Oscar Wilde

by Richard Ellmann

  24 Ibid., 191 and n; ‘Mr. Oscar Wilde at Mr Whistler’s,’ The Bat, 29 Nov 1887.

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

  26 Letter in Manuscript Room, NYPL.

  27 Osbert Sitwell, Noble Essences (1950), 100.

  28 A. J. A. Symons, letter to Reginald Turner, 28 Aug 1935; Turner to Symons, 26 Aug 1935 (both at Clark); Arthur Ransome, Oscar Wilde: A Critical Study (1912), 32.

  29 Letters, 720.

  30 Ada Leverson, Letters to the Sphinx from Oscar Wilde and Reminiscences of the Author (1930), 48–9.

  31 J. J. Renaud, ‘Oscar Wilde tel que je l’ai “entendu,” ’ Carrefour, 8 Oct 1904.

  32 Otho Holland (Lloyd), letter to Arthur Ransome, 28 Feb 1912 (Hart-Davis).

  33 Jopling, 82.

  Exaltations

  CHAPTER XI

  1 ‘Should Geniuses Meet?,’ Court and Society Review IV, no. 148 (4 May 1887): 413–14, in Mason, 38.

  2 Raffalovich in Blackfriars (1927).

  3 Marc-André Raffalovich, A Willing Exile, 2 vols. (1890), 1: 88–9.

  4 Jopling, 79, 82; Letters, 277.

  5 Sir Isaiah Berlin told me of hearing these remarks by Wilde from Bernard Berenson, and Professor Ernest Samuels confirmed that Berenson had noted them down.

  6 Pall Mall Gazette, 17 Apr 1888.

  7 Anne Clark Amor, Mrs Oscar Wilde (1983), 72, 76–9; Jopling, 305.

  8 Chatterton lecture, poem on Chatterton (MS. Clark; additional punctuation for the sake of clarity).

  9 ‘A Note on Some Modern Poets,’ Woman’s World, Dec 1888.

  10 ‘The Poet’s Corner,’ Pall Mall Gazette, 6 Apr 1888.

  11 ‘Mr Pater’s Imaginary Portraits,’ Pall Mall Gazette, 11 June 1887.

  12 Almy, ‘New Views of Mr O.W.,’ in Theatre (1894), 124.

  13 G. B. Shaw, letter to Frank Harris, 7 Oct 1908 (Texas). Shaw’s diary indicates that the discussion with Wilde on socialism took place at the home of Fitzgerald Molloy, and Mrs Belloc Lowndes dates it. Sir Bernard Partridge, letter to Hesketh Pearson, 30 Sept 1943 (Holroyd), describes the scene.

  14 R. Ross, letter to Frank Harris, 2 May 1914 (Texas).

  15 N.F., ‘Oscar Wilde as Editor,’ Cassell’s Weekly, n.d. (Clark); Yeats, Autobiography, 87–8.

  16 Harris, 337–8.

  17 Quoted in Beddington, 41.

  18 ‘As You Like It at Coombe House,’ Dramatic Review, 6 June 1885.

  19 Cf. Letters, 185.

  20 ‘Mr Whistler’s Ten O’Clock,’ Pall Mall Gazette, 21 Feb 1885.

  21 E. F. Benson, As We Were, 244–5.

  22 Swanwick, 66.

  23 M. Asquith, More Memories, 116.

  24 Ross, correction to Harris (Hyde).

  25 Yeats, Autobiography, 87–8; MS. draft of Four Years (family papers).

  26 Epigrams in Hyde Collection.

  27 Yeats, Autobiography, 181.

  28 See Yeats’s inscription in John Quinn’s copy of The Land of Heart’s Desire (NYPL: Berg). That Wilde ‘all but saw the Grail’ is from an interview by Sybil Bristowe, ‘Mr W. B. Yeats, Poet and Mystic,’ Daily Mail and Record, 4 Apr 1913.

  CHAPTER XII

  1 Richard Le Gallienne, quoting Wilde, in a review of Intentions, Academy, 4 July 1891.

  2 Michael Field, 136–7.

  3 The Artist as Critic, 351; Michael Field, 139; Walter Pater, ‘A Novel by Mr Oscar Wilde,’ Bookman, Nov 1891.

  4 W. Rothenstein, 187.

  5 [Raymond and] Ricketts, 28; Frank Liebich, ‘Oscar Wilde,’ TS. at Clark.

