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diff --git a/77494-0.txt b/77494-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8294652 --- /dev/null +++ b/77494-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1932 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77494 *** + + + + + TEN CENT POCKET SERIES NO. 442 + Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius + + Oscar Wilde in + Outline + + Charles J. Finger + + + HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY + GIRARD, KANSAS + + + + + Copyright 1923, + Haldeman-Julius Company. + + + PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + +OSCAR WILDE IN OUTLINE + + One fiery-coloured moment of great life! + And then--how barren the nations’ praise! + How vain the trump of Glory! Bitter thorns + Were in that laurel leaf, whose toothed barbs + Burned and bit deep till fire and red flame + Seemed to feed full upon my brain, and make + The garden a bare desert. + With wild hands + I strove to tear it from my bleeding brow, + But all in vain; and with a dolorous cry + That paled the lingering stars before their time, + I waked at last, and saw the timorous dawn + Peer with grey face into my darkened room, + And would have deemed it a mere idle dream + But for this restless pain that gnaws my heart, + And the red wounds of thorns upon my brow. + + --_Translation from the Polish of + Madame Modjeska by Oscar Wilde._ + + +THE TRUE KNOWLEDGE + + Thou knowest all; I seek in vain + What lands to till or sow with seed-- + The land is black with briar and weed, + Nor cares for falling tears or rain. + + Thou knowest all; I sit and wait + With blinded eyes and hands that fail, + Till the last lifting of the veil + And the first opening of the gate. + + Thou knowest all; I cannot see. + I trust I shall not live in vain, + I know that we shall meet again + In some divine eternity. + +Men in general often find it hard to dissociate the work of artists +from the circumstances of their lives. Let a company fall to talking +of Villon, and it is a safe bet that before long someone will drag in +the incident of his having wandered very close to the gallows. Talk of +Baudelaire, and we are prone to forget, for a moment, his _Flowers of +Evil_, to recall that he painted his hair green. Of Dowson, we remember +that he was a pot house drunkard and overlook his _Impenitentia +Ultima_. Sometimes it seems, indeed, as though more truth was in the +saying that the evil that men do lives after them and the good is +often interr’d with their bones, than the reverse. Certainly Oscar +Wilde’s place in literature would have been decided long ago but for +the distortion caused by circumstances in his life. But, as the mists +clear, certain points stand out. It seems very definitely decided +that as a poet he flew on wings too feeble to reach the clear, cold +heights of Parnassus, two poems only being marked for distinction. +_The Ballad of Reading Gaol_ and _The Sphinx_. As a writer of fiction +he will probably be forgotten, or at best, remembered by one book, as +is Charles Brockden Brown, _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ living as a +literary curiosity as _Wieland_ lives, or as Beckford’s _Vathek_ lives, +a thing at once odd and curious. As literary critic Wilde cannot rank +with Hazlitt or Sainte-Beuve. As dramatist, doubtless, his fame is +secure, and as essayist he will not be forgotten. + +His friend, M. Andre Gide, has told us that Wilde said his novels and +stories were written as the result of wagers made. That is hard to +believe. Too plainly both novels and stories bear the earmarks of Wilde +the stylist. His novel, _The Picture of Dorian Gray_, approaches too +nearly his expressed ideal, his desire to write a tale that should be +of the wondrous beauty of a Persian rug. If Wilde wrote either novel or +story on a wager, he must have wagered with himself. For Oscar Wilde +took himself far too seriously to hang his art on a hair, to stake his +literary reputation on the casting of a die. Indeed, he took himself +and his art more seriously than he took the world, and that to his own +undoing. + +In another place I have shown how Wilde was influenced, how his +life’s path was pulled out of its calculated orbit because of his +feminine soul, and how heredity swayed his acts. Of that last he was +well aware, has, indeed, confessed to the world more than once and +especially in a passage in _The Critic as Artist_: + + Heredity has become, as it were, the warrant for the contemplative + life. It has shown us that we are never less free than when we try + to act. It has hemmed us round with the nets of the hunter, and + written upon the wall the prophecy of our doom. We may not watch + it, for it is within us. We may not see it, save in a mirror that + mirrors the soul. It is Nemesis without her mask. It is the last of + the Fates, and the most terrible. It is the ONLY one of the Gods + whose real name we know. + +The feminine soul naturally had its influence, gave his literary work +a tendency, a direction. To say that it did so seems so obvious as +almost to be platitudinous. With that feminine soul he could never have +written a _Call of the Wild_, for instance, nor could he have written +a _Walden_, because he was physically and mentally incapable of living +a life of adventure as Jack London lived, or of scaling life down to +the bare bone as Thoreau did. The fact is that Wilde himself was a +contradiction, this giant of a man with the feminine soul was the sport +of the gods, and that the spirit of contradiction entered into his +writings is everywhere apparent in the written page. + +Another thing the feminine soul did for him. Because of that inner +urge, he was filled with a burning desire to be admired, and therefore +wrote much for the pyrotechnical effect. In a word, he loved to show +off, to say and write things calculated to startle. You have exactly +the same spirit manifest in Chesterton, in Belloc, too, but to lesser +degree. But in Wilde, that self-satisfied strutting, that peacock +exhibition of brilliant parts is very obvious, indeed. + +Added to the spirit of contradiction and the pavonic display, there +was, in Wilde, a strong spirit of partizanship. That accounts for his +proclamation of himself as a kind of John the Baptist for Charles +Baudelaire. Indeed, for a time, the Baudelairean influence colored all +that he wrote and he outdid his master in ornateness. The same spirit +of partizanship led him to out-Pater Pater. He conceived it to be a +worthy mission to acquaint the stolid British public with Platonic +teachings, especially as relating to affection between men. That, +of course, was as impossible a task and as hopeless as it would be +to attempt to grow banana trees in Greenland. However, Wilde worked +valiantly in his cause and, because of ignorance, and some wilful +distortion and misrepresentation, much that he wrote in all sincerity +later in his life plagued him. + +As final ingredients there may be cited his opposition to the +commercialism and the philistinism of his day which he shared in +company with John Ruskin and Matthew Arnold, and his real desire to +cultivate the capacity for refined enjoyment of the beautiful in art +and literature, an outcropping of his partizanship of Walter Pater. + + +THE SPIRIT OF CONTRADICTION + +In some respects Wilde was like a clever debater who takes keen delight +in flouting the opposition. He was of that sort who, privately granting +the conclusions of his opponent, will deliberately beat about the bush +in an effort to discover entirely new reasons, spiritedly rejecting all +those advanced by the other side. Chesterton is of the same stripe. To +such men to be destructive, to dazzle, to astound, is meat and drink. +Of all pleasures, there is none to interest them as does the game of +conversational entanglements. At whatever cost, they must score off of +the opposition, be that opposition an individual, the public, custom or +convention. Nor do they come unscathed from the battle, for prejudices +and widely held beliefs are very solid things to butt against. Not +with entire impunity may anyone attack what men have imbibed with +their mother’s milk. Conventions and customs are results of ages of +experience and to modify them with changing circumstances is, at the +best, a slow task. + +By way of instance of the argument contradictory and provoking, let us +take a passage from _The Importance of Being Earnest_. It runs: “The +modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly +a thing to be encouraged in others.” Reading that, your average man +who belongs to a fraternal order, who subscribes to charity funds, +who rushes to fountain pen when a begging list is thrust before him, +is shocked. “What!” he exclaims, “would this fellow abolish sympathy? +would he weaken personal love and human affection? Does he scorn the +little child whose mother clung to it until it sunk into its grave? My +dear, old mother who----” and so on. There would be sentimentalities, +and, at the end, Wilde would stand condemned as a cold callous +anti-Christ. + +But without trying to read anything into what Wilde has written except +that which was actually there, reading carefully and accepting it as +the result of his own thought and experience, we find much of value. +We remember that Wilde had pondered long on hereditary influences, +was fully aware that he came from a failing stock and inherited fatal +weaknesses. He had also said something anent the stupidity of holding +that marriage was an institution determined by an omniscient divinity +and if anything was made in heaven it was divorce, not marriage. +Putting these together we have, not a cold and callous piece of +impudence, but an idea which, if pondered, we find leads to the belief +that society would do well to regard as an offense against itself the +mating of undesirables from whom might spring unhealthy branches, +or those prone to weaknesses or disease. Approached from another +direction the teaching looks sound enough and we embrace it, calling it +the gospel of Eugenics. Certainly, a couple having married and finding +in the course of time that their union was unfavorable, unpromising as +to their mutual happiness, would, most certainly, do well to separate, +for of all creatures, who so unhappy as children of a joyless union? +Hence Wilde’s “Divorces are made in heaven.” Hence, also, his scornful +contempt for those who spend efforts on the result of those social +ills which we see in the sick. After all, it is not vastly removed +from Christ’s swift answer to the sentimentalist: “Let the dead bury +the dead.” The Wilde idea closely touches Nietzsche’s. There is little +time to waste on failures. Man is in a state of transition and must +be surpassed. The human race has a long march before it. Which leads +to another apparently contradictory statement, another solid truth: +“Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.” Of +course it is, although shallow or thoughtless people denounced Wilde as +a stirrer up of trouble when the saying was quoted by socialists and +organizers of the unemployed. Had Wilde said, “It is the duty of every +Englishman to be progressive,” the platitude would have been hailed +with delight, and he might have basked in the concentrated smiles of +the black-coated million. But he chose the argument contradictory and +shocked with a truth. The unthinking saw in the saying, not a very +ordinary remark, but a gospel of discontent calculated to make men +vicious and improvident, anarchical and cruel. + +Take another instance of the argument contradictory, one from his +essay, _The Decay of the Art of Lying_, which enraged many on this side +of the Atlantic. Here it is: + + The crude commercialism of America, its materializing spirit, + its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of + imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due + to that country having adopted for its national hero a man, who + according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, + and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington + and the cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of + time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature. + +The book of collected essays, be it said, is called _Intentions_. Now +Wilde’s intention in the passage quoted, in the entire essay in fact, +was to register a condemnation of the idiotic habit of pestiferous +puritans in forever trying to tack a “moral lesson” to a work of art. +And the desire to do that is distinctly an American vice. Not more +than two weeks ago I came across an instance in which a school teacher +had set his pupil the task of writing an essay with this as subject: +“What moral lesson do we get from Robert Louis Stevenson’s _Treasure +Island_?” Now it must be clear to any thinking man that Stevenson +had no more idea of trying to convey a moral lesson in that glorious +tale than he had of advocating murder and piracy. Healthy minds read +for pleasure and not for moral profit, and no sane boy rushes out to +murder his grandmother because he has read the life of Nero. But our +moralists are forever trying to turn the world into a loveless place, a +hell in which each and every one is expected to be forever in a state +of awful spiritual anguish, imagining themselves to be reprobate, +shaken with religious doubt. The dark and cruel fanaticism of the +uplifter would rob both youth and man of joy, and the world would be, +had the moral-lesson monger his way, a duller, blanker, grayer place +every day. The uplifter would fasten upon us a blighting, spiritual +tyranny. On young America, then, the meddlers made an early start. +Washington, the national hero, must be portrayed first and foremost as +inhuman, a something not of the world in which all men are liars. But +at bottom, Wilde was driving home the salutory lesson that art is, must +be, independent of morality: must, assuredly, follow its destiny quite +independent of moral purpose. + +From quite another point of view, from a common sense point of view, +we may come to a realization of the folly of painting our national +heroes as monsters of virtue--as Charles Grandisons, all correct and +precise, and finicking. To endow our Lincolns and Washingtons with +middle class respectability is to belittle them. The picture of them +is unconvincing, as the picture of men without faults always is. Your +sensible European knows better than to set up a moral scarecrow with +all bad spots painted out, and loves his Nelson none the less because +of the Lady Hamilton affair, approves of his Dickens while admitting he +loved his glass, had a golden opinion of the late King Edward, although +he had his _affaires_. + +“The crude commercialism of America,” that Wilde denounced time +and time again, seems to be something that we are only now coming +to realize. Thoreau denounced it, of course; also did Emerson, but +theirs were voices in the wilderness. Today the cry is being taken up +everywhere. Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, John Hall Wheelock and a +dozen others are calling upon men to see something more than the mere +piling up of dollars in life. It is being realized that we are, as a +nation, sadly under-educated, that we have overlooked something of +the highest import when we have overlooked real self-culture. Wilde’s +words, once considered odd, now no longer have the appearance of oddity. + + The development of the race depends on the development of the + individual, and where self-culture has ceased to be the ideal, the + intellectual standard is instantly lowered, and, often, ultimately + lost. If you meet at dinner a man who has spent his life in + educating himself--a rare type in our time, I admit, but still + one occasionally to be met with--you rise from table richer, and + conscious that a high ideal has for a moment touched and sanctified + your days. + +And in another place in the same essay, _The Critic as Artist_: + + Who that moves in the stress and turmoil of actual existence, + noisy politician, or brawling social reformer, or poor + narrow-minded priest blinded by the sufferings of that unimportant + section of the community among whom he cast his lot, can seriously + claim to be able to form a disinterested intellectual judgment + about any one thing? Each of the professions means a prejudice. The + necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in + the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which + people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid. And, + harsh though it may sound, I cannot help saying that such people + deserve their doom. + +To say that “we live in an age in which people are so industrious as to +be stupid” has a ring of contradiction, especially to a people taught +to sing with Dr. Watts: + + How doth the busy little bee + Improve each shining hour, + +but, after all, what have we in the paragraph but a very honest +admission that in life, too much is often sacrificed to that _eclat_ +of success, that too many signally fail to see that there is such a +thing as losing a life while trying to gain it, that in the chase +for supremacy or for wealth, the finer things are often missed. And +you know, and I know, and we all know that men are overworked and +under-educated, and that there is a certain culture which modern +education cannot supply. The position taken by Wilde is quite tenable +to those who have been fortunate enough to read Matthew Arnold’s +_Literature and Dogma_. Nor is it a new truth that Wilde gives, but, on +the contrary, a very old one brilliantly stated. It is the tale told +by Aesop, the tale of the dog crossing the bridge with a bone in its +mouth. The shadow of notoriety is grasped at and the bond of really +desirable things lost forever. It is the viewpoint indicated by that +sturdy individualist Sumner that the man who makes the most of himself +and does his best in his sphere, is far more valuable in the long run +than the philanthropist who runs about with a scheme which would set +the world straight if everyone would accept it. Wilde, in his oblique +way, was getting the truth home that a man is a bundle of possibilities +and that it behooves each and every man to find his bent, to chart his +course true to some Polaris. And, moreover, each and every one must +find his compulsion in himself. “Become what thou art,” said Nietzsche. + +One thing more seems necessary to say in this connection anent the +crude commercialism of America and its materializing spirit. For +generations we have not only hammered away at the moral lesson, +but have made the mistake of setting up a kind of god of social +ambition, of domination, telling the young that with this, that and +the other quality encouraged, great will be the material reward. The +governmentship of the state, the presidency of the country, we have +insisted, would be the goal within the reach of everyone, the height +to which all should aspire, the prize within each grasp. That, of +course, is pernicious nonsense, and not only nonsense but senseless +social ambition. The stupidity of it may best be realized by imagining +an employer inept enough to tell his hands that each of them, by +being punctual and accurate, would have the management of the concern +within his grasp. Apart from the untruthfulness of that because of the +possibility of several developing the required qualities to the same +degree, consider the foolishness. For, it is perfectly obvious that a +manager of, we will say, a scrap iron business, having discovered a +good man at the handles of the electric hoist, would certainly keep +that man in his position and not advance him through the auditing +department and so on the road to the management. No wise manager would +spoil an excellent hoist man to make an indifferent bookkeeper. To do +that would be a step towards disintegration. In other words, everyone +in authority in the business world aims at the development of the +individual and not to the inculcation of social ambition. Nationally, +the same idea should be pursued on the ground that “where self-culture +has ceased to be the ideal, the intellectual standard is instantly +lowered.” In a passage in _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ we find the same +idea: + + The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature + perfectly--that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid + of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all + duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self. Of course they are + charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their + own souls starve, and are naked. + +Without individual self-development, insists Wilde, a society, +a nation, must become an empty thing, a thing all front, like a +Scandinavian troll. In the play _A Woman of No Importance_ Wilde, +emphasizing the point, puts a searing speech into the mouth of his +character Hester Worsley: + + You rich people in England, you don’t know how you are living. How + could you know? You shut out from your society the gentle and the + good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. Living, as you all do, + on others and by them, you sneer at self-sacrifice, and if you + throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a + season. With all your pomp and wealth and art you don’t know how + to live--you don’t even know that. You love the beauty that you + can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and + do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty + of a higher life, you know nothing. You have lost life’s secret. + Oh, your English society seems to me shallow, selfish, foolish. It + has blinded its eyes, and stopped its ears. It lies like a leper + in purple. It sits like a dread thing smeared with gold. It is all + wrong, all wrong. + +Yes, there was a spirit of contradiction in Oscar Wilde and he +delighted in awakening opposition, but looked at properly we find much +that is inexorably logical beneath what seems to be tricksy humor. +He made his hearers writhe while they smiled, and the writhing was +salutary. + + +WILDE’S SPIRIT OF PARTISANSHIP + +As I have said, Wilde’s writings are tinged with Baudelaire, a man of +strong convictions and with a very definite attitude to art and to +life, who has been made a symbol of perversity and decadence. But +let that pass for the time. Granted that Charles Baudelaire had made +excursions into strange dream lands by way of the opium and hashish +door, it is not for us to damn any more than to deify. What engages +us at this moment is Baudelaire’s poetic creed and its influence upon +Oscar Wilde. Baldly translated, I give the Baudelairean poetic creed +thus: “Poetry ... poetry has no other aim than itself; it cannot +have any other aim, and no poem will be so great, so noble, so truly +worthy of the name of poem, as that which will have been written +only for the pleasure of writing a poem. I do not wish to say--be it +understood--that poetry may not ennoble morals, that its final result +may not be to raise men above vulgar interests. That would evidently +be an absurdity. I say that, if the poet has pursued a moral aim, he +has diminished his poetical power, and it is not imprudent to wager +that his work will be bad. Poetry cannot, under pain of death or +degradation, assimilate itself to science or to morals. It has not +truth for its object, it has only itself.” + +It cannot be too strongly emphasized that this does not mean that there +is a predilection for things immoral, a delight in depravity and in +ugliness. It simply means what should be a self evident truth, a truth +accepted by all reasonable men; that art runs its course independently +of morality just as it runs independently of science or of political +economy; that wise men do not look for a moral lesson in works of art, +should, indeed, accept poetry just as they accept music. Who, hearing +a Beethoven sonata, would search for the lesson in it? Who so foolish +as to seek a moral sentiment in Rubinstein’s _Kammenoi-Ostrow_? Wilde’s +way of stating his artistic creed was very similar to Baudelaire’s. +Thus: + + Science is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon + eternal truths. Art is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes + are fixed upon things beautiful and immortal and ever-changing. To + morals belong the lower and less intellectual spheres. + +I wrote, a few paragraphs back, that Baudelaire had become a kind of +symbol. A word of explanation is due. Just as Hogarth chose to picture +a side of life which others of his time were either too blind, or too +squeamish, or too cowardly, or too conventional minded to attempt, +pictures that showed the beast in man, the human being as Yahoo and +Struldbrug, pictures a man debauched, dissipated, degraded and +filthy, so has Baudelaire sung of the unwholesome things which are +part of our artificial life--of vice, and crime, and corruption. Very +engagingly too he dabbles in things esoteric and diabolical. Take that +little prose poem, _The Generous Player_--a tale in which the chief +character sells his soul to the devil on condition that he shall be +free from boredom for the remainder of his days, but, after the compact +is made, begins to doubt with horror whether his satanic majesty will +keep his word. So, to reassure himself, he prays in semi-slumber: “My +God; Lord my God! Let it be that the Devil keep his word.” It is a +queer tale and there are others akin to it, but each must read for +himself, must try to understand the peculiar attraction for, not only +the diabolical, but the loathsome, the morbid, the criminal and the +lewd had for the Frenchman. Of course, the more Baudelaire was attacked +for his supposed immorality the more extravagant he became. Still, he +was a great poet and a master of the word. + +Unfortunately, somehow, we are inclined to overlook the fact that +it is not Frenchmen alone who have pictured the horrible. We forget +Morrison with his _Tales of Mean Streets_, Caradoc Evans with his +stories of sordid poverty and crime in the Welsh hill-country, Thomas +Burke and his dock-land sketches. But pass all that. Enamored of +Baudelaire, Wilde’s work became affected just as Swinburne’s work +was by the same influence, and, in another branch of