Oscar

by Sturgis, Matthew;

  4 R. Davenport-Hines, Ettie (2008), 57–8; OW’s host, Willie Grenfell, ‘a model English athlete gifted with peculiar intellectual fairness’ was not party to this disparagement. He considered OW to be ‘most surprising, most charming, a wonderful talker’. Harris, 85.

  5 Lady Tree, ‘Herbert & I’, in Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Some Memories of Him and of His Art Collected by Max Beerbohm (1918), 87.

  6 CL, 484; Lionel Earle, Turn Over the Page (1935), 77.

  7 Douglas Ainslie, Adventures Social and Literary (1922), 92–3.

  8 Harris, 258–9; Harry White to G. Curzon, in R. Davenport-Hines, Ettie, 58; Elizabeth Longford, A Pilgrimage of Passion: The Life of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1979), 289–90. OW had visited Crabbet Park before, in July 1889, for the annual garden party and horse show, known as the ‘sale of the Arabs’. Tynan, Twenty-five Years, 303.

  9 Charles L. Graves, Hubert Parry: His Life and Works (1921), 1:343; Parry records that ‘When G. W. went away one of the Peels [sons of the Speaker, and fellow Crabbet Club members] played up to O. W. in the same way and made him talk even greater bunkum.’

  10 Graves, Hubert Parry, 1:344.

  11 A. G. G. Liddell, Notes from the Life of an Ordinary Mortal (1911), 283 (from diary entry, 1 August 1891); Arthur Balfour in a letter to Lady Elcho, dated 5 August 1891, records seeing OW and CMW at Wrest that Sunday, along with Mrs E. Grenfell, H. Cust, Lord Northampton, the Alwynne Comptons, Bobby Spencer, the L. Drummonds and the Earl of Dudley. Jane Ridley and Percy Clayre, eds, The Letters of Arthur Balfour to Lady Elcho 1885–1917 (1992), 77.

  12 René Gimpel, Diary of an Art Dealer (1963), reporting an incident told him by Albert Clerk-Jeannotte, who had witnessed it as a young boy (Jeannotte was born in 1881 in Montreal).

  13 Liddell, Notes from the Life of an Ordinary Mortal, 283.

  14 Harris, 81–2. I have been unable to find any corroborative evidence for the story that OW wrote the play on a visit to a friend’s ‘cottage’ in the Lake District (hence his use of the name ‘Lady Windermere’) and his return from there via the North Yorkshire town of Selby (hence the mention of Selby in the final act of the play). This story was apparently mentioned by Robert Ross to Hesketh Pearson; see Pearson to Rupert Croft-Cooke (Texas). But OW had already used the name ‘Lady Windermere’ in his story ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’, and had used ‘Selby’ as one of Dorian Gray’s estates.

  15 The Oscar Wilde Encyclopedia, 179; Chambers’ The Idler was turned down by Herbert Beerbohm Tree, but taken up by Elisabeth Marbury, and put on in New York in November 1890.

  16 OW to Elisabeth Robins [1891] (Fales), OW to Marion Lea [1891] (Fales); for OW’s affinity with Ibsen see George Bernard Shaw to LAD, in Mary Hyde, ed., Bernard Shaw and Alfred Douglas: A Correspondence (1982), 128–9.

  17 Evening Standard, 29 November 1913, quoted in Ellmann, 315; Boyd, A Pelican’s Tale, 298.

  18 Kaplan, ‘A Puppet’s Power’, 62.

  19 CMW to Lady Mount Temple, 22 October 1891, in Moyle, 195; CL, 488,489. OW originally sent the script to Daly’s London agent, Joe Anderson, but then asked to have it back ‘as I would like to touch it up a little before Daly sees it’.

  20 Weindling and Colloms, The Marquis de Leuville for an account of WCKW’s relationship with Mrs Frank Leslie; Moyle, 194.

  21 PMG, 28 September 1891, refers to the break-in, ‘through a skylight’, occurring on ‘Friday night’, i.e. 25 September 1891; John Davidson to McCormick, quoted in John Sloan, John Davidson: First of the Moderns (1995), 67.

  22 Frederic Whyte, William Heinemann: A Memoir (1928), 82–4.

  Chapter 5: The Dance of the Seven Veils

  1 Ernest Raynaud, La Mêlée Symboliste (1890–1900) Portraits et Souvenirs II (1920), 133, translation in Ellmann, 328 and Schroeder, 119.

