Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated) (267 page)

CHAPTER VI
I

“Believe me, child, all the gentleman’s misfortunes arose from his being educated at a public school....” — Fielding.

In England success is a plant of slow growth. The tone of good society, though responsive to political talent, and openly, eagerly sensitive to money-making talent, is contemptuous of genius and rates the utmost brilliancy of the talker hardly higher than the feats of an acrobat. Men are obstinate, slow, trusting a bank-balance rather than brains; and giving way reluctantly to sharp-witted superiority. The road up to power or influence in England is full of pitfalls and far too arduous for those who have neither high birth nor wealth to help them. The natural inequality of men instead of being mitigated by law or custom is everywhere strengthened and increased by a thousand effete social distinctions. Even in the best class where a certain easy familiarity reigns there is circle above circle, and the summits are isolated by heredity.

The conditions of English society being what they are, it is all but impossible at first to account for the rapidity of Oscar Wilde’s social success; yet if we tell over his advantages and bring one or two into the account which have not yet been reckoned, we shall find almost every element that conduces to popularity. By talent and conviction he was the natural pet of the aristocracy whose selfish prejudices he defended and whose leisure he amused. The middle class, as has been noted, disliked and despised him: but its social influence is small and its papers, and especially
Punch
, made him notorious by attacking him in and out of season. The comic weekly, indeed, helped to build up his reputation by the almost inexplicable bitterness of its invective.

Another potent force was in his favour. From the beginning he set himself to play the game of the popular actor, and neglected no opportunity of turning the limelight on his own doings. As he said, his admiration of himself was “a lifelong devotion,” and he proclaimed his passion on the housetops.

Our names happened to be mentioned together once in some paper, I think it was
The Pall Mall Gazette
. He asked me what I was going to reply.

“Nothing,” I answered, “why should I bother? I’ve done nothing yet that deserves trumpeting.”

“You’re making a mistake,” he said seriously. “If you wish for reputation and fame in this world, and success during your lifetime, you ought to seize every opportunity of advertising yourself. You remember the Latin word, ‘Fame springs from one’s own house.’ Like other wise sayings, it’s not quite true; fame comes from oneself,” and he laughed delightedly; “you must go about repeating how great you are till the dull crowd comes to believe it.”

“The prophet must proclaim himself, eh? and declare his own mission?”

“That’s it,” he replied with a smile; “that’s it.

“Every time my name is mentioned in a paper, I write at once to admit that I am the Messiah. Why is Pears’ soap successful? Not because it is better or cheaper than any other soap, but because it is more strenuously puffed. The journalist is my ‘John the Baptist.’ What would you give, when a book of yours comes out, to be able to write a long article drawing attention to it in
The Pall Mall Gazette
? Here you have the opportunity of making your name known just as widely; why not avail yourself of it? I miss no chance,” and to do him justice he used occasion to the utmost.

Curiously enough Bacon had the same insight, and I have often wondered since whether Oscar’s worldly wisdom was original or was borrowed from the great Elizabethan climber. Bacon says:

“‘Boldly sound your own praises and some of them will stick.’... It will stick with the more ignorant and the populace, though men of wisdom may smile at it; and the reputation won with many will amply countervail the disdain of a few.... And surely no small number of those who are of solid nature, and who, from the want of this ventosity, cannot spread all sail in pursuit of their own honour, suffer some prejudice and lose dignity by their moderation.”

Many of Oscar’s letters to the papers in these years were amusing, some of them full of humour. For example, when he was asked to give a list of the hundred best books, as Lord Avebury and other mediocrities had done, he wrote saying that “he could not give a list of the hundred best books, as he had only written five.”

Winged words of his were always passing from mouth to mouth in town. Some theatre was opened which was found horribly ugly: one spoke of it as “Early Victorian.”

“No, no,” replied Oscar, “nothing so distinctive. ‘Early Maple,’ rather.”

Even his impertinences made echoes. At a great reception, a friend asked him in passing, how the hostess, Lady S —— , could be recognised. Lady S —— being short and stout, Oscar replied, smiling:

“Go through this room, my dear fellow, and the next and so on till you come to someone looking like a public monument, say the effigy of Britannia or Victoria — that’s Lady S —— .”