art, Aubrey +Beardsley’s. But let us not overlook the fact that there is everywhere +manifested a vast interest in the odd and the bizarre, in the occult +and the fantastic. That peculiar interest accounts for the popularity +of others besides those whose names I have mentioned; Poe, for +instance, and Ambrose Bierce, and Zola, and Gautier and De Maupassant. +It accounted for the vast interest which, as Frank Harris tells us, +was manifested in Wilde’s poem, _The Harlot’s House_, as a poem slight +enough, but as a picture very attractive, as all forbidden things are +attractive. + + We caught the tread of dancing feet, + We loitered down the moonlit street, + And stopped beneath the harlot’s house. + + Inside, above the din and fray, + We heard the loud musicians play + The “Treues Liebes Herz” of Strauss. + + Like strange mechanical grotesques, + Making fantastic arabesques, + The shadows raced across the blind. + + We watched the ghostly dancers spin + To sound of horn and violin, + Like black leaves wheeling in the wind. + + Like wire-pulled automatons, + Slim silhouetted skeletons + Went sidling through the slow quadrille. + + They took each other by the hand, + And danced a stately saraband; + Their laughter echoed thin and shrill. + + Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed + A phantom lover to her breast, + Sometimes they seemed to try to sing. + + Sometimes a horrible marionette + Came out, and smoked its cigarette + Upon the steps like a live thing. + + Then, turning to my love, I said, + “The dead are dancing with the dead, + The dust is whirling with the dust.” + +Baudelaire, and Wilde as well, sometimes ran _fanti_, just as men +in arguments are intoxicated with their own verbosity. So we find +Wilde in the warmth of his partizanship not only couching a lance for +Baudelaire, but handling edged swords, to be wounded later with his +own weapons. Thus: + + What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it + the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colorless. By its + curiosity, Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its + intensified assertion of individualism, it saves us from monotony + of type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, + it is one with the higher ethics. And as for the virtues! What + are the virtues? Nature, M. Renan tells us, cares little about + chastity and it may be that it is to the shame of Magdalen, and not + to their own purity, that the Lucretias of modern life owe their + freedom from stain. Charity, as even those of whose religion it + makes a formal part have been compelled to acknowledge, creates a + multitude of evils. The mere existence of conscience, that faculty + of which people prate so much nowadays, and are so ignorantly + proud, is a sign of our imperfect development. It must be merged + in instinct before we become fine. Self-denial is simply a method + by which man arrests his progress, and self-sacrifice a survival + of the mutilation of the savage, part of that old worship of pain + which is so terrible a factor in the history of the world, and + which even now makes its victims day by day, and has its altars + in the land. Virtues! Who knows what the virtues are? Not you. + Not I. Not any one. It is well for our vanity that we slay the + criminal, for if we suffered him to live he might show us what we + had gained by his crime. It is well for his peace that the saint + goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his + harvest.--_The Critic as Artist._ + +That, which played a great part in Wilde’s trial, is apparently a +kind of advocacy of the M. Fr. Paulhan point of view, (_Le Nouveau +Mysticisme_, page 94) the Decadent philosophy dished up and watered +for British consumption. Baudelaire had said that “the vulgar sought +goodness as an end,” and Wilde had this: + + To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is + obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid + terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low + passion for middle-class respectability.--_The Critic as Artist._ + +Instances might be multiplied, but enough has been said to show that +Wilde not only depended for effects upon a manifestation of his spirit +of contradiction, but somewhat suffered in his art because of his +partizanship. Still, of his originality there can be no doubt and a +partizan is not necessarily a plagiarist. + +As to the charge of plagiarism, while others have charged Wilde with +the literary sin, it remained for his former friend, Lord Alfred +Douglas, to be the most bitter in denunciation. “His (Wilde’s) sonnets +are, for the most part, Miltonic in their effects; the metre and +method of _In Memoriam_ are used in the greater number of his lyrics; +and he used the metre which Tennyson sealed to himself for all time +even in _The Sphinx_, which is his great set work; while in such +pieces as _Charmides_, _Panthea_, _Humanitad_ and _The Burden of Itys_ +he borrowed the grave pipe of Matthew Arnold.” Writing of the poem +_Le Mer_, Douglas says: “The bird is Wilde, the plumage and call are +Tennyson’s to a fault.” Again, “While Wilde arranges the stanzas as +though they consisted of two lines, they really consist of Tennyson’s +four ... Tennyson’s suns as well as Tennyson’s stanza!” In another +place Douglas writes: “I have not space to enter into great detail +with regard to those lyrics of Wilde which are not flatly Tennysonian. +There are about twenty of them, and they include a cheap imitation of +_La Belle Dame sans Merci_, a flagrant copy of Hood’s lines beginning +‘Take her up tenderly’--(Douglas refers to the poem _The Bridge of +Sighs_)--and sundry pieces which are childishly reminiscent of Mrs. +Browning, William Morris and even Jean Ingelow.... Wilde was an +over-sedulous ape, so over-sedulous, in fact, that he is careful to +emphasize and exaggerate the very faults and defects of his masters.” + +Douglas is bitter as gall and, like the gallant Michael Monahan, I +prefer to quote him with the sonnet he wrote on learning of the death +of Oscar Wilde: + + I dreamed of him last night, I saw his face + All radiant and unshadowed of distress. + And as of old, in music measureless, + I heard his golden voice and marked him trace + Under the common thing the hidden grace, + And conjure wonder out of emptiness, + Till mean things put on beauty like a dress, + And all the world was an enchanted place. + And then methought outside a fast-locked gate + I mourned the loss of unrecorded words, + Forgotten tales and mysteries half said, + Wonders that might have been articulate, + And voiceless thoughts like murdered singing birds, + And so I woke and knew that he was dead! + +It leaves a sweeter taste in the mouth. + + +AS FICTION WRITER + +Possessed with the spirit of contradiction, obsessed with the +Baudelairean diabolism, Wilde tried his hand at fiction with curious +results. Be it remembered that he was one of those odd and lucky +individuals in whom bubble up at all times plots and ideas and +situations capable of being used in the making of stories. Such +minds see not only the thing before them, a man and a woman, we will +say, walking towards one another over a bridge, but with a leap into +a strange world of possibilities or probabilities, there is conjured +up within them a thousand visions of things odd and fantastic, which +might happen. It is not even correct to say that they are men of great +imagination--they are more than that. They are, in a respect, tortured +men, men whose minds project them into all kinds of situations. They +themselves die a thousand deaths, suffer a thousand sorrows and pains, +are torn with a thousand griefs. You see that kind of character in +Charles Dickens who is always on the verge of tears or laughter, +enjoying life, actually enjoying it with Micawber, with Pickwick, with +Sam Weller, with Cap’n Cuttle, with the Crummeles: suffering with +Oliver Twist, with Sidney Carton, with his little Nell, with his Tom +Pinch. Such men live the lives that they portray and there is a vast +gulf separating them from those writers who artistically contrive +their characters but keep themselves apart from them as a Creator is +apart from his creatures. Thackeray for instance, who will paint for +you a Beatrix, a Henry Esmond, a Harry Warrington, a Madam Bernstein, +a Captain Costigan, but who will step down as it were, among his +audience, and comment upon the characters upon the stage; sometimes, +indeed, interrupt his narrative to point a moral. Of that sort too was +Trollope: of the other sort was George Eliot. Yet, in both cases, in +the case of Dickens as well as in the case of Thackeray, with George +Eliot as with Trollope, you have accurate pictures of life and of +society, and the prejudices, the motives, the ambitions, the form and +construction of the mind of the fictional personages are as evident to +the reader as if he lived in their very presence. + +Accepting Dickens and Thackeray as examples, we see Wilde with that +peculiar constitution of mind which made him prone to identify himself +with his characters, but, again, he had that streak of perversity in +him which refused to allow the characters he imagined to act a rational +way or to live in a rational world. There was in him that childish +and destructive habit of destroying his own toys, the habit we see in +Chesterton who paints pictures perfectly credible in his Auberons and +Barkers and Quins, but sets them to doing fantastic tricks, standing +on their heads, running about in queer disguises and undertaking to do +things that would, in a sane society, promptly land them in the lunatic +asylum. And, of course, with the trick of perversity, Wilde had that +Baudelairean bent. + +With what has been said kept in mind, consider Wilde’s story, _Lord +Arthur Savile’s Crime_, which appeared in the _Court and Society +Review_ in 1887 and in book form in 1891. In the story you have a mimic +world that is a faithful reflection of the contemporary world with its +lords and ladies and society folk of wealth, hobnobbing with poets, +socialists, nihilists, sceptics and odd characters. To verify the truth +of his picture of the reception at Bentick house, one has but to turn +to the pages of the newspapers of the day, the society journals rather, +and mark the names of those in the public eye: Lady Jeune, William +Morris, Prince Kropotkine, Burne Jones, Labouchere, the Positivist +crowd with Frederic Harrison and his friends, the theosophists with +Madam Blavatsky and Sinnett, the agnostics with Annie Besant and +Stewart Ross and Dr. Marsh; others too, Cunninghame Graham, Bernard +Shaw, Belfort Bax, Walter Crane. Such a gathering is hardly possible in +America where there is no democracy, but, instead, an aristocracy of +wealth. It was, and is, quite possible in the older country in which +there is a real democracy, where two impulses are present, a respect +for tradition and for visible authority and a regard for precedent on +the one hand, and on the other a regard for certain abstract principles +and a strong sense of the value of individual judgment. Between an +organized aristocracy and an organic people things are balanced and the +triumph of one does not develop into despotism, nor does the triumph +of the other result in sullen mob rule. So, as I say, the picture of +the reception is perfectly credible and Wilde paints well, as well as +Dickens paints when he tells us of the belfry in _The Chimes_, or of +Fountain Court in his _Martin Chuzzlewit_. + +But now mark the Wilde who twists things, who, in a stage set for +things as they are, chooses, in his contradictory spirit, to bring in +events as they are not at all apt to be. + +One of his characters is a palmist and to him goes the hero, Lord +Arthur Savile. The palmist, Mr. Podgers, tells his client that his fate +is read--that he is to become a murderer. Now see the odd kink, the +paradox. Lord Savile, being about to marry, finds his mind occupied +with the prediction. So, since it is decreed that he must do murder, +the sooner it is done and out of the way, the better. There is a kind +of Benvenuto Cellini touch here, the Cellini who when at work in +his shop finds his brain on fire because a fellow has annoyed him, +so rushes out dagger in hand to stab him and have done with it; the +Cellini who finding himself filled with amatory desire while at work, +satisfies himself with his model and gets to work again. So Wilde’s +Lord Savile. To him it does not very much matter who the victim is, so +he tries to poison an aunt and fails, then attempts to kill an uncle +with an infernal machine. Disgusted with his ill success he takes a +walk along the Thames embankment to ponder, when his eyes light upon +the palmist leaning on the parapet with folded arms, gazing into the +black depth. Then: + + 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 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 of 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 realized the decree + of destiny. He heaved a deep sigh of relief, and Sybil’s name came + to his lips. + +You see the kink, or course. A murder with no cause. A murder and +no remorse. The victim