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diff --git a/36017.txt b/36017.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d4c2810 --- /dev/null +++ b/36017.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4992 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Oscar Wilde, by Arthur Ransome + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Oscar Wilde + A Critical Study + +Author: Arthur Ransome + +Release Date: May 2, 2011 [EBook #36017] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OSCAR WILDE *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Martin Pettit and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +OSCAR WILDE + +A CRITICAL STUDY + +BY + +ARTHUR RANSOME + + +LONDON + +MARTIN SECKER + +NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET + +ADELPHI + +MCMXII + + +[Illustration: Oscar Wilde. from the Painting by Harper Pennington now +in the possession of Robert Ross. Esq.] + + +_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ + + BOHEMIA IN LONDON (Sketches and Essays), 1907 + A HISTORY OF STORY-TELLING, 1909 + EDGAR ALLAN POE, 1910 + THE HOOFMARKS OF THE FAUN, 1911 + ETC. + + +Copyright reserved in all countries signatory to the +Berne Convention. The copyright of this book in +Russia is the property of the Scorpion Press, Moscow + + + + +TO + +ROBERT ROSS + + + + +NOTE + + +I wish to thank Mr. Robert Ross, Wilde's literary executor, who has +helped me in every possible way, allowed me to read many of the letters +that Wilde addressed to him, and given much time out of a very busy life +to the verification, from documents in his possession, of the +biographical facts included in my book. I wish to thank Mr. Walter +Ledger for much interesting information, and for the sight of many rare +editions of Wilde's books that made possible the correction of several +bibliographical errors into which I had fallen. I wish to thank Mr. +Martin Secker for putting at my disposal his collection of late +nineteenth-century literature. I wish to thank an anonymous author for +lending me the proof-sheets of a forthcoming book, which will contain a +full and accurate account of the legal proceedings for and against +Wilde. Many of those who knew Wilde have helped me, by letter or in +conversation, with valuable reminiscence. I would thank, particularly, +M. Paul Fort, M. Remy de Gourmont, M. Stuart Merrill, and Mr. Reginald +Turner. + +The texts of Wilde's books that I have used throughout are these: +Messrs. Methuen's limited edition of the works, and the five shilling +edition issued by the same firm; Mr. Charles Carrington's edition of +_The Picture of Dorian Gray_; Mr. A. L. Humphreys' edition of _The Soul +of Man under Socialism_; Mr. David Nutt's edition of _The Happy Prince +and other Tales_. To these, as to the best, and in some cases the only, +editions easily accessible, I must refer my readers. Much accurate +observation is to be found in M. Andre Gide's "Oscar Wilde," published +by the Mercure de France, and the result of much laborious and useful +research is embodied in Mr. Stuart Mason's "Bibliography of the Poems of +Oscar Wilde," published by Mr. Grant Richards. Permission to include +many quotations has been granted by Messrs. Methuen and Co., and Mr. +Robert Ross. + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE +INTRODUCTORY 13 + +BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY 27 + +POEMS 36 + +AESTHETICISM 59 + +MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 80 + +INTENTIONS 104 + +THE THEATRE 130 + +DISASTER 153 + +DE PROFUNDIS 157 + +1897-1900 178 + +AFTERTHOUGHT 201 + + + + +I + +INTRODUCTORY + + +Gilbert, in 'The Critic as Artist,' complains that "we are overrun by a +set of people who, when poet or painter passes away, arrive at the house +along with the undertaker, and forget that their one duty is to behave +as mutes. But we won't talk about them," he continues. "They are the +mere body-snatchers of literature. The dust is given to one and the +ashes to another, but the soul is out of their reach." That is not a +warning lightly to be disregarded. No stirring up of dust and ashes is +excusable, and none but brutish minds delight in mud-pies mixed with +blood. I had no body-snatching ambition. Impatient of such criticism of +Wilde as saw a law-court in _The House of Pomegranates_, and heard the +clink of handcuffs in the flowing music of _Intentions_, I wished, at +first, to write a book on Wilde's work in which no mention of the man or +his tragedy should have a place. I remembered that he thought +Wainewright, the poisoner and essayist, too lately dead[1] to be +treated in "that fine spirit of disinterested curiosity to which we owe +so many charming studies of the great criminals of the Italian +Renaissance." To-day it is Wilde who is too near us to be seen without a +blurring of perspectives. Some day it will be possible to write of him +with the ecstatic acquiescence that Nietzsche calls _Amor Fati_, as we +write of Caesar Borgia sinning in purple, Cleopatra sinning in gold, and +Roberto Greene hastening his end by drab iniquity and grey repentance. +But not yet. He only died a dozen years ago. I planned an artificial +ignorance that should throw him to a distance where his books alone +would represent him. + +I was wrong, of course. Such wilful evasion would have been foolish in a +contemporary critic of Shelley, worse than foolish in a critic of Wilde. +An artist is unable to do everything for us. He gives us his work as a +locked casket. Sometimes the wards are very simple and all the world +have keys to fit; sometimes they are intricate and subtle, and the +casket is only to be opened by a few, though all may taste imperfectly +the precious essences distilling through the hinges. Sometimes, when our +knowledge of an artist and of the conditions under which he wrote have +been entirely forgotten, there are no keys, and the work of art remains +a closed casket, like much early poetry, of which we can only say that +it is cunningly made and that it has a secret. Why do we try to pierce +the obscurity that surrounds the life of Shakespeare if not because an +intenser (I might say a more accurate) enjoyment of his writings may be +given us by a fuller knowledge of the existence out of which he wrote? +It is for this that we study the Elizabethan theatre, and print upon our +minds a picture of the projecting stage, the gallants smoking pipes and +straddling their stools, the flag waving from above the tiled roof. We +would understand his technique, but, still more, while we lack directer +evidence, we would use these hints about the furniture of his mind's eye +in moments of composition. Writers of Wordsworth's generation realized, +at least subconsciously, that a work of art is not independent of +knowledge. They tried to help us by printing at the head of a poem +information about the circumstances of its conception. When a poet tells +us that a sonnet was composed "on Westminster Bridge," or "suggested by +Mr. Westell's views of the caves, etc., in Yorkshire," he is trying to +ease for us the task of aesthetic reproduction to which his poem is a +stimulus. There is a crudity about such obvious assistance, and it +would be quite insufficient without the knowledge on which we draw +unconsciously as we read. But the crudity of those pitiable little +scraps of proffered information is not so remarkable as that of the +presumptuous attempt to read a book as if it had fallen like manna from +heaven, and that of the gross dullness of perception that can allow a +man to demand of a poem or a picture that it shall itself compel him +fully to understand it. To gain the privilege of a just appreciation of +a man's books (if, indeed, such an appreciation is possible) we must +know what place they took in his life, and handle the rough material +that dictated even their most ethereal tissue. In the case of such a +writer as Wilde, whose books are the by-products of a life more +important than they in his own eyes, it is not only legitimate but +necessary for understanding to look at books and life together as at a +portrait of an artist by himself, and to read, as well as we may, +between the touches of the brush. It is not that there is profit in +trying to turn works of art into biographical data, though that may be a +fascinating pastime. It is that biographical data cannot do other than +assist us in our understanding of the works of art. + +In any case, leaving on one side this question, admittedly subject to +debate, it would have been ridiculous to study the writings alone of a +man who said, not without truth, that he put his genius into his life, +keeping only his talent for his books. I therefore changed my original +intention, and, while concerned throughout with Wilde as artist and +critic rather than as criminal, read his biographers and talked with his +friends that I might be so far from forgetting as continually to +perceive behind the books the spectacle of the man, vividly living his +life and filling it as completely as he filled his works with his +strange and brilliant personality. + +It is too easy to talk glibly of the choice between life and literature. +No choice can be made between them. The whole is greater than its part, +and literature is at once the child and the stimulus of life, +inseparable from it. But, beside art, life has other activities, all of +which aspire to the self-consciousness that art makes possible. The +artist himself, for all his gift of tongues, is not blinded by the +descending light to the plastic qualities of the existence that fires +his words and is itself intensified by his speech. He, too, moves in +walled town or on the green earth, and has a little time in which to +build two memories, one for his fellows, and another, a secret diary, to +carry with him when he dies. In his life, his books or pictures or +brave harmonies of music are but moments, notes of colour in a +composition vital to himself. And when we speak so carelessly of a +choice between life and literature, we do not mean a choice. We only +compare the vividness of a man's whole life, as we perceive it, with +that of those portions of it that he spent in books. Sometimes we wonder +which is more alive. In Wilde's case we compare a row of volumes, +themselves remarkable, with a life that was the occupation of an agile +and vivid personality for which a cloistered converse with itself was +not enough, a personality that loved the lights and the bustle, the eyes +and ears of the world, and the applause that does not have to wait for +print. + +Wilde was a kind of Wainewright, to whom his own life was very +important. He saw art as self-expression and life as self-development. +He felt that his life was material on which to practise his powers of +creation, and handled it and brooded over it like a sculptor planning to +make a dancing figure out of a pellet of clay. Even after its +catastrophe he was still able to speak of his life as of a work of art, +as if he had seen it from outside. Indeed, to a surprising extent, he +had been a spectator of his own tragedy. In building his life his strong +sense of the picturesque was not without admirable material, and he was +able to face the street with a decorative and entertaining facade, +which, unlike those of the palaces in Genoa, was not contradicted by +dullness within. He made men see him as something of a dandy among +authors, an amateur of letters in contrast with the professional maker +of books and plays. If he wrote books he did not allow people to presume +upon the fact, but retained the status of a gentleman. At the Court of +Queen Joan of Naples he would have been a rival to Boccaccio, himself an +adventurer. At the Court of James he would have crossed "Characters" +with Sir Thomas Overbury. In an earlier reign he would have corresponded +in sonnets with Sir Philip Sidney, played with Euphuism, been very kind +to Jonson at the presentation of a masque, and never set foot in The +Mermaid. Later, Anthony Hamilton might have been his friend, or with the +Earl of Rochester he might have walked up Long Acre to belabour the +watch without dirtying the fine lace of his sleeves. In no age would he +have been a writer of the study. He talked and wrote only to show that +he could write. His writings are mostly vindications of the belief he +had in them while still unwritten. It pleased him to pretend that his +plays were written for wagers. + +After making imaginary backgrounds for him, let us give him his own. +This man, who would perhaps have found a perfect setting for himself in +the Italy of the Renaissance, was born in 1854. Leigh Hunt, De Quincey, +and Macaulay were alive. Wordsworth had only been dead four years. +Tennyson was writing "Maud" and "The Idylls of the King." Borrow was +wandering in wild Wales and finishing "The Romany Rye." Browning was +preparing "Men and Women" for the press. Dickens was the novelist of the +day, and had half a dozen books yet to write. Thackeray was busy on "The +Newcomes." Matthew Arnold was publishing his "Poems." FitzGerald was +working underground in the mine from which he was to extract the roses +of Omar. Ruskin had just published "Stones of Venice," was arranging to +buy the work of a young man called Rossetti, helping with the Working +Men's College, and writing a pamphlet on the Crystal Palace. William +Morris, younger even than Rossetti, was an undergraduate at Oxford, +rhyming nightly, and exclaiming that, if this was poetry, it was very +easy. + +It is characteristic of great men that, born out of their time, they +should come to represent it. Victor Hugo, in 1830, was a young man +irreverently trying to overturn established tradition. He had to pack a +theatre with his friends to save his play from being hissed. Now, +looking back on that time, his enemies seem to have faded away, tired +ghosts, and he to be alone upon the stage laying about him on backs of +air. So far was the Elizabethan age from a true appreciation of +Shakespeare that Webster could patronise him with praise of "his happy +and copious industry." Shakespeare was a busy little dramatist, working +away on the fringe of the great light cast by the effulgent majesty of +Elizabeth. To-day Shakespeare divides with his queen the honour of +naming the years they lived in. The nineties, the early nineties when +Wilde's talent was in full fruition, seem now, at least in literature, +to be coloured by the personality of Wilde and the movement foolishly +called Decadent. But in the nineties, when Wilde was writing, he had a +very few silent friends and a very great number of vociferous enemies. +His books were laughed at, his poetry parodied, his person not kindly +caricatured, and, even when his plays won popular applause, this +hostility against him was only smothered, not choked. His disaster +ungagged it, and few men have been sent to perdition with a louder cry +of hounds behind them. + +There was relief as well as hostility in the cry. Wilde had meant a +foreign ideal, and one not too easy to follow. If he were right, then +his detractors were wrong, and there was joy in the voices of those who +taunted, pointing to the Old Bailey, "that is where the artistic life +leads a man." There was also shown a curious inability to distinguish +between the destruction of a man's body and the extinction of his mind's +produce. When Wilde was sent to prison the spokesmen of the nineties +were pleased to shout, "We have heard the last of him." To make sure of +that they should have used the fires of Savonarola as well as the cell +of Raleigh. They should have burnt his books as well as shutting up the +writer. That sentence, so frequently iterated, that "No more would be +heard of him," showed a remarkable error in valuation of his powers. + +There was surprise in England when _Salome_ was played in Paris while +its author was in prison. It seemed impossible that a man who had been +sent to gaol for such offences as his could be an artist honoured out of +his own country. Only after his death, upon the appearance of _De +Profundis_, and translations of his writings into French, German, +Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish, Polish, and Russian, did popular +opinion recognize (if it has yet recognized) that the Old Bailey, the +public disgrace and the imprisonment were only circumstances in Wilde's +private tragedy that would have been terrible even without them, and +that they were no guarantee of the worthlessness of what he wrote. + +So far were Wilde's name and influence from ending with his personal +disaster that they are daily gathering weight. Whether his writings are +perfectly successful or not, they altered in some degree the course of +literature in his time, and are still an active power when the wind has +long blown away the dust of newspaper criticism with which they were +received. It is already clear that Wilde has an historical importance +too easily underestimated. His indirect influence is incalculable, for +his attitude in writing gave literature new standards of valuation, and +men are writing under their influence who would indignantly deny that +their work was in any way dictated by Wilde. + +A personality as vivid as his, exercised at once through books and in +direct but perhaps less intimate social intercourse, cannot suddenly be +wiped away like a picture on a slate. No man's life was crossed by +Wilde's without experiencing a change. Men lived more vividly in his +presence, and talked better than themselves. No common man lives and +dies without altering, to some extent, the life about him and so the +history of the world. How much wider is their influence who live their +lives like flames, hurrying to death through their own enjoyment and +expenditure alike of their bodies and their brains. "Pard-like spirits, +beautiful and swift" are sufficiently rare and notable to be ensured +against oblivion. + +His personality was stronger than his will. When, as he often did, he +set himself to imitation, he could not prevent himself from leaving his +mark upon the counterfeit. He stole freely, but often mounted other +men's jewels so well that they are better in his work than in their own. +It is impossible to dismiss even his early poetry as without +significance. He left no form of literature exactly as he found it. He +brought back to the English stage a spirit of comedy that had been for +many years in mourning. He wrote a romantic play which necessitated a +new manner of production, and may be considered the starting-point of +the revolution in stage-management that, happily, is still proceeding. +He showed both in practice and theory the possibilities of creation open +to the critic. He found a new use for dialogue, and brought to England a +new variety of the novel. His work continually upset accepted canons and +received views. It placed, for example, the apparently settled question +of sincerity in a new obscurity, and the distinction between decoration +and realism in a new light. One of the tests of novelty and beauty is +that they should be a little out at elbows in an old aesthetic. Wilde +sets the subtlest problems before us, and I shall not be wasting time in +posing them and showing that his work has at least this quality of what +is beautiful and new, that it is impossible to apply to it definitions +that were sufficient before it. It will be necessary in considering his +writing, as I hope to do, to digress again and again from book, or play, +or poem into the abstract regions of speculation. Only so will it be +possible to appreciate this man whose name was to have disappeared in +1895, whose work is likely to preserve that name long after oblivion has +swallowed the well-intentioned prophets of its extinction. + +Even so, however carefully I may discuss alike his work and the abstract +and technical questions that it raises; however carefully I may gather +evidence of his overflowing richness of personality, I shall not be able +to make a complete and worthy portrait of the man. There are people, +mostly of the generation before my own (though the youngest of us may +come to it), who make a practice of suggesting our entire ignorance of a +subject by demanding that we shall define it in a few words. "Say what +you think of him in a sentence." If I could do that, do you think I +should be going to the labour of writing a book? One cannot define in a +sentence a man whom it has taken God several millions of years to make. +In a dozen chapters it is no less impossible. The utmost one can do, and +that only with due humility, is to make an essay in definition. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[1] He died in 1852. Wilde wrote in 1888. + + + + +II + +BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY + + +"The necessity of complying with times, and of sparing persons, is the +great impediment of biography. History may be formed from permanent +monuments and records; but Lives can only be written from personal +knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost +for ever. What is known can seldom be immediately told; and when it +might be told, it is no longer known. The delicate features of the mind, +the nice discriminations of character, and the minute peculiarities of +conduct, are soon obliterated; and it is surely better that caprice, +obstinacy, frolick, and folly, however they might delight in the +description, should be silently forgotten, than that, by wanton +merriment and unseasonable detection, a pang should be given to a widow, +a daughter, a brother, or a friend. As the process of these narratives +is now bringing me among my contemporaries, I begin to feel myself +_walking upon ashes under which the fire is not extinguished_, and +coming to the time of which it will be proper rather to say _nothing +that is false, than all that is true_" (Samuel Johnson, in his "Life of +Addison"). + + +Before proceeding to the main business of the book, an examination of +Wilde's work, I wish to set before myself and my readers a summary +biography which may hereafter be useful for our reference. Much of the +life of Wilde is so bound up with his work as to be incapable of +separate treatment; but, on the other hand, dates clog a page, and facts +do not always enjoy their just value when dovetailed into criticism. In +this chapter I shall set down the facts of Wilde's parentage and +education, up to the time when it becomes possible and advisable to +speak of his life and his work together. Thenceforward, I shall do +little more than note the dates of events and publications (reserving to +myself the right of repeating them when I find it convenient), and make, +as it were, a skeleton that shall gather flesh from the ensuing pages of +the book. + +Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on October 16, 1854, at +21, Westland Row, Dublin. His father was William Wilde, knighted in +1864, a celebrated oculist and aurist, a man of great intellectual +activity and uncertain temper, a runner after girls, with a lusty +enjoyment of life, and a delight in falling stars and thunderstorms. +His mother, whose maiden name was Elgee, was a clever woman, who, when +very young, writing as "Speranza" in a revolutionary paper, had tried to +rouse Irishmen to the storming of Dublin Castle. She read Latin and +Greek, but was ready to suffer fools for the sake of social adulation. +She was clever enough to enjoy astonishing the _bourgeois_, but her +cleverness seldom carried her further. When Wilde was born, she was +twenty-eight and her husband thirty-nine. They were people of +consideration in Dublin. His schoolfellows did not have to ask Wilde who +his father was. It is said, that before Wilde's birth, his mother had +hoped for a girl. He was a second son. His elder brother, William, +became a journalist in London, and died in 1899. He had a sister, Isola, +younger than himself, who died in childhood. Her death suggested the +poem 'Requiescat.' To him, as to De Quincey, a sister brought the idea +of mortality. There are exceptions to that fine rule of Hazlitt's +brother: "No young man believes he shall ever die." De Quincey looking +across his sister's death-bed through an open window on a summer day, +and Wilde, thinking of + + + "All her bright golden hair + Tarnished with rust, + She that was young and fair + Fallen to dust," + + +felt the fingers of death before their time. Like most of Wilde's early +melodies, his lament is sung to a borrowed lyre, but the thing is so +sweet that it seems ungracious to remember its indebtedness to Hood.[2] + +Both Sir William and Lady Wilde busied themselves in collecting +folk-lore. Wilde in boyhood travelled with his father to visit ruins and +gather superstitions. His childhood must have had a plentiful mythology. +Wilde and his brother were not excluded from the extravagant +conversations of their mother's _salon_. Any precocity they showed was +encouraged, if only by that curious atmosphere of agile cleverness. +There are no valuable anecdotes of his childhood, but it is said that +his mother always thought that Oscar was less brilliant than her elder +son. + +When he was eleven he was sent to the Portora Royal School at +Enniskillen, where he behaved well, did not particularly distinguish +himself, did not play games, read a great deal, and was very bad at +mathematics. In the holidays he travelled with his mother in France. +Leaving Portora in 1873, he went with a scholarship to Trinity College, +Dublin, where, in 1874, he won the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek. In +the same year he left Dublin for Oxford, matriculating at Magdalen and +taking a scholarship. In 1876 he took a First Class in Classical +Moderations, always a sufficient proof of sound learning, and, in 1878, +he took a First Class in Literae Humaniores. In 1877 he travelled in +Italy and went to Greece with Professor Mahaffy. This experience had +great influence on his attitude towards art, filled the classical +dictionary with life, and made the figures of mythology so luminous that +he was tempted to overwork them. In 1878 he read the Newdigate Prize +Poem in the Sheldonian Theatre. + +On leaving Oxford he brought to London a small income, a determination +to conquer the town, and a reputation as a talker. He took rooms in the +Adelphi. He adopted a fantastic costume to emphasize his personality, +and, perhaps to excuse it, spoke of the ugliness of modern dress. In +three years he had won the recognition of Punch, which, thenceforward, +caricatured him several times a month. + +In 1881 he published his first book, a volume of poems, discussed in the +next chapter. Five editions of it were immediately sold. His costume and +identification with the aesthetic movement of that time determined his +selection as a lecturer in America. The promoters of his tour there +were, however, anxious to help not the aesthetic movement but the success +of a play that laughed at it. He went to America in 1882, and again in +1883, on the latter occasion to see the production of _Vera_. On his +return from the first visit he went to Paris, where he finished _The +Duchess of Padua_, which was not published till 1908. In 1891 it was +produced in New York, when twenty copies were printed for the actors and +for private circulation. It is likely that in 1883, while in Paris, he +began _The Sphinx_, upon which he worked at various periods before its +publication in 1894. + +Returning to England, he took rooms in Charles Street, Haymarket, and +lectured in the provinces. In 1884 he married Constance Mary Lloyd, who +brought him enough money to enable him to take No. 16 Tite Street, +Chelsea, which was his home until 1895. He wrote for a number of +periodical newspapers, and, for two years, edited The Woman's World. + +In 1885 'The Truth of Masks' appeared as 'Shakespeare and Stage Costume' +in The Nineteenth Century. In 1886 he began that course of conduct that +was to lead to his downfall in 1895. In 1887 he published 'Lord Arthur +Savile's Crime,' 'The Canterville Ghost,' 'The Sphinx without a +Secret,' and 'The Model Millionaire,' which were issued together in +1891. In 1888 he published _The Happy Prince and other Tales_. In 1889 +'The Portrait of Mr. W. H.' appeared in Blackwood's Magazine. 'Pen, +Pencil and Poison' appeared in The Fortnightly Review in 1889, 'The +Decay of Lying' in The Nineteenth Century in the same year, and 'The +Critic as Artist' in The Nineteenth Century in 1890. _A House of +Pomegranates_ and _Intentions_, in which these three essays were +reprinted with 'The Truth of Masks,' were published in 1891. In the same +year 'The Soul of Man under Socialism' appeared in The Fortnightly +Review. _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ appeared in Lippincott's Magazine +in 1890. The Preface was published separately in The Fortnightly Review +in 1891. He added several chapters, and _The Portrait of Dorian Gray_ +was published in book form in 1891. Much of his time was spent in Paris, +and there, before the end of the year, he wrote _Salome_. In 1892 that +play was prohibited by the Censor when Madame Sarah Bernhardt had begun +to rehearse it for production at the Palace Theatre. It was first +produced in Paris, at the Theatre de L'Oeuvre, in 1896. _Lady +Windermere's Fan_ was produced on February 20, 1892, by Mr. George +Alexander at the St. James's Theatre. _A Woman of No Importance_ was +produced on April 19, 1893, by Mr. H. Beerbohm Tree at the Haymarket +Theatre, where, on January 3, 1895, he produced _An Ideal Husband_. On +February 14, 1895, Mr. George Alexander produced _The Importance of +Being Earnest_ at the St. James's. + +With the production of these plays Wilde became not only a caricatured +celebrity but a popular success. He lived extravagantly. In 1895 the +applause was turned to execration, when he lost in a prosecution for +criminal libel that he brought against the Marquis of Queensberry, and +was himself arrested on a more serious charge. The jury disagreed, and +he was released on bail, perhaps in the hope that he would leave the +country. He waited the re-trial, was convicted, and sentenced to two +years' imprisonment with hard labour, which sentence he served. Towards +the end of his time in prison he wrote the letter from which _De +Profundis_ (published in 1905) is extracted. After his release he went +to Berneval-sur-mer, near Dieppe, where he began _The Ballad of Reading +Gaol_, which he revised in Naples and Paris, and published +pseudonymously in 1898. He also wrote two letters on prison abuses, +which were published in The Daily Chronicle on May 28, 1897, and March +24, 1898. He lived in Italy, Switzerland and France. He died in Paris on +November 30, 1900. He was buried on December 3 in the Bagneux Cemetery. +On July 20, 1909, his remains were moved to Pere Lachaise. