Sherard, Robert Harborough. The Real Oscar Wilde. London: T. Werner Laurie, 1916.
———,. The Story of an Unhappy Friendship. London: Hermes, 1902.
Sinfield, Alan. The Wilde Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde and the Queer Moment. London: Caswell, 1994.
Small, Ian. Oscar Wilde Revalued: An Essay on New Materials and Methods of Research. Greensboro, N.C.: ELT Press, 1993.
Snodgrass, Chris. Aubrey Beardsley: Dandy of the Grotesque. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Stokes, John. In the Nineties. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.
———,. Oscar Wilde: Myths, Miracles, and Imitations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Sturgis, Matthew. Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook, 1998.
Weintraub, Stanley. Reggie: A Portrait of Reginald Turner. New York: Braziller, 1965.
Worth, Katharine. Oscar Wilde. New York: Grove, 1983.
PHOTOGRAPHIC AND ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
13.1 SIR WILLIAM WILDE: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
13.2 LADY WILDE: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
13.3 OSCAR AS A CHILD: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
13.4 MOYTURA HOUSE: Author photo.
13.5 WILDE IN 1876: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
13.6 WILDE IN 1878: Courtesy of Merlin Holland.
13.7 WILDE WITH COLLEGE FRIENDS: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
13.8 WILDE’S SKETCH OF FLORENCE BALCOMBE: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center Art Collection, the University of Texas at Austin.
13.9 FLORENCE BALCOMBE: Courtesy of Ann Dobbs.
13.10 VIOLET HUNT: Wallis Collection.
13.11 LILLIE LANGTRY: Library of Congress.
13.12 SARAH BERNHARDT: Library of Congress.
WILDE IN 1881: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
13.14 PROGRAM FOR PATIENCE: Private collection.
13.15 CARTOON BY GEORGE DU MAURIER: Punch, Feb. 12, 1881.
13.16 CARTOON BY GEORGE DU MAURIER: Punch, Oct. 30, 1880.
13.17 WILDE IN FUR COAT: Photograph by Napoleon Sarony, Library of Congress.
13.18 WILDE IN HAT AND CAPE: Photograph by Napoleon Sarony, Library of Congress.
13.19 WI LDEIN I 884: Courtesy of Christie’s, London.
13.20 WILDE IN 1889: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
13.21 ROBBIE Ross: Courtesy of Robert Baldwin Robertson.
13.22 JOHN GRAY: From In the Dorian Mode: A Life of John Gray, by Brocard Sewell (Pad-stow, Cornwall: Tabb House, 1983).
13.23 THE WOMAN’S WORLD: August 1888.
13.24 CONSTANCE WILDE AND CYRIL: Courtesy of Merlin Holland.
13.25 WILDE AND BOSIE: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
13.26 HAYMARKET THEATRE PROGRAM: Private collection.
13.27 BABBACOMBE CLIFF: Author photo.
13.28 ST. JAMES’S THEATRE: From The St. James’s Theatre: Its Strange and Complete History, by Barry Duncan (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1964).
13.29 CARICATURE BY ALFRED BRYAN: The Entr’acte, Sept. 1, 1883.
13.30 CARICATURE BY BERNARD PARTRIDGE: Punch, March 5, 1892.
13.31 WILDE IN 1892: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
13.32 FRONTISPIECE: From Salome by Oscar Wilde (London: The Bodley Head, 1894).
13.33 BOSIE IN 1893: From The Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas (London: Martin Seeker, 1929); courtesy of Sheila Colman.
13.34 REGGIE TURNER: From Letters to Reggie Turner, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1964).
13.35 FRONT PAGE: The Illustrated Police News, May 4, 1895.
13.36 CAFE DES TRIBUNAUX: Courtesy of the Oscar Wilde Society.
13.37 ERNEST DOWSON: From Ernest Dowson by Mark Longaker (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1945).
13.38 AUBREY BEARDSLEY: Frederick H. Evans photograph, reproduced with permission, from Beardsley: A Biography, by Stanley Weintraub (New York: Braziller, 1967).
