Life of Oscar Wilde 00 She Rial A

LIFE OF OSCRR WILDE
ROBERT HRRBOROUQH SHERRRD

THE LIFE OF
OSCAR WILDE
THE COURTSHIPS OF CATHERINE
THE GREAT. By PHILIP W. SERGEANT,
B.A. (late Scholar of Trinity College, Ox-
ford). Illustrated. Demy 8vo, cloth, gilt.
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THE BURLESQUE NAPOLEON.

Being the Story of the Life and Kingship
of Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, youngest
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WITH JOHN BULL AND JONA-

THAN. Reminiscences of Sixty Years of an
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NOTES FROM MY SOUTH SEA LOG.

"
By Louis BECKE, Author of By Reef and
Palm." Crown 8vo, cloth gilt. 6s. net.
Second Edition.
OSCAR WILDE
THE LIFE OF
OSCAR WILDE
BY ROBERT HARBOROUGH SHERARD
With a Full Reprint of the famous Revolutionary
" Jacta A lea
Article, Est," which was written
by Jane Francesco Elgee, who aftenvards
became the mother of Oscar Wilde,
and an additional 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
T. WERNER LAURIE
CLIFFORD'S INN, LONDON
1906
NOTE. A limited Edition dt
Luxe is issued oj this book.
Price on application to the
Publisher.
TO
T. M.
WHO, IN THE EXTREME OF ADVERSITY,

PROVED HIMSELF 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 feeling 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 fall, will not echo those further words of
that great, good Dr Johnson, of whom it may
be said that had his like been living, at the time
of Wilde's catastrophe, the whole after-story of
Wilde's life would assuredly have been a less
pitiful one.
"
That affluenceand power, advantages ex-
trinsic and adventitious, and therefore easily
separable from those by whom they are pos-

sessed, should very often flatter the mind with
expectations of felicity which they cannot give,
raises no astonishment but it seems rational
:
to hope that intellectual greatness should pro-

duce better effects ; that minds qualified for
vii
Preface
great attainments should first endeavour their

own benefit ; and that they who are most able
to teach others the to happiness should,
way
with most certainty, follow it themselves."
At the same time this must not be taken to
convey that any close comparison can be in-
stituted between Richard Savage and Oscar
Wilde, either in point of capacity and perform-
ance, or of character, or indeed, except in re-
spect of their vicissitudes, of career. It may,
however, be of literary interest to observe one

or two 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 natures and the meaner minds" still
appealed to him, and he underwent punishment

rather than forego their whispered exchange of
words.
And it will further be seen in the narrative
viii
Preface
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 nor had opposition any other
it ;
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 shallbe 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
Preface
that the present book has been written. The age
desiderates no such lessons, resents them rather.
Life to-day ordered by a reconcilement of
is
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 had withdrawn, and that for
others
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
ithas 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 The upward climb, the attain-
others.
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 sympathy 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 seemly and expedient for
it is
him to hear are ever prompting him to close

his ears.
ROBERT HARBOROUGH SHERARD.
January i^th, 1906;
xii
CONTENTS
CHAPTER i
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER Ill 52
CHAPTER IV 63
CHAPTER V 83
CHAPTER VI 101
CHAPTER VII 125

CHAPTER vin '59
CHAPTER ix 192
CHAPTER x 224
CHAPTER xi 245
CHAPTER xn 266
CHAPTER xm 282
CHAPTER xiv
CHAPTER xv 347
CHAPTER xvi 37
CHAPTER xvn 386

CHAPTER xvm 403
APPENDIX 427
BIBLIOGRAPHY 449
INDEX 465
xm
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PORTRAIT OF OSCAR WILDE
SIR WILLIAM WILDE .... .
ROYAL VICTORIA EYE AND EAR HOSPITAL

. .
Facing Title
Facing page 23
... 25
.
W. G. WILLS . .
,,85
i MERRION SQUARE . . .
87
i MERRION SQUARE . . .
87
PORTORA ROYAL SCHOOL . . . 101
OSCAR WILDE AS A LAD . . .

,,103
RUSKIN . . . . .
,,125
CARICATURE IN PUNCH (SUNFLOWER) .
165
CARICATURE IN PUNCH (SALVATION ARMY) 177
....,,
.
16 TITE STREET 257
HENRI DE REGNIER . . '. .

,, 283
JEAN JOSEPH-RENAUD . . .
287
CARICATURE BY HARRY FURNISS . .

345
OSCAR WILDE'S WRITING '. 355
IN MEMORIAM LADY WILDE . .

367
DEATH CERTIFICATE CONSTANCE WILDE .

375
xv
List of Illustrations
READING GAOL
PAUL ADAM
MONS. DUPOIRIER
......
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Facing page 377
,,417
403
BEDROOM IN THE HOTEL D' ALSACE . .

419
BILL AT THE HOTEL D' ALSACE . .

421
DEATH CERTIFICATE OSCAR WILDE .

,, 423
MADAME DUPOIRIER . . . .
,,425
OSCAR WILDE'S GRAVE . . . 426
xvi
The Life of Oscar Wilde
CHAPTER I
The Necessity ofcarefully 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 What he did with them
He Founds a Hospital His Noble Charity The Royal
VictoriaEye 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 life ; when she has
made him subject for the boundless
the fit
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
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 allied, 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 ia 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
solid qualities of sane normality and civic
excellence, that this unhappy man's aberration

must appear one of those malignant, morbid
developments which alarm and confound the
psychologist when they unexpectedly produce
themselves in a man's mentality, no less than
as by the sudden development in the body of
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
born at No. i Merrion Square, in the city of Dub-
lin, on the i6th October 1854. So great a part
3
of the task of telling the story of his life 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 public 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 concerning his character and his deeds.
lies
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
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 hugging to
younger in fact, in
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 wound the defending
counsel will be indicated later.
For months before Oscar Wilde was born his
mother had earnestly desired that the child
1
should be a girl. She often expressed her con-
1
This fact, like every other fact recorded in this book, is
given on unimpeachable authority.

5
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
little 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 hernew child was a boy. She used to treat
him, to speak of him as a girl, and as long as it was
possible to do so, she dressed him like one. To
pathologists these facts will appear of importance.
Oscar Wilde was the second son and child,
issue of the marriage between William Robert
Wills W T
ilde, 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
"
No one knew howdeeply 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 meherself the tidings of so irreparable,
so irredeemable, a loss."
Mr William 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
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
l
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 clergyman another, Thomas Wilde,
;
was a country physician. This Thomas Wilde

married a Miss Fynn, who was related by descent
to the eminent families of Surridge and Ouseley
of Dunmore in the county of Gal way. The
Ouseley s 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
1 "
To Hell or Connaught " was the alternative proposed by
the English invaders to the Irish peasants whom they hunted
off their lands like wild beasts.
8
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
9
in the person of Paddy Walsh, afterwards im-
mortalised "
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 the plain of Ruthcragan, the site
visits to
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
10
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 obtained the annual prize there against
several English and Irish competitors. In study-
ing for this examination he so overworked him-
self that his health broke down, and afever setting
in his life 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,
untilDr 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
make such havoc in the lives of William Wilde's
two sons. As which it should be added here
to
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 gives the coup de fouet (the lash
it
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
12
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
;
restrainedby 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
Philadelphia in
of, 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
right eye. The
flapping of a sail in which the
needle was sticking had driven it in with terrible
force. An ordinary operation was out of the
question ;
there was not enough of the head
protruding to allow of any hold being got on it

with a forceps by which it might have drawn
from its place. The man was suffering terrible
agony. Sir 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 285. This edition was
14
sold out immediately ;
a second edition was as
rapidly disposed of, and other editions followed.
The book has long since been out of print.
The young man continued his medical studies
in London, Berlin and Vienna, and finally
started in medical practice in July 1841, selecting
as special branches, those of oculist and otologist.
He took as the motto of his professional career,
"
the words :Whatever thou hast to do, do it
with all His reputation was already
thy might."
so good, that in the first year of his practice he
earned in professional fees the sum of 400, which
itappears, 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 applied the first thousand pounds of his
professional earnings to his noble purpose. To
him in this manner the city of Dublin and the
whole country of Ireland owe the foundation of
St Mark's Ophthalmic Hospital, 1 which for sixty-
four years has rendered such inestimable services
to the suffering Irish poor, and which increases
1
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
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 ofthe 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 poor, and is generally
by the
acknowledged by the upper classes of society.
.... In the year 1841 a dispensary for
treating the diseases of these organs was estab-
lished in South Frederick Lane, and supported
by its founder, Sir William Wilde for twelve

months at the end of which time, finding the
;
number of applicants and the consequent ex-

penditure far exceeding what was originally con-
16
templated, or what could be supported by in-
dividual exertion, and not wishing to apply for
public aid for the sum required to defray its
expenses, he determined to try the experiment
of making it support itself, by a monthly sub-
scriptionfrom 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 relieved with medicine, medical ad-
vice, or operation, from the commencement

by
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 but sixpence per
patient is
month, and this system of partial payments has

been found to work exceedingly well. It has
produced care, regularity and attention, and in-
duced a spirit of independence among the lower
orders of society worthy of countenance and
support, while the annual sum of 50 received
in this way in itself a sufficient guarantee.
is . .
that its benefits are appreciated by the poor,

numbers of whom seek its advantages from
distant parts of the country."
B 17
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, young surgeon commenced his
the
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 published 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 isto say in 1853, he was
appointed Surgeon-Oculist-in-Ordinary to the

Queen, which was the first appointment of the
kind made in Ireland. In 1857 he visited
Stockholm, and was created a Chevalier of the
Kingdom of Sweden, and was, further, decorated
with the Order of the Polar Star. Seven years
later, the
at conclusion of a chapter of the
Knights of St Patrick, held for the installation of
18
new members of this Order,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 European, and has been recognised by
is
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 announce the impending honour to the

to
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 Nationalists ; no Fenian
denunciation of the Sassenach has ever exceeded
in bitterness of reproach the simple total of
numerals which William Wilde's labours com-
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 William Wilde, it is a remarkable

fact, worthy of record, that within a few months
two sons, William and
of its presentation, his
Oscar, were each awarded a medal of Trinity

College the former (who has just been called
20
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."
William Wilde was too hospitable and too
Sir
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 hematernally descended) for
is
sale in the Land Estate Court, he became the
purchaser. The portion in was

cultivation
covered by a wretched pauper tenantry, numbers
of whom it became necessary to remove to en-
able those remaining to have a means of com-
fortable existence. Understanding somewhat of
the language of the people, and being, as they
"
said, one of the ould stock," he was able with
advice from the Catholic clergy to carry out
21
his plans without exciting discontent or in-
volving the sacrifice of large sums of money

and he gave an ample tenant right to those that
remained on the property over twelve years ago.
The reclamation that followed, with the ad-
dition of erecting a residence for himself in a
most picturesque situation, has converted a
locality characterised only afew 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
'
SIR WII.I.IAM WII.DE.
To face page 23.

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 Klinik (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
dJnigrtment, is the sincerest praise that a British

subject may ever hope to reap. One writer
"
describes Wilde as, ein Meister in genialer
"
Schlussfolgerungen (a master in deductions
inspired by genius). Another German autho-
"
rity says of him : auch in seinem lebhaften
und praktischen Interesse fuer Taubstumme
"
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 oculist. At a recent conference of
medical men in Zuerich when the great pioneers
23
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
pitying 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 William was greater as
an aural surgeon than as an eye-doctor, but in
both fields he considers him to have been one of
the most distinguished surgeons that Great
Britain has yet produced.
The same unanimity of praise is accorded to
his literary work. Perhaps the most interesting
reference to his 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 Be"ranger,
24
which her husband had left uncompleted at the
time of his death, and which Lady Wilde finished.
She begins by saying what diffidence 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 cloudland of Irish antiquities he
may especially be looked upon as a safe and

steadfast guide."
His charitableness and compassion for human
suffering were such that although he was a
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
John Lever, the novelist's nephew, illustrates
this benevolent trait in the great surgeon's
character.
"
On
one occasion he (Lever) wanted Wilde
to come and meet at dinner some friends he had
assembled, and calling at Merrion Square was

told that the doctor could not possibly appear.
Being denied several times, my

uncle at last put
his handkerchief in bandage form over his merry,
twinkling eyes ; his expedient brought the
oculist 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 illness on
Wednesday, igth 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 published long
obituary notices of the man, and the whole

country deplored his loss.
How pleasant it would be if this man's memory

could be left undisturbed as that of one who
was great and good, if nothing needed to be said
which may tarnish in some degree a reputation
so nobly won. Alas ! the exigencies of this
26
biography exact, in justice to immediate
its
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
William Wilde had also the evil repute of being
a man of strong, unbridled passions, in the
gratification of which no sense of social or pro-

fessional responsibility could restrain him. A
characteristic anecdote of a stinging retort made
to him by a veterinary surgeon whom he once
met, while out riding in Phoenix
Park, is
still told, and 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
figure of a woman in deep mourning who sat
and watched but never spoke, and at nightfall
went away, to return on the following morning.
It may be noted as a significant fact that the
son seemed to see no aspersion on his father's
reputation in this story. appeared to him to
It
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 stillremembered 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 un tidiest 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
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 gallery 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 strongenemy, 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 Êschylus 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
"
Ellis 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 so great a love and so deep a
felt
reverence, Oscar Wilde inherited many of those

admirable gifts and graces whichso 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
language in an incredibly short time. We are
informed in " The Story of the Unhappy Friend-
t(
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

literature was open to him." Lady Wilde was a
wonderful classical scholar ;
she had the sheer
delight in Latin and Greek literature that true
scholars manifest and made of the Roman
;
orators or the Greek tragedians her favourite
reading. A lady once called at No. i Merrion

Square and found Sir 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/ so sorry
I felt
for poor Lady Wilde and hurried upstairs to the

drawing-room where I knew I should find her.
Speranza was there indeed, but seemed not in
the least troubled by the state of affairs in the
house. found her lying on the sofa reading
I
the Prometheus Vinctus of Êschylus, from

which she began to declaim passages to me, with
exalted enthusiasm. She would not let me slip
31
ina 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-
cilities 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 waiting for the morrow,
He knows you not, ye heavenly powers.'
"
They were the which that noble Queen
lines
of Prussia, whom Napoleon treated with such
coarse brutality, used to quote in her humiliation
and exile they were the lines my mother often
;
32
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. remember quite well how I
I
used to tell her that I did not want to eat my

bread in sorrow, or to pass any night weeping
and watching for the dawn."
Yet the second verse, which seems to have
been overlooked by Lady Wilde as 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 Schwaermerisch. This
adjective describes a state of gushing exaltation,

a somewhat too ready enthusiasm, a capacity
for discovering romance in what is trite and
commonplace. The word conveys mild and
tolerant censure, and generally suggests that the
c 33
person to whom it is applied is too much taken
up in daydreams to give much
attention to
orderliness and the other domestic virtues. One
feels that but for 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 ofDublin 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 jeunes 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 qualities, it may be deduced from
his life that the preponderating maternal influ-
ence in his composition was responsible also for
34
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 born to a couple in which the
is
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 one of Nature's mysteries.
is
Those who believe 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's Wilde's assertion
that her ancestors were of Italian origin, that the
name Elgee is a corruption of the patronymic
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
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 Wexford. Here another
of
negation is necessary. Lady Wilde was not the

daughter of an Episcopalian clergyman she ;
was not the daughter of Archdeacon Elgee. Yet

these misstatements reproduced in the
are
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," shewrites, referring to one of these
"
biographical errors In the sketch given of
:
myself I regret that I was not named as Grand-

36
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 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 Maturin' s most famous
"
novel, Melmoth the Wanderer," that he
borrowed the name under which he was to drag
out the remaining agony of his years. Possibly
38
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 Moliere, 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 effet le type du Don Juan de
fut en
Moliere, du Faust de Goethe, du Manfred de

Byron et du Melmoth de Maturin. Grandes
images tracees par les plus grandes genies de
T 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
comparing them to the eyes of the hero of a

"
certain romance called Melmoth the Wan-
derer," which used to alarm us boys thirty
years ago eyes of an individual who had made

;
39
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 :
"
Celebre 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 pale et ennuye
"
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
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
brilliant man, who so many years after his death
was to stand sponsor to the most unhappy of
his kinsmen. The best account of Charles
Maturin as a manto be found in the pages of
is
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 reclame, 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
record his impressions of this remarkable writer,
Maturin, in whom Scott and Byron so thoroughly
believed that the first offered 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-
readableby 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. He
felt a kind of fascination for this lonely man of
genius, whom at one period he might have

called in his own words,
" 'The '
Only, the Lonely, the Earth's Companionless One?

"
He opens his sketch, which is very character-
istic of his style, with the humorous rhyme :
" '
Maturin, Maturin, what a strange hat you're in

'
?
42
" '
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. had been the master of sceptres of
If I
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
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 about him, but they
hunderscars
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,
1
generally given as the number.

1
41 is
44
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
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
officeby Mr Duffy, happened to come my way.
Iread it eagerly, and my patriotism was kindled."
"
This volume was D' Alt on 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
'
published, so I them Speranza,' and

signed
'
my letters John Fenshaw Ellis,' instead of
Jane Francesca Elgee."

46
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 Dublin. Her most
famous poem was entitled "A Million a Decade."
These contributions were for the most part
published in a small type column which pre-
ceded the leading articles, and which appears to
have been reserved for the efforts of amateur
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 Ellis' s prose.
The girl's poetry has no particular merit
either of expression or of thought, and, indeed,
compared unfavourably with similar verse con-

tributed by young women, whose
three other
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 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 himselfhad abandoned the cause of National-
ism as une eweur 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 Nationalists as they were when
Duffy and Speranza fired them into acts which
sent them into confinement in British gaols,
neither Speranza nor Duffy are remembered, as
Nationalists, with great esteem. The Fenian

editor, O'Leary, states that "Speranza" was
of the four poetesses on The Nation, the one
who was considered the least talented, that
Eva was held to be the most sincere and
the most gifted.
"
Eva " was Miss Eva Mary
" "
Kelly. Mary was Miss Ellen Downing. As
to
"
Thomasine " her anonymity has not been
pierced.
The great effect produced by Francesca Elgee
48
it is to be noted as characteristic that she ob-
jected to the beautiful but unromantic name of
Jane and never used it was when she de-

nounced herself in open court as the authoress
"
of the famous article Jacta est Alea," for the
publishing of which the future Sir Charles
Duffy of the Villa Marguerite, Nice, was being
prosecuted.
This article appeared in No. 304 (printed 304)
of The Nation which was 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
published 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 the only copy which escaped, and

it is
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 articlewas 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 politi-
D 49
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 3O4th 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 be added that Francesca Elgee had no
may
dealings with the other people, apart from
Duffy, who were active in agitation. In a
50
letter toMr O'Donoghue, dated i3th 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."
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 "
Terrifying 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
glittering brightly in the light of heaven, and
the monumental barricades stretching across
52
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 life, 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 life of heroism and patriotism, defiant as
a conqueror, devoted as a martyr, omnipotent
as a Deity !
"
Weappeal 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 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 chains ;
in the name of GOD and
man ; by the listening earth and the watching
heaven, I call on you to make this aspiration of
your souls a deed. Even as you read these weak
words of a heart that yet palpitates with an
enthusiasm as heroic as your own, and your
breast heaves and your eyes grow dim with
tears as the memory wrongs rushes
of Ireland's
upon your soul even now lift up your right

hand to heaven and swear swear by your un-
dying soul, by your hopes of immortality, never
to lay down your arms, never to cease hostilities,
till you regenerate and save this fallen land.
"
Gather round the standard of your chiefs.
Who dares to say he will not follow, when
O'BRIEN leads ? Or who amongst you is so ab-
ject that he will grovel in the squalid misery of

his hut, or be content to be flung from the ditch
side into the living tomb of the poorhouse,
54
rather than charge proudly like 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 ofhaving a country ? For you
have had no country. You have never felt the
pride, the dignity, the majesty of independence.
You could never lift up your head to heaven
and glory in the name of Irishman, for all
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 Courage
. !
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
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 have
die for Ireland ! Yes ;
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

to strike, moment
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
that her peasants starved
of legalised ruffianism
while they reaped the corn for their foreign
lords, because no man gave them bread that
56
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. Andshe 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. she capitulates even now
If
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-like strength
in a just cause a desperate energy in men who
are fighting in their own land for the possession
57
of that land. A glowing enthusiasm that scorns
alldanger when from success they can look on-
ward to a future of unutterable glory and
happiness for their country. Opposed to us are
only a hired soldiery, and a paid police, who
mere trained machines even as they are, yet
must shudder (for they are men) at the horrible
task of butchery, under the blasphemed name
of duty to which England summons them.
Brothers many them are
of of this people they
are called upon to murder sons of the same
soil fellow-countrymen of those who are heroic-
ally, struggling to elevate their common country.
Surely whatever humanity is left in them will

shrink from being made the sad instruments of
despotism and 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 prize honour, and the stately
Sicilians
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 a foreign tyrant.
58
But if, indeed, interest or coercion should tempt
them into so horrible and unnatural a position,
pity, a thousand times pity for those brave
officers who vaunt themselves on their honour.
Pity for that brave soldiery whose Irish valour

has made England illustrious, that they must
stain honour, and fame, and profession, and
their brave swords, by lending them to so in-
famous a cause. Ah we need not tremble for
!
a nation with a pure and holy enthusiasm,

filled
and fighting for all that human nature holds

dear but the masters of those hired mercen-
;
aries well tremble for their cause, for the

may
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 millions. And one thing is certain
that if the people do not choose to fight the
garrison, they may starve them. Adopt the
Milan method let no man sell to them. This
passive warfare may be carried on in every
59
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 liberty. We must show to the world that
60
we are fitted to govern ourselves ; that we are,
indeed, worthy to be a free nation, that the words

union, liberty, country, have as sacred a meaning
in our hearts and actions as they are holy on
our lips ; 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
ita 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 all evil passions trample on them, as a
triumphant CHRIST with his foot upon the
61
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 !
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 exactly of that class

is
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
ithas 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. could not be. She had been trained
It
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-
during the last six years of her life was to
self
draw from the Civil List a small alimony of

imperial silver. No
patriotism, no national
spirit can be fired in man or woman by the
perusal of a single book ; and of D' Alton
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 was the perusal
it
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
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
Nationalist there have been the galleys, the
rifle, the scaffold, and, as a set-off from the de-
rision of the worldly wise, the mute gratitude

of the voiceless people and a martyr's crown.
Lady Wilde's crassa Minerva did not allow her
to cling to a cause of which she was so soon
to discover that it was a hopeless one. Her
Nationalism, if whim it were, she readily aban-
doned, and she did not go through 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 Dorian Gray," he
of
describes how the hero of that novel fell under
"
the influence of a single book. It was the
65
strangest book that he had ever read. It
seemed to him that, exquisite raiment,

in and to
the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world
were passing in dumb show before him. ... It
was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of
incense seemed to cling 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 falling 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 silly, self-deceiving state-
ment about himself, and attributed to some
" "
poisonous book which he had once read
many of the abnormalities 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
had been of the briefest was entirely over-
looked.
The story of the first meeting between the
" "
editor of The Nation and John Fenshaw Ellis
is well-known. It may, however, be repeated
here, with the addition of Lady Wilde's own
account of how
was that having long refused
it
to let Mr Duffy call upon her she finally gave

him permission to do so.
''After a while," she relates, "Mr Duffy
wished me to call at the office, and again Mr
'
Ellis
'
hadto excuse himself from doing it. One
day my nurse came into room and found
my
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."
"
Charles Duffy relates in his
Sir Young
" "
Ireland that Mr Ellis, whom hehad frequently
requested to call upon him at The Nation office,
pleaded that there were difficulties which ren-
dered this course inpracticable. Finally, Mr
67
Ellis asked the editor to 34 Leeson Street.
call at
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
whose stately carriage and figure, flashing
girl,
brown eyes, and features cast in an heroic mould
seemed fit for the genius of poetry or the spirit
of the revolution."
After the suppression of The Nation, most of
the leaders of the revolutionary movement were
transported for treason-felony ;
while Mr (after-
wards Sir Charles) Duffy was put on trial for
sedition. The attorney -general quoted from

" "
the article Jacta Alea Est in support of the
charge, and declared that that article was

sufficient to convict the prisoner at the bar.
"
I am
the culprit, if culprit there be," cried a
voice from the gallery of the court, and a young
woman rose to her feet. It was Jane Francesca
Elgee who by this fine gesture endeared herself
for ever to the Irish Nation. The result was to
trouble the minds of the jury ; they disagreed ;
and the editor of The Nation was discharged to

pursue his career more profitably to himself in
another hemisphere.
Speranza's admiration for this man appears
to have been very great. The following is one
68
of the many letters she wrote to him after her
identity had been disclosed.
" LEESON STRBBT, Monday.

34
"
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.
"
cannot forbear telling you, now the pen
I
is in my hand, how deeply impressed I felt by
your opening lecture to your club. It was the

sublimest teaching, and the style so simple from
its very 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. speaking to soul. I
It is soul
never felt the dignity of your cause so much as
then to promote it any way seemed an object
that would ennoble a life. Truly, we cannot de-
spair when God sends us such teachers. But
you will wish me away for another four happy
69
months if I writeyou 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 in Dublin who remember No. i Merrion
Square when it was the salon of the capital.
On reception nights the crush of people in the
drawing-rooms upstairs used to be so great that
it was a familiar spectacle that of Lady Wilde
elbowing her way through the crush and 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
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
Time had wrought on
notice the difference that
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 swaying, 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
throat was bare, so were her arms, but they
were covered with quaint jewellery. On her
broad chest was fastened a series of large minia-
ture brooches, evidently family portraits . . .
this gave her the appearance of a walking
family mausolem. She wore white kid gloves,

held a scent-bottle, a lace handkerchief and a fan. ,
Lady Wilde reminded me of a tragedy queen

at a suburban theatre."
Lady Wilde was very popular in Dublin with

"
the people. It is related that they used to
cheer her when she was on her way to the
drawing-rooms at the Castle"; just because
some years previously she had urged a hundred
thousand musketeers to march upon that very
Castle, and to wipe it off the face of Ireland.
"
In the story of An Unhappy Friendship "
we find the following reference to Lady Wilde
at home in her son William's house in Park
Street, Grosvenor Square, in 1883 :
"
During the first days of my stay there
Oscar Wilde took me a reception at his
to
mother's house. ... I was presented as having a
volume of poemsand was graciously
in the press,
received. was standing talking
Later on, as I
to Anna Kingsford, Lady Wilde, holding some
primroses in her hand, crossed the drawing-room,

'
repeating Flowers for the poet

;
Flowers !
72
for the poet !
'
Itwas 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. Oetait quelqu'un. Her voice had
a peculiar power and a peculiar charm. She
seemed happy poverty and disaster had not
;
yet come upon her her sons were both full

;
of promise and achievement. There were to

be noticed few of the peculiarities of dress to
which Miss Corkran calls attention. Yet her
black silk bodice was as covered with large old-
fashioned medallions as is with orders on Garter
nights the brochette of the diplomat whose back
has been supple all through life.
Her clinging to youth, her efforts to mask
the advance of age, her horror for the stigmata
of physical decay were all characteristics which
she transmitted to her son Oscar. His books
are full of rhapsodical eulogies of youth he;
never tires of satirising and condemning maturity

and old age. In the same way her fondness for
73
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-revolutionary 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
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
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.
' '
can't write/ I heard her say,
I about such
things as Mrs Green looked very well in black,
'
and Mrs Black looked very well in green.'
Miss Hamilton also relates the following
characteristic anecdote about Lady Wilde.
"
When I wasat 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
make up the sum of human life. 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 lying 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,

Through the world's great heart are rushing.
While from peak to peak of the spirit land
A voice unto voice is calling :
'
The night is over, the day is at hand,
And the fetters of earth are falling !
'
turned to prose.
In a letter dated from Oakley Street in '88
she writes to Mr D. J. O'Donoghue the fol-
lowing account of her literary and journalistic
labours.
77
"
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 political pamphlet, Dublin.

"
But I have recently devoted myself more
to literature than to politics. Nationality 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 list of the best known
"
among the books of Lady Wilde Poems by
78
' " "
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 after her death, "translated several French
and German works, and was the author of
'
Ugo Bassi,' a tale of the Italian Revolution

'
The First Tempta-
in verse, published in 1857 ;
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 Beranger.'
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
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 which I have published in the
of
'
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
their different headings certain characteristics
of his which we are now able to trace back to
their source. Under " direct inheritance," or
"
transmission by blood," may, perhaps, be
classed his literary capacity, his gifts of poetry,
languages, of ready mastery of difficult studies,

his love of the beautiful, the sound common-
sense of his normal periods, family and
his
personal pride, and his moral courage in the

face of danger, but also an indifference to the
dangers of alcoholism, an aversion from failure,

physical, and mental, an exaggerated
social
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 only advanced
is
tentatively, as a suggestion, and with all due

awe for the complex mysteries of the human
soul. The psychology of an Oscar Wilde is not
to be resolved into elemental factors by human
intelligence. But the few data arrived at may
render the problem of that psychology less
bewildering, and at the same time, because of
F 81
the very dimness of the light 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 eitheron 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 from 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 Dublin whose ;
advent, because he was a boy, was a disappoint-

ment to his mother, and who for a long time after
his birth was treated as a girl, talked to as a girl,
dressed as a girl. His father did not share his
wife's caprice, and for his second son selected
names of singular virility. These names were
so chosen as to proclaim to the world the lad's
close associationby 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
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 men. More particularly was this resem-
blance a striking one between the prince as a
student at Upsala and Oscar Wilde as a student
at Oxford. On
page 39 of Dr Josef Linck's
"
biography of King Oscar" (" 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 by Elliot * fry.
W G. WILLS, PAINTER AND DRAMATIST. COUSIN TO OSCAR WILDE.
To face page 85.

be christened Fingal and O' Flaherty the latter;
"
from those " wild O'Flahertys 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
The Wills family were wealthy
Irish nationality.
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 ina near degree Oscar Wilde was cousin
to that gifted man, W. G. Wills, the dramatist,
painter and poet. Ontwo cousins the

the
wonderful of dramaturgy had descended to-
gether with an allied 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
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, and protestations. He

politics
had a strong aversion from what was local in
interest, from what was outre 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 shoulders, 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.
was amongst luxurious surroundings that

It
the child was reared. His father's house is one
of the best houses in the best part of Dublin
86
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
but on the tablets of the people's memory that
record isengraved. 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
cabman for the day. The Dublin cabman does
not recollect that his young patron had any
partiality buttonhole flowers, but he re-
for
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 and 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, remember, without a pang. Afterwards,

I
however, the enormity of the sacrifice I had

made impressed itself upon me. I considered
that such an act merited the greatest gratitude
and love in return, and whenever Willy crossed
me in any way I used to say " Willy, you don't
:
deserve my bear. Give me back my bear."

And for years afterwards, after we had grown
up, whenever we had a slight quarrel, I used to
89
"
say the same :
you don't deserve my
Willy,
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 one verse which renders a thought

is
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 novelist 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
of Mayo and Galway, where Sir William Wilde
had an The caller asked Lady Wilde
estate.
"
about the boys, and she answered Willy is :
all right, but Oscar is wonderful, wonderful.

He can do anything." He was then nine years
of age. In an article which Ernest La Jeunesse
wrote about him after his death in Paris, the
French critic referring to Wilde's wonderful
knowledge and capacity said "II savait tout." :
Indeed, few men have so impressed their con-

temporaries with the feeling of omniscience.
In a biographical notice of Oscar Wilde, which
appeared in 1891, is the following passage, refer-
ring to his early education.

