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diff --git a/77494-h/77494-h.htm b/77494-h/77494-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..85867ec --- /dev/null +++ b/77494-h/77494-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3026 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <title> + Oscar Wilde in Outline | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin: 0 10%; + font-family: serif; +} + +h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} +h2 { margin: 4em 0 1em 0; } +h3 { margin-top: 3em; margin-bottom: 1em; } +h4 { margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: .5em; } + +p { + margin: 0; + text-indent: 1.5em; + text-align: justify; +} + +.no-indent { text-indent: 0; } + +ins { + text-decoration: none; + border-bottom: 1px dotted blue; +} + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} +@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + +.pagenum { + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal; + text-indent: 0; + color: #888; +} + + +blockquote { + margin: 1em 1.5em; +} + +.center {text-align: center; text-indent: 0; } +.right {text-align: right;} +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} +.allsmcap {font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;} + +figcaption {font-weight: bold;} +figcaption p {margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: .2em; text-align: inherit;} + +/* Images */ + +img { + max-width: 100%; + height: auto; +} +img.w100 {width: 100%;} + +.figcenter { + margin: 2em auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + + +/* Poetry */ +.poetry-container {display: flex; justify-content: center;} +.poetry-container {text-align: center;} +.poetry {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;} +.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;} +.poetry .verse {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;} + +/* Poetry indents */ +.poetry .indent0q {text-indent: -3.5em;} +.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3.0em;} +.poetry .indent2 {text-indent: -2.0em;} +.poetry .indent4 {text-indent: -1.0em;} +.poetry .indent12 {text-indent: 3.0em;} +.poetry .indent14 {text-indent: 4.0em;} +.poetry .indent32 {text-indent: 13.0em;} + +/* Transcriber's notes */ +.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; + color: black; + font-size:small; + padding:0.5em; + margin-bottom:5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif; +} +.transnote h2 { margin-top: 1em; } + +.t1 { font-size: 115%; margin-top: 2em; font-weight: bold; } +.t2 { word-spacing: .2em; font-weight: bold; } +h1 { font-size: 250%; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 0; line-height: 1.2em; } +.t3 { font-size: 150%; margin-top: 0.5em; font-weight: bold; } +.t4 { font-size: 120%; margin-top: 10em; font-weight: bold; } +.t5 { font-size: 120%; font-weight: bold; } +.c1 { margin-top: 10em; word-spacing: .1em; } +.c2 { word-spacing: .1em; } +.c3 { word-spacing: .3em; margin-top: 10em; } + +/* Illustration classes */ +.illowp52 {width: 52%;} +.x-ebookmaker .illowp52 {width: 100%;} + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77494 ***</div> +<figure class="figcenter illowp52" id="cover" style="max-width: 147.3125em;"> + <img class="w100" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Book Cover"> +</figure> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[1]</span></p> +</div> + +<p class="center t1">TEN CENT POCKET SERIES NO. 442</p> +<p class='center t2'>Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius</p> + + <h1> +Oscar Wilde in<br> + Outline +</h1> + +<p class="center t3">Charles J. Finger</p> + + +<p class="center t4">HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY</p> +<p class='center t5'>GIRARD, KANSAS</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[2]</span></p> +<p class='center c1'>Copyright 1923,</p> +<p class='center c2'> Haldeman-Julius Company.</p> + +<p class='center c3'><span class='allsmcap'>PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</span></p> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a><a id="Page_4"></a><a id="Page_5"></a>[5]</span></p> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="OSCAR_WILDE_IN_OUTLINE"> + OSCAR WILDE IN OUTLINE + </h2> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">One fiery-coloured moment of great life!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And then—how barren the nations’ praise!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">How vain the trump of Glory! Bitter thorns</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Were in that laurel leaf, whose toothed barbs</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Burned and bit deep till fire and red flame</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Seemed to feed full upon my brain, and make</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The garden a bare desert.</div> + <div class="verse indent32">With wild hands</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I strove to tear it from my bleeding brow,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But all in vain; and with a dolorous cry</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That paled the lingering stars before their time,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I waked at last, and saw the timorous dawn</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Peer with grey face into my darkened room,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And would have deemed it a mere idle dream</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But for this restless pain that gnaws my heart,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the red wounds of thorns upon my brow.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class='verse indent12'>—<i>Translation from the Polish of </i></div> + <div class='verse indent14'><i>Madame Modjeska by Oscar Wilde.</i></div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + + +<h3 id="THE_TRUE_KNOWLEDGE"> + THE TRUE KNOWLEDGE +</h3> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou knowest all; I seek in vain</div> + <div class="verse indent2">What lands to till or sow with seed—</div> + <div class="verse indent2">The land is black with briar and weed,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Nor cares for falling tears or rain.