Oscar

by Sturgis, Matthew;

  41 LAD to More Adey, 15 Oct 1897 (BL).

  42 LAD, Autobiography, 158, says ‘house opposite’; ‘Arnoldo de Lisle’ (G. G. Rocco) names it as the Hotel della Riviera di Chiaja. Miracco, Verso il Sole, 35.

  43 LAD to More Adey, 15 October 1897 (BL).

  44 Borelli, Esperia, in Miracco, Verso il Sole, 46–7.

  45 LAD, Autobiography, 158.

  46 LAD, Autobiography, 158.

  47 LAD to More Adey, 15 October 1897 (BL).

  48 CL, 944, 952; also Harris, 252.

  49 CL, 949.

  50 CL, 946.

  51 CL, 950.

  52 CL, 953.

  53 CL, 996.

  54 LAD, Autobiography, 156.

  55 CL, 947.

  56 RR to Smithers, 17 April 1898, CL, 1055n.

  57 CL, 957.

  58 LAD, Autobiography, 158. Douglas’s unpublished poem contained the line, ‘Into the dreadful town through iron doors, / By empty stairs and barren corridors.’

  59 CL, 996.

  60 CL, 950.

  61 CL, 959.

  62 CL, 956.

  63 Norman Douglas, Looking Back (1936), 461–2. Douglas suggests that the first false report appeared in Il Mattino, but it seems to have been in the Corriere di Napoli. That certainly was where it was corrected on 11 October 1897, 1.

  64 Star, 9 October 1897; La Patrie, quoted in Star, 14 October 1897; Douglas, Looking Back, 461–2.

  65 According to Miracco, Verso il Sole, 32, OW was mentioned in Naples Echo, Journal des Etrangers, Captain Fracassa, Corriere di Napoli and Il Mattino.

  66 Il Mattino, 7/8 October 1897, p. 1.

  67 ‘Arnoldo de Lisle’ quoted in Miracco, Verso il Sole, 35.

  68 Il Pugnolo parlamentare, 9–10 October, 1897, reprinted in Miracco, Verso il Sole, 30–3. For an English translation see Masolino D’Amico, ‘Oscar Wilde in Naples’, in Sandulescu, ed., Rediscovering Oscar Wilde, 79.

  69 Il Mattino, 7 October 1897, 1.

  70 CL, 950.

  71 ‘Arnaldo de Lisle’, in Miracco, Verso il Sole, 35.

  72 CL, 955.

  73 CL, 962.

  74 Comoedia, 21 April 1923, in Miracco, Verso il Sole, 35–7; a fictionalized echo of this incident also appears in Roger Peyrefitte’s novel, L’Exile de Capri (1959).

  75 LAD to Lady Queensberry, quoted in Bengt Jangfeld, The Road to San Michele (2008), 157.

  76 Comoedia, 21 April 1923, in Miracco, Verso il Sole, 35–7.

  77 CL, 965.

  78 CL, 965.

  79 Leonard Green to Charles Kains Jackson, 11 August 1919, quoted in Wintermans, Alfred Douglas, 88.

  80 Harry de Windt, My Restless Life (1909), 232; LAD, Autobiography, 154.

  81 Wintermans, Alfred Douglas, 88; LAD, Autobiography, 154.

  82 CL, 950; G. G. Rocco had edited the literary magazine Stenna Margherita in 1894. Although OW referred to him as a ‘poet’, he does not appear to have published a volume of poems.

  83 Rita Severi, ‘“Astonishing in my Italian”: Oscar Wilde’s First Italian Editions’, in Evangelista, ed., The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe, 109.

  84 CL, 959.

  85 CL, 961.

  86 A contract letter was deposited with the Neapolitan notary, Sodano, dated 25 October 1897: ‘Dear Mr Rocco, I authorize you with great pleasure to translate and arrange for the performance of my play Salomé on the Italian stage. Oscar Wilde.’ Rita Severi, ‘Astonishing in my Italian’, 111.

  87 CL, 959.

  88 CL, 967–8.

  89 CL, 959.

  90 ‘Arnaldo de Lisle’, quoted in Miracco, Verso il Sole, 55–6.