" Mr Wilde
The son of two remarkable people,
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
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

Oscar Wilde began to realise in
cricket, that
some measure what he was. There he found
himself for the first time in a wholly congenial
environment. The English 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 familiar with German literature
as a boy is not the case, and it is also doubtful
92
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 SalomeV' As to the writing and
language of this play, the best French critics
are unanimous in expressing their wonder that
any foreigner have
could 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
"
familiar to him that, as he used to say, he often
thought in French." As a preparation for a
93
literary career in England was not a good
this
thing. The most successful writer knows only

the tongue in which he writes. Linguistic
attainment spoils the mother-language for the
unilingual reader. The average Englishman
" "
cannot follow the writer who at times thinks
in a tongue which is not his own. He revolts
against similes, deductions, points of view which

are not English. The man whose books translate
well into foreign languages is not likely to be
very highly appreciated in his own country.
That is why, perhaps, it has been said that
posterity begins at the frontier. There are
exceptions of course. Gerard de Nerval's

" "
translation of Goethe's Faust was such a
beautiful work that Goethe himself wrote to
the French poet to compliment him on the
"
authorship of the French Faust." But
" "
Faust is in itself an exception. It is what
"
the Germans call a Weltstueck," a term, by
the way, which they have also 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
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 was a house ;
it
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 saying of hers is still remembered in
Dublin, which gives an echo way which

of the in
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 rian 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 Dublin furnishes stranger specimens.
How free was the conversation which went on
there in the presence of the two lads may be
95
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 a lad he was taught to admire
his father as
the beauties of Nature, but it did not appear
in after life that he shared Sir William's en-
96
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
seasidenear Dublin, a terrific storm having
broken out overhead, he dragged a reluctant
guest from his bed and up to the top of the
house, there to admire with him the wonderful
effects the lightning flashes over the sea.
of
"
He kept me there for nearly an hour," related
"
this guest afterwards, and showed the greatest
enthusiasm for the spectacle. I was far from
sharing his excitement. was drenching wet,
It
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 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 lifeas 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 am
:
Enjoy Nature ! I 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
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
doubt, from the knowledge that there is much
pretence, not to say hypocrisy, in the general
definitions of what is good and beautiful. This
hypocrisy stirred his indignation and
gave
impetus to his pen. What ordinary man or
woman of the world really cares for Nature
in preference to urban haunts ? What sincerity
is there in the gushing rhapsodies about the
beauties of the country to which it is fashionable

to give utterance. How many times does the
London dame or squire look up to the stars ?
100
CHAPTER VI
Portora Royal School Its Sectarian Character Prompt Dis-
illusionment 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 Gold Medal The Classical
Scholarship His Marks Why he left T.C.D. He goes
to Oxford A Turning-Point in his Life The Possible
Dangers of a Student's Life His University Achieve-
ments " Not a Reading Man."-
THE school which was selected for Oscar Wilde
by hisparents was a school founded by an

" "
English prince, the father of that Pretender
whom one of the boy's ancestors had helped to
overthrow. Possibly it was Speranza's great
"
detestation of the soulless iconoclast/' Crom-
well, thatprompted her to send her sons to be

alumni in a house of which King Charles was
the founder, patron and benefactor, Portora
Royal School, Enniskillen. Motives of economy
may also have dictated this choice for compared
;
with the fees of an English public school, the

charges at Portora are very small. There are
three terms in the year, and the fees for each
"
boarder a considerable reduction being made
101
in the case of brothers" are only 17, IDS.
per term. According to the present synopsis
of the course of instruction the work of the
higher forms is mainly directed towards pre-

paration for the universities, and especially for
Trinity College, Dublin. The school is under
the government of The Fermanagh Protestant
Board of Education, of which the Right Rev.
The Lord Bishop of Clogher, D.D., is the
Chairman, and amongst the members of which
are the Rector of Enniskillen and another
Church of England clergyman. It is a sectarian
school ;
for we notice amongst the provisions
" "
of the Course of Instruction there that :
"
Religious training is regarded as of supreme
importance. The boarders are regularly
instructed in Divinity, and on Sundays attend
the respective Protestant churches in charge
of responsible masters." From what precedes
it is easy to imagine the bias with which English
and Irish historymust have been taught in

this school,what Whiggish principles must have
been instilled hour by hour into the pupils'
minds, and what the prevailing opinion among
Oscar's pastors and masters on Irish Nationalism,
and the doings of the Young Ireland Party
may have been. For instance, one may fancy
the views of the Lord Bishop of Clogher, D.D.,
102
OSCAR WILDE AS A LAD. (FROM A RED CHALK DRAWING.)
To face paije 103,

on " The Glorious young Meagher." At first
bewilderment must have come to the lad, who
had been trained to admire his mother for the
part she had taken in a movement which to the
Right Rev. the Lord Bishop and the rest of
The Fermanagh Protestant Board of Education
must have appeared in much the same light as
did to the Lord Archbishop of Munster the
proceedings of John of Ley den and the other
Anabaptists in 1536. Bewilderment would give
place to an insight into the insincerity of most
political professions, and from this to cynicism
and general disbelief would be but one step.
"
If the gods of our faith be liars, in whom shall
"
we trust ?
Oscar went to this school when he was eleven

years old. Lady Wilde's description of him as
a wonderful boy who could do anything seems
to have been justified by his early achievements
at Portora. In 1868 he was already very high
up in the school ;
he had, indeed, already reached
the third class in his first year. It is recorded
"
of him that he got quicker into a book than
any boy that ever lived." At the same time
he was a great dunce in the mathematical class.
He has been described by a schoolfellow of his,
who is now a most distinguished man, as
"
absolutely incapable of mathematics." In
103
arithmetic he was hopelessly bad, and, as by the
regulations of the school a certain proficiency in
arithmetic was an indispensable qualification for
the winning of certain prizes for scholarship, it
was a usual thing to young Oscar Wilde, on
see
the eve of entering some examination, being
coached in the elements of mathematical science
by one of the junior masters. This early incapa-
city for figures explains much of the recklessness
of his after life. The careful and parsimonious
of this world are by instinct mathematicians, at
least as far as the four great rules are concerned.
It isrecorded of most spendthrifts, on the other
hand, that the faculty of calculation is an element
lacking in their mental composition. Has the
world's history any record of an extravagant
mathematician ?
Oscar Wilde was a big boy, very tall for his
age, and distinctly heavy of build. One of his
"
schoolfellows says that he used to flop about
ponderously." He was not popular with the
other boys. For one thing, he never played any
games. In laterhe used to say that he
life
objected to cricket because the attitudes as-

sumed were so indecent. He never rowed on
the lake and he had for the musketry instructor
;
and the drill sergeant contempt mingled with

pity. His manner was very reserved, and he
104
used to keep aloof from the other boys. Another
characteristic which made for his unpopularity
amongst his schoolfellows, just as in later life

it up against him so many implacable
raised
enemies, was the extraordinary gift he had of

saying trenchant things about others. He was
a very clever boy at giving nicknames. He was
the ironical sponsor to the whole school from
the Rev. William Steele, D.D., the headmaster,
down to the smallest boy in class ib. As a
man, few wits have ever said cleverer and at the
same time more biting things about their con-
temporaries. This capacity of his and his
ruthless exercise thereof account for much of
the hatred that is still alive against him years
after his lonely death. Of one very famous
"
contemporary Irish writer he remarked : He
has no enemies, but he is intensely disliked by
his friends." Of the son of a famous pianist
he once said, when the fact of this parentage
was stated to him " Well, I am glad that he
:
has managed to survive it." Of an extra-

ordinary Russian Jew who at various times
essayed to fillmodern London the role of a

in
Maecenas, a Heliogabalus, and other less worthy

parts, and who hated Oscar Wilde with an
intensity of hatred that almost made him
"
interesting, he declared He came to London
:
105
in the hopes of founding a salon. He has
succeeded only in opening a restaurant." He
used to use this man's name as the symbol of
" "
ugliness. As ugly as was an expression
constantly in his mouth. He described him as
" " "
a foetus in a bottle." In Intentions one
finds many compliments, a rebours, addressed to
various of the prominent writers of the time.
We are told that Hall Caine writes at the top of
his voice ;
that Rudyard Kipling reveals life
" "
splendid flashes of vulgarity
by that as one ;
turns over the pages of one of James Payn's

" the
novels, suspense of the author becomes
"
quite unbearable ;
that Henry James writes
were a painful duty and that
fiction as if it ;
Marion Crawford has immolated himself on the

altar of local colour. These remarks are all
very clever, but they are not gratifying to the

people about whom they were made, and would
not tend to increase the satirist's number of
friends. But Oscar Wilde seemed
to go out of
his way to offend people, not individuals alone,
but whole sections of society. What solicitor,
for instance, being present at the performance
"
of his
comedy, The Importance of Being
Earnest," and hearing his sneer at the social
standing of the profession, as it was put into
Lady Bracknell's mouth, but would feel a personal
106
grievance against the author for a gratuitous
slight ? These are the words referred to :
"
Lady Bracknell :
Markby, Markby &
Markby ? A firm of the very highest position
in their profession. Indeed, I am told that one
of the Mr Markbys is occasionally to be seen
at dinner-parties."
Elsewhere every stockbroker gets an un-
necessary wound to his self-esteem.
Indeed,
few of the professions escape the lash of satire
which seems prompted merely by the contempt
of a man professing to voice aristocratic and
elegant society, and its alleged disdain for men
and women who have to work for a living. He
carried his imprudence to the extent of in-
sulting journalists with tedious insistence, thus
fouling the very trumpets of modern reputation.
There are many points in Oscar Wilde's career
which allow of a comparison between him and
the great Napoleon and this deliberate delight
;
in provoking enmities, this sheer reckless and

uncharitable combativeness, is not the least
striking characteristic common to both. In
both men it arose from a delusion as to the
extent of their powers, from a spirit of prepotence,
from a most imprudent contempt of the
aggregate force of the individual adversaries
whom they so joyfully and so wilfully raised
107
up against themselves. This policy of mischief
did not succeed in the hands of Napoleon it ;
was therefore not likely to be more successful

in the hands of Oscar Wilde. The latter was
"
fond of reading the " Maximes of the Due de la
Rochefoucault, and might have remembered to

hisadvantage that the epigrammatist said that
the man who thinks that he can do without
societymakes a mistake, but that the man
who thinks that society cannot do without him
makes a still greater mistake.
Although he is remembered at Portora as
having been very clever in giving nicknames to
others, none of his schoolfellows can recall what
was his own particular soubriquet. He seems
"
to have been generally known as Oscar." As
"
to his brother, Willy, he was known as Blue-
Blood." He was not a tidy boy ;
he had
inherited some of the paternal carelessness about
his appearance, and having one day been re-
monstrated with for the umber of his neck and
hands, declared very proudly that his skin was

dark, not because it was dirty, but because of
the blue blood in the veins of the Wildes. This
anecdote might have been left unrecorded, but
for the fact that it shows that the Wilde boys
held a high opinion of their social standing, and
may explain Oscar's subsequent determined
108
efforts to establish himself in London society, as
also his contempt, referred to above, for people
whose blood was not blue, and who had to work
for their maintenance. And here it may once
more be repeated that the exigencies of this
biography make it
impossible to discard
any
fact, on which friendship or reverence might
plead for silence, when that fact can serve to
throw light upon the complex problem of the
character which we are engaged in studying.
Already in those days young Oscar Wilde
showed that fondness for distinguished attire
which ever marked him in life. He is re-
membered at Portora as the only boy there who
"
used to wear a top hat. It was always a
very fashionable hat, of the latest style." All

the boys at Portora were provided, by school
regulations as to the outfit, with one Black
Silk Hat, but this was for Sunday wear only.
Oscar never discarded his. He was always very
"
well dressed, and wore his hair long. He had
"
a good wisp of hair ! is said of him still in
Enniskillen. He appear to be very
did not
"
friendly with his brother Willy. He was very
superior in his manner towards Willy." The
latter was much more popular with the boys.
The boys at Portora, especially, had the
little
greatest affection for Willy Wilde. Even in

109
those early days he had all the charming talents
de socidtt which afterwards won him much
success. He used to tell stories to the children,
and he used to play the piano for them.
Oscar was considered exceedingly clever in
literature that to say in his knowledge of
is
books. At the same time the future author of

" "
Intentions never showed any superiority in
"
composition. He never stood out in essays/'
remarks one of his masters, who adds " Oscar :
Wilde was never looked upon as a formidable

competitor by the boys who went in for examina-
tions in Portora school." His conduct was
uniformly good. There was not a breath of a
complaint about him in any way, except some
short time before he left the school, when, as
"
one of his schoolfellows relates, he got into
an awful row with the headmaster. He had
cheeked old Steele something awful." That
there was nothing of the decadent about Oscar
Wilde in his school-days is the ananimous
declaration of many men who were boys at
school with him. He was a great reader, and
assimilated what he read in a remarkable
manner. He used to get through a book with
a speed that astonished everybody; and what
he had read thus rapidly, he used to remember.
He read nothing but English books, and these
no
were generally classical novels. He displayed
no particular efficiency in French in those days.
He had a great fondness for handsome books
"
and choice editions. When he came so pro-
minently before the world as an aesthete/'
relates a Don at T.C.D, "we all tried to
remember any indication that he had given as
a lad of a taste for beautiful things, and the only
thing that we could recall in this connection was
that he always had most expensive copies of class-
books. He had, for instance, a beautiful large
paper edition of ^schylus." During his last
year at Portora, when he was a lad of sixteen,
his eager thirst for knowledge and his great
receptivity were matters of observation and

comment. Often when Mr Purser was instruct-
ing the class in history or in geography Oscar
Wilde would contrive by means of some cleverly
put question to lead the master into a dis-
quisition on some topic on which he desired to
gain information. The subject in hand would
be forgotten ;
the master, ever prompted by
his pupil, would unbosom himself of his store
of learning. Sometimes the whole of the hour
would be thus absorbed. At other times the
master would bring the discussion back to the
subject of the lesson, and then it was a sight to
see the lad, all alert, thinking and planning
in
how, next day, he could turn the master once
more on to the question in which he needed
instruction questions often as obstruse as the
relative definitions of nominalism and realism.
In arithmetic he made no progress at all
while at school, and many boys remember the

efforts which Mr Purser used to make to cram
him with the elementary rules.
It was, perhaps, in the competition for the
Gold Medal which is the great distinction at
Portora that Oscar Wilde displayed his peculiar
capacity for mastering the contents of a classical
"
book. In the viva voce" says one of his
"
competitors, which was on the Agamemnon
of Êschylus, he simply walked away from us
all." He gained 25 per cent, higher marks in
this examination than the nearest to him.
In October 1871 Oscar Wilde matriculated
at Trinity College, Dublin. In the matricula-
tion examination where he obtained the second
place his marks in the various subjects were

as follows (The maxim number of marks
:
obtainable in each subject was 10.)
Greek, Two Papers 8, 8.
Latin, Two Papers 8, 7.

Latin Composition 4.
English Composition 5.
History 8.
Arithmetic 2.
112
His total was thus 50. The total obtained by
another Portora boy, the gentleman who is now
the Junior Bursar of Trinity College, and who
ranks as one of the most distinguished classical
scholars in the country,was 65. On the second
day of the examination, where the subjects were
the Higher Classics, Oscar Wilde obtained 46
marks whilst the boy who had so outstripped
;
him on the previous day in the rudiments only

obtained 36 marks. Oscar Wilde's neglect of
the rudiments was always a feature of his
character.
He registered on the matriculation book
is
of Trinity College in the following terms and

under the headings given :
MATRICULATION ENTRY
Johannes Malet Praelector Primarius
Dies Mensis Admissorum Nomina Qualitates Fidei Professiones
Oct. 10 Oscar Wilde P. I. C.
Patres Patrum Qualitates Nativitatum Loca Aetatis Anni

Wm. Physician Dublin 16
He was at that time just within six days of

his seventeenth birthday. At this time of his
life, therefore, Oscar Wilde displayed side by
side,with a brilliant capacity for reading and
understanding the classics, a not quite first-rate
knowledge of the elements of classical knowledge.
He was undistinguished in Latin composition,
which exacts this mastery of the rudiments,
H 113
mediocre in English composition, and un-
satisfactory in arithmetic. It is related of
Emile Zola, it be remembered, that he was
may
rejected at his examination for the baccalaureat
degree for inefficiency in composition.
During his year's attendance at Trinity
College, Dublin, hisconduct was irreproachable.
"
He left this College," says one of the Dons
who was a fellow-student of his, " with the very
highest character." Beyond the foolish remark
of his, that invitation of a fellow-undergraduate
to come to his father's house, which has been
quoted above, not a single thing remembered

is
against him. It was for this reason, no doubt,

that no official cognisance was taken by Trinity
College, Dublin, of his
public disgrace his ;
name was not deleted on any of the honourable

records on which his capacity, excellence and
industry had inscribed it. At Portora Royal
College, on the other hand, a resolution was
taken by The Fermanagh Protestant Board of
Education in virtue of which the inscription of
honour of his name on the stone tablets of
the schoolhouse would have been erased, when,
mirabile dictu, it transpired that outraged Nature
herself had forestalled The Fermanagh Pro-
testant Board of Education in the execution
of this salutary sacrifice. The slab on which
114
Oscar Wilde's name was inscribed in letters of
gold had cracked right across the ill-reputed
words Nature had effaced the name. In a
:
less enlightened place, amongst the ignorant

and superstitious Irish who are not Protestants,
the circumstance might have been hailed as a
miracle.
He was considered a highly gifted, amiable
young man, likely to win a high place as a scholar.
In the various college examinations he con-
tinually distinguished himself. He was first out
of fourteen in the First Rank in theMichaelmas
Prize Examination 1872 in ; Hilary Term he
was third of the First Rank. The gentleman,
now a Privy Councillor, who was Solicitor
General under the last Tory Administration,
was an undergraduate of the same standing as
Oscar Wilde, and with the other junior freshman,
competed in the same examinations. He did
not, however, emerge from the Second Rank.
In later life these two men were to be once more
in fierce competition, the fiercest competition,
perhaps, that has ever been waged in the Old

Bailey Court between a witness for the prosecu-
tion and a counsel for the defence and here too
;
Oscar Wilde was to hold the superior rank. It

has been stated that the barrister has admitted
that until towards the very end of his cross-
"5
examination of the prosecutor he felt that he
had had the worst of it all along. He was just
about to sit down when an answer of fatal
insolence and folly brought the whole of Wilde's
splendid defence of himself crumbling to the
ground, gave an opening to his more patient
adversary, and exposed him to devastation and
ruin. This cross-examination of Oscar Wilde
in the Queensberry trial is still eagerly studied
by advocates as a lesson how a barrister should
act when brought face to face with a hostile
witness of such consummate readiness, power
and nerve. The barrister's triumph in this
case was a complete one ;
but the reason for that
was rather because the witness had become
intoxicated with his own triumph throughout,
lost his head in consequence of this, and in an
imprudent moment destroyed the whole effect
of his previous answers. The report teaches
what patience can do, and a knowledge of the
rudiments; and in that sense is a triumph for
the counsel.He might well have lost his head.
He did not. He waited and watched, and in
the words of a barrister who was sitting in
"
court at his side, pounced like a hawk," upon
the witness when the long-waited- for oppor-
tunity arose.
Amongst certain men, prominent at Trinity
116
"
College, Oscar Wilde was held an average sort
of man/' and surprise was expressed when he
came to the front. Such surprise can only
have proceeded from that innocency and ignor-
ance of the things of this world which are the
most beautiful traits in the character of the
deeply learned. Success in the world, the
acclaim of the populace do not go to the modest
and retiring scholar. It is an age of advertise-
ment, and even the greatest talents must con-
form to the commercial exigencies of the hour.
One may see any day any of the big public
in
libraries, the shabby, hungered, half-blinded man

of great learning and knowledge elbowed by
the secretary of some popular novelist who
is collecting facts for his master. The secretary
is well-dressed, well-fed, and shines with the
reflected light of his employer, who, very pro-
bably, earns in one hour more than the great
scholar can gain in a week of laborious days and
nights.
In a letter written by Lady Wilde to Mr
O'Donoghue she begs him not to omit to
mention in writing a biographical notice of her
that both her sons were Gold Medallists, " a
distinction," she said, "of which they are both
very proud." Oscar's gold medal was the
Berkeley Medal. This prize was founded by
117
the famous Bishop Berkeley, who denied the
existence of matter, and of whom Lord Byron
wrote that when he said that there was no
matter it was no matter what he said.
really
It was possibly from a desire to be consistent
with his principles that the Bishop left so small
a sum for the purpose of this prize that the
Berkeley Gold Medal is not materially one of
much value. As a distinction, however, it is
highly prized. The subject in which candidates
"
were examined in 1874 was The Fragments of
the Greek Comic Poets, as edited by Meineke,"
and the prize was won by Oscar Wilde. It will
illustrate to what financial straits the poor man
was put even at a time when his name was in
everybody's mouth, that in 1883 after his

successful visit to Paris, and while he was
lecturing all over England, he was obliged to
go to the magistrate at Marlborough Police
Court to make a statutory declaration con-
cerning the loss of a pawn-ticket which was the
voucher for Bishop Berkeley's gold medal.
In the books of Trinity College there is no
record of the marks earned by the various
competitors who entered for the Berkeley Prize
in 1874. The mere fact that this was won by
Oscar Wilde is registered in the records of the
college. With regard, however, to the scholar-
118
ship which Oscar Wilde had won in the previous
year full particulars of his various markings are

to be found. They are of some interest, as
illustrating the state of his mental capacity in

the diiferent subjects in which the candidates
were examined.
Oscar Wilde's marks in the various subjects
were the following. In each case 10 was the
maximum number of marks obtainable.
Viva Voce Thucydides 8.

Viva Voce Tacitus 7^.
Greek Prose Composition 5. (The examiner in this
"
subject was Mr Stack, a notoriously hard marker." The
best marks given were 6, which were obtained by Joseph
King, who, however, only got the last place but one
among the selected candidates. He was ninth, while Oscar
Wilde was sixth.)
Greek Translation 7. (This was the best mark given.)
Greek Tragedians (Questions on) 7.
Latin Comedians (Questions on) 7.
Latin Prose Translation on Paper 6.
Latin Prose Composition 3$.
Demosthenes 5 .
Ancient History 7.
Greek Verse (Passages on Paper) 5.
Greek Verse Composition. i. (Here Mr Wm. Roberts
"
was the examiner. He was a character as a 'Varsity
Don," a very hard examiner. In this subject most of the
candidates scored no better than Oscar Wilde, some got
no marks at all, a plump duck's egg figures against their
names in the Trinity record. One or two got two marks.
Messrs Montgomery and L. C. Purser, who were first and
second in the final classification, each got five marks.)
119
Greek Viva Voce (Mr Tyrell, examiner) 6.
Latin Viva Voce (Mr Tyrell, examiner) 5^.
Translation from Latin Poets 4.
English Composition 6. (This was the highest number
of marks scored in this subject by any of the candidates.)
Latin and Greek Grammar 4.
In the final result Oscar Wilde got the sixth

place out of ten selected candidates. Joseph
King, who was considered the cleverest man
in the college was placed ninth. The following
is the complete list of selected candidates in
their order of merit.
MALCOLM MONTGOMERY.
Louis CLAUDE PURSER.
RICHARD HENNESSY.
THOMAS CORR.
GODDARD HENRY ORPEN.
OSCAR WILDE.
WILLIAM RIDGEWAY.
GEORGE THOMAS VANSTON.
JOSEPH KING.
ARTHUR M'HuGH.
An examination of the marks obtained by Oscar

Wilde sets forth that while still weak in the
rudiments he had made great progress in English
composition. He was to make still greater pro-
gress in the event.
The TrinityCollege Scholarships, like the
Gold Medal, lack in that materialism which the
Bishop denied. They carry with them no great
120
emolument. A T.C.D. scholar obtains rooms in
college at half the usual fees charged to students.
He has no fees to pay for tuition, and he gets
his dinners for nothing. But there
no income is
"
attached to the position. Oscar Wilde never
held his scholarship at Trinity College," one
learns, "as he preferred to go to Oxford, where
better things are to be won."
In the following year, accordingly, he went to
Oxford, won a demyship at Magdalen College,
of the annual value of 95, tenable for five years,
and matriculated at Magdalen on iyth October.
" "
He writes in De Profundis of his entrance
into the English University, as the great turning-
point of his life.

" "
I want
to get to the point," he writes, when
I shall be able to say quite simply, and without
affectation, that the two great turning-points in
my life were when my father sent me to Oxford,

and when society sent me to prison."
It is possible that when he wrote those lines
he was thinking that if he had never been sent
to Oxford, the extraordinary latent madness
which had brought him to the terrible place
where he might never have been roused into
sat,
fatal activity. For there is no use denying it :
Oxford, which is the finest school in the world

for the highest culture, is also the worst training-
121
ground for the lowest forms of debauchery. It
all depends on the character of the his
student,
early home-training, his natural propensities,
his physical state, his religious belief. Oxford
produces side by side the saint, the sage, and
the depraved libertine. She sends men to
Parnassus or to the public-house, to Latium or
the lenocinium. The Dons ignore the horrors
which are going on under their very eyes. They
are wrapped up in the petty concerns of the
University hierarchy they are of men the most

;
unpractical and least worldly; while possibly

their deep classical studies have so familiarised
them with certain pathological manifestations
that they really fail to understand the horror
of much that is the common jest of the under-
graduates. Oxford has rendered incalculable

services to the Empire, but she has also fostered
and sent forth great numbers of men who have
contributed to poison English society. It is
very possible that if Sir William Wilde had not
sent his second son to Oxford, but had left him in
Ireland, where certain forms of perversion are

totally unknown, and where vice generally is
regarded with a universal horror which contrasts
most strongly with the mischievous tolerances
that English society manifests towards it, Oscar
would now be living in Dublin, one of the lights
122
of Trinity College, one of the glories of Ireland,
a scholar and a gentleman of universal reputa-
tion. Let any Oxford man who remembers
his undergraduates days, who remembers the
things that used to be jested about there, and

the common talk at the wines about this man or
that, ask himself when he has condemned Oscar
Wilde whether alma mater may not have been
to blame, in part if not in toto, for the tremendous
and terrible metamorphosis that was worked in
Oscar Wilde's character, admitting that the
young man, who left Trinity College with a
spotless reputation, really did develop in so
short a time into the dangerous maniac such as
he afterwards came to be considered. The man
who approaches the study of this extraordinary
degeneration of character (admitting the common
aspect of the Oscar Wilde of later years to be
justified) in a scientific spirit and without bias,
cannot to feel the gravest suspicion that
fail
Oscar Wilde was to a very large extent a victim

of the Oxford educational system, of the Oxford
environment. To the same dangers as those to
which he succumbed any impressionable lad is
exposed, who, starting with no strong moral
sense, his native virtue weakened by evil
example at home, is immersed in a year-long
course of study, in which in the finest language
133
that the world has ever voiced men and women
are glorified who in the present day would be
considered monsters fit only for the stake, and
where in almost divine poetry are celebrated
passions and acts which society and the church
now point to as the very abomination of de-
solation. In a pathetic letter which Oscar
Wilde wrote to a friend of his after his release
from prison he said "I have still difficulty in
:
understanding why the frequentation of Sporus

should be considered so much more criminal than
the frequentation of Messalina." It is, more-
over, a well-established pathological fact that the

men in whom certain aberrations develop with
the most hideous fecundity are men of great
scholarship whose moral sense has been warped
by studies in which they have come to identify
their environment with that of the men and
women of antiquity.
In scholarship Oscar Wilde progressed with
surprising rapidity. His career as a student was
a most successful one. He took a First Class
in Moderations in the Honours School (Trinity
Term 1876), and two year later, in Trinity
"
Term 1878, he took a First Class in the Honour
Finals." Yet he was never a reading man, and
was rarely to be seen at his books.
124
Photo !>y Elliot & Fry.
To face page 125.

CHAPTER VII
Oscar Wilde at Oxford John Ruskin The Extent of his

Influence on Oscar Wilde Ruskin's Socialism Oscar
Wilde as a Social Reformer His Immense Influence
Abroad Oscar as an Undergraduate His Rooms at
Magdalen His Appearance He is " Ragged " His
Physical and Moral Courage His Leanings to Catholicism
His Journey in Greece The Effect upon him Early
Writings in Prose and Verse
"
Ravenna " The Irony
"
of Fate Ravenna " Symbolical of his own Career.
DURING some part of Oscar Wilde's first term at

Oxford that is to say, during one month in
Michaelmas Term 1874 John Ruskin, Slade
Professor of Fine Arts, was lecturing twice a
week in the Oxford Museum on the " Êsthetic
and Mat hematic schools of Art in Florence."
This was the second course of lectures delivered
by Ruskin during that term, and this course was
divided into eight lectures, classified under three
separate titles. The first three lectures (Series
A) dealt with (i) Arnolfo, (2) Cimabue, (3)
Giotto. This series described the " Esthetic
Schools of 1300." The next series of three
lectures (Series B), treated of the " Mathematic
Schools of 1400," and the various lectures ex-
pounded, (4) Brunelleschi, the architect of the
125
Pitti Palace in Florence, (5) Quercia, and (6)
"
Ghiberti. The Final Efforts of Esthetic Art
in Florence" formed the subject of the two
concluding lectures (Series C), and these treated
of (7) Angelico, and (8) Botticelli.
Oscar Wilde was a constant attendant at these
lectures, and there can be no doubt that they
produced a very strong impression on his mind,
as, indeed, Ruskin's discourses did on every man
who heard them. They must have opened up
a new field of interest to the young Irishman,
have afforded him new subjects on which to talk,
and have suggested to him, by the spectacle of
the great enthusiasm which Mr Ruskin aroused,
the opportunism of a minor apostolate in a creed
so obviously popular and successful. But there
does not appear to be any grounds for saying, as
has so often been said, that Oscar Wilde was
greatly influenced by Mr Ruskin. It was not
probable that this would be so seeing that the
whole period of Ruskin's public appearances that
term did not exceed twenty- four days, and that
in that period it is not possible for one man to
influence another to the extent of tinging his
whole psychology. Oscar Wilde was a man of
extraordinary receptivity, but even to him it

would have been impossible to absorb Ruskin's
teachings and example so that these should
126
have any permanent effecton his character, in
so short a period. At that time he was fresh at
Oxford a hundred things presented themselves
;
every day to divert his attention his mentality ;
was in no way prepared to receive the master's

teachings and altogether it seems as absurd to
;
state that Ruskin influenced the whole of his

character and his life by means of the eight
lectures which Oscar Wilde attended as a fresh-
man during his first term in Oxford, as it was
incredible that the perusal of a single book
could pervert the mental composition of a man.
These matters have to be looked at from a
scientific point of the plain facts have
view ;
to be considered and the evidence that can be

adduced. There isno trace of any Ruskin
influence in Oscar Wilde's after life, and it would
be a psychological miracle had been.
if there
It is true that the young man was brought
into personal contact with the master, and that
"
he was one of the " ardent young men who
gathered round Mr Ruskin in his practical
demonstrations of the Gospel of Labour. In
one of the notices of Oscar Wilde's early life we
"
find the following reference to this : The
influence of Ruskin was so great that Mr Wilde,
though holding games in abomination, and
detesting violent exercise, might have been seen
127
on grey November mornings breaking stones on
'
the roadsides not unbribed, however he ;
had the honour of filling Mr Ruskin's especial

wheelbarrow/ and it was the great author of
'
Modern Painters '
himself who taught him
how to trundle it."
Mr E. T. Cook in his very able monograph,
"
Some Aspects of Mr Ruskin's Work/' which
"
is one part of his Studies in Ruskin/' gives
"
the following account of the road-digging
"
experiment," referred to above. No pro-
fessor, Isuppose, has had more power of personal
influence over his pupils, or has used it more
for good, than Mr Ruskin. One of the methods
which he adopted for gathering a circle of ardent
young men around him, and impregnating them
with his spirit, was the subject of much sarcastic
comment. This was the famous road-digging
experiment. No one was more alive to the
amusing side of the affair than Mr Ruskin
himself. The road which his pupils made is,
he has been heard to admit, about the worst in
the three kingdoms, and for any level places
in it he gives the credit to his gardener, whom
he incontinently summoned from Brant wood.
Nevertheless the experiment, even from the
point of view of road-making, was by no means
barren. An inch of practice is worth a yard of
128
preaching ;
and Mr Ruskin's road-digging at
Hincksey gave a powerful stimulus to the Gospel
of Labour, of the same kind as the later and
independent stimulus of Count Tolstoi of ;
whom Mr Ruskin has spoken gratefully in recent

years as his successor. But the fact is that
most of the Oxford road-diggers were attracted
to the work, not for its own sake, but for the
reward of it the reward of the subsequent
breakfast-party and informal talks in Mr Ruskin's
rooms at Corpus. It was in Mr Ruskin's Oxford
Lectures and these supplementary enforcements
of their teaching that the seeds were sown or
watered, of that practical interest in social

Oxford movement of
'
questions which is the

"
to-day.'
It would be an insult to the lofty intellect of
Oscar Wilde, immature as he then was, receptive
as he always was, to suppose that the socialism
of Mr Ruskin, that Tolstoism d'avant la lettre,
which enangers and disgusts every true reformer,

had any influence upon him whatever, and that
"
the author of that magnificent plaidoyer, The
Soul of Man Under Socialism," did not fully
realise the grotesqueness of these bourgeois
buffooneries. One has the highest respect for
Mr Ruskin ;
but what opinion is likely to be held
by anyone who knows the real condition of the
i
129
poor in the three kingdoms of England, Scot-
land, and Ireland who is invited to admire the
Slade Professor of Fine Art haranguing in the
following terms an audience of young bourgeois
and aristocrats, greasy and replete with
unctuous breakfast, clad in warm clothing,
"
opulent and perky : I tell you that neither
sound art, policy, nor religion can exist in Eng-
land until, neglecting, if it must be, your own
pleasure-gardens and pleasure-chambers, you

resolve that the streets which are the habitation
of the poor, and the fields which are the play-
grounds of their children, shall be again restored

to the rule of the spirits whosoever they are in
earth and heaven, that ordain and reward, with
constant and conscious felicity, all that is
decent and orderly, beautiful and pure." This
is the kind of talk that gets Social Reformers
into Whig Cabinets and raises statues to them
by subscription of the middle classes. It does
not deceive the people for a single moment,
and it does not for a single moment deceive
those who instinctively or by long observation
understand the wants of the people and know
what wrongs of theirs ought to be redressed. It
would not deceive Oscar Wilde, who intuitively
rather than by observation, for he recoiled from
any sights that might distress his aesthetic
130
taste, so fully understood the problem of the
poor. It is among some of his friends an
abiding regret that he was not spared a few
years longer, so that in the depth of his despair
he might have seen the wonderful triumph that
Germany has prepared for him, might have
watched the crowds flocking to the theatre to
" "
see Salome played, might have listened to
the frantic enthusiasm which this play never
fails to evoke, might a little later on have
realised that it had been given to him by this
play to stimulate to the highest expression of

his wonderful art the composer Richard Strauss,
whom the cognoscenti hail as the greatest maestro
who ever lived. Amongst other of his friends
the regret will be greater that it never came to
his knowledge that all over Europe amongst the
poor, oppressed and outcast, his name is rever-

enced as that of an apostle of the liberties of
man. No writing on the social question,
perhaps, has produced a profounder impression
"
than his on the continent, where The Soul of
"
Man has been translated into every tongue.
Amongst the very poorest and most forlorn, and
most desperate of the helots of Europe, the Jews
of Russia and Poland, Oscar Wilde, known to
them only as the author of this essay, is re-
garded in the light of a prophet, a benefactor, a

saint. In many of the awful kennels in Warsaw
and Lublin, in Kieff and Libau his portrait is
pinned to the wall. Such is the interest taken

in him that recently, his friend, the author of
" " The
Oscar Wilde," Story of an Unhappy
Friendship," received from a Jewish gentleman
living in the East End of London a request that
he should furnish his correspondent with bio-
graphical details about Oscar Wilde, to be pre-
fixed in form of a preface to a new edition of the
"
Yiddish translation of The Soul of Man," such
particulars having been eagerly asked for from
the Jewish proletariat all over Poland and Russia.
Mr Ruskin left for Venice at the end of
Michaelmas Term 1874, and did not return to
Oxford till a year later, when he delivered a
"
series of The Discourses of
twelve lectures on
Sir Joshua Reynolds," during the month of
November. During 1876 he did not lecture at
all, and it was not till Michaelmas 1877 that
he was seen again as Slade Professor of Fine Art.
Under the circumstances it is nonsense to assert
that his influence on Oscar Wilde extended any
further than what is indicated in Walter
Hamilton's most interesting book, " The
Êsthetic Movement in England," in the chapter
which treats of Oscar Wilde.
"
But unfortunately," he writes, " Mr Ruskin
132
left for Venice at the end of Mr Wilde's first term;
not, however, before he had inoculated a number
of the young collegians with artistic tastes.
Mr Wilde occupied some fine old wainscoted
rooms over the river in that college which is
thought by many to be the most beautiful in
Oxford. These rooms he had decorated with
painted ceilings and handsome dados, and they
were filled with treasures of art picked up at
home and abroad and here he held social meet-
;
ings, which were attended by numbers of the

men who were interested in art, or music, or
poetry, and who for the most part practised
some one of these in addition to the ordinary
collegiate studies."
It was at this time, therefore, that a role was
forced upon the young man, which he had no
natural qualifications to play it was here that
;
the curtain rose on that tragi-comedy in which

his fine intellect was to lend itself to grotesque
performances until, just before a period was

put to his existence, he really found himself.
It was from these reunions in Magdalen that
dated that virtuosity in music and painting
and the decorative arts which he was forced
to assume by the hazards of life, his own
necessitiesand the folly of his contemporaries.
He knew little about music, and little about
painting, and in the matter of furniture,
tapestries, wall-papers and architecture he was
no more of any man who
a connoisseur than is
can assimilate the current modes and the

chatter of the arbiters. During a long period of
his life this pose which had been forced upon
him must have galled his native rectitude.
Face to face with himself he must have felt
that it was an unworthy part for a man of his
great intellect and wonderful gifts to play.
Perhaps it was from this feeling that in some
respects he was playing a double-faced role that
proceeded that curious self-accusing manner,

which all his intimates noticed in him, and
which filled them with astonishment. It is a
fact that music bored him ;
it is a fact that he
had no knowledge of any instrument ;
it is
probable that he could with difficulty distinguish

one tune from another. Yet he was forced to
posture as a connoisseur, and to speak and write
about musicians and music with the air of one
who was profoundly versed in the technique
all
of the art. A friend of his relates that the rare

occasion on which he saw Oscar Wilde angry
with him was once when he had frequently
repeated in his presence a phrase from one of
Oscar's essays, a phrase which had struck him
by its effectiveness so that he had the pleasure

in repeating that actors have in mouthing a
it
" "
gag which has caught the popular ear.
This phrase was "a splendid scarlet thing by
:
Dvorak." At the third repetition of these

words, Oscar Wilde flew into a veritable passion
and rebuked the friend for wishing to ridicule
him. It has always been held by the man who
relates this story that Oscar's anger was caused
by the suspicion that his friend knew that his

claim to write about Dvorak or any other com-
poser was a mere pretence, and that he cleverly
veiled his ignorance by the use of sonorous and
effective phrases.
Mr Hamilton quotes the following passage
" one who was
as given by acquainted with Mr
Wilde at Oxford " as descriptive of his life there :
"
He soon began to show his taste for art and
china, and before he had been at Oxford very
long, his rooms were quite the show ones of the
college and of the university too. He was
fortunate enough to obtain the best situated
rooms in the college, on what is called the
kitchen staircase, having a lovely view over the
river Cherwell and the beautiful Magdalen
walks, and Magdalen bridge. His rooms were

three in number, and the walls were entirely
panelled. The two sitting-rooms were connected

by an arch, where folding doors had at one
time stood. His blue china was supposed by
connoisseurs to be very valuable and fine, and
there was plenty of it. The panelled walls were
thickly hung with old engravings chiefly en-

gravings of the fair sex artistically clad as nature
clad them. He was hospitable, and on Sunday
nights after
"
Common Room " his rooms were
generally the scene of conviviality, where under-
graduates of descriptions and tastes were to be
all
"
met, drinking punch, or a B. and S.," with their
cigars. It was at one of these entertainments
"
that he made his well-known remark, Oh,
would that I could live up to my blue china " !
His chief amusement was riding, though he never

used to hunt. He was generally to be met on
the cricket-field, but never played himself and;
he was a regular attendant at his college barge

to see the May eight-oar races, but he never used
to trust his massive form to a boat himself."
At this time he had not yet adopted those
eccentricities of costume which a few years later
attracted universal attention to his person. The
portraits which exist of him as an undergraduate
of Oxford represent him comfortably and soberly
attired in a tweed suit, a flannel shirt, with a tie
unassumingly gathered into a knot under his

turn-down collar. In the winter he used to
wear an ordinary grey ulster. His hair which
136
was brushed back from his forehead was not too
long. The best known photograph of Oscar
Wildcat this period that is to say in 1878 is the
" "
amateurish and therefore faithful picture of
him taken by a man who was then a well-known
character in Oxford, whose name was Guggen-
heim. This man used to be known as " Gug"
by the undergraduates. He was a kind of Hans
Breitmann, a typical stage-German, with tasselled
smoking-cap, carpet slippers, and a long-stemmed
"
china pipe. His studio was in the High," and
" "
he had a reputation for taking College groups
in an effective manner.
Oscar Wilde attempted while an under-
graduate to render himself proficient in painting,
but nothing that he ever painted has survived.
There a story that for a period during vacation
is
he studied art in Paris and it is remembered at

