He did try to impress on her his conception of the play. When she suggested cutting some of the comic lines, he responded with one of his essential tenets, rephrased later in ‘The Truth of Masks’: ‘Now, one of the facts of physiology is the desire of any very intensified emotion to be relieved by some emotion that is its opposite. Nature’s example of dramatic effect is the laughter of hysteria or the tears of joy. So I cannot cut out my comedy lines. Besides, the essence of good dialogue is interruption.’10† Miss Prescott’s replies, long-winded but not stupid, pointed out that Vera wishes to kill the object of her love. This theme appears in many of Wilde’s works, from ‘Humanitad’ and The Duchess of Padua to The Ballad of Reading Gaol. The supposed narcissist was at bottom swayed by self-disserving desires.
Wilde had many practical suggestions. There was the samovar from Sarah Bernhardt. His design for Miss Prescott’s vermilion dress in the last act delighted her: ‘No dress is so becoming to me.’ (In The Duchess of Padua even a package has to be wrapped in vermilion silk.) She should not wear petticoats, he instructed, and she revealed that she never did. Would he not reconsider the heavy fur coat prescribed for Vera in Act I? Wilde presumably agreed, in view of the August opening. He wrote out his letters to her carefully, and preserved some of his best mots, such as this one: ‘Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result. Art is the mathematical result of the emotional desire for beauty.’ With an eye to publicity, he explained that Vera was at once ‘a Titan cry of the people for liberty,’ and yet a play about passion rather than politics. He told Constance Lloyd later that it was about politics rather than passion. Since it could be read either way, amorous passion would please frivolous New York and political passion please serious Constance. Marie Prescott printed one of his letters in the New York Herald as part of the publicity for the play.11
The 20th of August being slow to come, Wilde had to find other resources until he became a successful playwright. His marital plans he had to defer for the moment. Fortunately, in the spring Colonel Morse, D’Oyly Carte’s former lecture manager, turned up in London, representing J. M. Stoddart, the Philadelphia publisher, as agent for the Encyclopedia Americana and other books. Wilde called on him in mid-June and asked if he could arrange a lecture tour of the British Isles for an old client. Morse agreed to undertake it as a sideline. The lecture fees were paltry, 10 to 25 guineas a lecture, or at best half the receipts; but Wilde would have money coming in as well as going out. He offered two lectures, one bantering, ‘Personal Impressions of America,’ and one messianic, ‘The House Beautiful.’
The first lecture would be given in London at Prince’s Hall, Piccadilly, so as to warm the provinces to the idea. While arrangements were being made, Wilde was invited by Eric Forbes-Robertson to lecture to the students of the Royal Academy and accepted. Whistler, envying an invitation which he would like to have had an opportunity to refuse, was quick with suggestions for what Wilde might say as his St John. Some of these Wilde developed, though he knew, as Whistler had perhaps forgotten, that many of Whistler’s attitudes had been formed by Gautier’s preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin, and others by the writings of Baudelaire and Mallarmé. Whistler’s originality lay principally in the tartness of his expression, rather than in the content. Wilde’s lecture, posthumously printed in somewhat garbled form, indicates that he was still clinging to Ruskin for some of his theory even as he proclaimed the supremacy of Whistler in practice. So, after insisting like Whistler that art moved apart from history—a view he would later upset—Wilde urged the students to master their own age the better to ignore it. He also used Ruskin’s terms to underline the relation of corruption in human surroundings to decay in art. The Whistler and Gautier dogmas were chiefly negative: art is not national, no age has ever been artistic, nor any people (he would modify this later); art history is useless; art offers no message. Anything can be beautiful, he told them, ‘even Gower-street … when dawn was breaking.… A policeman … was not, under ordinary circumstances, a thing of beauty or a joy forever, but he saw one in a mist on the Thames Embankment, lit up with dusky light … Michael Angelesque in appearance.’ When it was objected that Whistler’s paintings ‘looked as well upside down as right side up, why shouldn’t they?’ he asked. ‘Either way they gave delight.’12 The students were pleased, the press approbatory, and Whistler jealous. If the hostile Herbert Vivian can be trusted, Whistler checked Wilde’s gratification by asking what he had said, and, as Wilde reeled off the points, Whistler rose at each to take a bow as if he himself had originated everything. He would say later, when they were no longer friends, that Wilde ‘not only trifled with my shoe, but bolted with the latchet.’ Yet half the talk stemmed from Ruskin, and Vivian cannot have reported the bowing altogether accurately.