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou knowest all; I sit and wait</div> + <div class="verse indent2">With blinded eyes and hands that fail,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Till the last lifting of the veil</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the first opening of the gate.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Thou knowest all; I cannot see.</div> + <div class="verse indent2">I trust I shall not live in vain,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">I know that we shall meet again</div> + <div class="verse indent0">In some divine eternity.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span></p> + +<p>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 <i>Flowers of Evil</i>, +to recall that he painted his hair green. Of +Dowson, we remember that he was a pot house +drunkard and overlook his <i>Impenitentia Ultima</i>. +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. <i>The Ballad +of Reading Gaol</i> and <i>The Sphinx</i>. As a writer +of fiction he will probably be forgotten, or +at best, remembered by one book, as is Charles +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span> +Brockden Brown, <i>The Picture of Dorian Gray</i> +living as a literary curiosity as <i>Wieland</i> lives, +or as Beckford’s <i>Vathek</i> 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.</p> + +<p>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, <i>The Picture of Dorian Gray</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span> +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 <i>The Critic as Artist</i>:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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 <i>Call +of the Wild</i>, for instance, nor could he have +written a <i>Walden</i>, 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span> +is everywhere apparent in the written +page.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span> +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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<h3 id="THE_SPIRIT_OF_CONTRADICTION"> + THE SPIRIT OF CONTRADICTION +</h3> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span> +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.</p> + +<p>By way of instance of the argument contradictory +and provoking, let us take a passage +from <i>The Importance of Being Earnest</i>. 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span> +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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span> +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.</p> + +<p>Take another instance of the argument contradictory, +one from his essay, <i>The Decay of +the Art of Lying</i>, which enraged many on this +side of the Atlantic. Here it is:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The book of collected essays, be it said, is +called <i>Intentions</i>. Now Wilde’s intention in +the passage quoted, in the entire essay in fact, +was to register a condemnation of the idiotic +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span> +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 <i>Treasure Island</i>?” 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>affaires</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span></p> + +<p>“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.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>And in another place in the same essay, <i>The +Critic as Artist</i>:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>Who that moves in the stress and turmoil of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span> +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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p class='no-indent'>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:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">How doth the busy little bee</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Improve each shining hour,</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='no-indent'>but, after all, what have we in the paragraph +but a very honest admission that in life, too +much is often sacrificed to that <i>eclat</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span> +education cannot supply. The position taken +by Wilde is quite tenable to those who have +been fortunate enough to read Matthew +Arnold’s <i>Literature and Dogma</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>One thing more seems necessary to say in +this connection anent the crude commercialism +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span> +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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span> +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 <i>The Picture of +Dorian Gray</i> we find the same idea:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p class='no-indent'>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 <i>A Woman of No Importance</i> +Wilde, emphasizing the point, puts a +searing speech into the mouth of his character +Hester Worsley:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span></p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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.</p> + + +<h3 id="WILDES_SPIRIT_OF_PARTISANSHIP"> + WILDE’S SPIRIT OF PARTISANSHIP +</h3> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span> +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.”</p> + +<p>It cannot be too strongly emphasized that +this does not mean that there is a predilection +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span> +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 <i>Kammenoi-Ostrow</i>? +Wilde’s way of stating his artistic creed was +very similar to Baudelaire’s. Thus:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span> +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, <i>The Generous Player</i>—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.</p> + +<p>Unfortunately, somehow, we are inclined to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span> +overlook the fact that it is not Frenchmen +alone who have pictured the horrible. We +forget Morrison with his <i>Tales of Mean Streets</i>, +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, <i>The Harlot’s +House</i>, as a poem slight enough, but as a picture +very attractive, as all forbidden things +are attractive.