  2 Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, My Diaries – Part One (1919), 72: diary entry for 27 October 1891. It is sometimes supposed that the ‘play’ referred to is OW’s Salomé (see for example CL, 491n). But OW to HSH Princess of Monaco (CL, 491, 495) clearly suggests that it is The Good Woman about which he is talking; as does Emily Lytton to Rev. Whitwell Elwin, 3 November 1891 (quoted in Lady Emily Lutyens, A Blessed Girl (1953), 68): ‘[OW] has just written a play which he wants to have translated into French and acted at the [Comédie] Français, nothing less would be good enough for him.’ Her comments indicate that the ‘just written play’ had been composed in English, and was to be translated into French, by OW or another. Salomé was written directly in French.

  3 The copy of Intentions inscribed ‘To Robert, Earl of Lytton, with best wishes, and in sincere admiration, from the author, Paris ’91’ is in the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware; Lord Lytton to OW ‘Saturday’ [31 October 1891] (Austin); Emily Lytton to Rev. Whitwell Elwin, 3 November 1891 (quoted in Lutyens, A Blessed Girl, 68.

  4 CL, 492; the copy of PDG is inscribed ‘A Stéphane Mallarmé, Hommage d’Oscar Wilde, Paris ’91’. Telegram JMW to Mallarmé, 3 November 1891; JMW to Mallarmé, 2 November 1891, quoted in Ellmann, 317–19.

  5 CL, 492n; S. Mallarmé to JMW, 11 November 1891; 24 November 1891; 23 December 1891 (GUL).

  6 CL, 500; CL, 495; Sherard, SUF, 109; Margaret Talbot to Robert de Montesquiou-Fézensac, 7 November [1891] (GUL).

  7 Leslie, Memoir of John Edward Courtenay Bodley, 18; Arthur Kingsland Griggs, ed., The Memoirs of Léon Daudet (1926), 200; Jean Lorrain, Sensations et souvenirs (1895), in Bernard Gauthier, ‘Marcel Schwob et Oscar Wilde’, in Bruno Fabre et al., Marcel Schwob. L’homme au masque d’or (2006), 59.

  8 Stuart Merrill, ‘La Jeune littérateur anglaise’, La Plume, 15 March 1893.

  9 Henri de Régnier, Les Annales Politiques, in Mikhail, 464–5.

  10 Gustave Le Rouge, ‘Oscar Wilde’ [3 November 1928], in Mikhail, 459.

  11 Coulson Kernahan, ‘Oscar Wilde As I Knew Him’, ts 50 (Clark); CL, 741.

  12 André Gide, Journal I, 1887–1925, ed. Eric Marty (1996), 138ff; the first meeting occurred on 26 November chez Henri de Régnier, at least a dozen meetings between then and 15 December. Robert Mallet, ed., André Gide and Paul Valéry Correspondance 1890–1942 (1955), 139; Jules Renard, Journal Inédit 1887–1895 (1925), 131. Gide, Journal I, 1887–1925, 148: ‘Wilde ne m’a fait, je crois, que du mal. Avec lui j’avais d’appris de penser. J’avais des émotions plus diverses mais je ne savais plus les ordonner; je ne pouvais surtout plus suivre les déductions des autres.’

  13 William Rothenstein, Men and Memories I, 86–93; Sherard SUF, 95, fails to grasp the humour of Wilde’s comment, recording it as, ‘Robert was splendid and defended me at the risk of his life.’

  14 O’Sullivan, 75–6.

  15 Gide, Journal I, 1887–1925, 138; Stuart Merrill, Prose et vers: Oeuvres posthumes (1925), 142–5, in Ellmann, 328; Rothenstein, Men and Memories I, 92.

  16 Raynaud, La Mêlée Symboliste, 136–7, translation in Ellmann, 330.

  17 Moyle, 200.

  18 Glasgow Herald, 26 November 1891; JFW to OW, in Tipper, Oscar, 130; Liverpool Mercury, 23 December 1891; Mason, 365–9; Moyle, 200.

