Oscar

by Sturgis, Matthew;

  Chapter 2: First Drama

  1 CL, 209; Sherard, Real, 148; OW lost the pawn ticket and had to swear an affidavit at Marlborough Street Police Court to secure a replacement ticket.

  2 J. E. Millais to OW, 7 July 1883; the Oscar Wilde collection of John B. Stetson, cat. item 390.

  3 JMW to OW, 26 May 1883 (GUL). OW dined chez Lewis on 22 June 1883; Mr & Mrs Comyns Carr and Burne-Jones were also present, along with five others; CL, 213.

  4 CL, 211.

  5 Laura Troubridge, diary, July 1883, Life Amongst the Troubridges, 164–5.

  6 Hare, The Story of My Life, 5:386, re. a reception on 21 June 1883 at Madame du Quaire’s; Mrs Duncan Stewart (1804–84) had been born Harriet Everlinda Gore in Donegal.

  7 Otho Lloyd to Nellie Hutchinson, in Melville, 176.

  8 Otho Lloyd to Nellie Hutchinson, in Melville, 177.

  9 Melville, 178.

  10 Melville, 178; JFW to CMW, 25 May 188,3 in Moyle, 67; Otho Lloyd to Nellie Hutchinson, in Melville, 179.

  11 Otho Lloyd to Nellie Hutchison, in Melville, 178, 179.

  12 Jopling, in Mikhail, 204; CMW to OW, 11 November 1883 (BL).

  13 Marie Belloc Lowndes, ‘Something About Our Lady Contributors’, Answers, 13, no. 315 (9 June 1894); ‘Men, Manners and Moods’, Collier’s Weekly, 26 August 1897, reprinted in Intentions, August 2007, 11–15.

  14 CL, 212–13; Dibb, 22–3 on his borrowings from Pater’s ‘Preface’; JMW letter to Truth, 2 January 1890 in Ronald Anderson and Anne Koval, James NcNeill Whistler (1994), 316.

  15 OW, ‘Modern Art Training’, 224–32.

  16 Newspaper cutting, 4 July 1883, quoted in Dibb, 28.

  17 Sherard, Real, 288.

  18 Freeman’s Journal, 11 July 1883; World, 18 July 1883; cheaper seats were also available at 7s 6d at the back of the stalls, and 5s in the balcony.

  19 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 11 July 1883; Leicester Chronicle, 21 July 1883, in Dibb, 30–1.

  20 World, 18 July 1883; OW’s manuscript notes for the lecture were sold at Christie’s, Vander Poel sale, 3 March 2004.

  21 ‘Mr. Oscar Wilde on America’, Freeman’s Journal, 11 July 1883; the shorthand account of the lecture indicates ‘(laughter)’ at frequent intervals.

  22 Queen, 14 July 1883, in Dibb, 33; W. F. Morse, ‘Lectures in Great Britain’.

  23 Tatler, 14 July 1883, in Dibb, 33; ‘Theatrical Gossip’, Era, 14 July 1883.

  24 ‘Exit Oscar’, Truth, 19 July 1883, 86–7.

  25 New York Herald, 12 August 1883, in Ellmann, 226.

  26 W. F. Morse to OW, 18 August 1883 (Clark). The letter was sent to OW in New York.

  27 Don Mead, ‘Personal Impressions of America – Oscar Wilde in Southport’, Wildean, 16 (2000), 18–32.

  28 Kenneth Rose, Superior Person (1969) 72; NYT, 12 August 1883: the other members of the group were Sir Savile Crossley and Mr Hanbury.

  29 NYT, 12 August 1883; ‘Oscar Wilde’s Return’, Fort Worth Daily Gazette, 18 August 1883.

  30 NYT, 12 August 1883; ‘Oscar Wilde’s Return’, Fort Worth Daily Gazette, 18 August 1883.

  31 NYT, 12 August, 1883; Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, 14 August 1883; New York World, 12 August, 1883, quoted in R. B. Glaenzer, ed., Decorative Art in America: A Lecture by Oscar Wilde (1906), 32.

  32 R. B. Glaenzer, ed., Decorative Art in America: A Lecture by Oscar Wilde (1906), 196; ‘Losing Money on Vera’; NYT, 27 August 1883.