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">We caught the tread of dancing feet,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We loitered down the moonlit street,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And stopped beneath the harlot’s house.</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span> </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Inside, above the din and fray,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We heard the loud musicians play</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The “Treues Liebes Herz” of Strauss.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Like strange mechanical grotesques,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Making fantastic arabesques,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The shadows raced across the blind.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">We watched the ghostly dancers spin</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To sound of horn and violin,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Like wire-pulled automatons,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Slim silhouetted skeletons</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Went sidling through the slow quadrille.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">They took each other by the hand,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And danced a stately saraband;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed</div> + <div class="verse indent0">A phantom lover to her breast,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Sometimes a horrible marionette</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Came out, and smoked its cigarette</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Upon the steps like a live thing.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Then, turning to my love, I said,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">“The dead are dancing with the dead,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The dust is whirling with the dust.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>Baudelaire, and Wilde as well, sometimes ran +<i>fanti</i>, 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span> +edged swords, to be wounded later with his +own weapons. Thus:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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.—<i>The +Critic as Artist.</i></p> +</blockquote> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span></p> + +<p>That, which played a great part in Wilde’s +trial, is apparently a kind of advocacy of the +M. Fr. Paulhan point of view, (<i>Le Nouveau +Mysticisme</i>, 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:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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.—<i>The Critic +as Artist.</i></p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span> +method of <i>In Memoriam</i> are used in the +greater number of his lyrics; and he used the +metre which Tennyson sealed to himself for +all time even in <i>The Sphinx</i>, which is his great +set work; while in such pieces as <i>Charmides</i>, +<i>Panthea</i>, <i>Humanitad</i> and <i>The Burden of Itys</i> +he borrowed the grave pipe of Matthew Arnold.” +Writing of the poem <i>Le Mer</i>, 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 <i>La Belle Dame sans +Merci</i>, a flagrant copy of Hood’s lines beginning +‘Take her up tenderly’—(Douglas refers +to the poem <i>The Bridge of Sighs</i>)—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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span> +emphasize and exaggerate the very faults and +defects of his masters.”</p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">I dreamed of him last night, I saw his face</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All radiant and unshadowed of distress.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And as of old, in music measureless,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I heard his golden voice and marked him trace</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Under the common thing the hidden grace,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And conjure wonder out of emptiness,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Till mean things put on beauty like a dress,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And all the world was an enchanted place.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And then methought outside a fast-locked gate</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I mourned the loss of unrecorded words,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Forgotten tales and mysteries half said,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Wonders that might have been articulate,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And voiceless thoughts like murdered singing birds,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And so I woke and knew that he was dead!</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p class='no-indent'>It leaves a sweeter taste in the mouth.</p> + + +<h3 id="AS_FICTION_WRITER"> + AS FICTION WRITER +</h3> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span> +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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span> +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.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span> +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.</p> + +<p>With what has been said kept in mind, consider +Wilde’s story, <i>Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime</i>, +which appeared in the <i>Court and Society Review</i> +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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span> +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 <i>The Chimes</i>, or of Fountain Court in his +<i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span></p> + +<p>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:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>In a moment he had seized Mr. Podgers by the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span> +legs and flung him into the Thames. There was a +<ins title='original: course' id='cor_037'>coarse</ins> 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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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 <i>The Critic as Artist</i>, relating to sin as an +essential element of progress.