13.39 WILDE AND BOSIE IN 1897: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
13.40 WILDE IN 1900: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
13.41 HOTEL D’ALSACE: Courtesy of Merlin Holland.
13.42 WILDE ON DEATHBED: Photograph by Maurice Gilbert, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
13.43 WILDE’S GRAVE AT BAGNEUX: Courtesy of Merlin Holland.
13.44 JACOB EPSTEIN’S MONUMENT: Author photo.
Sir William Wilde.(photo credit 13.1)
Lady Wilde in her late fifties.(photo credit 13.2)
Oscar in blue velvet and lace at age two.(photo credit 13.3)
Moytura House, overlooking Lough Corrib, in County Mayo, where the Wildes spent vacations.(photo credit 13.4)
Wilde as an undergraduate at Magdalen College, Oxford.(photo credit 13.5)
In 1878, his last year at Oxford.(photo credit 13.6)
With his best friends, Reginald “Kitten” Harding, left, and William “Bouncer” Ward.(photo credit 13.7)
Wilde did this pencil sketch of Florence Balcombe, his first love, in 1877. It is the most impressive example of his talents as an artist to survive.(photo credit 13.8)
Florence, or Florrie, around the age of seventeen, when she and Wilde first met. He said she had the “most perfectly beautiful face” he had ever seen.(photo credit 13.9)
Violet Hunt, left, followed Florence in Wilde’s affections. She was also seventeen, and “the sweetest Violet in England,” he said.(photo credit 13.10)
Lillie Langtry, the luminous beauty from the Isle of Jersey, was the mistress of the Prince of Wales before she became a famous actress. Wilde called her “the loveliest woman in Europe.”(photo credit 13.11)
Sarah Bernhardt, Wilde said, was one of the three women he most wanted to marry. Langtry and Queen Victoria were the other two.(photo credit 13.12)
Program for Patience at the Savoy Theatre.(photo credit 13.14)
The aesthetic craze inspired numerous Punch cartoons by George Du Maurier. In this scene, below, the character of Maudle resembles Wilde.(photo credit 13.15)
While at Oxford, Wilde remarked that he worried about living up to his blue china. By the time he arrived in London, the aspiration was a fashionable concern.(photo credit 13.16)
Napoleon Sarony photographed Wilde in twenty-seven poses before his American lecture tour in 1882. Wilde loved his oversize fur-trimmed coat.(photo credit 13.17)
Wilde often made a dramatic stage entrance by swirling his cape.(photo credit 13.18)
Sporting a short, curly hairstyle, Wilde was photographed in 1884 on the Isle of Wight, during a provincial lecture tour.(photo credit 13.19)
Wilde in 1889. The portrait is inscribed to Arthur Fish, his assistant editor at The Woman’s World.(photo credit 13.20)
Robert Ross, or Robbie, below, as he looked in the early 1890s.(photo credit 13.21)
John Gray, whom Wilde honored by using his surname for The Picture of Dorian Gray.(photo credit 13.22)
The title page of volume two of The Woman’s World, August 1888.(photo credit 13.23)
Constance Wilde with her firstborn, Cyril, in 1889, when he was five.(photo credit 13.24)
Wilde and Bosie photographed at Oxford in the spring of 1893.(photo credit 13.25)
Program for the Haymarket Theatre, where A Woman of No Importance and An Ideal Husband opened.(photo credit 13.26)
Babbacombe Cliff, above, in Torquay. The black studio, at right, was called Wonderland. There Wilde worked on A Woman of No Importance and Salomé.(photo credit 13.27)
F
açade of the St. James’s Theatre in King Street, where Lady Windermere’s Fan and The Importance of Being Earnest were first performed.(photo credit 13.28)
Following the failure in New York of Wilde’s first play, Vera, The Entr’acte depicted brother Willie, the critic, consoling him.(photo credit 13.29)
Following the success of Lady Windermere’s Fan, Punch mocked Wilde for smoking onstage during his curtain speech.(photo credit 13.30)
Wilde in 1892, when he made his name as a playwright.(photo credit 13.31)
Frontispiece, below, by Aubrey Beardsley for the English edition of Salome, with a caricature of Wilde’s face and a carnation in the moon.(photo credit 13.32)
Bosie photographed in Cairo at the age of twenty-four.(photo credit 13.33)
Reginald “Reggie” Turner.(photo credit 13.34)
The front page of The Illustrated Police News for May 4, 1895, depicting the end of the libel trial brought by Wilde against the Marquess of Queensberry. In the bottom right corner is 16 Tite Street.(photo credit 13.35)
