Although Wilde wanted to bring out the book as quickly as possible, editorial concerns were not neglected. He grouped his poems into sections, each with its own running title. Eschewing flashier effects, he decided to title the volume Poems. He deployed his self-dramatizing sonnet ‘Hélas’– printed in italics – as the book’s opening statement, or ‘Proem’. In the poem Wilde cast himself as one who had ‘given away’ the ‘ancient wisdom and austere control’ offered, perhaps, by religion or by academe, in order to embrace the sensual Paterian flux of momentary impressions and shifting passions – ‘To drift with every passion’ and make of his ‘soul… a stringed lute on which all winds can play’. Although, characteristically, he wondered if – having thus touched ‘the honey of romance’ – he really ‘must… lose a soul’s inheritance’. The time for further changes of mind, he seemed to hint, might not be dead.
He pored over the printer’s proofs. It was said that, asked at dinner how he had spent his day, he replied that it had been taken up with hard literary endeavour: ‘I was working on the proof of one of my poems all morning and took out a comma.’ Quizzed about his afternoon, he said, ‘In the afternoon – well, I put it back again.’4 By the middle of June 750 copies of the text had been printed. However, only 250 were bound up to make the ‘First Edition’. This was another common practice among canny publishers: it reduced their initial outlay, and allowed them to stimulate excitement in the market by subsequently binding up fresh batches of the already printed folios as ‘new editions’.
Displaying both ambition and commercial acumen, Wilde also looked to America, where he had a growing profile. His verses had, of course, been printed in the Boston Pilot, but, more than this, his position as the ‘High Priest of Aesthetic Art’ and ‘the original of “Postlethwaite”’ was being quite widely reported in the American press.5 He arranged with the Boston firm of Roberts Brothers for them to bring out a simultaneous American edition of the book; identical as to text, but with an undecorated cloth cover, it was to be priced more modestly at $1.25, equivalent to 5s.6
By the end of June all was ready: advertisements began appearing in the press, and even on the walls of ‘London-town’.7 The World announced ‘People who, hearing of Mr. Oscar Wilde, ask who he is and what he has ever done, will now be able to learn, as a volume of Mr. Wilde’s collected poems will shortly be published.’8 The book – with its emphatic title and handsome form – confirmed Wilde’s long-assumed status as a ‘Poet’. Justly proud of his achievement, he dispatched inscribed copies to a plethora of friends and luminaries, including Gladstone and Lillie Langtry, William Blake Richmond and Ellen Terry. Violet Fane and Margaret Burne-Jones were among those who received poetic dedications.9 Now able, as he thought, to claim kinship with his literary heroes, he also sent books – with fulsome covering letters – to Swinburne, Rossetti, William Morris, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning and John Addington Symonds. The response was gratifying.
Symonds – while privately considering Wilde’s accompanying note almost ‘a caricature of himself in Punch’ – admired the book.10 He wrote back a generous letter of considered praise, admitting the poems’ inequalities, political contradictions and excessive ‘Keatsian’ sensuality – but recognizing ‘the real poet’s gift in them’.11 Arnold replied, flatteringly acknowledging Wilde as a ‘fellow worker’, and thanking him for his ‘too kind’ note: ‘I have but glanced at the poems as yet, but I perceive in them the true feeling for rhythm, which is at the bottom of all success in poetry; of all endeavour, indeed, which is not fictitious and vain, in that line of expression.’12 Swinburne’s response, if guarded, was not unwelcoming; he claimed to have enjoyed the impressionistic ‘Les Silhouettes’ in particular. Browning and William Morris sent ‘complimentary letters’.13 Only Rossetti, it seems, did not write back.*
In the press Poems created a decided stir. Wilde’s notoriety ensured that the book was widely reviewed, both in Britain and the United States. It also ensured that – in Britain especially – it would not be treated altogether fairly. Wilde did what he could to counter the expected hostility, asking friends, including Oscar Browning and William Ward, to write reviews.14 But he was largely at the mercy of critics, journalists and fellow writers who resented his fame, his ‘vulgar’ self-promotion, and his social success. Punch led the attack. Having trailed the book with the ditty ‘Aesthete of Aesthetes! What’s in a name? The poet is Wilde, But his poetry’s tame’, they confirmed the verdict in a review that condemned the work as a volume of poetic ‘echoes’, or ‘Swinburne and Water’.15