rather a scarecrow kind of figure. And you +see also, the Baudelairean gesture properly watered for English +consumption. Bear in mind, too, the quotation made a few pages ago from +_The Critic as Artist_, relating to sin as an essential element of +progress. + +Of course, the story is all tricksy fooling and certainly not worth +while. It is thin stuff, poor stuff, unworthy stuff and all this +largely because insincere and imitative. One seems to see Wilde +starting seriously enough, to break off at a tangent with a discordant +burst of laughter. But here is a point to consider. Had Wilde been +accused of murder, and placed on trial, what hidden tendency think you, +would have been discovered by a keen lawyer in the book? There’s matter +for thought there. + +We pass to the longer story, _The Picture of Dorian Gray_. In this, +Wilde tried to do something new, putting indeed, into the mouth of +one of his characters his ideal: “to write a novel that would be as +lovely as a Persian carpet, and as unreal.” He did, or attempted +more, endeavoring to break away from the English tradition and write +a novel with no love interest as motive. A task glorious enough to be +sure, for, as every thoughtful man must have realized, the Anglo-Saxon +is not obsessed with sex. The acquisition of a woman is by no means +the greatest thing in life, nor is it the thing that absorbs a man. +Marriage is a mere incident. Other things occupy his mind far more than +sex: business, for example, and art, and ambition. + +Now the story thread of _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ is slight enough. +A picture has been painted by Dorian’s friend, and, while the subject +of the picture retains his youth and beauty, the picture ages, the +face on the canvas reflecting the life of the man, showing the stigmata +of a life of folly, of vice, of lust, of hypocrisy. The discovery of +the change is thus described: + + “You won’t? Then I must do it myself,” said the young man; and he + tore the curtain from its rod, and flung it on the ground. + + An exclamation of horror broke from Hallward’s lips as he saw in + the dim light the hideous thing on the canvas leering at him. + There was something in its expression that filled him with disgust + and loathing. Good heavens! it was Dorian Gray’s own face that he + was looking at! The horror, whatever it was, had not yet entirely + marred that marvelous beauty. There was still some gold in the + thinning hair and some scarlet on the sensual lips. The sodden + eyes had kept something of the loveliness of their blue, the noble + curves had not yet passed entirely away from chiseled nostrils and + from plastic throat. Yes, it was Dorian himself. But who had done + it? He seemed to recognize his own brushwork, and the frame was his + own design. The idea was monstrous, yet he felt afraid. He seized + the lighted candle, and held it to the picture. In the left hand + corner was his own name, traced in long letters of bright vermilion. + + It was some foul parody, some infamous, ignoble satire. + + Hallward turned again to the portrait, and gazed at it. “My God! + if it is true,” he exclaimed, “and this is what you have done with + your life, why, you must be worse even than those who talk against + you fancy you to be!” He held the light up again to the canvas, + and examined it. The surface seemed to be quite undisturbed, and as + he had left it. It was from within, apparently, that the foulness + and horror had come. Through some strange quickening of inner life + the leprosies of sin were slowly eating the thing away. The rotting + of a corpse in a watery grave was not so fearful. + +A mere extract, of course, robs the scene of its vitality, but still, +Wilde does not stir in the reader the passion of horror that a true +artist should. Compare the scene with that never-to-be-forgotten page +in Conrad’s _Secret Agent_ where the woman thrusts the carving knife +into the heart of her husband, or the latter part of _Le Père Goriot_ +where Balzac bruises the reader’s heart as he tells of the torture of +anguish; or the picture in Thackeray’s _Vanity Fair_ where Steyne is +knocked down. The truth is that Wilde, as Ross told Blunt, was forever +thinking of his style, and when a man has his pose in mind, he is not +very apt to lay the lash on heavily. Machen, in his _Hieroglyphics_, +has had much to say on the ecstasy of writers, much that is well worth +reading, and he proves his point to the hilt. That ecstasy, Wilde +lacked. Within him were no eternal tempests. Never could he say with +Byron, “I have written from the fulness of my mind, from passion, from +impulse, from many motives but not from their sweet voices.” Wilde did +write for “sweet voices” and, consequently he lacked much that a writer +of fiction requires. Turn to the passage in the _Secret Agent_, which I +have mentioned, read it and compare it with this, the death of Dorian +Gray. Wilde seems sluggish, uninterested, aloof. + + Inside, in the servants’ part of the house, the half clad domestics + were talking in low whispers to each other. Old Mrs. Leaf was + crying, and wringing her hands. Francis was as pale as death. + + After about a quarter of an hour, he got the coachman and one of + the footmen and crept upstairs. They knocked, but there was no + reply. They called out. Everything was still. Finally, after vainly + trying to force the door, they got on the roof, and dropped down on + to the balcony. The windows yielded easily; the bolts were old. + + When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid + portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the + wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was + a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was + withered, wrinkled and loathsome of visage. It was not till they + had examined the rings that they recognized who it was. + +The most patient of readers is surfeited in the book with long, +descriptive, catalogue-like passages telling of the fantastic pursuits +of Dorian Gray, a literary trick evidently imitative of certain +French writers--Barres, Huysmans and Villiers de l’Isle Adam. Indeed, +in places, the character Dorian Gray is strongly reminiscent of the +character Des Essientes who “with his vaporizers injected into his +room an essence formed of ambrosia, Mitcham lavender, sweet pea, ess. +boquet....” There is much more of it in the pages of _A Rebours_. As I +say, Wilde proved himself to be very imitative. You must read his ninth +chapter, but a single quotation will give some idea: + + And so he would now study perfumes, and the secrets of their + manufacture, distilling heavily scented oils, and burning odorous + gums from the East. He saw that there was no mood of the mind that + had not its counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself + to discover their true relations, wondering what there was in + frankincense that made one mystical, and in ambergris that stirred + one’s passions, and in violets that woke the memory of dead + romances, and in musk that troubled the brain, and in champak that + stained the imagination; and seeking often to elaborate a real + psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several influences of + sweet-smelling roots, and scented pollen-laden flowers, of aromatic + balms, and of dark and fragrant woods, of spikenard that sickens of + hovenia that makes men mad, and of aloes that are said to be able + to expel melancholy from the soul. + +Dorian Gray collects many things, plays with many things, to chase away +his _ennui_: musical instruments, jewels, embroideries, ecclesiastical +vestments, and there are long catalogues in the case of each one +similar to that given above in relation to perfumes. There are pages, +especially in the ninth chapter that remind the reader of nothing more +than a great storehouse with Wilde standing before jumbled piles, +picking this thing after that in the manner of a suave auctioneer and +commenting upon each article quite oblivious of the fact that his +hearers yawn, and that no real business is being done. + +There is, all through the book, the Baudelairean influence. Dorian Gray +becomes very like the owls of Baudelaire sitting in a row, in his moods +of inactivity. Nor is the Baudelairean interest in crime and criminals +unimitated. Dorian ponders over strange things: over Gian Maria who +used hounds to chase living men and whose murdered body was + + “covered with roses by a harlot who had loved him; the Borgia on + his white horse, with Fratricide riding beside him, and his mantle + stained with the blood of Perotto; Petro Riario, the young Cardinal + Archbishop of Florence, child and minion of Sextus IV., whose + beauty was equaled only by his debauchery, and who received Leonora + of Aragon in a pavilion of white and crimson silk, filled with + nymphs and centaurs, and gilded a boy that he might serve her at + the feast as Ganymede or Hylas; Ezzelin, whose melancholy could be + cured only by the spectacle of death, and who had a passion for red + blood, as other men have for red wine--the son of the fiend, as was + reported, and one who had cheated his father at dice when gambling + with him for his own soul; Giambattista Cibo, who in mockery took + the name of Innocent, and into whose torpid veins the blood of + three lads was infused by a Jewish doctor; Sigismondo Malatesta, + the lover of Isotta, and the lord of Rimini, whose effigy was + burned at Rome, as the enemy of God and man, who strangled + Polyssena with a napkin, and gave poison to Ginevra d’Este in a cup + of emerald, and in honor of a shameful passion built a pagan church + for Christian worship; Charles VI., who had so wildly adored his + brother’s wife that a leper had warned him of the insanity that + was coming on him, and who could only be soothed by Saracen cards + painted with the images of Love and Death and Madness; and, in his + trimmed jerkin and jeweled cap and acanthus-like curls, Grifonetto + Baglioni, who slew Astorre with his bride, and Simonetto with his + page, and whose comeliness was such that, as he lay dying in the + yellow piazza of Perugia, those who had hated him could not choose + but weep, and Atalanta, who had cursed him, blessed him.” + +The truth is, that in the character Dorian Gray, Wilde portrayed not +a normal man, but one who comes very near the border line of being +what Krafft-Ebing would have termed a degenerate. Certainly he shows a +moral insensibility, a lack of proper judgment and ethical ideas. His +egoistic ambition is unlimited and he is full of a sentimentality that +is shallow cant. The book made a sensation and estimates of it ranged +from the zenith to nadir. There were those who extolled it and those +who damned it, just as there were those that extolled and others that +damned _Jurgen_ and _Ulysses_, as there were those that raised Rossetti +to the skies and others who charged him with all sorts of artistic sins +and said things anent the extolling of fleshliness as the distinct and +supreme end of pictorial and poetic art. + +The thing that is rare and valuable in _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ is +the vivid coloring, the effect of an atmosphere of expensive and highly +artificial life and cultured luxury; the florid and poetic style. +He depicts a highly artificial life and idealizes it. He portrays +a quite impossible world, as impossible as the world of pastoral +poetry where meadows were inhabited by youths and maidens who guided +sheep and carried beribboned crooks, and conversed in rhymed iambic +octosyllables, and danced and sang. For, in your experience doubtless +as in mine, never has man talked to man, off of a chautauquan platform, +like this: + + “Let us go and sit in the shade,” said Lord Henry. “Parker has + brought out the drinks, and if you stay any longer in this glare + you will be quite spoiled, and Basil will never paint you again. + You really must not let yourself become sunburned. It would be very + unbecoming to you.” + + “What does it matter?” cried Dorian, laughing, as he sat down on + the seat at the end of the garden. + + “It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray.” + + “Why?” + + “Because you have now the most marvelous youth, and youth is the + one thing worth having.” + + “I don’t feel that, Lord Henry.” + + “No, you don’t feel it now. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled + and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and + passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, + you will feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. + Will it always be so?... You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. + Gray. Don’t frown. You have. And Beauty is a form of Genius--is + higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one + of the great facts of the world, like sun-light, or spring-time, or + the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. + It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It + makes princes of those who have it. You smile? Ah! when you have lost + it you won’t smile. + + “People say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial. That may be + so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought. To me, Beauty + is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not + judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, + not the invisible.” + +But Wilde was idealizing, making deliberately an untrue, but charming +picture--doing indeed in another way what old Izaak Walton did in +his _Compleat Angler_, or what John Fletcher did in his _Faithful +Shepherdess_. + +As for the vivid coloring of which I spoke, read this: + + “The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the + light summer wind stirred amid the trees of the garden there came + through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more + delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn. + + “From the corner of the divan of Persian saddlebags on which he was + lying, smoking, as usual, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton + could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored + blossoms of the laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly + able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and + now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted + across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front + of the huge windows, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, + and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters who, in + an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of + swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering + their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with + monotonous insistence round the black-crocketed spires of the early + June hollyhocks, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive, + and the dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant + organ.” + +You see from that what Wilde meant when he made his character express +a wish to write a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian carpet. +I think that in _The Picture of Dorian Gray_, Wilde started with +the Persian carpet in his mind’s eye, but sometimes lapsed into the +carelessness of a wool sack maker. He is not innocent of passages +suggestive of the transpontine drama. But that we overlook in sheer +delight at his joy in magnificence. + +A last word on _The Picture of Dorian Gray_. It appeared at the end of +a time when the English world was full of books with a purpose, such +books as Edward Bellamy’s _Looking Backward_, Edna Lyell’s sentimental +agnosticism, Grant Allen’s _Woman Who Did_, and, at the same time, +there was a lively stream of Zola translations, much energetic, +realistic stuff very comparable with the work of Sherwood Anderson +of our day. To go further, there was much of the kind of fiction, +conventionally unconventional on the order of the present day Ben +Hecht. There was George Moore, too. The strictly conventional had +Hall Caine, Miss Braddon and Mrs. Henry Wood, writers of the stripe +of Harold Bell Wright and Gene Stratton Porter. Oscar Wilde struck a +path away from all that kind of thing and swung towards a modified +romanticism, a something that should not be literary photography. His +attempt was rather to lead away from the morass of realism into the +valley of idealism. You get the idea somewhat in the Shakespearean +lesson that + + Nature is made better by no mean, + But Nature makes that mean; so o’er that art, + Which, you say, adds to Nature, is an art + That Nature makes.... This is an art + Which does mend Nature--change it rather: but + The art itself is Nature. + +So we come to the fairy tales of Oscar Wilde, the best by far of which +is _The Happy Prince_. These naturally gave Wilde full scope for his +passion for color and luxury and decorative effects. But Wilde’s fairy +tales were fairy tales for grown ups and not for children. Indeed, it +is safe to say that for small folk who are in the Grimm’s Fairy Tale +age, they do not stand the test of reading aloud--the only test in a +children’s book. Oliver Goldsmith observed wittily that Dr. Johnson +made his little fish talk like great whales. Oscar Wilde made his fairy +animals and creatures talk like Oscar Wilde. Try this on a child and +observe the effect. “Tomorrow 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 great God Memnon. All night long he +watches the stars, and when the morning star shines, he utters one cry +of joy and then 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.” + +It would be waste of space to spend words on what children do, and +do not, appreciate. Had Wilde sought a guide, he could have taken +none better than his contemporary, Walter Crane. One careful study of +Walter Crane’s illustrations to Grimm’s household stories, the picture +of the Sleeping Beauty for example, would have been sufficient. But +Wilde was not writing for children, nor had he the faculty of doing +so. What Wilde cared about was his style--consideration of that filled +his horizon. Besides, his fairy tales carried altogether too obvious +a moral lesson. Children demand simplicity, and simplicity and Oscar +Wilde were ever strangers. The single tale, _The Happy Prince_, be it +said, is in altogether a different category. Wilde must have written +it because he wished to write it. Turning to the bibliography of Oscar +Wilde, I find that in every case, when fellow authors have written +about the book of fairy tales, there has been mention of _The Happy +Prince_. Walter Pater mentions it in a letter dated June 12th, to Oscar +Wilde: it is mentioned in a poem printed in the Harliquinade; Thomas +Hutchinson has a dedication to Oscar Wilde in his Jolts and Jingles: + + “To you who wrote The Happy Prince, + The sweetest tale of modern time...” + +Next appeared _The House of Pomegranates_, dedicated to Mrs. Wilde, a +book of tales frankly written for grown up folk in whom the love of +Romance is not dead. It was not a financial success and the stock was +sold off as a remainder. Wrote Wilde to the editor of the Pall Mall +Gazette: “... in building this House of Pomegranates, I had about as +much intention of pleasing the British child as I had of pleasing the +British public.” In another letter he compares his situation as writer +of fairy tales with Andersen’s, saying that the true admirer of fairy +tales was to be found “not in the nursery, but on Parnassus.” + +True, equally with Hans Christian Andersen, Oscar Wilde might have +written fairy stories because it pleased him to do so, but between +the method of the two men there was a gulf of difference. Andersen +wrote because he wanted to, but he wanted to do things that would +please children. Wilde wrote because he wanted to, but he wanted to +do things that would please himself. The fuss aesthetic is the one +thing that fairies will not put up with, the atmosphere that destroys +credibility. Wilde’s fantastic creatures were sophisticated rather +than simple, often self-conscious, like precocious children, hot house +beings eager for applause of their elders. Andersen’s fairy folk were +simple, dream-creatures that could stand cold water and clear air +and sunshine. In Wilde there is elegance always, but never rascally +gaiety. In Andersen there is quiet unobtrusiveness, never cleverness +nor facetiousness. + + +THE STAGE + +It would seem that in some mysterious way, all things pointed to +success for Wilde as a playwright. His love for gorgeous scenes, for +spectacular effects, for swift surprises, for witty dialogue, for +neat, staccato sentences, for the brilliant social life, for silver +laughter--all these were ingredients for success on the boards. More, +in his essays, we find the result of his study of the theater, a study +concerning itself sagely with stage, with scenery, with effects, with +management. As spectator and as critic, he accumulated a vast store of +knowledge and we find him, in _Lady Windermere’s Fan_, experimenting +with that knowledge. As Shaw pointed out, Wilde played with everything; +with wit, with philosophy, with drama, with actors and audience, with +the whole theater. + +Wilde’s appearance on the English stage was as a bright star in a dark +sky. His advent caused a flutter like the advent of Sheridan. It was +a time when the theater had sunk, when stage craft had slipped into +the slough of spectacularity. People flocked, here to see the dresses +that Mrs. Patrick Campbell wore, there to see Wilson Barrett in the +lime light with his subordinates duly subordinate, to another place +to gaze at the spectacles provided by Augustus Harris, to the music +halls for an exhibition of strong animal spirits and physical agility, +to the Lyceum to bathe in the heroics of Henry Irving, to melodramas, +to pantomimes, to acting versions of old plays that were little more +than falsifications. “Nobody goes to the theater,” wrote Shaw in 1896, +“except the people who also go to Madame Tussaud’s. Nobody writes for +it, unless he is hopelessly stage struck and cannot help himself. It +has no share of the leadership of thought; it does not even reflect +the current. It does not create beauty; it apes fashion. It does not +produce personal skill; our actors and actresses, with the exceptions +of a few persons of natural gifts and graces, mostly miscultivated +or half cultivated, are simply the middle class section of the +residuum. The curt insult with which Matthew Arnold dismissed it from +consideration found it and left it utterly defenseless.” And it was +into a theater world thus described, that Oscar Wilde stepped with his +skill and cultivated taste. + +The situation was much as it is today in the world of moving picture +production, a situation extremely demoralizing to true art in which, by +what we may call the star system, a few short sighted managers strive +to obtain vast wealth. I say demoralizing to art, because in time the +public wearies of its stars, and, having been educated to no standard, +deserts the field. I point to the moving picture world as analogy, +because in spite of all the advertisements of the correspondence +schools featuring scenario work as the way to fame, it is pretty well +admitted that today plays are written for actors, for stars, and actors +do not exist to act. Therefore we have, perforce, so much that is +sensational, childish or merely vulgar; so little on the screen that is +artistic. + +But Wilde with his wit, his gentle mirth, and, above all, his pose as +egotist, took London by storm. It was a real triumph of ability over +ineptitude. There was a delightful page written by A. B. Walkeley +in the _Speaker_ at the time _Lady Windermere’s Fan_ was produced, +a passage that gives an admirable picture of not only the play, +but the author, and it is easy to imagine the astonishment of the +fashionable audience at the St. James’s Theater. “The man or woman who +does not chuckle with delight at the good things which abound in _Lady +Windermere’s Fan_ should consult a physician at once; delay would be +dangerous. Of Mr. Oscar Wilde’s coming forward at the end, cigarette +in hand, to praise his players, like a preface of Victor Hugo, and to +commend his own play, ‘of which I am sure, ladies and gentlemen, you +estimate the merits almost as highly as I do myself,’ you will already +have read. I am still chortling ... at its exquisite impertinence.” + +There was something new indeed for London: piquancy, pungency, +wit, ingenious situations--to cap all, a throwing overboard of the +conventional self-depreciation and a public self glorification. Wilde, +clever, lucky, amiable, was a Beaumarchais redivivus. He walked into +his place like a monarch: considered his new position to be his +birthright. Life became to him as a holiday. I think that my friend +Haldeman-Julius hit the mark when he said to me, one day, that Wilde +would live for posterity as Sheridan has lived. There is a singular +resemblance between the two men indeed. Lord Byron, the friend of +Sheridan, has left on record his opinion that he had never heard nor +conceived of a more extraordinary conversationalist: has told us how +men spent nights listening to him: has told us that no one equaled him +at a supper: has told us how he retained his wit even when drunk. It +is Wilde to a hair. There was, in Wilde, the sparkling individuality +of the author of _The School for Scandal_, the sustained brilliancy, +the infinite variety, the inexhaustible vigor. Both men had the art of +repartee, of heaping witticism on witticism and happy phrase on phrase +in a fine crescendo. Both had the gift of satire--not the satire of +Swift to biting and stinging, but the satire of La Bruyère, a satire +that hides behind a gracious smile. One is inclined to think that the +plays are too good for acting, so swiftly comes arrow after arrow of +wit. + + _Vicomte de Nanjac (approaching)._ Ah, the English young lady is + the dragon of good taste, is she not? Quite the dragon of good + taste. + + _Lord Goring._ So the newspapers are always telling us. + + _Vicomte de Nanjac._ I read all your English newspapers. I find + them so amusing. + + _Lord Goring._ Then, my dear Nanjac, you must certainly read + between the lines. + + _Vicomte de Nanjac._ I should like to, but my professor objects. + (_To_ MABEL CHILTERN.) May I have the pleasure of escorting you to + the music-room, Mademoiselle? + + _Mabel Chiltern (looking very disappointed)._ Delighted, Vicomte, + quite delighted! (_Turning to_ LORD GORING.) Aren’t you coming to + the music-room? + + _Lord Goring._ Not if there is any music going on, Miss Mabel. + + _Mabel Chiltern (severely)._ The music is in German. You would + not understand it. (_Goes out with the_ VICOMTE DE NANJAC. LORD + CAVERSHAM _comes up to his son_.) + + _Lord Caversham._ Well, sir! what are you doing here? Wasting your + life as usual. You should be in bed, sir. You keep too late hours! + I heard of you the other night at Lady Rufford’s dancing till four + o’clock in the morning! + + _Lord Goring._ Only a quarter to four, father. + + _Lord Caversham._ Can’t make out how you stand London society. The + thing has gone to the dogs, a lot of damned nobodies talking about + nothing. + + _Lord Goring._ I love talking about nothing, father. It is the only + thing I know anything about. + + _Lord Caversham._ You seem to me to be living entirely for pleasure. + + _Lord Goring._ What else is there to live for, father? Nothing ages + like happiness. + --_An Ideal Husband (Act I.)