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    7 best short stories by Oscar Wilde
    7 best short stories by Oscar Wilde
    7 best short stories by Oscar Wilde
    Ebook150 pages2 hours

    7 best short stories by Oscar Wilde

    By Oscar Wilde and August Nemo

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    Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. Known for his acclaimed works including The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, as well as his brilliant wit, flamboyant style and infamous imprisonment for homosexuality. This selection specially chosen by the literary critic August Nemo, contains the following stories:Lord Arthur Savile's Crime The Sphinx without a SecretA Model MillionaireThe Happy PrinceThe Fisherman and his SoulThe Nightingale and the RoseThe Young King
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTacet Books
    Release dateMay 10, 2020
    ISBN9783968582238
    7 best short stories by Oscar Wilde
    Author

    Oscar Wilde

    Born in Ireland in 1856, Oscar Wilde was a noted essayist, playwright, fairy tale writer and poet, as well as an early leader of the Aesthetic Movement. His plays include: An Ideal Husband, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, and Lady Windermere's Fan. Among his best known stories are The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Canterville Ghost.

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      7 best short stories by Oscar Wilde - Oscar Wilde

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      The Author

      Oscar Wilde portrait Oscar Wilde was an Anglo-Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest playwrights of the Victorian Era.  In his lifetime he wrote nine plays, one novel, and numerous poems, short stories, and essays.

      Wilde was a proponent of the Aesthetic movement, which emphasized aesthetic values more than moral or social themes. This doctrine is most clearly summarized in the phrase 'art for art's sake'.

      Besides literary accomplishments, he is also famous, or perhaps infamous, for his wit, flamboyance, and affairs with men. He was tried and imprisoned for his homosexual relationship with the son of an aristocrat.

      Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime – a study of duty

      I

      It was Lady Windermere’s last reception before Easter, and Bentinck House was even more crowded than usual.  Six Cabinet Ministers had come on from the Speaker’s Levée in their stars and ribands, all the pretty women wore their smartest dresses, and at the end of the picture-gallery stood the Princess Sophia of Carlsrühe, a heavy Tartar-looking lady, with tiny black eyes and wonderful emeralds, talking bad French at the top of her voice, and laughing immoderately at everything that was said to her.  It was certainly a wonderful medley of people.  Gorgeous peeresses chatted affably to violent Radicals, popular preachers brushed coat-tails with eminent sceptics, a perfect bevy of bishops kept following a stout prima-donna from room to room, on the staircase stood several Royal Academicians, disguised as artists, and it was said that at one time the supper-room was absolutely crammed with geniuses.  In fact, it was one of Lady Windermere’s best nights, and the Princess stayed till nearly half-past eleven.

      As soon as she had gone, Lady Windermere returned to the picture-gallery, where a celebrated political economist was solemnly explaining the scientific theory of music to an indignant virtuoso from Hungary, and began to talk to the Duchess of Paisley.  She looked wonderfully beautiful with her grand ivory throat, her large blue forget-me-not eyes, and her heavy coils of golden hair.  Or pur they were—not that pale straw colour that nowadays usurps the gracious name of gold, but such gold as is woven into sunbeams or hidden in strange amber; and they gave to her face something of the frame of a saint, with not a little of the fascination of a sinner.  She was a curious psychological study.  Early in life she had discovered the important truth that nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion; and by a series of reckless escapades, half of them quite harmless, she had acquired all the privileges of a personality.  She had more than once changed her husband; indeed, Debrett credits her with three marriages; but as she had never changed her lover, the world had long ago ceased to talk scandal about her.  She was now forty years of age, childless, and with that inordinate passion for pleasure which is the secret of remaining young.

      Suddenly she looked eagerly round the room, and said, in her clear contralto voice, ‘Where is my cheiromantist?’

      ‘Your what, Gladys?’ exclaimed the Duchess, giving an involuntary start.

      ‘My cheiromantist, Duchess; I can’t live without him at present.’

      ‘Dear Gladys! you are always so original,’ murmured the Duchess, trying to remember what a cheiromantist really was, and hoping it was not the same as a cheiropodist.

      ‘He comes to see my hand twice a week regularly,’ continued Lady Windermere, ‘and is most interesting about it.’