;
Oxford that being once asked by a Magdalen

celebrity, as a joke, what he would do if his means
suddenly failed him and if he were to be thrown
on his own resources, he answered "I should
:
live in a garret and paint beautiful pictures."
However, no one at Oxford, who knew him in

those days, can remember seeing him paint, and
a suspicion existed that he could not paint at
all, and that his remark was only the outcome
of the deception which he had resolved to prac-
tise. It is quite probable, though, that he may
have attempted painting, and being dissatisfied
with his progress preferred to " talk pictures "
instead of painting them. II passa sa vie a se
purler, and not with reference to pictures alone.
Not in his dress, therefore, at that time, but in
his conversation and manners rather did he
"
assume that dangerous and delightful dis-
tinction of being different from others," of which
he writes in his remarkable essay on Thomas
Griffiths Wainewright ("Pen, Pencil, and Poison,"
"
in Intentions"). Yet, such as it was, his affecta-
tion irritated the undergraduates, and on one oc-
casion, at least, they manifested their displeasure

with the brutality which these over-fed young
men sometimes display. Oscar was once
" "
ragged at Oxford. Some eight healthy
"
young Philistines waylaid the blue china
"
cove while out walking, fell upon him, bound
him with cords and dragged him up a hill,
trailinghim along the ground. He was much
hurt and bruised, but he did not resist, for that
was useless nor did he protest with a single
;
word. When at last they released him at the
top of the hill he simply flicked the dust off his

coat with the air of a Regency beau flipping the
grains from his tabatiere off his lace jabot , and
"
looking at the prospect said Yes ; the view
:
138
from this hill is really very charming." Courage
was not wanting to him, either physical or moral.
Indeed very few men have displayed either
quality in a more remarkable degree. During
the period that he was out on bail between his
first and second trials his moral courage sur-
prised and impressed all who beheld him. He

refused to avoid the impending danger by flight ;
with heroism he faced the awful prospect that
lay before him. With regard to physical courage
it ison record that while a young man in London
he assisted a man, a friend, to escape from the
police, and in the furtherance of this object ex-
erted great physical strength, holding a door
against a number of constables, while the fugitive
was clambering out of the window
to safety and
freedom. In Paris he once expressed his desire
to learn the use of the rapier so that he might be
able to impose silence at the point of the sword
on the slanderers who were attacking his re-
putation. The fact is that Oscar Wilde was
really a man of action. In this respect he
resembles many great Irishmen who have found
for their energies no other outlet than that of
writing. This aspect of Oscar's character is

held by certain of his friends who had the op-
portunity of studying his nature at first hand.
In other times and under other circumstances
139
he might have been one of the greatest men of
action of the world. Possibly the fact that his
surroundings did not permit him to give play
to this desire for action, but pinned him down
to the writing-table, generated not only that
indolence and indifference which characterised
him, but fostered also that pessimism which
"
in the end killed him. Cette tristesse et ce
comique d'etre un homme," of which Octave
Mirbeau speaks, and which make for despair, are
felt by none so keenly as by men who, burning
to do, are by circumstance condemned to in-

activity. The men who banished Napoleon to
St Helena could have found in the torture-house
of the kings no infliction more cruel.
During his stay in Oxford Oscar Wilde contri-

buted various poems and prose writings to maga-
zines published in Dublin, notably to the T.C.D.
publication, Kottabos, and The Irish Monthly.

His first contribution to Kottabos appeared
in Vol. ii.
(1877) where it may be found on page
268. It is a poem headed :
AHZI0YMON EPOTOS AN6OS

(The Rose of Love and with a Rose's Thorns)
and begins :
"
My limbs are wasted with a flame. ..."
140
This poem appears under another title in his
first volume of collected poems. On page 298

of the same volume of Kottabos is to be found
a poem, adapted from the Greek, entitled
" "
Threnodia (Eur. Hec. 444-483), and described
"
as a song sung by captive women of Troy on
the sea-beach at Aulis, while the Achaeans were
then storm-bound thro' the wrath of dishonoured
Achilles, and waiting for a fair wind to bring
them home." The first strophe is as follows :
"
O Fair Wind blowing from the sea !
Who through the dark and mist dost guide

The ships that on the billows ride,
Unto what land, ah, misery !
Shall I be borne, across what stormy wave

"
Or to whose house a purchased slave !
This Threnody was very judiciously omitted

from his volume of poems. In the same volume
we find on page 320, " A fragment from the
"
Agamemnon of ^schylus and on page ; 331,
"
a poem beginning, Two crowned Kings." All
these poems are signed with his full initials,
"
O. F. O. F. W. W.," which shows that he had
not yet come to regard with disfavour those
patronymics which proclaimed his Irish descent
and aggressively asserted his nationality. The
same signature is found to a poem published on
page 56 of the third volume of Kottabos (1881),
141
entitled "Wasted Days" ("From a Picture
Painted by Miss V. T."). This poem is signi-
ficant, because we find here the first indications
that he was assuming a mode of writing about
physical qualities which later on was to be
brought up in evidence against him. Almost the
very words are here employed which were re-
peated in a letter, the writing of which, after it
had been made public, may nearly be said to
have precipitated his ruin. This poem begins :
" A fair slim boy not made for this world's pain,
Pale cheeks whereon no kiss has left its stain,
"
Red underlip drawn in for fear of Love
and so on.
It is on page 476 of the fifth volume of The
Irish Monthly that one of the earliest published
prose writings of Oscar Wilde is to be found.

This was written in 1877 in Rome. It describes
the Tomb of Keats, that Keats who was after-
wards to inspire the writer with one of the
noblest sonnets in the English language. The 1
short article is headed with a quotation from

some guide-book "As one enters Rome from
:
the Via Ostiensis by the Porta San Paolo the

first object that meets the eye is a marble pyra-
mid which stands close at hand on the left."
"
This tomb," writes the young Oxonian,
On the sale of the love-letters of Keats.
1
142
"
had been supposed to be that of Remus. It
really was that of one Caius Cestius, a Roman
gentleman of small note who died about 30 B.C."
" "
Yet," he continues, though we cannot care
much for the dead man who lies in lonely state
beneath it, and who is only known to the world
through his sepulchre, still this pyramid will be
ever dear to the eyes of all English-speaking
people, because at evening its shadow falls on
the tomb of one who walks with Spenser, and
Shakespeare, and Byron, and Shelley, and Eliza-
beth Barrett Browning, in the great procession
of the sweet singers of England."
Speaking of the poet's likeness he says in a

note :
"
think that the best representation of the
I
poet would be a coloured bust, like that of the

young Rajah of Koolapoor at Florence, which
is a lovely and lifelike work of art."
He concludes :
"
As I stood beside the mean grave of this
divine boy I thought of him as of a Priest of
Beauty slain before his time and the vision of
;
Guido's San Sebastian came before my eyes as

I saw him at Genoa, a lovely brown boy, with
crisp, clustering hair and red lips, bound by his

evilenemies to a tree and, though pierced with
arrows, raising his eyes with divine, impassioned
gaze towards the Eternal Beauty of the opening
heavens. And thus my thoughts shaped them-
selves to rhyme."
Here follows the poem on the death of
"
Keats, which here is entitled Heu Miserande
Puer."
This description of Oscar Wilde's feelings by
the grave of Keats is of special interest when it
isremembered that after his release from prison
he assumed the name of Sebastian. No doubt
Guido's picture came before his eyes in his cell in
Reading Gaol, and he felt of himself that though
pierced with arrows his eyes were still fixed on
the heavens, which during his confinement, as
"
is very clearly shown in Profundis," had, De
indeed, opened before his gaze, revealing to
him beauties of which he had never dreamed
before.
To The Irish Monthly he contributed various
poems. In vol.iv. (1876), on page 594, we find

"
a poem headed The True Knowledge," be-
ginning :
"
Thou knowest all I seek in vain
What lands to till or sow."
In vol. v. of the same publication are various

pieces which afterwards appeared in the col-
lected poems. We find on page 415 the poem
144
which in volume is entitled " Sonnet on Ap-
his
proaching Italy," and which begins :
" I reached the Alps ;

the soul within me burned."
This sonnet "

is here entitled Salve Saturnia
Tellus."
On page "
755 we find the poem Vita Nuova,"
as in his volume it is called, beginning :
" I stood by the unvintageable sea."
In The Irish Monthly this poem is entitled

HOI/TO? Arôoj/erof.
Amongst other contributions to this volume

of The Irish Monthly is his poem " Lotus Leaves,"
beginning :
" There is no peace beneath the noon."
It is stated that it was " impelled by Ruskin's

" "
lectures that Mr Wilde visited Italy." This
is of doubtful exactness. If Mr Ruskin's dis-
courses had inspired him with the desire to study
the painters about whom the Slade Professor
lectured, Oscar Wilde would have found the
finest specimens of their art much nearer home.
He very probably went to Italy for the same
reason that takes many young Oxonians abroad,
whose means are not stinted, and who are fond
of travelling. There amongst the writers of
is
biographical notices often a desire to do what a

K 145
"
French popular idiom describes as chercher
midi a quatorze heures," to attribute to all kinds
of influences themost commonplace acts of the
people of whom they treat. Cook & Sons and
the other tourists' agencies take many more
people to Italy than ever Ruskin's lectures will
send there. The greatest of men have often the
simplest motives for their ordinary acts.
In the same notice we read, what is much
more to the point, that " In Florence he became
aware of the spiritual element in art, and turned
wistfully towards that religion which had in-
spired the great Italian painters. During this
mood he produced some fine poems, notably
that entitled Rome Unvisited,' which won high
'
praise from Cardinal Newman but the last ;
wave of the ebbing tide of the Tractarian Move-

ment, though it lifted him off his feet, did not
carry him away." It is quite true that at this
time of his life he had some desire to join the
Church of Rome. If he did not do so it was
because his faith was never ardent. In later
years it abandoned him altogether. He was a
tolerant In " De Profundis" he
Agnostic.
writes :
"
Religion does not help me. The faith that
others give to what is unseen I give to what one
can touch and look at. My gods dwell in
146
temples made with hands. . . . When I think
about religion at all I feel as if I would like to
found an order for those who cannot believe :
the Confraternity of the Faithless one might

call it."
Another consideration which may have re-

strained him was that these reversions to Rome
were much too common amongst Oxford under-
graduates, and that the suspicion lurked in the
minds of worldly men that in many cases they
were simply caused by a desire for personal
advertisement, a wish to do something different
from others, to epater les contemporains : various
motives which to a man of Oscar Wilde's good
taste would appear eminently reprehensible.
Towards the very end of his life he often ex-
pressed the wish that he had sought refuge in
the arms of the church which the spirit of Calvin
does not infect. He is reported to have said
more than once that if he had become a Roman
Catholic when he was a young man he would
never have fallen. He would certainly have
suffered less at the hands of his new co-religion-
aries. Indeed, it is difficult to understand why
those who inspire themselves from the teachings
of Calvin that is to say the very large majority
of Englishmen and women and who should
therefore accept his doctrine of the predestina-
tion of man to sin, of the futility of striving
against its promptings, should with greater

ferocity than any other sect proclaim the entire
responsibility of the man who has sinned, and
exact from him the uttermost suffering that
mortal penance can inflict.
" "
Nous tenons," writes Calvin, que le peche
originel est une corruption repandue par nos sens
et affections en sorte que la droite intelligence
et raison est pervertie en nous, et sommes comme
pauvres aveugles en tenebres, et la volonte est

sujette a toutes mauvaises cupidites, pleine de
rebellion et adonnee au mal bref, que nous
;
sommes pauvres captifs detenus sous la tyrannic

du peche' non pas qu'en malfaisant nous ne
:
soyons pousses par notre volonte propre, telle-

ment que nous ne saurions rejeter ailleurs la
faute de tous nos vices, mais pour ce qu'etant
issus de la race maudite d' Adam, nous n' avons pas
une seule goutte de vertu a bien faire et toutes
nos facultes sont vicieuses."
It was the last act of friendship of a friend
whose devotion to poor Wilde is the one beautiful
thing in the terrible spectacle that humanity
afforded in the final tragedy of that man's life,
that on his deathbed Oscar Wilde was baptised
into a kindlier creed than the one expounded
above. Before the breath had left his body
148
pardon had entered into the death chamber and ;
to his friends remains the supreme consolation

that shrived and sung he was carried to his
grave. What would have been his obsequies
if this friend had not been by his side at the
last ?
In 1877 an event took place in connection

"
with which it may truly be said that a new
influence entered his life." This was his journey
in Greece with the party which accompanied
John Pentland Mahaffy. Of this journey it has
"
been said that it contributed to make a healthy
"
Pagan of the man who was hesitating whether
to join the Church of Rome. Wilde himself de-
clared that the lesson he learned during his
travels in Hellas was that it was very right for
"
the Greek gods to be in the Vatican. Helen,"
"
he declared, took precedence of the Mater
Dolorosa the worship of sorrow gave place
again to the worship of beauty." It is very
much doubted whether for these fine
to be
phrases there was any foundation whatever in

fact whether the relative claims of Paganism
;
and of Catholic Christianity ever troubled the

young traveller's head at all. The influence to
which reference is made above was much simpler
and much more important. It was the result
that might have been expected when an impres-
149
sionable lad, deeply read in classical literature, re-
ceived visual evidence of the actual existence of
the beautiful things of which he had read. For
the first time the true call of the Parthenon
would reveal itself to his ears. Things which had

been in his mind but words, words, words, be-
came tangible and living realities. It was then,
no doubt, that for the first time his true enthusi-
asm Beauty was aroused. It could hardly
for
be otherwise seeing in whose company he was
privileged to travel, and who the man was who
was at his side to expound to him the marvels
that Greece unfolds at every step. The full
account of this journey in Greece is given in

"
Professor Mahaffy's wonderful book, Rambles
in Greece," which was one of the favourite books
of Monsieur Ernest Renan. Those who are in-
terested in Oscar Wilde should not fail to read
this book carefully, for though it bears no re-
ference to his name, every page of it is significant
to the man who tries to form a just appreciation
of his extraordinary character. It allows one to
assert without fear of contradiction that after

his return from Greece, his apostolate in the
cause of Beauty was no longer dictated by a
sense of opportunism. Many writers allude to
the wonderful beauty of ancient times, but for
the most part their writings have the stamp of
150
artificiality. When
Oscar speaks of the beauty,
for instance, of a Tanagra statuette he knows
what he is talking about. In many minds the
suspicion lurks that in everything on which he
wrote and spoke he was apt to use words which
had a sound and which conveyed an artistic
fine
suggestion so as to create an impression of his

knowledge. It has been thought that the
catalogues of Museums, the price-lists of jewellers
and other artificers lay at his hand when he was
writing, so as to enable him to heap up dazzling
piles of coruscating words, which to him were
words and nothing Zola practised this
else.
deception, and so did Victor Hugo, but never

Oscar Wilde in his references to classical anti-
quity. Take the example quoted above. He
frequently refers in his writings, as he frequently
referred in his talk, to Tanagra statuettes. Those
who ever proclaimed the man an impostor have
been heard say that of Tanagra statuettes he
knew no more than any man who has access to
dictionary or encyclopaedia. Now, during the
many days that he spent in Athens with Pro-
fessor Mahaffy and his friends, the Museums at
Athens were sedulously visited, and particular
attention seems to have been paid to these
statuettes, which in 1877 had only recently been
unearthed in Tanagra in Boeotia. With what
"
attention these little figures of terra cotta,
often delicately modelled and richly coloured
"
both in dress and limbs were then studied
appears very clearly from Mahaffy's book. In
"
Chapter III. of the Rambles in Greece," under
"
the heading, Athens The Museums," we find
several pages devoted to a learned and inter-
esting description of these figurines.There can

be no doubt that on his return from Greece there
was no man in England better entitled and better
qualified to talk and write about Tanagra
statuettes than Oscar Wilde. And the same
proof could be given of the genuine knowledge
which he possessed of all the other beauties of
antique times. When, during the visit to Paris
in 1883, he was heard to say that he had passed

hours in the Louvre in admiration before the
Venus of Milos, people shrugged their shoulders
and charged him with posturing affectation.
Anyone who reads Mahaffy's book, and thus
gathers under what guidance Oscar's eyes were
opened to the admiration of Greek statuary, by
what teaching his critical sense of this form of
Art was created and fostered, will understand
that his sincerity could in no way be called into
account any more than his profound knowledge
of the subject. The man was steeped in the
glories that were Greece. Those wonderful
152
" De Profundis" in which he writes
passages in
with such facility and eloquence of the classic
days were inspired by no readings from a prison
Lempriere. They came to him as naturally as
came to him those other passages which refer
to the horrors, commonplaces of the life which he
was leading.
"
For the Greek gods, in spite of the white
and red of their fair fleet limbs, were not really
what they appeared to be." Such are the
opening words of a passage of great beauty
which it can be maintained was written as
simply and with no more straining for effect
than, for instance, the passage beginning :
" I am completely penniless and absolutely homeless."
It is not possible here, although it would be

of paramount scientific interest, to inquire too
closely into the question whether with this
awakening of enthusiasm for the beauties of
antique Greece the latent tendency towards

perversion was not also developed. If danger
there be in a classical education to lads who
have certain hereditary instincts and abnor-
malities of temperament, certainly no more
powerful means for breaking down such re-

sistance education, training, and
as religious
example might oppose could have been found
than this journey in Greece. That remarkable
writer, Henri de Regnier, in his study of Oscar
"
Wilde, which appears in his volume, Figures
et Caracteres," directly attributes his downfall
to the fact that he had
so steeped himself in the
life of gone-by days that he did not realise the
world in which he was actually living. The re-

sult would be that the laws of modern society
would not restrain his powerful impulses. " Je
n'insisterai pas sur les causes d'une pareille
"
a venture," writes Henri de Regnier. On les
connait. M. Wilde croyait vivre en Italic au
temps de la Renaissance ou en Grece au temps
de Socrate. On l'a puni d'une erreur chronologi-
que, et durement, etant donne qu'il vivait a
Londres ou cet anachronisme est, parait-il,
frequent." There can be little doubt that the
views enunciated above will by a more en-
lightened posterity be accepted in palliation of
the things with which his name is so cruelly
associated. That will be when men have at-
tained to some scientific comprehension of mental
pathology. At present even the pathology of
the body is only just emerging from ignorance,
superstition and charlatanism.
The delights of the tour in Greece were so
great how great they must have been will
appear to anyone who reads Mahaffy's wonderful
book that Oscar Wilde failed to return to Oxford
by the date when it was required of him to do.
The Dons of Magdalen fined him forty-five
pounds for this breach of discipline. The
money was, however, returned to him when in
the following year he so greatly distinguished
"
himself by taking a First Class in the Honour
Finals," and by winning the Newdigate Prize
for English Verse. The poem which he sent in
for this competition was a poem entitled
"
Ravenna." It is considered by many of Oscar
Wilde's admirers as a very fine piece of work,
and certainly shows a tremendous advance on
it
the work which is to be found in the magazines,

to which reference has been made above. By a
curious coincidence, in which the ancients might
have seen a manifestation of the dread irony of
the gods, a fortuitous circumstance had equipped
him admirably for success in this poetical tourney.
A triumph resulted both he himself and his
;
friends may have considered the circumstance

a piece of rare good fortune. When we review
his whole career we may ask ourselves if, indeed,
itwas for his happiness that this triumph was
won, and that in consequence he turned with
confidence to the pursuit of that career of letters
which when it is pursued side by side with the
quest of pleasure and excitement leads inevitably
to physical and mental ruin. The fortuitous
circumstance referred to is described in the
following terms by Mr Hamilton :
"
During a vacation ramble in 1877 he started
for Greece. Visiting Ravenna by chance on the
way he obtained material for a poem on that
'
ancient city ; and singularly enough Ravenna/
was afterwards given out as the topic for the
Newdigate competition, and on the 26th June
' '
1878 the Newdigate prize poem Ravenna

by Oscar Wilde of Magdalen, was recited in the
theatre, Oxford." The poem was, as is usual,
published by Messrs T. Shrimp ton & Sons. The
original edition is very rare, and high prices are
obtained for copies. Many forged editions have
been issued which can be distinguished from the
original by the fact that and cover pages
on title
the University Arms are generally missing. The

poem has been reprinted in extenso in Mr
Mosher's collected edition of Wilde's poems,
published in Portland, Mass. a very beautiful
:
volume.
The poem contains some beautiful lines, and
anyone who remembers the extraordinary
musical beauty of Oscar Wilde's voice will
readily understand that, as is recorded in a con-
" "
temporary account of the recital of Ravenna
"
by its author, it was listened to with rapt
156
attention and frequently applauded " by the
crowded audience. Here are the opening
lines :
"
O lone Ravenna !
many a tale is told
Of thy great glories in the days of old :
Two thousand years have passed since thou didst see

Caesar ride forth to royal victory.
Mighty thy name when Rome's lean eagles flew
From Britain's isles to far Euphrates blue ;
And of the peoples thou wast noble queen,

Till in thy streets the Goth and Hun were seen."
So far the listening competitors may have

wondered at their defeat.
Immediately after-
wards, however, they would be forced to admit
that a true poet had revealed himself.
"
Discrowned by man, deserted by the sea,
Thou sleepest, rocked in lonely misery !
No longer, now upon the swelling tide,

Pine-forest like, thy myriad galleys ride !
For where the brass-peaked ships were wont to float,

The weary shepherd pipes his mournful note ;
And the white sheep are free to come and go

Where Adria's purple waters used to flow."
How many of those who were

present in the
Sheldonian on that June afternoon and ap-
plauded the handsome youth as he recited in the
most melodious of voices his effective lines
realised that they were listening to what was a
very allegory of the startling contrasts that were

to mark the poet's life. Greatness was to come
to him, and upon greatness, desolation and
lonely ruin were to follow. The man, though
he knew not, was telling the story of his
it own
splendours to come, and of the misery that was
to follow upon them.
158
CHAPTER VIII
Oscar Wilde in Masquerade A Professor of Êsthetics The

Object Pursued The Êsthetic Movement Oscar Wilde's
Siege of London His Success and his Failure The Testi-
mony of an Eye- Witness Society's Attitude towards him
Possible Explanation of this Attitude Oscar Wilde's
Repartee Whistler in the same Dilemma Wilde's
Volume of " Poems " the Dress of the Cinderella Muse
In what the "Poems" greatly triumphed " Howell and
"
James The Friendship of Edmund Yates The Ad-
"
miration and Regard of Sarah Bernhardt The Poems "
and the Critics The " Poems n and a Professional
Humorist The " Poems " in America Oscar Wilde
"
sails for the States A Send-off in the World " What
Oscar may have felt.
ON ist May Oscar Wilde ap-

in this year 1878
peared at a fancy-dress ball at Headington Hill

given by Mrs Morrell. He presented himself in
the costume of Prince Rupert, and his fine and
striking appearance was commented upon in the
social chronicles of the time. For some period
of his life subsequent to this event he was to be
seen figuring in masquerade. Later on Society
forced him to assume another travesti, which in
its essential features was not dissimilar to the
one he had assumed when he went up to London

"
in the role of a Professor of Êsthetics and Art
critic' as Foster describes him in his Alumni
Oxonienses. The more one studies the lives of
great men the more does the certitude impress
itself upon one that our human destinies are
ruled by a power of which a mocking irony is

the prime characteristic. The ancients dis-
covered it long ago the modern world is be-
;
ginning to perceive it. For some part of his

life Oscar Wilde masqueraded in defiance of
Society, and then later on Society made him
masquerade in defiance of himself.
An authoritative who, however,
writer,
throughout Oscar Wilde's career was his sternest
critic and censor, declared at the time of his
downfall that Oscar Wilde had been heard to

explain that the reason why he assumed that
costume which it pleased him to describe as the
" "
aesthetic costume was merely to attract at-
tention to his personality. He adds that Oscar
Wilde had said that for months he had tried
in vain to find a publisher for his collected poems,
and that having failed to do so, because he was
an unknown man, he determined to make him-
self known, and had hit upon the device of ap-
pearing in public in an extraordinary dress. He

" "
adopted as the aesthetic costume a velvet
coat, knee-breeches, a loose shirt with a turn-
down collar, and a floating tie of some unusual
shade, fastened in a LavalliJre knot, and he not
160
unfrequently appeared in public carrying in his
hand a lily or a sunflower, which he used to
contemplate with an expression of the greatest
admiration. Let it be added to this that he
wore and was clean-shaven as to his
his hair long,
face and when it is remembered how striking
;
a form and what memorable features were his

already by Nature it will be understood what
attention his appearance must have attracted.
One might find other and more charitable ex-
planations for this self-travesty perhaps with ;
all the more justification that commerical in-
stinct does notappear to have been very strong

in Oscar Wilde. He was a young man at the
time ;
he was by nature and atavism inclined
to Schwaermerei he may have thought that
;
the costume suited him ;

he may have wished
to set Society at defiance at the prompting of
that Anarchist spirit which was within him, as
it is within all men who are really great. For
the rest, whatever the man's motives were, that
he gave effect to his plan shows that he possessed
great moral courage. It is by no means every
man who has the strength of mind to make a
laughing-stock of himself in the eyes of London.
The London gamins are pitiless ; and on each of
" "
his walks abroad the young aesthete must
have veritably run the gauntlet. It may further
L 161
be noted that many men and women of ap-
proved capacity have shown and do show this

curious love of self-advertisement. It has al-
ways been the malady of the great ;

in recent
years it has grown into an epidemic. The ad-

vance of commercialism may account for it.
Commercialism has made it clear that the only

method by which a man can call attention to
the excellence of his wares is by persistent
puffery. Artists, actors, writers, philosophers
and have equally wares to sell in
politicians
this age every man who is not independent is a
tradesman of sorts and one can hardly blame
them if they adopt the means for selling these
wares which succeed in other branches of trade.

The public, moreover, is gradually becoming so
accustomed to these methods that far from re-
garding with suspicion the man of letters who
by the eccentricity of his costume, the length
of his hair, the frequency or the rarity of per-
sonal mentions and portraits of him which
appear in the papers, is the carrier of his own
advertising boards, the importunate distributor
of personal leaflets, gives more and more its
it
exclusive attention to the person who most
loudly shouts his wares. This is the case in

England and America. In the Latin countries
and in Germany where art is still regarded in
162
much the same light as religion these tricks
would fail of their desired effect. But in Eng-
land we are a commercial nation, and as Doctor
Johnson never tired of pointing out to Bos well,
we must be dealt with by commercial methods.
There is no call in this biography to give any
extended description of that aesthetic movement
in England with which Oscar Wilde for a short
period of his life, and for motives which are not

quite clear to us, associated himself. Anyone
who is curious on the subject of one of those
crazes which sent the British public once more
"
into what Carlyle called a bottomless abyss of
delirium and confusion and nameless distrac-
" l
tion should read Walter Hamilton's excellent
"
and most interesting book : The Êsthetic
Movement in England," to which already fre-
quent reference has been made, and from which

material yet remains to be drawn. It is the
work of a man who was
not unsympathetic with
the movement, and who had for the leaders and
"
Carlyle once observed to my father
1
Upon the whole,
:
the British public, with its contagious enthusiasms, reminds

me of nothing so much as the Gadarene swine. There they
are quietly grubbing and grunting in search of what pignuts
or other aliments may present themselves for their sustenance
and comfort, when suddenly the devil enters into them, up
go their tails into the sky, and away they go, plunging into
bottomless abysses of delirium and confusion and nameless
"
distraction (" Random Reminiscences," by Charles H. E<
Brookfield).
163
camp-followers of it esteem, admiration, or
tolerance. And side by side with Mr Hamilton's
book, the volumes of Punch for the years
1880-1883 may be turned over. It is from the
satirist that one learns most of social life ;
and
Juvenal and Saint Simon are the best historians.
"The Êsthetes," wrote Mr Hamilton, "are
they who pride themselves upon having found
out what is the really beautiful in nature and
art, their faculties and tastes being educated up
to the point necessary for the full appreciation
of such qualities ; whilst those who do not see
the true and the beautiful the outsiders in
fact are termed Philistines."
Even at the height of the craze there was a
very considerable proportion of the public in

England which did not even know the meaning
of the word aesthetic. It was usual enough to
hear people express the surmise that as anaes-

thetic was something which sent you to sleep,
an aesthetic must be something which. The . . .
movement was generally associated with sun-

flowers, certain peculiar shades in pottery and
tissues, a languid demeanour, and a certain
angularity of furniture and attitude. The
penalty for this craze is still being paid by an
innocent posterity in the enormities of cheap
and tawdry accessories which are forced upon
164
I
OSCAR WILDE.
" "
0, I feel just as happy as a bright Sunflower !
Lays of Christy Minstrelsy.

Êsthete of Êsthetes !
What 's in a name.?