Whistler could not have been too offended at the supposed borrowings since he went to Wilde’s second lecture, at the Prince’s Hall on 11 July 1883. The World said on 18 July that Whistler was seen there, ‘jumping about like a cricket.’ This was the lecture on ‘Impressions of America,’ a mixed bag of comments on scenery, people, art, theatre, done with great wit. Wilde appeared twenty minutes late, impenitent, in evening dress, a white flower in his buttonhole, shirt cuffs overlapping the sleeves, a heavy seal hanging from his watch chain, a large diamond in the shirt front. He transformed the pedestrian circumstance of having lectured in Griggsville, Illinois: ‘I was asked to lecture on art at Griggsville, named after its founder—Griggs—I telegraphed them “First change the name of your town.” This they declined to do. How dreadful it would have been if I had founded a school of art there—fancy “Early Griggsville.” Imagine a school of art teaching “Griggsville Renaissance.” ’ He described his trip to Niagara Falls—‘a melancholy place filled with melancholy people, who wandered about trying to get up that feeling of sublimity which the guide books assured them they could do without extra charge’—and the desolate prairie, ‘the alkali plains, which conveyed the impression that Nature had given up the job of decorating the country, so vast its size, in absolute despair.’ In Salt Lake City he admired the beauty of the Mormon children, and told how he had asked whether the theatre was large enough for him to lecture in, and received the reply, ‘Oh, yes, it will hold nine families.’
He approved the luxury of the Pullman car, while regretting its lack of privacy. On the train, ‘Boys ran up and down selling literature, good and bad, and everything one could eat or not eat, but what harrowed my feelings most acutely was to see a pirated copy of my own poems selling for 10 cents. Calling these boys on one side I told them that though poets like to be popular they desire to be paid, and selling editions of my poems without giving me a profit is dealing a blow at literature which must have a disastrous effect on poetical aspirants. The invariable reply that they made was that they themselves made a profit out of the transaction and that was all they cared about.’ His narrative rambled about the country, from journalism to politics, machinery to art. He was never addressed as ‘Stranger,’ as people assumed foreigners in America always were. ‘When I went to Texas I was called “Captain,” when I got to the centre of the country I was called “Colonel,” and on arriving at the borders of Mexico, as “General.” ’ These he did not mind, but he had been much distressed at being called ‘Professor.’ He complained of the noise and hurry: ‘I only saw one reposeful American—a wooden figure outside a tobacco shop.’
The audience seemed pleased and most reports were favorable. Labouchere in Truth on 18 July was surprisingly grudging, and complained that Wilde had used the word ‘lovely’ forty-three times, ‘beautiful’ twenty-six times, and ‘charming’ seventeen times. If the statistics were correct, he must have departed from his script to caress these favorite adjectives. The next day Truth carried a three-column leader entitled ‘Exit Oscar.’ It scanned his career acidly: in Oxford he was ‘the epicene youth,’ and ‘No one laughed at him more than he laughed at himself.’ On his tour in the United States he was ‘an effeminat
e phrase-maker,’ ‘lecturing to empty benches.’ The hall in London was only half full, he said. Wilde commented, ‘If it took Labouchere three columns to prove that I was forgotten, then there is no difference between fame and obscurity.’13 Impervious to Whistler and Labouchere, he went on to lecture at Margate and Ramsgate on 26 July, Southampton on the 27th, Brighton on the 28th, Southport on the 31st. From that town on 1 August he traveled to Liverpool to welcome Lillie Langtry on her return from the United States. Modest in talent, and increasingly immodest in her offstage activities, she had been able to achieve a success of sorts, and would soon embark on a second tour.
The Tragedy of Vera
‘I knew I should create a great sensation,’ gasped the Rocket, and he went out.