</p> + +<p>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. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span> +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.</p> + +<p>We pass to the longer story, <i>The Picture of +Dorian Gray</i>. 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.</p> + +<p>Now the story thread of <i>The Picture of +Dorian Gray</i> is slight enough. A picture has +been painted by Dorian’s friend, and, while +the subject of the picture retains his youth +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span> +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:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>It was some foul parody, some infamous, ignoble +satire.</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span> +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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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 <i>Secret +Agent</i> where the woman thrusts the carving +knife into the heart of her husband, or the +latter part of <i>Le Père Goriot</i> where Balzac +bruises the reader’s heart as he tells of the +torture of anguish; or the picture in Thackeray’s +<i>Vanity Fair</i> 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 <i>Hieroglyphics</i>, 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span> +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 <i>Secret Agent</i>, which I have mentioned, +read it and compare it with this, the +death of Dorian Gray. Wilde seems sluggish, +uninterested, aloof.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The most patient of readers is surfeited in +the book with long, descriptive, catalogue-like +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span> +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 <i>A +Rebours</i>. As I say, Wilde proved himself to +be very imitative. You must read his ninth +chapter, but a single quotation will give some +idea:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span> +hovenia that makes men mad, and of aloes that +are said to be able to expel melancholy from the +soul.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Dorian Gray collects many things, plays with +many things, to chase away his <i>ennui</i>: 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.</p> + +<p>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</p> + +<blockquote> +<p class='no-indent'>“covered with roses by a harlot who had loved +him; the Borgia on his white horse, with Fratricide +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span> +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.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span></p> + +<p>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 <i>Jurgen</i> and <i>Ulysses</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>The thing that is rare and valuable in <i>The +Picture of Dorian Gray</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span> +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:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“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.”</p> + +<p>“What does it matter?” cried Dorian, laughing, +as he sat down on the seat at the end of the +garden.</p> + +<p>“It should matter everything to you, Mr. Gray.”</p> + +<p>“Why?”</p> + +<p>“Because you have now the most marvelous +youth, and youth is the one thing worth having.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t feel that, Lord Henry.”</p> + +<p>“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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span> +divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of +those who have it. You smile? Ah! when you +have lost it you won’t smile.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>But Wilde was idealizing, making deliberately +an untrue, but charming picture—doing indeed +in another way what old Izaak Walton did in +his <i>Compleat Angler</i>, or what John Fletcher +did in his <i>Faithful Shepherdess</i>.</p> + +<p>As for the vivid coloring of which I spoke, +read this:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“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.</p> + +<p>“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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span> +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.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p class='no-indent'>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 <i>The Picture of Dorian +Gray</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>A last word on <i>The Picture of Dorian Gray</i>. +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 <i>Looking +Backward</i>, Edna Lyell’s sentimental agnosticism, +Grant Allen’s <i>Woman Who Did</i>, and, at +the same time, there was a lively stream of +Zola translations, much energetic, realistic stuff +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span> +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</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent4">Nature is made better by no mean,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But Nature makes that mean; so o’er that art,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which, you say, adds to Nature, is an art</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That Nature makes.... This is an art</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Which does mend Nature—change it rather: but</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The art itself is Nature.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>So we come to the fairy tales of Oscar Wilde, +the best by far of which is <i>The Happy Prince</i>. +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, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span> +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.”</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span> +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, <i>The Happy +Prince</i>, 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 +<i>The Happy Prince</i>. 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:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0q">“To you who wrote The Happy Prince,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The sweetest tale of modern time...”