Wilde’s rich literary culture was held against him. There was a general rush among the reviewers to point out that his poems were derivative, and not just of Swinburne. The critics showed off their knowledge by indicating debts to Milton, Rossetti, Morris, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Keats, Wordsworth, Tennyson and Arnold. The only ‘poet of the day’ that Wilde was considered not to have imitated was Robert Browning – though, as one writer uncharitably suggested, ‘His “imitations of Browning” are presumably kept for another volume.’16
While Wilde’s ‘cleverness’ might be admitted, little else was.17 The most insistent charges – besides imitation – were ‘insincerity’ and ‘bad taste’. Wilde’s emotions were deemed to be put on for effect. His ignorance of nature was gleefully exposed: ‘He thinks that the meadowsweet and the wood-anemone bloom at the same time… and that owls are commonly met with in mid-ocean.’18 His apparent ability to see ‘equally the good and bad in everything’ from Roman Catholicism to paganism, monarchy to republicanism, revolution to communism – was accounted confusion.19 There were stern rebukes of ‘the sensual and ignoble tone’ of much of the work.20 ‘Charmides’ – his tale of a Sicilian youth’s erotic encounter with a statue of Athena – was considered the worst offender. In it he was adjudged to have ‘greatly exceed[ed] the licence which even a past Pagan poet would have permitted himself’ – with his references to ‘grand cool flanks’ and ‘crescent thighs’.21
Meanwhile the comic paragraphists made sport of Wilde’s line – in ‘Silentium Amoris’ – about ‘the barren memory / Of unkissed kisses’, wondering what on earth such kisses could be, and suggesting, among other things, that most of Wilde’s poems seemed to be made of ‘unthunk thoughts’, or might provoke ‘uncussed cusses’.22
Some judgements, though, were more generous. Wilde did have his supporters. One critic flatteringly suggested that ‘a little fold of the mantle of Keats’ had fallen upon him.23 ‘The Burden of Itys’ received repeated commendation as the best poem in the collection.24 The World (perhaps predictably) found much to admire both in the book’s appearance (‘a thing of beauty’) and its contents (‘well conceived and happily expressed’).25 And Oscar Browning, answering Wilde’s call, contributed an approving – though not uncritical – review in the Academy, ending with the assertion that ‘we lay down this book in the conviction that England is enriched with a new poet’. American responses often echoed such positive sentiments. Across the Atlantic ‘Ave Imperatrix’ was particularly admired; the New York Times pronounced it ‘an ode on England such as Tennyson has not [written] and cannot’.26
Though Wilde was delighted to receive such compliments, he remained frustrated by the prevailing tone of critical hostility in England.27 It was becoming clear that his hard-won celebrity was not only a limited support but might actually be a positive hindrance to his artistic ambitions. His carefully projected pose, though it might appeal to some, provoked resentment, and encouraged derision among rather more. It irked many artists, and annoyed both the philistine press and the ‘general public’. But, against this background, there was still room to manoeuvre. Publicity ensured that the book was known. It found its audience. The ‘first edition’ rapidly sold out, and a second ‘edition’ of a further 250 copies was at once bound up. By the beginning of October it was being announced that ‘Mr Oscar Wilde has the best of the laugh with his critics. They have jeered his book into a third edition.’28 A
nd with the original 750 sets of sheets thus accounted for, plans were made for a new printing of 500 copies; a similar pattern obtained in America, where the book soon ran through two editions.29
Within the small world of literary London this could be accounted ‘an extraordinary success’. And it was. Lady Wilde complacently told guests at one of her receptions: ‘You know, they say there has been no such sensation since Byron… Everyone is talking about [Oscar’s Poems].’30 Certainly Wilde’s friends were spreading the word. The book was ‘taken up’ by Ellen Terry.31 Rennell Rodd advised one acquaintance that he ‘ought to see Oscar Wilde’s new volume, there’s so much brilliant writing in it’.32 Whistler hoped that a visiting American patron, and her travelling companions, had ‘each bought a copy of Oscar Wilde’s poems – without which you cannot leave this land!’33 Wilde himself could feel pleased with the overall result. If less than a total triumph the book was being discussed, written about and bought. And although the high production costs meant that he earned little more than ‘pocket money’ from the sales, it was still an achievement to have turned a profit on a first volume of poetry.34