      ‘Good heavens!’ said the Duchess to herself, ‘he is a sort of cheiropodist after all.  How very dreadful.  I hope he is a foreigner at any rate.  It wouldn’t be quite so bad then.’

      ‘I must certainly introduce him to you.’

      ‘Introduce him!’ cried the Duchess; ‘you don’t mean to say he is here?’ and she began looking about for a small tortoise-shell fan and a very tattered lace shawl, so as to be ready to go at a moment’s notice.

      ‘Of course he is here; I would not dream of giving a party without him.  He tells me I have a pure psychic hand, and that if my thumb had been the least little bit shorter, I should have been a confirmed pessimist, and gone into a convent.’

      ‘Oh, I see!’ said the Duchess, feeling very much relieved; ‘he tells fortunes, I suppose?’

      ‘And misfortunes, too,’ answered Lady Windermere, ‘any amount of them.  Next year, for instance, I am in great danger, both by land and sea, so I am going to live in a balloon, and draw up my dinner in a basket every evening.  It is all written down on my little finger, or on the palm of my hand, I forget which.’

      ‘But surely that is tempting Providence, Gladys.’

      ‘My dear Duchess, surely Providence can resist temptation by this time.  I think every one should have their hands told once a month, so as to know what not to do.  Of course, one does it all the same, but it is so pleasant to be warned.  Now if some one doesn’t go and fetch Mr. Podgers at once, I shall have to go myself.’

      ‘Let me go, Lady Windermere,’ said a tall handsome young man, who was standing by, listening to the conversation with an amused smile.

      ‘Thanks so much, Lord Arthur; but I am afraid you wouldn’t recognise him.’

      ‘If he is as wonderful as you say, Lady Windermere, I couldn’t well miss him.  Tell me what he is like, and I’ll bring him to you at once.’

      ‘Well, he is not a bit like a cheiromantist.  I mean he is not mysterious, or esoteric, or romantic-looking.  He is a little, stout man, with a funny, bald head, and great gold-rimmed spectacles; something between a family doctor and a country attorney.  I’m really very sorry, but it is not my fault.  People are so annoying.  All my pianists look exactly like poets, and all my poets look exactly like pianists; and I remember last season asking a most dreadful conspirator to dinner, a man who had blown up ever so many people, and always wore a coat of mail, and carried a dagger up his shirt-sleeve; and do you know that when he came he looked just like a nice old clergyman, and cracked jokes all the evening?  Of course, he was very amusing, and all that, but I was awfully disappointed; and when I asked him about the coat of mail, he only laughed, and said it was far too cold to wear in England.  Ah, here is Mr. Podgers!  Now, Mr. Podgers, I want you to tell the Duchess of Paisley’s hand.  Duchess, you must take your glove off.  No, not the left hand, the other.’

      ‘Dear Gladys, I really don’t think it is quite right,’ said the Duchess, feebly unbuttoning a rather soiled kid glove.

      ‘Nothing interesting ever is,’ said Lady Windermere: ‘on a fait le monde ainsi.  But I must introduce you.  Duchess, this is Mr. Podgers, my pet cheiromantist.  Mr. Podgers, this is the Duchess of Paisley, and if you say that she has a larger mountain of the moon than I have, I will never believe in you again.’

      ‘I am sure, Gladys, there is nothing of the kind in my hand,’ said the Duchess gravely.

      ‘Your Grace is quite right,’ said Mr. Podgers, glancing at the little fat hand with its short square fingers, ‘the mountain of the moon is not developed.  The line of life, however, is excellent.  Kindly bend the wrist.  Thank you.  Three distinct lines on the rascette!  You will live to a great age, Duchess, and be extremely happy.  Ambition—very moderate, line of intellect not exaggerated, line of heart—’

      ‘Now, do be indiscreet, Mr. Podgers,’ cried Lady Windermere.

      ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure,’ said Mr. Podgers, bowing, ‘if the Duchess ever had been, but I am sorry to say that I see great permanence of affection, combined with a strong sense of duty.’

      ‘Pray go on, Mr. Podgers,’ said the Duchess, looking quite pleased.

