 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 arid Oscar were great friends ; and Oscar Wilde in after life 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 shght quarrel, I use^ 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 born 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 : — " Coffinboard, 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 novehst 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, lew 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 have been done with him. He had, of course, tutors, and the run of a library containing the best literature, and went to a Royal school ; but it was at his father's dinner-table and in his mother's drawing-room that the best of his early education was obtained. Another ex- perience, unusual to boyhood, had a powerful formative influence. He travelled much in France and Germany, becoming acquainted with the works of Heine and Goethe, but more especially with French literature and the French temperament. It was in France, at an age when other boys are grinding at grammar or cricket, that Oscar Wilde began to realise in some measure what he was. There he found himself for the first time in a wholly congenial environment. The EngUsh temperament — there are those who deny that such a thing exists-^ ' like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh ' responds indifferently to the aesthetic. In France Mr Wilde found everywhere exquisite susceptibility to beauty, and found also that he himself, an Irish Celt, possessed this suscepti- bility in all its intensity. French* and Greek literature were the two earliest passions of his artistic life." That he was famihar with German literature as a boy is not the case, and it is also doubtful 92 The Life of Oscar Wilde if the French environment revealed to the lad anything within himself of which he was not aware. There is no special susceptibility to beauty in France ; indeed, in few countries is more profound indifference displayed by the great mass of the people to the wonderful natural and artistic beauty with which the country is endowed. In Oscar Wilde's youth the very beauties which he was afterwards to celebrate in periods so eloquent were the derision of the majority. As a young man Oscar Wilde used to echo the foolish contempt of Lamartine which was the fashionable attitude of the cognoscenti in France in his boyhood. Lamar- tine, expounded by him, appeared a French Martin Tupper. And this is but an instance. His visits to France seemed to have laid the foundations of that great knowledge of the French language which he displayed in the writing of "Salome." As to the writing and language of this play, the best French critics are unanimous in expressing their wonder that any foreigner could have acquired such a mastery of the French language, its beauties and intricacies. But as Ernest La Jeunesse has said : " II savait tout." French was so famihar to him that, as he used to say, " he often thought in French." As a preparation for a 93 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 tiihes 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 applied to " Salome." 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 lad, 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 until 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 sa3dng of hers is still remembered in Diiblin, which gives an echo of the way in which her attitude of revolt against the accepted and the commonplace 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 met the right one." The mother's salon, the father's supper-table were frequented by boozy and boisterous Bohemians, than whom no city more than DubUn 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 want 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 foolish a way. " Pour etonner 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-lived young man than he. But his words show the prevailing 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- morality 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 life 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 under the moving seasons, he used to describe the country as " rather tedious " ; and to the end remained a dweller in cities. Atmospheric effects, the planets and the stars, the lights on land and sea, 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 Dubhn, 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 lightning flashes over the sea. " tte 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 life spent amidst rustic surroundings was fatal to artistic production. " One can only write in cities," 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 dislike for Nature and the natural life 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 Lying" are not so much brilliant paradox. They are the sincere expressions of Oscar Wilde's feeling 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 infinite 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 life." 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 hypocrisy, in the general definitions of what is good and beautiful. This h5rpocrisy 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 ? 100 CHAPTER VI Portora Royal School — Its Sectarian Character — Prompt Dis- iUusionment — Oscar's Proficiency — Incapacity for Arith- metic — His Appearance as a Boy — His Precocity in a Dangerous Talent — His Fondness for Dress — His Unpopularity — His Eager Thirst for Knowledge — His Excellent Character — ^Matriculation at T.C.D. — His Re- putation there — ^The Berkeley G
y Ttif^rfifjifz. l6, TITE STREET. To face jmjt 257. The Life of Oscar Wilde cream-coloured feathers and red knots of ribbon, lilies in their hands, amber necklaces and- yellow 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 under the brim and round 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 blindly 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 union so initiated could not contain the elements of happiness. Where the woman is entirely hypnotised and sub- jugated her marriage is not often a happy one for her. On the day of his wedding Oscar Wilde took his young 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 Rivoli. They both seemed to be radiantly happy. Oscar was a gallant and de- R 257 The Life of Oscar Wilde voted husband, and Constance seemed to be swathed in rapturous dehght. 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 solitude 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 to.p 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 little 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 journa- lism for hvehhood, and he accepted occasional engagements on the lecture-platform. He was a constant contributor of anonymous work to 258 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 pubUshing-houses by speculators in his notoriety. It was a disservice to his reputation, it would appear, which would concern these literary re- surrection-men but little. The work was poor ; it was the hack-work, cunente 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) j 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 world there underlies 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 system, as crushing as " The Soul of Man." And yet 259 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 Carroll and Hans Andersen Oscar Wilde tells a story which a child can read with pleasure and interest, and without that un- comfortable f eeUng that moral medicine is being administered to him in literary 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 delivered at the Gaiety, Dublin, 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 — UgUness in Dress); and the second, on Tuesday, treated of "The Value of Art in Modern Life." Of both these lectures a resume appears at the end of this volume. The enterprise was a disastrous failure. DubHn was indifferent to the son of Speranza, indifferent to the son of Sir William Wilde, in- different to the brilliant 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 " :— 360 The Life of Oscar Wilde " Although the fact of the lecture taking place was fully announced for days 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 intelligent, 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 public. Mr Gunn was asking 21s., 30s., and 42s. for private boxes, and proportionate prices for the rest of the house. At that time matinee 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 hstened patiently for some time to Oscar's discourse, and finally got up ex- claiming : " What's all 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 z6i The Life of Oscar Wilde the Berkeley Medallist, son of Sir William 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 Dublin audience would have excited v6ry general interest among his fellow-citizens. 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 public, 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 falling off in the quality of the lectures, which formed not only a complete exposition of Mr Wilde's peculiar 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 dehvered in this city will materially remedy this defect, and will help to restore Mr Wilde to public favour. Meanwhile he will not regret the decrease on his receipts, for as 262 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 sljining 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 embod5dng his requirements to The Freeman's 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 lived 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 born to them. Stray writings for the papers, 264 The Life of Oscar Wilde 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. 265 CHAPTER XII Oscar Wilde in Fleet Street — Editor of The Woman's World — 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 M'Clure's Magazine — Oscar Wilde and Le Journal — His Contribu- tions to The Daily Chronicle — ^The 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 Hill — 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 belief 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 ensure commercial success. In this belief 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 futilities 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 life. 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 believe, 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 " was 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 opportunities 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- 269 The Life of Oscar Wilde faction of showing that the part of journaUst 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 feelings 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 270 The Life of Oscar Wilde Tales." There are five of these tales, " A Night with the Fairies," " A Legend of Sharkj" " Fairy Help," " The Western Isles," and " St Patrick and the Witch." Constance Wilde's contribution during this year to the magazine of which her husband was editor is an illustrated, well " documented " paper on "Muffs," a good specimen of the " Museum-made " article. It may be said that since the magistrate, Brillat-Savarin, wrote his "Physiologic du Gout," and showed that a cookery-book can be made a work of literary art, never has literary skill been put in stranger fashion at the service of the commonplaces of domestic life than appears in the pages of The Woman's World under Oscar Wilde's editorship. " Que diable allait-elle faire dans cette galere ? " might be asked of Hterature. 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 delighted in the style were kept aloof by the subjects. Oscar Wilde's personal contributions to this periodical — apart from certain articles on special hterary subjects — ^took the form of a monthly causerie, published under the title of " Some Literary Notes." Considerable care and in- 271 The Life of Oscar Wilde dustry were expended by the editor on these articles. They usually occupied five pages of The Woman's World, and were quite the most interesting literary criticism then appearing in London. But what student of contemporary literature was going to himt out these " literary notes " between an article on " The Gymnasium for Girls," by Mrs L. Ormiston Chant, 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 literature, which no future compiler of a complete edition of his works should fair 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 1899 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 Countess of Portsmouth, St Hehers, Gleeson WTiite, Miss Olive Schreiner, Lady Sandhurst, Miss F. L. Shaw, Miss Marie 272 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 Rialto 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 wotdd 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 sppt. 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 hterary 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 Wilde magazines. He wrote anonymously for The Pall Mall 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 J his name is to be found under many magazine articles which have long since been forgotten. One remembers, for instance, an article on " London Models " which appeared in The English Illustrated Magazine (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 journa- lists. 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 pubKc 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 country — but naturally as long as his reputation rested alone on this foundation 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 public 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 brotjher 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 slips 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- 275 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 Parnell 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 Socialism," 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 public nailed the ears of journalists to the pump. That was quite hid- eous. In this century journalists have nailed their own ears to the keyhole. That is much worse." This vituperation of journalists 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 life 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 wheii " The Ideal 276 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 pubHsh 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 aU 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 Tite 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 wotild in no way assist in the production of the article unless he first received a cheque for ^f 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 friend 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 -^jvay 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 Berne val, it was suggested to Fernaud 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 night, alluding to this, I said : ' Well, you have got your name before the pubhc at last.' He laughed, and said : ' Nobody can pre- tend now not to have heard it.' ' Oscar Wilde. The Story of an Unhappy Friendship '■ -' 278 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 whicli 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 courteously 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 days past were prepared to pay him a very large fee for the privilege of 279 The Life of Oscar Wilde 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 monthlies he would be able to earn an immediate supply of money." " Ah," said Oscar Wilde, " I remember when one editor oi the Nineteenth Century used, to come to my house and solicit 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 hght 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 weir 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 sums which out of a meagre purse, at a time of great need, he gave away to his poor comrades in misfortune, those who had been prisoners with him in Reading Gaol. 281 CHAPTER XIII Some Traits Of his Character — Oscar Wilde in Matters of Money — His Extreme Delicacy of Feeling — Oscar Wilde as a Talker — ^The Testimony of a Gentleman of Letters — And of a Man of Action — Oscar Wilde as a Man of Action — ^The Reasons of his Popularity — His Small Actual Pro- duction — His Immense Real Output — ^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 Ufe 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 delicacy. He loved money for the pleasures that it commands ; 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 little recognition. His generosity was unbounded. "I have no sense of property," he used to say; 282 = « a The Life of Oscar Wilde but he did not add that for the property of others he had a respect as stern 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 delightful 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 feelings of his friend a sum 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 Sjaid : " 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 purposes. 283 The Life of Oscar 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 astounding as it was delightful. 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 Regnier 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 R6gnier, 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 novelist of refinement, pays in his book of essays 284 The Life of Oscar Wilde Figures et CaracUres 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 Regnier 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 were far from common. His expressions were embellished aSs The Life of Oscar Wilde with words which had been most judiciously selected. 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 telUng stories) "was his way of sa5dng 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 lips of the story-teller. As his hand moved with a slow gesture the scarabceus of his ring threw off its green lights. The face kept changing its ex- 286 lEAN JOSErH-RENAUI), TRANSLATOR OF "iNTENTIOXS," AND AUTHOR OF A ^rOST INTERESTING MONOGRAl'H ON OSCAR WILDE. MONSIEUR RENAUD IS THE BEST GENTLEMAN FENCER IN FRANCE. To face page 287. The Life of Oscar Wilde pression with the most amusing mimicry, the voice flowed on unceasingly, dragging a little, always 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. Stephane Mallarme, which explained facts and things in a manner so delicate and exact. It had nothing of the varied, anecdotic talk of M. Alphonse Daudet with his striking aperpus on men and things. Nor did it resemble in any way the paradoxical beauty of thie sayings of M. Paul Adam, or the biting acridity of M. Henri Becque. M. Wilde used to tell his stories like Vilhers de ITsle-Adam told them. . . . M. Wilde charmed and amused, and he gave one the 287 The Life of Oscar Wilde 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 English 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 English 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 Uterary 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 Monsieur 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 : — " ^/V^len, 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 Auteuil bookmaker, by clothes in better taste than a bookmaker wears, by a voice which was exquisitely musical, and by the pure blue hght, almost like , 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 shrivelling itself up in his button-hole. Without listening 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 closed 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 hors d'ceuvres 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 ! Oh ! 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 procures to a man. We found in M. Wilde the hoaxing cynicism of Baudelaire and VilUers 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 our prodigious theatri- cal instinct explains many of our acts ; French foreign pohtics, for instance, are theatrical ; they aim rather at the finest attitude, the most striking phrases, the most effective gestures, 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, 291 The Life of Oscar Wilde exact. He made them glitter under the light of his words, even as a jeweller awakes new hghts 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 little by little raised himself to a lofty and intoxicating lyricism ; his fine voice hymned, grew tender, rang out, hke a viol, in the midst of the emotional silence. This Englishman, 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 Gaulois 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 repandaient autour de lui comme autour de Buckingham, a la cour de France, se repandaient les bijoux par calcul mal attaches au pourpoint 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 use that the crime became an 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 little 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 mirej 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 literature 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 a 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 ! 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 always to remember that Oscar Wilde was a man of action, condemned 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 physically 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 buffooneries which in his youth were reproached against Oscar Wilde were the result merely of a chafing exuberance. He sought, indeed, saner outlets, and his misfortune 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 Parliament. It is deeply to be regretted that his poverty prevented the realisation of this project. In a political 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 born 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- liant 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 Wilde instance : when he was lecturing in DubUn 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 filled many eyes with tears : " When the heart of a nation is broken, it is broken in rnusic." 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, your 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 encounter, 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 dehghtful, 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 brilliant. 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 dying eloquence. "He is haunted with a foreboding of death, 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 thpy 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 feelings of many of those whom he came across ; words of woe poured from his lips ; 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 brilliant, whimsical touch, a swallow-wing flash on the waters of eloquence, the tone changed and rippled with laughter, bringing with it his audience, reheved, 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 ' From an article signed " A " in The St James's Gazette. 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 Berneval 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 brilliancy of Oscar Wilde's talk, in its unceasing flow and the ap- parently inexhaustible resources of wit and knowledge on which he drew, the prodromes of the disease of which he died. The cause of his death was meningitis, 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 chronic state which might account for the almost feverish energy of his cerebration. But to the ordinary man 300 The Life of Oscar Wilde 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 briUiant talkers who ever lived ? There are men high in humanity's Walhalla who left httle 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 Cor da. 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 always 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 measure 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 literature 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 widevspreading 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 systems 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 Uterature 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 hke to call an infallible taste in art and literature — my friend . . . can say something as to that — but I mention this ab- surdly egoistic belief simply because at first I had at times a lurking suspicion that my taste must be wrong, 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 literature, 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 Lippincott'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 literary 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 of 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 LippincoWs had refused the manuscript on the ground 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 deliberately 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 qualifying 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 delicate. The book might be described as silly, as obviously intended to Spater les sots, for one knows of all the nasty little vices of silly little 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 literature, 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 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 sufi&cient 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 un- consciously. 