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[2] + + "Take her up tenderly, + Lift her with care; + Fashioned so slenderly, + Young, and so fair!" + + + + +III + +POEMS + + +It is a relief to turn from a list of bibliographical and biographical +dates to the May-day colouring of a young man's first book; to forget +for a moment the suffering that is nearly twenty years ahead, and to +think of "undergraduate days at Oxford; days of lyrical ardour and of +studious sonnet-writing; days when one loved the exquisite intricacy and +musical repetitions of the ballade, and the villanelle with its linked +long-drawn echoes and its curious completeness; days when one solemnly +sought to discover the proper temper in which a triolet should be +written; delightful days, in which, I am glad to say, there was far more +rhyme than reason." It is too easy to forget this note in Wilde's +personality, that he sounded again and again, and that was not cracked +even by the terrible experiences whose symbol was imprisonment. To the +end of his life Wilde retained the enthusiasm, the power of self-abandon +to a moment of emotion, the delight in difficult beauty, in accomplished +loveliness, that made his Oxford years so happy a memory, and give his +first book a savour quite independent of its poetical value. + +Ballade and villanelle, rondeau and triolet, the names of these French +forms were enough to set the key for a young craftsman's reverie. But +the university at that time was full of lively influences. Walter +Pater's "Renaissance" had not long left the press. Its author, that +grave man, was to be met in his panelled rooms, ready to advise, to +point the way to rare books, and to talk of the secrets of his art. +Pater in those days was a new classic, the private possession of those +young men who found his books "the holy writ of beauty." The new +classics of the generation before--Tennyson and Arnold and Browning--had +not yet faded into that false antiquity that follows swift upon the +heels of popular recognition. The scholar gipsy had not long been given +his place in the mythology of "Oxford riders blithe," and the trees in +Bagley Wood were still a little tremulous at his presence. Browning's +"The Ring and the Book" had been published ten years before. Queen +Victoria's approval of Tennyson may have somewhat marred him in the eyes +of youthful seekers after subtlety, but the early poems offered a +pleasant opportunity for discriminating appreciation. It was not very +long since Swinburne "had set his age on fire by a volume of very +perfect and very poisonous poetry." Morris, the first edition of whose +"Defence of Guenevere," though published in 1857, was not exhausted till +thirteen years later, was a master not yet so widely admired as to deny +to his disciples the delight of a personal and almost daring loyalty. +Rossetti's was a still more powerful influence. + +All these factors must be remembered in any attempt to reconstruct the +atmosphere in which Wilde wrote his early poems. Nor must we forget that +when Wilde entered that atmosphere as an undergraduate he had an unusual +training behind him. He had known another university, and carried away +from it a gold medal for Greek. He was an Irishman whose nationality had +been momentarily intensified by his revolutionary mother and his own +name. And, perhaps still more important, he was a very youthful +cosmopolitan, had been often abroad, knew a good deal of French poetry, +and had been able to date one of his earliest poems from that +light-hearted Avignon where the Popes once held their court, and whence +the dancing on the broken bridge has sent a merry song throughout the +world. + +It is curious to see this young lover of Theophile Gautier and old +intricate rhyme-forms, winning the Newdigate Prize for a poem in +decasyllabic couplets on a set subject. Many bad and a few good poets +have won that prize, and it constitutes, I suppose, a sort of academic +recognition that a man writes verse. Wilde was always pleased with +recognition, of whatever quality, and was, perhaps, induced to compete +on finding himself curiously favoured by the subject chosen for the +year, which happened to be _Ravenna_. He had visited Ravenna on his way +to Greece in the previous long vacation, and so was equipped with +memories denied to his rivals. He saw the city "across the sedge and +mire," when they could only see her on the map. He knew "the lonely +pillar, rising on the plain" where Gaston de Foix had died. And, in +Italian woods, he had actually watched, hoping to see and hear + + + "Some goat-foot Pan make merry minstrelsy + Amid the reeds! some startled Dryad-maid + In girlish flight! or lurking in the glade, + The soft brown limbs, the wanton treacherous face + Of woodland god!" + + +The wordy piece of rhetoric that was published after winning him the +prize is enriched by some pictorial effects that are almost effects of +poetry. But the best that can or need be said of the whole is, that it +is an admirable prize poem. + +Three years later he published his first book. + +_Poems_, bound in white vellum, decorated with gold, and beautifully +printed, contains work done before and after _Ravenna_. The most obvious +quality of this work, and that which is most easily and most often +emphasized, is its richness in imitations. But there is more in it than +that. It is full of variations on other men's music, but they are +variations to which the personality of the virtuoso has given a certain +uniformity. Wilde played the sedulous ape with sufficient +self-consciousness and sufficient failure to show that he might himself +be somebody. His emulative practice of his art asks for a closer +consideration than that usually given to it. Let me borrow an admirable +phrase from M. Remy de Gourmont, and say that a "dissociation of ideas" +is necessary in thinking of imitation. To describe a young poet's work +as derivative is not the same thing as to condemn it. All work is +derivative more or less, and to pour indiscriminate contempt on Wilde's +imitations because they are imitations, is to betray a lamentable +ignorance of the history of poetry. There is no need too seriously to +defend this early work. Wilde's reputation can stand without or even in +spite of it. But it is worth while to notice that the worst it suggests +is that young poets should be very careful to be bad critics, since they +always do ill if they imitate the best contemporary models. They do +better to copy poetasters, whom they must believe to be Miltons. When +Coleridge admires Bowles, makes forty transcriptions from his poems for +distribution among his friends, and imitates him as wholeheartedly as he +can, he will but gain in comparison with his original. There is nothing +in the master strong enough to impose itself upon the pupil. When Keats, +full of admiration, imitates Leigh Hunt, he is not very heavily impeded +in his search for Keats. But when Wilde blows the horn of Morris, an +echo from that Norseman's lungs throws out of harmony the notes of his +disciple. When he touches Rossetti's lute his melody is blurred by the +thrum of the strings that the Italian's fingers have so lately left. In +fifty years' time it will, perhaps, be safe to imitate Swinburne. It is +not so at present. + +Even in springing from the ground of prose into the air of song, it is +wise to choose ground that age has worn or that is not itself +remarkable. When Coleridge reads Purchas-- + + + "In Xamdu did Cublai Can build a stately Palace, encompassing + sixteene miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile + Meddowes, pleasant Springs, delightfule Streames, and all sorts of + beasts of chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous + house of pleasure"---- + + +and rewrites it-- + + + "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan + A stately pleasure dome decree: + Where Alph the sacred river ran + Through caverns measureless to man + Down to a sunless sea. + So twice five miles of fertile ground + With walls and towers were girdled round: + And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills + Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; + And here were forests ancient as the hills. + Enfolding sunny spots of greenery"---- + + +he works a true magic, bringing two out of one, and setting beside +Purchas something that we can independently enjoy. Purchas died so long +ago. He and Coleridge have different worlds behind them. But when Wilde +remembers a passage in his favourite book, written not a dozen years +before, and asks why he should not make personal to himself the +description of the manifold life of Mona Lisa, that ends, "all this has +been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes"; when he prefixes two +verses of explanation to a rhymed elaboration of that sentence-- + + + "But all this crowded life has been to thee + No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell + Of viols, or the music of the sea + That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell"---- + + +he only puts it out of drawing. It is impossible to avoid a comparison, +because Pater and Wilde are so close together, alike in time and +feeling. + +'Eleutheria,' a section at the beginning of the book, includes a number +of discreet sacrifices on the altar of Milton. Here Wilde does much +better. Some of these exercises, which are among the most interesting he +wrote, suggest a new view of the morale of imitation. With Wilde in this +mood, imitation (to use one of those renewals of popular sayings that +were the playthings of his mind), was the sincerest form of parody. Now +parody is a branch of criticism. The critics of the music-hall stage are +those favourite comedians who imitate their fellow-actors. Lewis Carroll +is a negligible critic neither of Longfellow nor of Tennyson. Parody's +criticism is too often facile, seeking applause by the readiest means, +holding up to ridicule rather than to examination faults rather than +excellences, exaggerating tricks of manner and concerning itself not at +all with personality. Wilde's parodies are at once more valuable and +more sincere. He tries to catch not only the letter but the spirit, and +does indeed present a clearer view of Milton than is contained in many +academic essays. An accusation of mere plagiary is made impossible by +his openness. He writes a sonnet on Milton, a sonnet on Louis Napoleon, +and then, matching even the title of his model, a sonnet on the Massacre +of the Christians in Bulgaria. Let me print the sonnet "On the Late +Massacre in Piedmont":-- + + + "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter'd saints whose bones + Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold; + Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old, + When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, + Forget not: in thy book record their groans + Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold + Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that roll'd + Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans + The vales redoubled to the hills, and they + To Heav'n. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow + O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway + The triple tyrant; that from these may grow + An hundredfold, who having learned thy way + Early may fly the Babylonian woe." + + +And then Wilde's:-- + + + "Christ, dost thou live indeed? or are thy bones + Still straitened in their rock-hewn sepulchre? + And was thy Rising only dreamed by Her + Whose love of thee for all her sin atones? + For here the air is horrid with men's groans, + The priests who call upon thy name are slain, + Dost thou not hear the bitter wail of pain + From those whose children lie upon the stones? + Come down, O Son of God! incestuous gloom + Curtains the land, and through the starless night + Over thy Cross a Crescent moon I see! + If thou in very truth didst burst the tomb + Come down, O Son of Man! and show thy might, + Lest Mahomet be crowned instead of Thee!" + + +This is a very different thing from the blind plagiary of those who +cannot see their own way, and are themselves surprised to find that they +have stolen. In their case, mistrust of their own powers is +justifiable. But here, when the young poet, as an exercise--indeed as +more than an exercise--catches the accent of Milton in words that +deliberately set the doubtful faith of our day beside the noble +assurance of the Puritans, and show by implication what that absolute +belief meant to Milton, we are in the presence not of flattery, but of +criticism, of exact appreciation. On the next page is the sonnet +'Quantum Mutata,' with the lines:-- + + + "Witness the men of Piedmont, chiefest care + Of Cromwell, when with impotent despair + The Pontiff in his painted portico + Trembled before our stern ambassadors"; + + +and the suggestion, certainly not personal to Wilde, but chosen for its +fitness to the poet of whom he is thinking-- + + + "that Luxury + With barren merchandise piles up the gate + Where noble thoughts and deeds should enter by: + Else might we still be Milton's heritors." + + +If we were to take this view of the character of Wilde's imitations it +would be an easy task to run through most of the book, showing how +carefully he acknowledges his indebtedness to Arnold, to Swinburne, to +Morris, much as a creative critic like Walter Pater courteously sets the +name of Pico della Mirandola, or of Sir Thomas Browne, at the head of a +piece of his own writing of which they have been less the occasion than +the chosen keynote. But there is no need. + +It is more important to the student of Wilde to notice that the book had +a popular success, and a success in no way due to any praise from the +contemporary critics who, naturally enough, were unable to consider +_Poems_ as the first book of a great man, could not review it in the +light of his later writings, and attacked it wholeheartedly, perhaps +because they were flattered by the ease with which they detected its +openly-acknowledged borrowings. Five editions were sold immediately, and +this not very trustworthy success increased or confirmed Wilde's +confidence in himself. The readiness of the public to throw their +opinion in the critics' teeth was partly due, I think, to precisely +those qualities for which the book was attacked. Much of this unusual +eagerness of ordinary people to buy poetry, a commodity that they seldom +think worth money, may be attributed to the curiosity which Wilde had +contrived to stimulate by carefully calculated eccentricity. But such +curiosity would be more easily satisfied by the sight of the man than by +the reading of his poems. It is hardly enough to explain the sale of +five editions of a book of verse. I think we may look for another reason +of the book's popularity in the fact that Wilde, so far from inventing +a new poetry, happened to summarize in himself the poetry of his time. +He made himself, as it were, the representative poet of his period, a +middleman between the muses and the public. People who had heard of +Rossetti and Swinburne, but never read them, were able to recover their +self-respect by purchasing Wilde. + +And this leads us back to the book. All the defects of this young man's +verse became qualities that contributed to its popular success. It was +imitative: it summed up a period of poetry. It was overweighted with +allusion: nothing could be more poetical in the ears of readers not +trained by an austere Bowyer to a distrust of Pierian springs, lutes, +lyres, Pegasus, and Hippocrene. + + + "In fancy I can almost hear him now, exclaiming Harp? Harp? Lyre? + Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, Muse. Your nurse's daughter, + you mean! Pierian spring? Oh aye! the cloister pump, I suppose." + (Coleridge on Bowyer, in the "Biographia Literaria.") + + +The presence in verse of certain names of places and persons has come to +be taken as implicit evidence of poetry. Where Venus is, there must +poetry be; Helicon, Narcissus, Endymion (after Keats), and a score of +others have become a sort of poetical counters that careless eyes do not +distinguish from the sterling coin. Wilde makes full use of them, and, +perhaps, trusting to the capital letters to carry them through, +frequently decorates his verse with names of similar character not yet +so hackneyed as to be immediately recognized as poetry. This kind of +allusion flatters the reader's learning. Sometimes he brings colour into +his verse by the use of a reference that must be unintelligible to a +large part of his audience, and seems quite irrelevant to those who take +the trouble to follow it, and have not the good fortune to hit upon the +correct clue. For example, in 'The New Helen':-- + + + "Alas, alas, thou wilt not tarry here, + But, like that bird, the servant of the sun, + Who flies before the north wind and the night, + So wilt thou fly our evil land and drear, + Back to the tower of thine old delight, + And the red lips of young Euphorion." + + +Now that, though not poetry, is a pleasant piece of colour. But, leaving +aside the question of the bird, the servant of the sun, itself not easy +to resolve, young Euphorion, who has served Wilde's verse well enough in +having scarlet lips, is more than a little puzzling. Wilde probably +remembers Part II of Goethe's "Faust." Achilles and Helen are said, as +ghosts, to have had a child called Euphorion, but Goethe makes him the +son of Faust and Helen, named in the legend Justus Faust. He leaps from +earth when "scarcely called to life," and "out of the deep" invites his +mother to follow him not to any "tower of old delight," but to "the +gloomy realm." The reference is wilful, but Euphorion is a wonderful +name. + +Sometimes, indeed, the verse gains nothing from such allusion. For +example, in the same poem:-- + + + "Nay, thou wert hidden in that hollow hill + With one who is forgotten utterly, + _That discrowned Queen men call the Erycine_." + + +This is simply learning put in for its own sake by the young scholar +delighting in his knowledge of antiquity. The line that I have printed +in italics is no more than a riddle whose answer is Venus, sometimes +called Erycina (Erycina ridens) because she had a temple on Mount Eryx. +Wilde means that Helen was hidden with the spirit of beauty (Venus) now +shamefully neglected. He delighted in such riddles and disguised +references, and they certainly helped his less cultured readers to feel +that in reading him they were intimate with more poetry than they had +read. In 'The Burden of Itys,' to take a last example, he says, +addressing the nightingale:-- + + + "Light-winged and bright-eyed miracle of the wood! + If ever thou didst soothe with melody + One of that little clan, that brotherhood + Which loved the morning-star of Tuscany + More than the perfect sun of Raphael + And is immortal, sing to me! for I too love thee well." + + +Sir Piercie Shafton might choose such a method of referring to the +Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Indeed, so far does Wilde carry his +ingenuity that we are reminded of the defects of that school of verse +that Johnson called the metaphysical, whose virtues are too generally +forgotten. He hears the wind in the trees as Palaestrina playing the +organ in Santa Maria on Easter Day. With half an echo of Browning he +describes a pike as "some mitred old bishop _in partibus_," and, with a +true seventeenth-century conceit, speaks of the early rose as "that +sweet repentance of the thorny briar." + +This ready-made or artificial poetry lacked, however, the firm +intellectual substructure that could have infused into ornament and +elaboration the vitalizing breath of unity. Wilde was uncertain of +himself, and, in each one of the longer poems, rambled on, gathering +flowers that would have seemed better worth having if he had not had so +many of them. Doubtful of his aim in individual poems, he was doubtful +of his inclinations as a poet. Nothing could more clearly illustrate +this long wavering of his mind than a list of the poets whom he admired +sufficiently to imitate. I have mentioned Morris, Swinburne, Arnold, and +Rossetti; but these are not enough. In swift caprice he rifled a score +of orchards. He very honestly confesses in 'Amor Intellectualis' that +he had often "trod the vales of Castaly," sailed the sea "which the nine +Muses hold in empery," and never turned home unladen. + + + "Of which despoiled treasures these remain, + Sordello's passion, and the honeyed line + Of young Endymion, lordly Tamburlaine + Driving his pampered jades, and more than these + The seven-fold vision of the Florentine, + And grave-browed Milton's solemn harmonies." + + +Milton, Dante, Marlowe, Keats, and Browning, with those I have already +named, and others, make up a goodly list of sufferers by this +lighthearted corsair's piracies. He built with their help a brilliant +coloured book, full of ingenuity, a boy's criticism of the objects of +his admiration, almost a rhymed dictionary of mythology, whose +incongruity is made apparent by those poems in which, leaving his +classics passionately aside, he went, like a scholar gipsy, to seek a +new accomplishment in the simplicity of folk-song. + +Wilde's reputation as a poet does not rest on this first book, but on +half a dozen poems that include 'The Harlot's House,' 'A Symphony in +Yellow,' 'The Sphinx' and 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol,' and alone are +worthy of a place beside his work in prose. But, though poetry is rare +in it, it will presently be recognized that the first books of few men +are so rich in autobiography. We have seen that the book is an index to +his reading: let us see now how many indications it gives us of his +life. + +Threaded through the book, between the longer poems, runs an itinerary +of his travels in Italy and Greece, written by a young man very +conscious of being a poet, and keenly sensible of what it was fitting he +should feel. In Italy, for example, he thought that he owed himself a +conversion to the Catholic faith:-- + + + "Before yon field of trembling gold + Is garnered into dusty sheaves, + Or ere the autumn's scarlet leaves + Flutter as birds adown the wold, + + I may have run the glorious race, + And caught the torch while yet aflame, + And called upon the holy name + Of Him who now doth hide his face." + + +He wrote almost as a Catholic might write, and spoke of the Pope as "the +prisoned shepherd of the Church of God." But later, when + + + "The silver trumpets ran across the Dome: + The people knelt upon the ground with awe: + And borne upon the necks of men I saw, + Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome," + + +he turned, as a Puritan might have turned, from the emblem, +triple-crowned, and clothed in red and white, of Christ's sovereignty, +to remember a passage in the gospels: "Foxes have holes, and birds of +the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head." + +He had a Calvinistic, half-shocked and half-exultant vision of his own +iniquity, this undergraduate of twenty-three:-- + + + "My heart is as some famine-murdered land + Whence all good things have perished utterly, + And well I know my soul in Hell must lie + If I this night before God's throne should stand." + + +Yet he took hope:-- + + + "My nets gaped wide with many a break and flaw, + Nathless I threw them as my final cast + Into the sea, and waited for the end. + When lo! a sudden glory! and I saw + From the black waters of my tortured past + The argent splendour of white limbs ascend!" + + +He had, in short, a religious experience, such as is known by most young +men. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he was disturbed, +delightfully disturbed, by feeling that a religious experience was +possible to him. He went on to Greece, and, remembering Plato, forgot +the half-hoped, half-feared sensation of a wholly voluntary repose in +Christianity. + +He returned to Oxford, to win the Newdigate Prize in the next year, and +to remember, with something of a girl's adventurous regret for a lover +whom she has rejected, his Italian emotion. All this is written down in +'The Burden of Itys':-- + + + "This English Thames is holier far than Rome, + Those harebells like a sudden flush of sea + Breaking across the woodland, with the foam + Of meadow-sweet and white anemone + To fleck their blue waves,--God is likelier there + Than hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale monks bear"; + + +and, in a later stanza:-- + + + "strange, a year ago + I knelt before some crimson Cardinal + Who bare the Host across the Esquiline, + And now--those common poppies in the wheat seem twice as fine." + + +'Panthea,' in language that suggests that he is looking for approval +from the eyes of Swinburne, describes his substitute for that refused +conversion. It is the creed of a young poet who finds the gods asleep, +and does not care, because of Darwin, Evolution, and the Law of the +Conservation of Energy. + + + "With beat of systole and of diastole + One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart, + And mighty waves of single Being roll + From nerveless germ to man, for we are part + Of every rock and bird and beast and hill, + One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill." + + +And:-- + + + "From lower cells of waking life we pass + To full perfection; thus the world grows old:" + + +and:-- + + + "This hot hard flame with which our bodies burn + Will make some meadow blaze with daffodil, + Ay! and those argent breasts of thine will turn + To water-lilies; the brown fields men till + Will be more fruitful for our love to-night, + Nothing is lost in Nature, all things live in Death's despite." + + +It is boy's thought, as serious as the sentimental dreaming of a girl. +There is no need to laugh at either. No young girl ever yet made a great +poem out of her inexperience, nor has any young man turned to great art +his hurried reading of the universe. But few great men have been without +such thoughts in youth, and the noblest women can remember girlish +dreams of an incredible unreality. + +After taking his degree Wilde left Oxford and came to London to build up +that phantom of himself that helped to advertise him, and, at the same +time, to make his progress difficult. He dedicates a sonnet to 'My +Friend Henry Irving,' another to Sarah Bernhardt, and two to Ellen +Terry, 'Written at the Lyceum Theatre.' We have an impression of the +young man, more elaborately dressed than he can afford, paying +extravagant, delightful compliments, and quickly gaining the sort of +reputation that was given to gallants of an older time, who knew actors, +and had their seats on the stage. + +Finally, and certainly most important in his own eyes, the book contains +a record of the love affair which, in a sense, balanced the abortive +religious experience. He fell in love with an actress, who found him +quite delightful, did not love him, let him love her for a summer, and +then told him not to waste his time. Wilde, as a young poet, probably +came to town prepared to fall in love, just as he had gone to Italy +prepared to be converted to Catholicism. His actress may have recognized +that this was so, and been ready, within reason, to play the part +assigned her. Through Wilde's magnificent phrasing there appears a +replica of the love affairs of how many boys with women wiser than +themselves and not without a sense of humour. + + + "Ah! hadst thou liked me less and loved me more, + Through all these summer days of joy and rain, + I had not now been sorrow's heritor, + Or stood a lackey in the House of Pain." + + +But he had not to grumble: he had been able to love her learnedly in +sonnets and gallantly in serenades. He had-- + + + "Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed + The Love which moves the Sun and all the Stars!" + + +That was really all that he had needed, but an awakening critical +faculty told him that he won more pain than poetry. + + + "Had my lips been smitten into music by the kisses that but made + them bleed, + You had walked with Bice and the angels on that verdant and + enamelled mead." + + +He was disappointed, but the fault was not his, not his lady's, but due +only to impatience. He who wills to love has rhetoric in his feeling, +and, though he wrote-- + + + "I have made my choice, have lived my poems, and, though youth is + gone in wasted days, + I have found the lover's crown of myrtle better than the poet's + crown of bays," + + +we cannot help thinking that we know better. + +The book is the monument of Wilde's boyhood, and contains its history. +Perhaps that, though it may save it from oblivion, is the reason of its +failure. It is too immediate an attempt to translate life into +literature. Sometimes it even suggests that there has been an attempt to +make life simply for the purpose of transcribing it. Wilde disguised it +in elaboration, but it wears the mask with an ingenuous awkwardness. It +is so youthful. Indeed, the youth of the book is its justification, and +helps it to throw a flickering light upon his later work. For Wilde +never entirely lost his boyhood, and died, as he had mostly lived, +young. Five years after the publication of _Poems_ he wrote a letter in +which, catching exactly the mood of his undergraduate days of ten years +before, he said that he wished he could grave his sonnets on an ivory +tablet, since sonnets should always look well. That is the precise +sentiment of those who seek "to discover the proper temper in which a +triolet should be written." It was his whenever he wished. But, though +he could recapture the mood, and assume again the attitude, he did not +allow himself to imitate the work that mood and attitude had produced. +In that white vellum volume were harvested all the wild oats of the +intellect that he did not leave to later gleaners. He was free +thenceforth, and seldom again, until the magnificent confession _De +Profundis_, did he allow his experiences the use of the first person.[3] +He had done with the crude subjectivity of boyhood, whose capital "I" +seems so unreal beside the complete fusions of soul and body, manner and +material, that Art demands and that he was later to achieve. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[3] Except, of course, in the lectures. We must remember their +occasion, and that it never occurred to him to reprint them or count +them among his works. + + + + +IV + +AESTHETICISM + + +"I never object," said Coleridge, "to a certain degree of +disputatiousness in a young man from the age of seventeen to that of +four or five and twenty, provided I find him always arguing on one side +of the question." Coleridge would seem to reserve legitimate dispute for +the very young, did we not remember that academic education began and +ended earlier in his day. Boys went to college at seventeen. I do not +think he would have objected to the disputatiousness of Wilde, although +he was well over twenty-five before he left the noisy field of argument, +if, indeed, he left it at all. Wilde, at least, would have pleased +Coleridge by arguing always on one side of the question, though it is +possible that Coleridge would not have recognized that that side was his +own. At Oxford, Wilde had already begun to count himself, if not an +inventor, at least an exponent of the aesthetic theories of life that +were then disturbing with fitful movements the stagnant surface of +British Philistinism. He did not plan a Pantisocracy, and would have +turned with fright from Coleridge's sturdy proposal to harden the bodies +of those accustomed to intellectual and sedentary labour until they were +fitted to share in the tilling of the soil. But he was discontented with +life as it was commonly lived, and had learnt to hope that it might be +beautified by being set among beautiful things. He had expressed a wish +that he could "live up to his blue china." His rooms in Magdalen, +panelled and hung with engravings chosen for their difference from the +pictures commonly affected, had been a centre of debate. His attitude +had caused discussion and public protest, for he rode but did not hunt, +did not play cricket, watched boat-races but did not go on the river, +and only once showed much physical activity, when he wheeled Ruskin's +barrow during the famous expedition of undergraduate navvies to make a +road on Hinksey Marsh.