oscar wilde a critical study by arthur ransome london martin secker number five john street adelphi mcmxii [illustration: oscar wilde. from the painting by harper pennington now in the possession of robert ross. esq.] _by the same author_ bohemia in london (sketches and essays), a history of story-telling, edgar allan poe, the hoofmarks of the faun, etc. copyright reserved in all countries signatory to the berne convention. the copyright of this book in russia is the property of the scorpion press, moscow to robert ross note i wish to thank mr. robert ross, wilde's literary executor, who has helped me in every possible way, allowed me to read many of the letters that wilde addressed to him, and given much time out of a very busy life to the verification, from documents in his possession, of the biographical facts included in my book. i wish to thank mr. walter ledger for much interesting information, and for the sight of many rare editions of wilde's books that made possible the correction of several bibliographical errors into which i had fallen. i wish to thank mr. martin secker for putting at my disposal his collection of late nineteenth-century literature. i wish to thank an anonymous author for lending me the proof-sheets of a forthcoming book, which will contain a full and accurate account of the legal proceedings for and against wilde. many of those who knew wilde have helped me, by letter or in conversation, with valuable reminiscence. i would thank, particularly, m. paul fort, m. remy de gourmont, m. stuart merrill, and mr. reginald turner. the texts of wilde's books that i have used throughout are these: messrs. methuen's limited edition of the works, and the five shilling edition issued by the same firm; mr. charles carrington's edition of _the picture of dorian gray_; mr. a. l. humphreys' edition of _the soul of man under socialism_; mr. david nutt's edition of _the happy prince and other tales_. to these, as to the best, and in some cases the only, editions easily accessible, i must refer my readers. much accurate observation is to be found in m. andré gide's "oscar wilde," published by the mercure de france, and the result of much laborious and useful research is embodied in mr. stuart mason's "bibliography of the poems of oscar wilde," published by mr. grant richards. permission to include many quotations has been granted by messrs. methuen and co., and mr. robert ross. contents page introductory biographical summary poems Æstheticism miscellaneous prose intentions the theatre disaster de profundis - afterthought i introductory gilbert, in 'the critic as artist,' complains that "we are overrun by a set of people who, when poet or painter passes away, arrive at the house along with the undertaker, and forget that their one duty is to behave as mutes. but we won't talk about them," he continues. "they are the mere body-snatchers of literature. the dust is given to one and the ashes to another, but the soul is out of their reach." that is not a warning lightly to be disregarded. no stirring up of dust and ashes is excusable, and none but brutish minds delight in mud-pies mixed with blood. i had no body-snatching ambition. impatient of such criticism of wilde as saw a law-court in _the house of pomegranates_, and heard the clink of handcuffs in the flowing music of _intentions_, i wished, at first, to write a book on wilde's work in which no mention of the man or his tragedy should have a place. i remembered that he thought wainewright, the poisoner and essayist, too lately dead[ ] to be treated in "that fine spirit of disinterested curiosity to which we owe so many charming studies of the great criminals of the italian renaissance." to-day it is wilde who is too near us to be seen without a blurring of perspectives. some day it will be possible to write of him with the ecstatic acquiescence that nietzsche calls _amor fati_, as we write of cæsar borgia sinning in purple, cleopatra sinning in gold, and roberto greene hastening his end by drab iniquity and grey repentance. but not yet. he only died a dozen years ago. i planned an artificial ignorance that should throw him to a distance where his books alone would represent him. i was wrong, of course. such wilful evasion would have been foolish in a contemporary critic of shelley, worse than foolish in a critic of wilde. an artist is unable to do everything for us. he gives us his work as a locked casket. sometimes the wards are very simple and all the world have keys to fit; sometimes they are intricate and subtle, and the casket is only to be opened by a few, though all may taste imperfectly the precious essences distilling through the hinges. sometimes, when our knowledge of an artist and of the conditions under which he wrote have been entirely forgotten, there are no keys, and the work of art remains a closed casket, like much early poetry, of which we can only say that it is cunningly made and that it has a secret. why do we try to pierce the obscurity that surrounds the life of shakespeare if not because an intenser (i might say a more accurate) enjoyment of his writings may be given us by a fuller knowledge of the existence out of which he wrote? it is for this that we study the elizabethan theatre, and print upon our minds a picture of the projecting stage, the gallants smoking