  33 Argonaut.

  34 Mason, 271.

  35 Mason, 265–6; Argonaut.

  36 ‘Flaneur,’ Argonaut, 1 September 1883; CL, 218.

  37 Morning News, 10 June 1884 (Clark): OW added, ‘I shall never forget the two hours and a half I passed in the playhouse in New York on the first night of my piece.’

  38 Mason, 272–3; Birnbaum, Oscar Wilde: Fragments and Memories, 19; Argonaut, 1 September 1883.

  39 F. Gebhard to OW, 21 August 1883, Union Club, New York (Fales). The Argonaut noted that Gebhard had taken a box with ‘Lord Manderville and three other Englishmen’.

  40 Mason, 273; Sun, 23 August 1883.

  41 New York World, quoted in Freeman’s Journal, 23 August 1883; Sun, 23 August 1883. Argonaut: ‘Mr. Wilde in this scene attempts to be witty, but is a signal failure. He puts a number of commonplace and aged jokes in the mouths of the few comedians that the piece asks for, and they roll them off unintelligibly one after the other. Ed. Lamb was the principal comedian. He is an actor of undoubted excellence, and the small hit that he made was due to his own mannerisms rather than to the brightness of the lines. It is likely that after the play has been running a little while this act will be touched up so as to be the brightest of the piece.’

  42 Argonaut; Era, 8 September 1883; Mason, 273; Ellmann, 228.

  43 James Kelly, ‘Memoirs’.

  44 Quoted in the Standard, 22 August 1883.

  45 ‘The Play and the Public,’ NYT, 28 August 1883.

  46 New York Daily Mirror, 25 August 1883; Mason, 273.

  47 NYT, 27 and 28 August 1883. Although the play’s ‘withdrawal’ was reported in the press on 28 August, the decision was made on 27 August; and the last performance of the play was on 25 August. The Pilot commended OW for not appearing in the piece – ‘A young man can outlive even a bad play; but there are limits which may not be passed.’

  48 NYT, 28 August 1883.

  49 Ellmann, 228; Jessica Sykes to OW [1883] (Clark), inviting him to join a party at St Leonard’s Island, Lake Rosdean, Ontario, at the end of August, ends, ‘I am sure that your play will be successful, but if it should not be it would simply make no difference in my gladness to see you.’ Jessica Cavendish-Bentinck had married Sir Tatton Sykes in 1874.

  Chapter 3: Man of the Day

  1 Entr’acte, 1 September 1883.

  2 Birmingham Daily Post, 29 September, 1883, in Dibb, 47.

  3 Otho Lloyd, quoted in Ellmann, 229.

  4 For the best and fullest itineraries of OW’s lecture tour see Dibb.

  5 Sherard, Life, 30–1.

  6 Dibb, 59–90.

  7 ‘Mr Oscar Wilde in a/c with W. F. Morse’ (Clark); OW’s share of commission on his first thirteen lectures, beginning with Margate and Ramsgate (before the visit to America) and ending with Erdington on 10 October, came to £145 2s 3d, from which was subtracted £58 13s 4d in business expenses. The balance – £91 9s – was paid to OW on 12 October 1883. See Dibb, 58–9, for the Manchester audience.

  8 Melville, 180.

  9 CMW to OW, 11 November 1883, in Ellmann, 229–30.

  10 CL, 221; the lectures were at the Gaiety Theatre, 3 pm, 22 and 23 November.

  11 CMW to Otho Holland Lloyd, 26 November 1883, CL, 222.

  12 Moyle, 74.

  13 JFW to OW, [Nov 1883], in Tipper, Oscar, 105.

  14 WCKW to OW, 29 November 1883 (Clark).

  15 Ada Swinburne-King to JFW, 30 November 1883 (Clark).

  16 CMW to OW, [27 November 1883] (BL).

  17 CMW to Otho Lloyd, 27 November 1883, in Moyle, 75.

  18 CL, 222n.

  19 Emily Lloyd to OW, 30 November 1883 (Clark).

  20 Moyle, 76.

  21 Emily Lloyd to OW, 6 December 1883 (Clark).

  22 Schoeder, 81–2.

  23 Emily Lloyd to OW, 6 December 1883; Emily Lloyd to OW, 14 December 1883 (Clark).

  24 CL, 224, 225; Moyle, 73; CMW to OW (BL).

  25 CMW to OW (BL).

  26 World, quoted in York Herald, 5 December 1883; Dundee Courier and Argus, 5 December 1883; Belfast News-Letter, 12 December 1883; Freeman’s Newsletter, 20 December 1883; ‘Our London Letter’, Dundee Courier and Argus, 20 December 1883.