[4] + +We shall, perhaps, be better able to understand the first period of +Wilde's public prominence, if we examine the origins of the movement of +which, by accident and inclination, he became the accepted protagonist. +Continental critics have noticed in his writings theories so closely +analogous to those of the French Symbolists that they find it difficult +not to believe that he was a disciple of that school, and, as it were, +an English representative of Mallarme's salon in the Rue de Rome. It is +true that, like the Symbolists, he sought intensity in art, and emphasis +of its potential at the expense of its kinetic qualities. But in this he +was English as well as French. Later in his life he was influenced by +Maeterlinck and by Huysmans, but, while he was at Oxford and for some +time after, he found his rules of art and life in the teaching of the +Pre-Raphaelites. That teaching represents a movement in the same +direction as the Symbolists, but a movement which, unlike the French, +came to be identified with a desire to bring ordinary life into harmony +with the intensity it demanded from art. + +It is worth while to gain a clear perspective by discovering the +relation between such men as Morris, Burne-Jones, Rossetti, and Ruskin, +and the cult of knee-breeches and chrysanthemums with which Punch and +"Patience" identified Wilde. This cult was not a sudden sporadic +flowering of strange blooms in the frail hands of a few undergraduates. +It had its origin in 1848, when the members of the Pre-Raphaelite +Brotherhood founded The Germ, an extraordinarily earnest little monthly +magazine, in which appeared Rossetti's "Blessed Damozel," and etchings +by Holman Hunt and Madox Brown. Perhaps, indeed, it had an earlier +origin in the poetry of Keats, whose pure devotion to art for art's sake +foreshadowed the feeling of the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren, or in the +poetry of Blake, who, like them, emphasized the difference between the +Sons of David and the Philistines. But, if we go back so far, we must go +further and find still deeper roots for it in the great figures of the +Romantic Movement, in the figures who made that movement possible, in +Goethe, in Rousseau, in Ossian, in Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English +Poetry." Wilde, at least, saw back thus far into his spiritual ancestry. +But, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Pre-Raphaelites, +refusing the abstract art whose beginnings are marked by the technical +skill of Raphael, finding in early Italian painting, whose spirit was +less hidden by clear and insistent letter, a vivifying principle, stood, +not only for a new kind of painting, but for a new attitude towards art +in general, and then for a new attitude towards life. They were +attacked, and Ruskin, who thought they were trying to realize a prophecy +of his own, came to aid them with eloquent defence. Their pictures were +sold but seldom exhibited, so that a kind of separateness, almost a +secrecy, came to belong to their admirers. The public in general looked +upon them as something aloof and mad. It happened, perhaps through the +accident of Miss Siddal and Mrs. William Morris so frequently sitting as +their models, perhaps because the ladies exemplified what was already +their ideal, that there came into many paintings what is best known as +the Pre-Raphaelite woman, long-necked, and pomegranate lipped. Nature, +as Wilde was never tired of insisting, is assiduous in her imitation of +art, and, when Sir Coutts Lindsay opened the Grosvenor Gallery for the +benefit of these artists and their admirers, there were, beside those on +the walls, a sufficient number of Pre-Raphaelite portraits walking about +in the flesh to justify the curiosity and amusement of the crowd. A +play, "The Colonel," of no great value, and the wholly delightful +"Patience," a comic opera by Gilbert with music by Sullivan, brought the +"green and yallery" gowns of the "Grosvenor Gallery" elect, with their +poets and flowers and feelings towards the intenser life, into a +charming masquerade. "Patience" was played at the Savoy with great +success. Mr. D'Oyly Carte, attempting to repeat this success in America, +perceived that Americans, being without a Grosvenor Gallery, missed much +of the humour of the play, and conceived the Napoleonic scheme of +sending over a specimen aesthete to show what "Patience" was laughing at. +This somewhat ignominious position was, with due diplomacy, offered to +Oscar Wilde, on account of his extravagance in dress,[5] and proudly +accepted by him on the wilful supposition that it was a fitting tribute +to his recently published _Poems_. That is how it came about that on +December 24, 1881, Wilde sailed for New York, to say that he was +disappointed in the Atlantic, to tell the Customs Officials that he had +nothing to declare except his genius, and to lecture throughout America +on "The English Renaissance of Art," "House Decoration," and "Art and +the Handicraftsman." + +Youth and vanity helped to blind him to the rather humiliating reason of +his lecturing. He wanted the money, but was able to persuade himself +that he had really been chosen to represent the aesthetic movement to the +American people on account of his book of poems, and that, in any case, +he wanted to go to America to have _Vera_, a worthless melodrama he had +just written, put upon the stage. With his happy power of dramatizing +his position, a power he shared with Beau Brummel and picturesque +adventurers of lesser genius, he saw himself, almost immediately, as a +sort of combination of William Morris and John Ruskin, gifted more than +they with wit, beauty, and youth. He spoke of himself visiting the South +Kensington Museum on Saturday nights, "to see the handicraftsman, the +wood-worker, the glass-blower, and the worker in metals." He inspected +art-schools, and carried away, to show his audiences, brass dishes +beaten by little boys, and wooden bowls painted by little girls. He +began to take himself more and more seriously--no doubt Punch's +caricatures had helped him, and he was alone in America, far from the +facts--and was able to tell his listeners "how it first came to me at +all to create an artistic movement in England, a movement to show the +rich what beautiful things they might enjoy and the poor what beautiful +things they might create." By this time I have no doubt that he believed +with perfect good faith that the aesthetic movement was the work and aim +of his life. Only occasionally did he remember that he was living up to +"Patience." "You have listened to 'Patience' for a hundred nights," he +said, "and you have heard me for one only. It will make, no doubt, that +satire more piquant by knowing something about the subject of it, but +you must not judge of aestheticism by the satire of Mr. Gilbert." Once, +indeed, he allowed himself to remind his audience of the extravagances +at which that opera laughed, but then it was only to defend them with +all the solemnity of an apostle. "You have heard, I think, a few of you, +of two flowers connected with the aesthetic movement in England, and said +(I assure you, erroneously) to be the food of some aesthetic young men. +Well, let me tell you that the reason we love the lily and the +sunflower, in spite of what Mr. Gilbert may tell you, is not for any +vegetable fashion at all. It is because these two lovely flowers are in +England the two most perfect models of design, the most naturally +adapted for decorative art--the gaudy leonine beauty of the one and the +precious loveliness of the other giving to the artist the most entire +and perfect joy." This seems insufferable now, and probably was so then, +but it is a proof of the perfection with which Wilde played the part his +stage-manager had assigned him. + +There is much that is charming in the lectures, together with much that +is ridiculous, and some of the charm is in the folly. It is a very young +knight who fights with a lily on his helmet and a sunflower tied to his +spear-point. He has not perceived that the battle is at all difficult. +He does not try with slow argument to undermine the enemy's position, +but only says, quite cheerfully, that he would like to win. "When I was +at Leadville and reflected that all the shining silver that I saw +coming from the mines would be made into ugly dollars, it made me sad. +It should be made into something more permanent. The golden gates at +Florence are as beautiful to-day as when Michael Angelo saw them." He +does not ever come to blows, but only says how ready he is for battle. +"I have no respect," he quotes from Keats, "for the public, nor for +anything in existence but the Eternal Being, the memory of great men and +the principle of Beauty." And he shows that the great men are on his +side. In one lecture alone he appeals to Goethe, Rousseau, Scott, +Coleridge, Wordsworth, Blake, Homer, Dante, Morris, Keats, Chaucer, +Hunt, Millais, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Ruskin, Swinburne, Tennyson, +Plato, Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, Edgar Allan Poe, Phidias, Michael +Angelo, Sophocles, Milton, Fra Angelico, Rubens, Leopardi, Titian, +Giorgione, Hugo, Balzac, Shakespeare, Mazzini, Petrarch, Baudelaire, +Theocritus, and Gautier. + +Indeed, his relation to the aesthetic movement of 1880 is not unlike that +of Gautier to the Romantic movement of 1830. Gautier, like Wilde, was +born into an army already on the march, and became its most violent +champion and exemplar. Gautier's crimson waistcoat balances Wilde's +knee-breeches. It would be possible to carry the comparison further, and +to find in _Dorian Gray_ a parallel to "Mademoiselle de Maupin." An +identical spirit presided over the writing of both these books. And it +would be easy to find in Wilde, at any rate before his release from +prison, an aloofness from ordinary life not at all unlike that of the +man who exclaimed, "Je suis un homme des temps homeriques;--le monde ou +je vis n'est pas le mien, et je ne comprends rien a la societe qui +m'entoure." I can imagine Gautier lecturing Americans in just such a +manner as Wilde's, and forgetting, but for his loyalty to Hugo, that he +had not invented Romanticism. + +Wilde's lectures must have amused if they did not edify America. He +urged the miners to retain their high boots, their blouses, their +sombreros, when, with wealth in their pockets, they should return to the +abomination of civilization. Surprised audiences in the towns heard him +speak seriously of the stolid ugliness of the horse-hair sofa, and still +more seriously of stoves decorated with funeral urns in cast iron. He +begged them to realize the importance of a definite scheme of colour in +their rooms, and to use other kinds of jugs than one. In his +independence of the quarrels of his elders, he talked to them as Ruskin +might have talked, of the craftsman and his place in life, and, at the +same time, praised the Peacock Room and the room in blue and yellow +designed by that American whom Ruskin had accused of throwing a pot of +paint in the public's face. On one or two occasions Americans were rude +to him. But he spoke with such courtesy and such obvious benevolence +that more often they were content to pay their dollars, listen to him +attentively, stare at him curiously, and then go to see "Patience." + +Wilde took their dollars, left the propagation of beautiful furniture +behind him, and went to Paris. He was tired of prophecy and ready to +take a new part in a new play. He had + + + "... touched the tender stops of various quills, + With eager thought warbling his Doric lay," + + +and now, seeking the fresh woods of the Bois, and the new pastures of +the Champs Elysees, he "twitched his mantle" and threw it away, and with +it sunflower, lily, and knee-breeches, preferring a change of costume +with his change of part. He dressed now as a man of fashion, a dandy, +but not an aesthete. He even cut his hair. But the reputation he had made +swelled before him. He came to Paris, after his lecturing, in 1883, but, +as late as 1891, for those who had not seen him, Wilde "n'etait encore +que celui qui fumait des cigarettes a bout d'or et qui se promenait dans +les rues une fleur de tournesol a la main." He may even have encouraged +this reputation. Stuart Merrill, writing in La Plume, said: "Certains +cochers de hansom affirment meme l'avoir vu se promener, vers l'heure +des chats et des poetes, avec un lys enorme a la main. Oscar Wilde +recuse comme a regret leur temoignage en repondant que la legende est +souvent plus vraie que la realite." But in 1883 Wilde had had a surfeit +of lilies and sunflowers, and came to Paris as a poet, fashionably +dressed, with a number of white vellum volumes of verse to distribute +among those whose acquaintance he wished to secure. + +He took rooms at the Hotel Voltaire, and saw most of the better known +people of the day. But, as always, he was not content to leave a part +half played. He was in Paris as a poet, and, if he was ready to receive +the poet's reward of admiration and homage, he was determined also to +earn it, to write poetry, and not to rest on what he had already +written. He was, at this time, impressed as much by Balzac's power of +work as by his genius, and his biographer tells us that, with a view to +imitating it, he wore, while working, a white robe with a hood, like the +dressing-gown in which Balzac sat up at night, drinking coffee and +creating his fiery world. He also walked out with an ivory stick, set +with turquoises, like the stick that pleased Balzac because it set the +town talking. At a later time he sought a similar adventitious aid to +industry in buying Carlyle's writing table. He felt, like Balzac, that +the special paraphernalia of work was likely to induce the proper +spirit. In these circumstances, in the Hotel Voltaire, he finished _The +Duchess of Padua_, and possibly either wrote or re-wrote _The Sphinx_. + +_The Duchess of Padua_ is a play on the Elizabethan model of dark and +bloody tragedy. It is a sombre spectacle, marred by a constantly +shifting perspective. The folds of tragedy's cloak fall over an angular +figure, a little stiff in the joints, and the verse has the effect of +voluntary draping. It is the performance of a young man who has not yet +achieved the knowledge of the stage that was later to be his; the +performance of a young man who has not yet achieved a knowledge of +himself. It is better built than _Vera_ and more interesting, but it has +the faults of the 1881 volume of _Poems_, without the same excuse of +eager imitation and criticism. Here and there are lines of poetry that +seem now afraid and now defiant of the progress of the play. The poet +changes faces too often. He has all the Elizabethans at his back, and +writes like the young Shakespeare on one page, and on the next like +Shakespeare grown mature. His predilections are now for simplicity and +now for such overworked conceits as this:-- + + + "GUIDO. Oh, how I love you! + See, I must steal the cuckoo's voice, and tell + This one tale over. + + DUCHESS. Tell no other tale! + For, if that is the little cuckoo's song, + The nightingale is hoarse, and the loud lark + Has lost its music." + + +Wilde's weakness of grip on himself and his play is shown by the quite +purposeless inclusion of cumbersome, would-be-Shakespearian comic +relief:-- + + + "THIRD CITIZEN. What think you of this young man who stuck the + knife into the Duke? + + SECOND CITIZEN. Why, that he is a well-behaved, and a well-meaning, + and a well-favoured lad, and yet wicked in that he killed the Duke. + + THIRD CITIZEN. 'Twas the first time he did it: maybe the law will + not be hard on him, as he did not do it before." + + +That is a specimen very favourable to the play, which contains yet +duller jokes. It is hard to believe that the same man who wrote them was +also the author of _Intentions_ and the inventor of Bunbury. But there +is no need to linger over _The Duchess of Padua_, which, though it has +moments of obscure power, Wilde did not, in later years, consider worthy +of himself. + +There is some doubt as to the date of composition of _The Sphinx_. A +line and a half in it-- + + + "I have hardly seen + Some twenty summers cast their green for Autumn's gaudy liveries"-- + + +not only suggest extreme youth in the writer, but occur in _Ravenna_. +Mr. Stuart Mason, in his admirable "Bibliography to the Poems of Oscar +Wilde," says that "altogether some dozen passages of _Ravenna_ are taken +more or less verbatim from poems published before 1878, while no +instance is found of lines in the Newdigate Prize Poem being repeated in +poems admittedly of later date, and this," he thinks, "seems fairly +strong proof that the lines in _The Sphinx_ (if not the whole poem) +antedate _Ravenna_." Mr. Ross says that Wilde told him the poem was +written at the Hotel Voltaire during an earlier visit in 1874. This +statement, he thinks, was an example of the poetic license in which +Wilde, like Shelley and other men of genius, was willing to indulge. Mr. +Sherard says positively that Wilde wrote _The Sphinx_ in 1883 at the +Hotel Voltaire. There seems to be no real reason why Wilde should not +have borrowed from _Ravenna_ on this, even if he did so on no other +occasion. He was always ready to seem younger than he was, and always +ready to use again a phrase that had pleased him, no matter where he had +used it before. In _The Duchess of Padua_, about whose date there is no +question, he even went so far as to use two lines from a sonnet that he +had previously addressed to Ellen Terry, and published in _Poems_:-- + + + "O hair of gold, O crimson lips, O face + Made for the luring and the love of man!" + + +There is much in the poem itself that inclines me to trust Mr. Sherard's +memory of its date. + +It is work more personal to Wilde than anything in _Poems_. The firm +mastery of its technique would, indeed, be overwhelming proof that it +was written after _The Duchess of Padua_ if it were not known that Wilde +spent some time in revising it in 1889. But revision cannot alter the +whole texture of a poem, and _The Sphinx_ is full of those decorative +effects that are rare in his very early work and give to much of his +matured writing its most noticeable quality. No one has suggested that +it was written later than 1883, so that we must explain the +extraordinary advance that it shows on _The Duchess of Padua_ as one of +those curious phenomena known to most artists: it often happens that, +in turning from one kind of work to another, as from dramatic writing +to poetry, men come quite suddenly on what seem to be revised and better +editions of themselves. + +The kinetic base, the obvious framework, of _The Sphinx_ is an +apostrophe addressed by a student to a Sphinx that lies in his room, +perhaps a dream, perhaps a paperweight, an apostrophe that consists in +the enumeration of her possible lovers, and the final selection of one +of them as her supposed choice. It is a series rather than a whole, +though an effect of form and cumulative weight is given to it by a +carefully preserved monotony. In a firm, lava-like verse, the Sphinx's +paramours are stiffened to a bas-relief. The water-horse, the griffon, +the hawk-faced god, the mighty limbs of Ammon, are formed into a frieze +of reverie; they do not collaborate in a picture, but are left behind as +the dream goes on. It goes on, perhaps, just a little too long. So do +some of the finest rituals; and _The Sphinx_ is among the rare +incantations in our language. It is a piece of black magic. Of the +student who saw such things men might well say:-- + + + "Weave a circle round him thrice, + And close your eyes with holy dread," + + +but they could never continue:-- + + + "For he on honey-dew hath fed," + + +and, with whatever milk he had been nourished, they would be certain +that it was not that of Paradise. + + + "Dawn follows Dawn and Nights grow old, and all the while this + curious cat + Lies crouching on the Chinese mat with eyes of satin rimmed with + gold." + + +To paint the visions she inspires, Wilde ransacks the world for +magnificent colouring. He does not always secure magnificence in the +noblest way, but is satisfied with an opulence, rather of things than of +emotion, brought bodily into the verse and not suggested by the proud +stepping of the mind. Cleopatra's wine, ivory-bodied Antinous, the +crocodile with jewelled ears, metal-flanked gryphons, gilt-scaled +dragons, + + + "Some Nereid coiled in amber foam with curious rock-crystal breasts," + + +the Ethiopian, "whose body was of polished jet," Pasht "who had green +beryls for her eyes," Horus, + + + "Whose wings, like strange transparent talc, rose high above his + hawk-faced head, + Painted with silver and with red and ribbed with rods of Oreichalch," + + +the marble limbs of Ammon, "on pearl and porphyry pedestalled," an ocean +emerald on his ivory breast-- + + + "The merchants brought him steatite from Sidon in their painted + ships: + The meanest cup that touched his lips was fashioned from a + chrysolite----" + + +the lion's "long flanks of polished brass," the tiger's "amber +sides":--I think it is worth while to notice the mineral character of +all this imagery. It is as if a man were finding solace for his feverish +hands in the touch of cool hard stones, and at the same time, +stimulating his fever by the sexual excitement of contrast between the +over-sensitive and the utterly insensible. + + +Wilde had but a short respite from the trouble of keeping up a +reputation and an income. The American dollars were soon spent, and he +had to bring to an end his Balzacian industry, and the delightful +business of being a poet in Paris. He returned to London, where he took +rooms in Charles Street, Haymarket. He had to earn a livelihood, and +poverty and his own extravagance compelled him to do that which he most +disliked, to take up again a pose whose fascination he had exhausted. He +signed an agreement with a lecture agency, and toured through the +English provinces, repeating, as cheerfully as he could, the lectures he +had given in America. + + +NOTE ON WILDE AND WHISTLER + + + Both before and after his American lecturing tour Wilde was one of + the frequenters of Whistler's studio in Chelsea. He had an + unbounded admiration for this painter, whose conversation was no + less vivid than his work, and Whistler's attitude towards him was + not so cavalier as that he adopted to others among his admirers. + Wilde, in spite of his youth, had a reputation, and shared with + Whistler the applause of any company in which they were together. + In 1883, when Wilde was to lecture to the Academy Students, he + asked Whistler what he should say to them. Whistler sketched a + lecture for him, and Wilde used parts of it with success and repaid + him by a tremendous compliment. Two years later Whistler himself + lectured, and, for his "Ten O'Clock," re-appropriated some of the + material he had suggested to his friend. That is the origin of the + accusation, so often made, that Wilde built a reputation on + borrowed bons mots. In the "Ten O'Clock," Whistler, annoyed by + Wilde's lecturing on art, as he would have been by the lecturing of + any other man who was not himself a painter, held a veiled figure + of him up to ridicule, and threw a stone from a frail house in + jeering at his knee-breeches. "Costume is not dress. And the + wearers of wardrobes may not be doctors of taste ..." Wilde + smilingly replied. Whistler feinted. Wilde parried. Whistler + thrust:--"What has Oscar in common with Art except that he dines at + our tables and picks from our platters the plums for the pudding + that he peddles in the provinces? Oscar--the amiable, + irresponsible, esurient Oscar--with no more sense of a picture than + he has of the fit of a coat--has the courage of the opinions ... of + others!" Wilde answered that "with our James vulgarity begins at + home and should be allowed to stay there," and with that their + friendship was buried, like the hatchet, "in the side of the + enemy." Two years later, Wilde, with an indifference amusing in any + case and delightful if it was conscious, roused further protest by + using in "The Decay of Lying" the phrase, "the courage of the + opinions of others," that had been the sting of Whistler's + reproach. The letters on both sides may be read in "The Gentle Art + of Making Enemies." The whole story only makes it clear that Wilde + was better able to appreciate Whistler than Whistler to appreciate + a younger man, whose talent, no less brilliant, was entirely + different from his own. As Mr. Ross has pointed out, all Wilde's + best work was written after their friendship ceased. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[4] "The AEsthetic Movement in England," by Walter Hamilton. + +[5] He wore at this time a velvet _beret_ on his head, his +shirts turned back with lace over his sleeves, puce velveteen +knickerbockers with buckles, and black silk stockings. + + + + +V + +MISCELLANEOUS PROSE + + +On May 29, 1884, Oscar Wilde was married to Constance Mary Lloyd, the +daughter of a Dublin barrister. He settled with her in Chelsea. They had +two children, both boys, born respectively in 1885 and 1886. Wilde's +marriage was not felicitous, though he regretted it more for his wife's +sake than his own. It is said that Mrs. Wilde was rather cruelly made to +pose for Lady Henry Wotton in _Dorian Gray_, that "curious woman, whose +dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on +in a tempest.... She tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in +being untidy ... looking like a bird of paradise that had been out all +night in the rain...." She was sentimental, pretty, well-meaning and +inefficient. She would have been very happy as the wife of an ornamental +minor poet, and it is possible that in marrying Wilde she mistook his +for such a character. It must be remembered that she married the author +of _Poems_ and the lecturer on the aesthetic movement. His development +puzzled her, made her feel inadequate, and so increased her inadequacy. +She became more a spectacle for Wilde than an influence upon him, and +was without the strength that might have prevented the disasters that +were to fall through him on herself. She had a passion for leaving +things alone, broken only by moments of interference badly timed. She +became one of those women whose Christian names their husbands, without +malice, preface with the epithets "poor dear." Her married life was no +less ineffectual than unhappy. + +Wilde supplemented his wife's income by writing reviews of books for The +Pall Mall Gazette, and articles on the theatre for The Dramatic Review. +From the autumn of 1887 to that of 1889 he edited The Woman's World. +Little of this was wasted labour, though Wilde had no need to fillip his +invention by such practice as the writing of reviews provided. +Conversation was to him what diaries, note-books, and hack-work are to +so many others. But there is an ease in the essays of _Intentions_ +wholly lacking in 'The Rise of Historical Criticism' and in the +lectures. It is impossible not to believe that in writing literary notes +in The Woman's World and reviews in The Pall Mall Gazette, he quickened +the turn of his wrist and sharpened the point of his rapier. + +There is little of any great value in the volume of reviews collected +by his executor; little, that is to say, that raises them above the +level of reviews written by far less gifted men. Here and there are +fragments that he improved and used again in more lasting works. Here +and there are perfectly charming sentences, that show what sort of man +would be found if we could lift the mask of the reviewer. Throughout the +book are uncertain indications of the theories of art that were later to +be expounded in _Intentions_. But that is all. There is, however, an +historical interest in learning what Wilde thought of the writers of his +time. He railed at the shocking bad grammar of Professor Saintsbury, and +got an undergraduate enjoyment from laughing at Professor Mahaffy. When +he could, he piously drew attention to the works of his father and +mother. He was polite to his cousin, W. G. Wills, who had happened to be +delivered of an epic. Among greater men, he had excellent praise for +William Morris, a just appreciation of Pater, an enthusiasm for +Meredith, the expression of which he afterwards used in _Intentions_, +and a perspicuous criticism of Swinburne. The volume is full of clues to +the sources of the inessentials in his later work. The original of the +passage in _Dorian Gray_ on embroideries and tapestries is to be found +in a review of a book by Ernest Lefebure. The Starchild's curls "were +like the rings of the daffodil." This curious and delightful phrase may +be traced to a review of Morris' translation of the Odyssey, where Wilde +noticed the line, + + + "With the hair on his head crisp curling as the bloom of the + daffodil," + + +and quoted another version published in 1665, + + + "Minerva renders him more tall and fair. + Curling in rings like daffodils his hair." + + +It would be possible to make a long list of such alibis. + +Marriage and journalism slackened for a moment his ambition. He lectured +once or twice, though Whistler had almost succeeded in discrediting him +as an authority upon art. His reputation waned, and he was for some time +a young man with a brilliant past. Art seemed less worth while than it +had been, and he was ready to amuse himself with things that he thought +scarcely worth writing, things that required more cleverness than +temperament, and did not stretch his genius. It was in this mood that he +turned to narrative, and wrote the four stories which, published in +magazines in 1887, were collected into a volume in 1891. He had always +been accustomed to invent plots for other people, and to compose such +anecdotes as were needed to illustrate his conversation and to give it +an historical basis. Mr. Sherard says that he used to devise stories, +sometimes as many as six in a morning, for his brother William to write. +It occurred to him to write some of these tales himself, and, using the +conventions of the popular magazine fiction of his day, yet find means +to indulge his mind with the ingenious play in which it delighted. Three +of these tales need detain no student of Wilde. 'The Canterville Ghost' +is just so boisterous as to miss its balance, but, because it is about +Americans, is very popular in America. 'The Sphinx without a Secret' +betrays its secret in its title. 'The Model Millionaire' is an empty +little thing no better than the popular tales it tries to imitate. 'Lord +Arthur Savile's Crime,' however, is not only remarkable as an indication +of what Wilde was to do both as a dramatist and as a storyteller, but is +itself a delightful piece of buffoonery. Wilde is so serious. The +readers of The Family Herald are fond of Lords, and so the story begins +with a reception at Bentinck House, a delightful parody of the popular +descriptions of such a function. "It was certainly a wonderful medley of +people. Gorgeous peeresses chatted affably to violent Radicals, popular +preachers brushed coat-tails with eminent sceptics, a perfect bevy of +bishops kept following a stout prima-donna from room to room, on the +staircase stood several Royal Academicians, disguised as artists, and it +was said that at one time the supper-room was absolutely crammed with +geniuses." There was a cheiromantist, and a Duchess, who, on learning +that he was present, "began looking about for a small tortoiseshell fan +and a very tattered lace shawl, so as to be ready to go at a moment's +notice." The plot is no less moral than simple. Lord Arthur Savile +learns from the palmist that at some period of his life it is decreed +that he shall commit a murder. Unwilling to marry while a potential +criminal, he sets about committing the murder at once, to get it over, +and be able to marry with the easy conscience of one who knows that his +duty has been satisfactorily performed. He tries to kill a charming aunt +with a sugared pill, and a benevolent uncle with an explosive clock, +and, failing in both these essays, "oppressed with the barrenness of +good intentions," walks miserably on the Embankment, where he finds Mr. +Podgers, the cheiromantist, observing the river. "A brilliant idea +flashed across him, and he stole softly up behind. In a moment he had +seized Mr. Podgers by the legs, and flung him into the Thames. There was +a coarse oath, a heavy splash, and all was still. Lord Arthur looked +anxiously over, but could see nothing of the cheiromantist but a tall +hat, pirouetting in an eddy of moonlit water. After a time it also sank, +and no trace of Mr. Podgers was visible. Once he thought that he caught +sight of the bulky misshapen figure striking out for the staircase by +the bridge, and a horrible feeling of failure came over him, but it +turned out to be merely a reflection, and when the moon shone out from +behind a cloud it passed away. At last he seemed to have realised the +decree of destiny. He heaved a deep sigh of relief, and Sybil's name +came to his lips." Like much of Wilde's work, this story is very clever +talk, an elaborated anecdote, told with flickering irony, a cigarette +now and again lifted to the lips. But, already, a dramatist is learning +to use this irony in dialogue, and a decorative artist is restraining +his buoyant cleverness, to use it for more subtle purposes. There is a +delicate description of dawn in Piccadilly, with the waggons on their +way to Covent Garden, white-smocked carters, and a boy with primroses in +a battered hat, riding a big grey horse--a promise of the fairy stories. +The vegetables against the sky are masses of jade, "masses of green jade +against the pink petals of some marvellous rose." And, too, over the +sudden death of Mr. Podgers "the moon peered through a mane of tawny +clouds, as if it were a lion's eye, and innumerable stars spangled the +hollow vault, like gold dust powdered on a purple dome." + +_The Happy Prince and other Tales_, published in 1888, with pictures by +Jacomb Hood and Walter Crane, are very married stories. In reading them, +I cannot help feeling that Wilde wrote one of them as an experiment, to +show, I suppose, that he could have been Hans Andersen if he had liked, +and his wife importuned him to make a book of things so charming, so +good, and so true. He made the book, and there is one beautiful thing in +it, 'The Happy Prince,' which was, I suspect, the first he wrote. The +rest, except, perhaps, 'The Selfish Giant,' a delightful essay in +Christian legend, are tales whose morals are a little too obvious even +for grown-up people. Children are less willing to be made good. Wilde +was himself perfectly aware of his danger, and, no doubt, got some +pleasure out of saying so, at the end of the story called 'The Devoted +Friend': "'I am rather afraid that I have annoyed him,' answered the +Linnet. 'The fact is, that I told him a story with a moral.' 