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 saying of the French argousin : " Give me three lines of any man's writing and I will hang him." The book was not very well received. It was not at the time a commercial success. The reviewers were not enthusiastic. In the 307 The Life of Oscar Wilde AthencBum for 27th June i8gi 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 ability. The ideas of the book may have beeii 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 literary 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 Wilde than Walter Pater, which meant that every lover of literature 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 Ufe 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 underlies it, Mr Wilde startling his ' countrymen ' carries on, more per- haps than any other writer, the brilliant critical work of Matthew Arnold. ' The Decay of L5dng,' for instance, is all but unique in its half humorous, yet wholly convinced, presentment of certain valuable truths of criticism. Conversa- tional ease, the fluidity of life, feUcitous ex- pression are qualities which have a natural alliance to the successfxol 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 unsuc- cessful experiment in Epicureanism, in life 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. literature. 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 Mr Wilde, won't you give us time to read them ? " " Oh, for that," said Oscar Wilde, " 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 brilhant, he said : "I had to strain every nerve iij conversation to equal Henley." Henley afterwards remarked of Wilde : "He is the sketch of a great man." Oscar's briUiant 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 making 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 i8gi 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- 312 The Life of Oscar Wilde burnings 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 Annus Mirabilis — " Lord Arthur Savile's Crime " — Mrs Wilde's Copy — Lady Windermere's Fan — The Premiere — Oscar Wilde before the Curtain — Comments on His Attitude — The Obvious Explanation — " A Woman of no Import- ance " — '• An Ideal Husband " — Some Criticisms — A New Departure — •' The Importance of being Earnest " — Its Reception — ^The Critics Disarmed — Its Supernatural Cleverness — ^What that Portended — Oscar Wilde's Psy- chopathia — ^The Causes of its Periodical Outbreak — ^The Unconsciousness of the Afflicted — A Document from Hall Caine's Collection — ^The Corruption of London — Facts afterwards Remembered — ^The New Hedonists — ^Then and Now — Oscar Wilde in Paris — Two Pen-Pictures of him — Octave Mirbeau and de R6gnier. 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 English criticism, 314 The Life of Oscar Wilde the AthencBum, 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 pubhshed 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 novelist because that was far too easy he was indulging in no vainglorious boast. Ne faict ce tour qui veult, could not be said to him. It was a posi- tive fact that had he chosen to write marketable stuff there was nobody in London who could have produced a more saleable and more popular " Une " 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 hving in Charles Street, Grosvenor Square, his brother Willy, who used to write 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 jivant the plot of a story or two. Yates is asking me for some." Then Oscar, still puffing his cigarette, would 315 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-in-trade. The mere eavesdropper at his door showed that he could found a literary reputation and a fortune on such fragments of Oscar Wilde's conversation, as, straining his 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 AthencBum referred to above. Now the Athe- ncBunCs 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 little book 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 Canter ville Ghost ' is a first-rate ghost story, told partly from the point of view of the ghost himself — a 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, 'gi." 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 quality 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 Guildensterns 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 everything 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 hke 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 public 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 brilliant one. It was la grande Boheme that came to judge of Oscar Wilde as a dramatist." "Never," says a contemporary writer, " did audience at a premiere appear less brilliantly attired. The duchesses, countesses, and other grandSs dames whose foibles and follies were to be held up over the 319 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, hghtly 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 Indefwick, 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 estabhshed 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 laboured. His story was of the kind which has always tempted tyro 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 denouement, which was, of course, the greatest mistake that the playwright could have committed. Mrs Erl5mne 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- presented as leaning on a pedestal with his elbow propped upon volumes of " Odette," " Fran- cillon," and " Le- Supplice d'Une Femme," to make room for which a bust of Shakespeare 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 cited. The question was not there. It was by his way of treating a time-old 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 X 321 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 manners 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 footlights 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. 322 i*-'^ The Life of Oscar Wilde These are some extracts fronvthe article which appeared in that journal : — ,', "It is strange that the legitilhate^feh suc- cessor to Joe Miller should have forgotten one of the stalest stories of his native Dubhn. There jwas once on a time a row in a Dublin 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 ! Don't waste him. Spile a fiddler with him ! ' 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, deliberately 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 puffing himself between the whiffs of a cigarette in a public 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 would never have been finished without serious damage to Mr Alex- ander's property." In Punch of the following week the incident 323 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. For that his conduct was nothing but a gaucherie it needs not charity to believe. 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 all read of the strange antics which dramatic authprs 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 324 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 bafouilleege 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 would deliberately 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 dehberate 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 public 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, 32s The Life of Oscar Wilde has been ratified since. The play has frequently been revived, and each time with increased suc- cess. It is pla5dng this year in America before enthusiastic houses. On the Continent, with the exception, perhaps, of Italy, this play meets with little approval. For the French it is choses vues ; the Germans speak of it as a Gartenmauer 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 English 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 EngHsh-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 commonest order of melodrama.'' The AtheneBum's criticism may also be quoted in part. It endeavours to explain Oscar Wilde's 327 The Life of Oscar Wilde dramaturgical procesSj 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 duU people are brilliant at brealcfast. . .' ' All reasons are absurd,' and the like." 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 328 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 absurd ! " 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 applies to any work of art 329 The Life of Oscar Wilde which is close to perfection of its kind, has, of course, nothing to do^ in that gaUre. Clever it is beyond praise, because here once again we have Oscax 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 AAdth the same facility as ' the butterwoman's rank to market.' " " Yet frivolous, saucy, and impertinent as Mr Wilde's dialogue is," wrote th.Q Athenaunt critic, " and uncharacteristic 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 in 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 slightest 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 souffle. Nor, unfortunately, is it necessaiy 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 English writer of comedy has been performed. Oscar Wilde had transplanted to London the exnberant 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 Wilde 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 rollicking, 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 cynical 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 feeling 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- 332 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 ! not one of those who witnessed that wonderful premiere 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 delighted him was but a symptom of a cruel mental disease. The clever- ness displayed appeared to the dazzled audience supernatural. It was so indeed. As one may see in the circus-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 with its splendour over the narrow border-hne of which Dry den speaks. From circumstances which so soon afterwards became matters of pubhc knowledge and dismay there can be no dpubt that it was a diseased brain which had fashioned for delight 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 always 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. Physical 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 of means had put a certain check upon extra- vagant indulgence. After his accession to pros- perity this check was removed, and for many 334 The Life of Oscar Wilde months, indeed, for the period of three years, he was overstimulating his body and poisoning his nerve-centres to an extent which is revealed to us by the complete state of neurasthenia into which he fell shortly before his death. A very distinguished lady who has made a life-study of the question of nutrition on the mental state of man recently expressed in a letter her con- viction that it was to his irregular mode of life that much of Oscar Wilde's downfall could be attributed, both before and after his confinement in a gaol. " My belief is," she wrote to the author of " The Story of an Unhappy Friendship" — " and you seem to suggest something of the same kind — that the prison fare restored his health and his brain, and that had he had some really true friend who could have kept all alcohol and all meat and high living from him he would have returned to his poor wife, and all would have been different. I am so entirely convinced this is the case in hundreds of cases. The return to old drinks and the old foods reproduces the old self- same mental aberration which continually makes prisoners return to exactly the same state they were in before they went to prison, and to commit the same crimes." The temperance lecturers, if they had the 335 The Life of Oscar Wilde courage to quote the example, could find in the cases of those two brilliant men, William and Oscar Wilde, most striking demonstrations of the truth of their teachings, and the importance of their warnings. The man who drinks may not injure himself, he may die in good repute and lie buried under eulogistic marble, but he transmits to his aftercomers in their life-blood the very germs of dissolution, crime, and death. Oscar paid in his innocent person the toll that Nature exacted for the centuries of Hibernian convivia- lity of rollicking ancestors. He was never once intoxicated in his life ; except in the very last mournful weeks of his life, when he sought in alcohol a stimulus to his flagging brain, he held excess in abhorrence ; yet by reason of his descendance his indulgences, such as they were, in strong drink and gourmandising on stimulating foods, which would have been harmless to a man not predisposed by heredity, incontestably pro- duced the terrible mischief which was the cause of his ruin, disgrace and death. We have in his life the clearest demonstration of this fact. One has but to compare his mental, moral, and physical condition while he was leading a life of excess, with the man whom we see in his cell in Reading Gaol, writing " De Profundis." Max Nordau was in the right when he spoke of 336 The Life of Oscar Wilde Oscar Wilde as a degenerate, and his essay would have had more effect had it been worded with more charity and less rancour. There was in the composition of that wonderful brain, hidden somewhere, a demon factor, which the coup de fouet of alcohol and excess of stimulating food could lash into periodical activity. The evidence is very strong that Oscar Wilde's special form of disease was epileptiform, as indeed are all the most cruel afflictions of the brain. One striking characteristic of these formidable maladies is that their victim, who, while under the influence of the paroxysm he commits the most atrocious deeds, is, when he recovers his sanity, totally unconscious of what he has done. When Hall Caine some years ago was preparing for a book on drunkenness he was supplied by the great American temperance lecturer, Gough, with an illustration of the fatal dangers of drink to certain natures. " A man," related Gough, " woke up one morning in the lock-up in New York. Hor- ribly ashamed to find himself, a worthy, re- spectable citizen, in such a place, he called to the warder and asked him what could have caused his arrest. ' I suppose I got drunk last night ? ' he said. * You did so,' said the warder. ' My poor wife ! ' cried the man bitterly ashamed, ' what will she say when she hears that ? ■ He Y 337 The Life of Oscar Wilde then asked how soon it would be before he was taken before the magistrate to pay his fine and to return home. ' You won't go up to-day,' said the warder. ' You are in for murder. You killed someone last night ! ' The horrified prisoner refused to believe it. When at last the dreadful truth dawned upon him that the warder was speaking seriously, and that, indeed, his hands were stained in blood, he thought first of all of the misery and consternation which this would produce at home. ' My poor wife ! My poor wife ! ' he cried. ' Why, man ! ' cried the warder, almost indignantly, for he supposed the man to be feigning ignorance, ' sure and it's your wife that ye've murdered.' This was with- out a doubt a man suffering, though he did not know it, from an epileptiform affliction. He was a man who if he had never got drunk might have lived a blameless and honoured life. The alcohol had whipped the sleeping fiend into activity. There are thousands of men walking about London at this moment who are in his case. One reads every day in the law reports, in the sordid and mournful records of the policc'-courts and the Old Bailey, of cases which exactly tally with this one. That Oscar Wilde's psycho- pathia was the same, every piece of evidence that we have before us goes to confirm. Alcohol 338 The Life of Oscar Wilde was sheer poison to him. All the extraordinary acts which he committed, the acts of sheer in- sanity, were committed, not when he was drunk, for he never was drunk, but when alcohol had developed an epileptic crisis in his head. It is such a pity that people, because they are still so entirely under the stupid domination of the Church, will not approach the consideration of these matters in a purely scientific spirit. After each crisis Oscar Wilde seems to have been totally unconscious of having done anything bad, de- testable, shameful, or even unusual. Under no other condition could he have maintained the serene and tranquil dignity which stamped him in his sane moments. Many of his friends re- fused to believe one word of the charges brought against him when the terrible revelations of the Old Bailey were made. Many even to-day re- fuse to beheve them. It must be remembered, also, that until the very day of his arrest his wife had not the faintest suspicion of anything wrong in his conduct. Such consummate dis- simulation, where it is not h5rpocrisy — and Oscar Wilde was no hypocrite, could not be a hypo- crite, was too arrogant to be a hypocrite — is in- variably the concomitant of the worst forms of madness. During the three or four years of his excessive 339 The Life of Oscar Wilde indulgences in drink and food his conduct ap- pears, from what was heard afterwards, to have caused disquietude to his friends, and disgust to his enemies. After his downfall one heard that during that time his example had made London " impossible." This one man, it was stated, had corrupted the metropolis of the world's greatest empire. He had infected six millions of men and women. These statettients, when people came to reflect, did not appear, even to those who had never paused to consider causes, so entirely preposterous. It was re- membered that during the period referred to the language of certain market-porters, cornermen, and fishwives in London had been far from select ; that during those years the Divorce Courts had never once suspended their sittings, except in times of vacation ; that the attend- ances at many churches and chapels in the metropolis had often been mournfully exiguous ; and that it was dangerous for any respectable woman to walk alone and unattended after midnight in the Haymarket or Piccadilly. It is incontestable also that during that period a number of minor writers of verse, who called themselves new Hedonists or modern decadents, published little books of unpleasing verses, and that one or two publishers did in the issuing of 340 The Life of Oscar Wilde these verses realise a certain competency. But the readers of these verses were very few, and the nasty, httle poets soon crept back into their suburban kennels, to take to easier and more remunerative forms of writing. If one looks to-day for the pornographic pleiad which was oozed forth on to the surface of the London mud in those days, it is not even in the purlieus of Parnassus that such individuals as have sur- vived will be found. They are middle-aged now, the new Hedonists,' whiskered and paunchy. The thin veneer of artistry has long since been peeled off their faces, and the rank stigmata of the Philistine now stand forth. There is a horrible passage in one of Lombroso's books in which. Writing of criminal women, he says that in youth it is very difficult, almost impossible, for the physiologist to detect the sure signs of their criminality. The freshness of their com- plexions, the chubbiness of their faces hide the stigmata. It is only towards middle-age that these signs, which all along have been there, though concealed by the mask of youth, come forth in all their horrible significance. This passage often occurs to him who to-day considers the men who formed the band of decadents and hedonists, who mimicked Oscar Wilde in his acts of insanity, thinking in that wise to gain some 341 The Life of Oscar Wilde of the refulgence which shone from the genius of his lucid intervals. During those years he frequently crossed to Paris. There, at least, and speaking generally, no suspicion assailed him. In the essay by Henri de Regnier, to which reference has been made above, we find a pen portrait of him as he was at that time, and before quoting it it may be as well to put down what was the opinion of this writer on Oscar Wilde, as he summed it up at the end of his essay, which, it should be remembered, was written after all the exposure had taken place. " In any case," he writes, " we may ignore what was his manner of life in London, and re- call only that we met in Paris an amiable and eloquent gentleman of that name whom all will remember who are fond of beautiful language and beautiful stories." This is the picture which Henri de Regnier paints of Oscar Wilde in the early nineties : — " Each year, in the spring and sometimes in the winter, one used to meet a perfect English gentleman in Paris. He used to lead in Paris the life which Monsieur Paul Bourget, for in- stance, might lead in London, frequenting artists, and showing himself in salons and fashionable restaurants in the company of the 342 The Life of Oscar Wilde leaders of mundane society \ seeking in one word all things which can interest a man who knows how to think, and who knows how to live. " This foreigner was tall and of great corpul- ence. A high complexion seemed to give still greater width to his cleap-shaven and proconsular face. It was the unbearded (glabre) face that one sees on coins. The eyes smiled. The hands seemed to be beautiful : they were rather fleshy and plump, and one of them was ornamented with a ring in which a beetle of green stone was Set. The man's tall figure allowed of his wearing ample and masterly frock-coats, which opened out on somewhat ' loud ' waistcoats of smooth velvet or flowered satins. Oriental cigarettes with gold tips were ever consuming themselves into smoke in his mouth. A rare blossom in his button-hole gave a finishing touch to his rich attire in which every detail seemed to have been carefully studied. From cab to cab, from cafe to cafe, from salon to salon, he moved with the lazy gait of a stout man who is rather weary. He carried on his correspondence by means of telegrams, and his conversation by means of apologues. He passed from a luncheon with Monsieur Barres to a dinner with Monsieur Moreas, for he was curious about all kinds of thoughts and manners of thinking, and the bold, 343 The Life of Oscar Wilde concise and ingenious ideas of the former in- terested him as much as the short, sonorous and peremptory affirmations of the latter. Paris welcomed this traveller with a certain amount of curiosity. M. Hugues Le Roux praised him, M. Teodor de Wyzewa scratched him, but no- thing disturbed his stolid bearing, his smiling serenity, and his mocking beatitude. Which of us did not meet him during those years ? I also had the pleasure of seeing him, and of seeing him again sometimes. His name was Oscar Wilde. He was an English poet and a man of wit." However, when he was accompanied, as he sometimes was, by the evil genius of his life, he seems in Paris, also, to have displayed eccen- tricities which did not escape the keen and satirical observation of certain. In Octave Mirbeau's book, "Le Journal d'Une Femme de Chambre," there is a picture of Oscar Wilde, which reveals him as the posew that he seemed to be when his fits were upon him, or when he had at his side to prompt him the corrupting influence which we have indicated. Mirbeau describes a soiree, a dinner-party in the grande Boheme of Paris, at which are present two Enghsh guests, Lucien Sartorys and Sir Harry Kimberly. The characteristics of these two friends are de- 344 The Life of Oscar Wilde scribed in the crude realism of expression which is employed throughout the book by Mirbeau. Sir Harry Kimberly is Oscar Wilde. It is ap- parent that Mirbeau must have met him at some such dinner-party as is depicted here, and that Oscar Wilde was talking nonsense. He records a long story which Oscar Wilde told on that oc- casion, adding just enough of his own to carry the bathos of it to its lowest point ; he casti- gates the attitudes of the foolish women who were listening, and quotes their foolish comments. The incident covers many pages of the book. Kimberly concludes his story by saying: " And that is why I have dipped the point of my golden knife in the preserves which the Kanaka virgins had prepared, in honour of a betrothal, such as our century, ignorant of beauty, never saw the hke of in splendour and magnificence." After the dinner, Kimberly goes from group to group asking : " Have you drunk of the milk of the fisher-weasel ? Oh ! Drink the milk of t^e fisher- weasel. . . . It is so ravishing ! " We see here the Oscar Wilde as he was at first during that scene which is described by Jean Joseph-Renaud. But, unlike as on that occasion, he was unconscious of the effect that he was producing. We find also in " The Story of an Unhappy 345 The Life of Oscar Wilde Friendship " that the author, who was one of Oscar Wilde's oldest friends, visiting him in January of 1895, detected a surprising change in him both physically and mentally. This is the passage referred to : — " It was at Christmas that I met him last, before the catastrophe of 1895, and my impression was altogether a pain- ful one. He was not the friend I had known and admired for so many years. I dined with him at Tite Street : for once there was no pleasure, but distress rather, in the occasion. He looked bloated. His face seemed to have lost its spiritual beauty, and was oozing with material prosperity. And his conversation also was not agreeable. I concluded that too much good living, and too much success had momen- tarily affected him both morally and physically. There is an American slang-phrase which exactly describes the impression that he produced upon me. He seemed to be suffering from a swollen head." 346 CHAPTER XV A Sagacious and Benevolent Autocrat — How hs could have saved Oscar Wilde — The Advantages of the Bastille — Restraint at Last — Under what Circumstances — ^Xhe Un- consciousness Displayed — Oscar Wilde's Graphology — Isabella, Baroness of Ungem-Sternberg — Her , Reading of his Character — ^The Sister of Nietzsche — Wilde's Mental Recovery in Prison — Oscar Wilde released on Bail — Hunted from House to House — Takes Refuge with his Mother — His Position — The Sale at Oakley Street — " Salom^ " — His Bearing before the Trial — Abyssus Abyssum Invocat — The End — Silence Above, Clamour Below. When one contemplates the spectacle afforded by this man of genius, endowed with gifts which made for the pride and joy of the nation, aild which in this sense were part of the imperial inheritance, it must fill many with regret that we do not live in England under the sway of a sagacious and benevolent autocrat. If, as, from the evidence that is now before us, appears patent, there were times in Oscar Wilde's life when his conduct, his utterances, his demeanour must have revealed to any but the most super- ficial observer that the man was not entirely responsible at certain periods and under certain influences, what a subject for regret it must 347 The Life of Oscar Wilde ever be that no authority there was which, able to disregard the democratic clamour of the ab- solute right of man to complete personal liberty, could have imposed upon him a necessary wholesome and politic restraint. Had Louis XIV. been living as autocrat of England, or even Napoleon, and had there raised itself in the centre of London a beneficent Bastille, what grander use could there ever have been for the discreet httre de cachet, which for a time would have put the man under that salutary restraint, which afterwards, under tragic circumstances, worked in his whole organism a reformation so astonishing and so splendid ! But alas, we live under a democra,tic government, with all the incoherences which must proceed from the association of two ideas — democracy and govern- ment — so antagonistic. We profess such re- spect for the liberty of the individual that we complacently look on at the antics of the partially demented until some act is committed which puts him within the grasp of the law. We then punish him for a crime which is our own, and, accomplices before the fact, we force him to bear the responsibility which is entirely ours. It is painfully illogical, but where the mob is allowed to interfere in matters of government nothing else is to be expected. 