  27 Moyle, 82.

  28 Emily Lloyd to OW, 14 December 1883 (Clark). Whistler had been supporting OW in other ways too, e.g. taking his side after he was attacked in print by Augustus Moore. See A. Moore to JMW, 16 October 1883 (GUL) and R. H. Sherard to OW, 13 October 1883 (Clark).

  29 CL, 225.

  30 Eleanor Sickert to OW, 26 December 18
83 (Clark).

  31 CMW to OW, 4 January 1884 (BL).

  32 CL, 224; Langtry, The Days I Knew, 94.

  33 Cumberland and Westmorland Advertiser, 26 February 1884, in Dibb, 95–6. Dibb, 112–13 lists seventy-six lectures given by OW between 1 January and 26 April 1884.

  34 Russell Thorndike, Sybil Thorndike (1929), 43–4; after the Gainsborough lecture (28 January 1884) OW praised Sybil Thorndike’s mother, Agnes, as ‘a witty young woman’; she was inspired by his ideas, becoming a local arbiter of taste, and leading the trips up to town.

  35 Vanity Fair, 24 May 1884; see [Carlo Pellegrini/‘Ape’] ‘Unidentified’ to OW, 28 April [1884] (Austin): ‘My dear Oscar, On Thursday next at 5 o’clock exact you will find me here [53 Mortimer Street]… P.S. Bring with you a couple of your latest photographs.’

  36 OW, ‘Under the Balcony’, appeared in the Shakespearean Show Book (1884); see Mason, 196–9.

  37 Ada Cavendish to OW, 13 March 1884 (Clark): ‘I have… read your Play,’ she told him, ‘and think it is very fine and I sincerely trust that I may be able to produce it, if you cannot find a better exponent.’

  38 Courtenay Thorpe to [OW], 17 April 1884 (Clark).

  39 ‘The Trifler’ [James Huneker], Musical Courier (New York), 26 July 1893.

  40 ‘The House Beautiful’, in O’Brien, Oscar Wilde in Canada, 178.

  41 Moyle, 85–6.

  42 Moyle, 86, mentions the need for down payment. The lease was terminable at seven or fourteen years by either party. The rent was ‘£130 for the first 7 years, £140 for the 2nd 7 years, and £150 for the 3rd 7 years, payable quarterly, the first payment to be made on 29 September [1884] and to be £22.10.0 for the period ending that day’ (Hargrove & Co. to OW, 13 May 1884).

  43 Johnston Forbes-Robertson, A Player Under Three Reigns (1925), 110.

  44 Schroeder, 82, quoting information from Merlin Holland (also see Maguire, 54); this corrects Ellmann, 234, which suggested that OW borrowed ‘£1,000 on what remained of his father’s estate’ on 15 May 1884. A letter from George Lewis to OW, 15 May 1884 (Clark), enclosed a copy of a letter from Hargrove & Co. regarding a covenant by OW to repay to the trustees on demand the sum of £1,000 and in the meantime to pay them interest at the rate of 5 per cent p.a. by half yearly payments. Lewis asks if OW would like him to insert a clause saying that while the interest will be paid ‘the principal sum should not be called up for a certain number of years’.

  45 Otho Lloyd to A. J. A. Symons, 27 May 1937 (Clark).

  46 The Church of St James has been the parish church of Paddington since 1845. The building was remodelled in the Gothic style in 1881 by G. E. Street, the work being completed under the direction of his son, A. E. Street (who had read classics at Magdalen with OW).