'Ah! that +is always a very dangerous thing to do,' said the Duck. And I quite +agree with her." There is a moral in 'The Happy Prince,' but there is +this difference between that story and the others, that it is quite +clear that Wilde wanted to write it. It is Andersen, treated exactly as +Wilde treated Milton in the volume of 1881, only with more assurance, +and a greater certainty about his own contribution. We recognise Wilde +by the decorative effects that are scattered throughout the book. He +preferred a lyrical pattern to a prosaic perspective, and, even more +than his wit, his love of decoration is the distinguishing quality of +his work. Andersen might well have invented the story of the swallow who +died to repay the statue for jewelled eyes and gold-leaf mail given to +the poor of the town of which he had once been the Happy and unseeing +Prince, but he would never have let the swallow say: "The King is there +in his painted coffin. He is wrapped in yellow linen and embalmed in +spices. Round his neck is a chain of pale green jade, and his hands are +withered leaves." And only a swallow belonging to the author of _The +Sphinx_ would have said, "To-morrow my friends will fly up to the second +Cataract. The river horse couches there among the bulrushes, and on a +great granite throne sits the God Memnon. All night long he watches the +stars, and when the morning star shines he utters one cry of joy, and +then he is silent. At noon the yellow lions come down to the water's +edge to drink. They have eyes like green beryls, and their roar is +louder than the roar of the Cataract." + +In the next year he was again amusing himself with fairy tales, writing +this time a book alone in English literature; a book of tales not +intended for the British child but for those grown-up people who shared +Wilde's own enjoyment of brilliant-coloured fantasy. He had learnt to +control his invention, although he did not choose to do without a tuning +fork. Andersen still struck the note to which Wilde sang, but Flaubert +had been his singing master, and the curious and beautiful tales +collected in _A House of Pomegranates_ are like what I imagine "The Snow +Queen" would have been, if it had been written by the author of "Saint +Julien l'Hospitalier." In 'The Infanta's Birthday,' where one of Goya's +grotesques dances before a painting by Velasquez, the flowers pass their +opinions on the dwarf quite in the Danish manner. In 'The Star-child': +"The Earth is going to be married, and this is her bridal dress," +whispered the Turtle-doves to each other. "Their little pink feet were +quite frost-bitten, but they felt that it was their duty to take a +romantic view of the situation." That is surely written by the ghost of +Andersen's English translator. But 'The Star-child' ends with the firm, +aloof touch of Flaubert, who would not tolerate "quite": "Yet ruled he +not long, so great had been his suffering, and so bitter the fire of his +testing, for after the space of three years, he died. And he who came +after him ruled evilly." I remember the end of "Herodias" on just such a +distant note: "Et tous les trois, ayant pris la tete de Iaokanaan, s'en +allerent du cote de la Galilee. Comme elle etait tres lourde, ils la +portaient alternativement." And the picture of the leper in this story +is almost a transcription of that in "Saint Julien l'Hospitalier": "Over +his face hung a cowl of grey linen, and through the eyelets his eyes +gleamed like red coals." And Flaubert: "Il etait enveloppe d'une toile +en lambeaux, la figure pareille a un masque de platre et les deux yeux +plus rouge que des charbons." I do not suggest that one is a copy of the +other; but I think that Wilde remembered that clay mask with gleaming +eyes, and mistook it for a creation of his own whose eyes shone through +a grey linen cowl. + +It is hardly worth while so to carry the study of influence into detail. +Wilde wrote, with the pen of Flaubert, stories that might have been +imagined by Andersen, and sometimes one and sometimes the other touches +his hand. It is not impossible that Baudelaire was also present. But +all this does not much concern us, except that by subtraction we may +come to what we seek, which is the personal, elusive, but unmistakable +quality contributed by Wilde himself. + +This is, secondarily, a round mellowness of voice, a smooth solidity of +suggested movement, a delight in magnificence; and, primarily, a +wonderful feeling for decorative effect. This last is Wilde's peculiar +contribution to literature. His contribution to thought, his exegesis of +the critical attitude, is another matter. But this feeling for +decoration, that made him see life itself as a tapestry of ordered and +beautiful movements caught in gold and dyed silk, that made him +incapable of realizing that life was not so, until at last it became too +strong and tore his canvas, was itself enough to prevent the picturesque +figure of the dandy from obliterating the artist in the minds of +posterity. It is scarcely twenty years since Wilde wrote his books, and, +in poetry as well as in prose, their influence is already becoming so +common as not to be recognized. The historian of the period will have to +trace what he may call "The Decorative Movement in Literature" to the +works of Wilde, and through them to the Pre-Raphaelite pictures and +poems, whose ideals he so fantastically misrepresents. + +I have implied a distinction between decoration and realism that I have +not clearly defined. This distinction is not, though it has often been +held to be, a distinction between two different kinds of art, between +which runs a sharp dividing line. It is rather a recognition of opposite +ends of a scale, like the recognition of heat and cold, both degrees of +temperature, but without intrinsic superiority one over the other. In +painting we thus distinguish between the attempt to imitate and the +willingness (not the intention) to suggest nature. This distinction is +best expressed in the old simile of the window and the wall. Some +pictures represent a pattern on a wall: some pictures represent a vision +through a window. In some we look at the canvas: in others we look +through the frame. Some are decorative: some are realistic. Many +painters have wished that their pictures should not be found wanting +when compared with the pictures of similar subjects that each spectator +paints with the brushes and palette of his own brain. Sometimes this +desire has been carried so far as to preclude all others. Painters do +not usually read Berkeley, and there have been some who forgot that +there was no such thing as a world outside their brains, and cared only +to be recognised as faithful portrait-painters of nature: that is to +say, of what all spectators see, or can see, by training their +observation. There have been critics, too, like Ruskin, who have chosen +to compare painters by their fidelity to this external and observable +nature. But painters have other things to do than photograph, other +things to do than to select from what a camera would represent. +Sometimes the idea of imitation fades away, and they are willing, no +more, to suggest lilies by a convention, and to distort even the human +figure, while they concern themselves with harmonies in which the shapes +of flower or figure sound merely incidental notes. We must not forget +that these are extremes in a single scale, and that all painting is to +some extent realistic, to some extent decorative. Its extremes are +wholly imitative in aim, and dull, and wholly conventional in aim, and +empty. We call the two aims realism and decoration for our convenience. +In literature it is possible to trace a similar double aim, separate +from but analogous to the duality in speech that we shall have to +examine in a later chapter. There are books subservient to what we call +reality, and books for which reality is no more than an excuse, books +that follow nature, and books that cast nature into their own mould, +and, delighting in no accidental harmonies, bend nature to the patterns +that please them, and heighten or lower her colours for their private +purposes of beautiful creation. Even in music we can trace these +tendencies: there is music that humbly follows the moods of man, and +music whose serenely indifferent patterns compel the dancing attendance +of those moods. + +We have observed in _The Sphinx_ the decorative character of Wilde's +work. These tales provide the best examples of it that are to be found +in his prose. To the woodcutters looking down from the forest, the Earth +seemed "like a flower of silver, and the Moon like a flower of gold." +The young fisherman speaks to the witch of his "_painted_ boat," and his +author is no less aloof from realism. When the young fisherman forgets +his nets and his cunning, as he listens to the sweet voice of the +mermaid, Wilde writes: "Vermilion finned and with eyes of bossy gold, +the tunnies went by in shoals, but he heeded them not." Now that is a +picture that the young fisherman could not see. Nor can we see it, +unless the fisherman is a figure on a tapestry, sewn in stitches of +bright-coloured thread. Above him three undulating lines are waves, and +between them four tunnies, twisting unanimous tails, show their +vermilion fins and their eyes of gilded metal, skilfully bedded in the +canvas. + +Wilde, always perfectly self-conscious, was not unaware of this +difference between his own writing and that of most of his +contemporaries. When _Dorian Gray_ was attacked for immorality, Wilde +wrote, in a letter to a paper: "My story is an essay on decorative art. +It reacts against the brutality of plain realism." _The Picture of +Dorian Gray_ was written for publication in a magazine. Seven chapters +were added to it to make it long enough for publication as a novel, +because those who buy books, like those who buy pictures, are unable to +distinguish between size and quality, and imagine that value depends +upon area. The preface was written to answer assailants of the morality +of the story in its first form, and included only when it was printed as +a book. These circumstances partly explain the lack of proportion, and +of cohesion, that mars, though it does not spoil, the first French novel +to be written in the English language. England has a traditional +novel-form with which even the greatest students of human comedy and +tragedy square their work. In France there is no such tradition, with +the result that the novel is a plastic form, moulded in the most various +ways by the most various minds. After all, it is a question of name, and +it is impossible without elaborate and tedious qualification to discuss +classifications of literature. They should not be made, or they should +be made differently, for, at present, they deal only with superficial +resemblances, depending, sometimes, upon nothing more essential than the +price for which a book is sold. They have, however, a distinct influence +upon production. In France, Flaubert's "Tentation de Saint Antoine," +that wonderful dream in which so many strange dialogues are overheard, +Remy de Gourmont's "Une Nuit au Luxembourg," that delightful speculative +mirage, and Huysmans' "A Rebours," that phantasmagoria of intellectual +experience, are all included in publishers' lists of novels and sold as +such. Publishers in England are not so catholic. Whatever the reason may +be, economical, depending upon the publisher, traditional, depending on +the writer, Wilde's _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ was the first novel for +many years to be written in England with that freedom in choice of +matter and manner that has for a long time been in no way extraordinary +in France. It has, so far, had no successor free as itself from the +enforced interest in a love affair, to which we have grown so mournfully +accustomed. + +The story of the book is a fantastic invention like that of Balzac's "Le +Peau de Chagrin," in which the scrap of skin from a wild ass shrinks +with each wish of its possessor. The picture of Dorian Gray, painted by +his friend, ages with the lines of cruelty, lust and hypocrisy that +should mar its ever-youthful subject. He, remaining as beautiful as when +at twenty-one he had inspired the painter with a masterpiece, walks in +the ways of men, sullying his soul, whose bodily reflection records +neither his age nor his sins. It is the sort of invention that would +have pleased Hawthorne, and the book itself is written with the marked +ethical sympathy that Wilde, in his preface, denounced as "an +unpardonable mannerism of style." Perhaps the reason why it was so +loudly accused of immorality was that in the popular mind luxury and sin +are closely allied, and the unpardonable mannerism that made him preach, +in a parable, against the one, did not hide his whole-hearted delight in +describing the other. + +The preface, inspired by the hostility the book aroused, is an essay not +in the gentle art of making enemies, but in that of annoying them when +made. If his critics tell him that his book leers with the eyes of +foulness and dribbles with the lips of prurience, Wilde replies, with an +ambiguity as disturbing as his smile, that "it is the spectator, and not +life, that art really mirrors," and again that "the highest, as the +lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography." His arrows are not +angrily tipped with poison, but are not for that the less displeasing to +those against whom they are directed. They are weighted not with anger +but with aesthetic theory. They are so far separate from the story that +they are best discussed with the essays of _Intentions_. + +There are a few strange books that share the magic of some names, like +Cornelius Agrippa, Raymond Lully, and Paracelsus, names that possibly +mean more to us before than after we have investigated the works and +personalities that lie behind them. These books are mysterious and kept, +like mysteries, for peculiar moods. They are not books for every day, +nor even for every night. We keep them for rare moments, as we keep in a +lacquer cabinet some crystal-shrined thread of subtle perfume, or some +curious gem, to be a solace in a mood that does not often recur, or, +perhaps, to be an instrument in its evocation. _Dorian Gray_, for all +its faults, is such a book. It is unbalanced; and that is a fault. It is +a mosaic hurriedly made by a man who reached out in all directions and +took and used in his work whatever scrap of jasper, or porphyry or +broken flint was put into his hand; and that is not a virtue. But in it +there is an individual essence, a private perfume, a colour whose secret +has been lost. There are moods whose consciousness that essence, +perfume, colour, is needed to intensify. + +There is little need to discuss the minutiae of the book; to point out +that its sayings occur in Wilde's plays, poems, reviews and dialogues; +that it is, as it were, an epitome of his wit before and after the fact; +that the eleventh chapter is a wonderful condensation of a main theme in +"A Rebours," like an impression of a concerto rendered by a virtuoso +upon a violin. There is no need to emphasize Wilde's delight in colour +and fastidious luxury, as well as in a most amusing kind of dandyism: in +the opening scene the studio curtains are of tussore silk, the dust is +golden that dances in the sunlight, tea is poured from a fluted Georgian +urn, there is a heavy scent of roses, the blossoms of the laburnum are +honey-coloured as well as honey-sweet, Lord Henry Wotton reclines on a +divan of Persian saddlebags, and taps "the toe of his patent-leather +boot with a tasselled ebony cane." There is no need to point out any of +these things, but they help to justify what I have already said, and to +define the indefinable character of the book. Lord Henry Wotton would +have liked to write "a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian +carpet, and as unreal." Wilde tried to write it, and very nearly +succeeded. + + * * * * * + +Wilde's second period of swift development began towards the end of +1888. This, perhaps, explains the sentence in 'Pen, Pencil, and +Poison'--"One can fancy an intense personality being created out of +sin." His personality was, certainly, intensified when he became an +habitual devotee of the vice for which he was imprisoned. He had first +experimented in that vice in 1886; his experiments became a habit in +1889, and in that year he published 'Pen, Pencil, and Poison' and 'The +Decay of Lying,' revised _The Sphinx_, and wrote some, at least, of the +stories in _A House of Pomegranates_; these were immediately followed by +'The Critic as Artist' and _Salome_. + +These things are among his best work. It is possible that a +consciousness of separation from the common life of men is a sufficient +explanation of an increased vividness in a man's self, a heightened +ardour of production. Is Wilde's exceptional activity in those years to +be attributed to an eagerness to justify himself by other men's +admiration, of which he had never been careless? Was he eager to bring +mankind to his side? "It is the spectator, not life, that art really +mirrors." This sentence must now be applied to himself, when we consider +_The Portrait of Mr. W. H._ That narrative, now printed at the end of +_Lord Arthur Savile's Crime_, and first published in Blackwood's +Magazine in 1889, is an essay in criticism. + +Wilde read something of himself into Shakespeare's sonnets, and, in +reading, became fascinated by a theory that he was unable to prove. +Where another man would, perhaps, have written a short, serious essay, +and whistled his theory down the wind that carries the dead leaves of +Shakespeare's commentators, Wilde tosses it as a belief between three +brains, and allows it to unfold itself as the background to a story. The +three brains are the narrator, Cyril Graham, and Erskine. Graham +discovers the Mr. W. H. of the Sonnets in a boy-actor called Will +Hughes, and by diligent examination of internal evidence, almost +persuades Erskine to believe him. Erskine, however, demands a proof, and +Graham finds one for him in a portrait of Will Hughes nailed to an old +wooden chest. Erskine is persuaded, but discovers that the picture is a +forgery, whereupon Graham, explaining that he had only had it made for +Erskine's satisfaction, leaves the picture to his friend, protests that +the forgery in no way invalidates the theory, and kills himself as a +proof of his good faith. Erskine, disbelieving, tells all this to the +narrator, who instantly sets to work on the sonnets, finds a quantity of +further evidence, but none that sets beyond question the existence in +Elizabethan times of a boy-actor called William Hughes. He writes +Erskine a letter of passionate reasoning, that, while persuading +Erskine, wipes away his own belief. He finds that he has become an +infidel to the theory of which he has been a successful advocate. It was +a favourite idea of Wilde's, and the motive of _La Sainte Courtisane_, +that to slough off a belief like a snake's skin, one has only to convert +someone else to it. I need not further analyse the story, which is +merely the mechanism that Wilde used for the display of the evidence to +which he desired to draw attention. + +It would be impossible to build an airier castle in Spain than this of +the imaginary William Hughes; impossible, too, to build one so +delightfully designed. The prose and the reasoning seem things of ivory, +Indian-carved, through which the rarest wind of criticism may freely +blow and carry delicate scents away without disturbing the yet more +delicate fabric. Wilde assumes that Shakespeare addressed the sonnets to +William Hughes, and, that assumption granted (though there is no William +Hughes to be found), colours his theory with an abundance of persuasive +touches, to strengthen what is, at first, only a courtesy belief. Though +all his argument is special pleading, Wilde contrives to make you feel +that counsel knows, though he cannot prove, that his client is in the +right. The evidence is only for the jury. You are inclined to interrupt +him with the exclamation that you are already convinced. But it is a +pleasure to listen to him, so you let him go on. After all, "brute +reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It +is like hitting below the intellect." Wilde's _Portrait of Mr. W. H._ is +more than a refutable theory, a charming piece of speculation. It is an +illustration of the critic as artist, a foretaste of _Intentions_. It is +better than 'The Truth of Masks,' as good as 'The Decay of Lying.' Yet +it was not printed in that book, where it might well have had a place. +The reason for this is not uninteresting. Wilde did not intend to +reprint it as it stood. The theory beneath that delicate brain-play had +a lasting fascination for him, and, with its proofs, grew in his mind +till it overbalanced Cyril Graham and doubting Erskine. He re-wrote it +at greater length, after delays. When he was arrested, the publishers, +who had already announced it as a forthcoming book, returned it to his +house, whence it disappeared on the day of the enforced sale of his +effects. It has never been recovered. + + + + +VI + +INTENTIONS + + +Mrs. Malaprop classes paradoxes with Greek, Hebrew, simony and fluxions +as inflammatory branches of learning, and, in _De Profundis_, Wilde +says: "What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity +became to me in the realm of passion." Paradox and perversity were +matches to set fire to his thought and his dreams. But paradox is not in +itself different from direct speech. It is made by the statement of a +result and the omission of the steps of reasoning by which that result +has been achieved. When somebody accused Jean Moreas, that brilliant +Greek, of being paradoxical, he replied: "I do not know what paradox is; +I believe it is the name which imbeciles give to the truth." Wilde might +have made a similar answer, and perhaps did. His paradoxes are only +unfamiliar truths. Those of them that were thought the wildest are +already becoming obvious, for unfamiliarity is a temporal quality like +flowers in a road: when a multitude has passed that way the flowers are +trodden out of sight. Paradox is, however, a proof of vitality and +adventurous thought, and these things are sometimes the companions of +charm. Unfamiliar truth was, at first, the most noticeable +characteristic of Wilde's _Intentions_, but, though paradox may fade to +commonplace, "age cannot wither nor custom stale" the fresh and debonair +personality that keeps the book alive, tossing thoughts like roses, and +playing with them in happiness of heart. + +There is something of the undergraduate about the book. Its pages might +be reprinted from a college magazine in which a genius was stretching +youthful limbs, instead of from such staid and respectable reviews as +The Fortnightly and The Nineteenth Century. It belongs to the days when +the most natural thing in life is to talk until "the dusky night rides +down the sky," and the pale morning light mocks at our yellow lamp. +Indeed, I think that such freshness and vivacity of writing is the gift +of those authors only who are also talkers. They are accustomed to see +their sentences in company, not in solitude. They give them a pleasing +strut and swagger and teach them to make graceful entries and exits +neither too ceremonious nor yet disorderly. Their sentences are men of +the world, and of a world where the passport to success is charm. It is +not so with lecturers or preachers, whose office puts them in a +different category. But men who talk for their own enjoyment and that of +those who listen to them are less likely than the others to compose by +eye instead of by ear. It is actually difficult to read Wilde in +silence. His sentences lift the voice as well as the thoughts of their +writer from the printed page. + +Wilde loved speech for its own sake, and nothing could be more +characteristic of his gift than his choice of that old and inexhaustible +form that Plato, Lucian, Erasmus and Landor, to name only a few, have +turned to such different purposes. Dialogue is at once personal and +impersonal. "By its means he (the thinker) can both reveal and conceal +himself, and give form to every fancy, and reality to every mood. By its +means he can exhibit the object from each point of view, and show it us +in the round, as a sculptor shows us things, gaining in this manner all +the richness and reality of effect that comes from those side issues +that are suddenly suggested by the central idea in its progress, and +really illumine the idea more completely, or from those felicitous +afterthoughts that give a fuller completeness to the central scheme, and +yet convey something of the delicate charm of chance." Nothing could +better describe Wilde's own essays in dialogue. + +The first of these essays is 'The Decay of Lying,' in which a young +gentleman called Vivian reads aloud an article on that subject to a +slightly older and rather incredulous young gentleman called Cyril, +commenting as he reads, answering objections, and sometimes laying the +manuscript on his knees as he follows the swift-flying swallow of his +thought through the airy mazes of her joyous exercise. Vivian holds a +brief for the artist against the nature that he is supposed to imitate. +He behaves like a lawyer, first picking his opponent to pieces, lest the +jury should be prejudiced in his favour, and then proving his own case +in so far as it is possible to prove it. The dialogue is a delightful +thing in itself: it is also of the first importance to the student of +Wilde's theories of art. Under its insouciance and extravagance lie many +of the ideas that dictated his attitude as writer and as critic. Vivian +begins by opposing the comfort of a Morris chair to the discomfort of +nature's insect-ridden grass, and complains that nature is as +indifferent to her cultured critic as to cow or burdock--which is not to +be borne. He then, a little more seriously, envisages the history of art +as a long warfare between the simian instinct of imitation and the +God-like instinct of self-expression. He needs to show that fine art +does not imitate, and points out that Japanese painting, of which, at +that time, everybody was talking, does not concern itself with Japan, +and that the Japan we imagine for ourselves with the help of +willow-pattern plates and the drawings of Hokusai is no more real in one +sense and no less real in another than the slit-eyed girl of Gautier's +"Chinoiserie," who lives in a porcelain tower above the Yellow River and +the long-necked cormorants. Our ideal Japan has existed only in the +minds of the artists who saw it, and when we cross the seas to look for +it, we find nothing but a few fans and coloured lanterns. But that is +not enough. We continually see lovely things in nature, strangely like +the things we see in books and pictures. There is plagiary here, on one +side or on the other, and, with almost ecstatic courage, Vivian +announces that, so far from art holding the mirror to nature (a view +advanced by Hamlet as a proof of his insanity), nature imitates art. He +may have taken the hint from Musset, for Fortunio, in the comedy of that +name, exclaims with melancholy criticism: "Comme ce soleil couchant est +manque ce soir. Regarde moi un pen ce vallee la-bas, ces quatre ou cinq +mechants nuages qui grimpent sur cette montagne. Je faisais des paysages +comme celui-la, quand j'avais douze ans, sur la couverture de mes livres +de classe." But he made the statement in no spirit of extravagance. It +seemed to him that we observe in nature what art has taught us to see, +and he chose that way of saying so. He elaborates it delightfully, so +that people may forget he has spoken the truth. Fogs, for example, did +not exist till art had invented them. "Now, it must be admitted, fogs +are carried to excess. They have become the mere mannerism of a clique, +and the exaggerated realism of their method gives dull people +bronchitis." Then he runs on for a few pages, illustrating these wise +saws with modern and ingenious instances of life hurrying after fiction, +reproducing the opening of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," setting an unreal +Becky Sharp beside Thackeray's creation, and going so far, indeed, as to +trip up the heels of a serial story with the sordid actuality of fact. + +He discusses Zola and his no less heavy-footed disciples, who stand for +the failure of imitation and are the best proofs that the mirror cracks +when the artist holds it up to anything except himself. Cyril suggests +that Balzac was a realist, and Vivian quotes Baudelaire's saying, that +"his very scullions have genius," compares him to Holbein, and points +out that he is far more real than life. "A steady course of Balzac +reduces our living friends to shadows and our acquaintances to the +shadows of shades." + +Then comes an objection to modernity of form, and some reasons for that +objection that suggest a very interesting speculation. He thinks that +Balzac's love for modernity of form prevented him from producing any +single book that can rank with the masterpieces of romantic art. And +then:--"The public imagine that, because they are interested in their +immediate surroundings, Art should be interested in them also, and +should take them as her subject matter. But the mere fact that they are +interested in these things makes them an unsuitable subject for Art. The +only beautiful things, as somebody once said, are the things that do not +concern us. As long as a thing is useful or necessary to us, or affects +us in any way, either for pain or for pleasure, or appeals strongly to +our sympathies, or is a vital part of the environment in which we live, +it is outside the proper sphere of Art." These words seemed, in 1889, to +be both daring and precarious. The influence of philosophy is not so +immediate as is sometimes supposed. It is not extravagant to find in +those few words a reflection, direct or indirect, of Immanuel Kant, who, +writing in 1790, said that what is called beautiful is the object of a +delight apart from any interest, and showed that charm, or intimate +reference to our own circumstances or possible circumstances, so far +from being a criterion of beauty, was a disturbing influence upon our +judgment. In the Preface to _Dorian Gray_, that little flaunting +compendium of Wilde's aesthetics, it is easy to trace the ideas of Kant, +divested of their technical phrasing, freed from their background of +reasoning and their foreground of accurate explanation. For +example:--"No artist desires to prove anything." This balances Kant's +banishment of concepts from the beautiful. For another:--"All art is +quite useless." This balances Kant's distinction between the beautiful +and the good. This is not the place for any worthy discussion of the +relation between the theory and the practice of art; but it is +interesting to notice that what was temperamentally true for Wilde, and +therefore peculiarly his own, had been logically true for a philosopher +a hundred years before. Coleridge, whose originality there is no more +need to question than Wilde's, gave Kant's ideas a different colouring. +Is it that the philosopher is unable to apply in detail what the artist +is unable to conceive as a whole? + +It is important to remember that throughout this dialogue, Wilde is +speaking of pure art, a thing which possibly does not exist, and, +recognising it as an ideal towards which all artists should aspire, is +engaged in pointing out the more obvious means of falling short of it. +He achieves a triumph, of a kind in which he delighted, by making +people read of such a subject. Not wishing to be laughed at by the +British intellect, and wishing to be listened to, he laughs at it +instead, and, near the end of the dialogue, is so daring as to present +it with a picture of what is occurring, confident that the individual +will disclaim the general, and smile without annoyance at the +caricature. "The stolid British intellect lies in the desert sands like +the Sphinx in Flaubert's marvellous tale, and fantasy, _La Chimere_, +dances round it and calls to it with her false flute-toned voice." And +the individual reader did not understand, and Wilde danced away until he +felt inclined again to make him listen to the flute-toned enunciation of +unfamiliar truths. + +'Pen, Pencil, and Poison,' the essay on Wainewright, not in dialogue, +has some of the hard angular outlines of the set article on book or +public character. It fills these outlines, however, with picturesque +detail and half-ironic speculation. It is impossible not to notice the +resemblance between the subject of this essay and its author. It is +difficult not to suspect that Wilde, in setting in clear perspective +Wainewright's poisoning and writing, in estimating the possible power of +crime to intensify a personality, was analysing himself, and expressing +through a psychological account of another man the results of that +analysis. Perhaps, in that essay we have less analysis than hypothesis. +Wilde may have happened on the Life of Wainewright, and taken it, among +all the books he had read, as a kind of Virgilian omen. My metaphor, as +Dr. Chasuble would say, is drawn from Virgil. It used to be customary +among those who wished to look into the future to open the works of that +poet and to observe the lines covered by the thumb: "which lines, if in +any way applicable to one's condition, were accounted prophetic." I +think it possible that Wilde looked upon the little account of +Wainewright that gave him a basis for his article as just such a +prophetic intimation. He may have written the article to taste his +future before the fact. Anyhow, he foreshadows the line of defence to be +taken by his own apologists when he exclaims that "the fact of a man +being a poisoner is nothing against his prose." In any discussion of the +influence that Wilde's disease or crime exerted on his art, this essay +would be a valuable piece of evidence. But in other things than the +engaging in a secret activity, Wainewright offered Wilde a curious +parallel with himself. He too introduced a new manner in writing by a +new manner in dress, and Wilde was able to use his own emotions in the +presence of blue china to vitalize the piece of Dutch painting, a +Gabriel Metsu or a Jan van Eyck, in which he paints Wainewright with his +cats, his curiosities, his crucifixes, his rare books, his cameos, and +his "brown-biscuit tea-pots, filigree worked," against a background in +which green predominates. "He had that curious love of green, which in +individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in +nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals." Wilde +also was fond of green. I have not counted occasions, but I have the +impression that green is the colour most often mentioned alike in his +verse and in his prose. Green and jade: these are his keynotes in +colour, unless I am mistaken, and in these matters impressions are less +likely to err than mathematics. + +But the most striking and beautiful thing in _Intentions_ is that +dialogue between the two young men in a library whose windows look over +the kaleidoscopic swirl of Piccadilly to the trees and lawns of the +Green Park. They talk through the summer night, supping delicately on +ortolans and Chambertin, and, in the early morning, draw the curtains, +see the silver ribbon of the road, the purple mist among the trees, and +walk down to Covent Garden to look at the roses that have come in from +the country. There is something of Boccaccio in that setting, +something, too, of Landor in the lucid sentences of their talk, and +something of Walter Pater in the choice of the fruit they so idly pluck +from the tree of knowledge. But Pater could not have let their +conversation change so easily from smooth to ripple and from ripple to +smooth; Landor would have caught the ripples and carved them in +transparent moonstone, and Boccaccio would have given them girls to talk +of, instead of "The Critic as Artist." + +That would seem to be a question for the learned and not for two young +exquisites with a taste for music and books and an aesthetic dislike of +the German language. But the only critical dialogue in English +literature that is at all comparable with Wilde's is "The Impartial +Critick" of John Dennis, who was ready to prove that choruses were +unnecessary in tragedy, that Wycherley excelled Plautus, and that +Shakespeare himself was not so bad as Thomas Rymer had painted him. And +there too we have young men, not themselves authors, talking for +pleasure's sake, drinking with discretion, now in their lodgings, now at +The Old Devil and now at The Cock, reading aloud to each other and +commenting verse by verse on Mr. Waller, whom they admit to be "a great +Genius and a gallant Writer." There is a delightful savour about that +dialogue, dry as some of the questions were that those two young sparks +discussed with such wet throats. There is a suggestion of the town +outside and the country beyond, of stage-coaches passing through the +Haymarket, and of Hampshire gentlemen "being forbid by the perpetual +Rains to follow the daily labour of their Country Sports," handing about +their Brimmers within doors, "as fast as if they had done it for +Exercise." And those young men talk with just the fine superiority of +Ernest and Gilbert to the authordom whose rules and persons they amuse +themselves by discussing. + +Ernest and Gilbert are, however, better talkers. In fact, their talk is +far too good really to have been heard. They set their excellence as a +barrier between themselves and life. Not for a moment will they forget +that they are the creatures of art: not for a moment will they leave +that calm air for the dust and turmoil of human argument. Wilde was +never so sure of his art as in this dialogue, where Ernest, that +ethereal Sancho Panza, and Gilbert, that rather languid Don Quixote, +tilt for their hearer's joy. They share the power of visualization that +made Wilde's own talk like a continuous fairy tale. They turn their +ideas into a coloured pageantry, and all the gods of Greece and +characters of art are ready to grace by their visible presence the +exposition, whether of the ideas that are to be confuted or of those +that are to take their place. "In the best days of art," says Ernest, +"there were no art critics," and four pages follow in which the sculptor +releases the sleeping figures from the marble, Phaedrus bathes his feet +in the nymph-haunted meadow, the little figures of Tanagra are shaped +with bone or wooden tool from river clay, Artemis and her hounds are cut +upon a veined sardonyx, the wanderings of Odysseus are stained upon the +plaster, and round the earthen wine-jar Bacchus dances and Silenus +sprawls. + +"But no," says Gilbert, "the Greeks were a nation of art-critics." He +balances with a sequence of ideas his friend's pageant of pictures. The +Greeks criticized language, and "Words have not merely music as sweet as +that of viol and lute, colour as rich and vivid as any that makes lovely +for us the canvas of the Venetian or the Spaniard, and plastic form no +less sure and certain than that which reveals itself in marble or in +bronze, but thought and passion and spirituality are theirs also, are +theirs indeed alone. If the Greeks had criticized nothing but language, +they would still have been the great art-critics of the world. To know +the principles of the highest art is to know the principles of all the +arts." And so the talk goes on. There is but one defect in this +panoramic method of presenting ideas. Each time that Wilde empties, or +seems to spill before us, his wonderful cornucopia of coloured imagery, +he seems to build a wave that towers like the blue and silver billow of +Hokusai's print. Now, surely, it will break, we say, and are tempted to +echo Cyril in 'The Decay of Lying,' when, at the close of one of these +miraculous paragraphs, he remarks, "I like that. I can see it. Is that +the end?" Too many of Wilde's paragraphs are perorations. + +It is easy, in remembering the colour and rhythm of this dialogue, to +forget the subtlety of its construction, the richness of its matter, and +the care that Wilde brought to the consideration of his subject. I have +pleased myself by working out a scheme of its contents, such as Wilde +may have used in building it. Perhaps I could have found no better +method of illustrating the qualities I have mentioned. + +He begins with a story in the memoirs of an Academician, and, without +telling it, goes on to praise autobiographies and biographies and +egotism, in order to induce a frame of mind in the reader that shall +make him ready to consider without too much hostility a peculiarly +subjective form of art. He winds into his subject like a serpent, as +Goldsmith said of Burke, by way of music, returning to the story told by +the Academician, which is allowed to suggest a remark on the uselessness +of art-criticism. The ideas follow in some such order as this. Bad +Criticism. The Browning Society as an example. Browning. A swift and +skilful return to the point at issue. The Greeks not art critics. The +Greeks a nation of art critics. Life and Literature the highest arts. +Walter Pater. Greek criticism of language and the test of the spoken +word. Blind Milton writing by ear alone. Example of Greek criticism in +Aristotle's "Poetics." Identification of the creative and critical +faculties. All fine art is self-conscious. Criticism as such more +difficult than creation. Action and reverie. Sin an element of progress, +because it intensifies the individuality. The world made by the singer +for the dreamer. Criticism itself art, a form of autobiography concerned +with thoughts not events. Criticism purely subjective, and so +independent of obvious subject. For examples, Ruskin's prose independent +of his views on Turner; Pater's description of Mona Lisa independent of +the intention of Leonardo. "The meaning of a beautiful created thing is +as much in the soul of him who looks at it, as it was in his soul who +wrought it." Music. "Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods." The +highest criticism "criticizes not merely the individual work of art, but +Beauty itself, and fills with wonder a form which the artist may have +left void, or not understood, or understood incompletely." A work of art +is to the critic a suggestion for a new work of his own. Modern +painting. Too intelligible pictures do not challenge the critic. +Imitation and suggestion. "The aesthetic critic rejects those obvious +modes of art that have but one message to deliver, and having delivered +it become dumb and sterile." At this point, supper, with a promise to +discuss the critic as interpreter. Part II picks up the discussion and +continues. Works of art need interpretation. A true appreciation of +Milton, for example, impossible without scholarship. But the truth of a +critic's interpretation depends on the intensity of his own personality. +All arts have their critics. The actor a critic of the drama. The +executant a critic of the composer. Critics "will be always showing us +the work of art in some new relation to our age." Tendency towards +finding experience in art rather than in life. Life a failure from the +artistic point of view, if only because a moment of life can never be +lived again, whereas in literature, one can be sure of finding the +particular emotion for which one looks. A pageantry of the things that +have been happening in Dante for six hundred years. Baudelaire and +others. The transference of emotion. Not through life but through art +can we realize perfection. The immorality of art. "For emotion for the +sake of emotion is the aim of art, and emotion for the sake of action is +the aim of life, and of that practical organization of life that we call +society." A further comparison between action and contemplation. Ernest +asks, "We exist, then, to do nothing," and Gilbert answers, "It is to do +nothing that the elect exist." There follows one of the few passages +that contains any outspoken mention of a decadence. (This word was +freely used as a label in England and France at this time.) "But we who +are born at the close of this wonderful age are at once too cultured and +too critical, too intellectually subtle and too curious of exquisite +pleasures, to accept any speculations about life in exchange for life +itself." "In the development of the critical spirit we shall be able to +realise, not merely our own lives, but the collective life of the race." +Heredity, "the only one of the gods whose real name we know," brings +gifts of strange temperaments and impossible desires, and the power of +living a thousand lives. Imagination is "concentrated race-experience." +Being and becoming compared with doing. Defence of egotism. "The sure +way of knowing nothing about life is to try to make oneself useful." +Schoolmasters. Self-culture, not the culture of others, the proper aim +of man. The idea is dangerous: so are all ideas. Ernest suggests that +the fact that a critical work is subjective places it below the greatest +work, which is impersonal and objective. Gilbert replies that "the +difference between objective and subjective work is one of external form +merely. It is accidental, not essential. All artistic creation is +absolutely subjective." Critics not even limited to the more obviously +subjective forms of expression, but may use drama, dialogues, narrative, +or poetry. He then turns more particularly to the critic's +qualifications. He must not be fair, not be rational, not be sincere, +except in his devotion to the principle of beauty, Journalism, +reviewing, and prurience. Intrusion of morals into art. Further +consideration of the critic's qualifications. Temperament, its +cultivation through decorative art. A digression on modern painting, +returning to the subject of decorative art. The influence of the critic +should be the mere fact of his existence. "You must not ask of him to +have any aim other than the perfecting of himself." It is not his +business to reform bad artists, who are probably quite irreclaimable. +Remembering, but not alluding to Whistler's attack, he lets Ernest ask, +"But may it not be that the poet is the best judge of poetry, and the +painter of painting?" Gilbert replies, "The appeal of all art is simply +to the artistic temperament." Great artists unable to recognize the +beauty of work different from their own. Examples:--Wordsworth on Keats, +Shelley on Wordsworth, Byron on all three, Sophocles on Euripides, +Milton on Shakespeare, Reynolds on Gainsborough. The future belongs to +criticism. "The subject-matter at the disposal of creation is always +diminishing, while the subject-matter of criticism increases daily." The +use of criticism. It makes culture possible, makes the mind a fine +instrument, "takes the cumbersome mass of creative work, and distils it +into a finer essence." It recreates the past. It makes us cosmopolitan. +Goethe could not hate France even during her invasion of Germany. +Comparison between ethics and aesthetics. "To discern the beauty of a +thing is the finest point to which we can arrive." "Creation is always +behind the age. It is Criticism that leads us." A swift summary, with a +graceful transition to the dawn and opening windows over Piccadilly. +Such is the skeleton of thought that connects all that is said, and, +disguised by a wonderful skill, makes even the transitions delightful, +and remembers the main purpose again and again without ever wearying us +by allowing us to be conscious of repetition. + +But, forgetting these mechanics and listening to that light-hearted +conversation, we become aware that we are enjoying the exposition of a +point of view without an understanding of which Wilde would be +unintelligible as either man or writer. It does not represent him +completely; a man's points of views are as various as his moods. But, +with 'The Decay of Lying,' it does represent what was, perhaps, the +dominant mood of his life. The dialogues overlap, but do not contradict +each other. It can hardly have been chance that divided them in +_Intentions_, by 'Pen, Pencil, and Poison,' that reflects the mood +directly opposite, the mood in which he delighted to see a personality +express itself in clothes, in vice, in action of any kind other than the +vivid inaction of art. It is more likely to have been self-knowledge. +For the mood that dictated the study of Wainewright was akin to that in +which he found it an astounding adventure to entertain poisonous things. +"It was like feasting with panthers; the danger was half the +excitement." Wilde's tragedy may be traced to the conflict between these +moods, the one inviting him to life, the other to art. In either case, +life or art matched its colours to seduce his temperament. The mood of +the dialogues was that in which he turned, not necessarily always to +writing, but to seek experience in art. In this mood he preferred, if +you like to put it so, to take life at second-hand, and was happier to +speak of Corot than of twilight, of Turner than of sunset. In this mood, +like Vivian, he did not seek in Japanese art to know Japan, but rather +to learn a new country "anywhere out of the world." Ancient Greece did +not mean to him the Peloponnesian War, but the candour of Grecian +statuary and the small figures of Tanagra, in the folds of whose dancing +dresses, that seem always to have caught the tint of the evening sky in +their terra-cotta, he found the secret of quite another country than the +Greece of the historian. It was always his pleasure to begin where +others had ended, and criticism rather than creation came to mean for +him the delicate adventures of the intellect, such a life as was the +best part of his own. And so criticism became creation for him, building +its impressions into things beautiful in themselves, and transforming +the life of the critic into something no less delightful than the +subjects of his contemplation. + +Such a theory of criticism had not been stated before his time, though +there had been such critics and such criticism. The abstract usually +follows the concrete, and the practice dictates the precept. Wilde had +in his mind as he wrote such fine flaming things as Swinburne's study of +Blake, and such slow-moving magnificent pageants as "Marius the +Epicurean," in which Pater had criticized a century of manners and +ideas. And, perhaps, he did not forget his own 'Pen, Pencil, and +Poison,' that was "a study in green," as well as a summary of the life +and talents of Janus Weathercock of The London Magazine. + +Beautiful criticism had been made as long ago as when Sidney wrote of +the "blind crowder," whose song moved his heart like the sound of a +trumpet. But men had not known what they were doing, and made lovely +things with quite another purpose. Coleridge set the key for many men's +playing when he said that "the ultimate end of criticism is much more to +establish the principles of writing, than to furnish rules how to pass +judgments on what has been written by others; if indeed it were possible +that the two could be separated." And Mr. Arthur Symons, who has in our +own day made fine critical things, yet says, quite humbly, that "the aim +of criticism is to distinguish what is essential in the work of a +writer," and again, that "criticism is a valuation of forces." Hazlitt +was no further from the truth when he wrote, in a pleasant, rather +malicious article on the critics of his time, that "a genuine criticism +should, as I take it, reflect the colours, the light and shade, the soul +and body of a work." Criticism, as Wilde saw it, was free to do all +these things, but had a further duty to itself. Hazlitt, and those who +read him in his own day, thought that he was giving opinions, talking, +reflecting "the soul and body of a work"; but it is for himself that we +read him now, and his subjects and opinions matter little beside the +gusto and the fresh wind of the chalk downs that make his essays things +in themselves and fit for such criticism as he liked. Wainewright too, +who learnt from Hazlitt, "deals," as Wilde saw, "with his impressions of +the work as an artistic whole, and tries to translate these impressions +into words, to give, as it were, the literary equivalent for his +imaginative and mental effect." But he did not say so, and perhaps +Walter Pater's essays were the first to make it impossible not to +recognize that criticism was more than a series of judgments, opinions +and ideas, necessarily subordinate to the thing criticized. + +Wilde, at any rate, recognized this, and carried passive recognition +into active proclamation of a new creed for critics. He gave them a new +creed and a new charter, and, if he had done nothing else, would have +earned a place in the history of our literature. He showed that they +were free to do all they had ever attempted, to track the secret stream +of inspiration to its source, to work out alike the melody and +counterpoint of art, to discover its principles, to enjoy its examples, +to paint portraits, to talk with their sitters, to enounce ideas, to +catch the fleeting sunlight and shadow of impression. They were free to +do all this, and for a creed he taught them that criticism is itself a +creative art, perhaps the most creative of the arts, certainly an art to +be practised with no less delicate care than that of the maker of poems, +the teller of stories, the painter of pictures, the man who captures a +melody, or the man who shapes a dream in stone. + +My private predilections may have led me to lay too much emphasis on the +main contention of 'The Critic as Artist.' I hope not, but must take +this opportunity of remembering that, like 'The Decay of Lying,' this +dialogue is rich in other matter than theory. Wilde never, unless in the +essay on Wainewright, deliberately set himself to estimate an artist or +to paint a portrait. But throughout the two dialogues are scattered +fragments of vivid criticism, sometimes a little swift and careless, +always subordinated as notes of colour to the prevailing scheme of the +whole, but never impersonal or dull. It is impossible to read a page of +_Intentions_ without experiencing a delightful stimulus. It is, in my +opinion, that one of Wilde's books that most nearly represents him. In +nothing else that he wrote did he come so near to pouring into +literature the elixir of intellectual vitality that he royally spilled +over his conversation. + + +The fourth essay in the book is not on the high level of the others. It +is more practical and less beautiful, was written earlier than the rest, +and published in the year after Wilde's marriage. It is interesting, but +less as a thing in itself than as an indication of the character of +Wilde's knowledge of the theatre. I have therefore passed it over to the +next chapter. + + + + +VII + +THE THEATRE + + +There is a public glory in the art of the theatre, a direct and +immediate applause that is nearer to the face-to-face praise and visible +worship that is won by conversation than the discreet approval of +readers of books. Of all the arts that of the drama is most likely to +attract the talker for talk's sake. By its means he can set his fancies +moving on the boards, fling his metaphors dressed and coloured on a +monstrous screen, and entertain a thousand listeners at once. Hazlitt +never wrote a play; but his was talk with a purpose. He talked to learn, +to teach, to think aloud. But Lamb, who talked for the delight of +himself and his friends, tried to amuse a larger audience with "Mr. H.," +and, when that play was damned, joined heartily in the hisses, for fear +of being mistaken for the author. Those who conspired at the Mermaid +Tavern to send brave argosies of wit trafficking on a bluer sea than +ever sailed Drake's galleons were playwrights to a man. Particularly the +theatre attracts those dandies among authors and talkers, for whom +social means as much as artistic success--Steele, Congreve, Wilde. +Congreve, like Wilde, went to Trinity College, Dublin (though he was not +an Irishman), came to London with but little money, was a public +character before he was twenty-five, cared as much for society as for +art, grew fat with success, and became a gentleman of the world. The +differences between his comedies and Wilde's are not due to different +aims in writing, but only to differences in their personalities, and to +the change in public taste during the two centuries that passed between +"Love for Love" and _The Importance of Being Earnest_. Not until +Congreve had had three plays successfully acted did he write one of +which "but little ... was prepared for that general taste which seems +now to be predominant in the palates of our audience." + +It is important in considering Wilde's early comedies to remember the +character of the audience with which he had to contend. His was a public +that asked to feel as well as to smile, a public that had grown +accustomed to smile with tears in its eyes, a public that was best +pleased to laugh loudly and to sob into handkerchiefs, and judged a play +by the loudness of the laughs and the number of the handkerchiefs that +it made necessary. He had not a Restoration audience of men and women +with sharpened wits and a delight in their exercise, ready to smile and +quite unready to take anything seriously except amusement. It is for +that reason that he called _Lady Windermere's Fan_ "A Play about a Good +Woman," instead of making Mrs. Erlynne a Sylvia and punishing Lord +Darlington with a marriage. + +The spectacular effects of the theatre, the possibilities of delightful +dialogue, the public glory, of which he was always rather greedy, drew +Wilde to the writing of plays. But beside these less intimate motives he +had a genuine dramatic instinct that kept him from his early youth +intermittently preparing himself as a playwright. The first thing he +wrote after the publication of _Poems_ was a play. He took it with him +to America, and on his return wrote another. With the charming +braggadocio of one who was quite determined that there should be an Op. +XXX. he printed Op. II. on the title-page of the private issue of _The +Duchess of Padua_. His public recognition as a playwright was deferred +till 1892, but after the writing of _Vera_, which, I suppose, was Op. +I., he seldom ceased to observe and to plan for the stage. + +The character of Wilde's study of the theatre was shown in 'The Truth of +Masks,' and in the dramatic criticism that he wrote in the years +immediately following his marriage. It was a study of methods and +concerned no less with stage-management than with the drama. Nearly +thirty years ago he made a plea for beautiful scenery, and asked for +that harmony between costumier and scene-painter that has been achieved +in our day by Charles Ricketts and Cayley Robinson under the management +of Mr. Herbert Trench. He remarked that painted doors were superior to +real ones, and pointed out that properties which need light from more +than one side destroy the illumination suggested by the scene-painter's +shadings. From the first his dramatic criticism was written in the +wings, not from the point of view of an audience careless of means, +observant only of effects. _Vera_ may have been dull, and _The Duchess +of Padua_ unplayable, but actors, at least, shall have no fault to find +in the technique of _Lady Windermere's Fan_. That play seems to me to be +no more than a conscious experiment in the use of the knowledge that +Wilde had sedulously worked to obtain. + +There was a continuity in Wilde's interest in the theatre wholly lacking +in his passing fancies for narrative or essay-writing. This, with the +fact that his plays brought him his first financial success, has made it +usual to consider him as a dramatist whose recreations are represented +by his books. Even Mr. Symons, in his article on Wilde as "An Artist in +Attitudes," finds that his plays, "the wittiest that have been seen upon +the modern stage," expressed, "as it happened by accident, precisely +what he himself was best able to express." I cannot help feeling that +this is a little unjust to him. His most perfectly successful works, +those which most exactly accomplish what they attempt, without +sacrificing any part of themselves, are, perhaps, _The Importance of +Being Earnest_ and _Salome_. Both these are plays. But neither of them +seems to me so characteristic, so inclusive of Wilde as _Intentions_, +_De Profundis_, _The Portrait of Mr. W. H._, or even _The Picture of +Dorian Gray_. His plays are wilfully limited, subordinated to an aim +outside themselves, and, except in the two I have just mentioned, these +limitations are not such as to justify themselves by giving freedom to +the artist. Some limitations set an artist free for an achievement +otherwise impossible. But the limitations of which I complain only made +Wilde a little contemptuous of his work. They did not save his talent +from preoccupations, but compelled it to a labour in whose success alone +he could take an interest. + +It is impossible not to feel that Wilde was impatient of the methods and +the meanings of his first three successful plays, like a juggler, +conscious of being able to toss up six balls, who is admired for tossing +three. These good women, these unselfish, pseudonymous mothers, these +men of wit and fashion discomfited to make a British holiday; their +temptations, their sacrifices, their defeats, are not taken from any +drama played in Wilde's own mind. He saw them and their adventures quite +impersonally; and no good art is impersonal. Salome kissing the pale +lips of Iokanaan may once have moved him when he saw her behind the +ghostly footlights of that secret theatre in which each man is his own +dramatist, his own stage-manager, and his own audience. But Lady +Windermere did not return to her husband for Wilde's sake, and he did +not feel that Sir Robert Chiltern's future mattered either way. He cared +only that an audience he despised should be relieved at her return, and +that to them the career of a politician should seem to be important. Not +until the production of _The Importance of Being Earnest_ did he share +the pleasure of the pit. I know a travelling showman who makes "enjoy" +an active verb, and speaks of "enjoying the poor folk" when, for +coppers, he lets them ride on merry-go-rounds, and agitate themselves in +swing-boats, which offer him no manner of amusement. In just this way +Wilde "enjoyed" the London audiences with his early plays. He did not +enjoy them himself. + +Hazlitt said of Congreve that "the workmanship overlays the materials; +in Wycherley the casting of the parts and the fable are alone sufficient +to ensure success." Wilde may not have read Hazlitt on "The English +Comic Writers," but his earlier plays suggest a determination to "ensure +success" after the manner of Wycherley, and to overlay the base material +necessary for that purpose with wit's fine workmanship after the manner +of Congreve. The fables, the characters, the settings, were chosen on +account of their experience; all were veterans with reputations +untarnished by any failure in popularity. Some were taken from the +English stage, some from the French; all served as the machinery to keep +an audience interested and carry Wilde's voice across the footlights. In +the theatre, as in storytelling, he was not unready to work to +_bouts-rimes_. + +I say, to carry Wilde's voice across the footlights: that is exactly +what his plays do. Those neat, polished sentences, snapping like +snuffboxes, are often taken from the books that hold what he chose to +preserve of his conversation. An aphorism that has served the author of +_The Soul of Man_ and shone for a moment in _Dorian Gray_ is given a new +vitality by Lord Illingworth, and what is good enough for Lady +Narborough is a little better in the mouth of Dumby. Wilde was never +without the power, shared by all amateurs of genius, of using up the +odds and ends from one pastime to fill out the detail of another. Doing +things, like Merimee, for wagers with himself, he would make plays that +should be powerful in their effect on other people, but he would reserve +the right to show, even while making them, that he could do something +else. He learnt from Musset, and believed, with Fortunio, that "a pun is +a consolation for many ills, and a play upon words as good a way as +another of playing with thoughts, actions, and people." He consoled +himself for his plots by taking extraordinary liberties with them, and +amused himself with quips, bons-mots, epigrams and repartee that had +really nothing to do with the business in hand. Most of his witty +sayings would bear transplanting from one play to another, and it is +necessary to consult the book if we would remember in whose mouth they +were placed. This is a very different thing from the dialogue of +Congreve on the one hand or of J. M. Synge on the other. The whole +arrangement in conversation, as he might appropriately have called +either _Lady Windermere's Fan_, _An Ideal Husband_, or _A Woman of No +Importance_, was very much lighter than the story that served as its +excuse and sometimes rudely interrupted it. It was so sparkling, +good-humoured and novel that even the audience for whom he had +constructed the story forgave him for putting a brake upon its speed +with this quite separate verbal entertainment. + +I suppose that this forgiveness encouraged him to believe that the +situations and emotional appeals he borrowed from melodrama were not +necessary to his success. In _The Importance of Being Earnest_ he threw +them bravely overboard, and wrote a play whose very foundation was a +pun. Nothing could be a better proof of the inessential nature of those +tricks with which he had been making sure of his audience than the +immense superiority of this play to the others. Free from the necessity +of living up to any drama more serious than its conversation, it +preserves a unity of feeling and of tone that sets it upon a higher +level. Wit is a little heartless, a little jarring, when flashed over a +crisis of conscience, even when we know that the agitated politician is +only a figure cut from an illustrated paper and mounted on cardboard. +And passion, whether of repentance or of indignation, is a little +_outre_ in a picture-gallery where Lord Illingworth has said that a +well-tied tie is the first serious step in life. In those first three +plays, even when Wilde makes a serious effort to get dramatic value out +of, for