_ + +I choose, deliberately, the less talked of portions of the plays I +quote. Here again: + + _Lady Hunstanton._ We who are wives don’t belong to any one. + + _Lady Stutfield._ Oh, I am so very, very glad to hear you say so. + + _Lady Hunstanton._ But do you really think, dear Caroline, that + legislation would improve matters in any way? I am told that, + nowadays, all the married men live like bachelors, and all the + bachelors like married men. + + _Mrs. Allonby._ I certainly never know one from the other. + + _Lady Stutfield._ Oh, I think one can always know at once whether + a man has home claims upon his life or not. I have noticed a very, + very sad expression in the eyes of so many married men. + + _Mrs. Allonby._ Ah, all that I have noticed is that they are + horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably + conceited when they are not. + + _Lady Hunstanton._ Well, I suppose the type of husband has + completely changed since my young days, but I’m bound to state that + poor dear Hunstanton was the most delightful of creatures, and as + good as gold. + + _Mrs. Allonby._ Ah, my husband is a sort of promissory note; I am + tired of meeting him. + + _Lady Caroline._ But you renew him from time to time, don’t you? + + _Mrs. Allonby._ Oh no, Lady Caroline. I have only had one husband + as yet. I suppose you look upon me as quite an amateur. + + _Lady Caroline._ With your views on life I wonder you married at + all. + + _Mrs. Allonby._ So do I. + --_A Woman of No Importance (Act II.)_ + +Compare such a discharge of wit with the current popular “Revue” with +its slap stick farce, its reference to booze, to negroes, to sporting +drummers and the absurd bids for applause by a little thrown in about +the flag--and let us hope that we may produce a Wilde. + +But for sheer color and gorgeous vision, Wilde achieved nothing better +than his unpublished Burmese Masque, _For Love of the King_. As in a +lightning flash the eye takes in a scene of wondrous richness. King +Beng on his ruby sewn cushion; the blinding blue of an eastern sky; the +hundred waiting elephants; the peacocks; the silken banners “propelled +with measured rhythm”; the tables and chairs piled high with fruits +on golden dishes; the flower crowned courtiers and dancing girls, +some half nude, others splendidly robed. But everywhere that intense +brightness of a sunlit scene. There is little in the Masque that +would make it attractive to a stage manager, much that should attract +a scenario man. Indeed, it reads as though Wilde had visualized the +possibilities of the screen world. I copy from Act II, Scene I: + + “The jungle once more. Time; noonday. In place of the hut is a + building, half Burmese, half Italian villa, of white, thick wood, + with curled roofs rising on roofs gilded and adorned with spiral + carvings and a myriad golden and jewel-incrusted bells. On the + broad verandahs are thrown Eastern carpets, rugs, embroideries. + + “The world is sun soaked. The surrounding trees stand sentinel like + in the burning light. Burmese servants squat motionless, smoking on + the broad white steps that lead from the house to the garden. The + crows croak drowsily at intervals. Parrots scream intermittently. + The sound of a guitar playing a Venetian love song can be heard + coming from the interior. Otherwise life apparently sleeps.” + +It is an arabesque: it is a something very like that novel Wilde wanted +to write, the novel that was to have been as splendid as a Persian rug; +it is a word weaving in silk and gold and splendid feathers taken from +quetzal, and peacock, and golden crested wren. It is, in a word, Oscar +Wilde in his glory; a free fantasia of description; a rhapsodie of +color. + +As may well be imagined, Wilde was the target of the dramatic critics +of his day, especially of those of the malignant type. The type is not +unfamiliar and Coleridge has characterized it. + + No private grudge they need, no personal spite; + The _viva sectio_ is its own delight! + All enmity, all envy, they disclaim, + Disinterested thieves of our good name; + Cool, sober murderers of their neighbor’s fame. + +But Wilde was no Keats to be wounded by abuse. For instance, consider +his letter to _St. James’s Gazette_ from which I copy a paragraph as +follows: + + “... When criticism becomes in England a real art, as it should + be, and when none but those of artistic instincts and artistic + cultivation is allowed to write about works of art, artists will, + no doubt, read criticisms with a certain amount of intellectual + interest. As things are at present, the criticisms of ordinary + newspapers are of no interest whatsoever, except in so far as they + display, in its crudest form, the Boetianism of a country that has + produced some Athenians, and in which some Athenians have come to + dwell.” + +Much that passed as adverse criticism of Wilde’s dramatic work, +grew out of personal dislike--some out of scandal which had already +begun to raise a reptant head. There was one Charles Brookfield for +instance, who not only was active in adverse criticism, but also +produced a burlesque on _Lady Windemere’s Fan_ entitled _The Poet and +the Puppets_, the poet being Wilde. It was the same Charles Brookfield +who was largely responsible for collecting the evidence against Wilde, +which brought about his downfall very soon after. Indeed, Brookfield +and a few others entertained Queensberry at a banquet in celebration +of the conviction of Wilde. It was “criticism” of the kind impeached +by Coleridge in a never to be forgotten passage that should not be +lost to the world. “As soon as the critic betrays that he knows more +of his author than the author’s publications could have told him; as +soon as from this more intimate knowledge, elsewhere obtained, he +avails himself of the slightest trait against the author; his censure +immediately becomes personal injury, his sarcasms personal insults. +He ceases to be a critic and takes on him the most contemptible +character to which a rational creature can be degraded, that of a +gossip, backbiter, _pasquillant_; but with this heavy aggravation, +that he steals the unquiet, the deforming passions of the world into +the museum; into the very place which, next to the chapel and oratory, +should be our sanctuary and secure place of refuge; offers abominations +on the altar of the Muses, and makes its sacred paling the very circle +in which he conjures up the lying and profane spirit.” And it is +because of the existence in the Wilde case of so much of that which +Coleridge thundered against, that much of the so-called criticism of +Wilde’s dramatic work must be cast out. But the wonder of it all is +that knowing what was behind, for he must have been cognizant of it, +Wilde fought so well. If ever man died in the last ditch it was he. +Greatly he dared and we love him for his daring. We find him throwing +down the gage to the whole body of critics in a brilliant interview +published in _The Sketch_ of January 9th, 1895, three months before his +downfall, when he knew perfectly well that the dark clouds were rolling +up, and that poison tongues were fast wagging. He is talking to Gilbert +Burgess. Hear him: + + “... For a man to be a dramatic critic is as foolish and inartistic + as it would be for a man to be a critic of epics or a pastoral critic + or a critic of lyrics. All modes of art are one, and the modes of art + that employ words as its medium are quite indivisible. The result of + the vulgar specialization of criticism is an elaborate scientific + knowledge of the stage--almost as elaborate as that of the stage + carpenter, and quite on a par with that of the call boy--combined + with an entire incapacity to realize that a play is a work of art or + to receive any artistic impression at all.... + + “... The aim of the true critic is to try to chronicle his moods, + not to try to correct the masterpieces of others.... Real critics? + Ah, how perfectly charming they would be! I am always waiting for + their arrival. An inaudible school would be nice.... There are just + two real critics in London ... I think I had better not mention + their names; it might make the others jealous ... I do not write to + please cliques. I write to please myself.... It is a burning shame + that there should be one law for men and another law for women. I + think there should be no law for anybody....” + +The whole interview is too long to quote and I have taken some of the +salient passages. The complete thing may be read in the New York Daily +Tribune of January 27th, 1895, under the heading _A Highly Artistic +Interview_. + + +WILDE AS CRITIC + +The critic of the critics was himself a critic. Whether he modified his +work to suit his editors, or whether he was of the kindly sympathetic +nature of a Michael Monahan or a William Marion Reedy is impossible to +say, but certain it is that the Wilde of the criticisms is altogether +a different being from the Wilde of the satirical epigram. You find +very little of the Wilde perversities and idiosyncrasies, certainly +none of the Hazlitt waspishness nor any of the Mencken bluntness. Now +and then there are discovered occasional touches of tenderness as in +his criticism of William Morris’s _House of the Wolfings_, (_Pall +Mall Gazette_, March 2nd, 1889) and again in the review of W. B. +Yeats’ _Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry_, written for the +magazine of which Wilde was editor, the _Woman’s World_, February, +1889. There is a geniality almost equal to that of Charles Lamb or +of Leigh Hunt somewhat evident. “As we read Mr. Morris’s story (The +Wolfings) with its fine alternations of verse and prose, its decorative +and descriptive beauties, its wonderful handling of romantic and +adventurous themes, we cannot but feel that we are as far removed from +the ignoble fiction as we are from the ignoble facts of our own day. +We breathe a purer air, and have dreams of a time when life had a kind +of poetical quality of its own, and was simple, stately and complete.” +Certainly, Wilde as critic sought to be just, was at pains to write +frankly, vividly, accurately as possible. As critic he was thoroughly +in earnest. The clever smartness we discover in him in his plays is +absent in his critical work. + +I think that the very real Wilde was revealed in a little essay, +a writing that appeared in _The Speaker_, February 8th, 1890. It +deals with a translation of the works of Chuang Tzu as made by Mr. +Herbert Giles, British Consul at Tamsui. With the Chinaman, Wilde was +sympathetic. The idea pleased him that all modes of government are +wrong, that they are unscientific because of their tendency to alter +the natural environment of men; immoral because they interfere with +the individual. In the essay there is a ring of Edmund Burke with his +“the thing, government, the thing itself, is the abuse.” It pleased +Wilde immensely to find that the sage born in the fourth century before +Christ denounced the uplifter, because trying to make others good was +as foolish an occupation as “beating a drum in a forest to find a +fugitive.” Wilde found a man after his heart in the philosopher who +declared against chattering about clever men, and lauding good men, +and, what was worse, deifying powerful men. Then there is this by +Wilde, talking about the accumulation of wealth, which, he says, Chuang +Tzu denounces as eloquently as Mr. Hyndman. Wilde agrees with the +philosopher, or at any rate, interprets him approvingly. + + “The accumulation of wealth is to him the origin of evil. It + makes the strong violent and the weak dishonest. It creates the + petty thief and puts him in a bamboo cage. It creates the big + thief and sets him on a throne of white jade. It is the father + of competition, and competition is the waste, as well as the + destruction, of energy. The order of nature is rest, repetition and + peace. Weariness and war are the results of an artificial society + based upon capital; and the richer the society gets, the more + thoroughly bankrupt it is, for it has neither sufficient rewards + for the good nor sufficient punishment for the wicked. There is + also this to be remembered--that the prizes of the world degrade a + man as much as the world’s punishments. The age is rotten with the + worship of success. As for education, true wisdom can neither be + learnt nor taught. It is a spiritual state to which he who lives + in harmony with nature attains. Knowledge is shallow if we compare + it with the extent of the unknown, and only the unknowable is of + value. Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue + cleverer than others.” + +Compare that with the passage in _The Critic As Artist_, a speech that +Wilde puts into the mouth of Gilbert: + + _Ernest._ We exist, then, to do nothing? + + _Gilbert._ It is to do nothing that the elect exist. Action is + limited and relative. Unlimited and absolute is the vision of him + who sits at ease and watches, who walks in loneliness and dreams. + 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. To us the “citta divina” + is colorless, and the “fruitio Dei” without meaning. Metaphysics + do not satisfy our temperaments, and religious ecstasy is out of + date. The world through which the Academic philosopher becomes + “the spectator of all time and of all existence” is not really an + ideal world, but simply a world of abstract ideas. When we enter + it, we starve amidst the chill mathematics of thought. The courts + of the city of God are not open to us now. Its gates are guarded by + Ignorance, and to pass them we have to surrender all that in our + nature is most divine. It is enough that our fathers believed. They + have exhausted the faith-faculty of the species. + +And in another place, later, in the same essay: + + The security of society lies in custom and unconscious instinct, + and the basis of the stability of society, as a healthy organism, + is the complete absence of any intelligence amongst its members. + The great majority of people, being fully aware of this, rank + themselves naturally on the side of that splendid system that + elevates them to the dignity of machines, and rage so wildly + against the intrusion of the intellectual faculty into any question + that concerns life, that one is tempted to define man as a rational + animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in + accordance with the dictates of reason. + +Certainly, the philosophy of Chuang Tzu impressed Wilde greatly, +influenced him more than has been generally thought, and, in fact, the +philosophical basis of the greater part of the essay _The Critic As +Artist_ rests on that of the Chinese mystic, with a decided substratum +of Boehme. Boehme, certainly. The idea of self-surrender that Boehme +promulgated, you find everywhere in Wilde, like a recurring golden +thread in a tapestry. There is the Boehme “to-be” for which one will is +necessary; for the “becoming,” two. So Wilde: + + Yes, Ernest: the contemplative life, the life that has for + its aim not _doing_ but _being_, and not _being_ merely, but + _becoming_--that is what the critical spirit can give us. + +The mystery of it is that Wilde should have so intermixed in his +own life and philosophy the self-surrender of Boehme with the +self-assertion of Nietzsche. That he did so is not to be denied--to +attempt to explain how it so came to be is impossible. But then, who +can explain another? Who can understand or explain himself? The truth +is that Wilde, like everyone else, was a bundle of vain strivings, as +Thoreau put it. Wilde, like everyone else, gathered together his things +to make a bridge to the moon and wound up by making something like a +woodshed of the material. So do we all. Man’s reach certainly does +exceed his grasp. Browning said much there in a half dozen words. + +Of course, there are _Sententiae_, little impatiences, sympathetic +critic though he was. “Most modern novels are more remarkable for +their crime than for their culture.” “Though the Psalm of Life be +shouted from Maine to California, that would not make it good poetry.” +“Pathology is rapidly becoming the basis of sensational literature, +and in art, as in politics, there is a great future for monsters.” +“Such novels as ---- are possibly more easy to write than to read.” “There +seems to be some curious connection between piety and poor rhymes.” +“It is always a pleasure to come across an American poet who is not +national, and who tries to give expression to the literature that he +loves rather than to the land he lives in. The Muses care so little for +geography!”--but as critic of literature Wilde was eminently fair and +just, pointing out the good in writers so vastly apart as Walt Whitman, +Pater, Yeats, Blunt, Matthew Arnold; dropping his own prejudices, +getting inside the skins of those whose work he found to be worthy. + + +WILDE AS ESSAYIST + +Perhaps Wilde was to the fashionable of London much as the robust +Henry Fielding was to the literary world when Samuel Richardson +wrote _Clarissa Harlowe_. He had to shock the polite world out +of its terrible complacency. For there were such proper waxen +figures as Samuel Smiles and Martin Farquahar Tupper cooing, and +there were many who modeled their conduct upon the example of Sir +Charles Grandison--milk and water men, sanctified prigs, pious and +irreproachable gentlemen in whose mouths butter would not melt. To be +respectable was the one virtue, and tender sensibilities were shocked +when Shaw wore a woolen shirt and when Morris solemnly sat on his silk +hat. Yet, there must have been a secret delight in scandal. Turning +over the newspapers of the day we find prominence given to items with +salacious base. For instance, the crimes of Jack the Ripper, the +Charles Dilke divorce case, the Parnell-O’Shea tangle, Stead’s Maiden +Tribute of Modern Babylon. The fascination of murder held them as now. +Quiet men and women found something of vast interest in reading reports +of acts of violence, in living in imagination unrestrained lives. +But, the record of crime had been left to inept hands. To be sure in +novels, action hinged upon crime, but in novels criminals were always +black, lost souls who bore the brand of Cain on their brows, had no +single redeeming trait and went their way for a time certain of being +laid by the heels. It was, then, a tremendous and daring conception of +Oscar Wilde to take a wholesale murderer as the subject of an essay, +but he did so and produced a most interesting piece of work conceived +in graceful vein in his _Pen, Pencil and Poison_--the story of Thomas +Griffiths Wainewright. The subject of the essay has been confused with +another murderer, Henry Wainwright, also an educated man with literary +tastes, familiar with the actors and poets of his day, but the last +named murderer was but a clumsy fellow compared with Wilde’s hero. + +The late Max Nordau in his book _Degeneration_ has found, stupidly +enough, evidence of a love for “immorality” in Wilde because of the +essay, tearing from the context certain passages and adducing them +as proof of Wilde’s diabolism. One paragraph is truly amusing in its +ingenuousness. I quote from page 320: + + “Oscar Wilde apparently admires immorality, sin and crime. In + a very affectionate biographical treatise on Thomas Griffith + Wainewright, designer, painter, and author, and the murderer of + several people, he says: ‘He was a forger of no mean or ordinary + capabilities, and as a subtle and secret poisoner almost without + a rival in this or any age.’ ‘This remarkable man, so powerful + with pen and pencil, and poison.’ ‘He sought to find expression by + pen or poison.’ ‘When a friend reproached him with the murder of + Helen Abercrombie, he shrugged his shoulders and said: “Yes; it + was a dreadful thing to do, but she had very thick ankles.”’ ‘His + crimes seem to have had an important effect upon his art. They gave + a strong personality to his style, a quality that his early work + certainly lacked.’ ‘There is no sin except stupidity.’ ‘An idea + that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.’ + + “He cultivates incidently a slight mysticism in colours. ‘He,’ + Wainewright, ‘had that curious love of green which in individuals + is always the sign of subtle, artistic temperament, and in nations + is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence, of morals.’” + +That, of course, is sheer stupidity. We do not denounce Charles +Dickens because he told the story of Bill Sikes, of the Artful Dodger, +of Fagin, nor do we shudder at the name of Conrad because he ended +_Victory_ as he did. Doubtless, Max Nordau, on similar grounds to those +on which he condemned Wilde and Ibsen and Nietzsche as degenerates, +might have found cause to place the Bible on his index expurgatoris. +The fact is that Oscar Wilde wrote a fine essay on the murderer and +not perhaps so much because he was a murderer, as that he was one of +those extraordinary men who failed to become what he bade to be, and +was the friend and companion of such men as Charles Lamb, Dickens, +Macready and Hablot Browne. Perhaps Wilde had in mind his own case, +certainly there are prophetic passages and there is for example a +parallel existing between the incident told by Gide when he met Wilde +in connection with Wainewright. + + While he was in gaol, Dickens, Macready, and Hablot Browne came + across him by chance. They had been going over the prisons of + London, searching for artistic effects, and in Newgate they + suddenly caught sight of Wainewright. He met them with a defiant + stare, Forster tells us, but Macready was “horrified to recognize a + man familiarly known to him in former years, and at whose table he + had dined.” + +Look at the essay on Wainewright as the picture of a man who tortures +himself, a man of taste and sensibility at whose heart the worm of +misery gnawed constantly, a man sickened with secret maladies, a man +with brain on fire who moved among his fellows with a smiling face, +fearing at every moment the knocking at the gate which would mean his +doom--read the essay with all that in mind and you will be rightly +attuned for the pleasure. No show mannikin, no machine of creaking wood +has Wilde in his Wainewright, but a living thing, a frightened thing, a +tormented thing, a vice ridden thing. You feel the daily fear that must +have been in the murderer’s heart though Wilde does not play on the +vulgar emotions, displaying remorse crudely as Dickens does in his tale +of the murderer Jonas Chuzzlewit. But, in some mysterious manner, Wilde +makes his reader sense a melancholy, just as Beethoven makes us sense +a melancholy in that immortal passage of his seventh symphony when the +stringed instruments sob in the bass. + +Here is Wilde’s picture of the man in the midst of the things that he +loved: + + And so, in his own library, as he describes it, we find the + delicate fictile vase of the Greek, with its exquisitely painted + figures and the faint ΚΑΛΟΕ finely traced upon its side, and behind + it hangs an engraving of the “Delphic Sibyl” of Michael Angelo, + or of the “Pastoral” of Giorgione. Here is a bit of Florentine + majolica, and here a rude lamp from some old Roman tomb. On the + table lies a book of Hours “cased in a cover of solid silver gilt, + wrought with quaint devices and studded with small brilliants and + rubies,” and close by it “squats a little ugly monster, a Lar, + perhaps, dug up in the sunny fields of corn-bearing Sicily.” Some + dark antique bronzes contrast “with the pale gleam of two noble + _Christi Crucifixi_, one carved in ivory, the other molded in + wax.” He has his trays of Tassie’s gems, his tiny Louis-Quatorze + _bonbonniere_ with a miniature by Petitot, his highly prized + “brown-biscuit teapots, filagree-worked,” his citron morocco + letter-case and his “pomona-green” chair. + + One can fancy him lying there in the midst of his books and casts + and engravings, a true virtuoso, a subtle connoisseur, turning + over his fine collection of Marc Antonios, and his Turner’s “Liber + Studiorum,” of which he was a warm admirer, or examining with + a magnifier some of his antique gems and cameos, “the head of + Alexander on an onyx of two strata,” or “that superb _altissimo + relievo_ on cornelian, Jupiter Ægiochus.” + +And again, in a charming passage: + + Like Disraeli, he determined to startle the town as a dandy, and + his beautiful rings, his antique cameo breast-pin, and his pale + lemon-colored kid gloves, were well known, and indeed were regarded + by Hazlitt as being the signs of a new manner in literature: while + his rich curly hair, fine eyes, and exquisite white hands gave + him the dangerous and delightful distinction of being different + from others. There was something in him of Balzac’s Lucien de + Rubempré. At times he reminds us of Julien Sorel. De Quincey saw + him once. It was at a dinner at Charles Lamb’s. “Amongst the + company, all literary men, sat a murderer,” he tells us, and he + goes on to describe how on that day he had been ill, and had hated + the face of man and woman, and yet found himself looking with + intellectual interest across