On 2 August 1883 Wilde sailed on the S.S. Britannic for New York for the production of his first play. His hopes were high and the crossing went pleasantly. As part of the shipboard entertainment, Wilde read to general approbation his ‘Ave Imperatrix,’ the poem which saluted imperial might, regretted the English dead, and predicted a republic in the future. Several English passengers, including a friend of George Curzon’s named Broderick, sought out his company. ‘Wilde has been the life and soul of the voyage,’ he wrote to Curzon. ‘He has showered good stories and bons mots, paradoxes, and epigrams upon me all the way, while he certainly has a never failing bonhomie which makes him roar with laughter at his own absurd theories and strange conceits.… I don’t know that I have ever laughed so much as with and at him all through the voyage.’14 When the ship docked on 11 August, Wilde was not left without an interview. At the Brunswick Hotel the New York Times reporter found him more conventionally dressed, with ordinary trousers, but the dandiacal effect remained in a cutaway velvet coat, patent-leather boots, a Byronic collar, and a scarf with a diamond pin. His hair was cut, another point, yet Neronian still. He said to the reporter, of his English friends on shipboard, ‘They are on their way to the West to shoot buffaloes,’ and added in moody afterthought, ‘if there are buffaloes and—if they can shoot them.’ He spoke of having written The Duchess of Padua during his absence: ‘Of course I shall mount it handsomely. The best of pictures require suitable frames.’ He would visit Newport, to see Mrs Howe, and Peekskill, to see Henry Ward Beecher. Was the rumor true that Wilde had brought with him the scenery for Vera? ‘Not even a cornfield,’ he replied. What he had brought was some vermilion cloth for Marie Prescott.15
The rehearsals for Vera began on 13 August and the play opened to a packed house on the sweltering night of 20 August. At the end of the second act came cries of ‘Author!’ and at the end of the third Wilde appeared before the curtain and made a short speech, probably to say that the play was about passion rather than politics, or vice versa. It was just as well he delayed no longer, because everyone found the fourth act too long and Marie Prescott’s vermilion gown in that act caused consternation to go with perspiration. There were many friends of Wilde or Marie Prescott in the audience, among them the actor Wilson Barrett, and they praised the play. The reviews were generally less than favorable. Apart from the New York Sun, which proclaimed it a masterpiece, and the New York Mirror, which spoke of it as ‘really marvelous,’ the other papers were adverse. The New York Tribune was milder than usual in its dispraise on 21 August, and allowed editorially on 26 August that Wilde was or could be a changed man. Mrs Frank Leslie blamed the vermilion gown for the adverse reception. The New York Times reviewer devoted a pompous column to analysis and rejection of nihilism, before discussing the play, in a style that suggested Wilde’s epigrams had not been lost on him: ‘We do not doubt the sincerity of Mr. Oscar Wilde, who, nevertheless, has given us cogent reason to doubt his sincerity.’ ‘He has accomplished as little as possible, but we have been willing to believe that he could accomplish more.’ Bearing in mind the interview with Wilde the week before, the reviewer granted that ‘Ave Imperatrix,’ mentioned in it, was a fine poem, and that Wilde’s aesthetic theories were not devoid of merit. But the nihilist speeches were boring, and there were other defects. Condemnation was not total: ‘Yet there is a great deal of good writing in Vera, and Mr. Wilde exhibits cleverness and wit in a character like Prince Paul.’ In sum, ‘It comes as near failure as an ingenious and able writer can bring it.’ And although he himself said nothing, Wilde disliked the performance.
Marie Prescott was distressed by the written response to what the audience seemed to have enjoyed. She bravely addressed a letter to the editor of The New York Times naming a dozen reputable theatre people who had praised this ‘noble’ play. The letter served only to goad the Times to more scathing criticism of her and Wilde. She was characterized as having only a ‘pulpit eloquence.’ (The Boston Pilot, always sympathetic to Wilde, also blamed the failure on ‘an inferior actress, who can only scold on the stage and off it.’) At last the Times brought out an even heavier gun in the editorial section. Wilde was ‘very much of a charlatan and wholly an amateur,’ and the play was valueless.16
However unfair this dismissal in 1883 may have been, box-office returns fell off sharply, and the theatre was too expensive to keep open. Marie Prescott and her husband devised a final stratagem: a newspaper story announced that Wilde, as soon as he returned from Coney Island—where he had insouciantly gone—would be asked by them to play a part, presumably Prince Paul, or, failing that, to speak after each performance. He declined. On 28 August, Vera was withdrawn. A reporter went to see Wilde, who was smoking a cigar. For once he shunned the press: ‘Ah, but I am eating my breakfast, don’t you see.’17 Marie Prescott said she would take the play on tour, beginning 15 October, along with another play called Czeka. In December she was playing it in Detroit.