At Oxford the book became the subject of heated debate. Wilde was still a figure at the university. He continued to visit regularly – finding not only friends there, but also imitators. Every college, it seems, now had its small group of Aesthetic ‘extremists’: ‘they all wear their hair long,’ explained a contemporary undergraduate, ‘sport flame-coloured cravats, hang their rooms with blue china and Botticelli, and read nobody but Swinburne and Rossetti.35 And as these Wildean ‘disciples’ became more conspicuous, they became more resented. A proposal put forward by one of them (a Magdalen man), that the library of the Oxford Union should cancel its subscription to Punch because of that magazine’s persistent ridiculing of Aestheticism, was summarily rejected. And when it became known that Wilde would be in Oxford at the end of the summer term (to attend a dance at University College and to visit his apostle at Magdalen) plans were laid by some members of the Magdalen boat club to seize him and his follower – and to put them both under the ‘College pump’. Fortunately Wilde was tipped off by one of the conspirators and stayed away from Magdalen. His disciple, though, was ducked, and his rooms ransacked. The attack – and the threat of further assaults – rather diminished enthusiasm for Aestheticism at the university.36
It was against this background of mounting animosity that Wilde, upon request, had sent an inscribed copy of his Poems to the Oxford Union. When, at the close of the 11 July meeting, the librarian announced receipt of the book and proposed acceptance and a vote of thanks, Oliver Elton – the acknowledged leader of the university’s ‘Intellectuals’ – took the unprecedented step of opposing the motion. Having prepared carefully (with the assistance the future poet Henry Newbolt) he delivered a comical ‘mock-serious’ speech denouncing the book:
It is not that these poems are thin – and they are thin; it is not that they are immoral – and they are immoral: it is not that they are this or that – and they are all this and all that: it is that they are for the most part not by their putative father at all, but by a number of better-known and more deservedly reputed authors.
Claiming to have identified direct borrowings from over sixty writers – including Shakespeare, Philip Sidney, John Donne and William Morris – he proposed that the book should be rejected, as ‘the Union Library already contains better and fuller editions of all these poets’. The suggestion was greeted with varied cheers and hisses. An impromptu debate followed, with several speakers on each side, and Elton’s call for refusal was carried by 140 votes to 128. In an attempt to reverse the decision the librarian requested a poll of the membership. But this confirmed the verdict, by 188 to 180. And the book had to be returned, with the abject apologies of the Union secretary.37 Wilde responded to this rebuff with an assumption of lordly graciousness – his ‘chief regret… being that there should still be at Oxford such a large number of young men who are ready to accept their own ignorance as an index, and their own conceit as a criterion of any imaginative and beautiful work’.38
The incident, though vexing, had one useful consequence. It attracted the attention, and secured the interest, of Henry Labouchère, founder of the ‘society journal’ Truth (as well as Liberal MP, theatre proprietor, wit, anti-semite, enemy of W. S. Gilbert and client of George Lewis). Up until this point Truth had either ignored or lampooned Wilde; now it came out in his support.39 ‘Labby’ was a useful friend as well as an entertaining companion. Indeed Wilde acknowledged him as ‘one of the most brilliant conversationalists and the most brilliant journalist in England’.40 It was a fine thing to have this ‘brilliant enemy’ transformed into a no less brilliant ally. He was soon added to the select pantheon of Wilde’s ‘heroes’.41
But, if Poems gained Wilde a new supporter, it also cost him an old friend. Canon Miles, Frank’s father, had always taken an interest not only in Wilde’s work but also in his spiritual well-being. He read the book closely, and with increasing dismay. Although he found much that was ‘pure and very beautiful’ he was deeply disturbed by the ‘antichristian’ sentiments of some of the poems. One in particular – probably ‘Charmides’ – had so upset his wife that she had immediately excised it from the volume, convinced it would be extremely ‘dangerous to the young of either sex’.42 The canon wrote to Frank (twice) urging him to remonstrate with his friend. And although Frank did broach the subject in general terms, he hesitated actually to show Wilde his father’s letters, obliging the canon to write directly to Wilde, setting out his anxieties, and asking Wilde to remove the offending verses from future editions so as not to ‘mar… one of the most poetical volumes of modern times’.