348 The Life of Oscar Wilde In Oscar Wilde's case things happened as they do happen in democratic governments. His intermittent insanity, stimulated by the worst influences, led him to acts which at last enabled the authorities to move; and that re- straint was put upon him which applied in another fashion would have preserved to Eng- land one of the men most fitted to serve her in the field of intellectual delight. The criminal law interfered at last, and great scandal was thereby caused, which could have been avoided by a Monsieur de Sartine, or other Public Inter- ferer, acting in the general interests of the public and the private interests of the man, if our commonsense allowed of the employment of an official so useful. Various causes contributed to the gust of horror by which the unhappy man, after these exposures, was swept over into the bottomless abyss. For centuries past the promptings of his insanity have been invested in the public mind, at least as far as England and her English-speak- ing colonies are concerned, with all the dread that acts of sacrilege inspire. When in the reign of Queen Elizabeth the secular courts took over from the ecclesiastical tribunals the estimate of criminality and the punishment of offenders, there were thus transmitted for all their rigours 349 The Life of Oscar Wilde three classes of offence, for which the Church had a special designation, not to be heard by ears polite. Of these heresy was one, and usury another. We have lived down the horror that heresy used to inspire, and we no longer — those of us who are of the Established Church — desire, to see Non-Conformist Ministers burned at any stake ; and as to usury, which term covers banking and other financial operations, we have grown in England to look upon the pursuit of this as one of the most desirable and respectable professions that a man can follow. Yet in the times of Queen Elizabeth the practice of hetero- doxy and such financial methods as flourish to- day were acts of sacrilege, and inspired people with the horror of such. The hatred which suddenly blazed forth against Wilde in the masses of the people proceeded from this in- stinctive horror of sacrilegious acts. One must go back to the Middle Ages, to the times when the odium theologicum burned most fiercely, to find any such outbreak of public indignation against a single man. Contributory causes were the detestation in which society held the writer who had so mercilessly exposed its follies, pre- tences and vices ; the long-harboured rancour of the Calvinists to whom Wilde had given mortal offence by his audacity in teaching that 350 The Life of Oscar Wilde life was a very good thing, that the world was full of pleasures, and that the man lived most wisely who most enjoyed all the good things that human existence can afford ; the personal enmity of a great number of people, provoked by a variety of motives, none honourable, nor worthy, but all human. Amongst the indifferent the satisfaction at the man's removal was akin to that which the owl of whom Gray writes in his Elegy may have felt when its complaints to the moon had been heard, and the cause of them had been suppressed. There is much of the moping owl in a large section of our stolid Britishry, and people of that category dislike nothing more intensely than the man of radio- activity who bustles into the stagnant area of their gehd dulness, and interferes with their somnolent eupepsia. To be forced to think, to be forced to laugh, to be taught things, in one word to be interfered with. No ! No ! NO ! Away with him ! In the official classes, the judicial and police authorities, the feeling against the man was one of intense exasperation at his folly in provoking an inquiry. An official of the Home Office said at the time : " There are on the books at Scotland Yard upwards of 20,000 persons belonging to the better classes in London alone, who are watched by the poUce, 351 The Life of Oscar Wilde but who are not interfered with because they do not themselves provoke investigation." The spectacle of men dealing out what it pleases them to call justice is at no time an inspiriting one. The simian grotesqueness of man never more clearly nor burlesquely mani- fests itself than in those attitudes which he considers the fullest of dignity, and in those functions in which he feels that he is raising himself above the very low level on which Creation has placed hiln. It does not come within the province of this book to record other- wise than in the most perfunctory manner these repulsive proceedings. The attitude of the accused man is, however, of psychological in- terest, and it will be necessary to follow him to some extent through the period where Law and Justice were — to use one of their stock phr£(.ses — " dealing with him." Being one night close upon intoxication, and being urged on by a person, who had a great and pernicious influence with him, Oscar Wilde in March 1895 laid an information for criminal libel against the Marquess of Queensberry. That he was irresponsible at the time when he com- mitted what the National Dictionary of Bio- graphy calls an " act of fatal insolence," is very clearly shown by his own appreciation of his 352 The Life of Oscar Wilde conduct, when a healthy regime had once more triumphed over his insanity. In " De Pro- fundis *' we find the following passage referring to this act : — " The one disgraceful, unpardon- able, and to all time contemptible action of my life was to allow myself to appeal to society for help and protection. To have made such an appeal would have been from the individualist point of view bad enough, but what excuse can there ever be put forward for having made it ? Of course, once I had put into motion the forces of society, society turned on me and said, ' Have you been living all this time in defiance of my laws, and do you now appeal to these laws, for protection ? You shall have those laws exer- cised to the full. You shall abide by what you have appealed to.' The result is I am in gaol. Certainly no man ever fell so ignobly, and by such ignoble instruments, as I did/' The case against the Marquess of Queensberry commenced at the Old Bailey in the first week of April. Oscar Wilde, the prosecutor, goes down to the court in a brougham with two horses and Uveried servants. His psychopathia was at this moment perilously tending towards megalomania and what that portends. His ar- rogance was superb ; and from its resources he drew the wonderful energy and mental activity z 353 The Life of Oscar Wilde with which he faced the long cross-examination to which he was put by Edward Carson. Though he talked in such a way as to appal the simple citizens who sat in the jury-box, yet his evident superiority in the tourney was so great that by sheer force of his personality and genius he might have carried the day, but for that fatal slip which, occurring at the very end of the en- counter, and just as the advocate was about to sit down, brought the whole edifice tumbling about his head. That evening it was communi- cated to him in a circuitous fashion, but with too apparent explicitness, that his wisest course would be to leave the country. He refused to flee. The next day the prosecution broke down, and a verdict of acquittal was pronounced in favour of the Marquess. Steps were immediately taken to secure the arrest of the prosecutor, but such delays occurred, or were purposely allowed to occur, that the warrant was not executed till late in the evening. Oscar Wilde had spent that afternoon in a private sitting-room at a hotel, smoking cigarettes, drinking whisky and soda, and reading now the Yellow Book, and now the evening papers. He evinced neither dis- may nor trepidation when the officers entered the room, and on ahghting from the cab at Scot- land Yard he had a courteous discussion with 354 i-'-^-e ■ — / A 7t y- >Tj7 FACSIMILE OF WILDES WRITING TOWARDS THE END. To face page 355. The Life of Oscar Wilde one of the detectives about the payment of the cabman. The unconsciousness displayed would not have deceived a mental pathologist for one moment as to his mental state and consequent irresponsibility. Arrested on 5th April, and lodged in Hollo way on the following day, he spent nineteen days in prison before he was brought to trial at the Old Bailey. During that period he largely recovered his sanity. His physique was still in an abnor- mal condition, as the writing of some of his letters shows. It is the writing of a neuropath. In the number for March -April 1905 of the Graphologische Monatshefte, published in Munich, there appeared a study of Oscar Wilde's char- acter, as revealed by his handwriting^ from the pen of a very distinguished Russian lady, the Baroness Isabella von Ungern-Sternberg of Revel. Madame d'Ungern-Sternberg is the Vice-Presidentess of the Paris Graphological Society, and the study is a purely scientific out. It is worthy of the attention of all those who wish to provide themselves with ^yery possible means of arriving at a solution of the formidable problem of Oscar Wilde's mentaUty. The three pieces of his writing on which she based her study were three letters. Of these, one was written in 1883 to a friend, just after Wilde's 355 The Life of Oscar Wilde departure from Paris, the second was a letter from HoUoway Prison, written while he was under remand, and the third was a note written not long before his death. The Baroness's study of Wilde's writing seems to have inspired her with as great an admiration for his character as her reading of "Intentions" had originally roused her enthusiasm for his talents. A very striking sentence in her estimate of the writing declares : — " Pathalogisches ist in Wildes Handschrift nicht zvL finden, auch nicht in der Probe Fig. 2, sobald wir absehen von der begreiflichen Erre- gung durch Aijgst und Hoffnung, Krankheit und Kraenkung." This means that there was nothing in his writing to reveal a pathological condition ; that is to say when he was sane, for he does not appear to have written during the paroxysms of his dementia. The specimen referred to is the letter from Hollo way. Here there is nothing pathological, but at the same time the writing shows illness. A curipus incident may be re- lated in connection with the Baronne d'Ungem- Sternberg's essay. It so exactly talhed with the opinion which the sister of Nietzsche had formed of Oscar Wilde's character, from her study of his works, and from all that she had heard and read about him, that this distinguished lady 356 The Life of Oscar Wilde became an immediate convert to the scientific truth of graphology. He appears to have suffered very greatly during this confinement. " Wilde looked care- worn and much thinner " is what the reporters remarked about his appearance in the Old Bailey dock on 26th April. In the letter re- ferred to above he had spoken of himself in the following terms : " I am ill — apathetic. Slowly life creeps out of me." The trial ended in a disagreement of the jury. Shortly afterwards Oscar Wilde was released on bail to await a fresh trial at the next sessions. The amount was fixed at two thousand five hundred pounds, of which nearly three fourths were provided by a young nobleman, who was but slightly acquainted with the prisoner, and who realised almost the entire fortune at his command to supply the money. On leaving Hiolloway Prison Wilde drove to a hotel Where rooms had been engaged for him. As he was sitting down to dinner in his private room the manager of the hotel came in, shouted out that he knew who he was, and ordered him to leave the house at once. From thence Wilde drove to another hotel. Here he secured a room, and dinnerless, for he had no appetite left, was about to go to bed, when again he was 357 The Life of Oscar Wilde driven forth into the streets. Some men, it appeared, had followed him from the gates of HoUoway Prison — at whose instigation we need not inquire — and had determined that he should nowhere find shelter that night. They had threatened the manager of the second hotel that if he did not turn Oscar Wilde away they would wreck his house. He appears to have been refused admission, having been recognised, at other London hostel- ries that night. In the end he turned his thoughts towards his mother's home. Long past midnight his brother Willy heard a knock at the door of the house in Oakley Street. When he had opened the door, Oscar Wilde, pale as death, dishevelled, unnerved, staggered into the narrow hall, and sinking exhausted on to a chair cried out : " Willy, give me a shelter or I shall die in the streets." Willy Wilde frequently related the incident afterwards, but with a mixing of metaphors which sufficiently indicates the condition into which he was passing. " He came," he used to say, " tapping with his beak against the windowpane, and fell down on my threshold like a wounded stag." To the horrors of that peribd of waiting the touch of the grotesque was not to be wanting. SS8 The Life of Oscar Wilde He was entirely ruined, if such an expression may be applied to a man who had but to sit down and write in order to earn money. He had no money ; his home had been sold up ; of personal property he had nothing more than the few clothes and trinkets which he brought with him to Oakley Street . For on his arrest the usual had happened. Creditors rushed clamor- ously to precipitate his downfall. Judgments were " signed/' and executions " put in." Oh the day of the sale the house in Tite Street was invaded by a motley crowd, amongst which the genuine purchasers were few, the prurient sensation-mongers and the shifty-eyed thieves were many; Many articles were stolen ; doors were feloniously broken open. Never was such hamesucken perpetrated before with such im- punity. Here is the account which an Irish publisher gives of his visit to Tite Street during the sale : — "I went upstairs and found several people in an empty room, the floor of which was strewn, thickly strewn, with letters addressed to Oscar mostly in their envelopes and with much of Oscar's easily recognisable manuscript. This looked as though the various pieces of furniture which had been carried downstairs to be sold had been emptied of their contents on to the 359 The Life of Oscar Wilde floor. It is usual at sales, of course, for the furniture to be sold in each room as it stands. After I had been in the room some time, a broker's man came up and said : ' How did you get into this room ? What business have you in this room ? ' I said : ' The door was open and I walked in.' Then the man said : ' Then somebody has broken open the lock, because I locked the door myself.' " It was no doubt from this room that various of Oscar's manuscripts which have never been recovered were stolen. There were the scenarios of one or two comedies ; a whole poetic drama, " The Woman Covered With Jewels," and the manuscript of a work entitled " The Incomparable and Ingenious History of Mr W. H. Being the True Secret of Shakespeare's Sonnets, Now for the First Time here Fully Set Forth." This manuscript had been in the hands of Messrs Elkin Mathews & John Lane, who had already some time previ- ously announced it as being in preparation. On the day of Oscar Wilde's arrest, the manuscript was returned to his house. Nothing has ever been heard of it again. Certainly after Oscar Wilde's arrest there was no more opening for a work which was to establish that it was under the influence of an absorbing adoration for Mr W. H. that Shakespeare wrote his sonnets. It 360 The Life of OsCar Wilde is the only thing that Oscar ever wrote in which he daUied with the abnormal ; and, perhaps, for his reputation amongst the majority it is as well that instead of seeing the light of day this work is resting in the innermost recesses of the Cupboard of Poisons of some rich literary dilet- tant. In Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for July 1889 there appeared an article by Oscar Wilde entitled " The Portrait of Mr W. H.," in which he only very faintly indicates the theory to which he was to give such a development in the longer work. It was to form a piece of documentary evidence in support of his plea of the dignity, beauty, and advantages of those warm friendships between men, which he uttered in the witness-box at the Old Bailey amidst the moved silence even of his enemies. The sale at Tite Street was not a sale ; it was the pillage of an unprotected house. People stole with the greatest effrontery. The prices realised for such articles as did come to the hammer were ridiculously low. " There was a fine Whistler there," said the Irish gentleman referred to above, " the picture of a girl^ with the butterfly signature. I wanted to buy it. But the crowd in the room was so dense that one could not move, and I was unable to bid. It was knocked down for six pounds." 361 The Life of Oscar Wilde From his plays there was nothing to be hoped for. His name, immediately after his arrest, had been eSaced both on posters and pro- grammes ; the withdrawal of the plays was only a question of the time it took for the managers to reconcile interest with outraged fedings. For the rest, he had largely mortgaged his interests in these performances. From his books there was nothing to receive. The only asset that he possessed was the play " Salome," which he had written in French in 1892, and which had been accepted for production by Madame Sarah Bernhardt. Her intention had been to perform it in London, but the -Lord Chamberlain's Licen- ser of Plays refused to allow its performance. It was a Biblical piece ; and in those days Mr George Alexander and Mr Hall Caine had not yet demonstrated the utility of the stage in drawing the pubhc " nearer to the Great White Throne." Oscar Wilde's indignation at this re- fusal was very great, and he spoke at the time of leaving England and becoming a naturalised Frenchman. If he had followed up his purpose he would have been living now. While he was in Holloway, having no money for the purposes of his defence, he communicated through a friend with Madame Bernhardt offer- ing to sell her the rights in " Salome" for a lump 362 The Life of Oscar Wilde sum. The figure he mentioned was about the sixth part of what that poetic piece has already realised in royalties from Germany alone, with- out counting the sums which it is now producing as libretto in Strauss's opera. Madame Bern- hardt missed an excellent investment on this occasion, which as her conduct in this matter was entirely guided by business considerations may be for her to-day the subject of sOme regret. It is not to over-estimate the productiveness of " Salome " to say that anyone who had pur- chased it in 1895 for two or three thousand pounds would have invested his money at a thousand per cent. But, of course, Madame Bernhardt could not foresee that. She shed tears over Oscar Wilde's painful position, she sent him messages of sympathy, and she refused to assist him financially in any way. But for the generosity of Sir Edward Clarke in under- taking to defend him at the Old Bailey without a fee, it seems certain that Oscar Wilde would have been abandoned to the usual resources of poor prisoners. He had come to that : he was a poor prisoner : he might have been the bene- ficiary of an eleemosynary Old Bailey "soup." Sir Edward Clarke's sympathy with artists is notoriously not a great one ; he was the only man in London who refused to sign the petition 363 The Life of Oscar Wilde that the great Sir Henry Irving should be buried in Westminster Abbey ; and this in spite of the fact that they had been schoolfellows together. His principles and convictions must have been outraged by the principles and theories of Oscar Wilde (who, of course, had no convictions) yet he very generously undertook to defend him without remuneration. His friends had, of course, abandoned him. The usual had taken place. It is foolish to ex- pect exceptional conduct from the average. There had been the usual denials. The Atlantic cable was used by one person in his eager haste to repudiate the fallen man and his many ob- ligations to him. The actors took their revenge for that stinging remark about " the source of danger." Every door was shut upon the un- happy man. This was, perhaps, what afflicted him most. In his terrible awakening what sur- prised and distressed him beyond anything else was that " people to whom he had been kind, and nothing but kind, should turn upon him." There were, equally, of course, a few courtisans de la derniere heure. A man of such charm, such generosity and goodness could not but have friends who preferred him in disgrace and shame and peril to the people who turned their backs upon him. There were a few who would gladly 364 The Life of Oscar Wilde have gone to prison in his stead, would gladly have died for him. This is no hyperbole. More than one man since his downfall and ruin did die by his own hand, because he could not survive Oscar Wilde's catastrophe. More than a score of men are dragging out a broken life, who had not the courage to put an end to suffer- ings to which time can bring no surcease. It will not be necessary to say that the " R. " of " De Profundis," to whom Oscar Wilde pays a beautiful tribute in that book, a tribute worthy of the man's beautiful conduct, was loyal then as ever. And there were two or three others. During the period that he spent in Oakley Street, while on bail, Oscar Wilde seemed to have entirely recovered his sanity of mind. His physical condition was however deplorable. His nerves were wrecked. He was in fever all the time. He was paying his debt to Nature for years of indulgence. He was consumed with burning thirst. One of his friends was running out all day to fetch soda-water and lemonade for him. He drank gallons of liquid in the twenty-four hours. His moral attitude was splendid. He had made up his mind to face the worst. The advisability of flight was urged upon him by one of his friends. He refused to listen to the suggestion. It appears that Lady 36s The Life of Oscar Wilde Wilde had said that if he left the country she would never speak to him again ; but it is certain that the son of Speranza had never seriously entertained the project of showing his heels to a Sassenach judge and gaoler. His brother Willy was almost melodramatic in his protestations that a Wilde would not flee. "He is an Irish gentleman, and he will face the music," was what he used to repeat with almost tedious in- sistence. One day he announced that he had decided to sell his library in order to find the funds for sending back to France the particular friend who was the advocate of a discreet evanishment, for he entertained the idea that the reason why that friend did not return home was that he had not the means to do so. By a curious coincidence one of the very few books which constituted the " library " was a copy of the essays of that Montaigne, whose remark, " Were I to be accused of stealing the towers of Notre Dame the first thing I should do would be to put the frontier between myself and the gens de la justice," was being quoted in support of his advice by the friend whose removal he desired. It is very certain that Willy Wilde felt strongly that the honour of the family would be compromised by Oscar's flight. A young Irish poet relates that visiting Oakley Street 366 HH HH ■ ■ ■ ff U •^-T a ^ K ^ ^£ o ?: INI c§ u X 02 <3 On a= si O l- I O- co 12 o z z u □ « O CO LU bl ^ o z w (A vrj" o cs o -1 u Z CE 2 ^ i z (ft ■4? _^ S € C3 > i z u u 3 X S 50 S ^ CO LU C3 3 u I t- o z bl X to ^ Pi I s