The poet is WILDE,
But his poetry 's tame.
CARICATURE REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF THE PROPRIETORS OF " PUNCH."
To face page 165.

the ignorant public by the manufacturers under
the sacred name of Art, never so ruthlessly pro-
faned. As usual, certain men who put them-
selves forward as active agents of the movement,
of the reform, attained to popularity and wealth ;
certain tradesmen, commercial or self-styled
artistic, emerged from poverty and obscurity
by supplying the properties of the burlesque
which England was enacting. The sincere men
who had initiated all this enthusiasm remained,
as usual, in the background, and continue to-day
in the same serene solitude and silence the work
they then began. For his part in popularising

their theories one might almost say in burles-
quing them Oscar Wilde derived a certain and
wide notoriety, leaped into the public eye, found
a publisher for his poems, and, in the event, en-
gagements to lecture in the three kingdoms and
in America. On the other hand, he started his
artistic career amidst the suspicion of his con-
temporaries. This suspicion still clings to his

name. The public memory is tenacious. The
public mind does not readily accord to one man
the right to play more than one part in life. It
is diffident of versatility. Universality of genius
itblankly refuses to admit. The funny man can
never get people to take him seriously. Sydney
Smith has described this. The Hanswurst must
165
be Hanswurst till the end of the chapter. There
can be no doubt that Oscar Wilde's early ec-
centricities created an erroneous impression con-
cerning his capacities which for years militated,

and in certain quarters still militates against the
reputation which his high genius entitled him
to enjoy. Fame is not to be violated with im-
punity ; and when the claims of the Pont d' Arcole
were denied, could the peacock's feather and the
sunflower prevail ? The pose, such as it was, was
eminently successful. notoriety were sought
If
after, it was gained to the fullest extent. Punch

celebrates week in week out the eccentricities of
the school. On the parts played in this circum-
stance by both Du Maurier and Burnand Mr
Hamilton's most interesting book can be con-
sulted.
There can be no doubt that all the time when
Oscar Wilde was thus mumming and masquer-
ading the bitterness at his heart was great.
Knowing what was in him feeling the flame
;
of the genius that burned within conscious

;
of the part that he might have been playing on

the stage of the world, to none more than to
himself can his notoriety, acquired as it was and
kept alive by such means, have appeared despic-
able and a matter for regret. At the same time
it helped him to some extent to gain that entree
166
into London society which when he Oxford
left
and went to the metropolis was his immediate

object. The lion-hunters with which the capital
abounds were not sorry to be able to produce
at their tables and during their receptions the
man about whom England was speaking, and of
whom the comic papers made weekly sport. In
this way he certainly achieved some part of his
purpose, which, otherwise, might altogether have

failed of effect. For in a world where the first
question that is asked about a new-comer is :
"
What has he got ? " and the next is " Who :
"
is hethe younger son of an Irish professional
?
man, with the very smallest of incomes was

doomed by the very nature of things to utter
failure of his social ambitions. In addition to
this the reputation of his brother Willy, who
had preceded him to London, was already a
damaging one and there is no doubt that Oscar's
;
subsequent animosity towards his brother was

caused by his remembrance of the extent to
which he had been a stumbling-block in his early
path, when the conquest of social London was
the aim of his endeavours. But for the curiosity
which attached to his name it is certain that
none of the doors through which he desired to
pass would ever have opened before him. As it
was, he had the moderate social success which
167
London accords en passant to those who can
divert its stagnant ennui. But he was never
popular in society he was mistrusted
;
and mis-
understood and in the end he was disliked. His
;
superiority was too crushing. The men and

women who gathered round him wishing to
laugh had the disagreeable surprise of finding
that the buffoon's bladder was weighted with
lead, and that the point of his wit left an in-
tolerable sting behind it. A letter is in exist-
ence written by a lady who belongs to the
highest English nobility, and who saw him in
those early days in London. She appreciated
his qualities to the full, but she also was forced
to admit that as far as winning the suffrages of
what is known as good society in London he
failed utterly.
" "
I knew him," so runs the letter, first at a
Huxley dinner, just after he left Oxford. I was

then old enough to be his mother, but I thought
I had never met so wonderful and brilliant a
creature. . . . Even you," she adds, addressing

the person to whom this letter was written,
"
seem hardly to know how the ordinary run of
English society hated him. I was never allowed
to ask him to our house. How unconscious he
must have been of this hatred when he thought
that society would stand by him. Poor . . .
168
thing, that he should have represented an
aristocrat to the howling crowd is most curious."
One has to remember that England is a com-
mercial country where worth, merit, character,
quality, genius are estimated only by the amount
of money which a man earns or possesses. The
only poet who is allowed to show consciousness
of superiority is the poet who can show from
by his books an income superior

royalties earned
to that enjoyed by the people whom he wishes
to impress with his superiority. Our novelists
rank according to the amount of shillings or
pounds they receive per thousand words. In
England the poor man is not allowed to show
pride. Assumption of superiority which in the
man of genius is inevitable is resented in English
society when that man of genius is not able to
show the actual cash value of his talents. That
the younger son of a Dublin oculist, who was
reported to have a bare two hundred a year,
derived from land in Ireland, should try to
impress London*"society should show superi-
;
orityand act with arrogance, was such an offence

against the first precepts of English Society and
the Church of England catechism that the hatred
and indignation of his contemporaries can only
be too readily believed. It requires a man more
versed in psychology than is the ordinary man
169
of the world to understand that a man of genius
is proud because he is conscious of his superiority,
because he cannot help but feel this superiority, and
feeling cannot help but show it, guard himself

it
against this as carefully as he may. When

Andre" Chenier waiting his turn at the guillotine
struck his head against the uprights of the in-
strument of punishment and infamy and cried
"
out : And yet there were great things here " !
the mob roared with laughter. The mob always

laughs when the man whom it has degraded yet
claims any kind of pre-eminence. Oscar Wilde
in these early days of the attempted Conquest
of London displayed a pride which impressed
the onlookers as arrogance. He figured as the
mattre ; he assumed the office of arbiter, and he
was, perhaps, too young and inexperienced to
carry the burthen of the part. He used to re-
late with some gusto certain of the retorts which
he had made during this period. They display
that quality which Rabelais describes as outre-
cuidance, which where it does not subjugate ex-
cites inextinguishable enmity. One of these
stories also shows his readiness of
repartee.
One day arriving very late at a luncheon party
his hostess mildly remonstrated with him for
the delay, pointing to the clock in support of
"
her rebuke. And what, madam," he answered,
170
"
do you think that that little clock knows of
what the great golden sun is doing ? " The re-
tort was an able one but none the less would
;
that hostess feel that as an excuse for her burned

entries and the inconvenience of her other guests ;
it was hardly the amende honorable which she
was entitled to expect, and in her heart there

would be a feeling of grudge against the wit.
This anecdote enables one to institute a com-
parison between the readiness and powers of
repartee of Oscar Wilde and the same qualities
in that rival of his, Whistler. Whistler has al-
ways been considered as far superior in this
respect to Oscar Wilde, and tourneys of repartee
are quoted in which invariably the younger
man was defeated. Yet on a similar occasion,
Whistler, arriving late for lunch and being
chidden therefore, found nothing better to do,
or to say, than to fix his eyeglass firmly in his
"
eye, to stare around the room and to cry, Ha !
Ha Lunch Lunch Lunch Bunch Bunch

! ! ! ! ! !
'
Bunch ! The hearers laughed and found the
wit divine but when the thing had crystallised
;
it must have appeared to the hostess even a
more pitiful excuse than the one which had been

tendered by Oscar Wilde.
his early years in London Oscar Wilde
During
did not live with his mother and Willy. He
171
occupied lodgings in unfashionable districts.
For some months he lived in a couple of furnished

rooms in Salisbury Street, off the Strand, in the
very Bohemia of letters. It was not till later
that he moved Charles Street, Grosvenor
to
Square, which was his address during the last

period of his bachelor days. His income was
a very small one, and the struggle to figure as a
man of the world was constant. By mortgaging
and property in Ireland, by the help
selling his
of friends and by anonymous literary work, he
was just able to maintain himself. hopes of
If
wealth ever came to him they proceeded from

the fact that a rich friend, a lady, had bestowed
upon him a large quantity of shares in Keeley's
Perpetual Motion Engine, a fraud in which she
had invested very largely, and in which she had
the greatest confidence. At one time when
Oscar's name was most prominently before
London as the darling of London society his
entire assets consisted of a sheaf of these worth-
less green papers.
If his desire in assuming the masquerade of the
" "
aesthetic costume was to influence a publisher
to accept the risk of printing his poems, success
here, at least, awaited him. He found in David
Bogue, who was at that time in business as a
high-class publisher in St Martin's Lane, a
172
commercial man ready to produce his book in
the best style. In the Athenceum for 2nd July
1881 the book was announced in the following
terms :
Now ready. Crown Svo. Price los. 6d.
POEMS. BY OSCAR WILDE

PRINTED ON DUTCH HANDMADE PAPER AND
HANDSOMELY BOUND IN PARCHMENT
This advertisement to anyone who knows the

that the young aspiring poet has in
difficulties
finding a publisher for his works is a plain certi-

ficate of success. The price at which the volume
was offered, the paper on which it was printed,
and the parchment in which it was bound are all
so many tributes to the skill with which the
young man had impressed his personality on

business London. It isnot in this livery this
court dress rather that the Cinderella Muse
goes to the Palace of Fame, unless, indeed, a
fairy godmother has intervened.
The irony of things shows itself once more on
this page of the Athenceum. As one glances
down the list of David Bogue's announcements
one notices among the other new books which
he was issuing at the same time as Oscar Wilde's
"
poems the following works : Music and
"
Morals/' by Haweis Conscious Matter/' by
;
W. Stewart Duncan and (here one can almost

;
perceive the sardonic laughter of the immortals)

"
How to Make the Best of Life," by J. Mortimer
Gran vile.
This volume ofpoems consisted mainly of
reprints of verses which Oscar Wilde had con-
tributed to various periodicals, Kottabos, The
Dublin University Magazine, The Irish Monthly,
and certain London periodicals and journals.
After leaving Oxford he had published poems
weekly and monthly papers. Ed-
in different
mund Yates, who had a great esteem for him,
and was always his literary and social protector,
had opened to him the pagesTime and the
of
columns of The World. Much of his most
effective verse had appeared in The World. Of
these poems, which have now been reprinted,
and are open to the judgment, nothing need be
said in criticism in this place beyond the fact
that they appealed very strongly to the public
of the day, and that four editions were readily
sold in a few weeks. Many found great delight
in them. The great and beautiful Ellen Terry,
to whom the young poet dedicated two of the
sonnets in this book, was charmed by his tributes ;
and what better success could a poet desire than

having hymned Ellen Terry to win a smile of
approval from her Of the two sonnets,
lips ?
" "
To Portia," and To Queen Henrietta Maria,"
which appeared in this book, the one which
gave most pleasure to the wonderful and great-
hearted artist to whom they were addressed was
the latter. This is it :
QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA

In the lone tent, waiting for victory,
She stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain,
Like some wan lily overdrenched with rain,
The clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguined day,
War's ruin and the wreck of chivalry
To her proud soul no common fear can bring,
Bravely she tarrieth for her Lord, the King,
Her soul a-fiame with passionate ecstasy.
O Hair of Gold O Crimson Lips
! O Face! !
Made and the love of man,

for the luring
Withthee I do forget the toil and stress.
The loveless road that knows no resting-place,
Time's straitened pulse, the soul's dread weariness,
My freedom and my life republican.
This sonnet then achieved what many sonnets
of far greater beauty have failed to achieve. It
appealed to the lady to whom it was inscribed.

It is still remembered as a tribute by one upon
whom tributes have been rained down like the
dew of heaven. For the rest this supreme
artist like many other of the greatest women of
the day has always had admiration for the poet
and pity for the man. In the spring of 1905
while England was wondering whether it
still
would be right and seemly to pronounce the

name of the man who, although he had written
"
De Profundis," had yet ten years previously
been convicted of conduct for which he had paid
the utmost penalty of the law and the further
penalty of some years of lingering agony and a
miserable death, at that time, then, Miss Terry
had the courage, speaking publicly at Frascati's
at a meeting of the Gallery First Nighters' Club,
to include the name of Oscar Wilde amongst a
list of men whom
she used to see at the Lyceum
"
in the old triumphant days. In the gallery
and pit at the dear old Lyceum," she said,
"
there used to be seen faces of many men who
had won or were about to win distinction
in the world the Burne- Joneses the Justin
;
McCarthys ;
Alfred Gilbert, the great sculptor ;
the late Oscar Wilde the poet O'Shaughnessy."
;
The reference was a courageous one the act ;
was worthy of the woman. Its quotation here

serves another purpose. It enables us to gather
that in the days when Oscar Wilde was writing

his verse he was not a prosperous man. The
young man whose circumstances force him to go
to the pit or the gallery of the theatre a la mode
will find difficulty in storming the fortresses of
"
the British aristocracy. For the limitless
176
"
ambition of his, of which he used to speak as
a young man, aimed at the very highest social
success. The upper middle-class from which he
sprung filled him with disdain. He used to
speak with
contempt of Bayswater as the
stronghold of all that was common and vulgar,
and to be avoided. " A Bayswater view of
"
things he could find nothing more scathing
than that. When in the end he found that the
higher aristocracy, while willing enough to be
amused by him, did not readily yield to his ad-
vances, he came to speak with some contempt
"
of the old nobility. They are nothing but
exaggerated farmers," he used to say. Amongst
the modern souches he had some acquaintances,
and, perhaps, because of their greater affability,
these found no more valorous defender than
Oscar Wilde. It was an imprudent thing for
anyone to venture to joke on the nobility of

the big brewers, for he happened to have some
friends among men who had risen to the ranks
of the aristocracy by the ladder of heaped-up
barrels of beer. It is a fact that social success
always impressed Oscar Wilde. The man who

made money and " got on " in life enjoyed his
regard ;
for the failure he had nothing but ab-
horrence. Intimate friends of his have won-
dered to hear him speaking with praise of very
M 177
common fellows who by com-
reason of a little
mercial cunning had reached to reputation and

prosperity. In this respect he was essentially
a worldly man, and, so considered, one wonders
whether the Anarchist doctrines to which he
later yielded did not result from his vexation
at the small amount of real social success to
which he attained as a young man. In only a
very few good houses in London was he taken
seriously, or invited as an honoured guest.
Literary history affords few more distressing
pictures than these early years of Oscar Wilde,
where we see a man of supreme superiority wast-
ing his time and humiliating himself in running
after the worthless favours of men and women
so entirely his inferiors. In the artistic world,
however, his success was incontestable. He en-
joyed from an early age the friendship and ap-
proval of many men of high distinction. He
was the associate of Whistler he sat at the feet
;
of George Meredithhe was the companion of

;
the Pre-Raphaelites and he proclaimed a

;
sympathy for Swinburne which the elder poet

did not reciprocate.
In later life he did not often refer to these
days, and when he did so it was to talk of the
arcana of London rather than of its heights.
He had anecdotes to tell of an extraordinary
178
man named Howell, who seems to have exploited
the naive Pre-Raphaelites in a pitiless and con-
stant manner, and who had had many amusing
passages of arms with Whistler. For the clever-

ness of this man Oscar Wilde seemed to have
some admiration. He used to quote as a witty
saying of Howell's a retort that he once made
when a group of artists, anxious to get rid of him,
had offered to pay his passage out to Australia.
' "
Who," said Howell, would go to Australia,
"
if he had the money to go with ? He found
that it was a very clever invention on the part
of Howell, being asked one day by Whistler
whether he had ever happened to ride in cab
"
No. i in London to have answered No, but
:
a few days ago I drove home in cab No. 2."

He seems to have watched with poignant in-
terest the career of that unfortunate artist
Solomons, who, as Fate would have it, survived

Oscar Wilde by some years, and died under
circumstances not more tragic than those which
attended the death of the man who used to
express such pity for his terrible life. That even
at the time when
" Patience " had been
running
for some months and Bogue was announcing his
poems at the price of half-a-guinea he had not
imposed himself on true London society is made
clear by a note which Edmund Yates, his friend,
179
inserted in The World as a preliminary announce-
ment of these poems. It appeared in the number
"
for 6th July 1881, and runs as follows :
People
who, hearing of Mr Oscar Wilde, ask who he is
and what he has done, will now be able to learn,
as a volume of Mr Wilde's collected poems will
shortly be published." That Edmund Yates had

a sincere admiration for Oscar Wilde will be all
the more readily understood when it is recorded
that many of Wilde's poems which appeared in
The World had brought to the editor from
different parts of the world letters of high
commendation from the readers of that journal.
One incident especially appealed to Yates. It
came to his knowledge that a copy of The World
containing Wilde's poem Ave Imperatrix had
been received by a mess of British officers in one
of the regiments which followed Lord Roberts
on his march to Kandahar, and that these men
had been struck with the truth and beauty of
the picture which the poet had drawn of the
very spot where they were encamped. Sarah
Bernhardt's admiration for and friendship with
the young poet would also impress that most
Parisian of Londoners, Edmund Yates. Sarah
always had a high regard for Oscar Wilde. She
used to say that she had been charmed with the
courtesy of his manner, and with his kindness of
180
"
heart. Most men who are civil to actresses
and render them services," she used to say,
"
have an arriere-pensee. It was not so with
Oscar Wilde. He was a devoted attendant, and

did much to make things pleasant and easy for
me in London, but he never appeared to pay
court." In other words Sarah had discovered
amongst the young men of London one who was
an English gentleman in every sense of that
much misused term. And this may be put on
record here once and for all. Oscar Wilde was
the beau iddal of an English gentleman. That
is to say the sane Oscar Wilde. What he may
have been when his epileptiform fits took him
it is for the outcasts to say who saw him on these
rare and mournful occasions.

Oscar Wilde's volume of poems received with
enthusiasm by the public found little favour
with the critics. The book was roundly abused.
The Saturday Review, which in those days had
still some importance as an arbiter in literature,
contemptuously disposed of the book in a few

"
sentences at the end of an article on Recent
Poetry." This review appears in the number
for 23rd July 1881. It begins: "Mr Wilde's
verses belong to a class which is the special terror
of the reviewers, the poetry which is neither
good nor bad, which calls for neither praise nor

181
ridicule/and in which we
search in vain for any
personal touch of thought or music." Lower
"
down, The great fault of all such writing as
this is the want of literary sincerity which it
displays. For instance, Mr Wilde brings into

his verse the names of innumerable birds and
flowers, because he likes the sound of their

names, not because he has made any observa-
tion of their habits. He thinks that the meadow-
sweet and the wood-anemone bloom at the same
time, that that shy and isolated flower, the
'
harebell breaks across the woodlands in
'
masses/ like a sudden flush of sea/ and that

owls are commonly met with in mid-ocean."
Strong exception is next taken to the sensual
tone of the poems, and the review concludes
with the following: "This book is not with-
out traces of cleverness, but it is marred
everywhere by imitation, insincerity, and bad
taste."
This reviewer was no doubt sincere, for we
find in his comments the repetition of much that,
so far, we have heard raised up blame against
in
the young poet. We have heard him spoken
" "
of as an average sort of man we know ;
that his educational weakness was a neglect of

the rudiments in this case he is blamed for a
lack of the botanical and zoological rudiments ;
182
and we have already seen him charged with
imitation of others. Moreover, he is here once
more rebuked for that imprudent manner of
his of talking about the physical beauties of
man and woman which later on was to render
him such signal disservice. It was a habit
gained from his classical training and his en-

thusiasm for the literature of the ancients ; but
it was a literary habit which in modern days was
fraught with considerable danger.
The AthencBum gave him the place of honour
in itsnumber for 23rd July 1881. The long
review of his poems occupied its first page. The
review is a very careful one, well-written, as are
all the reviews in that periodical which stands
first amidst the critical papers of the world. It
was evidently the work of a man who was not
biassed either for or against the young poet, and
who had very conscientiously prepared himself
for his task as the critic of the book. The
review was an unfavourable one. It begins :
"
Mr
Wilde's volume of poems may be regarded
as the evangel of a new creed. From other
gospels it differs in coming after, instead of be-
"
fore, the cult it seeks to establish." fail We
to see however," continues the reviewer, after
an exposition of Oscar Wilde's teachings, " that
the apostle of the new worship has any distinct
183
"
message." Lower down, Turning to the exe-
cution of the poems there is something to ad-
mire. Mr Wilde has a keen perception of some
aspects of natural beauty. Single lines might
be extracted which convey striking and accurate
pictures. The worst faults are artificiality and
and an extravagant accentuation of
insincerity,
whatever in modern verse most closely ap-
proaches the estilo culto of the sixteenth century."
An able and scientific, ifnot very charitable,
requisitoire bearing out the charges in this in-
dictment follows. The charge of imitation is
particularly insisted upon.

" The sonnet on the '
Massacres of the Chris-
'
tians in Bulgaria reflects Milton's sonnet on
' '
the Massacres in Piedmont.' The Garden
of Eros
'
recalls at times Mr Swinburne at
times Alexander Smith. In the descriptions of
flowers which occur in the poem last named
there is a direct and reiterated imitation of
Shakespeare.
'
Some violets lie
That will not look the gold sun in the face
'
For fear of too much splendour
reminds one of the

'
Pale primroses
That unmarried ere they can behold
die
Bright Phoebus in his strength.'

184
Mr Wilde's
'
Budding marjoram, which but to kiss

'
Would sweeten Cytheraea's lips
and his
'
Meadow-sweet
'
Whiter than Juno's throat
brings back the

'
Violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytheraea's breath.'
' '
And the rustling bluebells rustling bluebells
is a vile phrase that come
'
Almost before the blackbird finds a mate,
'
And overstay the swallow
are but the daffodils

'
That come before the swallow dares.'
" Traces of this kind of imitation

abound, and
there is scarcely a poet of high mark in the
present century whose influence is not per-

ceptible."
The conclusion is an inspiring one
not :
"
Work of this nature has no element of en-
durance, and Mr Wilde's poems, in spite of some
grace and beauty as we have said, will, when their
temporary notoriety is exhausted, find a place

on the shelves of those only who hunt after the
curious in literature. They may, perhaps, serve
185
as an illustration insome chapter on the revival
in the nineteenth century of the Gongorism of
the sixteenth."
Against the charge of imitation Wilde's warm-
est friends will not be able were they desirous
of so doing to defend him. He was essentially
an artist, and the artist is essentially imitative.
Art is imitation. The only
original creation
which is not the reproduction of anything else of
which we know is the creation of the world, and

on that circumstance the data are too vague for
us to be quite certain that here too imitation did
not overhang the labour. Models were certainly
not lacking, or the astronomers have misled us.
There has never been a writer yet against whom
charges of plagiarism have not been brought.
Of those charges Moliere briefly and wittingly
exonerated himself. Moliere was in the right.
The artist is entitled to appropriate for his own
treatment the thoughts, the conceptions of
others. It is not the highest form of literary
art, but it gives pleasure, and it is a tribute to the
man from whom the borrowing took place. It
seems that it would be as unfair to say that a
prima donna who sings us the Jewel Song out
" "
of Faust ought not to be listened to because
we have heard other prime donne sing that song
before she came upon the stage. It is one of
186
the most detestable axioms of commercial Philis-
tinism that the exclusive right in a thought or
a comparison belongs to the man who first voiced
them. In the Republic of Letters and amongst
true artists no such proprietary instinct prevails.
It is the true artist's greatest joy to feel that he
has given forth fecundating atoms which shall
breed beauty in ages to come.
Most of the reviews were equally unfavour-
able. In some, private enmity was allowed to
show itself. The notice which appeared in
Punch may be humorous, it is certainly not
marked with courtesy. As a specimen of the
kind of criticism of himself which Oscar Wilde
,
had provoked, some extracts from this notice

may be quoted. It commences thus :
"
Mr Lambert Streyke in The Colonel pub-
lished a book of poems for the benefit of his
followers and his own ;
Mr Oscar Wilde has
followed his example." As Mr Hamilton points
out, the character of Lambert Streyke, in
Burnand's adaptation The Colonel, is that of a
paltry swindler, who shamming aesthetic tastes
imposes upon a number of rather silly ladies,

and is finally exposed by The Colonel.
"
The review continues The cover : is con-
summate, the paper is distinctly precious, the
binding is beautiful, and the type is utterly too.
187
'
Poems/ by Oscar Wilde, that is the title of the
book of the aesthetic singer, which comes to us
arrayed in white vellum and gold. There is a
certain amount of originality about the binding,
but that is more than can be said for the inside
of the volume. Mr Wilde may be aesthetic, but
he is not original. a volume of echoes,
This is
it is Swinburne and water, while here and there
we notice that the author has been reminiscent

ofMr Rossetti and Mrs Browning."
The poems were commercially a great success,
and this success pleased Oscar Wilde very much.
He used to speak with pride of the fact that his
volume of poems had run into four editions in
as many weeks. For the rest, as
powers his
developed he came to look upon this early work

in the light of a pechd de jeunesse. Certainly the
" "
author of Keats' Love-letters and other of
his later poems could not help but be critical
towards the verse contained in this volume.
Yet such as it is it has outlived the various
periods of notoriety which brought their author's
name so prominently before the world. Re-
cently republished in America by Mr Mosher of
Portland a large and constant demand for the
book continues.
Already at the time of its original
publication
the American edition met with great success. In
188
a paragraph in The World for gth November 1881
"
we read Mr Oscar Wilde has arranged to
:
leave England next month for America where

he will on Art subjects. Mr
deliver lectures
Wilde's volume of poems, which has had a very
large sale in America, will have prepared the
way for him and no doubt insured him a brilliant
reception in that country. I hear that Mr Wilde
is also making arrangements for bringing out an
original play before he leaves London." The

"
play here referred to is Vera," a Nihilist
drama. It was not produced until much later
in America, where it met with instant failure.
The great objection was the fact
to the play
that it contains only one female role, that of
Vera, the Nihilist heroine. This drama has been
printed, and can be obtained in London, with
various annotations.
was not, as amiably represented by Edmund
It
Yates, as the author of a successful volume of

poems that Oscar Wilde received encouragement
to go to America to lecture. It was suggested
to him that a good deal of curiosity existed in
"
that country in the Êsthetic Movement and
School/' that his personality aroused interest,
and that a profitable lecturing campaign might
be carried out there. At the same time he was
"
anxious to produce Vera," which he had not
189
been able to place upon the stage in London.
He had no arrangement with any impresario
when he left England. Major Pond afterwards
" "
undertook to run him in the States that is ;
to say after his appearance at the Chickering

Hall and his success there.
He sailed on board the Arizona on Saturday,
24th December 1881, his original intention being
"
to deliver one lecture on the Recent Growth
of Art England/' and he proposed to be
in
absent for three or four months. A few days be-
fore his departure there appeared in The World,
"
under the heading The Lights of London/'
"
a sketch of him by H. B., described as Ego
Up to Snuffibus Poet a," with certain humorous
verses attached, of which the following may be
quoted :
"
Albeit nurtured in democracy
And liking best that stateBohemian
Where each man borrows sixpence and no man
Has aught but paper collars ; yet I see
Exactly where to take a liberty.

Better to be thought one, whom most abuse
For speech of donkey and for look of goose,
Than that the world should pass in silence by.
Wherefore I wear a sunflower in my coat
Cover my shoulders with my flowing hair
Tie verdant satin round my open throat,
Culture and love I cry, and ladies smile,
And seedy critics overflow with bile
While with my Prince long Sykes's meal I share."
190
The parody meantto be friendly, but there
can be no doubt that it aroused bitter feelings
of self-reproach in Oscar Wilde's mind. Of self-
reproach, but also of indignant revolt against
the order of things which in these modern days
condemns a man of action to inactivity, who, if
he would emerge from the stagnant obscurity
to which the world condemns him, must play the
part of pantaloon. Vital, full of genius and of

that physical energy which is the genius of the
body, fitted for any part that the world has ever
yet bestowed upon a man, he found himself at
twenty-seven years of age crossing the Atlantic
in masquerade, to amuse, to be laughed at, and
in his bitter appear to take
humiliation to
pleasure in the
part. In the whole of his
mournful career few periods can have been more
full of suffering. We reach here the heights of
tragedy to which Shakespeare attains in " King
Lear." Higher heights, for the king was here a
youth. We are to remember too that the man
was a man of genius, and that being so he could
not help but know it.
191
CHAPTER IX
Oscar Wilde's Remark about the Atlantic He is Interviewed
His Personal Appearance Alleged Resemblance to
Irving Oscar Wilde and the Actors How Irving once
recalled Wilde's look Oscar's Lecture at the Chickering
Hall The Opinion of New York Oscar Wilde at Boston
The Harvard Students A Fiasco of Burlesque The
Gentleman and the Boors Boston's Tribute to the Gentle-
man His Lecturing Tour His Varied Fortunes Dif-
ferent Impressions of Oscar Wilde Oscar Wilde and Walt
Whitman Oscar Wilde's Kindness His Efforts on behalf
of an English Friend He Rescues a Starving Chicago
Sculptor Oscar Wilde and the Moncton Y.M.C.A. The
Bunco Steerers American Dry Goods " Robert Els-
mere " as a Top-Dressing The Production of " Vera "
A Paragraph in Punch What America did for Oscar Wilde.
THE next thing that London heard about Oscar

Wilde was that on arriving in New York he had
declared himself disappointed with the Atlantic.
This remark of his was seized upon by his critics
as a further proof of the man's intolerable conceit
and arrogance. As a matter of fact it was the
very simple expression of the feeling with which
most people who cross the Atlantic for the first
time look back on the passage when that voyage
has been performed during fine weather. One
expects a tumultuous sea, a succession of awe-
inspiring spectacles, great heights, and abysmal
192
depths of surging waters and, when the sea is
;
calm well, it is calm. The man could not say

the simplest thing without exciting malevolent
criticism.
Before he landed Oscar Wilde was, as is usual
"
in America with visitors of distinction, inter-
"
viewed by various reporters who had come
out to meet the Arizona. The report which
appeared in the New York
Herald gives, as
he himself declared, the best account of what
he said, and may therefore be reproduced
here.
"
Men may come and men may go, but it is
not every day that an apostle (thwaite) of

aestheticism comes to the shores of America.
It was for this reason that the Herald reporter
met Mr Oscar Wilde at the first available place

namely, quarantine.
"
Mr Wilde was not at all adverse to the
American process of interviewing, and began by
informing the reporter that he had come to the

' '
United States to lecture on the Renaissance

'
which he defined as the revival of the intimate
study of the correlation of all the arts.'

" '
I shall lecture,' said Mr
Wilde, a little
'
reservedly, in Chickering Hall on the Renais-

sance. My future movements will depend en-
tirely upon the results of my lecture in a business
N 193
sense. have come here with the intention of
I
producing upon the American stage a play

which I have written, and which I have not, for
reasons, been able to produce in London. It is
exceedingly desirable that it should be produced

with a cast of actors who shall be thoroughly able
to represent the piece with all the force of its
original conception.'
" ' '
But/ said the reporter, do you not intend

to produce a volume of poems while you are in
'
America ?
" '
No, I shall not, certainly for some time to

come, publish another volume, but I hardly care
to say what the future may develop.'
" '
You will certainly lecture, however ?
'
said
the reporter.
"
do not know
'
I certainly shall, but I if I
shall lecture in other cities besides New York.

It will depend entirely upon what encourage-
ment I find in the acceptance of my school of
philosophy.'
"
"'Do you, then, call aestheticism
<f
a philo-
'
sophy ? asked the reporter.

" '
Most certainly it is a philosophy. It is the
study of what may be found in art. It is the
pursuit of the secret of life. Whatever there

is in all art that represents the eternal truth is
an expression of the great underlying truth. So

194
far aestheticism may be held to be the study of
truth in art.'
" ' '
Êstheticism,' said the reporter, has been

understood in America to be a blind groping
after something which is entirely intangible.
Can you, the exponent of aestheticism, give an
interpretation which shall serve to give a more
'
respectable standing to the word ?

"
do not know,' said Mr Wilde, that I can
' '
I
give a much better definition than I have al-

ready given. But whatever there has been in
poetry since the time of Keats, whatever there
has been in art that has served to devolve the
underlying principles of truth whatever there ;
has been in science that has served to show to

the individual the meaning of truth as expressed
to humanity that has been an exponent of
J
aestheticism.'
And so the two augurs parted, and without a
smile.
Of Oscar Wilde's personal appearance at the
time of his landing in New York it may be re-
corded that when the late Sir Henry Irving ar-
rived in America on his first visit to the States
it was generally said that he much reminded
people of Wilde. In Frederic Daly's mono-

"
graph, Henry Irving," we find the following
passage in the chapter describing the reception

given to the great actor on his landing in New
York :
"
But the only unkind thing said of Mr Irving
on his arrival was that he resembled Mr Oscar
'
Wilde. The figure was muscular, as the
aesthete's was, and the face was long and a trifle
like his but there was far more strength in it,
;
and it was more refined and manly.' Thus

there was a dash of bitterness in Mr Irving's first
American cup, though the writer who com-
mended the chalice to his lips was not without a
desire to sweeten the draught."
At the time of Sir Henry's first visit to
America, Oscar Wilde had not yet shown him-

self. He was still masquerading and mumming ;
and if there is one person in the world for whom

the hardworking and conscientious actor, the
sincere artist, has a dislike, it is the man who
acts, asan amateur, by grimace and posture on

the stage of life. Oscar Wilde's worst enemies
were amongst the actors, and the spirit that
prompted this resentment was not always the
natural and excusable feeling that vexed Henry
Irving when he, the conscientious artist, found
himself compared to a man as to whom he did
not then understand on what he based his claims
to rank as an artist. The same feeling was
shown by Coquelin the younger, who is of
196
modern actors one of the most hardworking, and
"
in The Story of an Unhappy Friendship " we
find in this connection the following reference :
"
I had invited him to lunch with me at Paillard's
to meet Coquelin cadet. . . .

Coquelin cadet
was not greatly impressed by my and I
friend ;
imagine that, as a general rule, Oscar Wilde did

not have much success with actors. These may
have thought his affectation, harmless as it was,
an infringement on their own rights a trespass
on their domain."
When catastrophe came upon
him there were
two actors who most zealously worked to com-
plete his downfall but in both cases there was
;
personal animosity.
any resemblance between
It is difficult to trace
Oscar Wilde in 1881 and Henry Irving some

years later. Yet, on one occasion, one who knew
both men did notice the most striking and ex-
traordinary likeness. This man was attending
" "
one night the performance of the Lyons Mail
in the beautiful Prince of Wales' Theatre in
Birmingham. In the scene where Lesurques,
having been denounced by the witnesses from
the inn, makes his pathetic appeal to one of the
women to speak the word which admitting her
mistake shall absolve him from the horrible
charge which has been brought against him,
197
and the witness turns mournfully but resolutely
away, Lesurques' face assumed a look of agony
and horror, as the vista of what lay before him
opened out a look in which the blood rushed
to the face and made it turgid and vultuous,
there was at the same time a distending of the
eyeballs, which seemed about to leap from their

sockets, a twisting and contortion of the mouth
roughly kneaded into a mass of agony by
torturing hands, while the face lengthened as
though by two crushing and simultaneous blows
on each cheek it had been flattened downwards.
The look of unspeakable anguish and dismay
was cast sideways at the woman in whose silence
Lesurques read his ruin, shame, and death. The
spectator to whom reference has been made fell
back in his chair from excess of emotion at the
sight of a piece of acting so consummate. At
that moment Irving presented the exact facial
picture of Oscar Wilde, as looking sideways at
the foreman of the jury from his place in the
dock in the Old Bailey he listened to the verdict
that meant to him ruin, shame, and death.
The lecture at Chickering Hall was a great
success. Weread in the New York World the
following account of Oscar Wilde's debut before
the American public :
"It is seldom that Chickering Hall has con-

198
tained so fine an audience as that which gathered
there last evening (Monday, gth January 1882)
to see Mr Oscar Wilde, and to listen to his ex-
position of those peculiar views which have dis-
tinguished him from everyday folk in England.
And Mr Wilde was worth seeing, his short
well
breeches and silk stockings showing to even
better advantage upon the stage than in the
gilded drawing-rooms, where the young apostle

has hitherto been seen in New York. No sun-
flower, nor yet a lily, dangled from the button-
hole of his coat indeed, there is room for
;
reasonable doubt as to whether his coat had

even one button-hole to be put to such artistic
use. But judging his coat by the laws of the
Philistines was a well-fitting coat and looked
it
as though it had been made for the wearer as a

real coat and not as a mere piece of decorative
drapery. Promptly at eight o'clock the young

lecturer came upon the stage, and with the
briefest possible introduction from Colonel Morse
Mr Wilde began his lecture."
In the New York review, The Nation, appeared
at the end of that week a long article analysing
the lecture and giving the impressions of the
audience. 1 It was written by a representative
man, who admits at the very outset of his re-
Reprinted in the Appendix:

1
199
marks that Oscar Wilde's lecture was a success.
"
Yet his conclusion was that Mr Wilde was
essentially a foreign product and can hardly
succeed in this country. What he has to say
is not new, and his extravagance is not extra-
vagant enough to amuse the average American

audience. His knee-breeches and long hair are
good as far as but Bunthorne has really
they go ;
spoiled the public for Wilde."