  19 Intentions, 62 (2009), 26.

  20 PMG, 21 August 1891. It is unclear from the report whether the article was published in translation or in the original English; David Goodway, Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow (2011), 78, records that Mallarmé also subscribed to La Révolté.

  21 L’Echo de Paris, 27 December 1891.

  22 Raynaud, La Mêlée Symboliste, 134; Yvanhoe Rambosson, ‘Oscar Wilde et Verlaine’, in Comedia, 7 June 1923, in Ellmann, 322.

  23 A. Gide, If It Die (1951), 249.

  24 CL, 499.

  25 A. Retté, Le Symbolisme: Anecdotes et Souvenirs (1903), in OET V, 329; A. Gide, Oscar Wilde: A Study (1949), 26.

  26 E. Gómez Carrillo, ‘Comment Oscar Wilde rêva Salomé’, La Plume (1902), in Mikhail 195.

  27 Edgar Saltus, ‘On the origins of Salome’, ts (Clark).

  28 Gómez Carrillo, in Mikhail, 195.

  29 Guillot de Saix
, ‘Oscar Wilde chez Maeterlinck’, Les Nouvelle Littéraires, 25 October 1945, in Ellmann, 325.

  30 Jean Lorrain, ‘Salomé et les Poètes’, La Journal, 11 February 1896; Pierre Léon-Gauthier, Jean Lorrain (1962), 370–1, in Ellmann, 324.

  31 E. Gómez Carrillo, Treinta Años De Mi Vida (1974 edition), 295, translation in Ellmann, 323–4.

  32 H. Gómez Carrillo, in Mikhail 194: ‘Wilde began a short story [about Salome] entitled “The Double Beheading”. Not long after he tore up what he had written and considered writing a poem.’

  33 OW to W. Heinemann, 29 Boulevard des Capucines [November/December 1891] (BL, RP 3753), apologizing for not having got the ‘preface’ done: ‘Somehow, I have not been in the mood for it, and to be in the mood is everything in art.’ OW in PMB, 30 June 1892, 947, in Mikhail, 188.

  34 O’Sullivan, 32–3; OET V, 337, re. the notebook at in the Bodmer collection, Geneva.

  35 A. Lugné-Poe Le Sot du Tremplin, Souvenirs et Impressions de Théâtre (1931), in OET V, 332; L’Intruse was given its UK premiere at a matinee at the Haymarket Theatre on 27 January 1892, with Herbert Beerbohm Tree as the Grandfather. It is to be supposed that OW was in the audience.

  36 Gómez Carrillo, Treinta Años De Mi Vida, 296, in Ellmann, 323; Gomez Carrillo, ‘Comment Oscar Wilde rêva Salomé’, La Plume (1902), in Mikhail 195; Louise Thomas, L’Esprit d’Oscar Wilde (1920), in Ellmann, 324; O’Sullivan, 216. O’Sullivan claims the executed man was the anarchist Ravachol, but he was executed, and buried, at Montbrison on the Loire.

  37 CL, 506; see OET V, 337–9, which plausibly suggests that OW’s requests to Merrill, Retté and Louÿs to correct the manuscript did not occur till later.

  38 OW quoted in PMB, 30 June 1892, 947, in Mikhail, 188; Gil Blas, 27 December 1891: ‘M. Oscar Wilde, le poète anglais, vient de lire au Théâtre d’Art: Salomé, pièce au une acte, en prose, qu’il a écrit en française. Cette pièce sera au mois d’hiver prochain’. See also OET V, 342–3 for other references to OW reading. Robertson, Time Was, 136, on OW’s diction, re. a private reading of the script.

  39 Ricketts, 52–3.

  40 Huges Le Roux, ‘Oscar Wilde’, Le Figaro, 2 December 1891; [interview by Jacques Daurelle] L’Echo de Paris, 6 December 1891, in Stefano Evangelista, ed., The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe (2010), 69; R. H. Sherard, Le Gaulois, 17 December 1891, reprinted in SUF, 258–70; L’Echo de Paris, 19 December 1891; JWF to OW, December 1891, in Tipper, Oscar, 133; CL, 504n.

  Chapter 6: Charming Ball

  1 R. Ross, ‘A Note on “Salome”’; ‘Latest News’, Liverpool Mercury, 5 January 1892. OW’s visit to Glyn-y-Garth is a tantalizing new discovery. Mrs Schwabe was the grandmother of Maurice Salis Schwabe, whom OW came to know during the course of 1892, but there is no evidence to suggest that they met during (or before) this visit.