o ^, ts" 0= Ub. s 3 u to LU ^ O z o u tr (A 9 •« O l^^l H ■ ■ The Life of Oscar Wilde during that period " Willy came theatrically into the room and said : ' Who are you ? What do you want ? \ I told him who I was," he says, " and adde«| that I had a note for Oscar Wilde. Willy thek asked, ' Are you urging him to flee ? Because if you are, I won't let him have the note.' " " I think,' ^xth^ Irish poet has said since, "that the whole family — Irish pride being aroused— felt th^t the cowardice of running away would be A far greater disgrace than the disgrace of a/conviction and imprisonment. For the rest/' he adds, " prison does not seem such a disgrace in Ireland, and that for historical associa,tion»." Oscar Wilde's bearing on the night before the last day of hi^second trial, in the supreme moments of^s liberty, filled all those who saw hijri with-fespect and admiration. His serenity hg^iifeturned to him. His sweet, gentle dignity had clothed him anew. The tragic horror of the moment had aroused in him the perfect man- liness that periods had lulled into apathetic quiescence. He took farewell of his friends ; he informed each, one of a little gift, from the poor trinkets which remained to him, which he had destined as a souvenir in case he did not return home on the morrow. It is very certain .367 The Life of Oscar Wilde that at that moment he felt that if a conviction ensued he would never see any of his friends again ; that he felt that he was being tried for his life, and that prison would speedily kill him. He retired early from the mournful gathering, saluting by kissing her hand with stately courtli- ness, his brother's wife, whose kindness and sympathy had deeply touched his heart. He spent, before he sought his sleepless couch, a long hour with the mother, deeply loved and deeply honoured, whom he was never to' see again. Late in the afternoon of the following day, Saturday, 25th May 1895, Oscar Wilde was found guilty and sentenced to two years hard labour. There had been six counts against him. He was asked after his release by a very old friend as to the justice of the finding, and he said : " Five of the counts referred to matters with which I had absolutely nothing to do. There was some foundation for one of the counts." " But then why," asked his friend, " did you not instruct your defenders ? " " That would have meant betraying a friend," said Oscar. Circumstances which haye since tran- spired have established: — what for the rest was never in doubt in the minds of those who heard it made — the absolute truth of this statement. When the verdict became known outside the 368 The Life of Oscar Wilde court, a foul rabble, believing that an aristocrat had been condemned, filled the Old Bailey with shouts of delight. Men and women j oined hands, and a clumsy saraband was danced. Cruelty, the lascivia di sangue, glutted itself. There was a peculiar irony in this blood-lust which every- where in England found expression, for, as the pathologists affirm, it is a morbid manifestation very directly akin to the aberration to which the prisoner had fallen a victim. From evil, evil is bred. Abyssus abyssum invocat. The question presented itself to many : Where was our national regard for Jesus Christ as we exulted in the downfall and misery of the man whom we had punished ? The clergy held their tongues. The Church had nothing to say. The doctors, the men of science, the patholo- gists, the students and masters of psychology, who could have shown that the man was irre- sponsible : they were all mute. On the heights there was neither sound nor motion : in the depths males and females shouted and danced for gladness. What ripples of mocking laughter must run through Olympus if ever the careless gods from their lofty seats do deign to look down upon the world and see what men we are and what are the things we do, 2 A 369 CHAPTER XVI Oscar Wilde in Prison — The Effect of the Simple Life — A Splendid Renovation — " De Profundis " — ^The Sincerity of the Book — How Religion came to Wilde — ^The Scientific Explanation of the Phenomenon — A Quotation from " The Tree of Life "—Oscar Wilde Visited by his Wife- Constance Wilde — Why the Reconciliation never took Effect — Oscar Wilde as a Husband and a Father — The Testimony of Ernest La Jeunesse — A Prison Conversation — Oscar Wilde's Views on Religion — The Impression he produced in Prison — Described as a Saint. In Wandsworth Prison first and then in Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde's mental development reached a point of transcendency to which never in the world of men he could have hoped to attain. There had been forced upon him the recluse life which has raised many men in the world's history towards the stars, but which, perhaps, never beffore demonstrated its reforming and enhancing powers in a manner more magnificent, more orbicular, more triumphant. In the old days he had tried to imitate Balzac in his mode of life ; but Society and Pleasure had ever knocked at the door of his cell, nor had he had the strength of will great enough to resist their allurements. Now there were iron bars between 370 The Life of Oscar Wilde him and the fvasteful pleasures of the world ; a claustration, as strict if less severe than that which. Balzac imposed upon himself, held hirii fast, and he had the time to think. He had the time to think, and with a brain which at last had recovered its splendid normal power. The prison rigime, the enforced temperance in food, the enforced abstinence from all narcotic drugs and drink, the regular hours, the periodical exercise : the simple hfe, in one word, had restored to him the splendid heritage that he had received from Nature. What the real Oscar Wilde was, and of what he was capable were now to be made patent. In "De Profundis" he laid his soul bare, and the impartial are to judge from that book of the man's new powers, as a thinker and as a literary artist. His friends will ask no more than that, reserving to themselves the high delight of taking a holy joy in the lofty virtues which that book reveals, the kindness, the patience, the resignation, the forgiveness of sins, so splendid that one may almost beUeve that in his ardent meditations on Christ, he was able to bring the Bodily Presence of the God livho taught these things into his cell, and to learn from the divine lips themsdves what is the true secret of human happiness. In the ensuing chapter we have from the pen of a man who saw 371 The Life of Oscar Wilde him day by day in prison a description of him which shows that he put into hourly practice the lessons he had learned. Critics abroad have said that " there is too much about Christ " in " De Profundis," overlooking the fact that the book is from first page to last inspired by Christ, that no man who had not found Christ could have written that book, nor lived as the man who wrote it did live. In England one heard it said that it is absurd to believe that an agnostic, a sensualist would turn to religion, and the blasphemous statement has been made that this book is in its way no more sincere than the d5dng confessions of many prison-cells, the greasy cant that officious chaplains win from fawning prisoners ! One has heard the word HYPO- CRISY pronounced ! It is a thousand pities that people are placed by common consent in places of authority and allowed to pronounce opinions, who from a total absence of scientific training, are utterly imcompetent to opine and unworthy to pronounce. It is an elementary fact that when the mind of man either by his own volition or by the force of exterior circum- stances is concentrated on the bare facts of existence it becomes religious. ' " It is also noteworthy," writes Mr Ernest Crawley, in his remarkable and most interesting 372 The Life of Oscar Wilde study of religion, " The Tree of Life," " that, while the over-cultured man and the abstract thinker so often discard religion, simpler and actually more complete souls cleave to it with an instinctive faith. But every man, when he happens to be brought face to fkce with the eternal realities of existence. . . . becomes, ipso facto, a religious subject." In " De Profundis " Oscar Wilde describes the road by which he came from hyper-culture ahd abstract thought to a simpUcity and complete- ness of soul. In the same book may be found many of the awful details of his prison life. None of the humiHation, none of the sufferings ordained by our prison regulations were spared to him : he, himself, would have been the last to wish that any exception should bei made in his favour. The first three months of his confinement in Wands- worth Gaol were months of atrocious anguish. He relates that the idea of suicide was at all times with him ; the want of means wherewith to effect his purpose alone saved his life. At the end of this period he was seen by a friend, who found him " greatly depressed," prone to tears. His hands were disfigured, the nails were broken and bleeding, the face was emaciated and irrecognisable. In the following month — that is 373 The Life of Oscar Wilde to say on 21st September 1895 — he was visited in prison by his wife, by special permission from the Home Office. His appearance produced upon the unfortunate woman an impression, from the shock of which she never recovered. After leaving the gaol she wrote to the friend who had induced her to take to the prisoner the solace of her forgiveness and love a pathetic letter, in which unconsciously she revealed how great her affection still was for her husband; " It was indeed awful," she wrote, " more so than I had conception of. I could not see him, and I could not touch him, and I scarcely spoke." It is in those words " I could not touch him " that one reads the love that still was in her ; for to touch the cherished one is ever an instinctive prompting. The poor woman left him, having made up her mind, as she afterwards told the same friend, to take him back to her after his imprisonment was over. In the spring of the following year, as Oscar Wilde gratefully re- cords in " De Profundis," she travelled all the way from Genoa to London to break to him the terrible news of his mother's death. This was the last time that the two met. After Oscar Wilde's release circumstances arose which delayed their definite reconciliation, and then came that which parts the tenderest spouses. Constance 374 The Life of Oscar Wilde Wilde, who had been long ailing, and who had never recovered from the horrible shock of the catastrophe which shattered her home, was re- leased, from a world so full of cruel surprise to the simple and gentle, by death. She died in Genoa about one year after her husband had left prison. She was a simple, beautiful woman, too gentle and good for the part that life called upon her to play. She was a woman of heart whom kindlier gods would never have thrown into the turmoil and stress of an existence which was all a battle. Her death was to Oscar Wilde's affectionate heart a sorrow which accentuated his despair. His love for her, for the very reason that it never was a strong physical attachment, was pure, deep, and reverent. "From a poet to a poem" is what he once wrote in her album. This ap^ parent C5niic was, in fact, endowed with all the family virtues which men love to record of the departed. His conduct towards his mother is known ; and as a husband he was what he had been as a son. These Irishmen are very wonder- ful in their loyalty towards their own kin. Hie was no friend of his brother in his lifetime, but he never allowed anyone to say in his presence a single word of disparagement about him. He quarrelled with several friends who had ventured 375 The Life of Oscar Wilde to speak slightingly about Willy : that ten years' quarrel with a famous Irish writer, to which re- ference has been made, arose from no other cause. After Willy's death his memory had a champion in Oscar Wilde. For his children he felt deep affection. Ernest La Jeunesse in that masterly article which he wrote after Wilde's death relates what a revelation it was to him to hear Oscar speaking about his sons. It showed a new man to him ; an Oscar Wilde whom he had not known, of whose existence he had never had the joyful comprehension. He spoke so simply, like a good father, and with such joy and gladness. The passage is one which — in an essay that to read is pure delight from the beauty of the thing — forces tears even from those who are reluctant to yield to such emotions in the midst of the highest spiritual delight. To many people who knew Oscar Wilde well the statement of his domestic virtues will appear unwarranted. It should be remembered of him, however, that he took par- ticular pains to cloak thbse qualities which might cause him to be compared to the general. A noticeable trait in his character was that al- though he was loudly assertive of his literary, artistic, and ethical principles he never spoke about himself as a man. He had a horror of 376 The Life of Oscar Wilde anything that resembled self-aggrandisement ; and it cannot be doubted that he strove with all his power against that habit of self-accusation which at times was a pathetic feature of his conversation; because to speak evil of oneself even appears to the hypercritical and uncharit- able only a subtle form of self-adulation. In spite of the stringent prison regulations he appears to have had many opportunities for con- versation, and records of such conversations have been jealously preserved. At the time when he was writing " De Profundis " he had one after- noon a long talk with a man in Reading Gaol, who, writing from memory, supplies for the pvirpose of this biography the following account of it :— " We had been talking of Robert Emmet, when I incidentally remarked that it was curious that he an atheist should have made so many allusions to the Supreme Being and a future state in the course of his speech from the dock. " ' That was no doubt due to his Celtic tem- perament,' said Oscar Wilde. ' Those who are governed by their emotions are more given to hero-worship and the worship of the gods than practical people who beheve in logic and are governed by what they choose to term their reason. Imaginative people will invariably be 377 The Life of Oscar Wilde religious people for the simple reason that re- ligion has sprung from the imagination.' " I pointed out that Shelley and Voltaire were highly imaginative people and were sceptics. " ' Of course/ he replied^ ' we must allow for exceptions. I am one myself, but it is an open question whether the two poets you mention were unbelievers or simply agnostics. Besides, one's religious opinions are often greatly influ- enced by private and local events or national contingencies. I daresay the oppression of Church and State on the poor in France was the direct cause of Voltaire's apostasy.' " ' And may have led to yours,' I ventured to say. " He remained silent for some time, then stepped aside to allow a fly, which was floating round the door, to enter his cell. ' You see,' he observed, watching its movements, 'it will be company for me when you have gone.' I laughed, and repeated my question. " ' What,' he said, ' was the cause of my be- coming a man ? Remember I once was a child.' " ' Well,' I said hesitatingly, * I suppose it was natural development.' " ' Just so,' he answered, ' and the cause of my apostasy is spiritual development, or the 378 The Life of Oscar Wilde natural evolution of the mind. You will ob- serve that the various races of the world have various forms of supernatural belief, and if you examine closely into those forms you will find they accord more or less with the racial char- acteristics of the people who hold them. And what is true in regard to races is equally true when apphed to individuals, I mean individuals who can claim individuality — each one makes his own God, and I have made mine. My God might not suit you, nor your God suit me, but as my God suits myself I wish to keep him, and when I feel so inclined to worship him.' " * What is your God, then ? ' I asked. ' Art ? ' " ' No,' he said, ' Art is but the disciple, or, perhaps, I should say the Apostle. It was through Art I discovered him, and it is through Art I worship him. Christ, to me, is the one supreme Artist, and not one of the brush, or the pen, but, what is more rare, he was an Artist in words. It was by the voice he found expression — that's what the voice is for, but few can find it by that medium, and none in the manner born of Christ.' " ' If we acknowledge the divinity of Christ,' said I, ' neither his words nor his books, his fastings nor his final sufferings should excite our 379 The Life of Oscar Wilde admiration any more than the strength of the elephant or the fleetness of the deer. If we al- low he was a supernatural being, gifted with miraculous power, his sufferings became a farce ; they resemble a millionaire choosing to suffer the pangs of hunger in the midst of plenty, or the fanatic who deliberately inflicts pain on his body for the purification of his soul.' " ' The divinity of Christ,' said he, ' in its generally accepted sense, I, of course, do not believe, but I see no dif&culty whatever in behev- ing that he was as far above the people around him as though he had been an angel sitting on the clouds.' (Here followed a panegyric of Christ something similar to that drawn in " De Profundis.") " On another occasion when speaking on the same subject I wished to know which label I would present him with, supposing I had a bundle containing the names of the world's religions and non-religions, and to say 'Take this it fits you.' " He smiled and said he would not accept any one of them. ' This,' he said, touching the round piece of cardboard on his coat, " indicates my address, or rather the number of my room, and does so correctly, I daresay. But you couldn't find a card in your supposi- 380 The Life of Oscar Wilde titious bundle that would correspond with my religion.' " ' Yours is a unique creed, then/ I responded, ' why not explain its tenets and you may make a convert ? ' " ' 1 do not want any converts,' he replied, ' the moment I discovered that anyone else shared my belief I would flee from it, I must either have it all to myself or not at all.' " ' Selfish man ! ' I cried. " * To be a supreme Artist,' said he, ' one must first be a supreme Individualist.' " ' You talk of Art,' said I, ' as though there were nothing else in the world worth living for.' " ' For me,' said he sadly, ' there is nothing else.' " ' Do you know,' he said suddenly, ' the Bible is a wonderful book. How beautifully artistic the httle stories are ! Adam and his wife alone in the beautiful garden, where they could have enjoyed all the pleasures of life by simply obe5dng the laws. But he refuses to become a machine, and so eats the apple — I, also, would have eaten that apple— and in consequence is expelled.' " ' Then, young Joseph sold into Egypt as a slave, when he blossoms out as the ruler of a kingdom, and his subterfuge to obtain his brother. In nearly every chapter you can find 381 The Life of Oscar Wilde something so intensely interesting that one pauses to wonder how it all came to be written. The Psalms of David ; the Song of Solomon — how grand it is ! — And the story of Daniel ; all appeal to me as a lover of language, and as a lover of Art. And if I am delighted with the Old Testament imagery I am charmed with the New. Christj Paul, and most of the other char- acters in the book have for me a singular fas- cination. Then take the last book of all. How powerful must have been the imagination of the writer ! Why, I know of nothing in the whole world of Art to compare with it, especially those tenth, eleventh and twelfth chapters. Really, I have no sympathy with stupid people who cannot admire a book unless they believe in its ■ literal truth.' " I reminded him that the leading agnostics of the century had paid tribute to the beauty of the scriptures, and mentioned Renan, Huxley and Ingersoll. " ' I very much admire,' he said, ' Renan's " Life of Jesus " ; and Huxley had a captivating style which is seldom to be met with in men of science, for instance, I remember reading where he said " that one could not be a true soldier of science and a soldier of the Cross," and I thought it a very fine sentence, although I did 382 The Life of Oscar Wilde not believe it, for between matter of fact and matter of faith there is a wide gulf which science cannot bridge.' " ' When I go out from here I should like to find a qtiiet, nice little Church, I shouldn't in the least mind what its denomination was so long as it had a nice, simple-minded and good-hearted clergyman, one who had religion within himself and did not preach somebody else's opinions and practise somebody else's formulas, a man who thought of the sinner more than the stipend. I can never belong to any of the conventional forms of religion, but I should like to be able to extract the good there may be in all.' " In " De Profundis " we have Wilde's own account of his prison and, of what it meant to him. In the following chapter we have an ob- jective description of his life there. The warder's account of his character as it displayed itself in prison is confirmed by many witnesses. The man appeared to all who beheld him in prison as the heau iAtal of the Christian gentle- man. It is on record that on the night of his departure many of the wretched prisoners in Reading Gaol were rebuked and even punished for the loudness of their lamentations. One of these men said after his release, that when C. 3.3. went, his last hope seemed to have abandoned 383 The Life of Oscar Wilde him. His sympathy for his fellow-prisoners was so great that he often risked severe punishment in order to give to this one or to that the com- fort of his consolations. Some of the notes which he wrote while in prison to fellow-prisoners are still in existence, and some have found their way into the market for curiosities. De Mon- taigne's remark is here applicable once more. There have been people who have seen in these notes, words of encouragement for the most part, the most evil meanings. His sympathy went beyond mere words. Through his friends he was enabled to help with money many of his fellow-prisoners, who, leaving the gabl destitute, would otherwise have fallen immediately back into crime. While he was in Reading Gaol some lads, mere children, were committed to prison for snaring rabbits. The magistrates had given these hardened poachers the option of paying fines, and it was with his money that Oscar Wilde enabled them to gain their freedom. After his release he befriended several of those whose acquaintance he had made in prison. Although he spoke of himself as an agnostic in gaol, as is recorded in the conversation above, he showed by his conduct that Christianity had altogether taken possession of him. The singular sweet- ness and charm of his manners after he came 384 The Life of Oscar Wilde out of prison, his tolerance, his gentleness, his entire self-effacement, inipressed all those who came near him. The warder whose story now follows says of Oscar Wilde that in prison he appeared a saint. So, too, he appeared to many who saw him during the few months after his release, until fatality had driven him back to companionships in the atmosphere of which nothing that was good or noble could subsist. 2 B 385 CHAPTER XVII THE POET IN PRISON* (Written by one of the warders in Reading Gaol) There are supreme moments in the lives of men, as there are events in the histories of nations, which mark epochs and stand out in bold relief from the many others which go to make up the sum-total of their existence > Those moments in the life of Mr Wilde were when he stepped out of the dock at the Old Bailey, a ruined man, and with a sentence of two years* imprisonment hanging over his unfortunate head. There are days, months, and years in the lives of some men which to them are an eternity ; for them the hand of Time has ceased to move ; the clock no longer strikes the recurring hour ; for them there is no dawn ; there is no day — 1 This chapter has been contributed to this biography by a man who was a warder in Reading Gaol at the time of Oscar Wilde's imprisonment there. The express condition under which it was contributed was that it should be printed exactly as it stood in the manuscript, with no alteration of a single phrase or word or expression. This condition has been faith- fully observed, and the chapter has been printed as it was writteni 386 The Life of Oscar Wilde occasionally, perhaps, a twilight, for, as the adage has it, " Hope springs eternal in the human breast " ; — they live through one long, bewildering night — a night of terror, a night of appalling darkness, unrelieved by a single star ; a night of misery, a night of despair ! Two years' imprisonment meant to the Poet one long, dreary night — a night spent in an In- ferno, a night without variation, a night without dreams: no dreams, but nightmares, rendered the more ghastly because of their terrible reality. — From them there was no awakening. — Night- mares wherein men were flogged ! wherein men were executed ! Others, it may be urged, have been in prison before the Poet ; others since and others now. Ah, yes ! but they were not poets, they are not poets, in the sense he was. Their sufferings, no doubt, are great, but his were greater. Reared in the lap of luxury, living in an atmosphere of culture and refinement, he, the Apostle of .