  6 Lionel Johnson, letter of 5 Feb 1891 (Hart-Davis); Ernest Dowson, Letters, ed. Desmond Flower and Henry Maas (1947), 182.

  7 Shaw: An Autobiography, selected from his writings by Stanley Weintraub (1970), 50.

  8 Lionel Johnson, letter to Arthur Galton, 18 Feb 1890 (Hart-Davis).

  9 Anon., ‘Wilde As I Saw Him,’ Book Lover, 1 Dec 1914.

  10 Leverson, 42.

  11 Maxwell, Time Gathered, 97.

  12 Notes (NYPL: Berg).

  13 [Raymond and] Ricketts, 17.

  14 Pearson, Life of O.W., 145.

  15 A. Conan Doyle, Memories and Adventures (1924), 78–80.

  16 Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell, My Fill of Days (1937), 183–4.

  17 The Picture of Dorian Gray, ed. Murray, 246–7.

  18 See the valuable introduction and notes to Isobel Murray’s edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

  19 ‘Ainsi ses tendances vers l’artifice, ses besoins d’excentricité, n’étaient-ils pas, en somme, des résultats d’études spécieuses, de raffinements extra-terrestres, des spéculations quasi théologiques; c’étaient, au fond, des transports, des élans vers un idéal, vers un univers inconnu, vers un béatitude lointaine, désirable comme celle que nous promettant des Écritures.’ J.-K. Huysmans, A Rebours (Paris, 1965), 114.

  20 David Bispham, A Quaker Singer’s Recollections (N.Y., 1920), 150; Lady W, letter to Wilde, [June 1890] (Clark).

  21 Elizabeth Longford, A Pilgrimage of Passion: The Life of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1979), 290–1; Harris, 306–7.

  22 Letters, 257–70 passim.

  23 Desmond Chapman-Huston, The Lost Historian: A Memoir of Sir Sidney Low (1936), 68–73.

  24 Original title from a note in Hyde Collection.

  25 Letters, 343, 288.

  26 Kernahan, 213.

  27 Robert Sherard, ‘Aesthete and Realist,’ Morning Journal, 22 Mar 1891; Max Beerbohm, ‘Oscar Wilde,’ Anglo-American Times, 25 Mar 1893.

  28 D. S. MacColl, ‘A Batch of Memories—Walter Pater,’ Week-end Review, 12 Dec 1931; Walter Pater, ‘A Novel by Mr Oscar Wilde,’ Bookman, Nov 1891, 59–61.

  29 Lionel Johnson, ‘In Honorem Doriani Creatorisque Eius,’ Complete Poems, ed. Iain Fletcher (1953), 246.

  30 Lord Alfred Douglas, letter to A. J. A. Symons, 8 July 1930 (Clark); Letters, 281.

  31 Daily Telegraph, 18 Apr 1913.

  32 Henry D. Davray, Oscar Wilde: la tragédie finale (Paris, 1928), 19.

  33 Frank Harris, letter to Wilde, offered as item no. 1139 in Maggs Catalogue (1951).

  34 Sichel, Sands of Time, 125; George Lukács, The Meaning of Contemporary Realism (1963), 132.

  35 A letter from Constance Wilde to the editor, Pall Mall Gazette, 21 Nov 1891, says, ‘I should be very much obliged if you would insert a paragraph in your paper denying the assertion that any of our silver has been identified amongst the spoil of the burglaries on view at the King’s-Cross Police Station. I receive many letters on the subject but unfortunately I get nothing else.’

  36 E. Robins, Both Sides of the Curtain, 12–22.

  37 More Letters, 85–6.

  38 Harris, 97.

  39 Hesketh Pearson, letter to Rupert Croft-Cooke, 18 June 1962, says Ross told him about the stopover at Selby on the way back from Windermere (Texas).

  40 ‘Wilde As I Saw Him,’ Book Lover, 1 Dec 1914.

  41 ‘The Cenci,’ Dramatic Review, 15 May 1886.

  42 George Alexander, quoted in Evening Standard, 29 Nov 1913, and Liverpool Echo, 8 Dec 1913.

  43 Frederic Whyte, William Heinemann (1928), 83–5.

  CHAPTER XIII

  1 André Gide, Oscar Wilde (Paris, 1938), 14.

  2 Letters, 287–8.

  3 Whistler’s letter to Mallarmé of 2 Nov 1891, and telegram of 3 Nov, from Mallarmé-Whistler: Correspondance, ed. C. P. Barbier (Paris, 1962), 98–9, 102–3.