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>Next appeared <i>The House of Pomegranates</i>, +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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span> +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.”</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span> +gaiety. In Andersen there is quiet unobtrusiveness, +never cleverness nor facetiousness.</p> + + +<h3 id="THE_STAGE"> + THE STAGE +</h3> + +<p>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 <i>Lady Windermere’s +Fan</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span> +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, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span> +that Oscar Wilde stepped with his skill and cultivated +taste.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>Speaker</i> at the +time <i>Lady Windermere’s Fan</i> was produced, a +passage that gives an admirable picture of not +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span> +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 <i>Lady +Windermere’s Fan</i> 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.”</p> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span> +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 <i>The School for +Scandal</i>, 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.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p><i>Vicomte de Nanjac (approaching).</i> Ah, the English +young lady is the dragon of good taste, is she +not? Quite the dragon of good taste.</p> + +<p><i>Lord Goring.</i> So the newspapers are always +telling us.</p> + +<p><i>Vicomte de Nanjac.</i> I read all your English +newspapers. I find them so amusing.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span></p> + +<p><i>Lord Goring.</i> Then, my dear Nanjac, you must +certainly read between the lines.</p> + +<p><i>Vicomte de Nanjac.</i> I should like to, but my +professor objects. (<i>To</i> <span class="smcap">Mabel Chiltern</span>.) May I +have the pleasure of escorting you to the music-room, +Mademoiselle?</p> + +<p><i>Mabel Chiltern (looking very disappointed).</i> Delighted, +Vicomte, quite delighted! (<i>Turning to</i> +<span class="smcap">Lord Goring</span>.) Aren’t you coming to the music-room?</p> + +<p><i>Lord Goring.</i> Not if there is any music going +on, Miss Mabel.</p> + +<p><i>Mabel Chiltern (severely).</i> The music is in +German. You would not understand it. (<i>Goes out +with the</i> <span class="smcap">Vicomte de Nanjac</span>. <span class="smcap">Lord Caversham</span> +<i>comes up to his son</i>.)</p> + +<p><i>Lord Caversham.</i> 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!</p> + +<p><i>Lord Goring.</i> Only a quarter to four, father.</p> + +<p><i>Lord Caversham.</i> Can’t make out how you stand +London society. The thing has gone to the dogs, a +lot of damned nobodies talking about nothing.</p> + +<p><i>Lord Goring.</i> I love talking about nothing, +father. It is the only thing I know anything about.</p> + +<p><i>Lord Caversham.</i> You seem to me to be living +entirely for pleasure.</p> + +<p><i>Lord Goring.</i> What else is there to live for, +father? Nothing ages like happiness.</p> + +<p class="right"> + —<i>An Ideal Husband (Act I.)</i> +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>I choose, deliberately, the less talked of portions +of the plays I quote. Here again:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span></p> + +<blockquote> +<p><i>Lady Hunstanton.</i> We who are wives don’t belong +to any one.</p> + +<p><i>Lady Stutfield.</i> Oh, I am so very, very glad to +hear you say so.</p> + +<p><i>Lady Hunstanton.</i> 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.</p> + +<p><i>Mrs. Allonby.</i> I certainly never know one from +the other.</p> + +<p><i>Lady Stutfield.</i> 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.</p> + +<p><i>Mrs. Allonby.</i> Ah, all that I have noticed is that +they are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, +and abominably conceited when they are not.</p> + +<p><i>Lady Hunstanton.</i> 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.</p> + +<p><i>Mrs. Allonby.</i> Ah, my husband is a sort of +promissory note; I am tired of meeting him.</p> + +<p><i>Lady Caroline.</i> But you renew him from time +to time, don’t you?</p> + +<p><i>Mrs. Allonby.</i> Oh no, Lady Caroline. I have +only had one husband as yet. I suppose you look +upon me as quite an amateur.</p> + +<p><i>Lady Caroline.</i> With your views on life I wonder +you married at all.</p> + +<p><i>Mrs. Allonby.</i> So do I.</p> + +<p class="right"> + —<i>A Woman of No Importance (Act II.)</i> +</p> +</blockquote> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span></p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>But for sheer color and gorgeous vision, +Wilde achieved nothing better than his unpublished +Burmese Masque, <i>For Love of the +King</i>. 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:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“The jungle once more. Time; noonday. In +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span> +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.</p> + +<p>“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.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">No private grudge they need, no personal spite;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The <i>viva sectio</i> is its own delight!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">All enmity, all envy, they disclaim,</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span> + <div class="verse indent0">Disinterested thieves of our good name;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Cool, sober murderers of their neighbor’s fame.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>But Wilde was no Keats to be wounded by +abuse. For instance, consider his letter to +<i>St. James’s Gazette</i> from which I copy a paragraph +as follows:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“... 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.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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 <i>Lady Windemere’s Fan</i> +entitled <i>The Poet and the Puppets</i>, 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, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span> +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, <i>pasquillant</i>; 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span> +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 +<i>The Sketch</i> 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:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“... 