78 OW to Robertson (BL).
79 Bernard Partridge to Hesketh Pearson, 30 September, 1943 (Austin).
80 JFW to OW, [13 May 1887], in Tipper, Oscar, 110–11.
81 ‘Un Amant de Nos Jours’, which appeared on 13 December 1887, opens with the lines, ‘The sin was mine, I did not understand; / So now is music prisoned in her cave’. It is unknown, though, when the poem was written, so it is hard to gauge whether it reflected some real pang of remorse at lost love – for Florence Balcombe perhaps, or Lillie Langtry, or Constance – or whether it was just some literary exercise. It has echoes of George Meredith’s 1862 sonnet sequence, Modern Love.
82 CL, 325.
83 CL, 354; modern critics have found OW’s fairy tales rich ground for differing interpretations – personal, political, sexual and spiritual; see Jarlath Killeen, The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde (2007), for an excellent overview of the topic.
84 CL, 352.
85 Coulson Kernahan, In Good Company: Some Personal Recollections (1917), 195. Although he told Gladstone that his stories were ‘really meant for children’ (CL, 350) neither the stories themselves, nor his other statements, make this credible. In CL, 388, OW refers to his stories as being written ‘for childlike people from eighteen to eighty’.
86 Theodore Watts to OW, 7 June 1887 (Austin); OW to Roberts Bros, (rec. 26 March 1888) (Columbia).
87 Moyle, 124.
88 Saltus, Oscar Wilde: An Idler’s Impression, 13–26, in Mikhail, 428.
89 CMW to Otho Lloyd, 17 July 1887, in Moyle, 124.
Chapter 7: Woman’s World
1 CL, 297.
2 CL, 317.
3 CL, 317; WW, vol. 1, 40.
4 CL, 299; RR to Frank Harris, 17 May 1914 (Austin).
5 CL, 297–301.
6 OW, ‘Homer’s Women’ essay (Morgan). E. Fitzsimmons, Wilde’s Women (2015), 193.
7 Arthur Lambton, The Salad Bowl (1927), 57. For another dinner party see Moreton Frewen, Melton Mowbray and Other Memories (1924), 105; for one of Ouida’s ‘receptions’ at the Langham – 5 pm, c. 30 people – see Lady Paget, Embassies of Other Days Vol. II (1923), 418: guests included OW, Violet Fane, Lady Boo Lennox, Lady Dorothy Nevill, Robert Browning, Lord Lytton and Lord Ronald Gower.
8 ‘Some Famous Living Women’, Brisbane Courier, 19 November 1889.
9 Note: she published four articles in WW between March 1888 and May 1889: ‘Apropos of a Dinner’, ‘The Streets of London’, ‘War’ and ‘Field-Work for Women’. Although initially very enthusiastic (calling the magazine ‘so good’), by March 1889 her tone had altered slightly. She told Lady Constance Leslie, ‘Look out for an article of mine on war in Oscar Wilde’s Review. I write in it now and then out of camaraderie. He is a clever fellow though too vain and not always I fear sincere.’ Eileen Bigland, Ouida: The Passionate Victorian (1950), 202–3.
10 Gifford Lewis, The Selected Letters of Somerville and Ross (1989), 67–8.
11 Spectator, 5 November 1887.
12 Irish Times, 5 November 1887. Fitzsimmons, Wilde’s Women, 58.
13 Hampshire Advertiser, 3 November 1887; Spectator, 5 November 1887.
14 Morning Post, 2 November 1887; Bury and Norwich Post, 22 November 1887; Spectator, 5 November 1887.
15 Bury and Norwich Post, 22 November 1887.
16 PMG, 16 September 1887.
17 JFW to OW, ‘Friday Night’ [November, 1887], in Tipper, Oscar, 111–12.
18 WW, vol. 1, 98.
19 Lady Churchill to OW, 6 January 1888 (Austin).
20 PMG, 16 September 1887.
21 Arthur Fish, ‘Memories of Oscar Wilde’, Cassell’s Weekly, 2 May 1923, 215; A. J. A. Symons notes, (Clark); CL, 413, 455.