  2 James G. Nelson, The Early Nineties: A View from the Bodley Head (1971), 79; Mason, 319–23; CL, 490, 494.

  3 Cohen, John Evelyn Barlas, 111–16.

  4 H. H. Champion, ‘Wilde As I Saw Him’, Booklover (Melbourne), 1 December 1914.

  5 Guy & Small, 106; Sherard, Real, 295; the source says OW had ‘just crossed from Ireland’, but this seems unlikely.

  6 Ricketts, 35.

  7 JFW to OW, in Tipper, Oscar, 134; CL, 513–15.

  8 CL, 518; Pearson, 222; Kaplan, ‘A Puppet’s Power’, 72.

  9 ‘Music and Drama’, Glasgow Herald, 15 February 1892.

  10 CL, 518–20.

  11 CL, 520; James G. Nelson, The Early Nineties (1971), 199; Ernest Poole (editor of the Star) to OW, 16 February 1892 (Mark Samuels Lasner/Delaware); the original article in the Star appeared on 6 February 1892, the retraction on 15 February.

  12 Holland, 133–43; Hyde, Trials, 212–16, 296. Although, at his trial, OW was eventually found ‘not guilty’ in relation to this supposed incident, on technical grounds, the probability of a sexual relationship between the two men seems very strong. It was certainly assumed (or known) by John Lane, Richard Le Gallienne, John Gray and others. The suggested date of this incident – on OW’s indictment – was 20 February 1892. But, as this was the night of the premiere of LWF, it is clearly impossible. Wilde’s own memory was that he first had ‘supper’ with Shelley about ‘the beginning of March’.

  13 Harris, 77.

  14 Holland, 231+n; the ‘friend’ was designated as ‘Mr B’ in a letter from Shelley to OW read out in court. Holland suggests that he may have been the young actor Sydney Barraclough. But OW mentioned ‘being on terms of the most intimate friendship’ with the family of the ‘cultivated’ Mr B. There is no evidence that OW knew Sydney Barraclough’s family. They came from Yorkshire. A more plausible candidate might be Aubrey Boucicault, the twenty-two-year-old son of Dion Boucicault, who was just starting on a theatrical career. Dion Boucicault (senior) had died in 1890.

  15 CL, 517–21.

  16 Robertson, Time Was, 135–6; Schroeder, 122, on the identification of the florist as Goodyear in the Royal Arcade, and the character wearing the flower being ‘Cecil Graham’. The ‘dyeing’ of flowers had been pioneered in the late 1880s by British chemist Alfred Nesbit (elder brother of the author and sometime contributor to WW, Edith Nesbit). According to contemporary reports, during 1891, the supporters of one of the French political parties had designated themselves by wearing ‘green carnations’. And it was supposed by some that Wilde had become familiar with the blooms while in the French capital. Charles Nelson, ‘Beautiful Untrue Things’, Wildean, 48 (2016), 96–103.

  17 ‘By our Special “First Nighter”, PMG, 22 February 1892; ‘Society Gossip’, Preston Guardian, 27 February 1892. Louise Jopling, Twenty Years of My Life (1925), 81.

  18 Harris, 82–3; Robertson, Time Was, 135.

  19 H. James to Mrs Hugh Bell, [23 Feb 1892], in Leon Edel, ed., Henry James Letters (1981), 3:372–3.

  20 George Alexander’s account – given years later to Hesketh Pearson (and relayed by Hyde, Oscar, 174, and Ellmann, 346) presented the speech as a short and studied paradox – quite possibly prepared in advance. But the contemporary press accounts attest to its impromptu nature, and slightly rambling form, brought to a smart conclusion. See: Morning Post, 22 February 1892; Era, 27 February 1892; ‘Our London Letter’, Dundee Courier & Argus, 22 February 1892; The Sunday Times, 21 February 1892; ‘Last Night’s Theatricals’, Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 21 Feb 1891; ‘By our Special “First Nighter”’, PMG, 22 February 1892; Glasgow Herald, 22 February 1892.