example, the Lord Illingworth's worldly wisdom, he is quite +unable to disguise the fact that it is an effort and serious. Those +plays are interesting, amusing, clever, what you will, but their +contradictions have cost them beauty. It is not in the least surprising +that _The Importance of Being Earnest_, the most trivial of the social +plays, should be the only one of them that gives that peculiar +exhilaration of spirit by which we recognise the beautiful. It is +precisely because it is consistently trivial that it is not ugly. If +only once it marred its triviality with a bruise of passion, its beauty +would vanish with the blow. But it never contradicts itself, and it is +worth noticing that its unity, its dovetailing of dialogue and plot, so +that the one helps the other, is not achieved at the expense of the +conversation, but at that of the mechanical contrivances for filling a +theatre that Wilde had not at first felt sure of being able to do +without. The dialogue has not been weighted to trudge with the plot; the +plot has been lightened till it can fly with the wings of the dialogue. +The two are become one, and the lambent laughter of this comedy is due +to the radioactivity of the thing itself, and not to glow-worms +incongruously stuck over its surface. + +It is not easy to define the quality of that laughter. It is not +uproarious enough to provide the sore throat of farce. It is not +thoughtful enough to pass Meredith's test of comedy. It is not due to a +sense of superior intellect, like much of Mr. Shaw's. It is the laughter +of complicity. We do not laugh at but with the persons of the play. We +would, if we could, abet the duplicity of Mr. Worthing, and be +accessories after the fact to the Bunburying of Algernon. We would even +encourage Lady Bracknell's determined statement, for we are in the +secret, and we know-- + + + She only does it to amuse, + Because she knows it pleases. + + +The simultaneous speech of Cecily and Gwendolen is no insult to our +intelligence, nor do we boggle for a moment over the delightful +impossibility of Lane. We are caught from the beginning by a spirit of +delicate fun. We busy ourselves in the intrigues, and would on no +account draw back. _The Importance of Being Earnest_ is to solid comedy +what filigree is to a silver bowl. We are relieved of our corporeal +envelopes, and share with Wilde the pleasure of sporting in the fourth +dimension. + + * * * * * + +Nothing better illustrates Wilde's extraordinary versatility than his +almost simultaneous business as two entirely different dramatists. The +one wrote the plays we have been discussing, the other, plays so +different from these in character that it is hard to believe that they +are the work of the same man. These other plays have been called +"romantic," a word that hardly distinguishes them from the "romantic" +comedy of _The Importance of Being Earnest_. Still, Gautier and Flaubert +have made it possible to attribute to that word a flavour of the South +and the East, and these plays have Southern and Eastern settings that +are harmonious with their contents. There is no laughter in these plays. +They are nearer to _The Duchess of Padua_ than to comedy. Wilde +delighted in laughter, but also in a quality in emotion almost hostile +to laughter, a quality that I can best describe as magnificence. In his +prose books both are expressed; if his dramatic writing had been limited +to the four plays that brought him success, it would have seemed that +the Wilde who wrote _The Sphinx_ had not been represented on the stage. + +But, when he was writing _Lady Windermere's Fan_, or a little earlier, +he wrote down, swiftly, as if to relieve himself, a play whose mood was +at the opposite end of his range. And, while _The Importance of Being +Earnest_ was filling the St. James's Theatre, he was trying to finish +_La Sainte Courtisane_, and had submitted to a manager the latter part +of _A Florentine Tragedy_, which he had never been able to begin. When +he was released from prison, he left the manuscript of the first in a +cab, and did not complete the second. He had imagined, while in Reading +Gaol, two other such plays as _Salome--Ahab and Isabel_, and _Pharaoh_. +These, unfortunately, like _The Cardinal of Arragon_, portions of which +Wilde was accustomed to recite, were never written. The non-existence +and the incompleteness of these plays are explicable on other grounds +than those of inclination. I think that if _Salome_ had been produced +with success as soon as it was written, Wilde would very likely not have +written his plays about good women and conscience-stricken men of State, +or, having written one, would have written no more. It is possible that +we owe _The Importance of Being Earnest_ to the fact that the Censor +prevented Sarah Bernhardt from playing _Salome_ at the Palace Theatre. +For though Wilde had the secret of a wonderful laughter, he preferred to +think of himself as a person with magnificent dreams. He would rather +have been a magician than a jester. The well-dressed modern plays +starved too many of his intimate desires. He was unable to clothe +magnificent emotions in evening dress. But applause was necessary to +him. He made sure of it by the modern plays, and had not a chance of +securing it by anything else. And so there are four social comedies, and +only one _Salome_. + +Of the unfinished plays, as they are printed in his works, there is +little to be said. _La Sainte Courtisane_ is a beautiful fragment, +suggesting a story rather intellectual than emotional, but an admirable +framework on which to drape a cloak of imagery. The motive is the same +as that of _The Portrait of Mr. W. H._ The woman covered with jewels is +converted by the hermit to the love of God, and he by her to the love of +the flesh. They lose their own beliefs in imparting them, and the hermit +goes to Alexandria, while the woman remains in the desert. The dialogue +is of the same character as that of _Salome_, which we shall presently +discuss. We cannot tell how fine a play it might have been. _The +Florentine Tragedy_ is less fragmentary. As Wilde left it, it was the +latter part of a play in one act in blank verse, beginning with the +surprisal of the lovers by the husband. The whole of the conversation +between the three had been written. To fit the play for presentation on +the stage, Mr. Sturge Moore wrote a preparation for it that cannot be +far different from Wilde's design, and is now printed with the rest. It +is not the business of this book to consider the brilliant and vigorous +poetry of Mr. Sturge Moore, though it is impossible not to remember with +delight passages from many of his books, always rich in ore, and again +and again melting into purest gold. His induction to Wilde's play is +perfectly calculated. He catches the spirit of Wilde's verse, and +subdues his own to agreement. His is the difficult task of so drawing +Bianca's character that she shall be able without incongruity to beg the +young lord to kill her husband, and, when the young lord is himself +killed, to come dazed towards the merchant she has despised, with the +question-- + + + "Why + Did you not tell me you were so strong?" + + +and receive the answer-- + + + "Why + Did you not tell me you were beautiful?" + + +Wilde's is a piece of cumulative drama that keeps up an increasing +tension in the audience from the moment that the husband enters till the +moment when the lover dies and those two sentences are spoken. The play +resembles _The Duchess of Padua_ in being unable to disguise an aloof +intention, an extraneous will-power, that is perfectly hidden in the +earlier _Salome_. + +It is surprising to think that _Salome_ was not written with a view to +production. It was only offered to Sarah Bernhardt when she asked Wilde +why he had not written a play for her. The stage-directions, I am told, +set almost insoluble problems to the manager, whose ideas are limited by +the conventions of the modern theatre. The final speech of Salome is of +a length that demands, if abridgment is to be avoided, a consummate +actress and an audience in a state of extraordinary tension. But, since +the play induces such a tension, the lack of an actress can hardly be +urged as a blemish on its technique. And since, when the play is +produced it is extremely successful, we can only rejoice that it has +shown, if only accidentally, the inadequacy of once accepted dogmas of +theatrical presentation. An appeal to the populace is not good +criticism, but no badly built play can show such a record of success as +_Salome_. Mr. Ross will, I am sure, allow me to use some of the heavy +fire of facts with which he answered those critics who spoke of the play +as having been "dragged from obscurity" when it was produced in England +in 1905. "In 1901, within a year of the author's death, it was produced +in Berlin; from that moment it has held the European stage. It has run +for a longer consecutive period in Germany than any play by any +Englishman, not excepting Shakespeare. Its popularity has extended to +all countries where it is not prohibited. It is performed throughout +Europe, Asia, and America. It is played even in Yiddish." + +But before discussing the play itself let me set down the facts on both +sides of the mild controversy over the writing of it in French. Wilde +had talked of the play for some time before he wrote it, and talked of +it chiefly in Paris. Frenchmen had applauded the fragments he recited. +It was to them that he wished to show it when completed. This is the +reason why it shares with "Vathek" and "The Grammont Memoirs" the +distinction of being a work written in French by an English-speaking man +of genius. It has been suggested that the language made it possible, but +_La Sainte Courtisane_ is enough to show that it could have been written +in English. There are slight disagreements over Wilde's knowledge of +French. M. Andre Gide says that "he knew French admirably, but pretended +to have to look for the words for which he meant his listeners to wait. +He had almost no accent, or at most only what it pleased him to retain +to give a new and strange aspect to his words." On the other hand, M. +Stuart Merrill writes of his speaking French with a fantasy that, +pleasant enough in conversation, would have produced a deplorable +impression in the theatre. For example, Wilde ended one of his stories +with "Et puis, alors, le roi il est mouru." + +These pieces of evidence must be remembered when we consider the +composition of _Salome_. Mr. Ross says: "The play was passed for press +by no less a writer than Marcel Schwob, whose letter to the Paris +publisher, returning the proofs and mentioning two or three slight +alterations, is still in my possession. Marcel Schwob told me some years +afterwards that he thought it would have spoiled the spontaneity and +character of Wilde's style if he had tried to harmonize it with the +diction demanded by the French Academy." M. Merrill says: "Un jour Wilde +me remit son drame qu'il avait ecrit tres rapidement, de premier jet, en +francais, et me demanda d'en corriger les erreurs manifestes. Ce ne fut +pas chose facile de faire accepter a Wilde toutes mes corrections.... Je +me rappelle que la plupart des tirades de ses personnages commencaient +par l'expletif: _enfin!_ En ai-je assez biffe, des _enfin!_ Mais je +m'apercus bientot que le bon Wilde n'avait en mon gout qu'une confiance +relative, et je le recommandai aux soins de Rette. Celui-ci continua mon +travail de correction et d'emendation. Mais Wilde finit par se mefier de +Rette autant que de moi, et ce fut Pierre Louys qui donna le dernier +coup de lime au texte de _Salome_." In comment, I shall do no more than +notice that the play was written in 1891, and not published till 1893. +The two stories do not necessarily contradict each other, for Marcel +Schwob did not suggest that he saw the manuscript, and M. Merrill's +reminiscence is concerned with _Salome_ long before it was sent to the +printers. + +The question is not one of any great importance. It is sufficient for +our purpose to observe that the French of _Salome_, whether as Wilde +wrote it or as it survived the emendations of his friends, is very +simple in construction. Salome, daughter of Herodias, Princess of Judaea, +did not use the finer subtleties of the language in which she loved +Iokanaan. A perusal of Maeterlinck's "Les Sept Princesses" had taught +her to use a speech whose power depends on its simplicity. She, Herod, +Herodias and all their entourage, speak like children who have had a +French nurse. Their speech is made of short sentences, direct assertions +and negations, that run like pages beside the progress of the play. They +show, these short sentences, what is happening, the more forcefully, +because they are themselves aloof from it and busied with their own +concerns. For example:-- + + + "_Herode._ Qu'est-ce que cela me fait qu'elle danse ou non? Cela ne + me fait rien. Je suis heureux ce soir. Je suis tres heureux. Jamais + je n'ai ete si heureux. + + _Le premier soldat._ Il a l'air sombre, le tetrarque. N'est-ce pas + qu'il a l'air sombre? + + _Le second soldat._ Il a l'air sombre." + + +The effect of the play is won by the cumulative weight of these short +contradictory sentences, that fall like continual drops of water on a +stone, never argue, are never loud enough to be quarrelsome, and +sometimes amuse themselves by reflecting, as if in a box of mirrors, a +single object in a hundred ways. The moon is translated into many moods. +For the page of Herodias she is a dead woman coming from the tomb to +look for dead men. Salome's lover sees her as a little dancing princess, +with yellow veil and silver feet. For Salome she is a little piece of +money, cold, chaste, a virgin. The page of Herodias sees her again as a +dead woman, covering herself with a winding-sheet, and when the young +Syrian dies, laments that, knowing she was seeking a dead man, he had +not hidden his friend in a cavern where she could not see him. Herod +finds her an hysterical woman seeking lovers everywhere, naked, and +refusing to be veiled by the clouds. Herodias finds that the moon +resembles the moon, and that is all. Then in the eyes of Herod she +becomes red in accordance with the prophecy, and Herodias replies, +jeering, "And the Kings of the Earth have fear." And finally, when +Salome is speaking to the head, when all is over but her death, Herod +cries aloud that the moon should be put out with the torches and the +stars, because he begins to be afraid. + +The drama, reflected in these images of the moon that show the changing +colours of the minds that look at her, is thrown inward, and must be +read between the lines. Rather than describe the strength of an emotion, +or show it in immediate action, Wilde shows what it compels its +possessor to disregard. Salome answers the question of the young Syrian +with irrelevant remarks, because she is obsessed by the mole's eyes of +her stepfather. When Iokanaan speaks, and the young Syrian suggests that +she should go into the garden in her litter, she replies simply, "Il dit +des choses monstrueuses a propos de ma mere, n'est-ce pas?" When he +kills himself, on account of her words to the prophet, and falls before +her feet, she does not see him. The page laments, and a soldier tells +her of what has happened before her eyes:-- + + + "_Le premier soldat._ Princesse, le jeune capitaine vient de se + tuer. + + _Salome._ Laisse-moi baiser ta bouche, Iokanaan." + + +This is potential as opposed to kinetic drama, and expresses itself not +in action, but in being unmoved by action. It is an expression of the +aspiration towards purely potential speech characteristic of the French +symbolists, and of all who seek "a literature in which the visible world +is no longer a reality, and the unseen world no longer a dream." It was, +perhaps, the fear that such drama of the mind would be impossible on the +stage that made Maeterlinck write as sub-title to a book of plays, +"Little Dramas for Marionettes." For the speech maps out by avoidance +what is really said, and whereas some plays would lose little by being +acted in dumb show, these appeal less to the eye than to the ear. + +In writing _Salome_, however, Wilde did not neglect the wonderful visual +sense of the theatre that was, later, to suggest to him the appearance +on the stage of Jack in mourning for his non-existent brother. He was +able to see the play from the point of view of the audience, and refused +no means of intensifying its effect. When Salome is leaning over the +cistern, listening for the death of Iokanaan, he does not allow the +executioner to come up with the head. The man would have shared the +attention of the audience, and made the head a piece of meat. Instead: +"Un grand bras noir, le bras du bourreau, sort de la citerne apportant +sur un bouclier d'argent la tete d'Iokanaan. Salome la saisit. Herode se +cache le visage avec son manteau. Herodias sourit et s'evente. Les +Nazareens s'agenouillent et commencent a prier." The head, like a +dramatic moment, isolated upon the stage, compels a group of +characteristic actions. Its appearance is a significant speech. The +strength of the emotion in the play blinds many to the beauty without +which it would be worthless. Salome's lust, wreaking itself on dead lips +because it was denied them living, is, indeed, a powerful demon to +subdue to the service of beauty. And the prurient, who are most +intimately moved by it, make up most of those who cannot see beyond it. +But this emotion is but part of a larger harmony, which, though still +more powerful, is not allowed to confuse the delicate, careful fingering +of the artist. Control is never lost, and, when the play is done, when +we return to it in our waking dreams, we return to that elevation only +given by the beautiful, undisturbed by the vividness, the clearness with +which we realise the motive of passion playing its part in that deeper +motive of doom, that fills the room in which we read, or the theatre in +which we listen, with the beating of the wings of the angel of death. + + + + +VIII + +DISASTER + + +Before the success of the plays, Wilde had been an adventurer on thin +ice, exhibiting a brave superiority to fortune, but painfully conscious +that his income was far smaller than that on which it was possible to +live with the happy extravagance that was natural to him. He had been +born with the ghost of a silver spoon in his mouth, but had never been +able to materialize it. It was his right to live luxuriously, since that +task was one that he was peculiarly fitted to perform. Some carelessness +in the inviting of his fairy godmothers, some inattention on the part of +the presiding gods, had denied him that right. When the success of the +plays suddenly raised his income to several thousands of pounds a year, +he lost no time in living up to and above it. Some of his extravagances +were of the simplest, most childish kind. He over-fed, like a schoolboy +in a tuckshop with an unexpected sovereign in his hand. Flowers he had +always worn, hansom-cabs he had always used, but now he bought the most +expensive button-holes, and kept his cab waiting all day. His +friendships became proportionately costly, for he denied nothing to +those he liked, and some of them never forgot to ask. He hurriedly +ruined himself with prosperity, like the poor man in the fairy tale, +whose wish for all the gold in the world was granted by a mischievous +destiny. + +The success of the plays and the extravagance that it permitted placed +him in so strong a light of public attention that he could do nothing in +secret. He became one of those people whose celebrity lends a savour to +gossip. Scandal borrowed wings from the knowledge that it had a +beginning in truth. In 1889, before the maleficent flood of gold was +poured upon him, he had become accustomed to indulge the vice that, +openly alluded to in the days and verses of Catullus, is generally +abhorred and hidden in our own. He had been in youth a runner after +girls, but, as a man, he ceased to take any interest in women. In the +moment of his success, when many were ready to throw themselves at his +feet, one, perhaps, of the reasons of his power was his own indifference +to his conquests. Many excuses have been made for him. It has been +suggested, for example, that in his absorption in antiquity he allowed +himself to forget that he was not living in it. But Wilde was not a +scholar with a rampart of books between himself and the present. Our +business here is scientific, not apologetic, and such evidence as we +have shows that the vice needs none but a pathological explanation. It +was a disease, a malady of the brain, not the necessary consequence of a +delight in classical literature. Opulence permitted its utmost +development, but did not create it. Opulence did, however, make it +noticeable, and prepared the circumstances in which it was publicly +punished. + +Wilde had always been laughed at, and, even before the facts of his +conduct were generally known, the laughter was coloured by dislike. A +book that was written by a small, prehensile mind, gifted with a limber +cleverness, enables us to see him through the eyes of the early +nineties. This book, "The Green Carnation," is a limited but faithful +caricature. Wilde was accused of having written it, but +characteristically replied: "I invented that magnificent flower. But +with the middle-class and mediocre book that usurps its strangely +beautiful name, I have, I need hardly say, nothing whatsoever to do. The +flower is a work of art. The book is not." Here, as in the matter of +"Patience," he could not forgo the perversity of lending colour to other +people's parodies of himself. "The Green Carnation" shows us Esme +Amarinth and a youthful patrician who models himself upon him expounding +the art of being self-consciously foolish, wearing green carnations, +and teaching choir-boys to sing a catch about "rose-white youth" in the +presence of the widow of a strong and silent British soldier. Lady Locke +thinks that England has changed, and though fascinated by Amarinth's +under-study, does not marry him, for fear her "soldier's son," a stout +Jehu of the governess-cart, should learn from him a soul-destroying and +effeminate love of carnations pickled in arsenic. This book is like a +clever statue, brightly painted, of Britannia refusing the advances of +the aesthete. The aesthete is made to look rather a fool; and so is +Britannia. Such sections of the public as took pleasure in it thought +Wilde a peculiarly arrogant coxcomb, a disconcerting and polished reply +to the Victorian tradition of muscular manhood in which they had long +been secure. They were ready to rejoice in his discomfiture, and their +hostility to Wilde spread swiftly and gave a quality of triumph to the +delight of all classes as soon as he was arrested. + +An elaborate account of the various trials would in no way serve the +purpose of this book. It is sufficient to say that on May 25, 1895, he +was sentenced to two years' imprisonment with hard labour. + + + + +IX + +DE PROFUNDIS + + +The book called _De Profundis_, first published in 1905, five years +after Wilde's death, is not printed as it was written, but is composed +of passages from a long letter whose complete publication would be +impossible in this generation. The passages were selected and put +together by Mr. Robert Ross with a skill that it is impossible +sufficiently to admire. The letter, a manuscript of "eighty +close-written pages on twenty folio sheets," was not addressed to Mr. +Ross but to a man to whom Wilde felt that he owed some, at least, of the +circumstances of his public disgrace. It was begun as a rebuke of this +friend, whose actions, even subsequent to the trials, had been such as +to cause Wilde considerable pain. It was not delivered to him, but given +to Mr. Ross by Wilde, who also gave instructions as to its partial +publication. + +It is not often possible to detect the original intention of rebuke in +the published portions of _De Profundis_. I suppose that as Wilde +pointed out his friend's share in his disaster, and set down on paper +what that disaster was, he came to examine its ulterior effect on his +own mind, for those pages that are open to us contain such an +examination. He is in prison, and is at pains to realize exactly what +this means to him: where he is unchanged, where he has lost, and where +and how he has gained. He would draw up a profit and loss account, of +the loaves that are sustenance for the body and the flowers of the white +narcissus that are food for the soul, and in this way give himself +courage to face the world with the knowledge that he had kept his soul +alive. He will discover where he stands with regard to Christianity, and +where with regard to Flaubert. A critic and artist, he will realize +himself among masterpieces, and discover what is altered in the +personality for whose notation he has been accustomed to use his +criticism of works of art. "To the artist, expression is the only mode +under which he can conceive life at all. To him what is dumb is dead." + +Wilde's life in prison was lived on two planes. Only one of them is +represented in _De Profundis_. In writing that letter he was able to +pick up the frayed threads of his intellectual existence, to find that +some were gold and some were crimson, and to learn that whatever else he +might have lost he had not lost his lordship over words. The existence +whose threads he thus collected was not that which was at the moment +determining the further development of his character. It was an +aftermath of that summer of the intellect that had given him +_Intentions_. Instead of the debonair personality of an Ernest or a +Gilbert, he painted now a no less ideal vision of himself in +circumstances similar to those that now surrounded him. + +Behind this imaginary and as it were dramatic life was another in which +he shared the days and the day's business of his fellow convicts. + + + "We tore the tarry rope to shreds + With blunt and bleeding nails; + We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors + And cleaned the shining rails: + And rank by rank, we soaped the plank, + And clattered with the pails." + + +There was the routine of the prison, the daily walk for one hour round a +circular path, watched by warders, inside a wall that hid all but the +sky and the topmost branches of a tree, upon whose bare twigs, buds, and +green and ruddy leaves, the prisoners depended for news of the +magnificent passage of the seasons. These daily walks, like all the work +of the prison, took place in silence, broken only by the warders' words +of command delivered in the raucous voice that tradition has dictated. +As speech is the greatest of man's privileges, so its deprivation is the +least bearable of his punishments. During the daily walks even those +convicts who in other things are obedient to the prison discipline, +learn to speak without a perceptible motion of the lips. For six weeks +Wilde walked in silence, but one evening at the end of that time, he +heard the man walking behind him say: "Oscar Wilde, I am sorry for you. +It must be worse for you than for us." He nearly fainted, and replied: +"No; it's the same for all of us." In this way he made the +acquaintanceship of his fellows. One by one he talked with all of them, +and these scraps of conversation, he told M. Andre Gide, made his life +so far tolerable that he lost his first desire of killing himself. "The +only humanizing influence in prison is the prisoners," he wrote after he +came out. Except in the matter of permission to write (a permission not +granted until near the end of his term, and then only on the +recommendation of the doctor), the prison discipline was in no way +relaxed for Wilde. He slept on a plank bed. He did not, like +Wainewright, remain "a gentleman," and share a cell with a bricklayer +and a sweep, neither of whom ever offered him the brush. He cleaned out +his cell, polished his tin drinking cup, turned the crank, and picked +the oakum like the rest. + +Echoes of these things are heard in _De Profundis_, but if, as Wilde +had, we have made ourselves + + + "Misers of sound and syllable, no less + Than Midas of his coinage," + + +it is not in what books say but in their style that we look for the +secrets of their writers. And it is impossible not to notice that the +character of Wilde's prose in this book is not very different from that +in _Intentions_. He observed changes in himself, and foresaw others, but +the real alteration of his point of view was not accomplished until he +came out of prison. In gaol he was in retreat, like a man who has gone +into a monastery. The world was still the world that he had left, and +not until he was again free did he realize more vividly than by +speculation how different his life was to be, and across what a gulf he +would look back at the existence that had been broken off by his +disaster. His artistic attitude had not yet been changed. + +It is for this reason that the book raises so easily a question dear to +those who prefer praising or blaming to understanding. Is it sincere? +they ask. Is it possible that a man who felt such things sincerely could +write of his feelings in such mellifluous prose? Is it sincere? they +ask, with particular insistence, pointing to the character of Wilde's +life after leaving prison as a proof that it was not. And if not, what +then? Why then, they say, it is worthless. + + + "Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold + A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least + That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs! + What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; + And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs + Grate on their scrannel-pipes of wretched straw." + + +They demand that the truth shall be told in a hoarse voice, that they +may recognize it, and yet the ugly, conscientious noise of their +scrannel-pipes is no nearer than _De Profundis_ to the sincerity they +admire. Sincerity, in the sense that they give to that word, does not +exist in art. "What people call insincerity is simply a method by which +we can multiply our personalities." That sentence, from the mouth of one +of the personalities that Wilde was able to assume, explains the obvious +variety of his work. It throws also no dubious light upon the general +nature of art. For in art no attitude is insincere whose result is +beautiful, and no attitude is possible whose result may not be +beautiful. All depends on the artist and on the depth and abandon of his +insincerity. For art tolerates many contradictions, but a work of art +tolerates none. The man who takes an attitude and is unable to sustain +it, who smirks at the audience, who plays as it were the traitor to his +own choice, can produce nothing but what is ugly, since, like him, it +will contain a contradiction. But the man who chooses an attitude, and +preserves it consistently in any work of art, is thereby fulfilling a +condition of beauty. He may make a lovely thing, and then, taking +another attitude, may contradict himself in a thing of no less +loveliness. Repentance like that in _De Profundis_ is a guarantee of a +moment of humility, but not of a life of reform. Shakespeare wrote +Hamlet's soliloquy and also Juliet's murmuring from the balcony. Yet he +was not always in love, nor always melancholy with inaction. We are +accustomed to insincerity in play-writing, and do not expect each +character, fool or wise, young or old, to represent its author. We +allow, as, for an obvious example, in Restoration comedy, plays to be +written from a standpoint that their authors could not possibly maintain +in private life. In poetry also, we do not consider Browning insincere +because he speaks now for Lippo Lippi, and now for Andrea del Sarto. In +novels we allow Fielding to write "Jonathan Wild" as a satirist, and +"Joseph Andrews" as a comic romancer, and we are not shocked when he +relishes in imagination deeds that as a magistrate he would be bound to +censure. I think we have to learn that all fine literature is dramatic. +No man pours from his mouth in any single speech all the roses and the +vomit that would represent his soul. Men speak and hold their peace. +They make and their hands are still. And many moods flit by while they +are silent, and myriad souls agitate the blood in the veins of those +motionless hands. The artist is he who, remembering this mood or that, +can hold it fast and maintain it long enough for the making of a work of +art. We do not ask him to retain it further. The shaping of his mood in +words or in clay has already changed his personality. The writer of a +mad song need not gibber in the streets. Golden phrases lose none of +their magnificence if he who made them wears plain homespun when we meet +him in the marketplace. He has been a king for a moment, and given us +his kingship for ever. We can ask no more. + +Wilde, perhaps more than other men, insisted on the dramatic character +of his work. In considering any of it we should remember those sentences +in the last paragraph of 'The Truth of Masks':--"Not that I agree with +everything that I have said in this essay. There is much with which I +entirely disagree. The essay simply represents an artistic standpoint, +and in aesthetic criticism attitude is everything." I am not sure that +this confession does not spoil 'The Truth of Masks.' It is perilously +like an aside; but Wilde was sufficiently subtle to have chosen a mood +which such an aside would illustrate rather than contradict. In +considering his work, we must remember, first, that all work is +dramatic, true to an individual mood only; and, secondly, that Wilde, +more clearly conscious of this than most artists, was better able to +take advantage of it. He was freed from those qualms of conscience which +made Swinburne glad to differentiate his earlier from his later work by +saying:--"In my next work it should be superfluous to say that there is +no touch of dramatic impersonation or imaginary emotion." This sentence, +that denies together what is universal and what does not exist (since +you cannot imagine an emotion without feeling it) points to no blemish +in Swinburne's work, but only to a discomfort of mind that some of it +must have caused him. From this discomfort Wilde was free. He had many +tuning-forks, and distrusted none of them because it happened to be +pitched differently from another. + +There is no doubt that, when _De Profundis_ was finished, Wilde regarded +it as a document of historical value, as a veracious confession. This +is clear from the tone in which he wrote of it to Mr. Ross:--"I don't +defend my conduct. I explain it. Also there are in my letter certain +passages which deal with my mental development in prison, and the +inevitable evolution of my character and intellectual attitude towards +life that has taken place; and I want you and others who still stand by +me and have affection for me to know exactly in what mood and manner I +hope to face the world." Those sentences certainly let us see the +attitude that Wilde hoped to induce in his readers, but, if we would +turn to Wilde himself, and, careless of the beauty of the work, pry past +it to discover the private feelings of the author, we must take them not +as a statement of the truth, but, seeking the truth, take that statement +into account. That statement, the published _De Profundis_, those +unpublished portions of the letter which, probably, will never be read +in our lifetime, the whole of Wilde's works, the whole of his life, the +character of that person to whom he was immediately writing, the +character of those other friends by whom he desired to be read, the +character which, without deliberate choice, he had himself grown +accustomed to present to them: we must know all these things, and be +able to weigh them exactly, and balance them justly against each other. +Have I not said enough to show that it is a vain task to seek for the +absolute truth in such a matter, and that we are better and more +hopefully employed when we concern ourselves simply with a wonderful +piece of literature dictated by certain conditions that we admit are +impossible accurately to discover? + +In pointing out that the details of Wilde's life in prison did not +affect the manner of his thought, but only provided him with fresh +material, I do not wish to suggest that prison was unimportant to him. +It might have been. He might, in revolt against it, have made it no more +than a hideous accident, stunting his nature by not refusing to allow it +to assimilate the black bread that had been thrown to it as well as the +sweetened cakes. If he had been earlier released, as he said, this might +have happened. He was not released, and revolt was changed to +acceptance, and, at last, he was able to say, as he had hoped, that +society's sending him to prison ranked with his father's sending him to +Oxford, as a turning point in his life. But that is a question for the +next chapter, for imprisonment did not radically alter him until he was +again in the world. + +In prison, however, the anaesthetic of magnificent living was denied him, +and he turned to magnificent thought, recovering the power that had +been his before popular success had narrowed his horizon. + + + "Knowing the possible, see thou try beyond it + Into impossible things, unlikely ends; + And thou shalt find thy knowledgeable desire + Grow large as all the regions of thy soul."