Oscar Wilde

by Richard Ellmann

  30 Lady W, Men, Women, and Books, 175; letter to unnamed correspondent, 1852 (Reading).

  31 Lady W, letter to Lotten von Kraemer, [Nov] 1862 (copy, NLI).

  32 Yeats, Autobiography, 92; G. B. Shaw, ‘My Memories of Oscar Wilde,’ in Frank Harris, Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions (N.Y., 1930), 388; J. B. Yeats, letter to W. B. Yeats, 13 June 1921 (W. M. Murphy papers).

  33 T. G. Wilson, Victorian Doctor (N.Y., 1956), 109.

  34 A. H. Sayce heard this story from J. P. Mahaffy: Sayce, Reminiscences (1923), 135.

  35 Shaw, in Harris, 393–4; J. B. Yeats, letter to W. B. Yeats, 13 June 1921 (Murphy papers).

  36 William M. Murphy, Prodigal Father: The Life of John Butler Yeats (Ithaca, N. Y., and London, 1978), 31; W. H. Chesson, ‘A Reminiscence of 1898,’ Bookman xxxiv (Dec 1911): 389–94.

  37 Lady W, letters to unnamed correspondent, 1852, 22 Nov 1854 (Reading).

  38 Lady W, letter to Mrs Rosalie Olivecrona, 1 Jan 1865 (copy, NLI).

  39 Lady W, letter to unnamed correspondent, 1858 (Reading).

  40 Information from Eileen O’Faolain, citing a tradition in Glenmacnass.

  41 J. B. Yeats, Letters to His Son …, ed. Joseph Hone (N.Y., 1946), 277.

  42 Murphy, Prodigal Father, 551. J. B. Yeats’s letter of 30 May 1921, about this episode, was misread in Hone’s edition.

  43 Lady W, letter to Mrs Olivecrona, 1 Jan, 23 Mar 1865 (copy, NLI).

  44 De Vere White, Parents of O.W., 210–211.

  45 Rathcreedan, Memories, 52.

  46 Lady W, letter to unnamed correspondent, c. 21 Nov 1852 (Reading).

  47 Letter to unnamed correspondent (Reading).

  48 Douglas Sladen, Twenty Years of My Life (1915), 109.

  49 Coulson Kernahan, In Good Company, 2nd edn. (1917), 208.

  50 Vincent O’Sullivan, Aspects of Wilde (1936), 80.

  51 Pall Mall Budget, 10 Jan 1895.

  52 Wyndham, 52.

  53 Lady W, letter to unnamed correspondent (Reading).

  54 Sherard, Life of O.W., 5–6 (presumably on authority of Ross).

  55 Luther Munday, Chronicle of Friendship (1912), 95–6.

  56 Thomas Flanagan, The Irish Novelists, 1800–1850 (N.Y., 1959), 325.

  57 Lady W, letter to Lotten von Kraemer (copy, NLI).

  58 Lotten von Kraemer, ‘Författaren Oscar Wilde’s Foraldrahem 1 Irlands Hufvudstad,’ Ord och Bild (1902), 429–35; translation by Alice Pederson.

  59 Robert Sherard, The Real Oscar Wilde (n.d. [1917]), 163.

  60 Ross, quoted in Hesketh Pearson, The Life of Oscar Wilde (1946), 20–1.

  61 Reginald Turner, letter to A. J. A. Symons, 26 Aug 1935 (Clark).

  62 Letter to the editor of the Irish Times, 28 Aug 1954, from Murroe Fitzgerald. In 1919, he says, he prepared a claim for a woman who had been nanny for both the Wilde children and Edward Carson at Dungarvan when she was fifteen years old, in 1859.

  63 Wyndham, 56.

  64 Rev. L. C. Prideaux Fox, ‘People I Have Met,’ Donahoe’s Magazine (Boston) LIII, no. 4 (Apr 1905): 397.

  65 Stuart Mason, Bibliography of Oscar Wilde (1914), 118.

  66 William Morris, MS. note in Sidonia the Sorceress (Clark).

  67 See Isobel Murray, ‘Some Elements in the Composition of The Picture of Dorian Gray,’ Durham University Journal XXXIII (1972): 220–31.

  68 Reminiscences of Claire de Pratz in Guillot de Saix, ‘Souvenirs inédits sur Oscar Wilde,’ in undated issue of L’Européen (Reading).