  4 Eileen Souffrin, ‘La Rencontre de Wilde et de Mallarmé,’ Revue de littérature comparée XXIII, no. 4 (Oct–Dec 1959): 533; Guy Chastel, J.-K. Huysmans et ses amis (Paris, 1957), 263.

  5 Letters, 298n.

  6 Gédéon Spilett, in Gil Blas, 22 Nov 1897.

  7 Ross, in Salome (1912), xxiii.

  8 Rose, Superior Person, 151.

  9 Mrs Edgar Saltus, notes at Clark; O’Sullivan, 146; Saltus, 20.

  10 Yvanhoe Rambosson, ‘Oscar Wilde et Verlaine,’ in Comédia, n.d. (Bibl. de l’Arsenal).

  1
1 Ross, in Salome (1912), xii.

  12 Enrique Gomez Carrillo, En Plena Bohemia, in his Obras Completas (Madrid, n.d. [?1919–22]), xvi: 190ff.

  13 Jean Lorrain, ‘Salomé et les poètes,’ Le Journal (Paris), 11 Feb 1896; Pierre Léon-Gauthier, Jean Lorrain (Paris, 1962), 370–1.

  14 André Salmon in Louise Thomas, L’Esprit d’Oscar Wilde (Paris, 1920).

  15 O’Sullivan, 33.

  16 Gomez Carrillo, xvi: 214.

  17 Guillot de Saix, ‘Oscar Wilde chez Maeterlinck,’ Les Nouvelles littéraires, 25 Oct 1945.

  18 Jules Renard, Journal (Paris, 1925), Dec 1891, p. 131; Jean Lorrain, Sensations et souvenirs (Paris, 1895).

  19 Pierre Champion, Marcel Schwob et son temps (Paris, 1927), 99; O’Sullivan, 75–6.

  20 Léon Daudet, Memoirs, ed. and trans. A. K. Griggs (N.Y., 1925), 200.

  21 Philippe Jullian, Oscar Wilde (Paris, 1967), 246.

  22 Stuart Merrill, Prose et vers: Oeuvres posthumes (Paris, 1925), 142–5; Spilett.

  23 Ernest Raynaud, Souvenirs sur le symbolisme (Paris, 1895), 393–7.

  24 Ainslie, 178; Jean Lorrain, Sensations et souvenirs.

  25 E. Raynaud, Souvenirs sur le symbolisme, 398–9.

  26 Bungalow Catalogue no. 4, item 387, n.d. (Ross Collection, Bodleian).

  27 Shane Leslie, J. E. C. Bodley, 18; W. Rothenstein, 93.

  28 J.-J. Renaud, preface to his translation of Intentions (Paris, 1905), viii-xii.

  29 Mrs T. P. O’Connor, I Myself (1910), 238; Coulson Kernahan, ‘Oscar Wilde As I Knew Him,’ TS. at Clark.

  30 Jean Lorrain, Sensations et souvenirs.

  31 Inscribed copy of The House of Pomegranates (Hart-Davis).

  32 Renard, 107.

  33 André Gide, Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1932–39), XIII: 57. See also Richard Ellmann, Golden Codgers (1973), 81–100.

  34 Gide, Oeuvres complètes, III: 476–7.

  35 Wilde’s remark to Berenson is in the Berenson papers (courtesy of Professor Ernest Samuels); that about creation was made to George Ives, who recorded it in his journal (Texas).

  36 Gide, Oeuvres complètes, III: 482.

  37 Guillot de Saix, ‘Souvenirs inédits,’ in L’Européen, n.d., 141.

  38 Yeats, Autobiography, 91.

  39 Jean Lorrain, Heures de casse (Paris, 1905), 31.

  40 Edmond Jaloux, Les Saisons littéraires (Paris, 1950), 170–1.

  41 André Gide, Journal 1889–1939 (Paris: Pléiade edn., 1939), 28.

  42 Letters, 476; Gide, Journal, 49.

  43 Kernahan, 222–3.

  44 The Artist as Critic, 270; and see Letters, 476–80.

  45 Gide, Oeuvres complètes, 11: 84.

  46 Quoted in the Times, 19 Jan 1922.

  CHAPTER XIV

  1 Sherard, The Real O.W., 321; Hesketh Pearson, The Pilgrim Daughters (1961), 185, on the basis of information from Sherard.

