by Oscar Wilde
I have made a few light adjustments to punctuation so as to minimize unnecessary distractions, chiefly by replacing em dashes and semicolons with commas before directly quoted speech or text extracts, as well as by removing quotation marks from around the many text extracts in “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” The stories are printed here in order of their publication but not necessarily of their composition. Dates of publication are given in the annotations. Precise dates of composition are impossible to determine, although according to the unpublished memoirs of Harry Marillier, “The Happy Prince” was first conceived during a visit to Cambridge in late 1885; Wilde’s comment that the story “lingered in the manuscript chest” of the English Illustrated Magazine for eighteen months suggests that it was finished by late 1886 or early 1887.12 Wilde’s correspondence reveals, moreover, that “The Fisherman and His Soul” was begun in the autumn of 1889, as early as two months after the publication of “Mr. W. H.,” although Wilde soon put it aside in frustration, incomplete, in order to commence the composition of his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Finally, Horst Schroeder conjectures plausibly that the Blackwood’s version of “Mr. W. H.” was composed between January and April 1889. However, this is to ignore a letter to an unnamed correspondent, conjecturally dated October 1887 by the editors of Wilde’s correspondence and tentatively identified by them as addressed to a business manager at the New York Tribune, in which Wilde states “I am writing another story at present, and should be very pleased to forward you advance proofs should you care to publish it. The story is connected with Shakespeare’s Sonnets.”13
NOTES
1 Wilde published no fewer than nine articles in The Court and Society Review, including his often-anthologized essays “The American Invasion” and “The American Man,” as well as one poem and two short stories. For the warmth of his friendship with the magazine’s editor, Alsager Vian, see The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), 296, hereafter cited in annotations as CL. Similarly, he had published six times in The World prior to the publication of “Lady Alroy” and “The Model Millionaire.” In 1879 the editor of The World, Edmund Yates, harnessed Wilde’s name and reputation to the launch of a sister-magazine, Time, whose first number included Wilde’s poem “The Conqueror of Time.”
2 Frank Harris, Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions (2 vols. New York: Brentano’s, 1916), 1: 116. Wilde’s story was widely noticed upon its appearance in Blackwood’s, whose editor later told Wilde “I hope you have been pleased with the reaction your story has had” (quoted CL 405, n.3). The Pall Mall Gazette praised its “wonderful ingenuity,” adding that it “will amuse, if it does not convince, every student of Shakespeare” (Pall Mall Gazette, 29 June 1889, 1), while The Graphic commented on the “pleasant fictional guise” in which Wilde advanced “a new theory of Shakespeare’s sonnets.” The Daily News similarly praised Wilde’s story as advancing an “ingenious” and “plausible” theory about the sonnets, but The World found the subject “deeply unpleasant,” while the Scots Observer found Wilde’s story “out of place in Maga [Blackwood’s Magazine]—or, indeed, any popular magazine.” For a detailed discussion of the story’s reception, see Horst Schroeder, Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Mr. W. H.—Its Composition, Publication, and Reception (Braunschweig, 1984), 14–21.
3 In an unpublished sonnet titled “To Oscar Wilde, for his Fairy Tale in the Paris Illustré,” written shortly after the publication of “The Birthday of the Little Princess” in Paris Illustré, the poet Richard Le Gallienne writes of reading Wilde’s story “Here where a thousand eyes may read it too” (CL 397, n.1). By contrast, the 1891 republication of the story in A House of Pomegranates was “not a success” (Stuart Mason [Christopher Millard], Bibliography of Oscar Wilde [London: T. Werner Laurie, 1914], 369), with reviewers complaining about the book’s design and printing, and expressing uncertainty or skepticism about its capacity to hold child readers. Mason tells us that the book was remaindered in 1903 or 1904.
4 As Ian Small remarks, Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories was “not particularly successful.” (The Short Fiction, ed. Ian Small, vol. 8 of The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017], xlii). In United Ireland, Yeats announced that the collection “disappoints me,” while in The Academy, William Sharp wrote that the collection “will not add to [its] author’s reputation.”