22 Arthur Fish, ‘Oscar Wilde as Editor’, Harper’s Weekly, 58 [1913], 18.
23 Fish, ‘Oscar Wilde as Editor’, 18; the daring of OW’s editorial policy is suggested by a letter from Marie Bancroft to OW (Austin), 9 November [1888 or 1889]: ‘I will think over your suggestion. The subject is a very delicate one, and there is always a fear of scalding our toes! How long should the article be? I will try but I may fail.’ It seems she did fail, as no article appeared by her, after her piece on Switzerland in the first number.
24 CL, 337, 338.
25 Anna, comtesse de Brémont, Oscar Wilde and his Mother (1911), 73.
26 Harris, 53, 67; CL, 1121. Frank Harris describes himself as meeting ‘Oscar Wilde continually’ from 1884 onwards; but their friendship seems to have begun later in the decade.
27 W. B. Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil (1922), 15.
28 Newman Flower, in Cassell’s Weekly, 1923, quoted in The Register (Adelaide) 30 June 1923.
29 Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil, 20.
30 C. Lewis Hind, Naphtali (1926), 54.
31 J. M. Barrie, quoted in Alfred Noyes, Two Worlds for Memory (1953), 55.
32 CL, 367.
33 ‘A Note on Some Modern Poets’, WW, December 1888; OET VII, 108–13.
34 CL, 294; 356; G. B. Shaw, ‘My Memories of Oscar Wilde’, in Harris, 334.
35 J. Lewis May, John Lane and the Nineties (1936), 31; Walter Crane, An Artist’s Reminiscences (1907), 310. OW took Walter Crane’s children backstage to meet the Colonel ‘in his tent’ after the show.
36 CL, 362n; OW’s official proposer was not Henley, but Rev. W. J. Loftie, formerly of Trinity College Dublin. At the Savile Club candidates were not ‘blackballed’, but if members expressed opposition to a candidate, his name was left in the candidate’s book but his election was postponed indefinitely.
37 PMG, 9 June 1888; Leeds Mercury, 9 June 1888; Crane, An Artist’s Reminiscences, 324; E. R. Pennel, Life and Letters of Joseph Pennel (1930), 1:202.
38 World, 17 November 1886.
39 CL, 288; Crane, An Artist’s Reminiscences, 295, recalled OW being present – and speaking – at one meeting.
40 The discussion, below, of OW’s engagement with Liberal politics and Home Rule, draws on Wright and Kinsella, ‘Oscar Wilde, A Parnellite Home Ruler and Gladstonian Liberal’.
41 Freeman’s Journal, 23 September 1887. Wright and Kinsella, ‘Oscar Wilde, A Parnellite Home Ruler and Gladstonian Liberal’, record OW attending an Eighty Club dinner at Willis’s rooms on 13 December 1887.
42 OET VII, 12ff. OW was only slightly more generous to Mahaffy’s The Principles of the Art of Conversation, ‘Aristotle at Afternoon Tea’, PMG, 16 December 1887, OET VII, 35–7: ‘it pleases in spite of its pedantry’ and ‘the arid and jejune character of the style’.
43 ‘Poetry and Prison’, PMG, 3 January 1889.
44 WW, January 1889.
45 Jane Morris to Henry Sparling [Autumn 1885], in Frank C. Sharp and Jan Marsh, eds, Collected Letters of Jane Morris (2012), 143.
46 Bernard Partridge to Hesketh Pearson, 30 September 1943 (Austin); George Bernard Shaw’s diary mentions the meeting on 14 September 1886.