  69 Lady W, letter to Lotten von Kraemer (copy, NLT).

  70 Harris, 21.

  71 Lady W, letter to unnamed correspondent, 22 Nov 1954 (Reading).

  72 Lady W, letters to Mrs Olivecrona, 13 Feb 1865, and to Lotten von Kraemer (copies, NLI).

  73 J. Glover, Jimmy Glover, His Book (1911), 17.

  74 Sherard, Life of O.W., 108.

  75 Slason Thompson, Eugene Field: A Study in Heredity and Contradiction, 2 vols. (N.Y., 1901), I: 213; W. B. Maxwell, Time Gathered (1937), 142–3.

  76 Sir Edward Sullivan in Harris, 18; Louis Claude Purser, ‘Wilde at Portora,’ a MS. sent to A. J. A. Symons in 1932 (Clark).

  77 Harris, 19.

  78 [Jean Paul Raymond and] Charles Ricketts, Oscar Wilde: Recollections (1932), 18.

  79 Epigrams in Hyde Collection.

  80 Harris, 17–18.

  81 Letters to Lotten von Kraemer, July 1867 and 3 Apr 1870 (copies, NLI).

  82 Mason, 295.

  83 Purser, ‘Wilde at Portora’ (Clark).

  84 Reginald Turner, letter to A. J. A. Symons, 20 Aug 1935 (Clark); H. Montgomery Hyde, Oscar Wilde (N.Y., 1975), 13; Edward Marjoribanks, The Life of Lord Carson (1932), 13.

  85 W. B. Stanford and R. B. McDowell, Mahaffy (1971), 60.

  86 ‘Aristotle at Afternoon Tea’ (review of Mahaffy), Pall Mall Gazette, 16 Dec 1887.

  87 ‘Mr Mahaffy’s New Book,’ Pall Mall Gazette, 9 Nov 1887.

  88 Oliver St. John Gogarty, letter to A. J. A. Symons, 10 Sept 1935 (Clark); Gogarty, ‘The Most Magnificent Snob I Ever Knew,’ Irish Times, 10 July 1962.

  89 Walter Starkie, Scholars and Gipsies (1963), 100.

  90 The Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (1962), 338; Lady W, letter to Wilde [1882] (Clark).

  91 Commonplace Book (Clark).

  92 Gogarty in Irish Times, 10 July 1962.

  93 J. P. Mahaffy, Social Life in Greece from Homer to Menander (1874), 308.

  94 Mrs Tyrrell, letter to Robert Ross, 20 Apr [1914] (Hyde).

  95 Sherard, The Real O.W., 148.

  96 Lloyd Lewis and Henry Justin Smith, Oscar Wilde Discovers America (N.Y., 1936), 8–9.

  97 The Suggestion Book is at TCD.

  98 Sullivan in Harris, 26; Wilde’s copy of Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads is in the Library of King’s College, University of London.

  99 So Wilde wrote in 1876 in an apparently unpublished review of the Second Series of Symonds’s The Greek Poets (1876). The MS. is at Clark. See Letters, 25.

  100 Sold by James W. Borg, a Chicago bookseller, n.d.

  101 G. F. Sims Catalogue no. 79.

  102 Letters, 25; ‘Ben Jonson,’ Pall Mall Gazette, 20 Sept 1886.

  103 J. A. Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets (1873), 416–17.

  104 Wilde’s copy of Symonds’s Shelley was sold at Sotheby’s in 1985.

  105 Harris, 26.

  106 Journal of J. E. Courtenay Bodley (Bodleian).

  107 Ross makes this statement in his introduction to the German edition of Wilde’s works.

  108 Lady W, letter to Lotten von Kraemer, 6 May 1875 (copy, NLI).

  109 Edith Cooper, letter of 30 Nov 1900 (BL).

  110 Ross, introduction to the German edition of Wilde’s works.

  111 Douglas Ainslie, Adventures (1922), 93.

  112 Lady W, letter to Mrs Olivecrona, 1874 (copy, NLI).

  113 Mason, 498.

  114 Stanford and McDowell, Mahaffy, 39, slightly varies the phrasing.

  CHAPTER II

  1 A letter from Bunbury (1878) is at Clark.

  2 Review of ‘Henry the Fourth at Oxford,’ Dramatic Review, 23 May 1885; Henry James, Persons and Places (1883), 246; Letters, 772.