^stheticism, was suddenly hurled from the proud pinnacle on which his genius had placed him, and, without passing through any inter- mediate stage, found himself encased amid walls of iron and surrounded by bars of steel. He who formerly devoted himself to the producing of the highest works of Art, was now shredding 387 The Life of Oscar Wilde tarred ropes in a dismal cell. He, with a poet's weakness for adornment, was now attired in the garb of gloomy grey, taken from a prison ward- robe. He, to whom expression was life — nay, more than life itself — was suddenly reduced to a silence moire silent than the grave ; and he who had made a name, glorious in the world of literature, had now only a number. His was worse than suffering ; his was a tragedy, and one of the greatest that the nineteenth cen- tury has to record. For the first eighteen months of his im- prisonment all the rigours of the system were applied to him relentlessly. He had to pick his quantity of oakum, or bear the punishment that was sure to follow ; turn the monotonous crank, along with his fellows, by which the prison was supplied with water ; read the silly books from the library, or pace his cell, a prey to his own sad thoughts, until his health broke down under the unnatural strain, and, to prevent his being sent to a madhouse, he was allowed the privilege of having a limited number of books, which were sent by friends, and which afterwards found a place amongst others less abstruse on the shelves of the prison library. Later he was allowed a more important privilege — the privilege of writing— and to this 388 The Life of Oscar Wilde concession the world owes " De Profundis." He wrote mostly in the evenings, when he knew he would be undisturbed. In his cell were two wooden trestles, across which he placed his plank bed. This was his table, and, as he him- self observed : "It was a very good table, too." His tins he kept scrupulously clean ; and in the mornings, after he had arranged them in their regulated order, he would step back, and view them with an air of child-like complacency. He was dreadfully distressed because he could not polish his shoes or brush his hair. " If I could but feel clean," he said, " I should not feel so utterly miserable. These awful bristles " — touching his chin — " are horrid." Before leav- ing his cell to see a visitor he was always careful to conceal, as far as possible, his unshaven chin by means of his red handkerchief. He showed great agitation when a visitor was announced. " For I never know," he said, " what fresh sorrow may not have entered my Ufe, and is, in this manner, borne to me, so that I may carry it to my cell, and place it in my already over- stocked storehouse, which is my heart. My heart is my storehouse of sorrow ! " It was during the latter part of the Poet's imprisonment that the order was issued for " first offenders " to be kept apart from the 389 The Life of Oscar Wilde other prisoners. They were distinguished by two red stars^ one of which was on the jacket and the other worn on the cap, and in conse- quence were known as " Star-class men." The order, not being retrospective, did not apply to the Poet, and in consequence he, like the re- mainder, had to stand with his face to the wall when any of the " star-class " were passing in his vicinity. The framers of the order were, no doubt, actuated by the best of motives, but its too literal interpretation caused it to look rather ludicrous. I have seen the Poet having to stand with his face to the wall while a villainous- looking rufi&an, who had been convicted for half killing his poor wife, passed him. In fact, nearly every day he was forced to assume this undignified position, which might have been obviated but for the crass stupidity of officialdom. In Church the Poet seemed to suffer from ennui. He sat in a Kstless attitude with his elbow resting on the back of his chair, his legs crossed, and gazed dreamily around him and above him. There were times when he was so oblivious of his surroundings, so lost in reverie, that it re- quired a friendly " nudge " from one of the " lost sheep " beside him to remind him that a 390 The Life of Oscar Wilde hymn had been given out, and that he must rise and sing, or at least appear to sing, his praises unto God. When the Chaplain was addressing his shorn and grey-garbed flock, telling them how wicked they all were, and how thankful they should all be that they lived in a Christian country where a paternal Government was as anxious for the welfare of their souls as for the safe-keeping of their miserable bodies ; that society did not wish to punish them, although they had erred and sinned against society; that they were under- going a process of purification ; that their prison was their purgatory, from which they could emerge as pure and spotless as though they had never sinned at aU ; that if they did so society would meet and welcome them with open arms ; that they were the prodigal sons of the com- munity, and that the community, against which they had previously sinned, was fattening calves to feast them, if they would but undertake to return to the fold and become good citizens, — the Poet would smile. But not his usual smile : this was a cynical smile, a disbelieving " smile, and often it shadowed despair. " I long to rise in my place, and cry out," said he, " and tell the poor, disinherited wretches around me that it is not so ; to tell them that they are society's 391 The Life of Oscar Wilde victims, and that society has nothing to offer them but starvation in the streets, or starvation and cruelty in prison ! " I have often wondered why he never did cry out, why he was able to continue, day after day, the dull, slow round of a wearisome existence — an existence of sorrow : sorrow benumbed by its awful monotony ; an existence of pain, an exist- ence of death. But he faithfully obeyed the laws, and con- scientiously observed the rules, prescribed by Society for those whom it consigns to the abodes of sorrow. I understand he was punished once for talking. I have no personal knowledge of the circumstance, but I know that it would be almost a miracle for one to serve two years' imprisonment without once being reported. Some of the rules are made with no other object than to be broken, so that an excuse may be found for inflicting additional punishment.^ However, he could not have been punished by soUtary confinement for fifteen days, as has been stated. A governor is not -empowered to give more than three days. But twenty-four hours' bread and water is the usual punishment for talking, and, if it be the first offence, the de- linquent is generally let off with a caution. 'The writer, it should be remembered, is a prison warder 392 The Life of Oscar Wilde During the period of his incarceration the Poet suffered in health, but he seldom com- plained to the doctor. He was afraid of doing so lest he should be sent to the sick-ward. He preferred the seclusion of his cell. There he could think aloud without attracting the glances or the undertone comments of the less mobile- minded. There he could be alone — alone with the spectre of his past, alone with his books, alone with his God ! When I entered his cell on a certain bleak, raw morning in early March I found him still in bed. This was unusual, and so I expressed surprise. " I have had a bad night," he ex- plained. " Pains in my inside, which I think must be cramp, and my head seems splitting." I asked whether he had better not report sick. "No," he said; "not for anything; I shall be better, perhaps, as the day advances. Come back in a few minutes, when I will be up." I returned to his cell a few minutes afterwards, and found he was up, but looking so dreadfully ill that I again advised him to see the doctor. He declined, however, sa5dng he would be all right when he had had something warm to drink. I knew that in the ordinary course of events he would have nothing for at least another hour, 393 The Life of Oscar Wilde so I resolved to find something to give him in the meanwhile myself. I hastened off, and warmed up some beef-tea, poured it into a bottle, placed the bottle inside my jacket, and returned to- wards his cell. While ascending the staircase the bottle slipped between my shirt and skin. It was very hot. I knew that there was an unoccupied cell on the next landing, and I determined to go there and withdraw the bottle from its painful position. But at that moment a voice called me from the central hall below. I looked down, and saw the Chief Warder. He beckoned me towards him. I went back. He wished to speak concerning a discrepancy in the previous night's muster report. I attempted to elucidate the mystery of two prisoners being in the prison who had no claim on its hospi- tality. I am afraid I threw but little light on the mystery. I was in frightful agony. The hot bottle burned against my breast like molten lead. I have said " there are supreme moments in the lives of men." Those were supreme moments to me. I could have cried out in my agony, but dared not. The cold, damp beads of per- spiration gathered on my brow j I writhed and twisted in all manners of ways to ease myself of the dreadful thing, but in vain. I could not shift that infernal bottle — try as I might. 394 The Life of Oscar Wilde It lay there against my breast like a hot poultice, but hotter than any poultice that was ever made by a cantankerous mother or by a cantankerous nurse. And the strange thing about it was that the longer it lay the hotter it became. The Chief eyed me curiously. I beheve he thought I had been drinking. I know I was incoherent enough for anything. At last he walked off, and left me, for which I felt truly thankful. I bounded up the iron stairs, and entered the Poet's cell, and, pulling out the burning bottle, I related, amid gasps and imprecations, my awful Experience. The Poet smiled while the tale was being told, then laughed- — actully laughed. I had never seen him laugh naturally before, and, with the same qualification, I may add that I never saw him laugh again. I felt angry because he laughed. I told him so. I said it was poor reward for all I had undergone to be laughed at, and, so saying, I came out, and closed the door — I closed it with a bang. When I took him his breakfast he looked the picture of contrition. He said he wouldn't touch it unless I promised to forgive him, " Not even the cocoa ? " I asked. "Not even the cocoa," he replied; and he looked at it longingly. 395 The Life of Oscar Wilde "Well, rather than starve you, I'll forgive you." " And supposing I laugh again ? " said he, with a smile. " I sha'n't forgive you again," I said. The following morning he handed me a sheet of foolscap blue of&cikl paper. " Here is some- thing," said he, " which is not of much value now, but probably may be if you keep it long enough." I had no opportunity of reading then, but when I had read it I was struck by the power and beauty of its expresssion. It was headed : " An Apology," and written in his old, original, and racy style. The flow of subtle humour, the wit and charm of the many epigrams, the naivete contained in some of the personal allusions, were captivating. As a lover of style, I was capti- vated, and told him so. " Ah ! " said he, " I never thought to resume that style again. I had left it behind me as a thing of the past, but yesterday morning I laughed, which showed my perversity, for I really felt sorry for you. I did not mean to laugh : I had vowed never to laugh again. Then I thought it fitting when I had broken one vow to break the other also. I had made two, and I broke both, but now I have made them 396 The Life of Oscar Wilde again. I never intend to laugh, nor do I in- tend ever again to write anything calculated to produce laughter in others. I am no longer the Sirius of Comedy. I have sworn solemnly to dedicate my hfe to Tragedy. If I write any more books, it will be to form a library of lamentations. They will be written in a style begotten of sorrow, and in sentences composed in solitude, and punctuated by tears. They will be written exclusively for those who have suffered or are suffering. I understand them, and they will understand me. I shall be an enigma to the world of Pleasure, but a mouth- piece for the world of Pain." In conversation the Poet was always perfectly rational. His every action during the day was rational, but, when left to himself in the evening, he underwent a transformation, or, it might be more appropriate to term it, a transfiguration. It was when he was alone in his cell, when the doors were double-locked, when the gas was flickering, when the shadows of night were fall- ing, when all was quiet, when all was dead. The grim and watchful warder moves around with velvety tread . There is a still and awful silence — a silence in the warder's slippers, a silence in the cells, a silence in the air. The dark, sombre shadow stops at the door of each living sepulchre, 397 The Life of Oscar Wilde and gazes in ; he peers through the aperture of glass, to satisfy himself that the tomb has not become too reaUstic, that it still contains the living, that none have dared to cheat the law — have dared to baffle Justice. The view is nearly the same in each : a drab and ghostly figure seated on a stool, finishing the day's task, which will be collected at the hour of eight, or, if he has already finished his work, he sits staring with vacant eyes into vacancy, or looks for consolation in the Book of Common Prayer. The watching figure gUdes on, now stops, peers into another cell near the end of the corridor. The cell is marked C.3.3. — it is the cell of the Poet ! Around the whole circle of living sepulchres no sight like this ! No sight more poignant ! No sight more awe-inspiring ! No sight more terrible. The Poet is now alone ! Alone with the Gods ! Alone with the Muse ! He is pacing his cell — one, two, three. Three steps when he has to turn. Three steps and turn again. His hands behind his back, a wrist encircled by a hand, and thus backwards and forwards, to and fro, he goes, his head thrown back, smiling — but, Heavens, what a smile ! 398 The Life of Oscar Wilde His eyes — those wonderful eyes ! — are fairly dancing. Now they are looking towards the ceiling — but far beyond the ceiling, looking even beyond the depths of airy space, looking into the infinite. Now he laughs ! What a laugh ! Piercing, poignant, bitter — all and more are condensed in that awful laugh. His powerful imagination is at work. Though his body is in fetters his soul is free — for who can chain the soul of a poet ? It roams on high and mighty altitudes — high above the haunts of men. Then higher yet, above the silvery clouds, it soars, and finds a resting-place among the pale shadows of the moon. Then back to earth it comes with one fell stroke, as hghtning flashed from heaven — back through the iron window, back to the prison cell. Hush ! . . . He speaks ! . . . He breathes the sacred name of Mother, and calls his wife by name ! He sheds a tear, it glistens on his cheek, when, lo ! an angel comes and the tear evaporates. And thus his life, whate'er he may have done, was purged from his account by one hot tear that trickled from a heart redeemed and purified by suffering. But hark ! He speaks again. He addresses an imaginary vis- itor, with hands outstretched towards his little stool : 399 The Life of Oscar Wilde " Long, long ago, in boyhood's days, I had a fond ambition : I intended to reform the world, and alter its condition. I raised myself — through Art alone — to a very high position, And now, my friend, you see me, a poor victim of attrition." He laughs again, and repeats the last few words : " A victim of attrition. Piti-less attri- tion." He turns away, and resumes his melan- choly walk ; then stops once more before his visionary visitor, and raises his finger. " The world," he says, with a tinge of egotism, "is not so solid after all. I can shake it with an epigram and convulse it with a song." He laughs once more, then sinks upon the prison stool, and bows his head. And here we leave him to think his thoughts alone — ^Alone ! Let no one mock those nightly scenes, and say the Poet was not sincere. In prison he was the very soul of sincerity — and remember, no man can wear a mask in prison. You may deceive the governor, you may deceive the chaplain, you may deceive the doctor, but you cannot deceive the warder. His eye is upon you when no other eye sees yOu, during your hours of sleep as well as during your hours of wakefulness. What the Poet was before he went to prison I care not. What he may have been after he left prison I know not. One thing I know, however, that while in prison he Uved the Ufe 400 The Life of Oscar Wilde of a saint, or as near that holy state as poor mortal can ever hope to attain. His gentle smile of sweet serenity was some- thing to remember. It must have been a smile like this that Bunyan wore as he lay in Bedford Gaol dreaming his wonderful dreams. It must have been a similar smile that illumined the noble face of St Francis of Assisi when he spoke of " his brother the wind and his sister the rain." Had Hugo been an artist with the brush as he was artist with the pen he would have de- picted such a smile as shimmering over the features of the good bishop when he told his great white lie to save poor Jean Valjean. And, who can say that the Prince of Peace Himself would have considered such a smile unworthy of His countenance as He uttered the sweet words of invitation to the little children whom the disciples wished to keep away ? One can remember such a smile although one's pen fails to describe its sweetness, as it fails to describe the sweet perfume of the rose. It was a smile of resignation, a smile of benevolence, a smile of innocence, a smile of love. Farewell, brave heart ! May your sleep be as peaceful as your smile. May the angels hover around your tomb in death as they hovered 2 c 401 The Life of Oscar Wilde around your tomb in life. And, had you been destitute of every other attribute that goes to make the perfect man, that smile alone would have served you as your passport through the gates of Paradise and onwards to the Great White Throne ! Farewell ! I have kept my promise. I have remembered you during all the years that have intervened since that memorable day we shook hands and parted in your cold and cheerless cell. You asked me to think of you sometimes. I have thought of you always ; scarcely one single day has passed since then that I have not thought of yoU; — ^you who were at once my prisoner and my friend. 402 PAUL ADAH IN FRANCE. TIME OF I ONE OF THE MOST DISTINGUISHED NOVELISTS AND WRITERS PUBLISHED A SYMPATHETli; ARTICLE ABOUT WILDE AT THE :s DOWNFALL, AND HAD I'ERSISTENTLY PROCLAIMED HIS ADMIRATION FOR WILDES OENIUS AND IIIS CONDEMNATION OF THE WAY IN WHICH HE \VAS TREATED. MONSIEUR ADA:iI ENJOYS THE FULLEST CONFIDENCE OF THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT. To face pa ALSACE. WILDE IlIEIl IN HIS ARMS. To face page 417. The Life of Oscar Wilde is that, though five years have now passed since Oscar Wilde died, he pursues quietly the level way of his noble friendship. He is one of the very rare people with whom the dead do not die quick. He goes on being good to Oscar Wilde. He devotes his means to the payment of his friend's creditors. He jealously fosters his friend's literary reputation. He watches over his grave at Bagneux, looking forward to the day when he shall be able, of his own means, to secure a permanent and worthier resting-place for his ashes. Such constancy after death is not a virtue of which humanity has warranted the expectation. Devotion dies by slow degrees when the loved one is no longer anything but a memory, a name. Evil breeds evil; but here also good was bred, and in this mournful his- tory this friendship is a beautiful and pleasant thing. Oscar Wilde lived for three and a half years after his release from prison. After he had left Italy he returned to Paris. Here for some time he resided in a hotel in the Rue MarsoUier. He was forced to leave this house because he could not pay his bill. He was literally turned out into the streets. From this position he was rescued by the landlord of a small hotel in the Rue des Beaux-Arts, Monsieur Dupoirier, who 2D , 417 The Life of Oscar Wilde had known him in his prosperous days. Du- poirier offered him rooms in his house, and went to the hotel in the Rue MarsoUier, and dis- charged the bill, recovering Wilde's property. From that time on Wilde resided at Number 13 Rue des Beaux-Arts, which is within five minutes' walk of the Hotel Voltaire of his imperial days. He had no superstitious dread of the number of the house, which was to be his final dwelling- place, though, Hke all great minds, he enter- tained many other superstitions. One can understand this. The great mind recognises, what the fool does not, that there are powers in the universe of which he has no comprehension, although he discerns their manifestations. Oscar Wilde was superstitious. For instance, he con- sidered it very unlucky to drive in a carriage which was drawn by a white horse. Of the Hotel d' Alsace it would not be fair to say that it was squalid. It is related that Mon- sieur Dupoirier remarked, after Wilde's death, that it was very unfair for the newspaper writers to speak of his house as a hotel of the tenth order, when the fact was that it was une maison de cinquieme categoric. It was the kind of house where regular lodgers are few, and where the profits of the undertaking are derived mainly from stray visitors. At the back of the hou§e 418 The Life of Oscar Wilde was a small yard or garden, where Oscar often used to sit of afternoons, reading books and sipping absinthe. It has been stated that his life in Paris during this period was one of shameful relapse. Calumny is still at work with his memory. The fact should be put on record that he was at all times under the close supervision of the police. An influential friend of his once asked Henri Bauer to use his interest with the Minister of Fine Arts on Oscar Wilde's behalf. Henri Bauer after- wards reported that the Minister had said that he would do nothing for a man who frequented such company as Oscar Wilde was in the habit of frequenting, that the police were carefully watching him, and that on the least provocation he would be arrested. Now, as he was never interfered with to the time of his death, it seems very clear that he did nothing, that warranted such interference, and that calumny has dis- covered what the spies of the Rue de Jerusalem failed to observe. One wonders who the associates were to whom the police had referred in their report to the Minister. The people with whom he used to be seen were reputable enough as the large tolerance of Paris goesl The poor man could not choose his associates, and as he loved to talk he 419 The Life of Oscar Wilde was sometimes glad, in his loneliness, of any audience. He appears, at least during the last year of his life, to have been provided with means. His incurable generosity, no doubt, accounts for the fact that, though his monthly bill at Dupoirier's hotel was never a large one, he died owing the friendly little man close upon one hundred pounds, and that there were many other debts in Paris. Dupoirier's bill, and some of the other accounts, have since been paid — we need not ask by what devoted friend. Of the awful tragedy of his last months Ernest La Jeunesse gives a striking account in his article in the Revue Blanche. Here is a short passage describing his condition towards the end : " He has been into the country and to Italy, he longs for Spain, he wishes to return to the shores of the Mediterranean : all that he can have is Paris, a Paris which shuts door after door against him, a Paris which has no longer more to offer him than holes into which he may creep to drink, a Paris which is deaf, a famished, spasmodic Paris, flushed here, there pale, a city without eternity and with no myth. Each day brings sufferings with it for him, he has no longer either a court or a true friend, he falls 4Z0 The Life of Oscar Wilde into the blackest netirasthenia. ... He is haunted with the foreboding of death, which in the end will kill him." For months before he died he suffered from pains in the head. At the same time he was lashing his moribund energies by the use of alcohol. Dupoirier relates that he used to write all night, keeping his strength alive with brandy. In the end the pains grew so intolerable that the doctors said that an operation would be necessary. But the operation threatened to be a very difficult one, for it was impossible to locate the exact spot where surgical treatment would benefit the patient. Only one of the great masters of surgery could be trusted, so the physicians said, with such an operation. A huge fee was mentioned as the amount that would probably be demanded by such a master. " Ah, well, then," said Oscar, " I suppose that I shall have to die beyond my means." "He must have suffered terribly," says Du- poirier, " for he kept raising his hands to his head to try and ease the torture. He cried out again and again . We used to put ice on his head . I was ever giving him injections of morphine." Robert Ross was with him at'the end. That he brought a Roman Catholic priest to the dying man has already been recorded with a reCog- 421 The Life of Oscar Wilde nition of the kindness of the act. There was another friend also in attendance. But fate would have it that neither of the two were there when Oscar Wilde breathed his last. This was at two o'clock on the afternoon of 30th November 1900. Dupoirier was holding him in his arms when he passed away. He had foreseen that he would not live to see the dawn of the new century. A journalist has recorded a remark that Oscar Wilde made in this connection. " The last time I saw him," he writes, " was about three months before he died. I took him to dinner at the Grand Cafe. He was then perfectly well and in the highest spirits. All through dinner he kept me delighted and amused. Only afterwards, just before I left him, he became rather depressed. He actually told me that he didn't think he was going to live long; he had a presentiment, he said. I tried to turn it off into a joke, but he was quite serious. ' Somehow,' he said, ' I don't think I shall live to see the new century.' Then a long pause. ' If another century began, and I was still alive, it would really be more than the! English could stand.' " He was buried in Bagneux Cemetery on 3rd December 1900, where he lies in the 17th Grave 422 « .?