He was not taken seriously by many. An
intimate friend of his relates that the only re-
ference which he ever heard Oscar Wilde make
to the coarse things of was in connection with
life
"
this lecture. As soon as it was over," he said,
"
a number of fashionable young men who had
been present, and who met me at the club to
which I went that night, wished to take me out
to the night-houses of New York.
*
Of course/
'
they said, after lecturing on Art and Culture,

you will want to go and see the girls.'
'
From a commercial point of view the lecture

was a decided success, and at once a proposal
was made to Oscar Wilde by that enterprising
lecture-agent, the late Major Pond, who offered
" "
to run him for a series of lectures through
the States. It has been generally understood
that this series of lectures was very successful,
that Oscar Wilde's progress through the States
200
was a triumphant one, and that the venture re-
sulted in great financial benefit to himself and
his impresario. Major Pond, however, himself
stated, during his last visit to England and at a
time when he had visited Hall Caine at Greeba
Castle to endeavour to persuade the novelist to
undertake a lecture-tour under his manage-
ment, that Oscar Wilde's lectures had not been
successful, and that he had abandoned the tour
before the entire towns arranged for had
list of
been visited. This statement was made, how-
ever, at a time when everybody who had any-
thing to say in detriment to Oscar Wilde was
only too ready to give utterance to it. At the
same time the Major was speaking to two men
whom he knew to be friends of Wilde which
allows it to be supposed that he was speaking
the truth ;
and another thing is that Major Pond
had been speaking very freely about the different
men whom he had " run," and the financial re-
sults which had been obtained.
The first town that Oscar Wilde visited after
leaving New York was Boston, where from the
very nature of the place and the bent of its in-
habitants he might have been assured of a large
and attentive audience. The audience was, in-
deed, large, but it was not a representative one.
It was mainly composed of the curious who had
201
been attracted by the announcement that a
number of Harvard students, dressed up in a
"
burlesque of the aesthetic costume," intended
" "
to be present, and most probably would guy
the lecturer. A large audience congregated to
see the fun, but the prominent Bostonians
stayed away. The masqueraders waited until
Oscar Wilde had stepped upon the platform, and
then trooped in in single file, each assuming a
demeanour more absurd than that of the man
who followed him. There were sixty youths in
the procession, and allwere dressed in swallow-
tail coats, knee-breeches, flowing wigs and green
ties. They all wore large lilies in their button-
holes, and each man carried a huge sunflower
as he limped along. Sixty front seats had been
reserved for the Harvard contingent, and it was
amidst shouts of laughter that they filed into
their places. The effect that they had wished

to produce was, however, spoiled to some extent
by the fact that Oscar Wilde had for that occasion

discarded his peculiar costume and appeared in
ordinary evening-dress, so that those of the
audience to whom appearance was not
his usual
familiarentirely missed the point that the
Harvard students wished to make. The young
men behaved with little decorum. Though they
" "
did not guy the lecturer, whose counter-
202
manoeuvre had somewhat abashed them, they
took the opportunity of such pauses as occurred
during the lecture when Oscar Wilde paused
to drink water, to applaud in a most vigorous
and derisive manner. Oscar Wilde, however,
triumphed in the end, as an English gentleman
always will triumph in a contest with boors.
On the following day there appeared in that
excellent paper, The Boston Evening Transcript
(2nd February 1881) the following account of the

lecture, which shows with what tact and success
the young foreigner turned the tables on the men
who had tried to discomfit him :
"
Boston is certainly indebted to Oscar Wilde
for one thing the thorough-going chastening of
the superabounding spirits of the Harvard fresh-
man. It will be some time, we think, before a
Boston assemblage is again invaded by a body
of college youths, massed as such, to take pos-
session of the meeting. This is not unimportant,
for if the thing should grow into a practice and
succeed, anything in the way of public enter-

tainments here must finally be done with the
leave only of the youngest and most ill-bred
class of Harvard students. Whether in his first
off-hand observation, or in the pointed remarks
scattered through his address, or in the story he
told of the Oxford boys and Mr Ruskin, nothing
203
could have been more gracious, more dignified,
more gentle and sweet, and yet more crushing,
than the lecturer's whole demeanour to them,
and its influence upon the great audience was
very striking. A goodly number of the latter,
it seemed to us, had gone there to see the fun,
in hopes of a jolly row ;

but the tide of feeling
was so completely turned by Mr Wilde's cour-
teous and kindly dignity that even this portion
of the audience took sides with him, and hissed
down every attempt on the part of the rougher
element to disconcert or interrupt the speaker
by exaggerated and ill-timed applause. Mr
Wilde achieved a real triumph, and it was by
right of conquest, by force of being a gentleman
in the truest sense of the word. His nobility
not only obliged him it obliged his would-be
mockers to good behaviour. He crowned his
triumph, and he heaped coals of fire upon those
curly and wiggy heads, when he, with simplicity
and evident sincerity, made them an offer of a
statue of a Greek athlete to stand in their
gymnasium, and said he should esteem it an

honour if they would accept it. This really
seemed to stun the boys, for they even forgot to
recognise the offer with applause. It was a lovely
though sad sight, to see those dear silly youths
go out of the Music Hall in slow procession,
204
hanging their heads meekly, and trying to avoid
observation, followed by faint expressions of
favour from their friends, but also with some
hisses. A lady near us said, How mortified I
'
'
should be if a son of mine were among them !
We think that everyone who witnessed the

scene on Tuesday evening must feel about it
very much as we do, and that those who came
to scoff, if they did not exactly remain to pray,
at least, left the Music Hall with feelings of
cordial liking, and perhaps, to their own sur-
prise, of respect for Oscar Wilde."

"
Courteous and kindly dignity" that was, :
perhaps, the trait in Oscar Wilde's character

which won him such enthusiastic friendships, and
so fervent a following of admirers.
The conduct of these Harvard lads was re-
membered at the time when
was the popular
it
thing to heap abuse on Oscar Wilde, and in 1895

many of the baser American prints retold the
story, but gave the beau role to the lads who had
been so sorely discomfited. Some Rochester
students who had imitated the pranks of Har-
vard also came in for commendation when to
have flouted Oscar Wilde at any time in his career
was supposed to entitle a man to social recog-
nition and gratitude. But Rochester did not,
in fact, come off any better in the encounter
205
between brains and manners with stupidity and
boorishness than Harvard had done.
By his lecture and especially by his demeanour
in the course of its delivery Oscar Wilde won
many friends in Boston ; and that city of learning

its high approval both on
having set the seal of
the lecturer and the lecture, the respectful at-
tention of cultured Americans throughout the
States was, at least, ensured to him. Some of
the Boston ladies expressed the highest en-
thusiasm for the handsome young poet. Oscar
Wilde's behaviour towards them only increased
the respect with which he had come to be re-
garded.
"
Oh, Mr Wilde," said to him at a reception
"
by a young lady, you have been adored in
New York, but in Boston you will be wor-
shipped."
"
But I do not wish to be worshipped," said
Oscar.
A circumstance which made for such success
as he enjoyed during his lecture-tour was the
support given by the Irish- Americans to the son

of Speranza. Certain remarks in his lectures in
which England and English society were scath-
ingly criticised appealed strongly to this section
"
of his audiences. To disagree with three-
fourths of all England on all points is one of the
206
first elements of sanity," is one of these remarks.
But for the Americans, in general, there was such
praise in some of his sayings as may have satis-
fied the almost morbid national self-conscien-
tiousness of that country. "It is rather to
you," he said, in the course of his lecture on the
"
English Renaissance, that we turn to perfect
what we have begun. There is something
Hellenic in your air and world. You are young ;
'
no hungry generations tread you down,' and
the past does not mock you with the ruins of a
beauty, the secret of whose creation you have
lost. Love art for its own sake, and then all
things that you need will be added to you."
"
The Americans called this taffy," but they
liked it.
From Boston he went to Omaha, where he

"
lectured on Decorative Art." In the course
of the lecture he described American furniture
"
as not honestly made and out of character."
This remark may not have
pleased his audience,
but it was a plain expression of the truth, and
that he made it shows that he had an observant
eye, and even in the matter of household furni-
ture could tell bad workmanship from good.
Only last year there was published in London a

book by J. Morgan Richards, one of the keenest
American business men living, who speaking
207
about the various kinds of goods which American
commerce had unsuccessfully tried to introduce
into England, specially refers to American
furniture, which he describes in almost the very
words which the young aesthete used in his
lecture in Omaha. When in an obituary notice
of Oscar Wilde that wonderful writer, Ernest La
Jeunesse, said of him, // savait tout (he knew
everything), he advanced a proposition which
Oscar Wilde's admirers could support with
numerous arguments and illustrations.
"
Wherever he went in the States," says Mr
"
Walter Hamilton, he created a sensation, and
it was gravely asserted that he had been induced
to cross the Atlantic in order to work up an

"
interest inPatience," the satire of that opera not
having been sufficiently understood in the States
except by reading people. Such an idea had
probably never entered his head he is scarcely
;
the man to condescend to become an advertising

medium for a play which professes to ridicule
nearly everything he holds sacred in art or
poetry, but his visit did certainly have a most
beneficial effect upon the success of the piece,
which, beyond a certain point, had created little
interest amongst middle-class Americans, whose

ideas of culture are only awakened by an oc-
casional visit to Europe." Mr Hamilton in his
208
commendable enthusiasm for Oscar Wilde is
here rather too severe both on the middle-class

Americans and on Gilbert and Sullivan's
operetta. The middle-class Americans are cer-
tainly not lacking in culture; in this respect,
indeed, they show themselves superior to the

"
middle-classes of Europe. And as to ff Patience
the main idea of that amusing and inspiriting
piece is one which men have appreciated ever
since stage-plays first existed. It is a theme
which has been handled by most dramatists.
It is Moliere's Tartu ffe treated in Gilbert's
kindly and humane manner. It would appeal

to anyone who had never heard of Oscar Wilde
"
or of the aesthetic movement." This slight
opera -bouffe parodies advance the great
in
movement that is still going on in France the
struggle between the intelleduels and the military
party. It is very much more than an amusette,
though as such, thanks to Sullivan's delightful

music, takes the highest place amongst pieces
it
of its kind.
was another city which he visited,
Louisville
and where he lectured on " Decorative Art."
Some offence was taken here at his description
"
of American houses as illy designed, decorated
"
shabbily, and in bad taste but on the whole
;
the reception was a favourable one, and the local

o 209
papers were filled with flattering articles about
the lecturer.
His experiences were varied. In some cities
he had a fine welcome, and a large audience in ;
other places he was received with indifference,

or even ridicule, and the takings at the door of
the lecture-hall were not sufficient to cover
Major Pond's expenses. At Denver he lectured
to a very rough audience, and he used to relate
that the week previously a man had been shot
in the public room which he lectured there,
in
while he had turned his back on the crowd for
the purpose of examining a chromo-lithograph.
"
Which shows," Oscar Wilde used to add,
"
that people should never look at chromo-
lithographs."
"
From the States he went to Canada, visiting
Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Kingston, and Tor-
onto ; in the latter city he was present at a
Lacrosse match between the Torontos and the
St Regis Indians, which he pronounced a charm-
ing game, quite ahead of cricket in some respects.
His lecture in the Grand Opera House, Toronto,
was attended by noo persons, and wherever
he went his movements and lectures created
great interest."
" "
Charming was at that time his favourite
word to express his approval. Later on he
2IO
" "
adopted the word amazing to describe any-
thing very good. The opposite feeling was

"
expressed by the word tedious," which he
retained till the end of his life.
He proceeded from Canada to Nova Scotia,
lecturing at Halifax on 8th October 1882, and
on the following day. The subjects of his
lectures were
"
The Decorative Arts " and " The
House Beautiful." The following account of his
personal appearance was given by a writer in the
Halifax Morning Herald, who prefaces his article
"
by referring to the winning and polite friendli-
"
ness with which he was received by Oscar
Wilde.
"
The apostle had no lily, nor yet a sunflower.
He wore a velvet jacket which seemed to be a
good jacket. He had an ordinary necktie, and
wore a linen collar about number eighteen on a
neck half-a-dozen sizes smaller. His legs were
in trousers, and his boots were apparently the
product of New York judging by their

art,
pointed toes. His hair is the colour of straw,

slightly leonine, and when not looked after, goes
climbing all over his features. Mr Wilde was
communicative and genial he said he found
;
Canada pleasant, but in answer to a question as

to whether European or American women were
the more beautiful he dexterously evaded his
211
"
querist : That I cannot answer here, I shall
wait till I get in mid-ocean, out of sight of both
countries. Your women
are pretty, especially
in the South, but the prettiness is in colour and
freshness and bloom, and most of your ladies will
not be pretty in ten years.'
" '
I believe you discovered Mrs Langtry ?
'
A look of rapture came to Oscar's face, and with

a gesture, the first of the interview, he said :
'
I would rather have discovered Mrs Langtry
than have discovered America. Her beauty is
in outline perfectly moulded. She will be a

beauty at eighty-five. Yes
was for such ;
it
ladies that Troy was destroyed, and well might

'
Troy be destroyed for such a woman.'

He, on that occasion, expressed his opinion that
Poe was the greatest American poet and of ;
"
Walt Whitman, he said that if not a poet, he
was a man who sounds a strong note, perhaps
neither prose nor poetry, but something of his
own that is grand, original and unique."
It would seem from the account of The Morn-
ing Herald reporter that Oscar Wilde during his
Canadian tour had been dyeing his hair, for never
at any time could its natural colour have been
described as the colour of straw. It was of a
peculiarly rich brown, a very beautiful colour,

and it was opulent and abundant. During his
212
lecture - toursWilde always carried a
Oscar
" "
make-up box with him. As he was playing
a part he seemed to feel that he might enlist
all the advantages that actors assume. The
reference to the absence of gestures on his part
is interesting. This struck other people who
met Oscar Wilde in the States, elsewhere than
on the lecture-platform. Some people male-
volently spoke of it as affected languor one :
very prominent American statesman used to

describe a visit he paid to Oscar in his hotel in
Boston, where he found him lying on a sofa

smoking cigarettes, and he said that he had been
most unfavourably impressed by seeing a young
"
man in such a state of slackness." This
gentleman who was a person of very great im-
portance in the States seems to have expected
" "
to find Oscar Wilde hustling round his room.
It did not occur to him, nor to the other people
who blamed Oscar for affected languidness, that
the exertion of lecturing to large audiences night
after night, in addition to the filling of innumer-
able social engagements, might make it necessary
for the young man to rest himself whenever op-
portunity to do so offered Poor Oscar
itself.
Wilde ! The simplest things he did were turned

into reproaches against him. For every act of
his an evil motive was uncharitably devised.
213
One would fancy that he committed an un-
pardonable offence in ever coming into the
world at all. He was accused of posturing on
his very death-bed. What ferocity does great
pre-eminence not arouse in the envious heart
of man !
Some time after his visit to Halifax Oscar

Wilde visited Walt Whitman. The meeting was
not any more successful than was the meeting
between him and Paul Verlaine. Oscar Wilde
"
was " distressed by the poverty of Walt Whit-
man's appearance, his shabby attire, and especi-
ally by the untidiness and squalor of the one
room in which the American poet lived. The
place was littered with great heaps of news-
papers, for Walt Whitman collected everything
that was printed about him, and these papers
were strewn all over the room, and over them
was so thick a coat of dust that it was impossible
for any visitor to find a clean spot where to
sit down. Walt Whitman, primaeval, natural,
aboriginal, would feel little sympathy for the
dandified Hellene. One may think of a meeting
between Alcibiades and Diogenes to understand
the lack of sympathy that must have reigned
during this memorable interview.
Oscar Wilde's great kindness of heart fre-
quently manifested itself during this lecture-tour.
214
While in Philadelphia he made great efforts to
find a publisher for an American edition of the
poems of a friend of his, a young Oxford man,

who since hascome to very high honours, and
whose verse was certainly of a very high order.
But at that time the young poet was unknown,
and the American publishers fought shy of the
expense of publishing the volume. At last one
firm agreed to produce the poems provided that
Oscar Wilde wrote a preface to the verse. He
at once agreed to do so, and the preface which
he wrote is one of the finest pieces of prose
that he had written up till then. The book was
printed in lamentable style ; the notions of the
"
publishers as to what constituted the aesthetic
"
decoration of a volume were curious in the
extreme ;
and the English poet-friend felt him-
self aggrieved by Oscar Wilde. After receiving
the book from America he wrote a letter to
Oscar putting a
period to their friendship,
candidly stating that his political ambitions
would be balked by its continuance, and parti-
cularly chiding him for having allowed his poems
to be produced in a style which could only cover
their author with ridicule.
Oscar Wilde's comment on this letter was
"
characteristic : What he says," was his only
"
remark, is like a poor little linnet's cry by the
215
side of the road along which my immeasurable
ambition sweeping forward." The poor man
is
was not to know to what a goal of glory he was

to reach, per varios casus per tot discrimina
rerum. The frantic applause of the Dresden
Opera-house fell short of the lonely grave in
Bagneux cemetery.
On his arrival in Chicago,where he lectured
afterwards to very large audiences, he received
a letter at his hotel from a young Irish sculptor
who told him of the misery in which he was
living, of the anguish that he, an artist, who felt
himself capable of great things, suffered to be
slighted and ignored in such a city as Chicago,
and begged him to come to the garret which was
his studio and look at his work and give him the
encouragement of his praise, if praise he could

find to give. Directly after receiving this letter
Oscar Wilde set out for the address given by the
writer, and after a hazardous excursion into the
slums of Chicago found John Donoghue's abode.
He stayed with him for a long time, he praised
his work, he comforted him, he told him the
great consolation of I' Art pour I' Art, and he did
not leave him without commissioning him to do
a piece of work. The next evening John
Donoghue sitting amongst the audience in the
crowded lecture-hall suddenly heard Oscar Wilde
216
in the course of his lecture reproach the fashion-
able and distinguished men and women who
were listening with rapt attention to his words
with the fact that a young sculptor of undoubted
genius who was living in their midst was being
allowed by them in their ignorance and indiffer-
ence to Art to die of hunger and that starvation
which more rapidly kills the artist the con-
temptuous neglect of the public. He went on
to describe his visit to John Donoghue's studio ;
he spoke of the beautiful things that he had

seen there, of the beautiful things that this
young man could do, of the honour which he
could bring to the city of Chicago if only people
would encourage his endeavours. The conse-
quence was that next day John Donoghue was
everywhere discussed in Chicago people flocked
;
to his studio commissions poured in and after

; ;
a very short while one of those munificent

patrons of art who exist in America alone,
as though Maecenas had transmigrated to the
States after the Fall of the Roman Empire, came
forward with an offer to maintain the young
man during a course of study in the ateliers of
France and Italy. John Donoghue's artistic
career was assured. He came to Europe, he
studied, he prospered. But he was not a great

man, nor was he a great artist. In Oscar Wilde's
217
adversity he had not a word of comfort to send
him, but the circumstances of his own death
seem to show that in his last days he reproaches
himself for his ingratitude.
Mr Walter Hamilton describes a curious in-
cident which occurred towards the end of Oscar
Wilde's tour in Nova Scotia.
"
After leaving Halifax, Oscar Wilde went to
towns in Nova Scotia,
lecture in several smaller
amongst others to Moncton, where his experiences

were of a somewhat unpleasant description,
owing to a misunderstanding he had with a so-
called Young Men's Christian Association it ;
arose thus Two committee men had been

:
negotiating to secure him. The Y.M.C.A. com-

mittee telegraphed to Mr Wilde's agent, offering
$75 for a lecture on Friday night. Mr Husted
answered that the terms were satisfactory for
Thursday night, and requested a reply. This
was about 4 P.M. At about 8 P.M., four hours
later, the Y.M.C.A. replied that Thursday night
was satisfactory. Mr Wilde then replied in
'
effect : Waited till 7, then had to close with
other parties. Sorry.' Another committee of
townspeople had in the meantime closed with
Mr Wilde. Then the Y.M.C.A. obtained a writ
which was served on Mr Wilde. The Y.M.C.A.
laid damages at $200 Mr Husted offered to
;
218
give them $20 and pay costs. This was not
accepted. Mr Estey and Mr Weldon
Finally,
gave their bonds for $500 for Mr Wilde's
appearance. The action of the Y.M.C.A. is
generally condemned in the colony, both by
the very pious, who lift up their eyes and
hands in pious horror at one who attempts to
raise the love of Art and Beauty into a kind of
religious worship and by the ungodly, who see
;
that the Y.M.C.A. merely sought to fill its

coffers out of the attraction of the Arch Prophet,
irrespective of his teachings, and failing that,

feed their revenge by attempts to levy black-
mail."
The incident is worth recording, because it
shows that Oscar Wilde's financial position to-

wards the end of his lecturing-tour was such
that he was not unwilling to accept the sum
of 15 for travelling to a small town like
Moncton and lecturing there, and that he had no
objection to appearing under the auspices of a
Young Men's Christian Association. It also
shows that by time Major Pond had deter-
this
mined his arrangement, for the name of Mr
Wilde's agent appears to have been Husted.
Yet he did not return to New York without
a substantial sum of money, and his mode of life
there previous to his departure for Europe was

219
such that it attracted the attention of the New
York flash men. Oscar Wilde fell into the hands
"
of the bunco steerers." He was actually in-
volved into playing a game of poker with some
affable gentlemen whose acquaintance he had
made in a casual manner. They had intro-
duced themselves to him as having attended his
lecture in Boston with great edification to them-
selves. The result of the friendly game was
what might have been expected. Oscar Wilde
was cleared out of all the cash he had in his
pocket, and when hethe table he had to give
left
a cheque for a large amount on a New York

bank to settle what he owed as losses. However,
not long after he had left the house where he had
been fleeced it occurred to him that he had
simply been swindled, and promptly drove to
the bank and stopped the cheque. The men, it
"
appeared were notorious bunco steerers."
During his visit to America his irony did not
spare the Americans, and he gave utterance

to a few remarks which would not make for his
popularity amongst the people against whom

they were aimed. Some of these sayings he
afterwards used in his plays. He was, perhaps,
proudest of having defined American dry goods
as the productions of the American novelists.
The American novelists lui en ont gardJ une dent,
220
On a subsequent occasion he found everybody in
the States reading " Robert Elsmere," and dur-
ing a luncheon party in Dublin after his return
from the States he described how in the trains
every passenger seemed to have a cheap edition
"
of this book in his or her hands. As each page
is finished torn out and flung through the
it is
"
window," he said, So that in the end the
American prairie will get a top-dressing of
Robert Elsmere."
One disappointment had awaited Oscar Wilde
in America he was unable to find a manager who
;
was prepared to produce " Vera," so that in his
original purpose in going to America he was not

" "
successful. Vera was produced about a year
later in New York at a trial evening, but badly
mounted, badly played, it met with so unfavour-

able a reception that it was instantly withdrawn.
It was not a good play in the sense of a stage
piece. But it certainly merited to be spoken

of with more respect than in the following
paragraph in Punch, in which Wilde's disappoint-
ment at the Adelphi was recorded. In its
number for loth December 1881 the following
" " "
Impressions Du Theatre appeared The :
production of Mr Oscar Wilde's play '

Vera '
is Naturally no one would expect a

deferred.
Veerer to be at all certain it must be, like a
:
221
pretendedly infallible forecast, so very weather-
cocky. Vera is about Nihilism, this looks as if
there was nothing in it. But why did Mr O.
Wilde select the Adelphi for his first appearance
as a Dramatic Author, in which career we wish
him cordially all the success he may deserve ?
Why did he not select the Savoy ? Surely

where there's a Donkey Cart we should say
D'Oyly Carte there ought to be an opportunity
"
for an 'Os-car ?
"
In answer to numerous inquiries we beg to
state that as far as we know the Wilds of Scot-
land are no relation to the Wildes of Ireland.
Ed"
Although he did not succeed in placing his
drama, and though the lecture-tour was not as
fruitful as he may have been led to expect after
his triumphant reception both in New York and
in Boston, this year's travelling in America was
productive of the greatest good in the develop-
ment of his character. Brought into daily and
hourly contact with the most energetic of men,
his latent energy aroused itself. He returned to
Europe sharpened and stimulated to a degree
that made him almost irrecognisable. America
"
had taken all the nonsense out of him," if so
trivial a phrase may be used in this connection.
The dealings he had had with men, the struggles
222
both and commercial in which he had in
social
the main triumphed had given him experience
which years of life in London might never have
afforded. His eyes had, moreover, been opened
to the exact value, as an asset to a man who
wishes to reach to influence and power, of the
affectations which he had till then assumed. He
had had, so to speak, a sound commercial train-
ing during those twelve months in America.

The conclusion to which he came in the end was
that it would be to his interest to discard the
unworthy posturings which till then had dis-

figured him. He dropped his masquerade over
board into the Atlantic and never again assumed
it. And here masquerade applies as much to
affectation of manner and speech as to the
actual disguise he had been wearing.
223
CHAPTER X
A Man of Moods He goes to Paris His Success there Why
it was not Greater Oscar Wilde and Edmond de Gon-
court Oscar Wilde and Daudet His Visit to Victor
Hugo His Imitation of Balzac His Sincerity of Pur-
" "
pose The Duchess of Padua The History of this
Play Dr Max Meyerfeld's Version Its Ill-fated Pro-
"
duction in Hamburg The Sphynx " and " The Harlot's
"
House Oscar Wilde as seen in Paris in 1883 His Fine
Character His High Morality His Mode of Life Oscar
Wilde and Paul Bourget Oscar Wilde's Straits He is
" "
forced to leave Paris Exit Oscar and Edmund
!
Yates' Reply.
OSCAR WILDE was a man of moods. He himself

used to speak of these moods as periods through
which he has passed. When he reached Paris
in the spring of 1883 he described himself as
beginning a new period of his life. He repudiated
all responsibility for the Oscar Wilde of the
" "
aesthetic movement." That was the Oscar
"
Wilde of the second period," he used to say, I
am now in my third period."

On returning from America, after a very short
stay in London, he proceeded immediately to

Paris. Here he definitely abandoned his peculiar
costume. For a short time still he wore his hair
long, but he had not been very many days in
224
Paris before he discovered that an affectation
of Bohemianism was a pose which the men of
letters in France who counted had long since
abandoned. Murger's heroes were entirely out
of date. A transformation imposed itself, and
one day he went to the coiffeur, from whose
hands he emerged with the appearance of a
gentleman in the mode of the day. He used to
explain that it had been on contemplating the
bust of Nero in the Louvre that he had decided
that hair must not be worn and he used to
long,
speak of the style in which he then wore it as
"
my Neronian coiffure." Very shortly after his
arrival in Paris Mr Theodore Child, the corre-
spondent of The World, recorded the event in his

"
journal in the following terms Amongst other
:
illustrious visitors to Paris, besides the Gladstone
family, we have had and still have, Oscar Wilde.

Mr Wilde, is, of course, utterly unknown to the
French, and does not probably intend to take

any measures to make himself known. Last
week he was entertained at dinner by some
English and American artists and journalists,
and at dessert he made a very clever little
speech on his American experience. Generally
speaking, Mr Wilde told us, while in America he
had to converse on art with people who derived
their notions of painting from chromo-lithographs,
p 225
and their notions of sculpture from the figures in
front of the tobacconist's shops. In Colorado,
however, and the Rocky Mountains, Mr Wilde
was agreeably surprised by the aesthetic predis-
positions of the natives, and at Leadville in
particular, he found some of his own theories
"
on art-police fully accepted. When I arrived
"
in Leadville," Mr Wilde said, in the evening I
went to the Casino. There I found the miners
and pianist sitting at a piano over which was
'
this notice Please do not shoot at the pianist,
:
he is doing his best.' I was struck with this
recognition of the fact that bad art merits the

penalty of death, and I felt that in this remote
city, where the aesthetic applications of the re-
volver were already admitted in the case of
music, my apostolic task would be much simpli-
fied, as indeed it was."
Oscar Wilde had very tactfully come to the
conclusion that as there was a great deal of what
was ridiculous in the pretentious of the Oscar
"
Wilde of the second period," it would be the
wisest thing to do, to laugh with his mockers,
and he certainly seemed to take huge delight in
bringing out the funny aspects of what he called
"
his apostolic task." He was full of anecdotes
about his American tour, and it is a great pity
that he never gave execution to the plan he had
226
formed on leaving America of writing a volume
of his American impressions. It would have
been full of humour, and from the nature of the

man the humour would have been kindly. He
was bitter only against affectation and pre-
tentiousness. The simple and kindly Americans
would have been spared the lash of his satire.
The story about the pianist in Leadville was
a favourite one of his, and he developed it as he
repeated it. On the 5th of May of that year he
was dining with Edmond de Goncourt who in
his diary thus records what Oscar Wilde told
him :
"
Dined with the poet Oscar Wilde.
'
This poet, who tells the most improbable
stories, gives us an amusing picture of a town
in Texas, with its population of convicts, its
revolver habits, its pleasure resorts, where one

'
reads on a notice Please not to shoot at the
:
pianist who is doing his best.' He tells us of the

hall at the Casino, which, as it isroom
the biggest
in the place, is used for the Assize-Court, and here
they hang criminals on the stage after the per-

formance. He told us that he had seen there a
man who had been hanged clinging to the scenery
uprights, while the audience fired their revolvers
at him from their seats.
"
In those places, it would also appear, the
227
theatrical managers look out for real criminals to
'
play the parts of criminals, and when Macbeth

'
is to be staged and a person is wanted for the
role of Lady Macbeth offers are made to a

woman who has been convicted for poisoning,
and who has just been released after serving her
'
sentence. One sees posters thus worded The :
part will be taken by Mrs X.,' and, in brackets,

' '
the words (10 Years Penal Servitude).'

It may be noted that Monsieur de Goncourt
did not faithfully record in his diary the things
that he heard. He allowed his fine imagination
to play when he sat down to his Journal des
Goncourt. His entries have little historical
" "
value. He used to touch up an anecdote ;
he used to add to a statement of fact. He was
always preoccupied as to the effect that the
passage would produce on the reader. This
great artist would have made the ideal city
editoron a New York journal. In his diary for
1895 he records a conversation which he had
with a gentleman who told him of Wilde's ar-
rival midnight at his mother's house in
at
Oakley Street, after his release on bail, in a

manner in which malevolence seems to have
guided his pen. The gist of this page is that
everybody was drunk in the house in Oakley
Street, and for this statement his informant's

328
narrative had not given the shadow of a sug-
gestion.
Theodore Child was in error when he wrote
that Oscar Wilde did not probably intend to take
any measures to make himself known in Paris.

He did take active measures. He had
brought
with him from London a number of copies of his
volume of "Poems/'and soon after he had settled
down rooms in the Hotel Voltaire on the
in his
Quai Voltaire he sent his book accompanied by

a letter to a number of leading men in Paris,
both writers and painters. At the time of his
trial, in many drawing-rooms this volume and the
letter which had accompanied it were laid out
on view, as curiosities d'actualite, and people were
able to convince themselves of the extraordinary
knowledge of French which these well-written

letters displayed. His advances were favourably
received as such advances always are in humane
and enlightened Paris and many doors were
opened to him. He was frequently in the ex-
clusive society which numbered Edmond de
Goncourt amongst its ornaments he frequented
;
the leading painters of the impressionist school ;

and he was welcomed at the house of Sarah
Bernhardt where he met many of the most
distinguished people in Paris. He was generally
liked and admired, but he would certainly have
229
produced a better impression in literary Paris if
" "
he had not deemed it necessary to amaze the
Parisians by telling them stories and making
statements to them, which with all their bad-
auderie they could not accept as truthful fact.
For instance, at an evening party on 2ist April,
Oscar Wilde speaking to Monsieur de Goncourt
in the presence of a large number of highly-
cultured people was heard to remark that the
only Englishman who till then had read Balzac
was Swinburne. Such a statement as that would
appear to the people who overheard the remark,
nothing more than what the French call une

blague, and Oscar Wilde would create the im-
pression of being un blagueur. Now no worse
impression can be created in literary Paris than
this. The Parisians have a certain reverence
for the things of literature and art ; they desire
these things to be treated with the respect that
is accorded to religion by others; and to be
paradoxical and outre about them is to forfeit

the attention of those whose good opinion it is
worth while to cultivate. It is to be feared that
Oscar Wilde was never really understood in Paris.
A man who does not take himself seriously in
Paris, as a writer or an artist, will never induce
people to take him seriously. A large number
of Parisians listening to Wilde's brilliant talk,
230
and humour which over-
failing to perceive the
hung remarks simply set him down as a
his
charlatan who was trying to deceive them, and
resented the attempt. It is only since his death,
since the publication of Jean Joseph- Ren aud's
"
masterly translation of Intentions," and the
"
writings which have appeared on De Pro-
"
fun dis that the Parisian men of letters are
beginning to see that they had totally misunder-
stood the brilliant young man who made such
efforts to interest and amuse them. At the
same time it is not difficult to imagine what
effect must have been produced on an audience
of artists in Paris when Oscar Wilde told them
a thing which he was at that time very fond of
repeating that he used to spend hours at the
Louvre in rapt admiration before the Venus of
Milos. Alphonse Daudet who met him in those
days in Paris, both at his own house and at
soirees, notably at the house of the famous
painter of Parisian landscapes, de Nittis, con-

ceived from hearing him talk in this manner a
distrust of him which he was never able to cast
off. Now Daudet was very quick at noting the
salient traits in a man's character, and it shows
that Oscar Wilde must have dissembled his real
nature with the greatest skill, the most unfor-
tunate ability, for he was just of that exquisite
231
artistic mould which would have delighted
Alphonse Daudet, while his kindness of heart
and great refinement would have won for him
the warm friendship of the impressionable
Southerner. Daudet was deceived by Oscar
Wilde's outward manner, which shows that he
must have exerted great powers to dissimulate
the superiority of his nature, just as others who
came into contact with Daudet by a similar
exertion of profound hypocrisy were able to
deceive him as to their worthlessness.
At Victor Hugo's house Oscar Wilde enjoyed
one evening no little success, although the
master himself did not interrupt his usual nap
to listen to his visitor: but it was just after
Swinburne's visit to Hugo's house and the
habitues of Hugo's salon were most interested
to hear Wilde speak of the English poet. There
was a lady there, a Polish princess, who had
translated some of Swinburne's poems into
French, who was so pleased with Oscar Wilde's
eloquent championship of the poet, against whom

a certain hostility reigned in that milieu, that
she became the speaking-trumpet of the young
Irishman's fame in the many good houses in
Paris which she visited.
Although Oscar Wilde had laid aside his

aesthetic masquerade there were certain points
232
about his dress which did please the
not
Parisians. For one thing he used to wear fur-
coats. Of these he had two or three. One was
a very noticeable one, being made of green cloth
with black brandebourgs. Now, in those days
gentlemen did not wear fur-coats in Paris. It
was have his hair curled every
also his habit to
" "
day. There was too much get-up about his
appearance to please the Paris men of the world.
As a matter of fact, though Paris did not per-
ceive it, Oscar Wilde was paying to French
literature thecompliment of modelling himself
on the great writer Balzac. He was then in a
period of imitation of this great writer for whom
his admiration increased with each year of his
life. When at work at the Hotel Voltaire he
used to put on a white gown with a monkish
cowl, because it was in a dressing-gown like this
that Balzac, who wrote mostly at nights, used
to work. At the time when Balzac, who had
doomed himself for years to celibacy and con-
tinence, at last went courting, the recluse as-
sumed all the graces of the contemporary
Parisian dandy. He wore the most elegant
costumes, he adorned himself with jewellery,
and he carried when he went abroad a walking-
stick which was so noticeable that it inspired
"
Delphine Gay with the subject of a novel, La
2 33
Canne de Monsieur de Balzac." In all these
points Oscar Wilde imitated the master with
whose industry and enthusiasm for literary art
he was endeavouring to imbue himself. He
dressed much after the fashion of the fops of
1848, he wore noticeable jewellery, and he

carried a stick which was the replica of Balzac's
canne. This was a stick of ivory with the
pummel set with turquoises. The costume was
the outward sign of a very laudable effort. It
can be to nothing but the credit of any writer
to wish to imitate Balzac and if by adopting his
;
peculiarities a man might hope to attain to any

degree of his powers of production and style,
one would to see the whole Republic of
like
Letters curled as to the hair, bejewelled, clad
in 1848 costumes,and carrying ivory sticks with
turquoise-stone pummels. But Paris did not
understand the suggestion of Oscar Wilde's dress,
and did not believe that a man who seemed to
talk so flippantly had any real artistic strivings
in him. Oscar forgot that not any more in
Paris than in London, in London than in Berlin,
are men prone to a charitable interpretation of
any act of fellow man. He was labelled a poseur

when he was only trying by dressing a part to
enter into the very spirit of the man whom he
wished to imitate in his excellent qualities.
234
Many of the greatest actors which the stage has
ever produced would have failed utterly to re-
present the parts in which they most triumphed,
had they not been allowed to " dress the parts."
Paris might have understood this, but preferred
to disbelieve that any such strivings animated
the young man. Yet at that very time he was
actually inspiring himself from Balzac's example,
and at no period in his life, except, perhaps, when
"
he was writing De Profundis," did he more
sternly discipline himself to that constant labour
which, as Balzac said, is the law of art. During
those months at the Hotel Voltaire he wrote that
"
great play The Duchess of Padua," which some
of his admirers rank with the Elizabethan master-
pieces. This play was originally written for