  3 [J.E.C. Bodley], ‘Oscar Wilde at Oxford,’ New York Times, 20 Jan 1882.

  4 Michael J. O’Neill, ed., ‘Unpublished Lecture Notes of a Speech by Oscar Wilde at San Francisco,’ University Review (Dublin) 1 (Spring 1955): 29–32; Seymour Hicks, Between Ourselves (1930), 79; Yeats, Autobiography, 87.

  5 G. T. Atkinson, ‘Oscar Wilde at Oxford,’ Cornhill Magazine LXVI (May 1929): 562.

  6 Atkinson, 563.

  7 Oliver St John Gogarty, ‘A Picture of Oscar Wilde,’ in Intimations (N.Y., [1950]), 50; Atkinson, 561.

  8 Lord David Cecil, Max: A Biography (1964), 70.

  9 Gelett Burgess, ‘A Talk with Mr Oscar Wilde,’ The Sketch, 9 Jan 1895, p. 495; E. F. Benson, As We Were: A Victorian Peep-show (1930), 246.

  10 Oxford examination
s (Bodleian).

  11 David Hunter Blair, In Victorian Days (1939), 123.

  12 Stanford and McDowell, Mahaffy, 31.

  13 Atkinson, 561.

  14 Lewis R. Farnell, An Oxonian Looks Back (1934), 57.

  15 Atkinson, 561; Sladen, 109; Sherard, Life of O.W., 138.

  16 Sladen, 109; Pearson, Life of O.W., 36.

  17 Sir Frank Benson, My Memoirs (1930), 137–8.

  18 Letter to me from Ward’s daughter, Cissie, 1977.

  19 Letters, 32.

  20 Written in Wilde’s copy of Aurora Leigh (Magdalen), for Ward’s benefit.

  21 New York Tribune, 8 Jan 1882.

  22 Oscar Browning, letter to the editor of Everyman, 1 Nov 1912, and letter to Frank Harris, 25 Sept 1919 (Texas).

  23 Archives of the Vice-Chancellor’s Court (Bodleian).

  24 Atkinson, 560.

  25 Hunter Blair, 115–43; Yeats, Autobiography, 91.

  26 Lady W, letter to unnamed correspondent, [5 May] 1875 (Reading).

  27 Review of ‘As You Like It at Coombe House,’ Dramatic Review, 6 June 1885; Letters, 471.

  28 The Works of John Ruskin, ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (1903), iv: 35–6; xxv: 122–3.

  29 Walter Pater, Preface to Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1874 and later edns.).

  30 Atkinson, 563; H. W. Nevinson, Changes and Chances (1923), 55.

  31 H. Kingsmill Moore, Reminiscences and Reflections (1930), 18.

  32 Wilde gave this account of his work on the road often: Home Journal (N.Y.), 19 Oct 1881; Nation, 12 Jan 1882; Indianapolis Journal, 14 Jan 1882; The World, 4 Feb 1882. Bodley questions it in his unsigned article in The New York Times, 20 Jan 1882; but Alon Kadish, who has made a study of the subject, assures me that Wilde was one of the roadbuilders.

  33 Kingsmill Moore, 45; Atkinson, 561–2.

  34 Letters, 218.

  35 Ibid., 61.

  36 Ibid., 482.

  37 Ruskin, Works, xxii: 235–6; xx: 91.

  38 Stuart Merrill, essay on Wilde, 20 Sept 1912 (Hart-Davis) at Clark; The Artist as Critic, 351; Max Beerbohm’s notes on Wilde (NYPL: Berg).

  39 Eduard J. Bock, Oscar Wildes personliche und fruhste literarische Beziehungen zu Walter Pater (Bonn, 1913), 26. Bock is quoting a letter to him from Robert Ross.