■ -a -^ b I Ml a a ^ gl 3i ■pa Q ^ |€ Vii,p;>n NOUS HI ^fc> rf &< < i« ^ „j . - -. -, . ... „^.... ^.; pKtSIDEht laj ool p-jeuiiAUDEl'^l* Instance BE LAStirti The Life of Oscar Wilde of the 8th Row of the 15th Division. The in- scription on his tomb is ds follows : — OSCAR WILDE Oct. 16th., 1854 ^0'"- 30th., 1900 Verbis meis addere nihil audebant et super illos stillabat eloquium meum. Job xxix. 22. R.I.P. The five years* lease of this grave was renewed in 1905 by Robert Ross, who hopes before that period has elapsed to be able to remove the ashes to a permanent resting-place in one of the Parisian cemeteries, when the friends and ad- mirers of the poet will be able, if they wish to do so, to raise a monument over his grave. " Deaths are apt to be tragic," is the comment which was made upon his passing by one who described his last hours. His death, coming when it did, avoidable as it was, wasteful as it was, was more cruel and more tragic than any passing of which literary history has record. If he had only taken care of himself ; if someone had been by him to take care of him ! Time was preparing for him a splendid triumph. The harvest was near to the ripening. England had rejected him, sacrificing the artist to the mental patient, but other countries, indifferent to everything but the 423 The Life of Oscar Wilde artist's work, were just about to open their arms. If he could have hved only three or four short years longer he would have found in the plaudits of the whole Continent some solace for all his terrible sufferings. In Germany he is to-day a "World's Poet," and "Salome" is a " World's Play." And we are not to dispute the literary taste of Germany. Oscar Wilde has been placed high in Germany's Walhalla, In Italy his success is no less startling. The Italians do not resent the comparison of him to the divine Alighieri. It may be very foolish, very wrong, but it simply is so. Nor have his sufferings, the miserable story of his life, created interest through pity, and set afoot a passing mode. A large number of Germans know nothing about the man Oscar Wilde, barely know his name, and yet are enthusiasts about his work. A friend of his, travelling to Russia at the beginning of last year, fell into conversa- tion in the train with a banker who was re- turning to Bromberg from an audience with the Emperor. This gentleman told him that he had spent one evening at the theatre, where he had seen Oscar Wilde's " Salom^," and he described the extraordinary impression it had produced on the audience. This seems to have been as great as that which was produced in the Paris 424 MADAME DUroiklER OK THK IIOTET, r/ALSAfR, WHO WAS KINIi TO OSCAR WILDE DURIN'G HIS EAST DAYS. To face page 425. The Life of Oscar Wilde Salon by the exhibition of the pictures forming Tissot's illustration of the Life of Christ. " I too/' said the banker, " though I am a hard- headed man of business, I felt like doing extra- ordinary things. I felt like springing up in my seat, and shouting out, and waving my arms. Such a mental convulsion I never felt within my- self, never thought I could feel in myself." The friend then began to refer to Wilde's history, and discovered that the banker did not even know the name of the author of " Salome," and had never heard a single word about his life ! Amongst literary Germans this ignorance does not, of course, prevail. There, thanks to the activity of the devoted Doctor Meyerfeld of Berlin, one of the foremost of German critics, Wilde's reputation is founded on a solid ex- position of his literary achievements. Meyerfeld has rendered great services to his memory, not only by writing about the man and the artist, but by defending his memory against the hterary harpies of his country who have sought to snatch profit from the public interest. Every German scribbler has his contribution on Wilde to the periodicals, but Meyerfeld is there to bludgeon the trafhckels.back into their dens. Yes ; the death, occurring when it did, was in- deed tragic. There are those who hold it as sad 425 The Life of Oscar Wilde in reality as the realistic parable in which Zola describes, by means of the death of Gervaise, the certain destruction of those in whom the power of resistance has been destroyed by unjust circumstances. One might change one word in Zola's tragic page, and write : " Mais la verite etait qu'il s'en allait de misere, des ordures et des fatigues de sa vie gdtee." " Sa vie gdtee " : that was it. These circumstances may afford satisfaction to the moralists and the unscientific : to those who have the cult of literature, and that patriot- ism which desires to see England take a fore- most place also in the intellect of the world, they can bring nothing but poignant regret. These cannot but deplore a loss, an unnecessary, spendthrift, wasteful loss, which deprives Eng- land of a genius who, as what we observe to-day on the Continent incontestably establishes, could have restored — having found himself — our litera- ture and our stage to the rank of supremacy from! which for centuries past they have been degraded. 426 OSCAR WILDRS CRA^'l-: AT HAHNKUX. To face page 426. APPENDIX OSCAR WILDE AT CHtCKERING HALL Mr Oscar Wilde delivered on Monday, at Chickering Hall, a lecture on "The English Renaissance," which might fairly be called a success. In the present days of easily manufactured notoriety a young man who has managed to establish a doubt in the minds of the public as to whether he is a profound thinker or an utter fool may be said to be on the high road to a very substitute for fame, and this is what Mr Wilde had previous to his lecture succeeded in doing. The difficulty with his future career is likely to be that his lecture solves the doubt, and that he will be unable to keep alive any curiosity on the subject. When we say that he solves the doubt we mean, of course, that he is a profound thinker — ^not by any means, to parody a phrase of his own, a thinker of unthought thoughts, but of thoughts thought and expressed too, for that matter, a great number of times before, though not thought nor ex- pressed so profoundly as by Mr Wilde, nor in his own manner. To say that the aesthete is a disciple of Ruskin gives a meagre idea of the chameleon-like power of imitative reproduction which he displays. His hospitable mind has opened its doors to Ruskin, Millais, Holman Hunt, Dante Rossetti, Swinburne, Baudelaire, Gautier, William Morris, Burne- Jones, Keats, Wordsworth, Shelley, Walt Whitman, Goethe, and Gilbert and SuUivan. It may seem at first that it 427 Appendix would be difficult for even a deep young man to find a common basis for an aesthetic movement in all these ; but Mr Wilde is not only deep enough for this, but far too deep to explain what the common basis is or what he has to do with it himself. Under these cir- cumstances, and at the risk of violating Mr Wilde's fundamental maxim of criticism — that the function of the critic is to hold his peace at all times and in all places — ^we will venture to offer a suggestion or two in explanation of the somewhat mysterious phenomenon presented by Mr Wilde'§ lecture tour. When Mr Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites set about reforming public taste in England they were forced to enter upon something very like a crusade. Almost every canon of art criticism that existed had to be de- molished, and its opposite established in its place. Springing up in a community strongly impregnated with moral and religious ideas, it is no wonder that the teachings of the school should have taken a religious tone. Appeals to the love of beauty alone would hardly have aroused the dull British Philistine from his contented, vulgar lethargy. To touch him at all it was necessary to stir his conscience ; and the fore- runners of the aesthetic movement — ^who, by the way, were all sincere men, and loved art themselves with a semi-religious fervour — ^became the founders of a pro- selytising church, a sort of artistic Rock of Ages in the weltering and waste of the British Philistinism. They brought the pure milk of the Word to the heathen, showed him his errors, touched his soul, awoke him to the new life, lifted him out of the mire of sin in which he l^-y wallowing, and showed him the true path. The unconverted heathen mocked and raged, as the heathen always do, and set up mere false gods in the shape of bad pictures, and ridiculed the true faith in the columns 428 Appendix of their heathen organ, Punch. They could not butcher the apostles, or give them to wild beasts to devour, but they inflicted upon them all the social persecution that the mild manners of modern times permit, by making them have a thoroughly " bad time." The persecution had its natural effect in strongly stimulating the devotion and zeal of the sect, and no one who has given any attention to its writings or teachings can have failed to notice the sacerdotal tone assumed by it — a tone of which there is a faint echo in Mr Wilde's platitudes and paradoxes, and even in his dimly religious voice. Everybody knows now how the Church spread ; how little by little the old Philistines were converted and new-bom Philistines were baptised into the hew faith. The rage of the heathen disappeared, and on every side the galleries of the old religion were cleared of their Philistine rubbish, and swept and garnished to make room for what was purely true and precious in art. The success of any church in converting the heathen, of course, puts it in a different attitude towards society from that which it occupies in the days of adversity. The Phihstine, who, though a man of sin, has a good deal of sense, always keeps his eyes on the children of light, and is always willing to take his cue from them when he finds it necessary to do so, and when he does do this he does it handsomely. The Philistine is after all the same flesh and blood as the rest of us, though so hopelessly sunk in the mire. After a time he too joined the Church, and, so far as fashionable society in England is concerned, it may be said to have been con- verted for ten years. The connection between the decorative or aesthetic movement, which Mr Wilde, with delightful impudence, is undertaking to further in this country, and the old Pre-Raphaelite crusade is 429 Appendix easy enough to trace. It too has been completely successful, and is m full possession of the walls, floors, ceilings, and furniture of the " best society " in England, and to a great and increasing extent of the United States. Mr Wilde, therefore, instead of being, as he represents himself, a missionary preaching art to the heathen in the wilderness at the sacrifice of fortune, fame, and everything that the Philistine holds most dear, stands to art more in the relation of the fashion- able preacher of the " swell " congregation to religion. To compare profane things to sacred, Mr Wilde is the Charles Honeyman of the religion of which Ruskin was the St Paul. When Ruskin preached society was Philistine, but it now forms the congregation. We all know the spirit in which we listen to the fashionable preacher — how we like to hear him denounce sin, and expose the vanity and frivolity of worldly pursuits, the money-loving and commercial spirit of the age, and how true we feel it to be that collections ought to be taken up for the conversion of others. There is the same vagueness too about the articles of Mr Wilde's faith that there is about those of the Reverend Charles. The aesthetic principles which he announced on Monday at Chickering Hall were in a strange jumble, the chief merit of which lay in the serene superiority of the lecturer to the confusion which he produced in the mind of his audience, and which we notice has led one reporter of it to imagine that he said that English aestheticism sprang from the union of Hellenism with the romantic spirit, "as from the marriage of Faust and Helen of Troy sprang the beautiful Lady Euphemia." Mr Wilde, again, represented himself as being de- termined to carry on the warfare of art against Philis- tinism to the bitter end, but really he brings peace 430 Appendix rather than a sword. Art, when first introduced among the Philistines, did lead to an internecine struggle. It introduced discord into every family — set father against son, and mother against daughter. It inspired passions in the simple-minded, barbarous Anglo-Saxon which nothing else but religion and the study of language had ever produced. But it is easy to see from the reception we have given to Mr Wilde that he is not an iconoclast, or in any danger of suffering the fate of a martyr. He is, as we have said, spreading the true faith in Art, much as a fashionable preacher spreads the true faith in the Gospel. He and his con- gregation are really all of one mind, but he has the gift of expression, the sweet eloq,uence which the successful preacher must always have, and he thoroughly appre- ciates the value of extravagance in attracting attention. He is glad to have even his congregation laugh at him, if they will only join in his prayer to the Steel of Toledo and the Silk of Genoa, or acknowledge the supreme importance of the " gaudy leonine beauty " of the sun- flower and the " precious loveliness " of the lily. It makes little difference whether Maudle is the caricature of Mr Wilde or Mr Wilde a realisation of Maudle. It is the doubt which gives reality to both. There is nothing that shows Mr Wilde in his true light so completely, as his great appreciation of Bunthome. Bunthome is an impostor, an " aesthetic sham," and his existence every night tends to make the whole aesthetic movement ridiculous. Now, it is very true that all new moments in art or poetry have had their parodists and their satirists. But it never occurred to any reformer before Mr Wilde that it would be a good thing to encourage parody and satire as a means of keeping the ball going. The same manager " runs " the lecture tour of the aesthete and the operatic com- 431 Appendix pany which heaps ridicule upon him. You hear the true Gospel at Chickering Hall, and join the mocking laughter of the heathen at the absurdity of it at the Standard Theatre. We must say that, to our mind, Mr Gilbert has the best of the joke. Real reformers have usually hated, as only just men can hate, those who sneer at reform. It was left to Mr Wilde to dis- cover the commercial value of ridicule in the good cause. Mr Wilde is a poet, a preacher, and a man of the world. As a man of the world, he knows that the true way to attract attention is to shock people's sense of decency, and the true way for a preacher to become fashionable is to make the Word pleasant and soothing to fashionable people, and that a very good substitute for fame is the notoriety attracted bysHUness. Mr Wilde is an essentially foreign product, and can hardly succeed in this country. What he has to say is not new, and his extravagance is not extravagant enough to amuse the average American audience. His knee-breeches and long hair are good as far as they go ; but Bunthorne has really spoiled the public for Wilde. 1 2th January 1882. The Nation: OSCAR WILDE'S LECTURE IN ENGLISH PRO- VINCES ON THE " HOUSE BEAUTIFUL " He used to commence his lecture on the " House Beautiful " by saying that he would refrain from "giving a definition of the abstract principle of beauty" ; that metaphysicians, rhetoricians, and poets had all tried to do so in vain. " There was a time," he continued, " when every house was beautiful. There was once a spirit Which 432 Appendix touched everything into loveliness." The right basis of every artistic movement was to " value and honour handicraft." Delicacy of hand, refinement of imagina- tion, the eye to see beauty, and the power to transmit that beauty to others — unless all this were honoured " art might become the luxury of a few people, or it might be the fashion of a few seasons," but it would be nothing more. He referred to what he had seen in the Chinese quarter of San Francisco, where aU the little vessels and cups of the Chinese were articles of the greatest taste, while he in his hotel had his tea given him in a " delf cup of the size of half a brick." All rules for decoration must be general . ^stheticism is not a style, but a principle. AU rules applicable to decora- tion must be " broad, workaday, and not abstruse." Mr William Morris's first rule was : " Not to have any- thing in the house but what one knows to be useful and what one thinks to be beautiful." "What strange ornaments," said Oscar Wilde, " are to be seen in the houses of very charming people. Wax flowers " (here people used to laugh) — " horrible things perpetrated in Berlin wool" {Laughter) — "and the endless array of anti- macassars, which seems to reduce life to ' the level of an eternal washing-day.' " (This was always applauded, and became a househbld phrase.) The lecturer then quoted Mr Morris's second principle : " Not to have anything but what is felt to have been a joy to some- one to make it, and a joy to others to use it." " This table-cloth," said Oscar Wilde, pointing to the one on the table in front of him — ^which was usually a showy one of indescribable pattern — " must have been made by someone who worked under permanent depression of spirits." {Laughter.) The third principle was : " Not to have in one house any imitation of one texture in another." Wood painted Uke stone, paper appearing 2 E 433 Appendix like marble, and other things which Ruskin condenmed so forcibly. For a man, said Ruskin, to have on the walls of his hall a marble paper was extremely im- moral. He (Oscar Wilde) would leave out of his dictionary aU fine ethical words about art. To him the " morality of art was its beauty, the immorality its ugliness," and that could be said without going into graver moral questions. We ought not, then, to think, but to be absolutely certain that there is nothing in our house which is not useful and that is not beautiful. He was often asked : " What is the true artistic colour ? " He was unable to reply. All colours were artistic. He smiled when he read in the newspapers that such and such a colour would be a fashionable one for the season. As in music, so in colour : one note was not more beautiful than another. The combination of notes was music, the combination of colours was beauty. How we should smile if it were to be announced that B Flat would for some months be the fashionable note — ^what a dreary lookout it would be ! But quite as depressing was it to be told that one particular colour would be fashionable for the season. It was essential to true decoration that there should be a knowledge of back- ground, of neutrals, and of tertiary colours, so as to produce the impression without glare. Gold was a neutral, its object to give tone, but it had been made into a primary colour. It was always safe to treat walls as background and keep bright colours for detail. Porcelain, silk, and such-like textures were best for bright colours. Colour not merely makes things beautiful, but is often the substitute for architectural features, which in themselves are not possible to us. "The fault of most rooms," Mr Wilde said, "was in their being too high." He then had a good-humoured tilt at the scientific doctors who advocate high rooms. 434 Appendix Ventilation was what was wanted. You need not light your rooms with five glaring lights of a chandelier hanging from a "plaster vegetable " in the centre of the ceiling. There was no reason why rooms should not be lighted with candles or oil-lamps. The lecturer then went on to describe how a room too high or too low should be treated in its decoration. The sten- cillings of Japan, designed by the first Japanese artists, were then described. Large windows and windows coming too low were condfemned. Plate-glass gives glare, but not light. Glare is to light what noise is to music. When ugly windows are obtained, then the upholsterer is sent for to see what he can do. The up- holsterer has no scruples. He brings a pole as heavy as a ship's mast, and massive rings thereon to support a curtain — not to fall into folds and reach only to the floor — but to trail and to be looped with woollen bands ; and all other kinds of wickedness the upholsterer de- signs. {Laughter.) The beauty of small panes and coloured glass was then pointed out. Coloured glass made " light beautiful." Dreary, white, shining marble chimney-pieces were next satirised, and were described as things which it would be wicked to sell and still more wicked to give away. The problem was : What to do with them ? Mirrors came in for unqualified condemnation. A room was supposed to have four walls. All sorts of fantastic shapes were given by a mirror reaching from the chimney-piece to the ceiling, and every straight line was deflected. Mirrors were one of the unpunished (irimes of the nineteenth century- He did not want to say anything more severe than that. When the present century came in there was a feeling that all useful things should be made as ugly as possible. Useful things ugly, and then the rooms filled' with a number of delicate little luxuries. The common things 43S Appendix of life ought to be made so beautiful that nothing shall hereafter be called common. The qualities of good furniture were that it should be well made, be comfort- able, and be made by people of refinement for people of refinement. There was something in art besides honesty. Honesty was not a principle but a condition of art. Furniture well made, and of good materials, grew more beautiful the longer you had it. The most comfortable chairs were not the softest. In conclusion, the lecturer, in an eloquent peroration, showed how all possibility of having in England beautiful things de- pended upon the honour and dignity given to handi- craft. It was here that the lecturer became most effective and impressive, and most earnestly did he plead that handicraft might have a place in the educa- tion of every child. We in England have made a great mistake, he continued. The attention of children has been fixed to books when it ought not to have been. Who cannot remember, when a child, looking at a blacksmith at work or spending an hour in a carpenter's shop ? Every child likes to see something made, and likes to make something. A school should be the most beautiful place in «very town and village — so beautiful that the punishment for undutiful children should be that they should be debarred from going to school the following day. In all schools there should be a con- stant succession of new and delightful things, so that children could not weary or become indifferent to any- thing that was beautiful. He considered that it would be a very good thing if some of the bits of decorative art which were stored up at South Kensington and similar museums were lent to the schools throughout the country for the edification and delight of the children. There was no place so absolutely depressing as a museum. There was a better use of art than 436 Appendix looking at it on a rainy day. Give a child something to make, and he would be happy — and a perfectly happy child would be a perfectly good child. Children might be taught to do something in wood, something in leather, in pottery, in furniture, in decorative art, and in metal-working. The artistic power of every child was great. The problem of the age was the noisy boy who would not go to school nor learn his lessons, but spent his time in throwing stones at windows. What was the matter with him ? He had simply discovered that he had hands, and that they were given him for something. Many people do nothing with their hands but cover them with kid gloves. The human hand has marvellous powers. Every child loved beautiful things. The taste of a child was often perfectly faultless. A child knew that what was beautiful must be good. If such children were taught the nobility of all handicraft that lesson would be quite as important as teaching them the population of Madagascar, or the names of the Saxon kings, or in the incidents in the private lives of people who never lived. Open the child's eyes to see the beauty of land and sea, of the flight of birds, of the budding of a flower, and the falling of a leaf, and they will feel it a joy, and desire to communicate that joy to others — ^and almost every noble lesson of life will have been learned. They will learn to love all that is beautiful and to hate all that is ugly. Moral tales do not accomplish much good. The boy who throws a stone does not always faU into the well, as the tale states. This is soon dis- covered, and then comes the revolt of life against literature. Every child cannot be made into an artist. The lecturer closed his remarks by quoting the words of " one who loved beauty more than an5d;hing else " — John Keats, who, replying