Though he used to pretend that all this self-advertisement was premeditated and planned, I could hardly believe him. He was eager to write about himself because of his exaggerated vanity and reflection afterwards found grounds to justify his inclination. But whatever the motive may have been the effect was palpable: his name was continually in men’s mouths, and his fame grew by repetition. As Tiberius said of Mucianus:

“
Omnium quæ dixerat feceratque, arte quadam ostentator
” (He had a knack of showing off and advertising whatever he said or did).

But no personal qualities, however eminent, no gifts, no graces of heart or head or soul could have brought a young man to Oscar Wilde’s social position and popularity in a few years.

Another cause was at work lifting him steadily. From the time he left Oxford he was acclaimed and backed by a small minority of passionate admirers whom I have called his fuglemen. These admirers formed the constant factor in his progress from social height to height. For the most part they were persons usually called “sexual inverts,” who looked to the brilliancy of his intellect to gild their esoteric indulgence. This class in England is almost wholly recruited from the aristocracy and the upper middle-class that apes the “smart set.” It is an inevitable product of the English boarding school and University system; indeed one of the most characteristic products. I shall probably bring upon myself a host of enemies by this assertion, but it has been weighed and must stand. Fielding has already put the same view on record: he says:

“A public school, Joseph, was the cause of all the calamities which he afterwards suffered. Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality. All the wicked fellows whom I remember at the University were bred at them....”

If boarding-school life with its close intimacies between boys from twelve to eighteen years of age were understood by English mothers, it is safe to say that every boarding-house in every school would disappear in a single night, and Eton, Harrow, Winchester and the rest would be turned into day-schools.

Those who have learned bad habits at school or in the ‘Varsity are inclined to continue the practices in later life. Naturally enough these men are usually distinguished by a certain artistic sympathy, and often by most attractive, intellectual qualities. As a rule the epicene have soft voices and ingratiating manners, and are bold enough to make a direct appeal to the heart and emotions; they are considered the very cream of London society.

These admirers and supporters praised and defended Oscar Wilde from the beginning with the persistence and courage of men who if they don’t hang together are likely to hang separately. After his trial and condemnation
The Daily Telegraph
spoke with contempt of these “decadents” and “æsthetes” who, it asserted, “could be numbered in London society on the fingers of one hand”; but even
The Daily Telegraph
must have known that in the “smart set” alone there are hundreds of these acolytes whose intellectual and artistic culture gives them an importance out of all proportion to their number. It was the passionate support of these men in the first place which made Oscar Wilde notorious and successful.

This fact may well give pause to the thoughtful reader. In the middle ages, when birth and position had a disproportionate power in life, the Catholic Church supplied a certain democratic corrective to the inequality of social conditions. It was a sort of “Jacob’s Ladder” leading from the lowest strata of society to the very heavens and offering to ingenuous, youthful talent a career of infinite hope and unlimited ambition. This great power of the Roman Church in the middle-ages may well be compared to the influence exerted by those whom I have designated as Oscar Wilde’s fuglemen in the England of today. The easiest way to success in London society is to be notorious in this sense. Whatever career one may have chosen, however humble one’s birth, one is then certain of finding distinguished friends and impassioned advocates. If you happen to be in the army and unmarried, you are declared to be a strategist like Cæsar, or an organizer like Moltke; if you are an artist, instead of having your faults proclaimed and your failings scourged, your qualifications are eulogised and you find yourself compared to Michel Angelo or Titian! I would not willingly exaggerate here; but I could easily give dozens of instances to prove that sexual perversion is a “Jacob’s Ladder” to most forms of success in our time in London.

It seems a curious effect of the great compensatory balance of things that a masculine rude people like the English, who love nothing so much as adventures and warlike achievements, should allow themselves to be steered in ordinary times by epicene æsthetes. But no one who knows the facts will deny that these men are prodigiously influential in London in all artistic and literary matters, and it was their constant passionate support which lifted Oscar Wilde so quickly to eminence.