47 LAD, Oscar Wilde and Myself, 60–1; see from George Bernard Shaw’s diaries: 15 December 1887 OW and Shaw meet at H. Horne’s house in Fitzroy Street. The talk was stimulating and Shaw did not leave until one in the morning; [Sunday], June 1888, OW and Shaw both at an afternoon reception chez Miss Charlotte Roche, in Cadogan Gardens. ‘The conversation was on art and how socialism would metamorphose it.’ July 1888, Fabian Society meeting at Willis’s rooms, Walter Crane on ‘The Prospects of Art Under Socialism’ – reported in the Star, 7 July 1888 – both OW and Shaw speak from the floor. Shaw to Frank Harris, 7 Oct 1908, in Dan H. Laurence, ed., Bernard Shaw Collected Letters, Vol. 2, 1898–1910 (1972), 813.
48 CL, 388; Killeen, The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, 37–8.
49 Saltus, Oscar Wilde: An Idler’s Impression, 13–26, in Mikhail, 428; Richard Le Gallienne, The Romantic ’90s (1926), in Mikhail, 394.
50 PMG, 15 November 1887. Shaw would have been able to give OW details of the riot when they met four days later at the wedding reception for Shaw’s sister, Lucy. Shaw diary, 17 November 1887.
51 C.
K. Shorter, An Autobiography (1927), 59; Stanley Weintraub, ‘The Hibernian School: Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw’, in J. A. Bertolini, ed., Shaw and Other Playwrights, 30; Georgina Sime, Brave Spirits (1952), 14.
52 ‘Children’s Dress in this Century’, WW, July 1888; ‘Muffs’, WW, February 1889.
53 Moyle, 148.
54 PMG, 7 March 1888.
55 Mrs T. P. O’Connor, I Myself (1910), 238.
Chapter 8: A Study in Green
1 Macmillan Reader’s Report, 16 February 1888, quoted in Guy & Small, 69.
2 Mason, 331–4; OW to Roberts Bros, (rec. 26 March 1888) (Columbia), gives an idea of the initial production plans: ‘The book will be very daintily got up, and will appear in May….There will be a first edition probably at 10/- limited in number and a popular edition to follow.’
3 Millard’s annotated copy of his own bibliography at the Clark lists: Athenaeum, Universal Review, Christian Leader, Dublin Evening Mail, Glasgow Herald, World, Morning Post, Liverpool Daily Post, Manchester Guardian, Wit and Wisdom, PMG, PMB (with a cartoon by F. C. G[ould], 7 June), Literary World, Lady’s Pictorial, St James’s Gazette, Star, Scotsman, Daily Express (Dublin). To these can be added the Saturday Review (20 October 1888) and Spectator (2 March 1889). The only carping review was in Graphic (30 June 1888); but even it admits that the stories – though ‘somewhat insipid’ – were ‘well written’, and the book itself ‘admirable’.
4 OW consistently referred to the book self-deprecatingly as ‘my little book’; CL, 350, 352.
5 PMG.
6 Spectator, Saturday Review.
7 Morning Post, 20 June 1888; Spectator.
8 Walter Crane to OW, 1 July 1888: ‘I am glad to hear the book has been so successful’. OW to Thomas Niles [1888], ‘Here it has been a great success.’
9 Ellen Terry to OW, 9 June 1888, in Don Mead, ‘An Unpublished Letter from Ellen Terry to Oscar Wilde’, Wildean, 8 (1996); CL, 350.
10 Samuel Hales to OW, 16 June 1888 (Clark). Justin Huntly McCarthy was another who liked ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’; see his poem ‘The Happy Prince – To Oscar Wilde’, in Mason, 335.
11 The second edition had still not sold out in September 1894, when OW wrote to John Lane, complaining that Nutt’s ‘average yearly sale of The Happy Prince is about 150!’ He called the figure ‘really absurd’.
12 Carlos Blacker to the Duke of Newcastle, 5 December 1888, in Maguire, 24.
13 Isle of Man Times, 29 December 1888. ‘Christmas Magazines’, Hampshire Telegraph, 8 December 1888: ‘In the front by merit is Mr Oscar Wilde’s charming allegory “The Young King”, original, vivid, exquisitely expressed’. ‘Christmas Leaves’, Penny Illustrated Paper, 1 December 1888: ‘There is an admirable moral in Oscar Wilde’s excellent fairy story.’ See also Liverpool Mercury, 28 November 1888; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 24 November 1888; Morning Post, 5 December 1888.