      ‘Economy is not the least of your Grace’s virtues,’ continued Mr. Podgers, and Lady Windermere went off into fits of laughter.

      ‘Economy is a very good thing,’ remarked the Duchess complacently; ‘when I married Paisley he had eleven castles, and not a single house fit to live in.’

      ‘And now he has twelve houses, and not a single castle,’ cried Lady Windermere.

      ‘Well, my dear,’ said the Duchess, ‘I like—’

      ‘Comfort,’ said Mr. Podgers, ‘and modern improvements, and hot water laid on in every bedroom.  Your Grace is quite right.  Comfort is the only thing our civilisation can give us.

      ‘You have told the Duchess’s character admirably, Mr. Podgers, and now you must tell Lady Flora’s’; and in answer to a nod from the smiling hostess, a tall girl, with sandy Scotch hair, and high shoulder-blades, stepped awkwardly from behind the sofa, and held out a long, bony hand with spatulate fingers.

      ‘Ah, a pianist! I see,’ said Mr. Podgers, ‘an excellent pianist, but perhaps hardly a musician.  Very reserved, very honest, and with a great love of animals.’

      ‘Quite true!’ exclaimed the Duchess, turning to Lady Windermere, ‘absolutely true!  Flora keeps two dozen collie dogs at Macloskie, and would turn our town house into a menagerie if her father would let her.’

      ‘Well, that is just what I do with my house every Thursday evening,’ cried Lady Windermere, laughing, ‘only I like lions better than collie dogs.’

      ‘Your one mistake, Lady Windermere,’ said Mr. Podgers, with a pompous bow.

      ‘If a woman can’t make her mistakes charming, she is only a female,’ was the answer.  ‘But you must read some more hands for us.  Come, Sir Thomas, show Mr. Podgers yours’; and a genial-looking old gentleman, in a white waistcoat, came forward, and held out a thick rugged hand, with a very long third finger.

      ‘An adventurous nature; four long voyages in the past, and one to come.  Been ship-wrecked three times.  No, only twice, but in danger of a shipwreck your next journey.  A strong Conservative, very punctual, and with a passion for collecting curiosities.  Had a severe illness between the ages sixteen and eighteen.  Was left a fortune when about thirty.  Great aversion to cats and Radicals.’

      ‘Extraordinary!’ exclaimed Sir Thomas; ‘you must really tell my wife’s hand, too.’

      ‘Your second wife’s,’ said Mr. Podgers quietly, still keeping Sir Thomas’s hand in his.  ‘Your second wife’s.  I shall be charmed’; but Lady Marvel, a melancholy-looking woman, with brown hair and sentimental eyelashes, entirely declined to have her past or her future exposed; and nothing that Lady Windermere could do would induce Monsieur de Koloff, the Russian Ambassador, even to take his gloves off.  In fact, many people seemed afraid to face the odd little man with his stereotyped smile, his gold spectacles, and his bright, beady eyes; and when he told poor Lady Fermor, right out before every one, that she did not care a bit for music, but was extremely fond of musicians, it was generally felt that cheiromancy was a most dangerous science, and one that ought not to be encouraged, except in a tête-à-tête.

      Lord Arthur Savile, however, who did not know anything about Lady Fermor’s unfortunate story, and who had been watching Mr. Podgers with a great deal of interest, was filled with an immense curiosity to have his own hand read, and feeling somewhat shy about putting himself forward, crossed over the room to where Lady Windermere was sitting, and, with a charming blush, asked her if she thought Mr. Podgers would mind.

      ‘Of course, he won’t mind,’ said Lady Windermere, ‘that is what he is here for.  All my lions, Lord Arthur, are performing lions, and jump through hoops whenever I ask them.  But I must warn you beforehand that I shall tell Sybil everything.  She is coming to lunch with me to-morrow, to talk about bonnets, and if Mr. Podgers finds out that you have a bad temper, or a tendency to gout, or a wife living in Bayswater, I shall certainly let her know all about it.’

      Lord Arthur smiled, and shook his head.  ‘I am not afraid,’ he answered.  ‘Sybil knows me as well as I know her.’

      ‘Ah!  I am a little sorry to hear you say that.  The

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