  21 Manchester Guardian, 22 February 1892.

  22 Oswald Crawfurd, ‘A Contributor’s Opinion’, PMG, 22 February 1892.

  23 Standard, 22 February 1892.

  24 Coulson Kernahan, ‘Oscar Wilde As I Knew Him’, ts 21 (Clark).

  25 Kaplan, ‘A Puppet’s Power’, 59–73. See: PMG, 22 February, 1892; Birmingham Daily Post, 22 February 1892; Glasgow Herald, 22 February 1892, etc. CL, 521–2; The decision to alter the scene seems to have been made on, or soon after, the opening night. See Era, 27 February 1892: ‘On the fall of curtain Mr Wilde acknowledged that from the point of view of holding the attention of the audience riveted on the characters and exciting sympathy, Mr Alexander’s view had been entirely the right one.’

  26 JFW to OW, [26 February 1892], in Tipper, Oscar, 138; although JFW was not at the first night she certainly saw the play, going – probably not for the first time – in a party with OW’s old friend Julia Ward Howe, who came over to London that summer. L. E. Richards, M. H. Elliott and F. H. Hall, Julia Ward Howe (1916), 2:168; CL, 524–7; Longford, A Pilgrimage of Passion, 295; Harris, 83; Pearson, 225; Ellmann, 347.

  27 PMG, 25 February 1892; ‘Our London Correspondence’, Glasgow Herald, 9 March 1892.

  28 Raffalovich/Michaelson, 111.

  29 Standard, 22 February 1892; PMG, 23 February 1892; Guy & Small, 107–8. Some of OW’s receipts are preserved at the Clark: for the weeks ending 11 March 1892: £43 15s 1d; 25 March 1892: £46 12s 5d; 13 April 1892: £36 17s 11d; and 8 June 1892: £
48 1s 11d. Moyle, 210; CMW to Mrs Fitch, 14 September 1892 (Clark).

  30 Harris, 83, records Ada Leverson writing in praise of LWF in Punch ‘of all places in the world’. The anonymous ‘A Wilde “Tag” to a Tame Play’, accompanied by a caricature by Bernard Partridge, was the magazine’s only comment on the play (besides a short poem and an even shorter paragraph about ‘Mr George Alexander running Wilde at the St James’s Theatre’). Leverson later told Osbert Sitwell that she had met Wilde because he had been amused by an anonymous skit on Dorian Gray that she had written in Punch – and, on seeking a meeting, he had been amazed to discover that the author of the piece was a woman. But this would seem to be a false memory, as Leverson’s first parody mentioning Dorian Gray (‘New Year’s Eve at Latterday Hall’) did not appear in Punch until December 1893, by which time her friendship with Wilde was well established. Perhaps it was an anonymous skit on LWF that had piqued Wilde’s curiosity. And perhaps ‘A Wilde “Tag” to a Tame Play’ was that skit. Julie Speedie, Wonderful Sphinx (1993), 33–4.

  31 Harris, 100.

  32 O’Sullivan, 169; H. M. Hyde, ‘Prefatory Note’ to Stuart Merrill, ts ‘Oscar Wilde’ (Clark); Wilde’s March/April visit to Paris (attested by a several entries in Pierre Louÿs’ diary, and a letter to Paul Valéry, 14 April 1892 in Peter Fawcett and Pascal Mercier, eds, Correspondances A Trois Voix (Paris, 2004), 581–2) is previously unrecorded. Interestingly, Joseph Donohue posited the possibility of such a visit in his excellent account of the complex relationship of the various surviving Salomé manuscripts, and their corrections, given at OET V, 337–8; P. Louÿs to OW, 22 May 1892 (Austin).

  33 Jimmy Glover, His Book (1911), 37. Glover had initially been collaborating with Chance Newton on a skit to be called ‘Lady Windowblind Fin-de-Siécle’ (PMG, 8 March 1892) but then joined forces with Hawtrey and Brookfield; Charles Brookfield, The Poet and the Puppets: A Travestie Suggested by Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892).

  34 Pearson, 246–7.

  35 The Artist and Journal of Home Culture, 1 June 1892; Standard, 20 May 1892; Hermann Vezin to OW, 24 June 1892 (Clark); Proceedings at the Forty-Seventh Anniversary Festival of the Royal General Theatrical Fund (1892) (Berg). I have converted the reported text from the past to the present tense.