  91 Severi, ‘Astonishing in my Italian’, 111.

  92 CL, 958.

  93 Baedeker Southern Italy (1896 edition), 67–8.

  94 CL, 958.

  95 A. Sper, Capri Und Die Homosexuellen (1902), quoted in Robert Aldrich, The Seduction of the Mediterranean (1993), 163.

  96 R. Ross, ‘Statement of Evidence in His Case Against Douglas’ (Clark).

  97 Harris, 300.

  98 Miracco, Verso il Sole, 23; CL, 979; 1118.

  99 Miracco, Verso il Sole, 23; CL, 967. Nothing is known of the Falstaffian ‘Sir John’ Ashton, though he is perhaps the mysterious ‘X’ in LAD’s comically coded letter to the secretive George Ives: ‘We met a charming fellow here yesterday. I wonder if you know him; his name is X and he lives at Z. He was obliged to leave R on account of a painful scandal involving H & T.’ LAD to George Ives, 22 October 1897 (Clark).

  100 ‘Arnoldo de Lisle’ in Miracco, Verso il Sole, 35.

  101 Miracco, Verso il Sole, 39.

  102 LAD, Oscar Wilde and Myself, 127–8.

  103 CL, 976.

  104 CL, 978, 981.

  105 LAD to Edward Strangman, 29 November 1897, in Ellmann, 520.

  106 CL, 968.

  107 CL, 971.

  108 CL, 978.

  109 CL, 976.

  110 CL, 981, 990.

  111 CL, 971.

  112 CL, 980.

  113 CL, 972.

  114 CL, 953.

  115 CL, 954, 957; 966.

  116 James G. Nelson, Publisher to the Decadents (2000), 181–2.

  117 CL, 972.

  118 CL, 975.

  119 CL, 984.

  120 CL, 994–5, 965, 959.

  121 CL, 988, 969, 983.

  122 CL, 1003.

  123 CL, 984.

  124 CL, 1011.

  125 CL, 973.

  126 RR to Leonard Smithers, 16 November 1897 (Fales).

  127 CL, 956; Publisher to the Decadents, 200–1.

  128 Harris, 252.

  129 LAD to Lady Queensberry, 7 December 1897, quoted in Wintermans, Alfred Douglas, 90.

  130 LAD, Autobiography, 154.

  131 V. O’Sullivan to A. J. A. Symons, [?1932] (Clark).

  132 Harris, 252.

  133 Harris 252–3; Miracco, Verso il Sole, 39.

  134 CL, 1004.

  135 CL, 979, 995.

  136 Percy Douglas to LAD, BL RP 5487.

  137 LAD to Edward Strangman, in Ellmann, 520.

  138 CL, 991.

  139 LAD to Edward Strangman, in Ellmann, 520.

  140 Lady Queensberry to M. Adey, 18 December 1897 (Clark).

  141 LAD to Lady Queensberry, 7 December 1897, in Hyde, LAD, 117.

  142 CL, 997.

  143 CL, 983.

  144 CL, 1003.

  145 CL, 993.

  146 R. Croft-Cooke, Bosie, 163–4: LAD, having learnt that Ross had expressed a doubt to Smithers about whether the US serial rights would have any value, had written to a common friend (More Adey) claiming that Ross was trying to prevent Wilde earning money from the poem.

  147 CL, 1006.

  Chapter 4: Bitter Experience

  1 CL, 998; Joseph Francis Daly, The Life of Augustin Daly (1917), 626; OW hoped for ‘£100 down, and £100 for each completed act’.

  2 CL, 961; 969, 976.

  3 CL, 958. A letter from L. Smithers to OW, 26 January 1898 (Bodleian), stating ‘I hear that you are within an ace of completing your play, “Pharaoh”’ seems to have been based on an over-optimistic report.

  4 ‘Arnoldo de Lisle’ (G. G. Rocco), quoted in Miracco, Verso il Sole, 23. The anecdote recorded by Rocco related to LAD, trying to imitate OW’s ‘system’, taking too many pills, and becoming violently sick.