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....</p> + +<p>“... 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span> +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....”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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 <i>A Highly Artistic Interview</i>.</p> + + +<h3 id="WILDE_AS_CRITIC"> + WILDE AS CRITIC +</h3> + +<p>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 <i>House +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span> +of the Wolfings</i>, (<i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, March 2nd, +1889) and again in the review of W. B. Yeats’ +<i>Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry</i>, +written for the magazine of which Wilde was +editor, the <i>Woman’s World</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>I think that the very real Wilde was revealed +in a little essay, a writing that appeared in +<i>The Speaker</i>, February 8th, 1890. It deals +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span> +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.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“The accumulation of wealth is to him the origin +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span> +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<ins id='cor_068'>, and competition</ins> 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.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Compare that with the passage in <i>The Critic +As Artist</i>, a speech that Wilde puts into the +mouth of Gilbert:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p><i>Ernest.</i> We exist, then, to do nothing?</p> + +<p><i>Gilbert.</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span> +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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p class='no-indent'>And in another place, later, in the same essay:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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 <i>The Critic As Artist</i> rests on that +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span> +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:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>Yes, Ernest: the contemplative life, the life that +has for its aim not <i>doing</i> but <i>being</i>, and not <i>being</i> +merely, but <i>becoming</i>—that is what the critical +spirit can give us.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span></p> + +<p>Of course, there are <i>Sententiae</i>, 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.</p> + + +<h3 id="WILDE_AS_ESSAYIST"> + WILDE AS ESSAYIST +</h3> + +<p>Perhaps Wilde was to the fashionable of London +much as the robust Henry Fielding was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span> +to the literary world when Samuel Richardson +wrote <i>Clarissa Harlowe</i>. 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span> +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 <i>Pen, Pencil and Poison</i>—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.</p> + +<p>The late Max Nordau in his book <i>Degeneration</i> +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:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“Oscar Wilde apparently admires immorality, sin +and crime. In a very affectionate biographical +treatise on Thomas Griffith Wainewright, designer, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span> +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.’</p> + +<p>“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.’”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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 <i>Victory</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span> +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.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span> +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.</p> + +<p>Here is Wilde’s picture of the man in the +midst of the things that he loved:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span> +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 <i>Christi Crucifixi</i>, one carved in ivory, +the other molded in wax.” He has his trays of +Tassie’s gems, his tiny Louis-Quatorze <i>bonbonniere</i> +with a miniature by Petitot, his highly prized +“brown-biscuit teapots, filagree-worked,” his citron +morocco letter-case and his “pomona-green” chair.</p> + +<p>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 <i>altissimo +relievo</i> on cornelian, Jupiter Ægiochus.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>And again, in a charming passage:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span> +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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Again:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>And this too, which is Wilde to a T:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span></p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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 <i>Janus Weathercock</i> 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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Perhaps too there is an apologia in another +passage:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>This strange and fascinating figure that for a +few years dazzled literary London, and made so +brilliant a <i>debut</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span> +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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>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:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Wilde’s two essays, <i>The Decay of Lying</i> and +<i>The Critic as Artist</i> I have referred to several +times in the course of this essay, and also in +another booklet, <i>The Tragic Story of Oscar +Wilde</i>. In much, both essays are complementary +to his <i>Art and Decoration</i>: 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span> +polish. But always—style—style that becomes +sometimes pavonic display. Witness, from the +<i>Decay of the Art of Lying</i>:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>The solid stolid British intellect lies in the desert +sands like the Sphinx in Flaubert’s marvelous tale, +and fantasy <i>La Chimere</i>, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Of course, it must be admitted that there +is truth in those who complain that Wilde advocated +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span> +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:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent4">the very world, which is the world</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of all of us, the place where in the end</div> + <div class="verse indent0">We find our happiness, or not at all.