Wilde defended his position, probably suggesting that art was separate from morality, just as ‘subject’ must be separate from ‘treatment’. It was an idea that he was adumbrating just then: to the suggestion that his poetry was ‘impure and immoral’ Wilde informed another inquirer:
A poem is well written or badly written. In art there should be no reference to a standard of good or evil. The presence of such a reference implies incompleteness of vision. The Greeks understood this principle, and with perfect serenity enjoyed works of art which, I suppose, some of my critics would never allow their families to look at. The enjoyment of poetry does not come from the subject, but from the language and rhythm. It must be loved for its own sake, and not criticized by a standard of morality.43
The canon, however, was unmoved. He wrote back:
As to morality I can’t help saying Frank ought to be clear – he has I believe often argued with you. If in sadness I advise a separation for a time it is not because we do not believe you in character to be very different to what you suggest in your poetry, but it is because you do not see the risk we see in a published poem, which makes all who read it say to themselves, ‘this is outside the province of poetry’, it is licentious and may do a great harm to any soul that reads it.44
The idea that Wilde might be banished from Keats House due to anxieties about his moral influence upon Frank Miles had a bitter irony to it. During their time as housemates Wilde had become increasingly aware of his friend’s own, very real, moral deficiencies – the tendency for his interest in young girls to stray from the professional to the predatory. Beyond the suspicion that he was ‘more than a mere friend’ to the elfin Sally Higgs, there had been several incidents.45 According to one (rather over-coloured) account, Wilde had once found Miles at Tite Street in a ‘state of great distress and alarm, making hasty preparations as if for flight’. He confessed to an offence he had committed with ‘a young girl’, adding, ‘I am sure the parents have laid an information and that I am liable to be arrested at any moment. I am trying to get away before the police come.’ Wilde feared that it might already be too late, as he had noticed two figures, possibly detectives, in the street. Nevertheless he stemmed Miles’s frantic talk of ‘suicide, of throwing himself out of the window, of his disgrace an
d dishonour’, and indicated a possible escape route over the rooftops. As Miles exited through the studio window, Wilde held the door against the knocking of the police. When he finally let them in, he pretended that he had thought their importunate demands for entry were ‘some studio practical joke’. Miles, he told them, was away on the continent.46
Miles, too, must have been conscious of the injustice of the situation created by his father; nevertheless, dependent upon his parents, he felt unable to go against their wishes. Wilde was furious. There are few instances of him losing his temper, but this was one. According to Sally Higgs’s account, livid with rage, he demanded to know if Miles really intended to act upon ‘so outrageous a breach of the ties of their long friendship’, to ‘part after years together just because your father’s a fool?’ Miles, distraught, protested that he had ‘absolutely no alternative.’
‘Very well, then,’ said Wilde, ‘I will leave you. I will go now and I will never speak to you again as long as I live.’
He tore upstairs, flung his few belongings into a great travelling trunk, and without waiting for the servant to carry it downstairs, tipped it over the bannisters, whence it crashed down upon a valuable antique table in the hall below, smashing it into splinters. Wilde swept out of the house, slamming the door behind him. He never returned.47
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