  5 CL, 972–3.

  6 CL, 1005–6; Severi, ‘Astonishing in my Italian’, 113. Chiara had a copy of Eugene Tardieu’s French translation (published in 1895) to start from; Wilde’s own copy, sent down to Naples with his other books from Berneval, was impounded awaiting a customs payment he was unable make. CL, 992, 1005. Chiara’s translation, Dorian Gray Dipinto, was finally published in 1905.

  7 CL, 992.

  8 Sturge Moore, ed., Self-Portrait, 137; D’Amico, ‘Oscar Wilde in Naples’, 80. She performed at the Teatro Mercadante in Suderman’s Magda and La Seconda Moglie (as Pinero’s The Second Mrs Tanqueray was known in Italy).

 
9 CL, 1006.

  10 Severi, ‘Astonishing in my Italian’, 11; Sturge Moore, ed., Self-Portrait, 137.

  11 ‘Arnaldo de Lisle’, quoted in Severi, ‘Astonishing in my Italian’, 111.

  12 Rocco’s translation was published in 1901 in Neapolitan journal Rassegna Italiana. The first Italian production of Salomé was on 30 December 1904 at the Teatro dei Filodrammatici, Milan. Severi, ‘Astonishing in my Italian’, 112.

  13 CL, 1006.

  14 O’Sullivan, 69–70.

  15 CL, 983; V. O’Sullivan to A. J. A. Symons [1932?] (Clark).

  16 O’Sullivan, 64.

  17 O’Sullivan, 161–2.

  18 RR, ‘Statement of evidence in his case against Douglas’ (Clark).

  19 Samuels, Bernard Berenson, 292. Blaydes, a twenty-five-year-old doctor and would-be philosopher, had been in Tuscany (where he had begun an affair with Mary Berenson, or Costelloe as she then still was) and was heading to North Africa when he stopped in Naples that December.

  20 Edwin Tribble, ed., A Chime of Words: The Letters of Logan Pearsall Smith (1984), 102; see also Samuels, Bernard Berenson, 292. ‘Rumour had it that Smithers was paying him a pension of sorts to write indecent books to sell at thirty or fifty pounds a copy.’ The rumours did not prevent Blaydes touching the ever-generous Wilde for a small loan. W. Blaydes to OW, 28 January 1898 (Clark).

  21 Samuels, Bernard Berenson, 292.

  22 Samuels, Bernard Berenson, 292; Tribble, ed., A Chime of Words, 102.

  23 Samuels, Bernard Berenson, 292.

  24 CL, 1008; OW’s friend may have been the photographer Baron Rudolf von Transéhe-Roseneck. There is a letter at the Clark from the Baron to OW (10 January 1898) reminding OW of their recent time together in Taormina, asking for the repayment of 1,000 lire that Wilde had borrowed in Naples, and mentioning ‘Guglielmo’ who speaks every day of a red silk handkerchief that Wilde had promised him.

  25 http://www.italiannotebook.com/local-interest/florence-trevelyan-taormina/.

  26 CL, 1032; Nicholas Frankel, Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years (2017), 165.

  27 See the not very reliable commemorative plaque outside the Hotel Victoria, Corso Umberto 81, Taormina. Among its various clear errors, it describes Wilde as staying a whole month in the town, and not leaving until 13 February. It also contains a quote from an otherwise unknown letter to LAD suggesting that they might come and live together in Taormina. But the Gloeden references may preserve local memories of Wilde’s visit.

  28 J. G. Nelson, Publisher to the Decadents, 199–200: after Miss Marbury deducted her commission and expenses, she sent a cheque for $88.59 to be divided equally between Wilde and Smithers.

  29 CL, 1011–12.

  30 CL, 1012–13 +n.

  31 L. Smithers to OW, 26 January 1898 (Bodleian); CL, 1013.

  32 Graham Greene, A Sort of Life (1971), 26.

  33 CL, 1013.

  34 W. Blaydes to OW, 28 January 1898 (Clark); CL, 1013.

  Part XI: The Teacher of Wisdom

  Chapter 1: The Parisian Temple of Pleasure

  1 Athenaeum, 12 February 1898.

  2 ‘New Poem by Oscar Wilde’, Reynolds’s Newspaper, 13 February 1898.