5 John Stokes and Mark W. Turner, introduction to Journalism 1, vol. 6 of The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), xxx; P. D. Edwards, Dickens’s ‘Young men’: George Augustus Sala, Edmund Yates, and the World of Victorian Journalism (Brookfield, VT: Scolar Press, 1997), 139. Edwards states that The World was “courted by leading politicians and by other influential people” and that, besides Wilde, it published fiction by such admired writers as Walter Besant, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and Eliza Lynn Linton (139).
6 Regenia Gagnier, Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986), 121–122.
7 Stokes and Turner, introduction to Journalism 1, p. xii.
8 CL 249.
9 CL 264.
10 See Nils Clausen’s comment that “we must guard against being taken in by the narrator’s seemingly unequivocal pronouncement,” as well as his view of the story as an early exploration of the theme of the double life: “Lady Alroy does indeed have a secret—a sexual secret that the unnamed narrator purposefully conceals from Lord Murcheson” (“Lady Alroy’s Secret: ‘Surface and Symbol’ in Wilde’s ‘The Sphinx Without a Secret,’ ” The Wildean 28 [January 2006], 25).
11 The Short Fiction, ed. Ian Small, vol. 8 of The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
12 CL 385.
13 CL 325. This letter was first published in 2000, sixteen years after Horst Schroeder’s invaluable Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Mr. W. H.—Its Composition, Publication, and Reception. Ian Small makes no mention of it in his 2017 account of the composition of “Mr. W. H.,” where he accepts Schroeder’s conjecture about the date when composition began. For discussion of the composition and eventual publication of the story’s expanded version, begun as early as late 1889, see Schroeder, Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Mr. W. H.—Its Composition, Publication, and Reception, 22–42; and Small, introduction to The Short Fiction, ed. Small, liv–lxxxiii.
LORD ARTHUR SAVILE’S CRIME: A STORY OF CHEIROMANCY*
I
· · · IT WAS LADY WINDERMERE’S LAST RECEPTION before Easter, so Bentinck House was even more crowded than usual.1 Six Cabinet Ministers had come on from the Speaker’s Levée2 in their stars and ribands, all the pretty women wore their smartest dresses, and at the end of the picture-gallery stood the Princess Sophia of Carlsrühe, a heavy Tartar-looking woman, with tiny black eyes and wonderful emeralds, talking bad French at the top of her voice, and laughing immoderately at everything that was said to her. It was certainly a wonderful medley of people. Gorgeous peeresses chatted affably to violent Radicals, popular preachers brushed coat-tails with eminent sceptics, a perfect bevy of bishops followed a stout prima-donna from room to room, on the staircase stood several Royal Academicians, disguised as artists, and it was said that the supper-room was quite full of geniuses. In fact, it was one of Lady Windermere’s best nights, and the Princess stayed till nearly half-past eleven.3
As soon as she had gone, Lady Windermere returned to the picture-gallery, where a celebrated political economist was solemnly explaining the scientific theory of music to an indignant virtuoso from Hungary, and began to talk to the Duchess of Paisley. She looked wonderfully beautiful with her grand ivory throat, her large blue forget-me-not eyes, and her heavy coils of golden hair. Or pur 4 they were; not that pale straw colour that nowadays usurps the gracious name of gold, but such gold as
is woven into sunbeams, or hidden in strange amber; and they gave to her face something of the frame of a saint, with not a little of the fascination of a sinner. She was a curious psychological study. Early in life she had discovered the important truth that nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion; and by a series of reckless escapades, half of them quite harmless, she had acquired all the privileges of a personality. She had more than once changed her husband; indeed, Debrett5 credits her with three marriages; but as she had never changed her lover, the world had long ago ceased to talk scandal about her. She was now forty years of age, childless, and with that inordinate passion for pleasure which is the secret of remaining young.6
Suddenly she looked eagerly round the room, and said, in her clear contralto voice, “Where is my cheiromantist?”