[6] + + +In 1894 he had known the possible, and achieved it in _The Importance of +Being Earnest_. But in 1889 he had been trying far beyond it, and now +again, in prison, he found his desires growing far beyond the possible, +and covering the regions of his soul. He needed an idea that should make +this bread-and-water existence one with that of wine and lilies, an idea +that should make it possible for him to conceive his life as a whole, +and, in the conception, make it so. + +In _De Profundis_ he tries to make his friend realize what he has +scarcely realized himself; the depth of his fall, the twilight in his +cell, the twilight in his heart, the nature of suffering, the nature of +the sorrow that does not allow itself to be forgotten. He writes +passages so poignant as to blind us to their beauty, for sorrow is no +less sorrow when it walks in purple than when in rags it lies in the +dust. Then, after showing the ruins of his life, he paints a picture, no +less poignant, of himself rebuilding that broken edifice with those +things that he has hitherto rejected. He has learnt, he tells himself, +the value of pain and the virtue of humility. He has once believed that +pain was a blemish on creation, and that the sobbing of a child made the +gods hide their faces for shame. He now believes that suffering is a +means for the purification of the spirit, a fire through which vessels +of clay must pass to their perfection. And, for humility, he discovers +that there is no defiance so lofty as that of self-accusation. He has +been told to forget who he is; life in prison almost compels him to +rebellion; but he has learnt that only by remembering his identity, by +shifting to his own shoulders the burden of his disaster, and by an +absolute acceptance of all that has happened in and to him, will he be +able to win the pride that humility confers and that rebellion makes +impossible. + +This purpose, to give his life the unity he demanded from a poem; these +motives, of suffering and humility, run waveringly through _De +Profundis_, carrying with them here and there fragments of mournful +experience. Through them he came to contemplate Christ, not only as a +type of humility and suffering, but also as an example of one whose life +was a work of art. In such books as _De Profundis_, the continuous +wandering speech of a mind following itself, some paragraphs seem to +withdraw themselves a little, as the keynotes of the rest. Such +paragraphs are, I think, those in which he wrote of Christ as the +supreme artist, of Christ's influence on art, and of his philosophy as +Wilde interpreted it. These paragraphs have seemed blasphemous to some +and unreasonable to others. I cannot consider them more blasphemous than +a Madonna and Child by Murillo, or a Christ and his Father by Milton, or +more unreasonable than those persons who are unable to perceive that +religion, no less than the Sabbath, was made for man, and not for the +delectation of the Almighty. + +Man makes God in his own image, or as he would like himself to be, and, +as man's image changes, so is his God continually recast. Wilde's +prose-poem of the artist and the bronze is the story of the making and +remaking of religion. The Christ of the Roman slaves who escaped from +their masters' rods to worship their God in cellars was indeed a Man of +Sorrows, who found in misery and low estate the means of creating +loveliness. As they hoped, he promised, and each labourer's penny was +minted with the superscription he had himself designed. With the +renaissance of joy came new Christs. One taught the Irish monks to build +their wattled cells. Another, delighting in richness no less than in +simplicity, designed the stone lacework of the French cathedrals. Later, +the sombre, fiery Calvin saw a divinity of black and scarlet. Milton's +God conceived humanity as an epic, whose conclusion must neither be +hurried nor delayed. There have been Gods of war and Gods of peace, +changing with man's desires. It is for that reason that we are warned to +make no graven images, lest we should commit ourselves to a God of a +single mood. It was quite natural that the Christ whom Wilde saw, as he +sat on the wooden bench in his cell and turned the pages of his Greek +Testament, should be a Christ who showed that in all the acts of his +life there had been hope, a Christ who perceived "the enormous +importance of living completely for the moment," swept aside the tyranny +of orthodoxy, and "regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves +beautiful holy things and modes of perfection." + +Wilde expresses his conception with incomparable wit and charm. When he +speaks of Christ's love of the sinner, he remarks that "the conversion +of a publican into a Pharisee would not have seemed to him a great +achievement." On Christ's view that "one should not bother too much over +affairs," he comments, "the birds didn't, why should man?" And again: +"The beggar goes to heaven because he has been unhappy. I cannot +conceive a better reason for his being sent there. The people who work +for an hour in the vineyard in the cool of the evening receive just as +much reward as those who have toiled there all day long in the hot sun. +Why shouldn't they? Probably no one deserved anything." And I cannot +refrain from reminding myself by writing it down, of his beautiful +comparison of the Greek Testament with the version that endless +repetition without choice of occasion has made an empty noise in our +ears: "When one returns to the Greek, it is like going into a garden of +lilies out of some narrow and dark house." It pleased him to accept the +not generally received view of some scholars, that Greek was the +language actually spoken by Christ, and that [Greek: tetelestai][7] was +indeed his last word and not a mere translation of a similar expression +in a Nazarene dialect of Aramaic. + +But Wilde's study of the gospels had left him more than a handful of +phrases, and these chance flowers must not blind us to the garden of +thought in which they grew. Among the subjects on which he planned to +write was "Christ as the precursor of the romantic movement in life." +This essay was never written, but Wilde had made it almost unnecessary +by those suggestive paragraphs in the letter to his friend. + +Christ, for him, was a supreme artist, who chose to build a beautiful +thing in life instead of in marble or song. Marble and song are to the +artist means of living, indeed the medium of the highest life of which +he is capable. Christ essayed the more difficult task of giving life +itself the unity and the loveliness that another might have given stone +or melody. And this beautiful and complete life, more moving in its +completeness than that of any of the gods of Greece, who "in spite of +the white and red of their fair fleet limbs were not really what they +appeared to be," was at once a work of art and the life of an artist. +Christ, Wilde saw, cared more for intensity than for magnificence, for +the soul more than raiment. His teaching was not one of the refusal of +experience, but of self-development. He set personality above +possessions, and told his followers to forgive their enemies, for their +own sake, not because their enemies wished to be forgiven; it is very +annoying to be forgiven. "But," says Wilde, "while Christ did not say to +men 'Live for others,' he pointed out that there was no difference at +all between the lives of others and one's own life." And it is this +truth that marks the difference between ancient and modern art. In +reading ancient critics of ancient art, we perceive that their view of +the tragedies whose performance they were privileged to see in the open +amphitheatres of Greece was narrower than ours. Theirs was the spectacle +of a good man or a good woman at odds with tragic circumstance. We have +made tragic circumstance human, and, though we walk with Christ to +Calvary, we also wash trembling hands with Pontius Pilate. + +It is just this widened sympathy, this vitalization of other things in a +story besides the hero that divides what is called romantic from what is +called classical art. To Greek tragedy there was a background of the +Fates; but nobody sympathized with them. In whatever is classical as +opposed to romantic in modern art, we shall find a background of Fates +with whom nobody sympathizes, in whom nobody believes. But all the world +was alive to St. Francis. Shakespeare is myriad-mouthed as well as +myriad-minded. Daffodils are alive for him no less than kings, and Iago +is a man no less than Othello. And in all art that springs from the +spirit, thought Wilde, "wherever there is a romantic movement in art, +there somehow, and under some form, is Christ, or the soul of Christ." +Wilde, thinking in prison of Christianity in art, saw through the stone +walls the cathedral at Chartres in the blue morning mist, Dante and +Virgil walking in hell, the painted ship of the ancient mariner idly +rocking upon the painted ocean, Juliet leaning from her balcony, Pierre +Vidal flying as a wolf before the hounds, the irises of Baudelaire, the +bird-song of Verlaine, the breaking heart of Russian storytelling, +Tannhauser in the Venusberg, and all the flowers and children who have +laughed in a wind of song. + +For the mind, as for love, + + + "Stone walls do not a prison make, + Nor iron bars a cage." + + +Wilde had all the art of the world before him as he wrote. Seldom in his +life did his thought move more magnificently and with greater wealth of +illustration than in the cell where, in a perpetual twilight, his mind +alone could illumine itself, and in its own light pursue that game of +thinking whose essential it is to be free and harmonious.[8] Its +harmonies are those of agreement with its own character, like the +harmonies of art. Its freedom is that of the consistent representation +of the character chosen by the thinker. In _De Profundis_ Wilde wrote +as harmoniously and freely as if his life were spent in conversation +instead of in silence, in looking at books and pictures instead of in +shredding oakum or in swinging the handle of a crank. + +It is impossible too firmly to emphasize the division between the +texture of the life in _De Profundis_ and that of Wilde's life in +prison, a division not only needing explanation but explicable in the +light of later events. When he left prison he wrote _The Ballad of +Reading Gaol_. Now that ballad would have been obscured or enriched by a +silver cobweb of scarcely perceptible sensations if it had been written +before or during his imprisonment. Wilde could not then have suffered +some of the harsh and crude effects that are harmonious with its +character and necessary to its success. The newly-learnt insensibility, +that allowed him to use in the ballad emotions that once he would have +carefully guarded himself from perceiving, had been taught him in +prison. In prison his nerves had been so jangled that they responded +only to a violent agitation, so jarred that a delicate touch left them +silent. But at the time of the writing of _De Profundis_ these janglings +and jarrings were too immediate to affect him. They disappeared like +print held too close to the eye. He escaped from them as he wrote, for +he wrote from memory. While the events were happening, had just +happened, and might happen again, that produced the insensibility +without which he could not have secured the broad and violent effects of +his later work, he returned, in writing, to an earlier life. When he +took up his pen, it was as if none of these things were, unless as +material for the use of an aloof and conscious artist. He was outside +the prison as he wrote, and only saw as if in vision the tall man, with +roughened hands, who had once been "King of life," and now was writing +in a cell. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[6] From _The Sale of St. Thomas_. By Lascelles Abercrombie. + +[7] [Greek: KATA IOANNEN], XIX, 30. + +[8] "L'exercice de la pensee est un jeu, mais il faut que ce +jeu soit libre et harmonieux."--REMY DE GOURMONT. + + + + +X + +1897-1900 + + +"All trials," wrote Wilde, "are trials for one's life, just as all +sentences are sentences of death; and three times have I been tried. The +first time I left the box to be arrested, the second time to be led back +to the house of detention, the third time to pass into a prison for two +years. Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, +has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just +alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret +valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night +with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, +and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my +hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me +whole." + +He asked too much, both from Nature and from himself. Society would +indeed have none of him, as he had foreseen, but Nature could only +harbour for a moment this liver in great cities who had told her that +her use was to illustrate quotations from the poets, and had said that +he preferred to have her captive on his walls in the canvases of Corot +and of Constable, than to live in her cruder landscapes. He had never +intended to make too elaborate an advance to her. He had learnt from +Stevenson's letters that that ingenious man had "merely extended the +sphere of the artificial by taking to digging." He knew that reading +Baudelaire in a cafe would be more natural to him than an agricultural +existence. He was determined, however, not to return to the +extravagances of his life before prison, and he hoped that the country +would help him to keep this resolve. He was to learn that "one merely +wanders round and round within the circle of one's personality." When he +left prison he did not know that one must keep moving, but hoped to +choose a pleasant point in his personality, and stay there. + +Released from prison on May 19, 1897, he crossed the Channel to Dieppe, +where he stayed for some days, and drove about with Mr. Robert Ross and +Mr. Reginald Turner, examining the surrounding villages, most of which +seemed uninhabitable. At the end of a week he took rooms in the inn at +the little hamlet of Berneval. + +Here, for the first time, he lost his power of turning life into +tapestry. Alone in his cell he had written the magnificent pageant of +_De Profundis_, a pageant of purple and fine linen, though he who wrote +it wore the coarse cloth of convict dress. Set suddenly in the world +again, he was cut off more sharply from his former existence than ever +he had been cut off in prison. He became blithe and smiling, like a +child who has had no past. He bathed, and was amused at the simplicity +of his experience, which he laughingly attributed to having attended +Mass and so not bathing as a pagan.... "I was not tempted by either +Sirens or Mermaidens, or any of the green-haired following of Glaucus. I +really think this is a remarkable thing. In my Neronian days the sea was +always full of Tritons blowing conches, and other unpleasant things. Now +it is quite different." "Prison has completely changed me," he said to +M. Andre Gide, who visited him at Berneval; "I counted on it for that." +He spoke with disparagement of a man who urged him to take up his former +life, a thing, he said, which one must never do. "Ma vie est comme un +oeuvre d'art; un artiste ne recommence jamais deux fois la meme chose +... ou bien c'est qu'il n'avait pas reussi. Ma vie d'avant la prison a +ete aussi reussie que possible. Maintenant c'est une chose achevee." He +felt that a continuation of a life that had, as it were, ended in +prison, would be like adding a sixth act and a happy ending to a +tragedy, a deed repulsive to an artist, who finds it hard enough to +bear when murdered Caesar doffs his wig and smiles upon the audience that +has witnessed the agony of his death. He did not wish to appear in Paris +until he had had time to lay aside the costume he had worn in the play +that, he was glad to think, was now concluded. He did not wish to be +received as a released convict, but as the author of a new work of art. +"If I can produce only one beautiful work of art I shall be able to rob +malice of its venom, and cowardice of its sneer, and to pluck out the +tongue of scorn by the roots." For the moment, at any rate, he was +content in the country, and asked M. Gide to send him a Life of St. +Francis. + +"If I live in Paris," he wrote, "I may be doomed to things I don't +desire. I am afraid of big towns. Here I get up at 7.30.... I am happy +all day. I go to bed at 10 o'clock. I am frightened of Paris.... I want +to live here." He visited the little chapel of Notre Dame de Liesse, and +persuaded the cure to celebrate Mass there. He made friends with a +farmer and urged him to adopt three children. He found that the +customs-officers were bored, and lent them the novels of Dumas pere. And +on the day of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee he entertained forty children +from the school with their master so successfully that for days after +they cheered when he passed: "Vive Monsieur Melmoth[9] et la Reine +d'Angleterre." In his first enthusiasm for Berneval he wished to build a +house there, and did, indeed, take a chalet for the season, giving Mr. +Ross, through whom his allowance passed, all sorts of amusing reasons +for doing so, and for hurrying on the necessary preliminaries. He +planned the arrangement of the house with something of the impatient +delight of a student furnishing his first independent rooms. He asked +for his pictures, and for Japanese gold paper that should provide a +fitting background for lithographs by Rothenstein and Shannon. The +Chalet Bourgeat was ready for habitation on June 21. A month later he +wrote of _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_: "The poem is nearly finished. +Some of the verses are awfully good." + +He had left prison with an improved physique, and, now that he was able +to work, there was hope that he would not risk the loss of it by leaving +this life of comparative simplicity. Suddenly, however, he flung aside +his plans and resolutions, desperately explaining that his folly was +inevitable. The iterated entreaty of a man whose friendship had already +cost him more than it was worth, and a newly-felt loneliness at +Berneval, destroyed his resolution. He became restless and went to +Rouen, where it rained and he was miserable; then back to Dieppe; a few +days later, with his poem still unfinished, he was in Naples sharing a +momentary magnificence with the friend whose conduct he had condemned, +whose influence he had feared. + + * * * * * + +I have particularly noticed the change in his mental attitude that +became apparent at Berneval, because I think that it throws light on the +character of the work he did after leaving prison, so markedly different +from that of _De Profundis_, or _Intentions_, or _The Sphinx_, or any +other of the delightful designs it had pleased him to embroider. What is +remarkable in _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_, apart from its strength, or +its violence of emotion, is a change in the quality of Wilde's language. +A distinction between decoration and realism, though it immediately +suggests itself, is too blunt to enable us to state clearly a change in +Wilde's writing that it is impossible to overlook. We require a more +sensitive instrument, and must seek it in a definition of literature, a +formula that is concerned with the actual medium that literature +employs. + +To make such a definition I have borrowed two words from the terminology +of physical science. Energy is described by physicists as kinetic and +potential. Kinetic energy is force actually exerted. Potential energy is +force that a body is in a position to exert. Applying these terms to +language, without attempting too strict an analogy, I wish to define the +medium of literature as a combination of kinetic with potential speech. +There is no such thing in literature as speech purely kinetic or purely +potential. Purely kinetic speech is prose, not good prose, not +literature, but colourless prose, prose without atmosphere, the sort of +prose that M. Jourdain discovered he had been speaking all his life. It +says things. An example of purely potential speech may be found in +music. I do not think it can be made with words, though we can give our +minds a taste of it in listening to a meaningless but narcotic +incantation, or a poem in a language that we do not understand. The +proportion between kinetic and potential speech and the energy of the +combination vary with different poems and with the poetry of different +ages. + +Let me take an example of fine poetry, and show that it does perform in +itself this dual function of language. Let us examine the first stanza +of Blake's "The Tiger":-- + + + "Tiger! Tiger! burning bright + In the forests of the night, + What immortal hand or eye + Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" + + +It is impossible to deny the power of suggestion wielded by those four +lines, a power utterly disproportionate to what is actually said. The +kinetic base of that stanza is only the proposition to a supposed tiger +of a difficult problem in metaphysics. But above, below, and on either +side of that question, completely enveloping it, is the phosphorescence +of another speech, that we cannot so easily overhear.[10] + +Let me now apply this formula of kinetic and potential speech to a +definition of the change in Wilde's aims as a writer, that is +illustrated by _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_. I have said that the +proportion between kinetic and potential speech varies with different +poems and the poetry of different ages. The poets of the eighteenth +century, for example, cared greatly for kinetic speech, though the white +fire of their better work shows that they were fortunately prevented +from its invariable achievement. The Symbolists of the nineteenth +century cared greatly for potential speech. "Nommer un objet," said +Mallarme, "c'est supprimer les trois quarts de la jouissance du poeme +qui est faite du bonheur de deviner peu a peu. Le suggerer, voila le +reve." Mallarme, indeed, went so far as to work over a poem, destroying +where he could its kinetic speech, its direct statement, in the effort +to make it purely potential. He is not intelligible, except where he +failed in this. Wilde grew up with the Symbolists, and under the +influence of the Pre-Raphaelites. His criticism of pictures accurately +reflects his aims as a writer. The critic, he says, will turn from +pictures that are too intelligible that "do not stir the imagination but +set definite bounds to it"; "he will turn from them to such works as +make him brood and dream and fancy, to works that possess the subtle +quality of suggestion, and seem to tell us that even from them there is +an escape into a wider world." He will have none of "those obvious modes +of art that have but one message to deliver, and having delivered it +become dumb and sterile." He recognized suggestion or, as I prefer to +say, potentiality, in pictures that were decorations rather than +anecdotes, and, in his preference of potential over kinetic speech, made +his own work decorative rather than realistic. Decoration was for him a +mode of potentiality. Like the Symbolists, he had a sort of contempt for +kinetic speech, because while it obviously preponderates in the kind of +writing that he considered bad, he did not perceive that it is also +essential in the writing that he admitted to be good. This view was +intimately connected with his character, and before he could write a +poem whose kinetic was comparable to its potential power he had to +change completely his attitude towards life. He could not, without doing +violence to himself, have written _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_ before +his imprisonment. + +Such an alteration in his attitude became apparent when he was released: +not before. And he then proceeded to write a poem whose potentiality was +not won at the expense of directness. The difference between the work he +did before and after his release is the same, though not so exaggerated, +as that between Mallarme and the eighteenth-century poets. The later +work falls midway between these two extremes. It is writing that +depends, far more nearly than anything he had yet done, in verse, upon +its actual statements. _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_ is not more +powerfully suggestive than _The Sphinx_, but what it says, its +translatable element, is more important to its effect than the catalogue +of the Sphinx's lovers. + +We can more accurately observe this change of attitude if we examine the +early version of the ballad. This version, as it is now printed by the +side of that originally published, represents the poem as it was when +Wilde wrote to say that it was nearly finished. It is probably very +like what the poem would have been if he had not broken short his stay +at Berneval. The momentary retaste of his former life at Naples gave him +the more decorative verses that were then added, and the contrast +between the two moods made possible his disregard of the beliefs he once +had held concerning the evil effect of a message on a work of art. At +the same time, he realized at Naples how far he had departed from his +old standards, and added a certain recklessness to his already altered +equipment. For example, he had written at Berneval one stanza of direct +statement that he had afterwards deleted with others from the first +version that he sent to England:-- + + + "The Governor was strong upon + The Regulation Act: + The Doctor said that Death was but + A scientific fact: + And twice a day the chaplain called + And left a little tract." + + +At Naples he replaced it. He admits, in a letter to Mr. Ross, that "the +poetry is not good," and says, "I have put 'The Governor was strict upon +the Regulation Act'--I now think that strong is better. The verse is +meant to be colloquial--G. R. Sims at best--and when one is going for a +coarse effect, one had better be coarse. So please restore 'strong.'" I +think that nothing could more clearly illustrate the difference between +Wilde as artist before and after he was released. The change was +radical, and appeared not only in the medium of his work but in its +intention. He had once said that nothing was sadder in the history of +literature than the career of Charles Reade, who, after writing "The +Cloister and the Hearth," "wasted the rest of his life in a foolish +attempt to be modern, to draw public attention to the state of our +convict prisons." Now, he cheerfully labelled his ballad, "Poetry and +Propaganda," and admitted that though the poem should end with the fifth +canto, he had something to say and must therefore go on a little longer. +He had once written for his own admiration, and, to his disadvantage, +for that of people he might meet at dinner. He now wished to publish his +ballad in one of the more widely read newspapers, to reach the sort of +people who had shared his life in gaol. He had become anxious to speak +and to be heard, and was no longer content to make and to be admired. + +Little trace of the friction of change is left in the poem. It is true +that in certain lights a reader may perceive that he is examining a +palimpsest, and wonder what manner of writer he was whose writing is +obliterated. But there is an energy in the ballad that swings even the +more obvious propaganda into the powerful motion of the poetry. Nowhere +else in Wilde's work is there such a feeling of tense muscles, of +difficult, because passionate, articulation. And this was the effect +that he was willing to achieve. The blemishes on the poem, its moments +of bad verse, its metaphors only half conceived (like the filling of an +urn that has long been broken) scarcely mar the impression. It is felt +that a relaxed watchfulness is due to the effort of reticence. I know of +no other poem that so intensifies our horror of mortality. Beside it +Wordsworth's sonnets on Capital Punishment debate with aloof, +respectable philosophy the expediency of taking blood for blood, and +suggest the palliatives with which a tender heart may soothe the pain of +its acquiescence. Even Villon, who, like Wilde, had been in prison, and, +unlike