  2 Letters, 331–2.

  3 Graham Robertson, 135.

  4 New York Times, 28 Feb 1892; Leon Edel, Henry James: The Treacherous Years (1969), 39–40.

  5 Letters, 313.

  6 Harris, 98–9; Shaw, letter to Wilde, quoted in Sotheby Catalogue, 27 July 1911, item 220.

  7 Richard Whittington-Egan and Geoffrey Smerdon, The Quest of the Golden Boy: The Life and Letters of Richard Le Gallienne (1960), 181.

  8 Jopling, 81.

  9 J.-J. Renaud, preface to Intentions, xv.

  10 Royal General Theatrical Fund, report of speech, 26 May 1892, George Alexander in the chair (NYPL: Berg).

  11 Charles Hawtrey, The Truth at Last, ed. W. Somerset Maugham (1924), 221–7.

  12 Beerbohm quotes this in Letters to Turner, 287.

  13 Letters, 834; unidentified interview with Bernhardt, 8 July 1892 (Hyde). The copy of Wilde’s Poems inscribed to her is in the Taylor Collection, Princeton.

  14 Ross, letter to Saturday Review, 27 May 1895.

  15 [Raymond and] Ricketts, 53.

  16 Graham Robertson, 125–7.

  17 Pall Mall Budget, XL (30 June 1892); New York Times, 18 July 1892; Maurice Sisley, ‘La Salomé de M. Oscar Wilde,’ Le Gaulois, 29 June 1892.

  18 Beerbohm, Letters to Turner, 22–3, 38.

  19 Pall Mall Budget, 30 June 1892.

  20 Letters, 333.

  21 From ‘Copies of 100 Letters to O.W.,’ in my possession.

  22 W. Rothenstein, 184; Squire Bancroft, Empty Chairs (1925), 112–13; Beerbohm, Letters to Turner, 36.

  23 Robert Ross, Aubrey Beardsley (1909), 88; [Raymond and] Ricketts, 51–2.

  24 Douglas, O.W. and Myself, 73.

  25 H. Montgomery Hyde, ed., The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1948), 213.

  26 Jopling, 81.

  27 Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey: The Unknown Years (1967), 319.

  28 Lady W, letter to Wilde, n.d. [1893] (Clark 2381).

  29 Hesketh Pearson, Beerbohm Tree: His Life and Laughter (1956), 65.

  30 [Raymond and] Ricketts, 54.

  31 O’Sullivan, 20–1; Julia Neilson, This for Remembrance (1941), 131.

  32 Pearson, Life of O.W., 237.

  33 Beerbohm, Letters to Turner, 37.

  34 Boston Evening Transcript, 11 Jan 1922; Guillot de Saix, ‘Souvenirs inédits.’

  35 Cheiro [Count Louis Hamon], Cheiro’s Memoirs: The Reminiscences of a Society Palmist (Phila., 1913), 152–3.

  36 Letters, 475, 577.

  37 Guillot de Saix, ‘Souvenirs inédits.’

  CHAPTER XV

  1 Letters, 281; the second inscribed copy of Dorian Gray is in the Taylor Collection, Princeton.

  2 Ives journal (Texas).

  3 Beerbohm, Letters to Turner, 38–9, 90–1.

  4 Daily Telegraph, 18 Apr 1913.

  5 The Bat, 15 and 22 Dec 1885.

  6 Hyde, ed., Trials of O.W., 298.

  7 Letters, 311–12.

  8 André Gide, Si le grain ne meurt in Journal 1939–1949: Souvenirs (Paris: Pléiade edn., 1966), 583.

  9 Raffalovich in Blackfnars (1927).

  10 Leverson, 19–20.

  11 Letters, 334–5; H. P. Clive, Pierre Louys, 1870–1925 (Oxford, 1978), 91.

  12 Beerbohm, letter to R. Ross, n.d. (Hyde).

  13 G. P. Jacomb-Hood, With Brush and Pencil (1924), 116.

  14 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Journal, 4 vols. (Paris, 1956), iv: 395.

  15 P. Louÿs, letter to Wilde, 25 May 1893 (Bibl. Doucet, courtesy of H. P. Clive).

  16 Gide, O.W., 30–3.

  17 A. Hamilton Grant, ‘ “The Ephemeral”: Some Memories of Oxford in the ’Nineties,’ Cornhill Magazine LXXI (Dec 1931): 641–53. I have slightly abridged Grant’s renderings of Wilde’s stories.