“Your what, Gladys?” exclaimed the Duchess, giving an involuntary start.
“My cheiromantist, Duchess; I can’t live without him at present.”
“Dear Gladys! you are always so original,” murmured the Duchess, trying to remember what a cheiromantist really was, and hoping it was not the same as a cheiropodist.
“He comes to see my hand twice a week regularly,” continued Lady Windermere, “and is most interesting about it.”
“Good heavens!” said the Duchess to herself, “he is a sort of cheiropodist after all. How very dreadful. I hope he is a foreigner at any rate. It wouldn’t be quite so bad then.”
“I must certainly introduce him to you.”
“Introduce him!” cried the Duchess, “you don’t mean to say he is here?” and she began looking about for a small tortoise-shell fan and a very tattered lace shawl, so as to be ready to go at a moment’s notice.
“Of course he is here; I would not dream of giving a party without him. He tells me I have a pure psychic hand, and that if my thumb had been the least little bit shorter, I would have been a confirmed pessimist, and gone into a convent.”
“Oh, I see!” said the Duchess, feeling very much relieved, “he tells fortunes, I suppose?”
“And misfortunes, too,” answered Lady Windermere, “any amount of them. Next year, for instance, I am in great danger, both by land and sea, so I am going to live in a balloon, and draw up my dinner in a basket every evening. It is all written down on my little finger, or on the palm of my hand, I forget which.”
“But surely that is tempting Providence, Gladys.”
“My dear Duchess, surely Providence can resist temptation by this time. I think everyone should have their hands told once a month, so as to know what not to do. Of course, one does it all the same, but it is so pleasant to be warned. Now if someone doesn’t go and fetch Mr. Podgers at once, I shall have to go myself.”
“Let me go, Lady Windermere,” said a tall handsome young man, who was standing by, listening to the conversation with an amused smile.
“Thanks so much, Lord Arthur; but I am afraid you wouldn’t recognise him.”
“If he is as wonderful as you say, Lady Windermere, I couldn’t well miss him. Tell me what he is like, and I’ll bring him to you at once.”
“Well, he is not a bit like a cheiromantist. I mean he is not mysterious, or esoteric, or romantic-looking. He is a little, stout man, with a funny, bald head, and great gold-rimmed spectacles; something between a family doctor and a country attorney. I’m really very sorry, but it is not my fault. People are so annoying. All my pianists look exactly like poets, and all my poets look exactly like pianists; and I remember last season asking a most dreadful conspirator to dinner, a man who had blown up ever so many people,7 and always wore a coat of mail, and carried a dagger up his shirt-sleeve; and do you know that when he came he looked just like a nice old clergyman, and cracked jokes all the evening? Of course, he was very amusing, and all that, but I was awfully disappointed; and when I asked him about the coat of mail, he only laughed, and said it was far too cold to wear in England. Ah, here is Mr. Podgers! Now, Mr. Podgers, I want you to tell the Duchess of Paisley’s hand. Duchess, you must take your glove off. No, not the left hand, the other.”
“Dear Gladys, I really don’t think it is quite right,” said the Duchess, feebly unbuttoning a rather soiled kid glove.
“Nothing interesting ever is,” said Lady Windermere: “on a fait le monde ainsi.8 But I must introduce you. Duchess, this is Mr. Podgers, my pet cheiromantist. Mr. Podgers, this is the Duchess of Paisley, and if you say that she has a larger mountain of the moon than I have, I will never believe in you again.”
“I am sure, Gladys, there is nothing of the kind in my hand,” said the Duchess gravely.
“Your Grace is quite right,” said Mr. Podgers, glancing at the little fat hand with its short square fingers, “the mountain of the moon is not developed. The line of life, however, is excellent. Kindly bend the wrist. Thank you. Three distinct lines on the rascette! 9 You will live to a great age, Duchess, and be extremely happy. Ambition—very moderate, line of intellect not exaggerated, line of heart …”
“Now, do be indiscreet, Mr. Podgers,” cried Lady Windermere.