to someone who asked him 437 Appendix to venerate some principle or other, said : " I venerate only the Supreme Being, the memory of great men, and the principle of Beauty." OSCAR WILDE'S LECTURE IN DUBLIN ON " THE VALUE OF ART IN MODERN LIFE " Within the last few years in that country and else- where there had been a strong development of artistic feeling and artistic beauty in the houses, not alone of the wealthy, but of all classes. A better perception of form and colours and a greater sense of harmony ran through every room. Certain old ornaments had dis- appeared. The wax peach no longer ripened in the glass shade. Cumbrous and useless furniture had been more and more laid aside. He would endeavour to show the scientific basis of the movement. Modem science taught that every organism, whether plant or animal, sought its proper environment. There was no reason why mankind should not seek for theirs . Plato in his " Republic " taught that children should be brought up in the midst of fair sights and sounds, so that the soul might be brought naturally into harmony with the eternal world. Formerly abstract definitions of the beautiful were aimed at. But the artistic temperament was better developed by beautiful surroundings — ^by giving a perception of every particular beauty. He was not sure that the real meaning of art was under- stood. Most people imagined that it was in some way synonymous with ornamentation. But ornamentation was merely a branch of art. Art was primarily a question of construction, next of adaptability to a purpose, and lastly of proportion. Within the last 438 Appendix few years ornamentation had become an enemy of art. Some of the most beautiful things were entirely without ornament. In opposition to this they saw vases and articles of pottery beautiful in form, but covered with meaningless landscapes and sprawling flowers. The manufacturers said the public would not buy the things unless they were covered with ornament. Another thing which hindered artistic development, was the wrong use of materials. They saw looking- glasses framed in plush and painted with flowers. Plush was chiefly good for the deUcate folds that it afforded, and the merit of a looking-glass was that it reflected its object. But these effects were lost in such frames. Nature was beautiful in its exquisite details and in the pageantry of its changing moods. Nature was an ideal to itself, but, as regarded art, it was not an ideal at all. Art was not a mere imitation of natural objects. Decorative art, like music, depended absolutely on certain laws — on laws of alternation, symmetry, and series, corresponding more or less to melody in music ; on laws of repetition and mass, corresponding to harmony. Nature was the rough material from which art selected. Look at the examples of old Celtic art, and at Persian, Hindoo, and other Oriental arts in their general characteristics, except Japanese. In old Celtic art there was no imitation of a single object in nature. The prohibition in the Koran of the imitation of natural objects led to an exceedingly fine school of Mohammedan decorative art. These all dealt in exquisite lines, beautiful proportions, and lovely masses of colour. Bad ornamentation had arisen from the separation of the functions of the artist, the decor- ator, and the workman. Ornament should never for a moment disturb outline and proportion, nor should it add to the apparent weight of anything. With regard 439 Appendix to materials, when wood was used curves should be avoided. The curved furniture of the Louis Quatorze period was invariably gilt, so as to look like metal. In modem English furniture they saw the mahogany writhing into all sorts of shapes, giving a sense of in- security and heaviness. But should not art be national ? He felt obliged to say No. National art was as im- possible as national mathematics. Mathematics was the science of truth and art was the science of the beautiful. Both were founded on natural laws of universal application. But the national idea might be imparted in details. The Greeks made a certain use of the honeysuckle in the ornamentation of their buildings, but now, provided the principle of decora- tion were adhered to, any other flower would do as well. Therefore they should not furnish their houses as if they wished to please a professor of history. If he were asked for a definition of what a really Jaeautiful thing was, he was not sure that his answer would not be such an object as would harmonise with all other beautiful objects, no matter of what century or nation. They would agree because they expressed the same laws. Between examples of ancient Irish art and examples from the Alhambra, or from Oriental mosques of the Byzantine period, there would, therefore, be no discord. They could select from all these, and the best furnished house would be the one which could not be absolutely localised as regarded forms of art. Every- thing should be in proportion as to colour and form, and a mere spirit of archaeology should not prevail. Why was this movement called " aesthetic " ? There was a deeper sense in that word than the merely beauti- ful. In past ages decorative art was symbolic and ex- pressive of ideas. Afterwards it became simply im- pressive, and consequently aesthetic. In the hands of 440 Appendix the Greeks it became after a time Simply impressive, and in the period of the Renaissance Italian decorative art took the same direction. S3nnbolism had a ten- dency to putrefaction and to the stoppage of growth ; on the other hand, when the aesthetic impulse came into play there was a constant growth and admission of new light. When art was healthy it was constantly changing in its details. To us in the nineteenth century the aesthetic side of art had more application than the s3mibolic. Anciently sjmibolism was a means of conveying ideas in novels, religion, and philosophy, but, since printing, the enormous increase of books had almost put an end to that function, and ornamentation now mainly appealed to the eye — and thereby a greater amount of beauty was attained. The beauty of a rose was not enhanced by a long botanical name. Decoration was to be distinguished from imaginative art. Decorative art emphasised its material and made it more beautiful than before ; imaginative art anni- hilated its material. They did not regard the canvas of a picture or the stone of a piece of sculpture. Again, they could place a piece of decorative art where they liked, but they could not do so with a picture. They had to hang a picture where they could see it under certain conditions of light and shade. Decorative art depended largely on traditions, whereas the art of the picture or the statue was purely individual. De- corative art was purely impressive, like music. They did not ask what a piece of music meant, but how it affected them. But imaginative art expressed not merely the facts of nature, but the wonderful power of the hand and eye of the artist. What chiefly con- stituted the artist was his power of vision. He thought that in art schools here there was too much use of hard outline. The Japanese artists did better by 441 Appendix teaching their students to use a soft brush, and also by making them paint from the shoulder, without any rest for the wrist. The Greeks discovered what was beautiful, but the Dutch school of artists were the first to discover that ugly objects might be made beautiful. There was no object in life so hideous that it might not become beautiful under certain conditions of light and shade. What the artist should do is to watch for the moment when indifferent objects became thus transformed. Modem painters were too much in the habit of taking subjects from history and hterature and of resorting to s5mibolism. There was also too great a tendency to special subjects. At a London exhibition a young artist gained great iclat by a picture in which he introduced in the foreground three silver birch-trees. For a while afterwards the public would have nothing but silver birch-trees. The artist wisely remonstrated against this, and painted a picture with trees of a different kind, which he exhibited, and was informed by a dealer that a gentleman was ready to pay him his own price for it if only he would put three silver birch-trees in the foreground. (Here the first laugh was taken.) The practice of decorative art en- nobled labour, and contained within itself an enormous store of economic wealth, owing to the extent to which the value of the material was enhanced by the work of the artist. It was always possible for a nation by artistic power to give to the commonest material vastly increased value. There was no reason why we in Ireland should not do this. There was in all the Celtic races this power of decoration. Whether they viewed the remains of ancient art in the Royal Irish Academy or in the museums of Northern Europe, they would be struck by the far greater sense of beauty evinced in the early Celtic work than in the old English 442 Appendix art, which was deficient in delicacy and sense of pro- portion. {Applause.) And there was no reason why they should not show that those perceptions of the beautiful, and capacities of delicate handling as to hue and colour, were not dead. OSCAR WILDE'S LECTURE IN DUBLIN ON " DRESS " It was strange that, whereas so much attention had been paid to the decoration of our homes, very little care had been bestowed on the national dress of our men and women. No matter how beautiful a house might be, it should be only a background for the men and women who dwell in it. The beauty of the house was abnormal so loAg as the art of dress was neglected. When he called it an art he did not exaggerate its im- portance. To be dressed well requires that one should be a master of colour and form. The beauty of a dress consists in its giving expression to the grace and free- dom of the body. It should suit and yield to its every motion, and not be a mere prison in which the body is confined. Before there is any reform in our national costumes the natural motions and functions of the body must be better and more widely understood. A great aid to the general acquiring of that necessary knowledge would be the teaching of drawing. A desire to draw is natural ; no boy or girl fails to cover its lesson book with pictures of its parents and friends or of the house over the way. Writing, on the contrary, is an acquired art, and there is no reason why children should not be taught drawing as they are taught writing. They might commence by drawing 443 Appendix plane figures, squares, or cubes, proceeding afterwards to the study of the human figure — ^in the first place from the casts of the ancient Greek statues. They would then learn that the waist, for instance, is the most delicate and graceful curve in the entire body, and that it is not necessarily beautiful if it happens to be small. Nothing is beautiful because it is simply smaU or large, and the waist is beautiful only when it is in perfect proportion with the other parts of the human figure. Similarly the foot is beautiful when it gives the idea of being the firm basis on which the body rests ; and the hand is not beautiful in proportion to its smallness, but when its curves and those of the wrist are graceful and unbroken. The poets, who are generally blamed for everything (here the first laugh was usuaUy heard), are probably responsible for the idea that a small waist is necessarily beautiful. Chaucer and Dunbar are amongst the guilty : one talks of a lady whose waist was " as small as a willow wand." In the same way, it is almost irtipossible to take up a novel in which the lady has not extremely small hands and feet. The child who has learned to draw will know that the effect of horizontal lines upon the figure is to re- duce its apparent height, whilst that of vertical lines is to increase the height. The same principle, as is well known, holds in the case of a house. If a ceiling be too high — a fault very common in our modern houses — ^it is easy to reduce its seeming height by running any broad band, such as a dado, horizontally round the room. If, on the contrary, the ceiling be too low — as occasionally occurs in very old houses — proportion may be given by making the leading lines vertical. In dress, if a lady be too tall, a broad belt or sash lessens her apparent height ; while, if she happens to be small, the lines of her dress should be as much as possible 444 Appendix vertical. A person looking at the fashion plates of the period of the First French Empire will be struck by the apparent height of the beautiful ladies of the time. The cause is that the skirts were lengthened by shorten- ing the waist. As regards the question of colour, he should remind them that in decorating a room — unless it was wanted to be a museum — they should have some scheme of colour. The same holds true of dress. He thought that at most three colours, unless very exquisitely harmonised, were as many as could be safely employed, for it should be understood that any con- trasting colour concentrated attention on a mere detail. Vivid colours in ribbons or feathers in the head-dress are dangerous also, because they interfere with the attention, and attract undue observation. Large checks should not be worn, as they render any irregularity of the figure at once apparent. Recently he had gone into a shop in London to purchase some stamped velvet or plush. After a lengthened search he was obliged to ask the shopman to show him something that would not require a man some ten or twelve feet high to be in proportion. The figures on all that the shopman had shown were large 'enough for the paper of a considerable building. Anything else, the shopman said, was un- fashionable. When he mentioned the word " fashion" he named the greatest enemy of art in this as in all other centuries. It is a giant that puts men in chains. Art seeks to give expression to individuality ; fashion insists upon every man doing as every other man. If there were anything beautiful or excellent in fashions they would not have to be changed every six months. The Egyptians had preserved their national dress for nearly 2000 years ; the Greeks maintained theirs for over 900. With us a young lady spends her pocket- money bu3dng a bonnet which she wears for a few 445 Appendix weeks, to the admiration and rage of her neighbourhood; and then comes her dearest friend, who mentions, quite casually, that nobody wears a bonnet of that shape or colour now. (Laughter.) More money is spent on bon- nets alone than would suffice, if the figures were made public, to drive the husbands of the kingdom to despair. {Applause and laughter.) It is not that they are beauti- ful. Time was when great merchants and nobles dressed their wives in brocades and cloth of gold. More money in proportion is expended now, because fashion changes so often. The economy would indeed be great if dress could be rendered permanent. In England, as in every other country, the national costume was permanent until the end of the sixteenth century. Catherine de Medicis, who had been accused of nearly every possible crime, was guilty of the intro- duction of the corset and the farthingale. The former was an iron band, very broad, and arranged so as to be fastened with links and hooks at the back and under the shoulders. In it the body was iron-bound like an American trunk. The farthingale was a cage, some- times of osier, at times strengthened with iron ribs, that depended from the waist and kept the dress extended to a monstrous degree. A lady thus attired would occupy aU to herself as much room as would suffice for a moderate political meeting. (Laughter.) The same fashion may be seen caricatured in Hogarth's works, and in our time it has been known as the crinoline. It is now disused, and upon that at least we might con- gratulate ourselves. But what was the meaning of that wicked thing known as the dress improver ? (Applause and laughter.) Of course, none of those present were capable of wearing it, but for the benefit of others he would point out that its effect is to cut across the curve of the body just as it becomes beautiful. An ideal 446 Appendix dress was that of the Athenian woman in the days of Athenian glory, when she was pre-eminent in her arts and in her philosophy. They borrowed from the Orient, from which all things have come, a soft variety of woollen cloth similar to cashmere. The Ass5^ians, with the Oriental fondness for bright colours, dyed their dress in vivid shades. The Greeks, with more artistic feeling, discarded the colours and the horizontal lines of the Assyrian girdle, which they diminished to two small cords that served to reUeve the vertical lines of the robes by retaining oblique folds in position. The lecturer described the ancient Greek costume in detail. Of course, he added, in our colder climate it would be unsuitable, but two lessons may be learned from the facts known of it. The first is that as a dress material woollen cloth is superior to any other. It is a mistake to suppose that woollen textures are of necessity clumsy and coarse. The woollen stuffs of cashmere were finer than the finest silk. The other point observ- able in the costume he had described is that it was un- divided and unseamed. The beauty of the dress was entirely dependent upon the manner in which it was worn. The use of wool as the basis of materials for dress was greatly recommended by eminent physicians. It was cool in summer and warm in winter, whilst per- fectly flexible and light. Its employment in lawn- tennis, rowing, and cricketing clothes might be instanced as an example. A cloak with a hood, not intended merely for an ornament, was a very ancient and most admirable garment. It was decidedly Irish in very remote times, as their sculptures in Kilconnell Abbey proved. The hood should be made to protect the head from rain — that was its use. A head-dress as at present worn is rarely of any advantage to the wearer. It generally assumes the form of a stuffed bird perching 447 Appendix upon a small piece of tulle. (Laughter. ) Recently he saw in one of the French journals a drawing of a bonnet, with the note underneath : " With this style the mouth is worn slightly open." (Laughter.) That was surely the ne plus ultra of folly. (Applause.) Referring to the sub- ject of male attire, the lecturer declared that the tall top- hat was as wicked and monstrous as the worst of the feminine articles of apparel. It was supposed to give very great respectability on week-days and irreproach- able orthodoxy on Sundays. (Laughter.) High-heeled boots were next vigorously condemned, and Wilde con- cluded his lecture by impressing on his hearers that beauty in dress consisted in the perfect adaptability of the garments to the needs of the wearer. 448 BIBLIOGRAPHY CONTENTS I. Works issued in Book Form — 1. AUTHORISED EDITIONS PUBLISHED IN ENGLAND 2. WORKS PUBLISHED IN AMERICA ONLY 3. WORKS PUBLISHED IN PRIVATELY PRINTED EDITIONS ONLY . II. Magazines and Periodicals . III. Books containing Selectioi^s IV. Spurious Works V. Translations— 1. FRENCH 2. GERMAN 3. ITALIAN 4. POLISH 5. RUSSIAN 6. SPANISH 7. SWEDISH 451 453 453 453 458 460 461 461 463 463 463 463 463 2 F 449 BIBLIOGRAPHY I. WORKS ISSUED IN BOOK FORM I. Authorised Editions published in England Ballad of Reading Gaol, The. London : Leonard Smithers. 1898. 1st edition. 800 copies, 2s. 6d. Also 30 copies on Japanese vellum. 2nd edition. Text revised, 2s. 6d. 3rd edition. 99 copies, signed by the author. 4th, 5th, 6th editions similar to the 2nd edition, 2S. 6d. 1899. 7th edition, 2s. 6d. Author's name added on the title- page. All the above are on hand-made paper. 1900-5. Stereotyped editions on wove paper, all dated 1899. 2S. Children in Prison, and other Cruelties of Prison Life. London : Murdoch & Co. 1898. (Reprinted from The Daily Chronicle as a pamphlet.) Id. De ProfUndis. London : Methuen & Co. 1905. 5s. Also 200 copies on hand-made paper, 21s., and 50 on Japanese vellum, 42s. During 1905 six impressions of the 5s. edition were issued. Happy Prince and Other Tales, The. Londoii : David Nutt. 1888. 1st edition, 5s. Also 75 copies (65 for sale) with the illustrations in two states, on large paper. 1889. 2nd edition, 3s. 6d. 1902. 3rd edition, 3s. 6d. 1905. 4th edition, 3s. 6d. Hmtse of Pomegranates, A. London : Osgood, Mcllvaine & Co. 1891. 2IS. 451 Bibliography Ideal Husband, An. London ; Leonard Smithers & Co. 1899. 12 copies on Japanese vellum for presentation ; 100 L.P. 2IS. ; 1000 sm. 4to, 7s. 6d. Importance of Being Earnest, The. Leonard Smithers & Co. 1899. The number of copies issued, and the price, the same as ^» Ideal Husband. Intentions. London : Osgood, Mcllvaine & Co. 1891. ist edition, 7s. 6d. 1894. 2nd edition, 3s. 6d. Lady Windermer^s Fan. London : Elkin Mathews & John Lane. 1893. 50 copies L.P., 15$., and 500 copies sm. 4to, 7s. 6d. Lord Arthur Savil^s Crime and Other Stories. Osgood, Mcllvaine &Co. 189I. 2S. Picture of Dorian Gray, The. London i Ward, Lock & Co. 1891. 1st edition, 6s. Also 250 copies on L.P., 2rs. 1894. 2nd edition, 6s. (Ward, Lock, Bowden & Co.)^ Poems. London : David Bogue. 1881. ist, 2nd, 3rd editions, los. 6d, 1882. 4th, 5th editions, 105. 6d. London : Elkin Mathews & John Lane. 1892. 220 copies (200 for sale), 15s. Ravenna. Newdigate Prize Poem. Oxford : Thos. Shrimpton & Son. 1878. IS. 6d. (Genuine original copies of this have the Arms of Oxford University on the cover and title-page.) Salome. Drame en un acte. Paris : Librairie de I'Art Indd- pendant. London : Elkin Mathews & John Lane. 1893. 600 copies (500 for sale), ss. Also a limited issue on hand-made paper. SalomS. Translated by Lord Alfred Douglas. London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane. 1894. 500 copies, 15s. J 100 copies L.P., 30s. Sphinx, The. London : Elkin Mathews & John Lane. 1894. 250 copies, 42s. ; 25 copies L.P., 105s. Womun of No Importance, A. London : John Lane. 1894. The issue was limited to the same numbers as Lctdy Windermer^s Fan. Note. — Many of the above were published simultaneously in America, but pirated reprints are not included in this list. 452 Bibliography 2. Works published in America only Duchess of Padua, The. New York : Privately printed for the author. 1883. 20 copies. Vera; or, the Nihilists. New York: Privately printed for the author. 1882. Interleaved acting edition. Rise of Historical Criticism, The. Sherwood Press, Hartford, Conn., U.S.A. 1905. 225 copies. The publisher of this work gives no information as to the source from which he obtained the MS., and its inclusion in this list must not be taken as a guarantee of its being the work of Oscar Wilde. Lacking further information, its authenticity should be considered at least doubtftil. 3. Works published in Privately Printed Editions ONLY Harlofs House, The. London : Mathurin Press, 1904. (This poem appeared first in some periodical not later than June 1885, but the original puWidation has not yet been traced.) Impressions of America. Edited by Stuart Mason. Sunderland : Keystone Press, 1906. IL MAGAZINES AND PERIODICALS Bibelot, The. (Portland, Maine, U.S.A.) June 1904. " Pciems in Prose." July 1905. " Lecture on the English Renaissance." " Rose Leaf and Apple Leaf : L'Envoi." Black-woods Edinburgh Magazine. July 1889. " The Portrait of Mr W. H." Burlington, The. Janiiary 1881. " The Grave of Keats." Centennial Magazine, The. (Sydney.) . February 1889. " Symphony in Yellow." 453 Bibliography Century Guild Hobby Horse, The. July 1886. " Keats' Sonnet on Blue." Chameleon, The. December 1894. " Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young." Comhill Booklet, The. (Boston, U.S.A.) October 1900. " The Ballad of Reading Gaol." Court and Society Review, The. February 23, March 2, 1887. "The Canterville Ghost." May II, 18, 25, 1887. "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime. A Story of Cheiromancy." December 13, 1887. " Un Amant de Nos Jours." Daily Chronicle, The. July 2, 1890. " Dorian Gray." May 28, 1897. "The Case of Warder Martin. Some Cruel- ties of Prison Life." March 24, 1 898. " Don't Read This if You Want to be Happy To-day." Dramatic Review, The. January 23, 1886. "Sonnet on the Recent Sale by Auction of Keats' Love Letters." Dublin University Magazine, The. November 1875. " Chorus of Cloud Maidens." January 1876. " From Spring Days to Winter." (For Music.) March 1876. "Graffiti d'ltalia. L San Miniato." (June 15.) June 1876. "The Dole of the King's Daughter." (For a painting.) September 1876. " AUA.ii'oi', atA.ivov l67re, rb S'eS viKaToi." July 1877. "The Grosvenor Gallery." Eclectic Magazine, The. (New York.) February 1889. " The Decay of Lying : A Dialogue." August 1889. « The Portrait of Mr W. H." April 1 891. " The Soul of Man under Socialism." El Mer curio de America. December 1898. " Balada de la Carcel de Reading." (Spanish by Dario Herrera.) English Illustrated Magazine, The. January 1889. " London Models." 454 Bibliography Fortnightly Review, The. January i, 1889. "Pen, Pencil, and Poison : A Study." February i, 1891. "The Soul of Man under Socialism." March 1, 1891. "A Preface to ' Dorian Gray.' " July I, 1894. "Poems in Prose." Green Room, The. (Routledge's Christmas Annual.) 1880. "Sen Artysty; or, the Artist's Dream." (Translated from the Polish.) Humboldt Library of Science, The. (New York.) January 1892. "The Soul of Man under Socialism." In a Good Cause. 