  18 Theodore Wratislaw, memoir of Wilde (Clark).

  19 See Letters, 431.

  20 Ibid., 432–3.

  21 Aubrey Beardsley, Letters, ed. Henry Maas, J. L. Duncan and W. G. Good (1970), 58.

  22 Douglas, letter to John Lane [Nov 1884] (Rosenbach).

  23 Beerbohm, Letters to Turner, 84.

  24 Oscar Browning, letter to Frank Harris, 3 Nov 1919 (Texas); Ross testimony during Crosland trial, Daily News and Leader (London), 2 July 1914; Beerbohm, Letters to Turner, 84.

  25 Davos Courier, 13 Jan 1894.

  26 Letters, 434–5.

  27 Emma Calvé, My Life (1922), 97–8.

  CHAPTER XVI

  1 Letters, 358; Lady W, letter to Wilde, 29 Mar 1894 (Clark).

  2 Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, My Diaries, pt. 1 (N.Y., 1921), 145–6.

  3 Letters, 352.

  4 Ricketts, Self-Portrait, 124.

  5 Arthur Roberts, Fifty Years of Spoof (1927), 64.

  6 The scenario of The Cardinal of Avignon is given in Mason, 583–5. An earlier version, written in 1882, is at Dartmouth.

  7 Swanwick, 68.

  8 C. Dyett, 10 Glycena Road, Lavender Hill, [London] S.W., letter to Wilde, 28 Apr 1891 (Clark); Saltus, 18; Gertrude Pearce, letter in a Wilde notebook owned by Malcolm Pinhorn.

  9 George Santayana, The Middl
e Span (N.Y., 1945), 60.

  10 See Ross, letter to Frank Harris, 17 May 1914 (Texas).

  11 Letters, 435.

  12 Rupert Croft-Cooke, Bosie (Indianapolis and N.Y., 1963), 97.

  13 Letters, 446.

  14 Croft-Cooke, 98.

  15 Letters, 445.

  16 Berenson papers (courtesy of Professor Ernest Samuels).

  17 Gide, O.W., 29.

  18 Letters, 446; unidentified newspaper clipping (Ross Collection, Bodleian).

  19 Letters, 438, 446; Harris, 132.

  20 Douglas, letter to Ross quoted in Daily Telegraph, 19 Apr 1913.

  21 [Raymond and] Ricketts, 15; P. P. Howe, Dramatic Portraits (1913).

  22 Ross, interview with Wilde, More Letters, 196.

  23 Cecil, Max, 321.

  24 Leverson, 31.

  25 Letters, 373.

  26 Constance Wilde, letters to Arthur Humphreys (Hyde Collection).

  27 Queensberry letter in my possession.

  28 Letters, 438–9.

  29 Ibid., 379.

  30 Ives journal (Texas).

  31 O’Sullivan, 106.

  32 Charles Wyndham, letter to [H. A.] Jones, 18 Feb 1895 (Hart-Davis); Letters, 418–19n.

  33 Letters, 381; More Letters, 129.

  34 Gide, ‘Si le grain ne meurt,’ 581–96; Daniel Halévy, My Friend Degas (1966), 84–5.

  35 Pearson, Life of O.W., 257.

  36 Beerbohm’s copy of The Importance of Being Earnest, with his MS. notes, is in the collection of Sir Rupert Hart-Davis.

  Disgrace

  CHAPTER XVII

  1 Letters, 509.

  2 Marguerite Steen, A Pride of Terrys: Family Saga (1962), 206.

  3 I am grateful to R. E. Alton for his study of Queensberry’s handwriting, which enabled him to read for the first time correctly the message on Queensberry’s card.

  4 Letters, 526.

  5 Ibid., 384.

  6 Ibid., 493, 524; Ross, statement of evidence in his libel suit against Douglas, 1914.

  7 Lord Alfred Douglas, Autobiography (1929), 59.

  8 Marie Belloc Lowndes, Diaries and Letters 1911–1947, ed. Susan Lowndes (1971), 14.

  9 Reginald Turner, letter to G. J. Renier, 22 Mar 1933 (Clark).

  10 Marjoribanks, Lord Carson, 202; Sir Travers Humphreys, foreword to Hyde, ed., Trials of O.W., 8.

  11 Ives journal (Texas).

  12 F. A. K. Douglas, The Sporting Queensberrys (1942), 156.