the table at the young writer beneath + whose affectations of manner there seemed to him to lie so much + unaffected sensibility, and speculates on “what sudden growth of + another interest,” would have changed his mood, had he known of + what terrible sin the guest to whom Lamb paid so much attention was + even then guilty. + +In that last sentence, the reference to the “terrible sin” of which +he knew himself to be guilty, I cannot but see a subtle reference to +himself. Indeed, Wilde seems to be constantly projecting himself, +giving hints as it were, of what might be, just as a child guilty of +some misdemeanor, will make veiled references to its plight yet, at +the same time, do all that is possible to avoid discovery. Here is a +passage in which, writing of Wainewright, he surely describes himself: + + His delicately strung organization, however indifferent it might + have been to inflicting pain on others, was itself most keenly + sensitive to pain. He shrank from suffering as a thing that mars + and maims human life. + +Again: + + Like Baudelaire, he was extremely fond of cats, and with Gautier, + he was fascinated by that “sweet marble monster” of both sexes that + we can still see at Florence and in the Louvre. + +And this too, which is Wilde to a T: + + Modern journalism may be said to owe almost as much to him as to + any man of the early part of this century. He was the pioneer of + Asiatic prose, and delighted in pictorial epithets and pompous + exaggerations. To have a style so gorgeous that it conceals the + subject is one of the highest achievements of an important and much + admired school of Fleet Street leader-writers, and this school + _Janus Weathercock_ may be said to have invented. He also saw that + it was quite easy by continued reiteration to make the public + interested in his own personality, and in his purely journalistic + articles this extraordinary young man tells the world what he had + for dinner, where he gets his clothes, what wines he likes, and + in what state of health he is, just as if he were writing weekly + notes for some popular newspaper of our own time. This being the + least valuable side of his work, is the one that has had the most + obvious influence. A publicist, now-a-days, is a man who bores the + community with the details of the illegalities of his private life. + +Perhaps too there is an apologia in another passage: + + This strange and fascinating figure that for a few years dazzled + literary London, and made so brilliant a _debut_ in life and + letters, is undoubtedly a most interesting study. Mr. W. Carew + Hazlitt, his latest biographer, to whom I am indebted for many + of the facts contained in this memoir, and whose little book is, + indeed, quite invaluable in its way, is of opinion that his love of + art and nature was a mere pretense and assumption, and others have + denied to him all literary power. This seems to me a shallow, or + at least a mistaken, view. The fact of a man being a poisoner is + nothing against his prose. The domestic virtues are not the true + basis of art, though they may serve as an excellent advertisement + for second-rate artists. + +But it is neither safe nor wise to theorize too much, though, to be +sure, more than one of us feel strongly inclined to say of Wilde as he +said of Wainewright: + + The moral instinct can be brought to such a pitch of perfection + that it will make its appearance wherever it is not required. + Nobody with the true historical sense ever dreams of blaming Nero, + or scolding Tiberius or censuring Cæsar Borgia. These personages + have become like the puppets of a play. They may fill us with + terror, or horror, or wonder, but they do not harm us. They are not + in immediate relation to us. We have nothing to fear from them. + They have passed into the sphere of art and science, and neither + art nor science knows anything of moral approval or disapproval. + +Wilde’s two essays, _The Decay of Lying_ and _The Critic as Artist_ I +have referred to several times in the course of this essay, and also +in another booklet, _The Tragic Story of Oscar Wilde_. In much, both +essays are complementary to his _Art and Decoration_: the themes wind +in and out like the theme in a fugue. There are inconsistencies, there +is sometimes flippancy and there is much of utmost exquisite polish. +But always--style--style that becomes sometimes pavonic display. +Witness, from the _Decay of the Art of Lying_: + + The solid stolid British intellect lies in the desert sands like + the Sphinx in Flaubert’s marvelous tale, and fantasy _La Chimere_, + dances around it, and calls to it with her false, flute-toned + voice. It may not hear her now, but surely some day, when we are + all bored to death with the common-place character of modern + fiction, it will hearken to her and try to borrow her wings. + + And when that day dawns, or sunset reddens, how joyous we shall + all be! Facts will be regarded as discreditable, Truth will be + found mourning over her fetters, and Romance, with her temper of + wonder, will return to the land. The very aspect of the world will + change to our startled eyes. Out of the sea will rise Behemoth + and Leviathan, and sail round the high-pooped galleys, as they do + on the delightful maps of those ages when books on geography were + actually readable. Dragons will wander about the waste places, + and the phœnix will soar from her nest of fire into the air. We + shall lay our hands upon the basilisk, and see the jewel in the + toad’s head. Champing his gilded oats, the Hippogriff will stand + in our stalls, and over our heads will float the Blue Bird singing + of beautiful and impossible things, of things that are lovely and + that never happened, of things that are not and that should be. But + before this comes to pass we must cultivate the lost art of Lying. + +Of course, it must be admitted that there is truth in those who +complain that Wilde advocated no system of morality which could +console, raise or satisfy men. But to do that was not Wilde’s mission. +He was no moralist--made, indeed, his art his religion and deals with, +as Wordsworth said: + + the very world, which is the world + Of all of us, the place where in the end + We find our happiness, or not at all. + (Prelude xl, 142.) + +but his world, like the world of the Pre-Raphaelites, was confessedly a +falsehood, a world other than that which we see. That art, or poetry, +could go on to take in things other than of fairy land, could deal +with such things as sky-scrapers, fire vomiting factories, machinery, +as it does in the hands of Carl Sandburg, was unthinkable to Wilde +as it would have been unthinkable to Ruskin. But then, Wilde found +things to love which would have been altogether strange to his men of +Greece--mountain mists, brown fogs, clefts in rocks. So, pondering, +we get into deep water. The idea of truth as conceived by the artist +and the idea as conceived by the religious mind.... religion born of +faith and art born of perception.... religion growing out of a soil of +disillusion, art growing out of joy of life.... + + +AS POET + +Oscar Wilde did not have a jealous care of the art poetic. There was +too much of that “style” for real ecstasy; that style, too, was too +often encumbered with preciosities, overhung with ornamentation. Then, +too, he was constantly trying new forms, experimenting, seeking a +satisfactory model. Yet it would be wrong to assert that his poetry +lacks verbal charm, and the average man who has no great patience with +poetry, who would never sit down to read an _In Memoriam_ or an _Ode +on a Grecian Urn_, the kind of a man who loses himself among poetic +phrases, finds that Wilde evokes a picture by words full of color. Take +this, for instance: + + +SYMPHONY IN YELLOW + + An omnibus across the bridge + Crawls like a yellow butterfly, + And, here and there, a passer-by + Shows like a little restless midge. + + Big barges full of yellow hay + Are moved against the shadowy wharf, + And, like a yellow silken scarf, + The thick fog hangs along the quay. + + The yellow leaves begin to fade + And flutter from the Temple elms, + And at my feet the pale green Thames + Lies like a rod of rippled jade. + +A slight enough thing, but full of interest and spirit. Your man +who loses himself in verse based on legendary lore or mysticism, +understands and enjoys that. It means something to him. For the same +reason Wilde’s _Ballad of Reading Gaol_ interests and excites, almost +like an adventure story, combining simplicity and beauty in a way that +is altogether satisfying. Mark how a concrete image is called up by a +short descriptive passage. + + I walked, with other souls in pain, + Within another ring, + And was wondering if the man had done + A great or little thing, + When a voice behind me whispered low, + “_That fellow’s got to swing_.” + +And mark the dramatic appeal of this: + + A prison wall was round us both, + Two outcast men we were: + The world had thrust us from its heart, + And God from out His care: + And the iron gin that waits for Sin + Had caught us in its snare. + + And twice a day he smoked his pipe, + And drank his quart of beer: + His soul was resolute, and held + No hiding-place for fear; + He often said that he was glad + The hangman’s hands were near. + + But why he said so strange a thing + No warder dared to ask: + For he to whom a watcher’s doom + Is given as his task, + Must set a lock upon his lips, + And make his face a mask. + +He gets very close there to the heart of the common man, as close as +James Stephens indeed, with his _What Tomas an Buile Said in a Pub_. + +The truth of the matter is that under pain, the artificial Wilde +vanished and his poetry became something other than pretence and +artifice. I say that, because Douglas has told us that up to the time +of his imprisonment, Wilde had “held that style was everything, and +feeling nothing; that poetry should be removed as well from material +actuality as from the actuality of the spirit, and that no great poet +had ever in his greatest moments been other than sincere.” (Page 209, +Oscar Wilde and Myself.) And of _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_, Douglas +writes, “(in it) we have a sustained poem of sublimated actuality and +of a breadth and sweep and poignancy such as had never before been +attained in this line. The emotional appeal is ... quite legitimate and +... the established tradition as to what is fitting and comely in a +poem of this nature is not outraged or transgressed.” + +Another great poem grew out of his prison life. I refer to the long +letter, made into a book by Mr. Ross and entitled _De Profundis_, for a +poem, a prose poem, it is. It would be better to mention in this place +that _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_ was not composed until Wilde had +left prison. _De Profundis_, however, was written within stone walls. +In another place quotation has been made of Blunt’s Diaries in which +Ross is quoted as having said that it is impossible to tell how much +of _De Profundis_ is sincere repentance, and how much the result of +self pity. Be that as it may, it is very certain that the spirit of the +man was bitter in his solitude, that his egoism fell away from him at +times. But it is absurd to expect that punishment and imprisonment and +disgrace could change the man himself. If he had that feminine soul, he +had it. It was part of him, and he could not get away from it, prison +or no prison. But he could know in his own heart that he was not as +he should have liked to be, that his life’s ideal was other than his +life’s path. In other words, he realized, as we all realize, that +while his eyes were fixed on the stars, his feet were firmly planted in +the mud, and for that fact he was very sorry indeed. Not only sorry, +but rebellious that things were as they were, and, as Wilde said, the +mood of rebellion closes up the channels of the soul, and shuts out the +air of heaven. The mood rebellious and the mood penitential cannot sit +side by side in the same heart. Penitence presupposes submission and +gratitude for gifts bestowed, and Wilde felt no gratitude to the fates +that had, at his birth, dropped into his veins the one drop of black +blood which colored his life. Destiny is omnipotent, and destiny had +given Wilde the feminine soul. Doubtless, had Wilde been what he wished +to be, in his better moments, he would have sat with august divinities. +But neither Wilde, nor you, nor I, have it in our powers to command the +winds that would waft us to the Islands of the Blest. + + + + +Transcriber’s Notes + + + - Italics represented with surrounding _underscores_. + + - Small caps converted to ALL CAPS. + + - Obvious typographic and grammatical errors silently corrected. + + - Variations in hyphenation kept as in the original. + + - p. 37: Corrected "a course oath" to "a coarse oath". + + - p. 68: Corrected “It is the father of competition is the waste + as well as the destruction of energy.” To “It is the father + of competition, and competition is the waste, as well as the + destruction, of energy.” +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77494 *** |