From the beginning they fought for him. He was regarded as a leader among them when still at Oxford. Yet his early writings show no trace of such a prepossession; they are wholly void of offence, without even a suggestion of coarseness, as pure indeed as his talk. Nevertheless, as soon as his name came up among men in town, the accusation of abnormal viciousness was either made or hinted. Everyone spoke as if there were no doubt about his tastes, and this in spite of the habitual reticence of Englishmen. I could not understand how the imputation came to be so bold and universal; how so shameful a calumny, as I regarded it, was so firmly established in men’s minds. Again and again I protested against the injustice, demanded proofs; but was met only by shrugs and pitying glances as if my prejudice must indeed be invincible if I needed evidence of the obvious.

I have since been assured, on what should be excellent authority, that the evil reputation which attached to Oscar Wilde in those early years in London was completely undeserved. I, too, must say that in the first period of our friendship, I never noticed anything that could give colour even to suspicion of him; but the belief in his abnormal tastes was widespread and dated from his life in Oxford.

From about 1886-7 on, however, there was a notable change in Oscar Wilde’s manners and mode of life. He had been married a couple of years, two children had been born to him; yet instead of settling down he appeared suddenly to have become wilder. In 1887 he accepted the editorship of a lady’s paper,
The Woman’s World
, and was always mocking at the selection of himself as the “fittest” for such a post: he had grown noticeably bolder. I told myself that an assured income and position give confidence; but at bottom a doubt began to form in me. It can’t be denied that from 1887-8 on, incidents occurred from time to time which kept the suspicion of him alive, and indeed pointed and strengthened it. I shall have to deal now with some of the more important of these occurrences.

CHAPTER VII
I

The period of growth of any organism is the most interesting and most instructive. And there is no moment of growth in the individual life which can be compared in importance with the moment when a man begins to outtop his age, and to suggest the future evolution of humanity by his own genius. Usually this final stage is passed in solitude:

Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,
Sich ein Charakter in dem Strome der Welt.

After writing a life of Schiller which almost anyone might have written, Carlyle retired for some years to Craigenputtoch, and then brought forth
Sartor Resartus
, which was personal and soul-revealing to the verge of eccentricity. In the same way Wagner was a mere continuator of Weber in
Lohengrin
and
Tannhaeuser
, and first came to his own in the
Meistersinger
and
Tristan
, after years of meditation in Switzerland.

This period for Oscar Wilde began with his marriage; the freedom from sordid anxieties allowed him to lift up his head and be himself. Kepler, I think, it is who praises poverty as the foster-mother of genius; but Bernard Palissy was nearer the truth when he said: —
Pauvreté empêche bons esprits de parvenir
(poverty hinders fine minds from succeeding). There is no such mortal enemy of genius as poverty except riches: a touch of the spur from time to time does good; but a constant rowelling disables. As editor of
The Woman’s World
Oscar had some money of his own to spend. Though his salary was only some six pounds a week, it made him independent, and his editorial work gave him an excuse for not exhausting himself by writing. For some years after marriage; in fact, till he lost his editorship, he wrote little and talked a great deal.

During this period we were often together. He lunched with me once or twice a week and I began to know his method of work. Everything came to him in the excitement of talk, epigrams, paradoxes and stories; and when people of great position or title were about him he generally managed to surpass himself: all social distinctions appealed to him intensely. I chaffed him about this one day and he admitted the snobbishness gaily.

“I love even historic names, Frank, as Shakespeare did. Surely everyone prefers Norfolk, Hamilton and Buckingham to Jones or Smith or Robinson.”

As soon as he lost his editorship he took to writing for the reviews; his articles were merely the
résumé
of his monologues. After talking for months at this and that lunch and dinner he had amassed a store of epigrams and humorous paradoxes which he could embody in a paper for
The Fortnightly Review
or
The Nineteenth Century
.

These papers made it manifest that Wilde had at length, as Heine phrased it, reached the topmost height of the culture of his time and was now able to say new and interesting things. His
Lehrjahre
or student-time may be said to have ended with his editorship. The articles which he wrote on “The Decay of Lying,” “The Critic as Artist,” and “Pen, Pencil and Poison”; in fact, all the papers which in 1891 were gathered together and published in book form under the title of “Intentions,” had about them the stamp of originality. They achieved a noteworthy success with the best minds, and laid the foundation of his fame. Every paper contained, here and there, a happy phrase, or epigram, or flirt of humour, which made it memorable to the lover of letters.