A nineteenth-century postcard of the Café des Tribunaux in Dieppe, where Wilde took his evening aperitif.(photo credit 13.36)
Ernest Dowson, poet and fellow absinthe lover, left, frequently saw Wilde in Dieppe.(photo credit 13.37)
Aubrey Beardsley at first evaded Wilde in Dieppe, but then went shopping with him for a hat.(photo credit 13.38)
Wearing boaters, Wilde and Bosie pose together in Naples during the summer of 1897.(photo credit 13.39)
When Wilde went to Rome in April 1900, above, he had seven audiences with Pope Leo XIII. He bought a camera and had his picture taken at St. Peter’s.(photo credit 13.40)
The Hôtel d’Alsace on the rue des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where Wilde lived intermittently from 1898 until his death on November 30, 1900.(photo credit 13.41)
Wilde photographed on his deathbed by Maurice Gilbert, one of his closest friends during his last years in Paris. The flock wallpaper that he hated so much is faintly visible in the background.(photo credit 13.42)
Jacob Epstein’s monument in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, where Wilde’s remains were transferred from Bagneux in 1909.(photo credit 13.43)
Oscar Wilde’s first grave, at Bagneux, left.(photo credit 13.44)
To Debarah and Pino
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people contributed to this book, but two deserve special mention: my daughter, Deborah, who urged me to write it despite contradictory views that there was nothing more to say about Oscar Wilde, and Karl Beckson, whose encyclopedic knowledge of Wilde was a constant source of inspiration. Professor Beckson read a first draft and provided invaluable criticism, from which I have greatly profited. Another reader was Miles Merwin, who delighted in pouncing on anachronisms.
My research would have been impossible without the cooperation and intelligence of Merlin Holland, Wilde’s grandson, executor of his estate, and a Wilde scholar. I appreciate his permission to quote from the letters of Lady Wilde and Constance Wilde. I am grateful to Sheila Colman, executor of Lord Alfred Douglas’s estate, for permission to quote from his works.
I owe thanks to many people and institutions for their help and encouragement during the five years that it took to complete this biography. I am indebted to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles, the repository for most of Wilde’s letters and manuscripts, where I was a research fellow. Special thanks to Suzanne Tatian and Stephen Tabor, who know so much about the Wilde collection there, and those who assisted them during my stay: Donai O’Sullivan, Renee Chin, and Nissa Perez. My research was facilitated by the wonderful staff at Columbia University’s Butler Library, particularly the interlibrary loan department.
Beyond the Clark Library, I consulted material at the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection at the New York Public Library; J. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; Fales Rare Book Library, New York University; Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin; Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Princeton University Library; Trinity College Library, Dublin; National Library of Ireland, Dublin; Reading University Library; the Ross Collection at the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the British Library, and the Theatre Museum, London.
Other people have helped me in various ways, and I wish to acknowledge the kindness of Neil Bartlett, Professor Richard Blood, Maureen Borland, Bryan Cannon, Professor Masalino d’Amico, Philip Hoare, Mark Samuels Lasner, Joy Melville, and Mary Ellen Noonan. During my research and travel, I enjoyed much hospitality. I would like to thank Joan and Robert Cook, Jean and Sidney Engle, and Berthe and Alf Wallis. And a special salute to those animal companions—Maddie, Oscar, and Duse—without whom no writer can survive. Gratitude to my British editor at Bloomsbury, Rosemary Davidson, who contributed valuable suggestions and clarification. Words cannot express my appreciation to my agent, Geri Thoma, for her enthusiasm and support, and to my editor at Random House, Robert Loomis, whose courtly manners and unerring judgment are legendary.