  47 Pennell and Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 228.

  48 ‘London Jottings’, by Archibald Forbes, London, 30 May 1884, syndicated to the South Australian Advertiser (Adelaide), 9 July 1884; OW and many of the guests must have been rather light-headed as, on the evening before the wedding, the Lewises had hosted a big dance at Portland Place. OW (though he did not dance) had stayed till 4 am, taking down ‘a succession of aesthetic ladies to successive suppers’. One of them, Mrs Jopling, had given him advice on ‘how a young husband should treat his wife’.

  Chapter 4: New Relations

  1 Marie Belloc Lownes to Hesketh Pearson, 10 Dec 1943 (Austin): ‘He was ecstatically [or ‘extremely’?] in love with her when they married. During their honeymoon in Paris that seemed quite clear to the people who saw them. Both French and English people.’

  2 Sherard SUF, 93–4; Life, 158.

  3 Morning News, 20 June 1884 (Clark).

  4 Quoted in the Queensland Figaro (Brisbane), 17 January 1885.

  5 ‘London Jottings [by Archibald Forbes] London 8 August 1884’, in South Australian Weekly Chronicle (Adelaide) 11 October 1884; CL, 229.

  6 Lady’s Pictorial, quoted in the Derby Mercury, 3 September 1884, in Moyle, 93.

  7 J.-K. Huysmans, À Rebours (1959), translated and with an introduction by Robert Baldick.

  8 PDG; Morning News, 20 June 1884 (Clark).

  9 CL, 231; they arrived back in London on 24 June.

  10 CL, 236–7, 242; ‘Final bill for works and materials by Sharpe’ [up to 22 November 1884] and two certificates from Godwin re. work done by ‘Mr George Sharpe’ (Clark).

  11 ‘Echoes of Society’, North Wales Chronicle, 12 July 1884, 6.

  12 Leslie Linder, ed., The Journal of Beatrix Potter 1881–1897 (1966), 97; it was Potter’s parents who had been to the ball: ‘an extraordinary mixture of actors, rich Jews, nobility, literary etc’.

  13 The Ladies Treasury: A Household Magazine, 1 September 1884, quoted in Dibb, 134; the fete took place on 23 July 1884.

  14 ‘Society Gossip’, Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, 2 May 1885.

  15 Mrs Jopling, in Mikhail, 205.

  16 Adrian Hope, Letters of Engagement (2002), 6; Laura Troubridge’s diary entry for 8 July.

  17 Horatio Lloyd’s estate was valued at £92,392, of which some £23,000 was divided equally between Otho and CMW. Moyle, 100.

  18 Walford, Memories of Victorian London, 152; among other financial pressures, OW was being pursued by the Inland Revenue for ‘Legacy and Succession Duty’ still due on the Bray houses and the property at Clonfeacle. Inland Revenue to OW, 23 April 1884 (Clark).

  19 CL, 232.

  20 OET V, 8; ‘Theatrical Mems’, Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, 25 November 1884; ‘Dramatic Musical’, Derby Mercury, 26 November 1884.

  21 Yorkshire Gazette, 12 July 1884; Dibb, 138; Morse, ‘Lectures in Great Britain’, 166–7; OW also claimed to have prepared a lecture on Benvenuto Cellini, but there is no evidence that he ever delivered it.

  22 Godwin published his lecture as ‘Dress and its Relation to Health and Climate’ (Handbook of the International Health Exhibition, 1884).

  23 Dibb, 262–75. See also ‘Gleam of Common Sense’; Argus (Melbourne), 21 December 1885; ‘Lancashire Mill Girls’, Lancaster Gazette and General Advertiser, 27 December 1884.

  24 Dibb, 262–75.

  25 Harris, 69–70.

  26 CL, 233–4.

  27 A. Milner to OW, 22 May [1884], the Oscar Wilde collection of John B. Stetson, cat. item 391; Terence H. O’Brien, Milner (1979), 63; ‘Muscle-Reading by Mr Stuart Cumberland’, PMG, 24 May 1884, 2; OW to A. Milner, [1885], Bloomsbury Book Auctions (London) 19 May 2014, lot 49, where the putative date in the letter is given as 1882; an obvious impossibility.