They were all, however, conceived and written from the standpoint of the artist, and the artist alone, who never takes account of ethics, but uses right and wrong indifferently as colours of his palette. “The Decay of Lying” seemed to the ordinary, matter-of-fact Englishman a cynical plea in defence of mendacity. To the majority of readers, “Pen, Pencil and Poison” was hardly more than a shameful attempt to condone cold-blooded murder. The very articles which grounded his fame as a writer, helped to injure his standing and repute.

In 1889 he published a paper which did him even more damage by appearing to justify the peculiar rumours about his private life. He held the opinion, which was universal at that time, that Shakespeare had been abnormally vicious. He believed with the majority of critics that Lord William Herbert was addressed in the first series of Sonnets; but his fine sensibility or, if you will, his peculiar temperament, led him to question whether Thorpe’s dedication to “Mr. W.H.” could have been addressed to Lord William Herbert. He preferred the old hypothesis that the dedication was addressed to a young actor named Mr. William Hughes, a supposition which is supported by a well-known sonnet. He set forth this idea with much circumstance and considerable ingenuity in an article which he sent to me for publication in
The Fortnightly Review
. The theme was scabrous; but his treatment of it was scrupulously reserved and adroit and I saw no offence in the paper, and to tell the truth, no great ability in his handling of the subject.

He had talked over the article with me while he was writing it, and I told him that I thought the whole theory completely mistaken. Shakespeare was as sensual as one could well be; but there was no evidence of abnormal vice; indeed, all the evidence seemed to me to be against this universal belief. The assumption that the dedication was addressed to Lord William Herbert I had found it difficult to accept, at first; the wording of it is not only ambiguous but familiar. If I assumed that “Mr. W.H.” was meant for Lord William Herbert, it was only because that seemed the easiest way out of the maze. In fine, I pointed out to Oscar that his theory had very little that was new in it, and more that was untrue, and advised him not to publish the paper. My conviction that Shakespeare was not abnormally vicious, and that the first series of Sonnets proved snobbishness and toadying and not corrupt passion, seemed to Oscar the very madness of partisanship.

He smiled away my arguments, and sent his paper to the
Fortnightly
office when I happened to be abroad. Much to my chagrin, my assistant rejected it rudely, whereupon Oscar sent it to Blackwoods, who published it in their magazine. It set everyone talking and arguing. To judge by the discussion it created, the wind of hatred and of praise it caused, one would have thought that the paper was a masterpiece, though in truth it was nothing out of the common. Had it been written by anybody else it would have passed unnoticed. But already Oscar Wilde had a prodigious notoriety, and all his sayings and doings were eagerly canvassed from one end of society to the other.

“The Portrait of Mr. W.H.” did Oscar incalculable injury. It gave his enemies for the first time the very weapon they wanted, and they used it unscrupulously and untiringly with the fierce delight of hatred. Oscar seemed to revel in the storm of conflicting opinions which the paper called forth. He understood better than most men that notoriety is often the forerunner of fame and is always commercially more valuable. He rubbed his hands with delight as the discussion grew bitter, and enjoyed even the sneering of the envious. A wind that blows out a little fire, he knew, plays bellows to a big one. So long as people talked about him, he didn’t much care what they said, and they certainly talked interminably about everything he wrote.

The inordinate popular success increased his self-confidence, and with time his assurance took on a touch of defiance. The first startling sign of this gradual change was the publication in
Lippincott’s Magazine
of “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” It was attacked immediately in
The Daily Chronicle
, a liberal paper usually distinguished for a certain leaning in favour of artists and men of letters, as a “tale spawned from the leprous literature of the French
decadents
— a poisonous book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction.”

Oscar as a matter of course replied and the tone of his reply is characteristic of his growth in self-assurance: he no longer dreads the imputation of viciousness; he challenges it: “It is poisonous, if you like; but you cannot deny that it is also perfect, and perfection is what we artists aim at.”

When Oscar republished “The Picture of Dorian Gray” in book form in April, 1891, he sent me a large paper copy and with the copy he wrote a little note, asking me to tell him what I thought of the book. I got the volume and note early one morning and read the book until noon. I then sent him a note by hand: “Other men,” I wrote, “have given us wine; some claret, some burgundy, some Moselle; you are the first to give us pure champagne. Much of this book is wittier even than Congreve and on an equal intellectual level: at length, it seems to me, you have justified yourself.”