Wilde went off to Newport and Saratoga and stayed a month in the United States. He came back to London to find himself the butt of caricatures in Punch and Entr’Acte. The latter portrayed Willie consoling his dejected brother. Wilde still believed in the value of Vera. If he had reservations about Miss Prescott’s acting, he could not express them. In a season of inferior plays, Vera cannot have been greatly below the average. The newspapers were resolved to mock and underrate him; Wilde was depressed by Vera’s failure but held his tongue.
There was nothing for it but to go on lecturing. Colonel Morse had been able to arrange a great many bookings, chiefly at Mechanics Institutes; by 18 August he had sixteen or seventeen, and during the 1883–84 season he secured, by his own count, over 150 bookings for Wilde.18 The first was on 24 September at Wandsworth, where twelve years later Wilde would languish in prison. For these lectures he did not wear his velvet breeches or silk stockings. But his evening dress sported a black tie of curious cut, and from between his waistcoat and the bosom of his shirt peeped a salmon-colored silk handkerchief. He spoke now without notes, in his usual deliberate manner. On 11 October he took time off from lecturing to go with Lillie Langtry to Liverpool to see Henry Irving and Ellen Terry off on a tour of the States that would prove more equable than his own. On 25 October he lectured in Derby. But there was something more important, an audience of one.
Prenuptial Maneuvers
Once a week is quite enough to propose to anyone, and it should always be done in a manner that attracts some attention.
In mid-October, Wilde came to London between lectures, and Lady Wilde invited Constance to her reception so they could meet. The next day Wilde came to the Lloyds’ and described his tour. ‘He is lecturing still,’ Otho commented, ‘going from town to town, but in the funniest way, one day he is at Brighton, the next he will be at Edinburgh, the next at Penzance in Cornwall, the next in Dublin; he laughed a good deal over it and he said that he left it entirely to his manager.’ The topic of Vera came up, and Wilde seemed much mortified by its failure. He brought a privately printed copy to Constance, and asked for her opinion. She promised to write from Dublin, where she was about to go on a visit. It was a pleasant coincidence that her stay there would coincide with two lectures in Dublin by Wilde.
On 11 Novembe
r, Constance wrote to Wilde from her grandmother’s house in Ely Place:
You ask me to let you know what I think of your play, and tho’ I have no pretensions to being a critic and do not even know what constitutes a good play, I must, I suppose, give you some answer. I was much interested in ‘Vera’ and it seems to me to be a very good acting play and to have good dramatic situations. Also I like the passages on liberty and the impassioned parts, but I fancy that some of the minor parts of the dialogue strike me as being slightly halting or strained. I am speaking however only from aesthetic impressions and not from knowledge, so please don’t let any remarks of mine weigh upon your mind. I cannot understand why you should have been so unfortunate in its reception unless either the acting was very inferior or the audience was unsympathetic to the political opinions expressed in it. The world surely is unjust and bitter to most of us; I think we must either renounce our opinions and run with the general stream or else totally ignore the world and go on our own regardless of all, there is not the slightest use in fighting against existing prejudices, for we are only worsted in the struggle—I am afraid you and I disagree in our opinions on art, for I hold that there is no perfect art without perfect morality, whilst you say that they are distinct and separable things, and of course you have your knowledge to combat my ignorance with. Truly I am no judge that you should appeal to me for opinions, and even if I were, I know that I should judge you rather by your aims than by your work, and you would say I was wrong. I told the Atkinsons that you would be here some time soon and they will be very pleased to see you: I shall be here [breaks off]19
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