  CHAPTER III

  1 Hunter Blair, 126.

  2 Harris, 33.

  3 The Picture of Dorian Gray, ed. Isobel Murray (1974), 132.

  4 Lord Ronald Gower, My Reminiscences, 2 vols. (1883), II: 134.

  5 Mason, 62–4.

  6 Lady W, letter to Wilde [Mar 1876] (Clark).

  7 Hunter Blair, 134–5; The Biograph iv: 133.

  8 Letters, 24.

  9 Both letters at Clark.

  10 Letters, 16.

  11 W. W. Ward, ‘An Oxford Reminiscence,’ in Vyvyan Holland, Son of Oscar Wilde (N.Y., 1954), 219.

  12 Bodley journal (Bodleian); Letters, 31.

  13 Julian Hawthorne, diary 18 Feb 1880 (courtesy of Michael Bassan).

  14 Source unknown: perhaps to Harold Boulton (see Letters, 62–3).

  15 Geoffrey Faber, Jowett: A Portrait with Background (1957), 96.

  16 Information from Alon Kadish, based on contemporary letters; Bodley journal (Bodleian).

  17 ‘A Batch of Novels,’ Pall Mall Gazette, 2 May 1887.

  18 Marc-André Raffalovich, Uranisme et unisexualité (Lyon and Paris, 1896), 245.

  19 Letters, 23.

  20 Oscar Browning papers (Eastbourne).

  21 Copy in Hyde Collection.

  22 Atkinson, 562; Berenson papers (courtesy of Professor Ernest Samuels); ‘Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young,’ Chameleon, Dec 1894.

  23 Oxford examinations (Bodleian).

  24 Letters, 14.

  25 Sladen, 110.

  26 Ainslie, 93; Chesson, 394.

  27 Letters, 15; F. Benson, My Memoirs, 137–8.

  28 Letters, 18.

  29 Copy in Hyde Collection.

  30 Letters, 20; The Artist as Critic, 341.

  31 Letters, 20.

  32 Letter signed ‘Le T,’ misdated 1 Nov 1877 (for 1 Nov 1876; Thursfield was proctor from 1 Jan 1876 to 1 June 1877), Oxford University Register.

  33 Atkinson, 561.

  34 Letters, 30–1.

  35 In Catalogue no. 429 of Ivor L. Poole, Ltd. (1951), item 415 is a letter from Wilde at Magdalen requesting photographs of these paintings.

  36 Letters, 31.

  37 Ibid., 34.

  38 Shane Leslie papers (TCD); G. A. Macmillan, letter to his father from Genoa, 28 Mar 1877, in possession of his grandson, W. S. G. Macmillan; Stanford and McDowell, Mahaffy, 41.

  39 Letters, 35.

  40 G. A. Macmillan, letter to his father, 28 Mar 1877.

  41 G. A. Macmillan, letter to Margaret Macmillan, 29 Mar 1877 (courtesy of W. S. G. Macmillan).

  42 Letters, 35.

  43 A. Teixeira de Mattos, ‘Stray Recollections,’ in Soil: A Magazine of Art (N.Y.), Apr 1917, 156.

  44 Charles Ricketts, Self-Portrait, comp. T. Sturge Moore, ed. Cecil Lewis (1939), 425.

  45 [G. A. Macmillan], ‘A Ride Across the Peloponnese,’ Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, May 1878, 551–2, 561, 563.

  46 George Fleming [pseud, of Constance Fletcher], Mirage, 3 vols. (1877), II: 94; Lady’s Pictorial (London), 7 July 1883.

  47 Hunter Blair, 132–4.

  48 Mason, 86.

  49 The Biograph IV: 134.

  50 W. W. Ward, in V. Holland, Son of O.W., 220.

  51 George Fleming, Mirage, II: 91–2, 93; III: 26.

  52 Ibid., I: 93; II: 16–17; II: 91.

  CHAPTER IV

  1 President’s Minute Book, Magdalen College.

  2 [Raymond and] Ricketts, 35.

  3 ‘The Grosvenor Gallery,’ Dublin University Magazine, July 1873.

  4 ‘The Grosvenor Gallery’; Henry James, The Painter’s Eye, ed. John L. Sweeney (1956), 142.

  5 ‘Secret Diary of a Lady of Fashion,’ Evening News, 15 Nov 1920.

  6 Letters, 39.

  7 Ibid., 40; Ruskin, Fors Clavigera, 2 July 1877.

  8 Letters, 36–7.

  9 Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde and Myself (1914), 205.

  10 Letters, 37–8.

  11 Lord Houghton, letter to Wilde, 20 May 1877; W. M. Rossetti, letter to Wilde, 3 Aug 1877, both from a bound volume, ‘Copies of 100 Letters to Oscar Wilde,’ in my possession.