Half an hour later I was told that Oscar Wilde had called. I went down immediately to see him. He was bubbling over with content.

“How charming of you, Frank,” he cried, “to have written me such a divine letter.”

“I have only read a hundred pages of the book,” I said; “but they are delightful: no one now can deny you a place among the wittiest and most humorous writers in English.”

“How wonderful of you, Frank; what do you like so much?”

Like all artists, he loved praise and I was enthusiastic, happy to have the opportunity of making up for some earlier doubting that now seemed unworthy:

“Whatever the envious may say, you’re with Burke and Sheridan, among the very ablest Irishmen....

“Of course I have heard most of the epigrams from you before, but you have put them even better in this book.”

“Do you think so, really?” he asked, smiling with pleasure.

It is worth notice that some of the epigrams in “Dorian Gray” were bettered again before they appeared in his first play. For example, in “Dorian Gray” Lord Henry Wotton, who is peculiarly Oscar’s mouthpiece, while telling how he had to bargain for a piece of old brocade in Wardour Street, adds, “nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” In “Lady Windermere’s Fan” the same epigram is perfected, “The cynic is one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

Nearly all the literary productions of our time suffer from haste: one must produce a good deal, especially while one’s reputation is in the making, in order to live by one’s pen. Yet great works take time to form, and fine creations are often disfigured by the stains of hurried parturition. Oscar Wilde contrived to minimise this disability by talking his works before writing them.

The conversation of Lord Henry Wotton with his uncle, and again at lunch when he wishes to fascinate Dorian Gray, is an excellent reproduction of Oscar’s ordinary talk. The uncle wonders why Lord Dartmoor wants to marry an American and grumbles about her people: “Has she got any?”

Lord Henry shook his head. “American girls are as clever at concealing their parents as English women are at concealing their past,” he said, rising to go.

“They are pork-packers, I suppose?”

“I hope so, Uncle George, for Dartmoor’s sake. I am told that pork-packing is the most lucrative profession in America, after politics.”

All this seems to me delightful humour.

The latter part of the book, however, tails off into insignificance. The first hundred pages held the result of months and months of Oscar’s talk, the latter half was written offhand to complete the story. “Dorian Gray” was the first piece of work which proved that Oscar Wilde had at length found his true vein.

A little study of it discovers both his strength and his weakness as a writer. The initial idea of the book is excellent, finer because deeper than the commonplace idea that is the foundation of Balzac’s “Peau de Chagrin,” though it would probably never have been written if Balzac had not written his book first; but Balzac’s sincerity and earnestness grapple with the theme and wring a blessing out of it, whereas the subtler idea in Oscar’s hands dwindles gradually away till one wonders if the book would not have been more effective as a short story. Oscar did not know life well enough or care enough for character to write a profound psychological study: he was at his best in a short story or play.

One day about this time Oscar first showed me the aphorisms he had written as an introduction to “Dorian Gray.” Several of them I thought excellent; but I found that Oscar had often repeated himself. I cut these repetitions out and tried to show him how much better the dozen best were than eighteen of which six were inferior. I added that I should like to publish the best in “The Fortnightly.” He thanked me and said it was very kind of me.

Next morning I got a letter from him telling me that he had read over my corrections and thought that the aphorisms I had rejected were the best, but he hoped I’d publish them as he had written them.

Naturally I replied that the final judgment must rest with him and I published them at once.

The delight I felt in his undoubted genius and success was not shared by others. Friends took occasion to tell me that I should not go about with Oscar Wilde.

“Why not?” I asked.

“He has a bad name,” was the reply. “Strange things are said about him. He came down from Oxford with a vile reputation. You have only got to look at the man.”

“Whatever the disease may be,” I replied, “it’s not catching — unfortunately.”

The pleasure men take in denigration of the gifted is one of the puzzles of life to those who are not envious.

Men of letters, even people who ought to have known better, were slow to admit his extraordinary talent; he had risen so quickly, had been puffed into such prominence that they felt inclined to deny him even the gifts which he undoubtedly possessed. I was surprised once to find a friend of mine taking this attitude: Francis Adams, the poet and writer, chaffed me one day about my liking for Oscar.