Mary Anderson, and while Oscar was yet in Paris
the manuscript was sent to her for her perusal.
She declined it, greatly to the author's secret
discomfiture. Mary Anderson probably saw
that it was not likely to succeed as a play for
the stage. This opinion proved itself in the
" "
event to be a right one. The Duchess has
been tried twice in two different languages and
has failed each time. The first performance was
given in New York in the early nineties. It
gained a great succes d'estime, but it never came
to be considered a paying piece. Only last year
2 35
made between a beauti-
negotiations were being
ful young American actress, who was anxious
to mount the play and take the part of the
Duchess, and a lady who owns the American

acting rights. The negotiations fell through on
other grounds but those of terms ; and when it
isrecorded that the only fee demanded by the
holder of the copyright for the right of perform-
ance was five pounds a week, it will be under-
stood at what a low figure the financial pos-
sibilities of the play were estimated in the
American theatrical world. But the play for all

that had warm admirers. Indeed, it was at the
suggestion of her mother that the young Ameri-
can actress referred to above had desired to
mount the " Duchess of Padua." In a letter to
one of Oscar Wilde's friends this lady wrote :
"
Many saw a performance (in
years ago I
New York) of Oscar Wilde's play The Duchess

'
'
of Padua with Laurence Barrett and Mina Gale
in the leading roles. The play made a decided
impression on me, and I have often wondered
why it has not been revived."
This play has not been published in England,
but an excellent German translation by Doctor
Max Meyerfeld of Berlin appeared more than a
year ago. This version was produced in De-
cember 1904 at one of the leading theatres in
236
Hamburg. It was not a success, and after three
nights was withdrawn. It cannot be said that
justice was done to it, nor that it had a fair

trial. The translation is excellent. Doctor
Meyerfeld has rendered Oscar Wilde's verse in
German verse of quite equal merit, nor has he
in any way sacrificed the original to the neces-
sities of translation. The German play is in
itself a fine piece of literature. The acting was,
however, deplorable. The man who played the
part of Guido was suffering from influenza, and
for this reason made a
burlesque of the last act.
In this act the great scene is where the Duchess
finding Guido asleep in his prison addresses him
in impassioned language. The Duchess's fine
tirade was at the Hamburg theatre constantly
interrupted by the snuffling, sneezing, and cough-

ing of the sleeping hero. The Duchess was her-
selfby no means word-perfect. But the climax
of misfortune was reached on the night of the
third performance when the actor who played
the part of the Cardinal suddenly went mad on
the stage and had to be removed vi et armis to a
lunatic asylum. The Official Receiver in Oscar
Wilde's bankruptcy then intervened, questioning
the right of the poet's literary executors to give
Dr Meyerfeld the right to produce the play in
Germany; and under the circumstances the
337
Doctor thought it advisable to withdraw it
from the stage. 1

His version was enthusiastically reviewed in
The Daily Chronicle by William Archer, who
saluted Oscar Wilde as having revealed himself
in this play a dramatic poet of very high rank.
It was this play which Oscar Wilde was writing
at the time when the Paris men of letters were
regarding him with suspicion as a literary char-
latan. As an artist, and as an intellect, there
were not more than three men in the Paris
literary world of that day who were the equals
of this literary charlatan. Some of his finest
verse was also written at this time, notably " The
Sphynx," over which he laboured with the appli-

cation of Flaubert, but perhaps with better re-
sults. This piece has been published several
times. The original edition was issued in a
beautiful form in September 1894 by Messrs
Elkin Matthews and John Lane. It is a master-
piece of the poetry which is not spontaneous.
The inspiration came from Poe through Baude-
laire. Both these poets were at that time ex-
ercising upon Oscar Wilde as strong an influence
"
as in another way was Balzac. In the Harlot's
"
1
The Duchess of Padua " was revived early this year in
Berlin. It waskilled by the critics, and its ill-fated per-
formance resulted in a heavy financial loss to the devoted
Meyerfeld.
238
House," a poem which he wrote at the same
time, Oscar Wilde was more himself. As to the
publication of this poem we find in the ex-
cellent bibliography which is appended to the
translation Andre Gide's monograph on
of
"
Wilde the following note The original publi-
:
' '
cation of The Harlot's House has not yet been
traced. The approximate date is known by a
'
parody on the poem, called The Public House/

which appeared in The Sporting Times of i3th
June 1885. In 1904 a privately printed edition,
on folio paper, with five illustrations by Althea
Gyles, was issued by the Mathurin Press, London.
In 1905 another edition was privately printed
in London, 8 pp., wrappers." It was a short
lyricalpoem. The poet is standing in the street

outside the house of the Scarlet Woman and
looksup at the windows of which the blinds are
drawn down. It is night, and on the blinds
" "
appear the silhouettes of the dancing figures,
" "
the marionettes within. In this poem Oscar
Wilde overcame his objection to the use of words
" "
ending in ette for which he professed a real
artistic horror. The last lines of the poem in
which he speaks of the dawn fleeing down the
street like a frightened girl are very beautiful.
Perhaps the tone of the whole thing, like that

"
of The Sphynx," is not " robust," but, as we
239
have said, Oscar Wilde was then impregnated
with the essence of Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mai.
To those who came to know him intimately
in those days he appeared one of the
in Paris
most gifted as also one of the best of men. He
was then in the height of his intellectual powers.
The fiend of his insanity never betrayed its
presence by the faintest indication. His refine-

ment and chastity of speech and life seemed to
show how well he had schooled himself in the
example of the great artist whom he had set up
above him as his master. He was the most
delightfulcompanion that a man could meet.
More than personal magnetism emanated from
his joyous personality. Men used to wonder
what this quality was in him that seemed to
stimulate in those who came near him every
desirable faculty. To-day, when the scientists
speak of radio-activity, men might wonder
whether in human beings also this principle did
not exist so that such men as possess this quality
can as readily affect those who approach them as
substances which are brought into the proximity
of radium are affected. A distinguished man
was heard to wonder whether there be not sexes
"
of the intellect. Most men would then appear
to have female intellects the very rare, the
;
geniuses, having male intellects. From the con-

240
tact of the two, great thoughts spring off. I
"
know," he added that my brain never seems
to live nor to be so fertile as it does when I am
in the company of Oscar Wilde." His geniality
was another trait that endeared him to all who
saw him in private life. His joyousness of life
was as exhilarating as a draught of generous
wine. He seemed a happy man. His happiness
made others feel the folly of despondency and
pessimism. His gratitude to his Maker for his
creation was revealed in the intense delight he
took in every little thing that is good and
pleasant in the world. As to his morality we
"
read in The Story of an Unhappy Friendship."
" The
example of his purity of life in such a city
as Paris, of his absolutedecency of language, of
his conversation, in which never an improper
suggestion intruded, the elegance and refinement
which endowed him, would have compelled even
the most perverse and dissolute to some re-
straint. The companionship of Oscar Wilde, in
the days in which I lived in his intimacy, would
have made a gentleman, at least outwardly, of a
man of bad morals and unclean tongue."
He used to live in great luxury, dining every
evening, when he had money, at the most
fashionable Parisian restaurants. He preferred
Bignon's in the Avenue de TOp^ra, but he some-
Q 241
times went to the Cafe de Paris, which was quite
as expensive, or, when he felt inclined for the
Latin Quarter, to Foyot's or to La venue's. At
he used to meet John Sargent the
this last place
painter, and Paul Bourget ; and in the album at

that cafe John Sargent one day sketched his
portrait with that of Bourgetand another friend.
With Bourget he had some relationship, and the
two used frequently to meet at the Cafe d'Orsay,
which has long since disappeared. Although
Bourget has never written anything about Wilde
it was obvious in those days that he was
impressed by the man's genius ;

his constant
deference and the things which he said about
him were proof of that.
He was not always prosperous. The funds
which he had brought with him from America,
not a large amount, had been exhausted ;
his
work produced nothing, and his expenses were
heavy. His resources during that period in
Paris were derived from the final disposal of his
property in Ireland. There was a small estate

called the Red Island which at that time was
being melted into gold. There were times when

he was very pressed for money, when the fashion-
able restaurants had to be abandoned. During
these periods he used to take his meals in his
hotel, and it was at his hotel that with no

242
splendour he was forced to entertain the poet,
"
Rollinat, for whose book La Main de Tropp-
"
mann he professed a great admiration. The
macabre was then greatly preoccupying his mind,
but that it never corrupted his bounding optim-
ism hiswhole subsequent career establishes.
"
Mary Anderson's refusal of the Duchess of
Padua " was a great disappointment to him. He
had hoped from the proceeds of that play to be
able to continue his luxurious life of literary
activity in Paris. was nothing to

But, as there
be looked for from this source, and as the lawyers
in Ireland declared it impossible to squeeze any
more gold out of the barren acres of the Red
Island, the Paris days had to be brought to an
end. He
returned to England in the summer of
1883 under the necessity of finding a means of
gaining his livelihood. An important journal
then published an article concerning his position,
achievements and prospects, the tone of which
is best explained by the title under which it
"
appeared : Exit Oscar." Edmund Yates re-
butted this article in the next number The of
World, and said that in any case Oscar's exit

was a very brilliant one after the great artistic
and social successes which he had enjoyed in
Paris. The fact was, however, that his position
at that time was a very difficult one. Yet with
243
great courage and a never-failing dignity he faced
the situation, and, in the event, came through
it triumphantly. An American firm of lecture-
agents which had a branch in London approached
him immediately on his return to London and,
having no option in the matter, he came to terms
with them. It was under their auspices that he
lectured one afternoon in the Prince's Hall,
Piccadilly, before a moderate audience. He was
at that time living in two small rooms at the
top of a house in Charles Street, Grosvenor

Square. To outward appearance he was very
prosperous, and must have continued to stir the
gall of the envious. He smoked Parascho
cigarettes, and was sometimes to be seen dining
in the grill-room of the Cafe Royal with Whistler.
But the meal was ever a frugal one, and the wine
which accompanied the modest grill was always
a claret chosen from the very top of the list.
244
CHAPTER XI
Oscar Wilde on the Lecture-Platform His Provincial Audi-
ences What the People hoped to see What they saw
And heard Two Pen Pictures by Provincials How
People of Refinement considered him The Opinion of a
Distinguished Woman Oscar Wilde released from this
Penance His Marriage with Constance Lloyd The Ex-
traordinary Wedding Dresses The Foreboding of Cer-
tain Oscar Wilde's New Home His Straightened Cir-
cumstances Some Fine Writings His Failure as a
Lecturer The Dublin Fiasco A Prophet in his own
Country The Caution of The Freeman's Journal The
Wildes' Poverty His Two Sons.
IMMEDIATELY after the lecture in the Prince's

Hall Oscar Wilde commenced to visit various
provincial towns in different parts of the kingdom

"
to give his address on The House Beautiful,"
under a contract with a firm of lecture-agents.
The labour was not distasteful to him, and the
fees way were at that time his sole
earned in this
resource. He was so poor in the autumn of 1883
that he was frequently obliged to have recourse
to the pawnbrokers, and just before his first
London, a friend accompanied him to

lecture in
Marlborough Street Police Court to swear to the

pawn-ticket before the magistrate. The
loss of a
same friend remembers a day, at about the
245
same time, when he was entirely devoid of funds,
and for once, at least, could have written himself
down, impransus, as he retired to bed. Under
no other circumstances would he have brought
himself to associate his name with the enterprise
of those provincial lectures, so clear was it made
to him that its success was expected not from
the value and the interest of the address, but
from the notoriety attaching to his name as the
"
eccentric aesthete." The
great majority of the
people who came to his lectures paid the en-
trance fee with no other purpose than to stare
at the man who was reported to have a strange
passion for sunflowers and lilies. Everybody

had heard of " the aesthetic movement," very
few even knew the meaning of the adjective.
was to imbeciles of this calibre that this
It
scholar was forced by his necessity to discourse.
His lectures were not successful in any degree,
nor can the speculation have been a very pro-
fitable one to the agents who had engaged upon
it. People were vastly disappointed to find that
his appearance, dress, and manners were no
differentfrom those of any gentleman. The ad-
vertisements of these lectures which appeared in
some provincial town were calculated to arouse
the highest expectations of the morbidly curious.
A show was promised the subject-matter of the
;
246
lecture was not referred to. On certain news-
paper files in different parts of the country one

may read display advertisements, running
still
down whole columns, after some such fashion

of vulgarity as this :
HE IS COMING!!!
HE IS COMING!!!
HE IS COMING!!!
WHO IS COMING???
WHO IS COMING???
WHO IS COMING???
OSCAR WILDE!!!
OSCAR WILDE!!!
OSCAR WILDE!!!
THE GREAT ESTHETE!!!
It was in this way that it was brought to the
public notice that a gentleman of rare scholarship
and great erudition designed to address a
meeting on a subject on which, at least, from a
careful study of its masters and extensive reading
and observation he was adequately qualified to
speak. One day in Charles Street one of his
friends picked up a provincial newspaper which
247
was lying on his table. Oscar Wilde, whose
manners were always gentle and urbane, flushed
red, and violently snatched it from his hands.
" "
Do not look at that he cried, crushing the
!
paper up and flinging the ball into the fire. His

friend, had, however, noticed an advertisement
similar in tone to the one of which a part is
given above. Nobody felt more keenly the de-

gradation of these exhibitions than the potential
author of "The Soul of Man Under Socialism"
himself. Although his want of money was
pressing at this time he indignantly refused to
"
appear in aesthetic costume," in spite of the
fact that for such an additional attraction a
much higher fee would have been paid to him.
In view of his refusal the agents, who were well
aware that it was the person of Oscar Wilde
and not at all what he might have to say about
beautiful houses that would attract the sight-
seers of the provinces, were obliged to conceal
the fact that no spectacle was to be afforded.
" "
The references tothe great aesthete in the
advertisements contained the suggestion that
something laughable was to be on exhibition,
and when the audience discovered that instead
of watching the antics, and listening to the
patter, of a buffoon, they were expected to lend
ear to a disquisition delivered by a scholar which
invited their minds to ascend to a plane of in-
accessible height they were not slow to express
their disappointment and disapproval. On
several occasions the room emptied itself during
the progress of the lecture.
It will be of interest to put on record here in
spite of the vulgarity of their style two pen-

pictures of him drawn at the time in different
places by two provincial journalists, for they will

show first what the audience had expected to
see, and secondly how they were impressed by
his appearance and delivery. They are repre-
sentative of opinions expressed throughout the
country.
This is the first :
"
We were informed by the advertisement pamphlet that
this gentleman has, since the publication of his book of poems
in 1890, devoted his time to public addresses. So, as poets
do not often come before the public personally, we were
naturally anxious to see what a poet-lecturer was like. With
imaginary visions of celebrated poets in mind we were
anxiously awaiting the appearance of Mr Wilde upon the plat-
form, when the curtain was drawn asunder, and in walked
not a Tennyson, but a Long-fellow. For the first quart d'heura
we could not erase the impression from our minds that the
subject of the lecture was not
' '
the house beautiful, but the
1
man beautified.' This cheveux de frise he gets very warm

on the subject of friezes proved at a glance how highly the
lecturer estimated the power of capillary attraction, for his
head seemed surrounded with a perfect halo of artificially-
arrayed curls, which, if removable, would doubtless fetch a
figurative sum at an auction sale as a most admirable substitute
for a lady's bonnet. Joking apart, no gentleman would con-
tradict a lady who said that Mr Wilde could rejoice in the
249
possession of a hairy head which at once stamps him as a
master of artistic decoration. His collar had evidently been
made to an original design, which has no doubt been deposited
at South Kensington and the pattern patented, or it must have
been in the market long ago. His necktie was neither tied
nor untied, but, like the clerical collar, puzzled one to know
where it began and how it ended. His cuffs were equally
aesthetic and
'
took one by the collar.' Mr Wilde's theory
as to the harmonious arrangement of colours in art decoration
is that our backgrounds should consist of tertiary or neutral
tints, relieved by small objects or ornaments of rich primary
colour or bright appearance. The man beautified was accord-
ingly arrayed in the neutral tints of black and white, with the
rich relief in the shape of a red silk handkerchief peeping out
from the left side of his vest, and a massive watch-chain
pendant, which appeared like the name-label on a bunch of
keys, inasmuch as no one else had one just like it. In (not on)
those marvellous members of the human body, the hands,
were held a pair of white silk gloves, which if the owner did not
know to be useful at all events felt to be beautiful. Tall and
graceful, and presenting a youthful appearance, he delivers
his lecture with clear, distinct articulation, never hesitating
for a word, nor striving after nights of eloquence, but handling
his subject with an amount of assurance and self-possession
that gives you the impression that he must be quite as high
an authority as Morris or Ruskin, whom he quotes to agree or
disagree with. The closing part of his lecture on art
. . .
education drew forth repeated applause, and, in fact, the whole

of it was sufficiently interesting to gain for him unbroken
attention during the hour and a half which his lecture occupied. ''-
This is how the second provincial journalist

wrote :
"
Oscar Wilde, the aesthetic the ineffable the exponent
of the principle of eternal loveliness has visited us and is
human. He is not an angel after all Nor is he a deity
!
springing to us out of the dark past. His food must have

been other than the nectar'd sweets the poets love to write
about in fact he can be seen, and heard, and handled, for
;
he is a man. This revelation will come as an unwelcome

surprise to many. One so delightfully out of sympathy with
250
the age, with such ineffable yearnings towards the romantic
past, with such inexpressible aspirations towards the beauteous
future, when the essential ugliness of to-day shall only be re-
membered as a hideous dream, such a man cannot be ought
not to be one of us. So I am sure many think. I believe
it was Mrs Browning who describes how sad we feel when we
find our cherished idols simply to be clay ; but I can confess
to no such revelation of feeling when Mr Oscar Wilde stepped
on to the platform and I discovered he had no wings. Mr
Oscar Wilde is tall, well-proportioned, with a poet's hair, and
shall I say it a mildly epicurean countenance. In his
appearance there was nothing Byronic, or Bulwerian, or
Carlylean, or Ruskinesque a little that savoured of Count
;
d'Orsay, Beau Brummel, and more that suggested the tradi-

tional diner-out. His dress had few peculiarities, being
ordinary evening-dress, a very wilderness of shirt-front, re-
lieved by a half-concealed scarlet handkerchief, deftly placed
inside his vest. His pose and manner might have been artistic,
but were not particularly effective. His voice is a moderately
pleasing one, with an occasional lisp to give it an aristocratic
tone. His action what little there was of it was striking.
He spoke entirely extempore, not even availing himself of the
use of notes. For very much more than an hour he addressed
his audience. There was no hesitation, and there was no
fire. Only once there was an approach to pathos, and as far
as I could detect only one quotation from the poets, excepting
an extract he gave in the form of a letter I think of John
Keats. He came to speak to us on an important subject.
And here I must say, that if his lecture had been called the
'
Home Beautiful,' instead of the House Beautiful,' I should
'
have been better pleased. Englishmen especially such as

would go and hear such a discourse as Oscar Wilde's do not
"
care much for their houses," they care everything for their
homes. An Englishman never says he is going to his house,'
'
but always that he is going home.' A house to an English-

'
man is an empty building. The same building filled with

furniture, and all sorts of lovely things plus wife and children
becomes a home."
On
people of refinement the impression pro-
duced was, of course, a different one. Many
people in many parts of the country remembering
him as he appeared to them twenty-two years
ago speak regretfully of his fate. Over women

his personality seems to have exercised a great
"
influence. I can remember him," writes a
lady of refinement and culture from a Midland

"
town, though I had seen him yesterday. My
as
mother was delighted with his appearance she ;
often afterwards spoke of his hair and his hands

and his tie oh his tie, how it impressed us all.
!
For my part, though I was only a girl then, I

felt he was saying things which nobody present
could understand, and it seemed to me at times

as though he knew it also. I felt it was a pity
he should have had to come here at all, for I
suppose it was necessity that drove him on to the

lecture- platform. the things he said
Many of
have remained familiar in my mind ever since.
I never see a big curtain-pole without thinking
of what he said about the sins of the upholsterer,
and I know never drink a cup of tea at a
that I
railway refreshment-room without remembering

how he described the cup out of which he drank
his coffee at the hotel in San Francisco, where
he contrasted the crockery of the Chinese in the
Chinese quarter of that city, with the domestic
vessels used by the Europeans. It was a real
distress to me to sit in that lecture-room
252
looking at this wonderful youth and listening to
his profound and beautiful words, while the rest
of the audience were either gazing with dismay
and surprise, or showing how bored they were.
The room was not half-full to begin with, and
during the whole course of the lecture people
kept getting up and going out. But he seemed
quite indifferent to the mood of his audience,
his manner, if I may use the term in such a
connection, was quite business-like. It was as if

he was saying to himself, I am here to say cer-
'
tain things, and I shall go on speaking until I

have said them/ He began speaking the
moment he came on the stage, and when he had
said his last word he walked off as if anxious
to catch a train and get away from us all."
Those amongst his provincial audiences who
listened to him, and who attempted to be critical,
were in the habit of saying that his weakness as
a lecturer was in a tendency to exaggeration.
Some Joseph Prud'homme of the provinces
"
sagely remarked : He pronounces as dicta,
with the authority of an oracle, principles which
are essentially debateable."
The most favourite criticism, however, of Oscar
"
Wilde's lecture on The House Beautiful " a
criticism which can be found in similar phrase-
ology in contemporary prints all over the

253
country, and not in the provinces alone was
"
to the effect that : Mr Oscar Wilde seems to
ignore the deeply-rooted prejudice that aestheti-
cism if not symbolic of weakness and effeminacy,
is, at least, the antithesis of that moral and in-
tellectual robustness which we, in this age, are

accustomed to respect."
From this bondage, from these chains, which
to such an artist must have been galling indeed,
Oscar Wilde was to be rescued by the gentle and
beautiful Constance Lloyd. To her for some
time past he had been paying attentions it was;
during the course of his lecture-tour that he was

able to visit Dublin and ask her to become his
wife. Constance Lloyd admired him and loved
him ;
she put her hand into his. She was
wealthily connected she was assured of a good
;
income on her marriage by her grandfather, who

had instituted her to be his heiress. The
marriage took place on the 29th of May 1884 ;
we find the following announcement of it in The

Times for 3ist May "On 2gth May, at St
:
James's Church, Paddington, by the Rev. Walter

Abbott, Vicar, Oscar, younger son of the late
Sir William Wilde, M.D., of Dublin, to Constance
Mary, only daughter of the late Horace Lloyd,

Esq. Q.C." Edmund Yates gave a friendly
notice of the occurrence in The World for 4th
254
"
June 1884 : Mr Oscar Wilde's wedding went
off with more simple effect than the large crowd
who thronged the church had possibly come out

to see. Owing to the illness of Mr John Horatio
Lloyd, the bride's grandfather, the ceremony
was meant to be of rather a private character,
and only the near relatives were asked to meet
at Lancaster Gate after the service. There is
only this much to be recorded about it that :
the bride, accompanied by her six pretty brides-

maids, looked charming that Oscar bore him-
;
selfwith calm dignity and that all most intim-

;
ately concerned in the affair seemed thoroughly

pleased. A happy little group of intimes
saw them off at Charing Cross." Yet the
baroque and the bizarre were not wanting in
this wedding which sealed a union which was
to end in such unhappiness. It appeared that
Oscar Wilde felt it incumbent on him as a
" "
Professor of Estheticsto give such directions
as to the dresses of his bride and bridesmaids
as might impress the onlookers with the fact
that it was no ordinary wedding that they were
attending. A brief description of these dresses

"
will establish this suggestion. The bride's
rich creamy satin dress was of a delicate cowslip
tint ; the bodice, cut square and somewhat low
in front, was finished with a high Medici collar ;
255
the ample sleeves were puffed the skirt, made
;
plain, was gathered by a silver girdle of beautiful

workmanship, the gift of Mr Oscar Wilde the ;
veil of saffron-coloured gauze was

Indian silk
embroidered with pearls and worn in Marie

Stuart fashion a thick wreath of myrtle leaves,
;
through which gleamed a few white blossoms,

crowned her fair frizzed hair the dress was
;
ornamented with clusters of myrtle leaves the ;
large bouquet had as much green in it as white.

The six bridesmaids were cousins of the bride.
Two dainty little figures, that seemed to have
stepped out of a picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds,
led the way. They were dressed in quaintly-
made gowns of Surah silk, the colour of a ripe
gooseberry large pale yellow sashes round their
;
waist ; the skirts falling in straight folds to the

ankles displayed small bronze, high-heeled shoes.
Large red silk Gainsborough hats decked with
red and yellow feathers shaded the damsels'
golden hair ;
amber
necklaces, long yellow
gloves, a cluster of yellow roses at their throats,
a bouquet of white lilies in their hands, com-
pleted the attire of the tiny bridesmaids. The
four elder bridesmaids wore skirts of the same
red Surah silk, with over-dresses of pale blue
mousseline de laine, the bodices made long and
pointed ; high crowned hats trimmed with
256
Photo by Riechgit:
l6, TITE STREET.
To face page 217.

cream-coloured feathers and red knots of ribbon,
lilies amber necklaces and yellow
in their hands,
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
voted husband, and Constance seemed to be
swathed in rapturous delight. If ever her
husband left her alone to go out with any friend,
a few minutes after his departure a messenger
would arrive at the hotel bearing for the bride
a bouquet of exquisite flowers together with a
note couched in language of such impassioned
adoration that it charmed her 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 top of the
house a work-room had been installed for Oscar
Wilde, the furniture of which was painted red.
But he never used this room. The 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 livelihood, and he accepted occasional
engagements on the lecture-platform. He was
a constant contributor of anonymous work to
258
The World and The Pall Mall Gazette. Much of
his writings at thistime have been traced, and
were recently being hawked round the London
publishing-houses by speculators in his notoriety.
It was a disservice to his reputation, it would
appear, which would concern these literary re-
surrection-men but little. The work was poor ;
it was the hack-work, current'e calamo, of a man
who had no heart in his labours; and "poorer

one London publisher to whom this
stuff," said
"
volume was offered, I never read in my life."
Yet at the same time he was writing those ex-
quisite fairy-stories, which were afterwards re-
"
published in a volume by David Nutt. The
"
Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) a volume
;
which many of his admirers look upon as his

best and most characteristic prose work. There
are no fairy-stories in the English language to
compare with them. The writing quite is
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
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 a story which a child can read
tells
with pleasure and interest, and without that un-

comfortable feeling 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 Ugliness in Dress);
and the second, on Tuesday, treated of "The
Value of Art in Modern Life." Of both these
lectures a resumJ appears at the end of this
volume. The enterprise was a disastrous failure.
Dublin 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 worldstalking. We find in The Free-
man's Journal for 6th January the following
prefatory remarks to its notice of the lecture on
" "
Dress :-
260
"
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 2is., 303., and 423. 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 listened 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
261
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 very
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
toany 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 delivered 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
'
he stated in his second lecture : True Art is
"
economical.'
In the same number of the organ of
official
T.C.D. appears a letter on Sir Noel Paton's

"
picture Lux in Tenebris." "It is pretty
"
enough," says the writer, but it no more
realises the idea of a spiritual light shining in the
moral darkness of the world than would, let us
say, a picture of Mr Oscar Wilde preaching about
dress-improvers at the Gaiety."
This was Dublin's salute to the most talented
man to whom
she had ever given birth. For
the rest, although in Ireland one finds little of
that horror against the mention of Oscar Wilde's
name which still lingers in England, in certain
quarters, where one would least expect to find
it, it persists. In the summer of last year a
gentleman being desirous of purchasing a photo-

graph of Oscar Wilde as a child, and of getting
information as to the early life of Speranza, sent
an advertisement embodying his requirements
to The Freeman's Journal, where, if anywhere in
Ireland, Lady Wilde's memory ought to have

been revered. The advertisement was eventu-
but not for several days, during
ally inserted,
which the manager was communicating with the
editor the acting-editor not having dared to
assume so grave a responsibility as to whether
263
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
lower any chances of success as a lecturer
still
which remained to Oscar Wilde. Whistler made

it public that Oscar Wilde's lecture on the English
Renaissance was mainly made up from and
facts
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
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
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
" "
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 punctuality, and
industry,
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
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 whomhe 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
faction of showing that the part of journalist
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
"
Tales." There are five of these tales, A Night
" "
with the Fairies/' A Legend of Shark/' 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.
Itmay 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 literature.
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
literary subjects took the form of a monthly
"
causerie, published under the title of Some
Literary Notes." Considerable care and in-
271
dustry were expended by the editor on these
They usually occupied five pages of
articles.
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 hunt 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 fail to
collect.
In the important matter of obtaining the

services of distinguished people as contributors
to his magazine, without possessing a free hand
in fixing the scale of remuneration, Wilde was
remarkably successful. During the first six
months of 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
Heliers, Gleeson White, Miss Olive Schreiner,
Lady Sandhurst, Miss F. L. Shaw, Miss Marie
272
Corelli, and Mrs Crawford.
Arthur Symons,
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
would tolerate no slovenliness of writing. In
the matter, for instance, of punctuation he was
scrupulous in the extreme. If anywhere on a
printed or manuscript page laid before him a
poor little comma had intruded where it had
no right to be, or one had deserted its post, his
flashing glance would immediately turn to the

spot. One of his stories was that his hostess
in a country house having asked him at dinner
how he had spent the day he had answered :
'''
I have been correcting the proofs of my

poems. In the morning, after hard work, I
took a comma out of one sentence." " And in
"
the afternoon ? "In the afternoon, I put it
back again." He was here jesting at what was
a marked characteristic of his literary technique.
During all this time, apart from his editor-
ship, he was a frequent contributor to the
weekly and daily press, as well as to the
s 273
magazines. He wrote anonymously for The Pall
Mall Gazette, in whose columns he revealed him-
self asa brilliant paragraphist, who did not dis-
dain the piquancy of personalities he contri-
;
buted much to The World under Yates's editor-

ship ;
his name is to be found 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 a year or two later that he
till
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 public men have made and those who
;
have expected great results from the persistent

clamour of the journalists, do often, when dis-
appointed in these expectations, manifest ran-
cour and resentment towards those whom at an
274
earlier datethey 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
had brought true fame
real service to the public
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. Afterappointment of his brother
the
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
body England he expressed the greatest
else in
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 arousedagainst 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 when The Ideal
276
"
Husband was being written he had entirely
set his face against it. In January 1895 he was
approached by the Messrs M'Clure, of M'Clure's
Magazine, who were anxious to publish about
him an article in the form of an interview. It
should be stated that this magazine was already
at that time a great power in the United States,
and that the foremost writers and celebrities in
other walks of parts of the world had
life in all
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 would in no way assist
in the production of the article unless he first
received a cheque for 20. As at that time such

a sum was no importance to him whatever,
of
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
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 waywhich on the posters of the
in
newspapers his name was placarded all over

London afforded him some satisfaction, and a
remark of his on the subject is on record but ;
l
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
Berneval, 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,
;
Well, you have got your name before

'
alluding to this, I said :
the public at last.' He laughed, and said

'
Nobody can pre-

:
tend now not to have heard it.'

'
Oscar Wilde. The Story
'
of an Unhappy Friendship
278
literature and art on which his authority was
uncontested. Xau agreed to place his name on
his list of contributors, which included many
of the leading politicians and all the foremost
literary celebrities of France. The terms he

offered as remuneration were the same as those
paid to the first writers. There was here no

suggestion at all that Oscar Wilde's collabora-
tion was desired because the scandal which at-
tached to his name would appeal to the morbid-
minded, and create a profitable sensation. It

was a plain, business-like offer from a very
shrewd business-man to a writer of eminent
and recognised capacity. It was a proposal
which most authors of high standing and Euro-
pean reputation would have taken as a compli-
ment. Yet, although at that time Oscar Wilde
was in sad difficulties through want of money,
he declined the offer without one moment's
consideration. This refusal was 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
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 two for the
article or
monthlies he would be able to earn an immediate
"
supply of money." Ah," said Oscar Wilde,
"
remember when one editor of the Nineteenth
I
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 light of his troubles
as possible,and assured him that all he required
'
was pen, ink and paper. My friend,' he said
he repeated these words on several occasions
You do not know the world as well as I do.
'
Some people might read what I chose to write

out of morbidness, but I don't want that, I wish
'
to be read for Art's sake, not for my notoriety.'
His only contributions to journalism, after he
left prison,were the long letters which he wrote
"
under the title of The Case of Warder Martin,"
"
on Some Cruelties of Prison Life," and the letter
280
"
Don't Read This you wish to be Happy
if
"
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 publicity 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 theyears of his married

first
life Oscar Wilde's difficulties were often very

great, not on one single occasion in the whole of
his life even in the starveling years after his
release from prison did he obtain or attempt to
obtain resources by any means unworthy of
proper pride, of self-respect, of 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 would win little
letters
recognition. His generosity was unbounded.

"
I have no sense of property," he used to say;
282
a z
"
*
O H
o -a
Z PS
O
S Ed
= <
fc; s 2
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 money, for the man had
of
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. Hepretended 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 said :
"
And a cigar." " I hardly think that it would
"
run to that," said Oscar, but if there is any-
thing over I will buy a postage stamp and write
to acknowledge the money." His generosity
even was misconstrued. Gifts which had been
made by him out of sheer kindness of heart were
represented as bribes for nameless purposes.
283
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,
hisdevelopment 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
intellectualbanquets. 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 Regnier, 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
Figures el Wilde
Caracteres a tribute to Oscar
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
285
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 Regnier here remarks what anyone
who with due attention reads Oscar Wilde's
fairy stories will observe :
"
This" (by telling stories) "was his way of
saying everything, of expressing his opinion on

every subject it was the figurative hypocrisy of
:
"
this thought (the way in which he veiled his
thoughts) . . .
"
One might not press M. Wilde too closely
for the meaning of his allegories. One had to
enjoy their grace and the unexpected turns he
gave to his narratives, without seeking to raise
the veil of this phantasmagoria of the mind
which made of his conversation a kind of
'
'
Thousand and One Nights as spoken.
"
The gold- tipped cigarette went out and
lighted 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
JEAN JOSEPH-RENAUD, TRANSLATOR OF "INTENTIONS," AND AUTHOR
OF A MOST INTERESTING MONOGRAPH ON OSCAR WILDE. MONSIEUR
RENAUD IS THE BEST GENTLEMAN FENCER IN FRANCE.
To face page 287.