</div> +<p class="right"> + (Prelude xl, 142.) +</p> + </div> + </div> +</div> + + +<p class='no-indent'>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....</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span></p> + + +<h3 id="AS_POET"> + AS POET +</h3> + +<p>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 <i>In Memoriam</i> or an <i>Ode on a +Grecian Urn</i>, 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:</p> + + +<h4 id="SYMPHONY_IN_YELLOW"> + SYMPHONY IN YELLOW +</h4> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">An omnibus across the bridge</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Crawls like a yellow butterfly,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">And, here and there, a passer-by</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Shows like a little restless midge.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Big barges full of yellow hay</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Are moved against the shadowy wharf,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">And, like a yellow silken scarf,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The thick fog hangs along the quay.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">The yellow leaves begin to fade</div> + <div class="verse indent2">And flutter from the Temple elms,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">And at my feet the pale green Thames</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lies like a rod of rippled jade.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span></p> + +<p class='no-indent'>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 <i>Ballad +of Reading Gaol</i> 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.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">I walked, with other souls in pain,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Within another ring,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And was wondering if the man had done</div> + <div class="verse indent2">A great or little thing,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When a voice behind me whispered low,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">“<i>That fellow’s got to swing</i>.”</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>And mark the dramatic appeal of this:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> + <div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">A prison wall was round us both,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Two outcast men we were:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The world had thrust us from its heart,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">And God from out His care:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the iron gin that waits for Sin</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Had caught us in its snare.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">And twice a day he smoked his pipe,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">And drank his quart of beer:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">His soul was resolute, and held</div> + <div class="verse indent2">No hiding-place for fear;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">He often said that he was glad</div> + <div class="verse indent2">The hangman’s hands were near.</div> +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span> </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">But why he said so strange a thing</div> + <div class="verse indent2">No warder dared to ask:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For he to whom a watcher’s doom</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Is given as his task,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Must set a lock upon his lips,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">And make his face a mask.</div> + </div> + </div> +</div> + +<p>He gets very close there to the heart of the +common man, as close as James Stephens indeed, +with his <i>What Tomas an Buile Said in a +Pub</i>.</p> + +<p>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 <i>The Ballad of Reading Gaol</i>, +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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span> +established tradition as to what is fitting and +comely in a poem of this nature is not outraged +or transgressed.”</p> + +<p>Another great poem grew out of his prison +life. I refer to the long letter, made into a book +by Mr. Ross and entitled <i>De Profundis</i>, for a +poem, a prose poem, it is. It would be better to +mention in this place that <i>The Ballad of Reading +Gaol</i> was not composed until Wilde had left +prison. <i>De Profundis</i>, 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 <i>De Profundis</i> 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 +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span> +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.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> +<div class="chapter"> +<div class='transnote'> + <h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcribers_Notes"> + Transcriber’s Notes + </h2> + +<ul> + <li>Obvious typographic and grammatical errors silently corrected.</li> + <li>Variations in hyphenation kept as in the original.</li> + + <li><a href='#cor_037'>p. 37</a>: Corrected "a course oath" to "a coarse oath".</li> + + <li><a href='#cor_068'>p. 68</a>: 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.”</li> +</ul> +</div></div> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77494 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/77494-h/images/cover.jpg b/77494-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..8a1334e --- /dev/null +++ b/77494-h/images/cover.jpg |