14 CL, 372.
15 See 3 letters from OW (written by a secretary) to Annie Schletter, re. her ‘extremely interesting’ article, and the delay over publishing it: 28 February 1888, 19 March 1888, 23 April 1889 (Yale).
16 Newman Flower, in Cassell’s Weekly, quoted in Register (Adelaide), 30 June 1923.
17 See JFW to OW [1887], ‘Miss Leonard wrote to me to say that she can supply an article on French matters if you wish, as her father sends all the latest news.’ OW to ‘Miss Leonard’, 28 February 1888 (Washington) asking for ‘a short article (about 2500 words) on Madame Adam – giving an account of her receptions and literary career.’ The article never appeared.
18 Pearson, 262.
19 Pearson, 262; [Anon], East and West – Confessions of a Princess (1922), 176; the poem used may have been ‘Remorse (A Study in Saffron)’. OET I, 169; Fitzsimmons, Wilde’s Women, 233–4.
20 Elizabeth Robins, Both Sides of the Curtain (1940), 9–10, 14–28 (Sir Randall Roberts is called ‘Sir Mervyn Owen’ in the book); CL, 357–8; Elizabeth Robins ms memoir quoted in CL, 357; Diaries (Fales).
21 Rev. F. B. D. Bickerstaffe-Drew to OW, 5 May 1890 (Clark).
22 C. Dyett to OW, 28 April 1891 (Clark): ‘Had it not been for you we should have had to part with our home… I shall always remember your kindness in our time of trouble.’
23 [Otho Lloyd], ‘Stray Recollections’, 156.
24 Secrest, Being Bernard Berenson, 125.
25 Swanwick, I Have Been Young, 68–9; Oswald A. Sickert died on 11 November 1885.
26 Jacomb-Hood, With Brush and Pencil, 115.
27 Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil, 24, 25.
28 Coulson Kernahan, ‘Oscar Wilde As I Knew Him’, ts 22 (Clark)
29 CL, 367.
30 R. Le Gallienne to OW, 11 November 1888 (Clark); Le Gallienne chose ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ as it had ‘a beauty so much your own’.
31 J. A. Symonds, A Problem in Greek Ethics (1883).
32 The eight letters from Frederick C. Althaus to OW are at the Clark. McKenna, 131–6, gives an excellent reading of their emotional content, though he mis-transcribes their text in several places, failing to register the references to the Lyric Club, and suggesting that a word beginning with ‘C’ refers to the Cock Tavern, a bohemian pub on the Charing Cross Road. This leads him to suppose (wrongly) that Althaus was socially ‘different from the usual run of young men that Oscar mixed with at this time’.
33 Frederick C. Althaus to OW, 12 November 1888 (Clark).
34 Frederick C. Althaus to OW, 12 November 1888 (Clark).
35 Frederick C. Althaus to OW, 12 November 1888, is sent from ‘New Court, E.C.’ (where Leopold Rothschild had his offices), and regrets that ‘I shall not be able to get away from the City’ that day. PMG, 26 February 1891; Era, 18 March, 1893. Frederick C. Althaus to OW, 19 March 1889, mentions ‘my brother and I are going to the Femmes Nerveuses’, a French play then running at the Royalty Theatre.
36 Frederick C. Althaus to OW, ‘Wednesday’; Frederick C. Althaus to OW, 19 March 1889; see ‘The Remarkable Story of the Lyric Club’, The Press (New Zealand), 4 November 1892.
37 Frederick C. Althaus to OW, June [1889].
38 Horst Schroeder, ‘Volume IV of the OET Edition of The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: III “Pen, Pencil and Poison,”’ Wildean, 36 (2010), 32; Josephine Guy, ‘Introduction’, in Josephine Guy, ed., Criticism (OET IV), xxxi–xxxiii.