NOTES
The main repositories of material on Oscar Wilde’s life and on the history of his plays are the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at the University of California, Los Angeles; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection at the New York Public Library; J. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; Fales Rare Book Library, New York University; Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin; Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia; Trinity College Library, Dublin; National Library of Ireland, Dublin; and the Theatre Museum, London.
The following short titles are used frequently in the notes:
America: Lloyd Lewis and Henry Justin Smith, Oscar Wilde Discovers America (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936).
Clark: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Critic: Oscar Wilde, The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde, ed. Richard Ellmann (New York: Random House, 1969).
Dorian: Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ed. Peter Ackroyd (London: Penguin Classics, 1985).
Ellmann: Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde (New York: Knopf, 1988).
Fiction: Oscar Wilde, Complete Shorter Fiction, ed. Isobel Murray (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).
Intentions: Oscar Wilde, Intentions (New York: Brentano’s, 1907).
Letters: Oscar Wilde, The Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962).
Mason: Stuart Mason, Bibliography of Oscar Wilde (London: Werner Laurie, 1914).
Mikhail: Oscar Wilde: Interviews and Recollections, ed. B. H. Mikhail, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1979).
More Letters: Oscar Wilde, More Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis (New York: Vanguard, 1985).
NLI: National Library of Ireland.
Plays: Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays, ed. Peter Raby (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Poetry: Oscar Wilde, Complete Poetry, ed. Isobel Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
Reading: University of Reading Library, Reading, England.
Trials: Famous Trials: Oscar Wilde, ed. H. Montgomery Hyde (1948; reprint, London: Penguin, 1962).
Writings: Oscar Wilde, De Profundis and Other Writings, introduction by Heskem Pearson (London: Penguin Classics, 1986).
Yeats: W. B. Yeats, Autobiographies (London: Macmillan, 1955).
INTRODUCTION
1 “one duty we owe.” Intentions, “The Critic as Artist,” pt. 1, p. 128.
CHAPTER ONE: LORD OF LIFE
1 “I made art.” Letters, p. 466.
2 “There is nothing.” Plays, A Woman of No Importance, p. 131.
3 “Everyone is good.” Clark, unidentified newspaper clipping.
4 “The public is wonderfully tolerant.” Intentions, “The Critic as Artist,” pt. 1, p. 95.
5 “My name has two O’s.” Coulson Kernahan, In Good Company: Some Personal Recollections (London: John Lane,
1915), p. 208.
6 “He is to be called.” Reading, Jane Elgee Wilde to unnamed correspondent, Nov. 22, 1854.
7 “Names are everything.” Dorian, p. 231.
8 “I envy those men.” Yeats, p. 87.
9 “The soul is born old.” Plays, A Woman of No Importance, p. 111.
10 “How ridiculous of you.” Kernahan, In Good Company, p. 208.
11 “the infamous St. Oscar.” Letters, p. 720.
12 “Man is least himself.” Intentions, “The Critic as Artist,” pt. 2, p. 185.
13 “One should never trust.” Plays, A Woman of No Importance, p. 110.
14 “was the first.” R.G.F. Jenkins and G. O. Simms, Pioneers and Partners: William Maturin and Henry Hogan (Dublin: privately published, 1985), p. 80.
15 “the acknowledged voice.” NLI, Lady Wilde to Lotten von Kraemer, Mar. 19, 1859.
16 “I, and I alone.” C. J. Hamilton, Notable Irishwomen (Dublin: Sealy Bryers and Walker, 1909), p. 181.
17 “this German romance.” Edmund Gosse, Leaves and Fruit (New York: Scribner’s, 1927), p. 195.
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