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure,” said Mr. Podgers, bowing, “if the Duchess ever had been, but I am sorry to say that I see great permanence of affection, combined with a strong sense of duty.”
“Pray go on, Mr. Podgers,” said the Duchess, looking quite pleased.
“Economy is not the least of your Grace’s virtues,” continued Mr. Podgers, and Lady Windermere went off into fits of laughter.
“Economy is a very good thing,” remarked the Duchess complacently, “when I married Paisley he had seventeen castles, and not a single house fit to live in.”
“And now he has seventeen houses, and not a single castle,” cried Lady Windermere.
“Well, my dear,” said the Duchess, “I like—”
“Comfort,” said Mr. Podgers, “and modern improvements, and hot water laid on in every bedroom. Your Grace is quite right. Comfort is the only thing our civilization can give us.”
“You have told the Duchess’s character admirably, Mr. Podgers, and now you must tell Lady Flora’s;” and a tall girl, with sandy Scotch hair, and high shoulder-blades, stepped awkwardly from behind the sofa, and held out a long, bony hand with spatulate fingers.
“Ah, a pianist! I see,” said Mr. Podgers, “an excellent pianist, but perhaps hardly a musician. Very reserved, very honest, and with a great love of animals.”
“Quite true!” exclaimed the Duchess, turning to Lady Windermere, “absolutely true! Flora keeps two dozen collie dogs at Macloskie, and would turn our town house into a menagerie if her father would let her.”
“Well, that is just what I do with my house every Thursday evening,” cried Lady Windermere, laughing, “only I like lions better than collie dogs.”10
“Your one mistake, Lady Windermere,” said Mr. Podgers, in a low voice.
“If a woman can’t make her mistakes charming, she is only a female. But you must read some more hands for us. Come, Sir Thomas, show Mr. Podgers yours;” and a genial-looking old gentleman, in a white waistcoat, came forward, and held out a thick rugged hand, with a very long third finger.
“An adventurous nature; four long voyages in the past, and one to come. Been shipwrecked three times. No, only twice, but in danger of a shipwreck your next journey. A strong Conservative, very punctual, and with a passion for collecting curiosities. Had a severe illness between the ages sixteen and eighteen. Was left a fortune when about thirty. Great aversion to cats and Radicals.”
“Extraordinary!” exclaimed Sir Thomas, “you must really tell my wife’s hand, too.”
“Your second wife’s,” said Mr. Podgers quietly, still keeping Sir Thomas’s hand in his. “Your second wife’s. I shall be charmed;” but Lady Marvel, a melancholy-looking woman, with brown hair and sentimental eyelashes, entirely declined to have her past or her future exposed, and nothing that Lady Windermere could do would induce Monsieur de Koloff, the Russian Ambassador, even to take his gloves off. In fact, ma
ny people seemed afraid to face the odd little man with his stereotyped smile, his gold spectacles, and his bright, beady eyes; and when he told poor Lady Fermor, right out before every one, that she did not care a bit for music, but was extremely fond of musicians, it was generally felt that cheiromancy was a most dangerous science, and one that ought not to be encouraged, except in a tête-à-tête.
Lord Arthur Savile, however, who did not know anything about Lady Fermor’s unfortunate story, and who had been watching Mr. Podgers with a great deal of interest, was filled with an immense curiosity to have his own hand read, and feeling somewhat shy about putting himself forward, crossed over the room to where Lady Windermere was sitting, and, with a charming blush, that he had never been quite able to get rid of since he had been at Eton,11 asked her if she thought Mr. Podgers would mind.
“Of course, he won’t mind,” said Lady Windermere, “that is what he is here for. All my lions, Lord Arthur, are performing lions, and jump through hoops whenever I ask them. But I must warn you beforehand that I shall tell Sybil everything. She is coming to lunch with me to-morrow, to talk about bonnets, and if Mr. Podgers finds out that you have a bad temper, or a tendency to gout, or a wife living in Bayswater,12 I shall certainly let her know all about it.”