  12 Pater’s letters to Wilde are at Clark.

  13 Quoted by Wilde in ‘Mr Pater’s Last Volume,’ The Speaker 1, no. 12 (22 Mar 1890): 319–20.

  14 Letter to Ernest Radford, n.d., in unspecified Sotheby catalogue (item 555); Michael Field, 35; The Artist as Critic, 229–30.

  15 [Bodley], New York Times, 20 Jan 1882.

  16 More Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (1985), 82.

  17 Letter at Brasenose College, Oxford (courtesy of Bernard Richards).

  18 [Raymond and] Ricketts, 37; Ross quoted in Bock, Oscar Wildes … Beziehungen zu … Pater, 11.

  19 William Rothenstein, Men and Memories (N.Y., 1931), 139; O’Sullivan, 130; Michael Field, 121.

  20 Thomas Wright, The Life of Walter Pater, 2 vols. (1907), II: 126.

  21 Lady W, letter to Wilde, n.d. (Clark).

  22 More Letters, 26.

  23 Letters, 23.

  24 Sladen, 109; cf. Ainslie, 93.

  25 Rhoda Broughton, Second Thoughts (1880), 187, 207, 9, 10, 188.

  26 Wilde’s partial authorship of this article in the Athenaeum is marked in the files of that periodical.

  27 Raffalovich, 245–6.

  28 Letters, 20–1. Wilde’s copy of Mallock is now in the library of King’s College, University of London.

  29 Letters, 21; P. H. W. Almy, ‘New Views of Mr Oscar Wilde,’ Theatre n.s. XXII (Mar 1894): 119–27.

  30 The copy of Aurora Leigh presented to Ward is at Magdalen. Cf. ch. II, n. 20.

  31 Letters, 52.

&nbs
p; 32 Mason, 394–9.

  33 Hunter Blair, 137–8.

  34 Letters, 31.

  35 In 1953, Maggs Catalogue no. 812 listed item 121 as a poem by Wilde, said to be ‘probably’ addressed to ‘the prostitute from whom he caught syphilis.’ It was included in a folio of letters belonging to the Queensberry family.

  36 Lionel Johnson, copy of letter (Hart-Davis).

  37 The Revd H. S. Bowden, letter to Wilde, 15 Apr 1878 (Clark).

  38 André Raffalovich, ‘Oscar Wilde,’ Blackfriars VIII, no. 92 (1927).

  39 The Picture of Dorian Gray, ed. Murray, 132; O’Sullivan, 65.

  40 Atkinson, 562; Ainslie, 93.

  41 Robert Forman Horton, An Autobiography (1917), 44.

  42 Margaret L. Woods, ‘Oxford in the Seventies,’ Fortnightly CL (1941), no. 282: 281–2.

  43 Lady W, letter at Clark.

  44 See article in the Academy, 17 Feb 1906.

  45 Letters, 53.

  46 [Bodley], New York Times, 20 Jan 1882; Letters, 53.

  47 Ethel Smyth, Impressions That Remained, 2 vols. (1919), I: 115–17.

  Advances

  CHAPTER V

  1 Letters, 54, 74.

  2 [Mrs] H. M. Swanwick (Helena Sickert), I Have Been Young (1935), 64–5.

  3 Gower, My Reminiscences, II: 320.

  4 Letters, 720.

  5 Farnell, An Oxonian Looks Back, 70–1.

  6 Letter to A. H. Sayce, 28 May 1879 (Bodleian).

  7 Wilde as reported in New York Telegram, 13 Jan 1882. Benson does not credit Wilde with any part in the undertaking.

  8 Letters, 59.

  9 Athenaeum, 4 Sept 1880, 301–2; the section of the review identified as by Wilde (see ch. iv, n. 26) runs from ‘Mr Jebb’s article’ to ‘Athens.’ E. R. Dodds’s comment is from a letter to me.

  10 Letters, 63.

  11 Ibid., 61.

  12 Robert Sherard, Twenty Years in Paris (1905), 347.

  13 Louise Jopling, Twenty Years of My Life, 1867 to 1887 (1925), 79; F. Benson, My Memoirs, 138; Mrs Julian Hawthorne in Harper’s Bazaar, 18 June 1881.

  14 Letters, 475.

  15 Elizabeth Robins, Both Sides of the Curtain (1940), 9.

  16 Letters, 62; Mrs Claude Beddington, All That I Have Met (1929), 34.