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 It did not, for instance, re-
causeries.
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 aperfus
on men and things. Nor did it resemble in any
way the paradoxical beauty of the sayings of
M. Paul Adam, or the biting acridity of M. Henri
Becque. M. Wilde used to tell his stories like
Villiers de 1' Isle- Adam told them. . .M. .
Wilde charmed and amused, and he gave one the

287
impression that he was a happy man at ease in
life."
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 known
is well
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 nothing is
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
effectwhich he produced upon the company in
that house in Paris has been described by a
288
great English novelist, who is at the same time
our sternest literary critic, as masterly in its
truthful representation of the man described.
It shows us Wilde wishing at any cost to
"
amaze," and having failed in his first manner
readily adopting another mode in which he
triumphed, carrying all before him. The passage
is from the preface to 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 :
"
When, an hour late, Mr Wilde entered the
drawing-room, we saw a tall gentleman, who
was too stout, who was clean-shaven, and who
differed from any Auteuil bookmaker, by clothes
in better taste than a bookmaker wears, by a
voice which was exquisitely musical, and by the
pure blue light, 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
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 spoke us. He
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
speaking almost in whispers, as though

tell us,
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 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
Villiers de V 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 But later on in the
the meal.
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 politics, 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 modern 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
exact. He made them glitter under the light
of his words, even as a jeweller awakes new
lights in his gems.
" He then went on to talk about Lady Bless-
ington and Disraeli.
"
To tell us of the pains of love of Lady
Blessington he little by little raised himself to
a lofty and intoxicating lyricism ;
his fine voice
hymned, grew tender, rang out, like 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
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
aster dragged in the mire, many writers, many
speakers, have cut for themselves resplendent
robes in which they strut their small parades
and enjoy their tiny triumphs. One constantly
sees in modern 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. probably, because
It is,
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
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
instance : when he was lecturing in Dublin the
audience was not at sympathetic. His open-
all
"
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 music." It
was by his manner of speaking to women and
children that he won such undying admirations
from them. A
charming scene is related by an
Irish poet who was lunching once at Oakley
Street with Oscar Wilde. Amongst the guests
was a pretty girl, who was barely seventeen
years old, and who had come up to town for her
first season. When Oscar came in the girl
"
exclaimed Oh Mr Wilde, where are your
: !
"
curls ?
" " "
Oh !
Oscar, said 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
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
delightful,and thought with regret of all the
pleasure which I had missed during the ten years
in which we had avoided each other." On the
morning after that dinner, the Princess sent her
portrait to Oscar Wilde, and on it she had written

the words :
"
Au vrai Art, A Oscar Wilde."
In prison he seems to have preserved his
power of repartee. There are things on record
which were there spoken in the watchful whispers
of those who are dumb by law and under penalty,
and which scintillate with wit. When freedom
released his tongue his friends found that he had
never been more brilliant. Ernest La Jeunesse
in an article which reaches that high point of
297
literary excellence that may be said of it that
it
it is a tribute to the great man about whom it was
written, gives a striking picture of this dying

eloquence.
"
He ishaunted 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 ofa 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 and who saw him in those
for years,
last days. was not a friend.
It
"
Of course, he had his bad moments, moments
of depression and sense of loss and defeat, but
they were not of long duration. It was part of

298
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, relieved, 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
l
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

1
From an article signed
"A " in The St James's Gazette.
299
'
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.
a pathologist would have
It is possible that
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
no saner, no serener, speaker ever appeared. He
seemed at all times master of himself; it was,
indeed, this perfect maestria of his powers of
conversation which so astounded those who
approached him. When one comes to think of
the matter why should not Oscar Wilde's friends
be satisfied that his memory should go down to
the after-ages as that of one of the most brilliant
talkers who ever lived ? There are men high in
humanity's Walhalla who left little behind them
but the echoes of their voice. The greatest
philosophers, the men who gave new religions to
the world, did not write ; they talked. Did
Christ write, did Mahound write, did Socrates
write ? If Oscar Wilde had had the fortune to
findamongst 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
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 him a very
sufficient to give
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 :
"
have put my genius into my life
I 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
thousands of the world's most cruelly disin-
herited. Who shall say what has been the
wide-spreading and most beneficial influence of
" "
that marvellous book Intentions ? Let one
testimony be quoted. It is that of a man of the
very highest scholarship and learning in England,

whose bent has led him specially to study the
religions and the philosophical systems of the
"
world. experience may be interesting,"
My
"
he writes in a letter. After taking a high
degree in Classics at Cambridge, and then
reading literature and science, for mere love of
beauty and truth, I happened after about six
'
years of this, tocome across Intentions.' This

firstreading 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.

Never man spoke like this man.' It
'
I said :
was a revelation more so than when I read

;
Plato. I secured all his books

Every I could.
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
always had what I don't like 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 Lippincotfs Monthly
Magazine, an American periodical which in 1890
was publishing a complete novel by some author
supplement to the other contents.
of repute as a
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

34
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
had refused the manuscript
editor of Lippincott's
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 with an Old Bailey jury.
effective I was
"
poor," he might have said, at the time when I
was asked to write that book. If the manuscript
u 305
had dissatisfied the editor and he had returned
it could not have enforced payment if the
I
book was an immoral one and I had deliberately

written it so. Therefore absurd to say that
it is
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 may be which
vices 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 dpater 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 perhaps the cruellest thing that one says
is
about a work which professes to be a novel.

How purely Oscar Wilde in those days looked
upon not as the exposition of any
this book,
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
fact that when he was arranging to issue the
book in volume form, and it was pointed out to
him that the length of the manuscript did not
reach the tare exacted by the trade for goods of
that kind, he willingly supplied sufficient ad-
ditional matter to make up the required weight.
Works The book
of art are not thus produced.
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 that the sufferers do things, being
is
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
37
Athcnceum for 2yth June 1891 we find the
following brief notice of this book :
"
Mr Oscar Wilde's paradoxes are less weari-
some when introduced into the chatter of society
than when he rolls them off in the course of his
narrative. Some of the conversations in his
novel are very smart, and while reading it one
has the pleasant feeling, not often to be enjoyed,
of being entertained by a person of decided
ability. The ideas of the book may have been

'
suggested by Balzac's Peau de Chagrin,' and

is none the worse for that. So much may be
'
said for the Picture of Dorian Gray,' but no
more, except, perhaps, that the author does not
appear to be in earnest. For the rest, the book
isunmanly, 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 Nicoll, 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
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 being really alive. His genial laughter-
its
loving sense of life and its enjoyable intercourse
goes far to obviate any crudity that may be in

the paradox, with which, as with the bright and
shining truth which often underlies it, Mr Wilde
' '
countrymen carries on, more per-

startling his
haps than any other writer, the brilliant critical
'
work of Matthew Arnold. The Decay of
Lying/ 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, felicitous ex-
pression are qualities which have a natural
alliance to the successful writing of fiction ; and
side by side with Mr Wilde's
' '
Intentions (so
he entitles his critical efforts) comes a novel,
309
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
effectsuddenly, and in a moment, at the end of
his story) a beautiful creation. But his story
is though carefully considered ex-
also a vivid,
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. ..."
one of the strangest things in literary
It is
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
and The Scots Observer for I2th 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 brilliant, he said "I had to strain
:
every nerve in conversation to equal Henley."

Henley afterwards remarked of Wilde "He is :
the sketch of a great man."

Oscar's brilliant endowments had won him
many enemies. He was widely envied. But
3"
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, was an easy matter under these circum-

it
stances for Oscar's enemies to deny that he had
any talent at all. They did not fail to take

advantage of the opportunity. Until the end of
1891 it was the common comment on him that
he had advertised himself into notoriety by
posturings of various kinds, but that there was
"
really no thing 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
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 Mivabilis " 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 Regnier.
THE year 1892 was the annus mirabilis of our

poor hero's life. 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,
the Athenaum, which had steadily censured his
work in the past, reviewed in a flattering and
advantageous manner another collection of short
"
stories Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and
:
Other Stories," which had been published in the

previous July by Messrs Osgood, M'llvaine &
Co. These stories were meant to teach nothing ;
they were amusettes merely, intended to interest
and amuse, "pot-boilers" as the argot of the
craft calls them. When Oscar Wilde wrote
" "
Dorian Gray
apropos of the reviews of 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
" "
of fictional reading-matter.
line He could
invent amusette stories by the hundreds. Many
of his friends have heard him to do it. When he
was living in Charles Street, Grosvenor Square,
his brother Willy, who used to 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 want the plot of a
:
story or two. Yates is asking me for some."

Then Oscar, still puffing his cigarette, would
315
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 doorshowed 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. not an exaggeration to say
It is
that had he chosen he could have produced a

volume equal merit every month of
of, at least,
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
Athenaeum referred to above. Now the Aihe-
naum's opinions have an undoubted effect on
the trade, and it is in the hands of the retail
bookseller that the fame and fortune of literary
craftsmen rest in our commercial England.
"
Mr Oscar Wilde's little book of stories," so
runs this review, which appeared in the number
"
for 23rd January 1892, is capital. They are
316
delightfully humorous, witty, and fresh, sparkling
with good things, full of vivacity and well put
together."
' '
The Canterville Ghost is a first-rate ghost
story, told partly from the point of view of the
ghost himself 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, '91."
It was the copy which he had presented to his
wife. In this volume the following passages
were marked in pencil, no doubt by the author
himself, wishing to call attention to certain parts
of the book which Sterne, had he been the writer,
would probably have printed on purple patches.
It will give a taste of the 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
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 was not the mystery, but the
yet it
comedy him
of suffering that struck 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 like
$*
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 2Oth 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 The duchesses,

less brilliantly attired.
countesses, and other grandes dames whose

foibles and follies were to be held up over the
319
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, lightly accented
with black/ Mrs Pinero, Miss Julia Neilson,
and Miss Florence Terry. Mrs Oscar Wilde
was there, and we read that '
she looked
charming in her pale-blue brocaded gown made
after the fashion of Charles I.'s time, with
its long tabbed bodice, slashed sleeves, and
garniture of old lace and pearls.' Amongst other
distinguished people in the audience were, Mrs
Langtry, Mrs Campbell-Praed, Mr Bancroft, Mrs
Hare, Mr Charles Matthews, Mr Inderwick, Dr
Playfair, Mr Luke Fildes, Mr Forbes-Robertson,
and Mr Oswald Crawford."
The success of the play was never in doubt,
and here again Oscar Wilde's peculiar genius
triumphed. He established the falsity of that
axiom, "The play is the thing," which the
greatest of dramatists laid for the guidance of
future playwrights. His play was not the thing,
to which he had paid attention, on which he had
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
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
Erlynne is Lady Windermere's mother, a de-
classee who is supposed to be dead, but whom
Lord Windermere befriends for her daughter's
sake. From proceeds the entanglement.
this
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 donnde 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 was he himself talking all
it
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
any smaller here. rest, the play was
For the
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
These are some extracts from the article which
appeared in that journal :
"It is strange that the legitimate Irish suc-

cessor to Joe Miller should have forgotten one of
the stalest stories of his native Dublin. There
was 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 incalm 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
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
allread of the strange antics which dramatic
authors have performed under similar emotion.
Daudet, for instance, used to go rushing along
the streets of Paris like a madman. In Oscar's
case emotion would be the more overwhelming
all
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
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 bafouillage

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 playedhim 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 deliberate and calculated
wish to treat his patrons with insolent arrogance,
as that he purposely made a corrupt and im-
moral book of his novel.
For the rest, the London 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,
325
has been ratified since. The play has frequently
been revived, and each time with increased suc-
cess. It is playing this year in America before
enthusiastic houses. On the Continent, with
the exception, perhaps, of Italy this play /i"
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 igth
"
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
had kept his head, for such emotions as had
moved him on the night of his first success
come to a man once only in life. " A Woman
"
of No Importance frequently played since,
"
formerly as by the author of Lady Winder-
mere's Fan," and now under the author's real
name, has continued to please and amuse the
English-speaking audiences of two worlds.
In 1895 he produced two plays of a very
"
different character. The one, An Ideal
Husband," was first brought out on 3rd

January. The Times critic wrote of this per-
formance :
" '
An Ideal Husband '
was brought out last
night with a similar degree of success to that

which has attended Mr Wilde's previous pro-
ductions. It is a similar degree of success due
to similar causes. For

'
An Ideal Husband '
is
'
marked by the same characteristics as Lady
Windermere's Fan and A Woman of No Im-
' '
portance.' There is a group of well-dressed

men and women on the stage talking a strained
inverted but rather amusing idiom, while the
action, the dramatic motive springs from a con-
ventional device of the commonest order of
melodrama."
The Athenceum's criticism may also be quoted
in part. It endeavours to explain Oscar Wilde's
327
dramaturgical process, and to account for his
undeniable success.
"
One of the constituent elements of wit is the
perception of analogies in things apparently dis-
parate and incongruous. Accepting this as a
canon, and testing it by the pretensions of Oscar
Wilde in his latest play, the writer might be pro-
nounced the greatest of wits, inasmuch as he
perceives analogies in things absolutely anta-
gonistic. His presumable end is gained, since
a chorus of laughter attends his propositions or
paradoxes. It requires, however, gifts of a kind
not usually accorded to humanity to think out
'
a statement such as High intellectual pleasures
make girls'noses large !
' '
Only dull people

'
are brilliant at breakfast. . .' All reasons are
absurd/ and the 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 noses you had probably in mind the
girls'
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
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 !
then Oscar Wilde's success as a playwright

Till
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 i4th February

at the St J ames' 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
which is close to perfection of its kind, has, of
course, nothing to do, in that galere. Clever it
is beyond praise, because here once again we

have Oscar Wilde joking as only Oscar Wilde
could joke. It is an extravaganza spoken by
Oscar through the mouths of a number of men
and women.
"
Almost every sentence of the dialogue,"
"
said The Times critic next morning, bristles
with epigram of the now accepted pattern, the
manufacture of this being apparently conducted
'
by its patentee with the same facility as the

butter woman's rank to market.'
'
and impertinent as Mr
'
Yet frivolous, saucy,
Wilde's dialogue is," wrote the Aihenceum 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 the most mon-
in
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
f
comedy a bid for popularity in the direction
' '
of farce.' Stripped of its Oscarisms regarded
330
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 souffld. Nor, unfortunately,
is itnecessary 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 exuberant gaiety of Paris, without
appealing by even the faintest suggestion to that

fumier of which Heine spoke as being the soil
on which all French comedy and farce thrive.

"
The play a clean play, a play of the
is knock-
"
about farcical order, with this tremendous dis-
tinction that the knock-about here is not a
331
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

allthings. . . .
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 Being Earnest in Dublin,
of
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
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
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-line of which Dry den speaks.
From circumstances which so soon afterwards
became matters of public knowledge and dismay
there can be no doubt 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. that point in his career absence
Till
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
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
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 such as they were,
his indulgences,
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 One
the clearest demonstration of this fact.
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
33 6
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, when he recovers his sanity, totally

is,
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. got drunk last night ?
I suppose I
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
then asked how soon
would be before he was
it
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 !
Why, man
' ' '
poor wife ! he cried. 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 though he did not
suffering,
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 police-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
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 believe 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 hypocrisy 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
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 statements,
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 was dangerous for any respectable

it
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
these verses realise a certain competency. But
the readers of these verses were very few, and
the nasty, poets soon crept back into their
little
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
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 pen portrait of him as
find a
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 end of his essay, which, it
up at the
should be remembered, was written after all
the exposure had taken place.
" "
In any case," he writes, we may ignore
what was manner of life in London, and re-
his
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 the picture which Henri de Regnier
is
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 which Monsieur Paul Bourget, for in-
life
stance, might lead in London, frequenting

artists, and showing himself in salons and
fashionable restaurants in the company of the
342
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 clean-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 seemed to have been
detail
carefully studied. From cab to cab, from cafe

to cafe, from salon to salon, he moved with the
lazy gait of a stout man whorather weary.
is
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
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 poseur 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 English
guests, Lucien Sartorys and Sir Harry Kimberly.
The characteristics of these two friends are de-
344
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
like 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
!
"
the fisher- weasel. . . . It is so ravishing !
We Wilde as he was at
see here the Oscar
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
"
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 he could have
saved Oscar Wilde The Advantages of the Bastille
Restraint at Last Under what Circumstances The Un-
consciousness Displayed Oscar Wilde's Graphology
Isabella, Baroness of Ungern-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
" "
Salomd 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, and
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 now
before us, appears
is
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
\
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 lettre 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 democratic government, with all the
incoherences which must proceed from the
association of two ideas democracy and govern-
ment soantagonistic. 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
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
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 England to look upon the pursuit of
in
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 and inspired people
of sacrilege,
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
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 gelid 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
provoking an inquiry. An official of
folly in
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 police,
351
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 him. 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 phrases
"
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
against the Marquess of Queensberry. That
libel
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
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

lifewas 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 Oscar Wilde, the prosecutor, goes
April.
down to the court in a brougham with two
horses and liveried 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

2 353
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
slipwhich, occurring at the very end of the en-
counter, and just as the advocate was about to
sitdown, 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 alighting from the cab at Scot-
land Yard he had a courteous discussion with
354
FACSIMILE OF WII.DE's WRITING TOWARDS THE END.
To face page 355.

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 Holloway
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 one.
It is worthy of the attention of all those who
wish to provide themselves with every possible
means of arriving at a solution of the formidable
problem Oscar Wilde's mentality. The three
of
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
departure from Paris, the second was a letter
from Holloway 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 zu finden, auch nicht in der Probe Fig. 2,
sobald wir absehen von der begreiflichen Erre-
gung durch Angst 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 Holloway. Here there is nothing

pathological, but at the same time the writing
shows illness. A curious incident may be re-
lated in connection with the Baronne d'Ungern-
Sternberg's essay. It so exactly tallied 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
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
lifecreeps 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, which nearly three fourths
of
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 Holloway 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
driven forth into the streets. Some men, it
appeared, had followed him from the gates of

Holloway Prison at whose instigation we need
not inquireand 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 window-pane, and fell down
on my threshold like a wounded stag." To the
horrors of that period of waiting the touch of the
grotesque was not to be wanting.

358
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." On
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 :
"
went upstairs and found several people
I
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 recognisable manuscript. This
easily
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
floor. It is usual at sales, of course, for the
furniture to be sold in eachroom 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

f '
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 Nothing has ever
his house.
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
isthe only thing that Oscar ever wrote in which
he dallied 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 room was so dense that one
in the
could not move, and I was unable to bid. It was
knocked down for six pounds."
361
From his plays there was nothing to be hoped
for. His name, immediately after his arrest,
had been effaced 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 feelings. 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 public 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
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 isnot to over-estimate the productiveness of
" "
Salome to say that anyone who had pur-
chased in 1895 for two or three thousand
it
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 sympathy with artists is
Clarke's
notoriously not a great one he was the only

;
man in London who refused to sign the petition

363
Henry Irving should be buried
that the great Sir
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 dernier e 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
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
" "
willnot 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
365
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 library in order to find the
sell his
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 very certain that Willy Wilde
is
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
"
during that period Willy came theatrically
into the room and said Who are you ? What
:
'
I told him who I was," he

'
do you want ?
"
says, and added that I had a note for Oscar
'
Wilde. Willy then asked, Are you urging him
to flee ? Because if you are, I won't let him
have the
'
note.'
"
think," the Irish poet has said since,
I
"
that the whole family Irish pride being
aroused felt that the cowardice of running
away would be a far greater disgrace than the
disgrace of and imprisonment.
a conviction
"
For the rest," he adds, prison does not seem
such a disgrace in Ireland, and that for historical
associations."
Oscar Wilde's bearing on the night before the
last day of his second trial, in the supreme
moments of his liberty, filled all those who saw
him with respect and admiration. His serenity
had returned 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 from the little gift,
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
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 kissing her hand with stately courtli-
by
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 had absolutely nothing
I 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 have 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
court, a foul rabble, believing that an aristocrat
had been condemned, filled the Old Bailey with
shouts of delight. Men and women joined 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 mocking laughter must run
ripples of
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 before 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
37
him and the wasteful pleasures of the world ;
a claustration, as strict if less severe than that

which Balzac imposed upon himself, held him
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
regime, the enforced temperance in food, the
enforced abstinence from all narcotic drugs and
drink, the regular hours, the periodical exercise :
the simple life, 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 believe that in
his ardent meditations on Christ, he was able
to bring the Bodily Presence of the God who
taught these things into his cell, and to learn

from the divine lips themselves what is the true
secret of human happiness. In the ensuing
chapter we have from the pen of a man who saw
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 dying
confessions of many prison-cells, the greasy cant
that officious chaplains win from fawning
prisoners ! One has heard the word HYPO-
CRISY pronounced a thousand pities
! It is
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.
"
noteworthy," writes Mr Ernest
It is also
Crawley, in his remarkable and most interesting

37 2
" "
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 face with the
eternal realities of existence. becomes, ipso
. . .
a religious subject/*
facto,
" "
In De Profundis Oscar Wilde describes the
road by which he came from hyper-culture and
abstract thought to a simplicity and complete-
ness of soul.
In the same book may be found many of the
awful details of his prison life. None of the
humiliation, 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 be 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
to say on 2ist September 1895 he was visited in
prison by his wife, special permission from

by
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, inwhich 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."
" I "
It is in those words 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 DeProfundis," 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
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 cynic 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. He
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
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 he took par-
of him, however, that
ticular pains to cloak those 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
anything that resembled self-aggrandisement ;
and it cannot be doubted that he strove with all

hispower 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
purpose 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 believe in logic and are
governed by what they choose to term their

reason. Imaginative people will invariably be
377
religious people for the simple reason that re-
ligionhas sprung from the imagination.'
"
pointed out that Shelley and Voltaire were
I
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 movements,
its '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.'

" ' '
and the cause of
Just so,' he answered,
my apostasy is spiritual development, or the
378
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 applied 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, say I should
Apostle. It was the
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 neither his words nor his books, his
I,
fastings nor his final sufferings should excite our

379
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 difficulty whatever in believ-
ing that he was as far above the people around
him though he had been an angel sitting on
as
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 address, or rather the number of
my
my room, and does so correctly, I daresay.
But you couldn't find a card in your supposi-
380
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 ?
" '
do not want any converts,' he replied,
I
'
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 little stories are ! Adam and his wife alone
in the beautiful garden, where they could have
enjoyed all the pleasures of life by simply obeying
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
38'
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. Christ, 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, eleventhand twelfth chapters. Really,
I have no sympathy with stupid people who
cannot admire a book unless they believe in its

literal truth.'
"
Ireminded 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
not believe it,between matter of fact and
for
matter of faith there is a wide gulf which science
cannot bridge.'
'
When I go out from here I should like to
find a quiet, nice little Church, I shouldn't in the
least mind what its denomination was so long as
it had a simple-minded and good-hearted
nice,
clergyman, one who had religion within himself
and did not preach somebody else's opinions
and practise somebody formulas, a man
else's
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 beau ideal 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
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 and some have found their
in existence,
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
who, leaving the gaol destitute,
fellow-prisoners,
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 conduct that Christianity had altogether

his
taken possession of him. The singular sweet-
ness and charm of his manners after he came
384
out of prison, his tolerance, his gentleness, his
entire self-effacement, impressed 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.
2K 385
CHAPTER XVII
THE POET IN PRISON l
(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
ofsome 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
writ tent
386
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 imprisonment meant to the Poet

years'
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
Êstheticism, 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
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 more 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 ofoakum, 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
"
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 life, 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
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 ruffian, who had been convicted for half
killing poor wife, passed him.

his 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 listless 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
" "
him
lost sheep beside to remind him that a
390
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 purgatory, from which they could

their
emerge as pure and spotless as though they had

never sinned at all ;
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
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 wasable 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. 1
However, he could not have been punished by
solitary 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.

1
The writer, it should be remembered, is a prison warder.
392
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 March I found him still
in early
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
anything; Ifor
shall be better, perhaps, as the day advances.
Come back in a few minutes, when I will be up."
I returned to hisa few minutes afterwards,
cell
and found he was up, but looking so dreadfully

ill that I
again advised him to see the doctor.
He declined, however, saying 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
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 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
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 believe 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 and, so saying, Iat,
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 promised to forgive him.
unless I
"
Not even the cocoa ? " I asked.
"Not even the cocoa," he replied; and he
looked at it longingly.
395
"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 official 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 was struck by the power and

it I
"
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
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
to Tragedy.
life 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 exclusively for those who have
written
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 when all was dead. The
was quiet,
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
and gazes in he peers through the aperture of
;
glass, to satisfy himself that the tomb has not

become too realistic, 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 staring with vacant eyes into
sits
vacancy, or looks for consolation in the Book

of Common Prayer.
The watching figure glides on, now stops,
peers into another cell near the end of the
corridor. The cell is marked .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
His eyes those wonderful eyes are fairly !
dancing. Now they are looking towards the

ceiling but far beyond the looking even
ceiling,
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 above
altitudes
high 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 lightning flashed from heaven back
through the iron window, back to the prison cell.
Hush ... He speaks ... He breathes the
! !
sacredname 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
"
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
leftprison I know not. One thing
I know,
however, that while in prison he lived the life

400
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 to save poor Jean Valjean.

lie 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 4OI
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 ADAM, ONE OF THE MOST DISTINGUISHED NOVELISTS AND WRITERS
IN FRANCE. PUBLISHED A SYMPATHETIC ARTICLE ABOUT WILDE AT THE
TIME OF HIS DOWNFALL, AND HAD PERSISTENTLY PROCLAIMED HIS
ADMIRATION FOR WILDE'S GENIUS AND HIS CONDEMNATION OF THE
WAY IN WHICH HE WAS TREATED. MONSIEUR ADAM ENJOYS THE
FULLEST CONFIDENCE OF THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT,
To face paye 403.

CHAPTER XVIII
Oscar Wilde released Sebastian Melmoth Berneval How
he appeared to his Friends The Prison Taint Degrada-
tion which had not degraded
"
Why he could not work
The Case of Warder Martin " " Don't read this "
"
The Ballad of Reading Gaol " He proceeds to Naples
His Condition there As to one of his Friends He
returns to Paris The Testimony of the Police Monsieur
Dupoirier His last Moments Oscar Wilde is released
His Burial and Grave Post Funera His Continental
Reputation The Significance of this Spendthrift Loss.
AFTER from Reading Gaol having

his release
refused the offer of certain American journalists
to pay him a large sum for an account of his
life in prison, with the remark he could not
understand that such offers should be made to

a gentleman he immediately crossed over to
France. His deference to English society was
such that he felt that, having offended his coun-
try,he must consign himself to a perpetual exile

from England. For the rest, he had reason to
expect sympathy and welcome in France, where
his case at the time of his downfall had been
widely discussed, with general commiseration.

It was held that the man had been very harshly
dealt with. Several prominent men had written

about him. Henri de Regnier and Paul Adam,
403
who already at that time held high positions in
French literature, in which to-day they rank as
masters, had published articles describing his
great good and paying respectful
qualities,
homage to the convict in Wandsworth Gaol.
Henri Bauer, an influential critic, had published
an account of Wilde's condemnation and the
treatment that was being dealt out to him,
which thrilled civilised France with horror. A
house had been taken for him at a village called
Berne val, on the sea-coast to the N.E. of Dieppe.
He had assumed the name of Sebastian Melmoth,
and his immediate purpose was to live here in
retirement, giving himself up to work. Those
amongst his friends who had means had sub-
scribed a sum which was handed to him on his
release, and there was also paid over to him the
balance of a gift of one thousand pounds which
had been applied to his purposes during his
confinement.
There is no worse school for husbandry than
a place where money has no use. The truth of
this is shown by the unvarying recklessness of
sailors.Prisoners display on their release an
extravagance as imprudent. The ship, as the

gaol, obliterates all notions of the value of
money. In Oscar Wilde's case

contributory
causes were his native generosity and the new
404
feeling of charity which filled his softened heart.
His resources melted away in his hands ;
he
sent presents of money to many of his late
fellow-prisoners ; he entertained at Dieppe a

band of Montmartre poets, and at Berneval, on
the occasion of the Queen's Jubilee, the whole
village school of children he rescued the poet
;
Ernest Dowson from a position of great em-

barrassment at the inn at Arques. He spent
money with the recklessness of sailors on shore
and prisoners free of gaol. No doubt it pleased
him could not help but please him, having been
humiliated so long to enjoy the power which
money gives in the spending of it. He was only
a man after all, with human weaknesses. That
he did feel the humiliation is shown in another
way. There are in existence some letters which
he wrote to the warder who had befriended him.
In one of these he indulges in the delicious
pleasure of rebuking in his turn one of the class
under whose domination and rebuke he had
lived for so many months. The man had
" "
written to him as Oscar Wilde," Care of
Sebastian Melmoth," and this is how Oscar
Wilde reproves him "I must begin by scolding
:
you thoroughly for a piece of carelessness on

your part. I told you I had changed my name,
and wrote out most carefully for you my new
405
name and address in spite of this you write to
me on the envelope as Oscar Wilde, Esqre., Care
of Sebastian Melmoth. Now, this was silly of
you. changed my name so as not to be
I
bothered, and then you go and write to me as

Oscar Wilde. You must be careful and thought-
ful about things. Just as much trouble is caused
by carelessness as by crime, my friend." Lower
down he tells the man who was anxious to
leave the prison service, that he has recommended
him for a post, and adds "I have spoken highly
:
of your character and intellect. Let me beg

of you have said of you. You
to deserve all I
have, I think, a good chance of a good place,

so you must be as sound and straightforward
and as good a fellow as possible."
He hankered after respectability. In inviting
friends to visit him at Berneval he used to ask
those who were married to bring their wives
with them, as though he felt that the presence
of ladies under his roof would vouch for its
respectability in his own eyes. He may have

fancied that prison had attainted him. It would
have been difficult for him to avoid such a
feeling. In his case there was not a single thing

he ever said, nor a single thing he ever did,
not a glance, not a flash of expression, not the
shadow of a thought, that could have betrayed
406
to the keenest observer, ignorant of the fact,
that this man had spent two years as a common
prisoner in a common gaol. Degradation had
failed to degrade him. His intimates noticed
only how vastly improved he was in physique,
in nerve and muscle, in energy and courage ;
how his whole being seemed rejuvenated, his
whole character sweetened. They attributed it
to the prison regime for in those

days they
did not know how, in the lonely meditation of
his cell, he had found the true secret of life.
He showed himself to those who had the privilege
of seeing him during the weeks which he spent
in Berneval a gentleman, a hero, and a Christian.
It is the privilege and the distinction of those
who take Christ as their model in life, who
follow Him in humility, in resignation, and kind-
ness, to receive at the hands of men treatment

no other than that which was accorded to Him
also. One cannot doubt that a man so keen
of intelligence as Oscar Wilde well foresaw, when
he came to that determination which he so
"
eloquently sets forth in De Profundis," what
the world would reserve for one who should
oppose to cruelty, mansuetude to insult, for-
;
bearance ; to hatred, forgiveness ; and to con-

tempt, the sublime pity which charity inspires.
He was admirably instructed in the ways of
407
society : he was essentially a man of the world.
He could give, in the old days, the most useful
advice on how best to act in the worldly sense.
A friend recalls how he once said of suicide that
it was wrong, because it was the highest compli-
ment that an individual could pay to society.
Of course, he knew, when he left prison in the
state of mind into which he had schooled him-
self, exactly what he had to expect from the

world. He had accepted in advance all the
outrages that were to be heaped upon him ;
deliberately he had entered upon a martyrdom

for which the world was to refuse him any
crown. With his great powers and the renewed
vigour of his body he could have dominated the
world. To effect that, as we now see if we
direct our eyes towards Germany, he had but
to let himself live. But Christianity possessed
him ;
he had laid aside all combativeness, and
he allowed himself to die.
His noble purpose he maintained during those
first months with a courage which surprised his
friends. Only on very rare occasions did a

flash of regret for the things that he had lost
disclose some streak of bitterness in his heart.
There were very rare moments when he spoke
with irritation, of which it was but too easy
for his friends to trace the cause.
408
From the very first he had the great mortifica-
tion to find that, under the new circumstances of

his life, work would be difficult to him. That
isto say, he recognised from the first that, as he
could no longer write under his name, he would
be unable to produce anything worthy of him-
self. He was one of those artists who write for
fame ;
for whom the money consideration is
nothing. He could not constrain himself to

hack-work :
anonymity's black cloak enshrouded
his brain. He needed applause he thirsted;
after personal triumph those were essential

factors in his artistic temperament. So though
he never spoke more brilliantly than during the
last years of his life, because there the reward
was immediate in the applause of the marvelling
listeners, he wrote nothing, all stimulus being

lacking.
We have in a letter which he addressed to a
"
working man in Reading, after his letter, The
"
Case of Warder Martin had appeared in The
Daily Chronicle (28th May 1897), the pathetic
proof of this natural hunger for applause, which
gives to the great starvation of literary artists
its keenest pang.
"
What does Reading say to it all ? " he asks.
"
Have you seen any of the warders ? I sup-
pose not." Then he passes on to other things,
409
but presently comes back to the subject of his
"
famishing curiosity. Have you heard any-
thing said about me, with reference to my
"
letter ? Anything nice ? In the many
pathetic letters from his pen which are in exist-
ence, one will search in vain for a passage more
pathetic than this. And we are to remember
that the man who was so anxious to hear that
people were talking about him as a literary
artist had only a few days previously refused
with indignation to lend himself to the wide
publicity offered by American correspondents.
It was not notoriety after which he hankered ;
it was recognition of his literary powers.

"
The Case of Warder Martin," which has
frequently been reprinted since his death, was
a plea for the better treatment of children in
prison in particular, and in general for the more
humane application of the right of punishment.
a noble plea, written in noble language, and
It is
the best documentary evidence that the most
exacting can demand of the complete mental
recovery and wonderful psychological trans-

formation of its author. Let any man read
"
first The Importance of being Earnest," which
was the last thing he wrote before going into
prison, and next this letter in the Chronicle ,
and then say, if he dare, that Oscar Wilde's an-

410
"
nouncement in De Profundis," that meditation
had made a new and different man of him, was
lure and deception.
He returned to the subject of prison treatment
"
in a letter entitled Don't read this if you
want to be Happy to-day," which appeared
in the Chronicle on 24th March 1898. These
"
two letters, and his Ballad of Reading Gaol,"
of which the leit-motiv is no different, are all
that he wrote after his release from prison. He
was keenly interested in this subject of prison
reform. Amongst the books which were found
in his room in the hotel where he died were
several in which this subject is treated. He had
John Howard's book on "Prisons," and a number
of magazines containing articles on prison life.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol " has been
'
described by certain authorities as the finest

ballad in the English language. In July 1904
there appeared in The Nineteenth Century, in
"
an article by Lady Currie, entitled Enfants
Trouves of Literature," a critical notice of this
poem. The name of the review in which this

appeared is significant, when we remember what
Oscar Wilde had said, in one of his prison con-
versations, about the way in which his name
would be regarded in that quarter. Lady Currie
" '
writes of the terrible Ballad of Reading Gaol/
411
with its splendours and inequalities, its mixture
of poetic force, crude realism, and undeniable
pathos." The writer adds lower down "All :
is grim concentrated tragedy from cover to

"
cover. A friend of mine," she continues, who
looked upon himself as a judge in such matters,
told me that he would have placed certain
passages in this poem, by reason of their terrible,

tragic intensity, upon a level with some of the
'
descriptions in Dante's Inferno,' were it not

that The Ballad of Reading Gaol was so much
' '
more infinitely human."