  28 PMG, 14 October 1884; PMG, 11 November 1884; Hope, Letters of Engagement, 91.

  29 W. Howgate to OW [1884] (Clark); CL, 239.

  30 Bryan Connors, Beverley Nichols: A Life (1991), 20–21; Dibb, 153–5. Alfred and Rebecca Shalders, Beverley Nichols’ maternal grandparents, lived at 7 Oak Villas, Manyham, Bradford. They were keen gardeners, and later had extensive hot-houses, so OW’s request may not have been totally capricious.

  31 Dibb, 160–2.

  32 Isle of Wight Observer, 4 October 1884; Dibb, 147–8.

  33 W. Partington, ed., Echoes of the ’Eighties (1921), 220–1; John Cooper, ‘Oscar Wilde’s Cello Coat’, and ‘Cello Encore’, OWIA.

  34 Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 23 October 1884; Dibb, 160.

  35 WCKW to ‘My dear Little Sister’ (CMW), [Oct/Nov, 1884] (Clark).

  36 Violet Fane [Mrs Singleton] to J. M. Whistler, 23 February 1885 (GUL): ‘How very large, everywhere, – [OW] has grown since marriage!… Is there any real reason for this?… or can it be that he is merely following the custom of those [Red] Indians of whom I have read, who, in certain circumstances, simulate the uncomfortable & unbecoming condition of their “Squaws”, & are there other Oscars & Oscaresses lurking in the Womb of the Future, to be let loose amongst us in due time?’

  37 CMW to Otho Lloyd, 15 January 1885; Moyle, 118.

  38 Coulson Kernahan, ‘Oscar Wilde: Some Recollections’, ts (Clark).


  39 [Otho Lloyd], ‘Stray Recollections’, 155. Ellmann, 241, erroneously ascribes authorship to Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (the second husband of WCKW’s second wife). Accounts of the house indicate that some details of decor and design altered over time. The earliest account is provided by Adrian Hope (in a letter to Laura Troubridge on 15 March 1885), and the fullest by Otho Lloyd (in ‘Stray Recollections’). I have combined them here to give a picture of the house as it was in 1885.

  40 Louise Chandler Moulton’s enthusiasm for the dining room was reported in the Oakleigh Leader and District Record (Brighton, Victoria) Saturday 14 January 1888; ‘How to Decorate a House by Mrs Oscar Wilde’, Young Woman, January 1895 (reprinted in Intentions, 10 February 2009, 6–10); Petersburg Times (South Australia), 15 June 1888.

  41 Marylin Hill, ‘A Tale of a Table’, Carlyle Studies Annual, 29 (2013), suggests that the table which OW owned was not Carlyle’s actual ‘writing-table’, although it may well have come from Carlyle’s house.

  42 Bankruptcy no. 724 of 1895, High Court of Bankruptcy, PRO – Chancery Lane, London B9/428–9, in Maguire, 54.

  43 B. Charles Stephenson [aka ‘Bolton Rowe’] to OW, 2 February 1885 (Clark).

  44 CL, 245n; CMW to Edward Heron-Allen, 12 December 1884 (Clark); Edward Heron-Allen, ‘Chyromantia’ [hand-reading album] (Houghton): CMW’s palm was read on 9 December 1884. OW’s was read on 2 January 1885. W. S. Gilbert has his hand read on the same day.

  Chapter 5: In Black and White

  1 A. S. Cole ‘Diary’, 26 March 1884 (online at GUL).

  2 Truth, 2 January 1890.

  3 Anderson and Koval, James NcNeill Whistler, 263.

  4 Herbert Vivian, quoted in Pennell and Pennell, Life of Whistler, 227.

  5 Daniel E. Sutherland, Whistler: A Life for Art’s Sake (2014), 206.

  6 Alan Cole to JMW, 21 February 1885 (GUL). ‘Wilde’s face was a picture when you talked of aesthetic costumes’; Violet Fane to JMW, 22 February 1885 (GUL).

  7 ‘Mr Whistler’s Ten O’Clock’, PMG, 21 February 1885; ‘Our London Letter’, Belfast News-Letter, 23 February 1885; York Herald, 23 February, 1885; ‘Our London Correspondence’, Liverpool Mercury, 23 February 1885; ‘Mr. Wilde and Mr. Whistler,’ Western Mail, 24 February 1885.