Wilde, had been himself under sentence of death, is infinitely +less actual. He sees only after death: the gibbet, the row of corpses, +their heads hanging, the eyes picked from their sockets by the crows, a +row of blackened, sun-dried bodies swinging in wind and rain. He sees +that, and thinks it a pitiful spectacle, but his only prayer is +"qu'enfer n'ayt de nous la maistrie!" For Wilde it is life that matters. +After it, who knows? A pall of burning lime, a barren spot where might +be roses. But he lives an hundred times life's last moments, and +multiplies the agony of the man who dies in the hearts of all those +others who feel with him how frail is their own perilous hold. + + * * * * * + +Wilde's two letters to The Daily Chronicle, 'On the Case of Warder +Martin,' and 'On Prison Reform,' show just such a change in his attitude +towards social questions as that which the ballad shows in his attitude +towards poetry. I have not, so far, said anything of _The Soul of Man +under Socialism_, and I left undiscussed the consciousness of social +problems that is apparent in some of the fairy tales. It seemed better +to consider these things later in the book, when it should be possible +to compare his attitudes towards the social system before and after he +had come in conflict with it. + +At the beginning of his career he had written republican poetry, but had +prefaced it with the avowal:-- + + + "Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes + See nothing save their own unlovely woe, + Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,-- + But that the roar of thy Democracies, + Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies, + Mirror my wildest passions like the sea + And give my rage a brother----!" + + +But for this, he says, nations might be wronged and he remain unmoved, + + + "... and yet, and yet, + These Christs that die upon the barricades, + God knows it I am with them, in some things." + + +For several years this double attitude persisted, though, as Wilde left +boyhood he left also the rage and the passions, if he had ever had them, +that could only be mirrored by turbulent oceans and fiery revolutions. +He was, however, increasingly troubled by the knowledge that he could +not accept the comfortable belief of Dr. Pangloss, that this is the best +of all possible worlds. If he had lived among the poor, he would, +perhaps, have amused them by pointing out the undeserved misery of the +rich. As he happened, mostly, to live among the rich, he stimulated +their enjoyment of their position by reminding them of the insecurity of +their tenure, of the existence of the poor, and of the inadequacy of the +means adopted to eliminate them. At that time in England many charitable +movements, now institutions, had only lately started upon their curious +careers, and, as Wilde pointed out, men "tried to solve the problem of +poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a +very advanced school, by amusing the poor." Wilde suggested no remedies, +but used his own clear perception of the difficulty, and the uneasiness +of other people's minds, as a background for much delightful +conversation, and for such stories as that of 'The Young King,' who sees +in dreams the pain that is hidden in the pearl that the diver has +brought for his sceptre, the toil woven into the golden tissues of his +robes, and the blood that fills with light the rubies of his crown. + +Yet Wilde was not without a personal stake in the solution of the +problem, for, though he lived among the rich, he was himself one of the +poor. He had not had enough money to write as he pleased and when he +pleased. He had had to lecture, to write in newspapers, and to edit a +magazine for women. Perhaps the solution of the problem of poverty would +also solve that of unpopular art and of the cakes and wine of the +unpopular artist. I cannot easily understand the extraordinary position +that, I am told, _The Soul of Man_ has taken in the literature of +revolution. It does, it is true, say many just things of the poor, as +for example, its rebuke of thrift: "Man should not be ready to show that +he can live like a badly fed animal." It upholds agitators. It praises +the ingratitude of those to whom is given only a little of what is their +own. But the essay as a whole is scarcely at all concerned with popular +revolt. It is concerned less with socialism than with individualism. +"The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of +Socialism, is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us +from that sordid necessity of living for others which in the present +condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, +scarcely anyone at all escapes." Wilde had not escaped himself. "Under +Socialism," he says, "all this will, of course, be altered." There is no +need to estimate the precise quality of the irony in that "of course." +If Socialism meant the ruling of the people by the people, Wilde +disliked it, as a new form of an old tyranny. He took it simply as an +hypothesis of free food for everybody and the abolition of property. +Rich and poor alike, he supposed, were to sell all they had and give ... +to the state. He was interested solely in the development of +personality, which, he thought, was hindered by the existence of private +property, whether possessed or not possessed, a plus or a minus +quantity. "Socialism itself," he says, "will be of value simply because +it will lead to Individualism," an individualism now difficult and rare, +because it consists in the free development of personality that +property, plus or minus, makes almost impossible except in special +cases. That seems to me to be a very different Socialism from that of +the people who, accepting greedily the sops thrown to Cerberus in the +course of the essay, are willing to accept the whole as a manifesto of +social revolution. Wilde keeps aloof from rich and poor alike, and, +throughout a long paper, more carelessly written than most of his, is +simply speculating upon what art can gain by social reform, and of what +kind that reform must be, if art is not to be left in a worse case than +before it. The essay is like notes from half a dozen charming, and, at +that time, daring talks, thrown together, and loosely brought into some +sort of unity by a frail connecting thread. + +In its airy distance from practical politics, nothing could be more +dissimilar than _The Soul of Man_ from the two letters to The Daily +Chronicle. While he lived in it, Wilde had been able to disguise, at +least sometimes, his lack of independence from society. When society put +him in prison he was face to face with that unpleasing fact. From being +the subject of ironical discussion, society and its reform became most +powerful and insistent realities. The poor were no longer people whose +unlovely woe he did not like to remember, but men whom he had met, men +from whom he had received kindness when he, like them, was "in trouble." +Reform was no longer a vague idea with possibilities at once dangerous +and delightful, but concrete, and with an immediate end. It was +concerned not with the development of individuality, but with saving +from disaster one poor man who had disobeyed regulations in giving a +biscuit to a starving child, and many poor men from sleeping +unnecessarily in an atmosphere of decaying excreta. _The Ballad of +Reading Gaol_ was poetry and propaganda; the two letters scarcely +troubled about anything but their urgent purpose, though Wilde was +incapable of writing sentences that should not be dignified and urbane. +A beggar had been allowed into the Palace of Art, and would not be +denied. + + * * * * * + +Soon after Wilde left Berneval for Naples, those who controlled the +allowance that enabled him to live with his friend purposely stopped it. +His friend, as soon as there was no money, left him. "It was," said +Wilde, "a most bitter experience in a bitter life." He went to Paris. In +February 1898, the ballad, that he had not been able to sell to a +newspaper, was published as a book. In March The Daily Chronicle printed +the second of the letters on prison abuses. He wrote nothing else after +he left prison, but revised _The Importance of Being Earnest_ and _An +Ideal Husband_ for publication, and supervised the French translation +of the ballad made by M. Davray, who, as he pointed out, had not had the +advantage of imprisonment, and was consequently puzzled to find +equivalents to some of the words. He suggested the plot of a play that +another man wrote. There was talk of his adapting a French play for the +English stage; but nothing came of it. He complained that he found it +"not easy to recapture the artistic mood of detachment from the activity +of life." He often left Paris. In December, 1898, he went to Napoule, +and in the following spring to Switzerland. + +His work was done, and, after the writing of the ballad, he was impotent +of any sustained effort, whether in life or in literature. He lost, +however, little of his intellectual activity, and none of his power of +enjoyment. When he was in Rome in the spring of 1900, he learnt how to +use a photographic camera, and took innumerable photographs with a most +childlike enthusiasm. He was blessed by the Pope, not once only but +seven times. His pleasure in watching the ceremonies of the Church +recalled the year when, as an Oxford undergraduate, he had half-hoped, +half-feared to find salvation, or, at least, a religious experience. + +In May he returned to Paris, where his life cannot but have been +humiliating to one who had been "le Roi de la vie." Many doors were +closed to him and others he was too proud to enter. He spent days and +nights in cafes, drank too much, and wasted his conversation on students +who treated him without respect. He had sufficient money, but his +extravagances often left him penniless. M. Stuart Merrill has a note +from him asking for a very little sum, "afin de finir ma semaine." He +was not starving, as has been suggested, nor was he entirely deserted by +his friends, though most of the French writers ignored in misfortune the +man they had worshipped in success. M. Paul Fort, almost the only French +poet of whom in his last illness Wilde spoke with affection, spent much +time with him, and remembers him not outwardly unhappy, less capable +than he had been of concealing his depths, and interested in everything, +like a child. Another Frenchman who saw him during these months thought +him dazed, like a man who has had a blow on the head. The two opinions +are not contradictory. They represent a man whose power of will has been +suddenly taken from him. Wilde no longer picked and chose; he no longer, +a critic in life as in art, directed his doings with intention and +self-knowledge. He could no longer dominate life and twist her to the +patterns he desired, but was become flotsam in a stream now obviously +much stronger than himself. He could smile as he drifted, but he could +not stop. + +As the year went on, he fell ill, and though he rallied more than once, +and never lost the brilliance and clarity of his intellect except in +delirium, he grew steadily worse. His death was hurried by his inability +to give up the drinking to which he had become accustomed. It was +directly due to meningitis, the legacy of an attack of tertiary +syphilis. For some months he had increasingly painful headaches. On +October 10, he was operated upon. He rallied after the operation, and, a +fortnight later, was in a condition to talk with wit and charm, as, for +example, when he said that he was dying beyond his means. On October 29, +he got up and went to a cafe. On the 30th, he was less well, though he +drove in the Bois. Throughout November he grew steadily weaker, and was +often hysterical and delirious. Specialists were called in consultation +but could do little more than label the manner of his death. On November +29, a priest, brought by Mr. Robert Ross, baptized him into the Catholic +Church, and administered extreme unction. + +The following account of his last hours is taken from a letter written +by Mr. Ross to a friend, ten days after Wilde's death. Mr. Reginald +Turner had nursed Wilde for some time before his death and, with Mr. +Ross and the proprietor of the hotel,[11] was present when he died. + +"About five-thirty in the morning (November 30) a complete change came +over him, the lines of the face altered, and I believe what is called +the death-rattle began, but I had never heard anything like it before, +it sounded like the horrible turning of a crank, and it never ceased +until the end. His eyes did not respond to the light test any longer. +Foam and blood came continually from his mouth.... From one o'clock we +did not leave the room, the painful noise from the throat became louder +and louder. (We) destroyed letters to keep ourselves from breaking down. +The two nurses were out and the proprietor of the hotel had come up to +take their place; at 1.45 the time of his breathing altered. I went to +the bedside and held his hand, his pulse began to flutter. He heaved a +deep sigh, the only natural one I had heard since I arrived, the limbs +seemed to stretch involuntarily, the breathing became fainter, he passed +at ten minutes to two exactly." + +On December 3, 1900, Oscar Wilde was buried in the Cemetery of Bagneux. +On July 20, 1909, his remains were moved to Pere Lachaise. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[9] After he left prison he took the name of Sebastian +Melmoth. + +[10] For a longer but still inadequate discussion of the +question, see an article in "The Oxford and Cambridge Review" for +October, 1911. + +[11] Hotel d'Alsace, 13 rue des Beaux Arts. + + + + +XI + +AFTERTHOUGHT + + +Wilde has been dead for nearly a dozen years. Already the more swiftly +fading colours of his work are vanishing; already critics who fix their +eyes on that departing brilliance are helping his books into the neglect +that often precedes and invariably follows popularity. His life is +already midway between fact and legend, between realism and glamour. His +life and his books alternately illumine and obscure each other. The +mutilated _De Profundis_ is given a biographical importance that it does +not, in its present state, possess, and the scarlet and drab contrasts +of his tattered tapestry of existence blind the eyes of people who would +otherwise read his books. + + * * * * * + +There is a word, often applied to Wilde in his lifetime, that has, since +his death, been used to justify a careless neglect of his work. That +word is "pose." In all such popular characterizations there is hidden a +distorted morsel of truth. Such a morsel of truth is hidden here. We +need not examine the dull envy of brilliance, the envy felt by timid +persons of a man who dared to display the hopes and the intentions that +were making holiday within him, the envy that used that word as a +reproach, and sought to veil the fact that it was a confession. But we +shall do well to discover what it was beside that envy that made the +word applicable to Wilde. + +Wilde "posed" as an aesthete. He was an aesthete. He "posed" as brilliant. +He was brilliant. He "posed" as cultured. He was cultured. The quality +in him to which that word was applied was not pretence, though that was +willingly suggested, but display. Wilde let people see, as soon as he +could, and in any way that was possible, who and what he was or wished +to be. No bushel hid his lamp. He arranged it where it could best be +seen, and beat drums before it to summon the spectators. He had every +quality of a charlatan, except one: the inability to keep his promises. +Wilde promised nothing that he could not perform. But, because he +promised so loudly, he earned the scorn of those whom charlatans do not +outwit. He has even met with the scorn of charlatans, who cannot +understand why he made so much noise when he really could do what he +promised. + +The noise and the display that were inseparable from any stage of +Wilde's career, and were not without an indirect echo and repetition in +his books, were partly due to the self-consciousness that was among his +most valuable assets. He knew himself, and he knew his worth, and, +conscious of an intellectual pre-eminence over most of his fellows, +assumed its recognition, and was in a hurry to bring the facts level +with his assumption. He had, more than most men, a dramatic conception +of himself. "There is a fatality," says the painter of Dorian Gray, +"about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality +that seems to dog the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be +different from one's fellows." Wilde was always profoundly conscious of +his own "physical and intellectual distinction," not with the almost +scornful consciousness of Poe, but with a deprecating pride and a sense +of what was due to it from himself and from others. Wilde's "pose"--call +it what you will--is easily adopted by talent since Wilde created it +with genius. Its origin was a sense of the possession of genius, of +being distinct from the rest of the world. Poe emphasized this +distinction by looking at people from a distance. Wilde emphasized it by +charming them, with a kind of desperate generosity. He knew that he had +largesse to scatter, and not till the end of his life did he begin to +feel that he had wasted it, that in him a vivid personality had passed +through the world and was not leaving behind it a worthy memorial. This +was not the common regret at having been unable to accomplish things. It +was a regret at leaving insufficient proof of a power of accomplishment +that he did not doubt, but had never exerted to the uttermost. In +thinking of the virtuosity of Wilde's manner, a thing not at all common +in English literature, we must remember the consciousness of power that +wrapped his days in a bright light, served him sometimes as a mantle of +invisibility, and made him loved and hated with equal vehemence. His +tasks were always too easy for him. He never strained for achievement, +and nothing requires more generosity to forgive than success without +effort. + +This consciousness of his power excused in him an extravagance that in a +lesser man would have been laughable. He would have it recognised at all +costs, for confirmation's sake. He needed admiration at once, from the +world, from England, from London, from any small company in which he +happened to be. The same desires whose gratification earned him the +epithet "poseur," made him expend in conversation energies that would +have multiplied many times the volume if not the value of his writings. +He pawned much of himself to the moment, and was never able to redeem +it. + +He leaves three things behind him, a legend, his conversation, and his +works. The legend will be that of a beautiful boy, so gifted that all +things were possible to him, so brilliant that in middle age men still +thought him young, stepping through imaginary fields of lilies and +poisonous irises, and finding the flowers turned suddenly to dung, and +his feet caught in a quagmire not only poisonous but ugly. It will +include the less intimate horror of a further punishment, an +imprisonment without the glamour of murder, as with Wainewright, or that +of burglary, as with Deacon Brodie, but a hideous publication to the +world of the sordid transformation of those imagined flowers. The lives +of Villon and of a few saints can alone show such swift passage from +opulence to wretchedness, from ease to danger, from the world to a cell. +We are not here concerned to blame or palliate the deeds that made this +catastrophe possible, but only to remark that to Wilde himself, in +comparison with the life of his intellect, they probably seemed +infinitely unimportant and insignificant. The life of the thinker is in +thought, of the artist in art. He feels it almost unfair that mere +actions should be forced into a position where they have power over his +destiny. As time goes on, the legend will, no doubt, be modified. It is +too dramatic to be easily forgotten. + +In earlier chapters I have spoken of the conversational quality of +Wilde's prose, but not, so far, of his conversation, which, to some of +those who knew him best, seemed more valuable than the echo of it in his +books. It varied at different periods and in different companies. More +than one writer has described it, and the descriptions do not agree. +With an audience that he thought stupid he was startling, said +extravagant things and asked impossible questions. With another, he +would trace an idea through history, filling out the facts he needed for +his argument with bright pageants of colour, like the paragraphs of +_Intentions_. At one dinner-table he discoursed; at another he told +stories. Wilde "ne causait pas; il contait," says M. Gide. He spoke in +parables, and, as he was an artist, he made more of the parables than of +their meanings. An idea of this fairy-tale talk may be gathered from his +_Poems in Prose_. These things, among the most wonderful that Wilde +wrote, are said to be less beautiful in their elaborate form than as he +told them over the dinner-table, suggested by the talk that passed. They +are certainly a little heavy with gold and precious stones. They are +wistful, like princesses in fairy-tales who look out on the world from +under their crowns, when other children toss their hair in the wind. But +we may well fail to imagine the conversation in which such anecdotes +could have a part, not as excrescences but one in texture with the rest. +No other English talker has talked in this style, and the Queen +Scheherazada did not surpass it when she talked to save her life. Beside +Lamb's stuttered jests, Hazlitt's incisions, Coleridge's billowy +eloquence, Wilde's tapestried speech must be set among the regrettable +things of which time has carelessly deprived us. I have heard it said +that Wilde talked for effect. The peacock spreads his tail in burning +blue and gold against the emerald lawn, and as Whistler made a room of +it, so Wilde made conversation. He talked less to say than to make, and +his manner is suggested by his own description of the talk of Lord Henry +Wotton in _The Picture of Dorian Gray_:-- + +"He played with the idea, and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and +transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with +fancy, and winged it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on, +soared into a philosophy, and Philosophy herself became young, and +catching the mad music of Pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her +wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the +hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled +before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge +press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round +her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over +the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides. It was an extraordinary +improvisation." + +Wilde improvised like that. A metaphor would suddenly grow more +important in his eyes than the idea that had called it into being. The +idea would vanish in the picture; the picture would elaborate itself and +become story, and then, dissolving like a pattern in a kaleidoscope, +turn to idea again, and allow him to continue on his way. Wilde talked +tapestries, as he wrote them. He saw his conversation, and made other +men see it. They thought him a magician. + +And now that mouth is closed, from which, as from Alain Chartier's, "so +many golden words have proceeded." Death has given the kiss of the Lady +Anne of Brittany, and the glittering words are blown away, or fallen in +the pages of other men's books to gild a meagre ground. In fifty years' +time the last of those who heard him speak will be old men and dull of +memory, or garrulous with tedious invention. The talk is gone. Wilde +had no Boswell. All that largesse of genius has been carried away and +spent, or thrown away and forgotten. A talker is like an actor. It is +only possible to say, he was wonderful on such an evening, or on such +another, and, as time goes on and this becomes matter of hearsay, why, +it is as if his achievement had never been. For the flowers of his talk +bloom only in dead men's memories, and have been buried with their +skulls. + +Wilde's talk is gone, but its effects remain in the conversational ease +of his prose, and in the mental attitude that his writings perpetuate. +The talker is, almost of necessity, a dilettante, a man who delights in, +but is not the slave of, his subject of the moment. The existence of the +dilettante is changeful and playful, resembling the bee-like, +sweet-seeking pilgrimage of the critic, but quite distinct from it. +Conversation fosters criticism and dilettantism alike, and these are +Wilde's most noticeable characteristics. I have already insisted, +perhaps too often, on the critical attitude of his work. He insisted on +it himself. Much in his poetry and in his tales is imitative criticism, +his dialogues are critical, the subject of the best of them is "the +critic as artist," and he did not call _Dorian Gray_ a story, but "an +essay on decorative art." I have not insisted on the dilettantism that +made even his multiform criticism a by-product rather than the object of +his life, and allowed it to look for applause, and to reflect his +conversation instead of letting his conversation borrow from its less +fleeting radiance. Wilde's work is distinguished from the greatest in +this: it is not overheard. + +Wilde provides us with the rare spectacle of a man most of whose powers +are those of a spectator, a connoisseur, a man for whom pictures are +painted and books written, the perfect collaborator for whom the artist +hopes in his heart; the spectacle of such a man, delighting in the +delicacies of life no less than in those of art, and yet able to turn +the pleasures of the dilettante and the amateur into the motives of the +artist. In some ages, when talk has been more highly valued than in +ours, he would have been ready to let his criticism die in the air: he +would have been content that all who knew him should credit him with the +power of doing wonderful things if he chose, and with the preference of +touching with the tips of his fingers the baked and painted figurine +over the modelling of it in cold and sticky clay. Such credit is not to +be had in our time, and he had to take the clay in his fingers and prove +his mastery. Besides, he had not the money that would have let him live +at ease among blue china, books wonderfully bound, and men and women as +strange as the moods it would have pleased him to induce. If he had been +rich, I think it possible that he would have been a des Esseintes or a +Dorian Gray, and left nothing but a legend and a poem or two, and a few +curiosities of luxury to find their way into the sale-rooms. + +Wilde preserved, even in those of his writings that cost him most +dearly, a feeling of recreation. His books are those of a wonderfully +gifted and accomplished man who is an author only in his moments of +leisure. Only one comparison is possible, and that is with Horace +Walpole; but Wilde's was infinitely the richer intellect. Walpole is +weighted by his distinction. Wilde wears his like a flower. Walpole is +without breadth, or depth, and equals only as a gossip Wilde's +enchanting freedom as a juggler with ideas. Wilde was indolent and knew +it. Indolence was, perhaps, the only sin that stared him in the face as +he lay dying, for it was the only one that he had committed with a bad +conscience. It had lessened his achievement, and left its marks on what +he had done. Even in his best work he is sometimes ready to secure an +effect too easily. "Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning," +may be regarded as an example of such effects. Much of his work fails; +much of it has faded, but _Intentions_, _The Sphinx_, _The Ballad of +Reading Gaol_, _Salome_, _The Importance of Being Earnest_, one or two +of the fairy tales, and _De Profundis_, are surely enough with which to +challenge the attention of posterity. + +These things were the toys of a critical spirit, of a critic as artist, +of a critic who took up first one and then another form of art, and +played with it almost idly, one and then another form of thought, and +gave it wings for the pleasure of seeing it in the light; of a man of +action with the eyes of a child; of a man of contemplation curious of +all the secrets of life, not only of those that serve an end; of a +virtuoso with a distaste for the obvious and a delight in disguising +subtlety behind a mask of the very obvious that he disliked. His love +for the delicate and the rare brought him into the power of things that +are vulgar and coarse. His attempt to weave his life as a tapestry +clothed him in a soiled and unbeautiful reality. Even this he was able +to subdue. Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit. He touched nothing that he +did not decorate. He touched nothing that he did not turn into a +decoration. + +I do not care to prophesy which in particular of these decorations, of +these friezes and tapestries of vision and thought, will enjoy that +prolongation of life, insignificant in the eternal progress of time, +which, for us, seems immortality. Art is, perhaps, our only method of +putting off death's victory, but what does it matter to us if the books +that feed the intellectual life of our generation are stones to the next +and manna to the generation after that? Of this, at least, we may be +sure: whether remembered or no, the works that move us now will have an +echo that cannot be denied them, unheard but still disturbing, or, +perhaps, carefully listened for and picked out, among the myriad roaring +of posterity along the furthest and least imaginable corridors of time. + + +WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD. +PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH + + + + +_Uniform with this Volume._ + + +EDGAR ALLAN POE + +A CRITICAL STUDY + +BY + +ARTHUR RANSOME + +"This very interesting study." + +TIMES. + + +"This book describes Poe's sad and extremely lonely life, with all its +pride and morbidness, and it also gives a subtle and clear analysis of +his brilliant gifts." + +STANDARD. + + +"Mr. Arthur Ransome has given us a workmanlike and readable book." + +CHRONICLE. + + +"The study is thorough and conscientious, and as entertaining as a whole +as it is in parts provocative." + +SATURDAY REVIEW. + + +"Always interesting, often ingenious, sometimes brilliantly written." + +NATION. + + +"Prefaced with a biographical account which is quite one of the best +sketches of Poe's oddly vagabond life that we have in English." + +PALL MALL GAZETTE. + + +"It is possible that the grace and charm of Mr. Ransome's style may +deceive some as to the serious import of his work; but it seems clear to +us that in his critical study of Poe, Mr. Ransome has made a potent but +mysterious person much more truthfully visible than before; and, in the +larger matters, has shown himself one of the present time's most vital +and original writers on philosophic criticism, one in whom the right +instincts are mated with an enthusiastic and careful precision of +analysis." + +LIVERPOOL COURIER. + + + + +_Uniform with this Volume._ + + +THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK + +A CRITICAL STUDY + +BY + +A. MARTIN FREEMAN + + +"Mr. Freeman's study will be eagerly welcomed. He deals with all +Peacock's known writings, giving analysis of each; and he writes with a +freshness, a searching clearness and thoroughness delightful in these +days of so much slovenly, slipshod criticism. He sends one to Peacock, +and thereby does the best service a critic of Peacock can do." + +EVENING STANDARD. + + +"It is distinguished and critical, and captures the atmosphere of +Peacock." + +OBSERVER. + + +"We recommend it to Peacockians, and also to those who would become +such; it reveals him better than any anthology could.... The book +contains biography and criticism in a manner quite sufficient to equip +the casual reader with a knowledge of the man and his books." + +WORLD. + + +"Mr. Freeman's monograph recounts all that is known about the +circumstances of Peacock's career, and it contains also a good deal of +acute criticism of his writings. It gives us many clues to +interpretation, and helps us to understand the whimsical characteristics +of a man who had a magic pen, and who was nothing if not original." + +STANDARD. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Oscar Wilde, by Arthur Ransome + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OSCAR WILDE *** + +***** This file should be named 36017.txt or 36017.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/0/1/36017/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Martin Pettit and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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