39 Ellmann, 283; Lawrence Danson, Wilde’s Intentions (Oxford, 1996), 89–92; Bristow and Mitchell, Oscar Wilde’s Chatterton, 215–29. OW’s attraction to criminal figures had also led him to ‘collect many particulars of the social career’ and crimes of Henry Fauntleroy, a banker hanged in 1824 for forgery. But he felt that the case was not quite ‘fascinating’ enough for an article. ‘Our London Letter’, Sheffield & Rotherham Independent, 10 January 1889.
40 ‘Anglo-Colonial Gossip’, ‘London, Jan 4th’, South Australian Register, 7 February 1889: the journalist dates OW’s performance to ‘a few weeks back’ – so, perhaps, November/December 1888. The January number of the Fortnightly Review, in which the essay appeared, was being reviewed by 2 January – and was indeed described (Derby Mercury) as being ‘early afield’, so OW’s contribution must have been submitted and accepted by early/mid-December 1888. That the article could have been completed quickly is suggested by the fact that on 10 February 1890 Frank Harris wrote to OW, after a lunch together, asking if he ‘would write an article for the March Fortnightly [Review]. Can you do this within 8 days? An article on Literature or any social subject as paradoxical as you please’ (Austin). Swinburne, ‘William Blake’ (1868) had referred to Wainewright’s use of ‘pen… palette… or poison’.
41 CL, 688.
42 CL, 253; some early ms pages relating to ‘The Decay of Lying’ are not written as dialogue, leading Lawrence Danson (Wilde’s Intentions, 37) to suggest that the adoption of the dialogue form was a ‘happy afterthought’ to the dinner with Ross. But that was not Wilde’s memory of the event. And Josephine Guy (‘Introduction’, OET IV, xl) argues
persuasively against the suggestion. The dinner with Ross could have occurred in November 1888, shortly after the Cambridge term ended.
43 Hilda Schiff, ‘Nature and Art in Oscar Wilde’s “The Decay of Lying”’, Essay and Studies, 18 (1965), 100ff, in Schroeder, 19–20.
44 Schroeder, 22.
45 Schroeder, 17–19; Whistler’s ‘Ten O’Clock’ had been the most conspicuous contribution to the debate on ‘Art and Nature’; among articles on ‘Realism and Romance’ Schroeder lists: R. L. Stevenson, ‘A Gossip on Romance’ (November 1882) and ‘A Note on Realism’ (January 1884); Rider Haggard, ‘About Fiction’ (February 1887); J. A. Symonds, ‘Realism and Idealism’ (September 1887) and Andrew Lang, ‘Realism and Romance’ (November 1887).
46 Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil, 28; Ellmann, 285.
47 Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil, 24; CL, 377.
48 Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil, 24.
Part VI: The Young King
Chapter 1: A Man in Hew
1 ‘Literature’, Derby Mercury, 2 January 1889; also called ‘a really good article’ in PMG, 24 December 1888; ‘a racy contribution’, Ipswich Journal, 28 December 1888; JFW to OW, in Tipper, Oscar, 116.
2 ‘Magazines for January’, Morning Post, 3 January 1889; ‘The Reviews for January’, PMG, 2 January 1889; ‘Our London Letter’, Sheffield & Rotherham Independent, 10 January 1889.
3 ‘Literature’, Derby Mercury, 2 January 1889.
4 OW to Henry Lucy, who had praised ‘Pen, Pencil and Poison’ – the Decay of Lying ‘is so much the better of the two’, CL, 384. On press comments: CL, 392, 394; OW to W. Pollack, CL, 387; see also OW to Mrs George Lewis, CL, 389.
5 JFW to OW, [late December 1888/early 1889], in Tipper, Oscar, 116.
6 Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil, 25, 24.
7 Ransome, 100.
8 Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil, 25.
9 Mason, 174; see also CL, 409; ‘Michael Field’, Journal (BL), 21 July 1890, refers to the French version of the story coming out ‘Pink and Blue’; in Mason, 174, it is described as ‘Pink and Silver’.
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