1885. " Le Jardin des Tuileries." Irish Monthly, The. September 1876. "The True Knowledge." February 1877. " Lotus Leaves." June 1877. " Salve Satumia Tellus." July 1 877. " The Tomb of Keats." December 1877. " Ildi/Tos 'Ar/oijyeTos." April 1878. " Magdalen Walks." Kottabos. Trinity College, Dublin. Trinity Term, 1876. « AT/^tflvjuov "EpMTos 'Av^os.' ("The Rose of Love, and with a Rose's Thorns.") Michaelmas Term, 1876. " Qfrqvif&ia." (Eur. Hec, 444-483.) Hilary Term, 1877. "A Fragment from the Agamemnon of jEschylos." "A Night Vision." Michaelmas Term, 1877. "Wasted Days." (From a picture painted by Miss V. T.) Hilary Term, 1879. "La Belle Marguerite." Ballade du Moyen Age. Michaelmas Term, 1879. "Ave! Maria." La Plume. (Paris.) December 15, 1900. " Le Rossignol et la Rose.'' (French by Stuart Merrill.) Lady's Pictorial, The. Christmas, 1887. "Fantaisies D^coratives — I. Le Panneau. 2. Les Ballons." Christmas, 1888. "The Young King." Uppincotfs Monthly Magazine. July 1890. " The Picture of Dorian Gray." 45 S Bibliography ikterature. Decemtber 8, igcxj. " Xheocritus." Month and Catholic Review, The. September 1876. " Graffiti d'ltalia." .(Arona. Lago Maggiore.) Nineteenth Century, The. May 1885. " Shakespeare and Stage Costume." January i88g. " The Decay of Lying : A Dialogue." July, September 1890. "The True Function and Value of Criticism ; with Some Remarks on the Importance of • Doing Nothing : A Dia;k)g!«ie." Notes and Queries. August I, 1903. " The Thames Nocturne of Blue and Gold." Our Continent. (Philadelphia.) February 15, 1882. "Impressions — i. Lejardin. 2. LaMer." Pall Mall Gazette, The. October 14, 1884. "On Woman's Dress." November 11, 1884. "More Radical Ideas upon Dress Reform." February 21, 1885. " Mr Whistlei-'s Ten O'Clock." February 28, 1885. " The Relation of Dress to Art. A Note in Black and White on Mr Whistler's Lecture." September 20, 25, 1894. " The Ethics of Journalism." October 2, 1894. " The Green Carnation." Papyrus, The. (Cranford, U.S.A.) May 1905. "From the 'Ballad of Reading Gaol,' and from 'DeProfundis."" Q^teen, The, The Lady's Newspaper. December 8, 1888. " English Poetesses." Reynold^ Newspaper. May 14, 1905. "The Harlot's House." Saunders' Irish Daily News. May S, 1879. " Grosvenor Gallery." (First Notice.) Scots Observer, The. July 12, August 2, 16, 1890. " Mr Wilde's Rejoinder-" (Letters on " Dorian Gray.") Seaside Library. (New York.) January 19, 1882. " Lecture on the English Renaissance." Shaksperean Show-Book. 1884. " Under the Balcony." 456 Bibliography Society. Summer Number, 1885. " Roses and Rue." Speaker, The. February 8, 1890. "A Chinese Sage." March 22, 1890. " Mr Pater's Last Volume." December 5, 1891. "A House of Pomegranates." Spirit Lamp, The. (Oxford.) December 6, 1892. "The New Remorse." February 17, 1893. " The House of Judgment." June 6, 1893. " The Disciple." TMet, The. December 8, 1900. "-The True Knowledge." Time. April 1879. " The Conqueror of Time." July 1879. " The New Helen." Truth. January 9, 1890. " Reply to Mr Whistler." Waifs and Strays. (Oxford.) June 1879. "Easter Day." March 1880. " Impression de Voyage." Wilshiris Magazine. (Toronto.) June 1902. " The Soul of Man." (Selections.) IVbman's World, The, November, December 1887 ; January, February, March 1888. " Literary and Other Notes." November 1888. "A Fascinating Book. December 1888. "A Note on Some Modern Poets." January to June 1889. " Some Literary Notes." World, The. June II, 1879. "To Sarah Bernhardt." July 16, 1879. " Queen Henrietta Maria ( Charles I., Act Hi.)." January 14, 1880. "Portia." August 25, 1880. "Ave Imperatrix ! A Poem on England." November 10, 1880. "Libertatis Sacra Fames." March 2, l88l. "Impression de Matin." November 14, 1883. Telegram to Whistler. February 25, 1885. Letter to Whistler. November 24, 1886. Note on Whistler. May 25, 1887. " Lady Alroy." June 22, 1887. "The Model MilUonaire." 457 Bibliography III. BOOKS CONTAINING SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF OSCAR WILDE Ballades and Rondeaus, Chants Royal, Sestinas, VtHanelles, &*c. Selected, with Chapter on the Various Forms, by Gleeson White. London : Walter Scott, 1887. Villanelle— " Theocritus." Best of Oscar Wilde, The. Selected by Oscar Harrmann. Edited by W. W. Massie, Avon Press, New York, 1905. "Hdlas!" "The Sphinx." Prose Extracts. "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." Short Poems. Book of Jousts, A. Edited by James M. Lowry. London : Leadenhall Press, E.C. (n.d.) "A Night Vision." Book-Song. An Anthology of Poems of Books and Bookmen from Modern Authors. Edited by Gleeson White. London : Elliot Stock, 1893. " To my Wife : With a Copy of my Poems." " With a Copy of the ' House of Pomegranates.' " Dublin Verses by Members of Trinity College. Edited by H. A. Hinkson. London : Elkin Mathews, 1895. " Requiescat." " The True Knowledge." " Salve Saturnia Tellus." " Theocritus." " The Dole of the King's Daughter." Epigrams and Aphorisms. Selected by George Henry Sargent. Boston : John W. Luce, 1905. Essays, Criticisms and Reviews. London : Privately Printed, 1901. Literary Notes, etc., contributed to The Womatis World, 1887-9. Every Day of the Year. Edited by J as. L. and Mary K. Ford. New York : Dodd, Mead & Co. "At the Grave of Keats." " Queen Henrietta Maria." " The Grave of Shelley." " Louis Napoleon:" 4S8 Bibliography Golden Gleams of Thought. Edited by S. P. Linn. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. " At the Grave of Keats." Golden Poems. Edited by Francis F. Browne. Chicago : A. C. McClurg & Co. " Requiescat." Serenade, " The Western Wind is Blowing Fair." Household Book of Poetry, The. Edited by Charles A. Dana. New York : D. Appleton & Co. "Ave Imperatrix ! " Odes from the Greek Dramatists. Translated into Lyric Metres by English Poets and Scholars. Edited by Alfred W. Pollard. London : David Stott, 1890. "Nubes."' ("Chorus of Cloud Maidens," from Aristo- phanes.) O'scariana. Epigrams. Privately Printed. London : Arthur Humphreys, 1895. Poems and Lyrics of Nature. Edited, with an Introduction, by Edith Wingate Kinder. London : Walter Scott Limited. (1894.) " Les Silhouettes." " La Fuite de la Lune." " Le Reveillon.'* 'Poets and the Poetry of the Century, The. Edited by Alfred H. Miles. Vol. viii. (1891.) "Robert Bridges and Con- temporary Poets." London : Hutchinson & Co. " Ave Imperatrix ! " "Apologia." " Requiescat." " On the Sale by Auction of Keats' Love Letters." " Libertatis Sacra Fames." "To Milton." "Hdlas!" Sebastian Melmoth (Oscar Wilde). London : Arthur L. Hum- phreys, 1904. Maxims and Epigrams. "The Soul of Man." 459 Bibliography Sonnets of this Century. Edited and Arranged, with a Critical Introduction on the Sonnet, by William Sharp. London : Walter Scott, 1886. " Libertatis Sacra Fames." " On the Sale by Auction of Keats' Love Letters." Victorian Anthology. Edited by E. C. Steadman. New York : Houghton, Miffin & Co. " Ave Imperatrix ! " Voice, Speech, and Gesture. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. "A Woman of No Importance." (Scene: Gerald and his Mother.) Werner's Readings and Recitations. No. 4. AU-RoUnd Recita- tions. Compiled and Arranged by Elsie M. Wilbor. New York : Edgar S. Werner Publishing Co. 1891. " Guido Ferranti." (Scene from " The Duchess of Padua.") IV. SPURIOUS WORKS The following works have been fraudulently attributed to Oscar Wilde, generally by unscrupulous publishers : — The Shamrock. (A poem published in The Sunday Sun about September 1894. Wilde repudiated the authorship in his letters to The Pall Mall Gazette on "The Ethics of Journalism.") The Priest and the Acolyte. (Reprinted from The Chameleon, Vol. I, No. I, December 1894. The real author was an undergraduate at Oxford.) What Never Dies. (An English translation of " Ce Qui ne Meurt pas," by Barbey d'Aurevilly. Published in Paris about 1902.) The Satyricon of Petronius. (A translation attributed to Wilde by the publisher in Paris who also issued " What Never Dies.") Ego Te Absolvo, Old Bishops, and The Orange Peel. (Three stories published in an American magazine, over Wilde's name, shortly after his death. They have been translated into French, and published by P. V. Stock in a volume containing " Lord Arthur Savile's Crime " and the five tales included in "The Happy Prince." The translator, M. Albert Savine, however, in a note says : " Nous les traduispns ici bien que I'authenticit^ nous en paraisse eminemment suspecte.") 460 Bibliography V. TRANSLATIONS 1. French Ballade de la GeSle de Reading. By Henry D. Davray. Paris : Society du Mercure de France, 1898. De Profundis. Prdc^dd de lettres dcrites de la Prisom par Oscar Wilde k Robert Ross,, Suivi de La Ballade de la Ge61e de Reading. Same translator and publishers. 1905. Intentions. By J. Joseph-Renaud. Paris : P. V. Stock, 1905. (Pages 279-294 contain " Phrases et Philosophies &, I'usage de la Jeunesse.") La Maison des Grenades. By George KhnopfF. Paris : Editions de la Plume, 1902. Le Crime de Lord Arthur Savile. By Albert Savine. Paris : P. V. Stock, 1905. Le Portrait de Dorian Gray. (By Eugene Tardieu and Georges Maurevert.) Paris : Albert Savine, 1895. N«w Edition, Paris : P. V. Stock, 1904. Le Portrait de Monsieur W. H. By Albert Savine. Paris : P. V. Stock, 1906. 2. German Buniury (" The Importance of Being Earnest "). By Felix Paul Greve. Minden : J. C. C. Bruns' Verlag. (n.d.) (1903.) Canterville Ghost. By Anne Marie von Boehn. Munich : Max von Boehn, 1897. Das Bildnis des Mr W. H., and Lord Arthur Saviles Verbrechen. By Felix Paul Greve. Minden in Westf. : J. C. C. Bruns' Verlag, 1904. Das Granatapfelhaus. By F. P. Greve. Leipzig : Im Insel-Verlag, 1904. Das Sonnetten^oblem des Herm W. H. By Johannes Gaulke. Leipzig : Verlag von Max Spohr. (N.D.) (rgo2.> De Profundis. Aufzeichnungen und Briefe Ausdem Zuchthaus in Reading. By Max Meyerfeld. Berlin : Verlag S. Fischer, 1905. 461 Bibliography Der gluckliche Prim und andere Erzahlungen, By Johannes Gaulke. Leipzig : Verlag von Max Spohr, 1903. Der gluckliche Prim Modeme Marchen. By Else Otten. Leipzig : Hermann Seemann Nachfolger, 1903. Der Sozialismus und die Seele des Menschen, and other Essays. By Hedwig Lachmann and Gustav Landauer. Berlin : Karl Schnabel, 1904. Die Ballade vom Zuchthause su Reading. By Wilhelm Scholer- mann. Leipzig : Im Insel- Verlag, 1903. DieHerzogin von Padua. Eine Tragodie aus dem 16. Jahrhundert. By Max Meyerfeld. Berlin: Egon Fleischel & Co. (n.d.) (1904.) Dorian Gray. By Johannes Gaulke. Leipzig : Verlag von Max Spohr. (n.d.) (1901.) Dorian Grays Bildnis. By F. P. Greve. Minden : J. C. C. Bruns' Verlag. (n.d.) (1903.) Ein idealer Gatte. By Isidore Leo Pavia and Hermann Freih. v. Teschenberg. Leipzig : Verlag von Max Spohr, 1903. Eine Frau ohne Bedeutung. Same translators and publishers, 1902. Ernst Sein. Eine triviale Komodie fur seriose Leute. By Her- mann Freih. v. Teschenberg. Leipzig: Verlag von Max Spohr, 1903. Fingerzeige. By F. P. Greve. Minden : J. C. C. Bruns' Verlag. (N.D.) (1903.) Intentionen. By Ida and Arthur Roessler. Leipzig : Friedrich Rothbarth, 1905. Lady Windermeris Fcicher. Das Drama eines guten Weibes. By Isidore Leo Pavia and Hermann Freih. v. Teschenberg. Leipzig : Verlag von Max Spohr, 1902. Lehren und SprUche and Gedichff in Prosa. By Franz Blei in " In Memoriam Oscar Wilde." Leipzig : Insel- Verlag, 1904. Salome. Drame in einem Aufzuge. By Isidore Leo Pavia and Hermann Freih. v. Teschenberg. Leipzig : Verlag von Max Spohr, 1903. Salome. Tragoedie in einem Akt. By Hedwig Lachmann. Leipzig : Im Insel- Verlag, 1903. 462 Bibliography Salome. Drama in einem Aufzug. By Dr Kiefer. No. 4497 Universal-Bibliothek. Leipzig: Verlag von Philipp Reclam, jun. (N.D.) Oscar Wilde. By Hedwig Lachmann. (Contains translations of " The Harlot's House," and other poems.) Berlin and Leipzig : Verlegt bei Schuster & LoefHer, 1905. 3. Italian De Profundis, Seguito da Alcune Lettere inedite di O. Wilde. Versione Italiana di Olga Bicchierai. Venezia : S. Rosen, Editore, 1905. (This edition contains the letters from prison in English.) Dorian Gray was published as a serial in a newspaper. Intentions has also been pubhshed. 4. Polish Salome. Dramat W I Akcie. Przeklad Jadwgi Gasowskiej. Munich : Dr J. Marchlewski & Co., 1904. 5. Russian De Profundis. 1905. Salome. Translated by the Baroness Rodoshefsky, 1905. 6. Spanish Balada de la Carcel de Reading. By D. H. (Dario Herrera of Buenos Ayres). El Mercurio de America, December 1898. 7. Swedish De .Profundis. By Anna Lamberg. Stockholm : Wahlstrom & Widstrands Forlag, 1905. Dorian Grays Portrdtt. By N. Selander. Stockholm: Albert Bdnniers Forlag, 1905. 463 Bibliography LSgnens Forfcell och Andra Uppsatser. By Edv. Alkman. Stock- holm : P. A. Norstedt & Soners Fdriag, 1893. Lord Arthur Savil^s brott en studie af plikten, and Spdkei Pa Canterville en hylo-idealistisk saga. By Michael Gripen- berg and Ernst von Wendt. Helsingfors ; Forlags A. B. Helios, 1905. Salome Sorgspel i en Akt. By Edv. Alkman. Stockholm ; Wahlstrom & Widstrand, 1895. Spoket pa Canterville och andra Noveller och Sagor. By Ernst Lundquist. Stockholm : Albert Bonniers Fdriag, 1906. Note. — This list of tuanslations does not profess to be complete. It i? compiled mainly from the writer's own collection. ^ Several editions of many of the works have been issued, but the date of the first edition is given, whenever possible. 464 INDEX Adam, Paul, 287 ; cited, 403-404 ^Esthetic Movement, 163-166, 246 Alcohol, 11-12,335-339 Anderson, Mary, 235 Archer, William, cited, 238 Art, Wilde's attitude towards, 379, 381-382, 409 Athenaum, Wilde's work reviewed in, 183-186, 308, 315-317. 327- 328, 330 "Ballad of Reading Gaol," 411-414 Balzac, 39, 233-236 Baudelaire, Charles, 40, 96, 238, 268 Bauer, Henri, 404, 419 Bernhardt, Sarah, 180, 181, 229, 293, 362-363 Bogue, David, 172 Bookman, " The Picture of Dorian Gray " reviewed in, 308-310 Boston Evening Transcript quoted, 203-205 Bourget, Paul, 242, 342 Cab-drivers, 88-89 Caine, Hall, cited, 337-338 Calvinism, 147-148 Carlisle, Lord, 19 Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 163 note Carson, Edward, S, 115-116, 354 "Case of Warder Martin, The," 280-281, 409-410 Child, Theodore, quoted, 225-226, 229 2 G 465 Clarke, Sir Edward, 363-364 Colum, Padraic, cited, 293 Cook, E. T., quoted, 128-129 Coquelin cadet, 197 Corkran, Miss, quoted, 71-72 Crawley, Ernest, quoted, 372-373 Curfie, Lady, quoted, 411-412 Daily Chronicle, Wilde's letters to, 280-281, 310-311, 409-411 Daily Telegraph, William Wilde on staff of, 275-276 ; quoted, 322 Daudet, Alphonse, 231-232, 287, 324 "De Profundis" quoted, 7, 121, 146-147, 353; cited, 144. 153. 365, 415; examination of, 371- 373 De Goncourt, Edmond, 227-229 De risle-Adam, Villiers, 287, 291 De Regnier, Henri, 284; quoted, 154, 285-288, 343-344; cited, 403-404 De Wyzewa, T^odor, 344 Dickens, Charles, 77 Donoghue, John, 216-218 Downing, Miss Elkn, 48 Dowson, Ernest, 405 Dublin Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital, 15-18 Dublin University Review quoted, 261-263 •• Duchess of Padua, The," 235-238, and note Duffy, Sir C. Gavan, 46-51, 63, 67-70 Dupoirier, M., 417-418, 420-422 Index Elgee, Archdeacon, 36-37 Elgee, Jane Francesca. See Wilde, Lady Elgee, Judge, 38 Emmet, Robert, 377 English Illustrated Magazine, Wilde's contributions to, 274 Figures et Caractires quoted, 285- 288 Freeman's Journal, 263 ; quoted, 260-261 Furniss, Harry, 29 Fynn, Miss (Mrs Thomas Wilde), 8,9 Gide, Andr^, 239, 412 Goethe quoted, 32, 33 Gough cited, 337J338 Greaves, Dr Robert, 1 1 Guggenheim, 137 Gunn, Michael, 260, 261 Hamilton, Miss, quoted, 74-77 Hamilton, Walter, quoted, 156, 208, 218-219; cited, 132, 135, 163-164 " Happy Prince and Other Tales, The," 259-260, 304 " Harlot's House, The," 238-239 Harris, Frank, 297 Harvard students, 202-205 Healy, Father, cited, 28-29 Hedonists, 340-341 Henley, W. E., 311 "House of Pomegranates, The," 259-260, 304 Howell, 179 Hugo, Victor, 232 Husted, Mr, 218-219 " Ideal Husband, An,'' 327 " Importance of Being Earnest, The," 329-332 " Intentions " quoted, 98-99 ; cited, 106, 138 ; translation of, into French, 231, 289; appreciation of, 303 ; Pater's criticism of, 309 Ireland — census. Sir Wilham Wilde's work on, 19; National movement (1847), 46, 48-50, 52- 62 ; Revolution of 1798, 37 Irish Monthly, 142, 144, 14S Irishmen, characteristics of, 295, 375 Irving, Henry, 195-198 "Jacta Alea Est," 49-5°. 52-62, 68 Joseph- Renaud, Jean, 294; cited, 231, 284, 288 ; quoted, 289-293 Journalism, Wilde's attitude to- wards, 274-278 Keats, 142-144 Kelly, Miss Eva Mary, 48 Kingsbury, Miss (Mrs Elgee), 38 Kottabos, 140- 141 La Jeunesse, Ernest, cited, 91, 208, 376 ; quoted, 297-298, 420 "Lady Windermere's Fan," 312- 313, 319-326 Langtry, Mrs, 212 Le journal, 278 Le Roux, Hugues, 344 Lectures by Wilde — Advertisements of, 246-248 " Decorative Art," 207, 209, 211 " Dress," 260, 443-448 " The English Renaissance," 193, 207, 264, 427-432 "The House Beautiful," 211, 245, 251, 253-254, 432-438 "The Value of Art in Modern Life," 260, 438-443 Lippiticotfs Monthly Magazine, 304 Lloyd, Constance. See Wilde, Mrs 466 Index " Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories," 315-319 " Lux in Tenebris," 263 M'Clure, Sir Robert, 38 M'Clure's Magazine, 2^^ Mahafiy, Prof., 150-152 Mallarm^, St^phane, 287 Mangan, Clarence, 41 Maturin, Rev. Charles, 3S-46 Meningitis, 300 Meyerfeld, Dr Max, 230-238, ana note, 425 Mirbeau, Octave, quoted, 344-345 Monaco, Princess of, 297 Morning Herald (Halifax, N.S.), quoted, 211-212 Nation, 46-48 Nation (New York), quoted, 199- 200, 427-432 Nature, Wilde's attitude towards, 97-100 New Hedonists, 340-341 New York Herald, interview in, 193-195 New York World qaoted, 198-199 NicoU, Dr Robertson, 30S Nineteenth Century, 208, 411 Nordau, Max, cited, 336-337 O'DoNOGHUE, D. J., 36, 41, 77, 117 O'Flyn, Miss (Mrs Ralph Wilde), 8 Ormsby, Sir Charles, 38 Oscar, King of Sweden, 84 Ouseley, Gideon, 9 Ouseley, Gen. Sir Ralph, 9 Ouseley, Sir Ralph, 8 Ouseley, Sir Wm., 8-9 Oxford poet friend, 215-216 Oxford University — Characteristics of, 121-123 ; Ruskin's influence at, 125-130 Pall Mall Gazette, Wilde's contribu- tions to, 259, 274 Paris — literary sensibilities in, 230-231 ; Wilde's honeymoon in, 257-258 ; estimate of his conversa- tional powers in, 285-293 ; vbits to (1892-95), 342 ; last days in, 418 Pater, Walter, 309-310 " Patience," 208-209 " Picture of Dorian Gray, The," 65-66, 304-310 Poe, E. A., 212, 238 " Poems," 173-175, 180-189 Pond, Major, 190, 200-201, 219 Portora, loi et seg., 114 " Portrait of Mr W. H., The," 361 Punch, " Poems " reviewed in, 187- 188 ; quoted, 221-222 ; cited, 321, 323-324 Punctuation, 273 QUEENSBERRY, MARQUESS OF, 5, "6, 352-354 Ravenna, 155-157 Reading Goal warder, account of Wilde by, 386-402 ; letter from Wilde to, 405-406 Red Island property, 242-243 Reid, Wemyss, 269 Religion, Wilde's attitude towards, 146-147, 371-372, 378-381. 383. 3S4 RoUinat, 243 Ross, Robert, 415-417. 421, 423 Richards, J. Morgan, cited, 207 Ruskin, John, 125-130, 132-133 St fames s Gazette quoted, 298-299 " Salomi," .362, 424-425 467 Index Salient, John, 242 Saturday Review, ' ' Poems " re- viewed in, 1S1-182 Scots Observer (National Observer), Wilde's letters to, 311 Scott, Clement, quoted, 322 Sebastian Melmoth, 38, 144, 300, 404. 405 Shakespeare's Sonnets, 360 Shelley, P. B., 378 Smithers, Leonard, 414 Solomons, 179 "Soul of Man under Socialism, The," 129-131, 259, 302" Speranza. See Wilde, Lady "Sphynx, The," 239 Steele, Rev. Wm., 105 " Story of an Unhappy Friendship, The," quoted, 72-73, 241, 278 note, 335, 345-346 Swinburne, A., 230, 232 Tanagra statuettes, 151-152 Terry, Ellen, 174-176 Thackeray quoted, 39 Theatre qwoteA, 330-331 " Thomasine," 48 Times, Wilde's work reviewed in, 327. 330 Truth quoted, 322-323; Wilde's work reviewed in, 331 Trinity College, Dublin, 112-115, 120-121 " Twenty Years in Paris " quoted, 415 Ungern - Sternberg, Baroness Isabella von, cited, 355-356 "Vera,'' 189, 221-222 Vezin, Hermann, 264 Voltaire, 378 Whistler, 171 Whitman, Walt, 212, 214 Wilde, Lady (Jane Francesca Elgee) (mother), family of, 35-38 ; birth, 37 ; literary abilities, 30-32 ; con- tributions to The Nation, 46-48 ; "Jacta Alea Est," 49-50, 52-62, 68 ; nationalism, 64 - 65 ; mar- riage, 18; desire that second child should be a girl, 5-6, 83 ; daughter of, 90 ; toleration of her husband's infidelities, 27-28 ; her salon, 70 ; in Park Street, 72 ; in Oakley Street, 70, 74-76; liter- ary works, 78-79 ; contributions to The Woman's World, 270-271 ; pension of, 20, 64 ; Oscar's rela- tions with, 6-7, 284, 368, 375 ; approves Oscar's remaining in England, 366; appearance of, 71-74; Sckwaermerei, 33-34, 36, 84 ; tendency to self-delusion, 35 ; clinging to youth, 73 ; quoted on Sir Wm. Wilde's literary position, 25 Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wills— Career, chronological sequence oj —birth, 3-5, 83; names, 83- 86; home, 86-87, 95-96; school, 92, loi et seq. ; un- popularity with schoolfellows, 104-105; gold medallist, 112; foreign travel, 92-93 ; at Trinity College, Dublin, 112 -115; Berkeley gold medallist, 20-21, 117; enters Magdalen College, Oxford, 121 ; Ruskin's lectures and influence, 125-130; sesthe- ticism, 133-138 ; ragging, 138 ; visits to Italy, 145-146; visit to Greece, 149-154; success in the schools, 124; First Cla:ss and Newdigate Prize, 155 ; literary work, 140-146; in London, 159, 166-169, '7'- 468 Index Wilde, Oscar — contintied 172; aesthetic costume, 160; unpopularity, 168-169; publi- cation of "Poems," 173-175, 180-189; American tour, 189- 190. 193-210, 219-223, 225- 227 ; Chickering Hall lecture, 198-200; Boston lecture, 202- 206 ; Omaha, Louisville, and Denver, 207-210 ; Canada and Nova Scotia, 210-219 ; Monc- ton Y.M.C.A., 218-219; in Paris, 224-243 ; financial diffi- culties, 242 - 246 ; returns to England, 243 ; lectures in London, 244 ; in the provinces, 245-2535 marriage, 254-257; honeymoon in Paris, 257-258 ; home in Chelsea, 258 ; journal- istic work, 259; feiry stories, 259-260; financial difficulties, 264, 305 ; birth of his sons, 264 ; editor of The Woman's World, 266-273 ; other journal- istic work, 273-274; "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime,'' 315- 319 ; " Lady Windermere's Fan,'' 319-326; "A Woman of No Importance," 326-329; "An Ideal Husband," 327; " The Importance of Being Earnest," 329-334 ; visits to Paris, 342 ; the Queensberry trial, 5, 116, 352-354 ; arrested, 3S4-3SS ; first trial. 3S7 ; goes to Oakley Street, 358 ; sale at Tite Street, 359-361 ; second trial and sentence, 278, 368; in prison, 370-373 ; visit from his wife, 374 ; conversations in prison, 377-383, 386-402 ; rela- tions with fellow-prisoners, 383- 384; "De Profundis," see that title ; released, 403 ; at Wilde, Oscar — continued Berneval, 404; "Ballad of Reading Gaol," 411-414; fin- ancial straits, 278-281, 415 ; at Naples, 415 ; in Paris, 417-420; last days, 420-422; baptised into Roman Catholic Church, 148, 416, 421 ; death, 422 ; tomb, 422-423 Characteristics — /Estheticism, 11 1 Ambition, 177 Anarchism, 161, 178 Artificiality, 233 Cleverness, 91, 103, no Conversational powers, and love of talking, 32, 284-295, 297-301, 409, 419 Courage, 139, 244 Courtesy, 180-181, 205, 2H, 296, 299-300 Detail, carefulness as to, 273, 4J4 Dignity, 205, 244, 367 Dogmatism, 253 Energy, 294 Family feeling, 6-7, 284, 368, 37S-376 Generosity, 282-284, 383-384, 404, 420 Geniality and kindliness, 214, 241, 309 Gentleness, 385 Honour in money matters, 282 Indolence, 140 Inherited tendencies, 80-81 Inventive faculty, 315-316 Linguistic facility, 30 ' Magnetic influence, 240 Mathematics, incapacity for, 103-104, 112; Optimism, 301-302 Pessimism, 140 Practicality, 34 469 Index Wilde, Oscar — continued Pride and arrogance, 170, 282, 339. 3S3 Repose of manner, 213 Satire and repartee, powers of, 10S-107, 170-171, 220,297 Self-accusation, habit of, 295, 302, 377; self-confidence, 319 Superstitiousness, 418 Voice, 293, 295 Youth, ardour for, 4, 73, 81 Miscellanea — Appearance, 29, 104, 1 96, 211, 22s, 233, 249, 251, 289, 343 Book read in youth, alleged influence of, 65-66 Dress, 109, 233-234, 250, 269- 270, 289, 343 Epileptiform malady, 34, 181, 307, 32s. 334. 337-339 Estimates, 91, 208, 34?, 426 — among European Jews, 131-132 — German, 424 — Italian, 424 Handwriting, 355-356 Irish nationality, concealment of, 86 Names, 38, 83-86, 141, 144, 404, 405 Philosophy, 301 Religious views, 146-147, 371- 372, 378-381. 383, 384 Smoking, addiction to, 269, 324-325, 334 Social celebrities,! preference for, 74, 177-178 Words affected, 210-21 1 Wilde, Mrs (wife), marriage of, 254-257 ; contributions to The Womatis World, 270-271 ; copy of " Lord Arthur Savile's Crime " inscribed to, 317 ; visits her Wilde, Mrs — continued husband in gaol, 374 ; tells him of his mother's death, 7, 374 ; death and estimate of, 375 Wilde, Ralph (great-grandfather), ■7-8 Wilde, DrThomas(great-uncle), 8, 9 Wilde, William (brother), atschool, r 08- 1 10; on Daily Telegraph staff, 275-276 ; Oscar's relations with, 89, 109, 167, 375-376; supplied with story plots by Oscar, 315-316; otherwise mentioned, 36, 70, 358, 366-367 Wilde, Sir William Robert Wills (father), family of, 7-9 ; early years, 9-10; medical studies, 11 ; illness, 11; medical success, 13- 15 ; voyage in the Crusader, 14 ; founds Eye and Ear Hospital, 15- 18 ; publication on Dean Swift, 18 ; marriage, 18 ; visits Stock- holm, 18 ; knighted, 18-20 ; Cunningham medallist, 20, 80 ; as landlord, 21-22 ; literary work, 22, 24, 80 ; foreign appreciations of, 23-24 ; Oscar's attitude towards, 6 ; characteristics, 25, 27-29 ; death and funeral, 26 Wills, W. G., 85 "Woman Covered with Jewels, The," 360 " Woman of No Importance, A," 326-327 Woman's World, 266-273 World quoted, 225-226, 254-255 ; cited, 243 ; Wilde's contributions to, 259, 274 Xau, Feknand, 278-279 Yates, Edmund, 174, 179-180; cited, 243 ; quoted, 254-255 470