  3 Sunday Special, 13 February 1898, quoted in CL, 1030.

  4 G. S. Layard, Mrs Lynn Linton: Her Life, Letters, and Opinions (1901), 356.

  5 Ivor C. Treby, Binary Star (2006), 140; diary entry 3 April 1898.

  6 CL, 1019.

  7 Mason, 417; Karl Beckson, ed., Oscar Wilde: The Critical Heritage (1970), 211–22. RR to L. Smithers, ‘Saturday’ [1898] (Fales) also mentions ‘a favourable note about the Ballad’ on ‘page 57 of the current Outlook’ (Henley’s unfavourable review appeared on page 146, in the issue of 5 March 1898).

  8 CL, 1036.

  9 CL, 1037.

  10 CL, 1024, 1027; Laurence Housman’s brother, A. E. Housman, considered ‘parts’ of the poem ‘above Wilde’s average’ but suspected they had been written by LAD. Archie Burnett, ed., The Letters of A. E. Housman (2007), 2:77).

  11 CL, 1021; John Rothenstein, Summer’s Lease (1965), 145.

  12 Ross, ed., Robbie Ross – Friend of Friends, 50; CMW to Carlos Blacker, 4 February 1898 (BL); CMW to Carrie Blacker, 5 March 1898 (BL); Major Nelson, to whom Ross had sent a proof copy, was not entirely won by the poem. He wrote back: ‘I quite concur in your criticism and altho’ thinking some stanzas very fine am of the opinion that the work is not worthy of the writer’s best effort. It is a terrible mixture of good bad and indifferent.’ Though distressed to learn that ‘Mr. Wilde has not succeeded in rescuing himself completely from the slough of the past two years’, he had hopes that ‘we shall someday see something really worthy of so brilliant and so unique a pen’.

  13 Lily Wilde to More Adey, 14 March 1898 (Bodleian).

  14 CL, 1026.

  15 Mason, 420; J. G. Nelson, Publisher to the Decadents, 202.

  16 CL, 1045; 1053.

  17 CL, 1063; J. G. Nelson, Publisher to the Decadents, 207.

  18 J. G. Nelson, Publisher to the Decadents, 208; curiously the scheduled appearance of the poem in the New York Journal on 13 February never occurred. It seems that the sinking of a transatlantic steamship on the previous day had resulted in the clearing of the paper’s pages to give full coverage of the disaster. For copyright purposes Smithers did produce a special edition of just six copies in the US. G. F. Sims Catalogue No. 78. (March 1971), item 438.

  19 CL, 1022.

  20 P. Valéry to P. Louÿs, 31 March 1898, in Fawcett and Mercier, eds, Correspondances À Trois Voix, 852.

  21 David Charles Rose, Oscar Wilde’s Elegant Republic (2016); 415; Niederauer and Broche, eds, Henri de Régnier, 449, March 1898 entry.

  22 CL, 1079.

  23 CL, 1057; OW to Henry Davray [June 1897], (Christie’s sale 6973, 3 March 2004); CL, 1028; J. G. Nelson, Publisher to the Decadents, 208.

  24 RR to OW, ‘Monday evening’ [May 1898] (Clark).

  25 CL, 1030.

  26 CL, 1078, 1079; Georgette Leblanc, Souvenirs, My Life with Maeterlinck (1932), 127–8.

  27 Healy, Confessions of Journalist, 157, 165.

  28 CL, 1051.

  29 Maguire, 120–6.

  30 Healy, Confessions of a Journalist, 125–6.

  31 Maguire, 120.

  32 Maguire, 127.

  33 Healy, Confessions of a Journalist, 125, 136. Healy claims that Wilde refused to visit Zola ‘on the curious ground that Zola was a writer of immoral romances’. But given Wilde’s oft-stated views on art and morality this seems scarcely credible. His objection was far more likely to have been artistic.