In the preface to the translation of Andre
Gide's mischievous memoir of Oscar Wilde
is quoted the following extract from a review
in one of the leading London papers :
'
The whole is awful as the pages of Sophocles.
That he has rendered with his fine art so much
of the essence of his life and the life of others
in that inferno to the sensitive is a memorable
thing for the social scientist, but a much more

memorable thing for literature. This is a
simple, a poignant, a great ballad, one of the
greatest in the English language."
It is very certain that there is in poetic de-
scription nothing in the world's literature more

powerful, more overwhelming, than the account
Oscar Wilde gives of the sleepless night which
412
he spent on the eve of the execution, those verses
ending with the lines :
"
At last I saw the shadowed bars,
Like a lattice wrought in lead,
Move right across the whitewashed wall
That faced my
three-plank bed,
And I knew that somewhere in the world
God's awful dawn was red."
The very nature of a ballad demands a certain

naivete of expression, a certain laxity in the
rhymes. It is, however, a curious thing that it
is a makeshift rhyme which is used in the one
verse that, while it appeals most strongly to
those who are morbid-minded, inspires some of
the poet's friends with the feeling that it shows
that, in spite of his splendid renovation, the
obliquity of vision which was ever one of his

great defects had not altogether been overcome.
These are the lines referred to :
"
Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
each let this be heard,
By
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword " !
The thing is not true ;

if it were true it is
badly expressed, and what is intended for an-

tithesis degenerates on examination into anti-
climax. Yet many find these lines the finest
413
in a ballad which is filled with beauties. Was
this the poor man's final indulgence in his elfin
"
joy in astounding fools," or was he in earnest ?
The Ballad was published early in 1898.
Oscar Wilde had expended over it an immense
amount of labour. It had been revised and
corrected with a precise regard of even the
slightest detail, of which we get some conception
from the many letters which he wrote to his
publisher, Mr Leonard Smithers, while the book
was passing through the press. Almost each
word in the poem was made the subject of long
consideration, of discussion. He advises on
changes in the punctuation. The rudiments had
caught him up at last.
These same letters give evidence of the very
mournful condition to which he had at last
come. They are on the one hand, of de-
full,
scriptions of his poverty and needs on the

;
other of recriminations against his friends. In

(<
one letter we read :
My present position is so
awful that began to-day a modern social
I
comedy and would in consequence have had

an excellent appetite for dinner had there been
any dinner."
"
Elsewhere he threatens suicide. I shall take
steps," he says.
He was then living in Naples. The circum-
414
stances under which he had been obliged to
leave Berneval, and to return to the least desir-
able companionship that the world of men
offered to his choice, are summed up in the
"
following sentence by the author of Twenty
Years in Paris":
"
The time
came, however, when, being
without money, repulsed, abandoned, desolate,
he could no longer resist entreaties which offered
to him companionship in the place of utter
loneliness, friendship in the place of hostility,
homage in the place of insult, and in the place
of impending destitution a luxurious and elegant
hospitality."
Measures were, however, taken at once by
third parties to break up this association, and,
all supplies being refused, Oscar Wilde's con-
dition in Naples became the hazardous existence
which he describes in his letters to Smithers.
His irritation at the collapse of his resolutions,
at their overthrow by the very force of things,
was so great that he turned upon all men. He
wrote abusive letters to his friends, not even
sparing the noblest of them, Robert Ross, the
subject of the glowing eulogy which one finds
in "De Profundis." Those words are letters
patent of immortality; but simple justice, not
lordly generosity, directed that splendid tribute.
415
This Robert Ross's conduct towards Oscar
Wilde was and is the most beautiful thing that
the history of noble friendships records. That
he gave him everything that he had may be
nothing ; it may be nothing that he bore obloquy
and endured suffering for his sake that he ;
visited him constantly in prison that he fought

;
and worked unceasingly to safeguard his friend's

interests, keeping a level and commercial head
in the midst of the unceasing onslaughts of the
harpies who kept swooping down upon Oscar

Wilde's prostrate body; that he watched over
him like a tender brother during those awful
months in Paris ;
that he was with him in his
last illness,tending him with the gentleness of
a sister of charity that it was he who brought
;
God at last into the gloomy room in the Hotel

and so obtained that the man who was
d' Alsace,
accursed of men went out of this world with the

kiss of pardon on his forehead, with body sancti-
fied and anointed, under the shadow of the
cross ;
that he ordained his honourable obse-
quies, and was one of the very rare mourners
who followed him to the grave. All these
things, from the nature of the man, may be
nothing; but what is unusual and splendid, a
disillusion to the pessimists, a delight to those
who, quand msme, would think well of humanity,

416
K IXTfOMIEK, l^SCDCOHD* OT THE HOTEL i/At-^JVTE. QOCAB
W1IJDC KCI)> I3C HI4 AKM&
." r -:.
r i.-
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 JÎM^
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
Oscar Wilde lived for three and a half years

from prison. After he had left
after his release
Italy he returned to Paris. Here for some time

he resided in a hotel in the Rue Marsollier. He
was forced to leave this house ImafflBf 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
D
had known him in his prosperous days. Du-
poirier offered him rooms in his house, and went
to the hotel in the Rue Marsollier, 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, like all great minds, he enter-
tained many other superstitions. One can
understand this. The great mind recognises,
what the fool does not, that there arepowers 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 was that it was une maison

fact
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 house
418
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 goes. The poor man could not choose
his associates, and as he loved to talk he
419
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
Remie Blanche, Here is a short
his article in the
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 which shuts door after

Paris, a Paris
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
420
into the blackest neurasthenia. ... 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
moribund energies by the use of
lashing his
to write
alcohol. Dupoirier relates that he used
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.
" "
I suppose
Ah, well, then," said Oscar,
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
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 soth 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 saw him," he writes, " was
time I
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
Then a long
century.'
If another century began, and I was
'
pause.
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 I7th Grave
422
i i-
of the 8th Row of the I5th Division. The in-
scription on his tomb is as follows :
OSCAR WILDE
Oct. i6th., 1854 N v -
3oM., 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
artist's work, were just about to open their arms.
If he could have lived 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. Germany he is to-day
In
a "World's Poet," "Salome" is a
and
"
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 Salome," 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 DUPOIRIER OF THE HOTEL D ALSACE, WHO WAS
5
KIND TO OSCAK WILDE DURING HIS LAST DAYS.
To face page 425.

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
literary 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 traffickers back into their dens.

Yes the death, occurring when it did, was in-
;
deed tragic. There are those who hold it as sad

425
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 been destroyed by unjust
of resistance has
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
gitee."
" "
Sa vie gat<e :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 WILDE'S GRAVE AT BAGNEUX.
To face page 426.

APPENDIX
OSCAR WILDE AT CHICKERING 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 Sullivan. It may seem at first that it
427
Appendix
would be even a deep young man to find
difficult for
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's 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 outof the mire of sin in which
he lay 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 organ, Punch. They could not
heathen
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-born Philistines were baptised into the new 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 Philistine, 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
allthe 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 in 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
asstheticism 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
43
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 eloquence 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,
ifthey 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 whether
difference 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 Bunthorne.
"
Bunthorne an impostor, an
is 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-
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 bysilliness.
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.
I2th 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 all 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. Êstheticism is not
a style, but a principle. All 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 household 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 like stone, paper appearing
ZE 433
Appendix
like marble, and other things which Ruskin condemned
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 all 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
tiltat 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 condemned. 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 crimes 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
435
Appendix
of life ought to be made so beautiful that nothing shall
hereafter be called common. The qualities of good
furniture were that should be well made, be comfort-
it
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 ofhaving 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 every 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
43 6
Appendix
looking atit 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
fall 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 who loved beauty more than anything else "
one
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. Modern
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 delicate 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
modern 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 beautiful
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. Symbolism 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 symbolic. Anciently symbolism 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 artwas 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 obj ects became
thus transformed. Modern painters were too much in
the habit of taking subjects from history and literature
and of resorting to symbolism. There was also too
great a tendency to special subjects. At a London
exhibition a young artist gained great eclat 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 long 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 small 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 usually 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 impossible 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 buying a bonnet which she wears for a few
445
Appendix
weeks, to the admirationand rage of her neighbourhood ;
and then comes her dearest friend, who mentions, quite
casually, thatnobody 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 all 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 nowdisused, 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 Assyrians,
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 relieve 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 rarely of any advantage to the wearer. It
is
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
I. WORKS ISSUED IN BOOK FORM

1. AUTHORISED EDITIONS PUBLISHED IN ENGLAND 451
2. WORKS PUBLISHED IN AMERICA ONLY . .

453
3. WORKS PUBLISHED
EDITIONS ONLY ..... IN PRIVATELY PRINTED
453
II. MAGAZINES AND PERIODICALS . . . .

453
BOOKS CONTAINING SELECTIONS
.....
III. . . .
458
IV. SPURIOUS WORKS 460
V. TRANSLATIONS
1.
2.
FRENCH
GERMAN
......
. . . .
.461
461
3.
4.
ITALIAN
POLISH ......
.
......
. . . . .
463
463
5.
6.
7.
RUSSIAN
SPANISH
SWEDISH
....
. . V .
.
.
.
.
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. ist 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. Also 200 copies on hand-made paper, 2 is., and 50
55.
on Japanese vellum, 423. During 1905 six impressions
of the 55. edition were issued.
Happy Prince and Other Tales, The. London : David Nutt.

1888. ist edition, 55. Also 75 copies (65 for sale) with the
illustrations in two states, on large paper.
1889. 2nd edition, 33. 6d.

1902. 3rd edition, 33. 6d.
1905. 4th edition, 33. 6d.
House 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. 2 is. 1000 sm. 410, 75. 6d.
;
Importance of Being Earnest, The. Leonard Smithers & Co.

1899. The number of copies issued, and the price, the same
as An Ideal Husband.
Intentions. London :
Osgood, Mcllvaine & Co.
1891. ist edition, 75. 6d.
1894. 2nd edition, 35. 6d.
Lady Windermertfs Fan. London Elkin Mathews & John Lane.

:
1893. 50 copies L.P., 155., and 500 copies sm. 4to, 75. 6d.
Lord Arthur Sarnie's Crime and Other Stories. Osgood, Mcllvaine
&Co.
1891. 2S.
Picture of Dorian Gray, The. London :

Ward, Lock & Co.
1891. ist edition, 6s. Also 250 copies on L.P., 2is.
1894. 2nd edition, 6s. (Ward, Lock, Bowden & Co.)
Poems. London : David Bogue.
1 88 1. ist, 2nd, 3rd editions, los. 6d.
1882. 4th, 5th editions, los. 6d.
London Elkin Mathews & John Lane.
:
1892. 220 copies (200 for sale), 155.

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.)
Salotni. Drame en un Paris Librairie de 1'Art Inde-
acte. :
pendant. Elkin Mathews & John Lane.

London :
1893. 600 copies (500 for sale), 53. Also a limited issue on
hand-made paper.
Salome. Translated by Lord Alfred Douglas. London : Elkin
Mathews & John Lane.
1894. 500 copies, 153. ;
100 copies L.P., 305.
Sphinx, The. London : Elkin Mathews & John Lane.

1894. 25 copies L.P., 1053.
250 copies, 425. ;
Woman of No Importance, A. London John Lane. :
1894. The issue was limited to the same numbers as Lady

WindermerJs 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.
225 copies.
1905.
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 doubtful.
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 publication has not yet been
traced.)
Impressions of America. Edited by Stuart Mason. Sunderland :
Keystone Press, 1906.
II. MAGAZINES AND PERIODICALS

Bibelot, The. (Portland, Maine, U.S.A.)
"
June 1904. Poems in Prose."
"
July 1905. Lecture on the English Renaissance."
" and Rose Leaf
Leaf Apple : L'Envoi."
Blackwoo(ts Edinburgh Magazine.
" Mr W.
July 1889. The Portrait of H."
Burlington, The.
"
} anuary 1 88 1 . 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 11, 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 ofPrison Life."
"
March 24, 1898. 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."
" From Spring Days to Winter."
January 1876. (For Music.)
March 1876. "Graffiti d'ltalia. I. San Miniato."
(June 15.)
June 1876. "The Dole of the King's Daughter." (For a
painting.)
"
September 1876. AfXivov, cuAivov enre, T& S'eu VIKCITW."
July 1877. "The Grosvenor Gallery."
Eclectic Magazine, The. (New York.)
"
February 1889. The Decay of Lying Dialogue." : A
"
August 1 889. The Portrait of Mr W. H."
"
April 1891. The Soul of Man under Socialism."
El Mercurio 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 i, 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 Saturnia Tellus."
July 1877. "The Tomb of Keats."
"
December 1877. HOVTOS 'Ar/air/eros."
"
April 1878. Magdalen Walks."
Kottabos. Trinity College, Dublin.
"
TrinityTerm, 1876. brigi&vpov "E/awros "Av0os.' ("The
Rose of Love, and with a Rose's Thorns.")
Michaelmas Term, 1876. " G/arjv^Si'a." (Eur. Hec., 444-483.)
Hilary Term, 1877. "A Fragment from the Agamemnon of
"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 Ddcoratives i. Le Panneau.
2. Les Ballons."
Christmas, 1888. "The Young King."
Lippincotfs Monthly Magazine.
July 1890. "The Picture of Dorian Gray."
455
Bibliography
Literature.
December 8, 1900. " Theocritus."
Month and Catholic Review, The.
"
September 1876. Graffiti d'ltalia." (Arona. Lago Maggiore.)
Nineteenth Century, The,
May 1885. "Shakespeare and Stage Costume."
"
January 1889. 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 Dialogue." :
Notes and Queries.

August i, 1903. "The Thames Nocturne of Blue and Gold."
Our Continent. (Philadelphia.)

February 15, 1882. "Impressions i. Lejardin. 2. La Mer."
Pall Mall Gazette, The.
October 14, 1884. "On Woman's Dress."
November 11, 1884. "More Radical Ideas upon Dress
Reform."
"
Mr Whistler's Ten O'Clock."
February 21, 1885.
"
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
'De Profundis.'"
Queen, The, The Lady's Newspaper.
December 8, 1888. "English Poetesses."
Reynolds' Newspaper.
May 14, 1905. "The Harlot's House."
1
Saunders Irish Daily News.
"
May 5, 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 "Lecture on the English Renaissance."
19, 1882.
Shaksperean Show-Book.
"
1884. Under the Balcony."
45 6
Bibliography
Society.
" Roses
Summer Number, 1885. 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."
SpiritLamp, The. (Oxford.)
December 6, 1892. "The New Remorse."
February 17, 1893. "The House of Judgment."
June 6, 1893. "The Disciple."
Tablet, The.
"
December 8, 1900. The True Knowledge."
Time.
"
April 1 879. The Conqueror of Time."
"
July 1879. The New Helen."
Truth.
" to Mr Whistler."
January 9, 1890. Reply
Waifs and Strays. (Oxford.)
June 1879. "Easter Day."
"
March 1880. Impression de Voyage."
Wilshire's Magazine. (Toronto.)
"
June 1902. The Soul of Man." (Selections.)
Woman'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 11, 1879. "To Sarah Bernhardt."
"
July 16, 1879. Queen Henrietta Maria ( Charles I., Act Hi.)."
"
January 14, 1880. Portia."
" Ave A Poem on England."
August 25, 1880. Imperatrix !
November 10, 1880. " Libertatis Sacra Fames."

March 2, 1881. " 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 Millionaire."
457
Bibliography
III. BOOKS CONTAINING SELECTIONS FROM THE
WRITINGS OF OSCAR WILDE
Ballades and Rondeaus, Chants Royal, Sestinas, Villanelles, Sfc.
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.
"H^las!"
"The Sphinx."
Prose Extracts.
"The Ballad of Reading Gaol."
Short Poems.
Book of Jousts, A. Edited by James M. Lowry. London :
Leadenhall Press, E.G. (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 WifeWith 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 Woman's World,

1887-9.
Every Day of the Year. Edited by Jas. L. and Mary K. Ford.
New York Dodd, Mead & Co.
:
"
At the Grave of Keats."
"
Queen Henrietta Maria."
"The Grave of Shelley."
" Louis
Napoleon."
458
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.)
Oscariana. 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 of the Century, The.

the Poetry 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."
" "
Melas !
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. All-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 traduisons ici bien que
:
1'authenticite' nous en paraisse dminemment suspecte.")
460
Bibliography
V. TRANSLATIONS
1. FRENCH
Ballade de la Geole de Reading, By Henry D. Davray. Paris :
Societd du Mercure de France, 1898.

De Profundis. Precede de lettres ecrites de la Prison par Oscar
Wilde a Robert Ross, Suivi de La Ballade de la Geole de
Reading. Same translator and publishers. 1905.
Intentions. By J. Joseph-Renaud. Paris P. V. Stock, 1905. :
"
(Pages 279-294 contain Phrases et Philosophies a 1'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. New Edition,
Paris P. V. Stock, 1904.
:
Le Portrait de Monsieur W. H. By Albert Savine. Paris :
P. V. Stock, 1906.
2. GERMAN
Bunbury ("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 Sonnettenproblem des Herrn W. H. By Johannes Gaulke.
Leipzig :
Verlag von Max Spohr. (N.D.) (1902.)
De Profundis. Aufzeichnungen und Briefe Ausdem Zuchthaus in

Reading. By Max Meyerfeld. Berlin Verlag S. Fischer,
:
1905.
461
Bibliography
Der gluckliche Prinz und andere Erzahlungen. By Johannes
Gaulke. Leipzig :
Verlag von Max Spohr, 1903.
Der gluckliche Prinz Moderne 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 zu Reading. By Wilhelm Scholer-
mann. Leipzig Im Insel- Verlag, 1903.
:
Die Herzogin 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 Windermertfs Facher. Das Drama einesguten Weibes. By
Leo Pavia and Hermann Freih. v. Teschenberg.
Isidore
Leipzig Verlag von Max Spohr, 1902.
:
Lehren und Spriiche and Gedichte 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 &

Loeffler, 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 published.
4. POLISH
Salome. Dramat W I Akcie. Przeklad Jadwigi 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 Portrait. By N. Selander. Stockholm : Albert

Bonniers Forlag, 1905.
463
Bibliography
Lbgnens For/all och Andra Uppsatser. By Edv. Alkman. Stock-
holm P. A. Norstedt & Soners Forlag, 1893.
:
Lord Arthur Savzle's brott en studie af plikten, and Spbket 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 Forlag, 1906.
NOTE. This list of translations does not profess to be complete. It is

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 Clarke, Sir Edward, 363-364
Esthetic Movement, 163-166, 246 Colum, Padraic, cited, 293
Alcohol, 11-12,335-339 Cook, E. T., quoted, 128-129
Anderson, Mary, 235 Coquelin cadet, 197
Archer, William, cited, 238 Corkran, Miss, quoted, 71-72
Art, Wilde's attitude towards, 379, Crawley, Ernest, quoted, 372-373
381-382, 409 Currie, Lady, quoted, 411-412
Athenaum, Wilde's work reviewed
in, 183-186, 308, 315-317. 327- Daily Chronicle, Wilde's letters to,
328, 33 280-281, 310-311, 409-411

Daily Telegraph, William Wilde on
staff of, 275-276 ; quoted, 322
"BALLAD OF READING GAOL,"
Daudet, Alphonse, 231-232, 287,
411-414
324
Balzac, 39, 233-236 " De
Profundis" quoted, 7, 121,
Baudelaire, Charles, 40, 96, 238,
268 146-147, 353; cited, 144, 153,
365, 415; examination of, 371-
Bauer, Henri, 404, 419
373
Bernhardt, Sarah, 180, 181, 229,
De Goncourt, Edmond, 227-229
293, 362-363
De 1'Isle-Adam, Villiers, 287, 291
Bogue, David, 172
De Regnier, Henri, 284 quoted,
Bookman, "The Picture of Dorian
;
285-288, 343-344;
154, cited,
Gray" reviewed in, 308-310
Boston Evening Transcript quoted, 403-404
De Wyzewa, Teodor, 344
203-205
Dickens, Charles, 77
Bourget, Paul, 242, 342
Donoghue, John, 216-218
Downing, Miss Ellen, 48
CAB-DRIVERS, 88-89 Dowson, Ernest, 405
Caine, Hall, cited, 337-338 Dublin Royal Victoria Eye and
Calvinism, 147-148 Ear Hospital, 15-18
Carlisle, Lord, 19 Dublin University Review quoted,
Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 163 note 261-263
"
Carson, Edward, 5, 115-116, 354 Duchess of Padua, The," 235-238,
"Case of Warder Martin, The," and note
280-281, 409-410 Duffy, Sir C. Gavan, 46-51, 63,
Child, Theodore, quoted, 225-226, 67-70
229 Dupoirier, M., 417-418, 420-422
2 G 465
Index
" Intentions "
ELGRB, ARCHDEACON, 36-37 quoted, 98-99 ; cited,
Elgee, Jane Francesca. See Wilde, 106, 138; translation of, into
Lady French, 231, 289; appreciation
Elgee, Judge, 38 of, 303 ; Pater's criticism of, 309
Emmet, Robert, 377 Ireland census, Sir William

English Illustrated Magazine, Wilde's work on, 19 ; National
Wilde's contributions to,274 movement (1847), 46, 48-50, 52-
62 ;
Revolution of 1798, 37
frisk Monthly, 142, 144, 145
Figures et Caracteres quoted, 285-
288 Irishmen, characteristics of, 295,
Freeman's Journal, 263 quoted, ;
375
260-261 Irving, Henry, 195-198
Furniss, Harry, 29 "
Fynn, Miss (Mrs Thomas Wilde), JACTA ALEA EST," 49-50, 52-62,
68
8,9
Joseph-Renaud, Jean, 294 cited, ;
231, 284, 288 quoted, 289-293 ;

GIDE, ANDRE, 239, 412
Journalism, Wilde's attitude to-
Goethe quoted, 32, 33
wards, 274-278
Gough cited, 337-338
Greaves, Dr Robert, II
KEATS, 142-144
Guggenheim, 137
Kelly, Miss Eva Mary, 48
Gunn, Michael, 260, 261
Kingsbury, Miss (Mrs Elgee), 38
HAMILTON, Miss, Kottabos, 140-141
quoted, 74-77
Hamilton, Walter, quoted, 156,
208, 218-219; cited, 132, 135,
LA JEUNESSE, ERNEST, cited, 91,
163-164 208, 376 ; quoted, 297-298, 420

" Prince and Other Tales, "Lady Windermere's Fan," 312-
Happy
The," 259-260, 304 313, 319-326
" Harlot's Langtry, Mrs, 212
House, The," 238-239
Harris, Frank, 297
Le Journal, 278
Harvard students, 202-205 Le Roux, Hugues, 344
Lectures by Wilde
Healy, Father, cited, 28-29
Hedonists, 340-341 Advertisements of, 246-248
" Decorative
Henley, W. E., 311 Art," 207, 209, 21 1
"
"House of Pomegranates, The," Dress," 260, 443-448
" The
259-260, 304 English Renaissance," 193,
Howell, 179 207, 264, 427-432
Hugo, Victor, 232

"The House Beautiful," 211,
Husted, Mr, 218-219 245, 251, 253-254, 432-438

"The Value of Art in Modern
" IDEAL HUSBAND, AN," Life," 260, 43 8 -443
327
"
Importance of Being Earnest, Lippincotf s Monthly Magazine, 304
The," 329-33 2 Lloyd, Constance. See Wilde, Mrs
466
Index
" Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Oxford University Characteristics
Other Stories," 315-319 of, 121-123 ; Ruskin's influence
" Lux in Tenebris," at, 125-130
263
Pall Mall Gazette, Wilde's contribu-

M'CLURE, SIR ROBERT, 38 tions to, 259, 274
MC(
lure's Magazine, 277 Paris literary sensibilities in,
Mahaffy, 1'rof., 150-152 230-231 ; Wilde's honeymoon in,

Mallarme, Stephane, 287 257-258 ; estimate of his conversa-
Mangan, Clarence, 41 tional powers in, 285-293 ; visits
Maturin, Rev. Charles, 38-46 10(1892-95), 342 last days in, 418
;
Meningitis, 300 Pater, Walter, 309-310

Meyerfeld, Dr Max, 230-238, and "
Patience," 208-209
note,425 "Picture of Dorian Gray, The,"
Mirbeau, Octave, quoted, 344-345 65-66, 304-310
Monaco, Princess of, 297 Poe, E. A., 212, 238
Morning Herald (Halifax, N.S.), "Poems," 173-175, 180-189
quoted, 211-212 Pond, Major, 190, 200-201, 219
Portora, IOI et seq. , 114
" Portrait of Mr W. H., The," 361
Nation, 46-48 " Poems "
Punch, reviewed in, 187-
Nation (New York), quoted, 199-
188 ; quoted, 221-222 ; cited, 321,
200, 427-43 2
323-324
Nature, Wilde's attitude towards,
Punctuation, 273
97-100
New Hedonists, 340-341
New York Herald, interview in, QUEENSBERRY, MARQUESS OF, 5,
193-195 "6, 352-354

New York World quoted, 198-199
Nicoll, Dr Robertson, 308 RAVENNA, 155-157
Nineteenth Century, 208, 411 Reading Goal warder, account of
Wilde by, 386-402 ; letter from
Nordau, Max, cited, 336-337
Wilde to, 405-406
Red Island property, 242-243
O'DoNOGHUE, D. J., 36, 41, 77, Reid, Wemyss, 269
117 Religion, Wilde's attitude towards,
O'Flyn, Miss (Mrs Ralph Wilde), 146-147, 371-372, 378-381, 383.
8 384
Ormsby, Sir Charles, 38 Rollinat, 243
Oscar, King of Sweden, 84 Ross, Robert, 415-417, 421, 423
Ousel ey, Gideon, 9 Richards, J. Morgan, cited, 207
Ouseley, Gen. Sir Ralph, 9 Ruskin, John, 125-130, 132-133
Ouseley, Sir Ralph, 8
Ouseley, Sir Wm., 8-9 St fames s Gazette quoted, 298-299
Oxford poet friend, 215-216 "Salome," 362, 424-425
467
Index
Sargent, John, 242 Wilde, Lady (Jane Francesca Elgee)
Saturday Review, "Poems" re- (mother), family of, 35-38 ; birth,
viewed in, 181-182 37 ; literary abilities, 30-32 ; con-
Scots Observer {National Observer], tributions to The Nation, 46-48 ;
Wilde's letters to, 311 "Jacta Alea Est," 49-50, 52-62,

Scott, Clement, quoted, 322 68 ;nationalism, 64 - 65 ; mar-
Sebastian Melmoth, 38, 144, 300, riage, 18 ; desire that second
404, 405 child should be a girl, 5-6, 83 ;
Shakespeare's Sonnets, 360 daughter of, 90 toleration of her

;
Shelley, P. B., 378 husband's infidelities, 27-28 ; her

Smithers, Leonard, 414 salon, 70 ; in Park Street, 72 ; in
Solomons, 179 Oakley Street, 70, 74-76; liter-
"Soul of Man under Socialism, ary works, 78-79 ; contributions
The," 129-131, 259, 302 to The Woman's World, 270-271 ;
Speranza. See Wilde, Lady pension of, 20, 64 ; Oscar's rela-
"Sphynx, The," 239 tions with, 6-7, 284, 368, 375 ;
Steele, Rev. Wm., 105

" approves Oscar's remaining in
Story of an Unhappy Friendship, England, 366 appearance of,
;
The," quoted, 72-73, 241, 278 71-74; Schwaermerei, 33-34, 36,

note, 335, 345-346 84 ; tendency to self-delusion, 35 ;
Swinburne, A., 230, 232 clinging to youth, 73 ; quoted on
Sir Wm. Wilde's literary position,
TAN AGRA statuettes, 151-152
25
Terry, Ellen, 174-176 Oscar
Wilde, Fingal O'Flaherty
Thackeray quoted, 39 Wills
Theatre quoted, 330-331
Career, chronological sequence of
"Thomasine," 48
birth, 3-5, 83 ; names, 83-
Times, Wilde's work reviewed in,
86 86 - 87, 95 - 96 ;
; home,
327, 330
school, 92, 101 et seq. ; un-
Truth quoted, 322 - 323 Wilde's
popularity with schoolfellows,
;
work reviewed in, 331

104-105; gold medallist, 112;
Trinity College, Dublin, 112-115, at Trinity
foreign travel, 92-93 ;
I2O-I2I
" " College, Dublin, 112-115;
Twenty Years in Paris quoted,
Berkeley gold medallist, 20-21,
415
117 ; enters Magdalen College,
Oxford, 121 ; Ruskin's lectures
UNGERN STERNBERG, BARONESS
-
and influence, 125-130; sesthe-
ISABELLA VON, cited, 355-356
ticism, 133-138 ; ragging, 138;
" visits to Italy, 145-146; visit
VERA," 189, 221-222
to Greece, 149-154; success in
Vezin, Hermann, 264
Voltaire, 378
the schools, 124; First Class
and Newdigate Prize, 155;
WHISTLER, 171 literary work, 140-146; in
Whitman, Walt, 212, 214 London, 159, 166-169, 171-
468
Index
Wilde, Oscar continued Wilde, Oscar continued
\T 2; aesthetic costume, 1 60; Berneval, 404; "Ballad of
unpopularity, 168-169; publi- Reading Gaol," 411-414; fin-
cation of "Poems," 173-175, ancial straits, 278-281, 415 ; at
180-189; American tour, 189- Naples, 415 in Paris, 417-420;
;
190, 193-210, 219-223, 225- last days, 420-422 ; baptised

227 Chickering Hall lecture,
; into Roman Catholic Church,
198-200; Boston lecture, 202- 148, 416, 421 ; death, 422 ;
206 ; Omaha, Louisville, and tomb, 422-423

Denver, 207-210; Canada and Characteristics
Nova Scotia, 210-219; Monc- yEstheticism, in
ton Y.M.C.A., 218-219; in Ambition, 177
Paris, 224-243 ; financial diffi- Anarchism, 161, 178
culties, 242 -
246 ; returns to Artificiality, 233
England, 243 ; lectures in Cleverness, 91, 103, no
London, 244 ; in the provinces, Conversational powers, and
2 45' 2 53 > marriage, 254-257 ; love of talking, 32, 284-295,
honeymoon in Paris, 257-258 ; 297-301, 409, 419
home in Chelsea, 258 journal- ; Courage, 139, 244
istic work, 259 fairy stories, ; Courtesy, 180-181, 205, 211,
259-260 ; financial difficulties, 296, 299-300
264, 305 ; birth of his sons, Detail, carefulness as to, 273,
264 editor of The Woman's
; 414
World, 266-273 ; other journal- Dignity, 205, 244, 367
istic work, 273-274; "Lord Dogmatism, 253
Arthur Savile's Crime," 315- Energy, 294
319; "Lady Windermere's Family feeling, 6-7, 284, 368,
Fan," 319-326; "A Woman 375-376
of No Importance," 326-329 ; Generosity, 282-284, 383-384,
"An Ideal Husband," 327; 404, 420
"
The Importance of Being Geniality and kindliness, 214,
Earnest," 329-334 ; visits to 241, 309
Paris, 342 Queensberry
; the Gentleness, 385
trial, 5, 116, 352-354 ; arrested, Honour in money matters, 282
354-355 ; first trial, 357 goes ; Indolence, 140
to Oakley Street, 358 ; sale at Inherited tendencies, 80-8 1
Tite Street, 359-361 second ; Inventive faculty, 315-316
trial and sentence, 278, 368 ; Linguistic facility, 30
in prison, 370-373 ; visit from Magnetic influence, 240
his wife, 374 ; conversations in Mathematics, incapacity for,
prison, 377-383. 3 86 '4O2 ; rela- 103-104, 112;

tions with fellow-prisoners, 383- Optimism, 301-302
384; "De Profundis," see Pessimism, 140
that title ; released, 403 ; at Practicality, 34
469
Index
Wilde, Oscar continued Wilde, Mrs continued
Pride and arrogance, 170, 282, husband in gaol, 374 ; tells him
339, 353 of his mother's death, 7, 374 ;
Repose of manner, 213 death and estimate of, 375

Satire and repartee, powers of, Wilde, Ralph (great-grandfather),
105-107, 170-171, 220, 297 7-8
Self-accusation, habit of, 295, Wilde, DrThomas(great-uncle), 8,9
302, 377; self-confidence, 319 Wilde, William (brother), at school,
Superstitiousness, 418 108-110; on Daily Telegraph
Voice, 293, 295 275-276; Oscar's relations
staff,
Youth, ardour for, 4, 73, 81 with, 89, 109, 167, 375-376;

Miscellanea supplied with story plots by Oscar,
Appearance, 29, 104, 196, 21 1, 315-316 ; otherwise mentioned,
225, 233, 249, 251, 289,343 36, 70, 358, 366-367
Book read in youth, alleged Wilde, Sir William Robert Wills
influence of, 65-66 (father), family of, 7-9 ; early
Dress, 109, 233-234, 250, 269- years, 9-10; medical studies, II ;
270, 289, 343 illness, n ; medical success, 13-
Epileptiform malady, 34, 181, 15; voyage in the Crusader, 14;
37, 325, 334, 337-339 founds Eye and Ear Hospital, 15-
Estimates, 91, 208, 342, 426 18 ; publication on Dean Swift,
among European Jews, 18; marriage, 18 ; visits Stock-
131-132 German, 424 holm, 18 knighted, ;
18-20 ;
Italian,424 Cunningham medallist, 20, 80 ;
Handwriting, 355-356 as landlord, 21-22 ; literary work,

Irish nationality, concealment 22, 24, 80 foreign appreciations
;
of, 86 of, 23-24 ; Oscar's attitude
Names, 38, 83-86, 141, 144, towards, 6 ; characteristics, 25,

404, 405 27-29 ; death and funeral, 26
Philosophy, 301 Wills, W. G., 85
Religious views, 146-147,371- "Woman Covered with Jewels,
372, 378-381, 383, 384 The," 360
Smoking, addiction to, 269, "Woman of No Importance, A,"
324-325, 334 326-327
Social celebrities, preference
Woman's World, 266-273
for, 74, 177-178 World quoted, 225-226, 254-255 ;
Words affected, 210-211 cited, 243 Wilde's contributions

;
Wilde, Mrs (wife), marriage of, to, 259, 274

254-257 ; contributions to The
Woman's World, 270-271 copy XAU, FERNAND, 278-279
;
of"Lord Arthur Savile's Crime " YATES, EDMUND, 174, 179-180;

inscribed to, 317 ; visits her cited, 243 ; quoted, 254-255
47
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LIFE OF OSCRR WILDE

ROBERT HRRBOROUQH SHERRRD

THE BURLESQUE NAPOLEON.

WITH JOHN BULL AND JONA-

NOTES FROM MY SOUTH SEA LOG.

ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS, FAC-

WHO, IN THE EXTREME OF ADVERSITY,

THE extract from the introductory passage of

separable from those by whom they are pos-

to hope that intellectual greatness should pro-

great attainments should first endeavour their

however, be of literary interest to observe one

times he diverted himself with the conversation

appealed to him, and he underwent punishment

of him what Dr Johnson wrote of Savage :

"... But here, as in every other scene of his

effect than to heighten his ardour, and irritate

exempt him or those who, in confidence of

superior capacities or attainments, disregarded

inclination and interest with the requirements

it is further to remove the false impressions, the

fact, to refute falsehood and to present a story

crystallise. Rumour can yet be unmasked as

to most of his principles, ethical, artistic, and

graces. His qualifications arise from the facts

panionships, that he was with him at times

imperative here, has been abandoned, with all

ment, the joys of conquest, the catastrophe,

elicitation of his sympathy for the teller of the

story to listen to a tale against which prejudice,

him to hear are ever prompting him to close

CHAPTER VII 125

CHAPTER xvn 386

PORTRAIT OF OSCAR WILDE

SIR WILLIAM WILDE .... .

ROYAL VICTORIA EYE AND EAR HOSPITAL

PORTORA ROYAL SCHOOL . . . 101

OSCAR WILDE AS A LAD . . .

CARICATURE IN PUNCH (SALVATION ARMY) 177

16 TITE STREET 257

HENRI DE REGNIER . . '. .

CARICATURE BY HARRY FURNISS . .

OSCAR WILDE'S WRITING '. 355

IN MEMORIAM LADY WILDE . .

DEATH CERTIFICATE CONSTANCE WILDE .

BEDROOM IN THE HOTEL D' ALSACE . .

BILL AT THE HOTEL D' ALSACE . .

DEATH CERTIFICATE OSCAR WILDE .

The Necessity ofcarefully tracing Oscar Wilde's Descent The

WHEN Nature has bountifully endowed a man

admiration or the unrestrained envy of his con-

example, or early training and environment can

excellence, that this unhappy man's aberration

It therefore becomes necessary, before pro-

care, his descent and affinities. In this way

enlightened posterity to judge a most remarkable

So important is the object to be attained by

might be almost told in a series of denials of cur-

As to the particular inaccuracy, however, to

years younger than he really was. A friend of