  34 Ernest La Jeunesse, ‘Oscar Wilde’, Revue Blanche, 15 December 1900, in Maguire, 111.

  35 Vance Thompson, ‘Oscar Wilde: Last Dark Poisoned Days in Paris’, New York Sun, 18 January 1914, 18.

  36 Newman Flower, ed., The Journal of Arnold Bennett, 1896–1910 (1932), 215; CL, 1051 n1.

  37 Robert Sherard, Twenty Years in Paris (1905), 443; Healy, Confessions of a Journalist, 165.

  38 CL, 1105; 1019, 1044.

  39 CL, 1104.

  40 Harris, 300.

  41 CL, 1078, 1106, 1104.

  42 Harris, 269; Harris’s rather fanciful verbatim account of OW’s meeting with the ‘little soldier’ does not mention Gilbert by name, and although the dates he gives do not correspond exactly with references in OW’s letters, the identification seems all but certain.

  43 CL, 1030–1; Harris, 270.

  44 CL, 1036, 1041, 1037. On 15 March 1898 – a month after publication – he received a first modest cheque for £4.

  45 Maguire, 119; for 200 francs and 100 francs.

  46 CMW to Carrie Blacker, 26 March 1898 (BL RP 3291).

  47 CL, 1050.

  48 CL, 1038–9.

  49 CMW to Carlos Blacker, 20 March 1898, in Maguire, 119.

  50 CMW to Carrie Blacker, 26 March 1898 (BL RP 3291).

  51 Frank Harris to Henry Davray, 24 November 1926 (Austin).

 
52 LAD, Oscar Wilde, A Summing Up (1940), 100–1.

  53 CL, 1054, 1229; Maguire, 121, 127.

  54 Vyvyan Holland, Time Remembered after Père Lachaise (1966), 10–12, in Mikhail, 361–2.

  55 CL, 1040.

  56 CL, 1062; Robins, Oscar Wilde: The Great Drama of His Life, 101.

  57 CL, 1056.

  58 Stuart Merrill, ‘Oscar Wilde’, trans. H. M. Hyde (1912) (Clark); Vincent O’Sullivan to A. J. A. Symons, 26 October 1931 (Clark).

  59 O’Sullivan, 54.

  60 CL, 1058.

  61 CL, 1065; 1077–8.

  62 Noel Arnaud, Alfred Jarry (1974), 418.

  63 CL, 1057.

  64 Sherard, SUF, 263.

  65 CL, 1057; LAD, Oscar Wilde and Myself, 130.

  66 RR to L. Smithers, [April 1898] (Fales).

  67 CL, 1058.

  68 CL, 1066.

  69 RR to L. Smithers, [9 May 1898] (Fales).

  70 CL, 1090.

  71 Rowland Strong, Sensations of Paris (1912), 187.

  72 W. H. Chesson, in Mikhail, 377.

  73 Carlos Blacker’s visit was on 7 June; Maguire, 125; CL, 1085–6.

  74 H. Bauër to Carlos Blacker, 2 August 1898, in Maguire, 137. OW seems to have been unaware of Baüer’s animosity. In July 1899 he sent him a copy of AIH.

  75 Maguire, 150.

  76 CL, 1094, 1092, 1093.

  77 Conder to Mrs Dalhousie Young, quoted in Ellmann, 533.

  78 Conder to Mrs Dalhousie Young, quoted in Ellmann, 533.

  79 Kessler, Journey to the Abyss, 329.

  80 Conder to Mrs Dalhousie Young, quoted in Ellmann, 533; RR to Adela Schuster, CL, 1229.

  Chapter 2: Going South

  1 CL, 1028, 1080.

  2 CL, 1035.

  3 CL, 1068.

  4 RR to L. Smithers, 19[?] February 1898 (Fales).

  5 Ellmann, 528.

  6 CL, 1101.

  7 Wilfrid Hugh Chesson, ‘A Reminiscence of 1898’, Bookman, 34 (1911), in Mikhail, 376. Chesson’s Christian name is wrongly given as ‘Wilfred’.

  8 Chris Healy, in Mikhail, 385.

  9 W. H. Chesson, in Mikhail, 380.

  10 OW’s enthusiasm for absinthe was something new. In the early 1890s he had told Bernard Berenson that ‘absinthe has no message for me’. Samuels, Bernard Berenson, 155.