pipes and straddling their stools, the flag waving from above the tiled roof. we would understand his technique, but, still more, while we lack directer evidence, we would use these hints about the furniture of his mind's eye in moments of composition. writers of wordsworth's generation realized, at least subconsciously, that a work of art is not independent of knowledge. they tried to help us by printing at the head of a poem information about the circumstances of its conception. when a poet tells us that a sonnet was composed "on westminster bridge," or "suggested by mr. westell's views of the caves, etc., in yorkshire," he is trying to ease for us the task of æsthetic reproduction to which his poem is a stimulus. there is a crudity about such obvious assistance, and it would be quite insufficient without the knowledge on which we draw unconsciously as we read. but the crudity of those pitiable little scraps of proffered information is not so remarkable as that of the presumptuous attempt to read a book as if it had fallen like manna from heaven, and that of the gross dullness of perception that can allow a man to demand of a poem or a picture that it shall itself compel him fully to understand it. to gain the privilege of a just appreciation of a man's books (if, indeed, such an appreciation is possible) we must know what place they took in his life, and handle the rough material that dictated even their most ethereal tissue. in the case of such a writer as wilde, whose books are the by-products of a life more important than they in his own eyes, it is not only legitimate but necessary for understanding to look at books and life together as at a portrait of an artist by himself, and to read, as well as we may, between the touches of the brush. it is not that there is profit in trying to turn works of art into biographical data, though that may be a fascinating pastime. it is that biographical data cannot do other than assist us in our understanding of the works of art. in any case, leaving on one side this question, admittedly subject to debate, it would have been ridiculous to study the writings alone of a man who said, not without truth, that he put his genius into his life, keeping only his talent for his books. i therefore changed my original intention, and, while concerned throughout with wilde as artist and critic rather than as criminal, read his biographers and talked with his friends that i might be so far from forgetting as continually to perceive behind the books the spectacle of the man, vividly living his life and filling it as completely as he filled his works with his strange and brilliant personality. it is too easy to talk glibly of the choice between life and literature. no choice can be made between them. the whole is greater than its part, and literature is at once the child and the stimulus of life, inseparable from it. but, beside art, life has other activities, all of which aspire to the self-consciousness that art makes possible. the artist himself, for all his gift of tongues, is not blinded by the descending light to the plastic qualities of the existence that fires his words and is itself intensified by his speech. he, too, moves in walled town or on the green earth, and has a little time in which to build two memories, one for his fellows, and another, a secret diary, to carry with him when he dies. in his life, his books or pictures or brave harmonies of music are but moments, notes of colour in a composition vital to himself. and when we speak so carelessly of a choice between life and literature, we do not mean a choice. we only compare the vividness of a man's whole life, as we perceive it, with that of those portions of it that he spent in books. sometimes we wonder which is more alive. in wilde's case we compare a row of volumes, themselves remarkable, with a life that was the occupation of an agile and vivid personality for which a cloistered converse with itself was not enough, a personality that loved the lights and the bustle, the eyes and ears of the world, and the applause that does not have to wait for print. wilde was a kind of wainewright, to whom his own life was very important. he saw art as self-expression and life as self-development. he felt that his life was material on which to practise his powers of creation, and handled it and brooded over it like a sculptor planning to make a dancing figure out of a pellet of clay. even after its catastrophe he was still able to speak of his life as of a work of art, as if he had seen it from outside. indeed, to a surprising extent, he had been a spectator of his own tragedy. in building his life his strong sense of the picturesque was not without admirable material, and he was able to face the street with a decorative and entertaining façade, which, unlike those of the palaces in genoa, was not contradicted by dullness within. he made men see him as something of a dandy among authors, an amateur of letters in contrast with the professional maker of books and plays. if he wrote books he did not allow people to presume upon the fact, but retained the status of a gentleman. at the court of queen joan of naples he would have been a rival to boccaccio, himself an adventurer. at the court of james he would have crossed "characters" with sir thomas overbury. in an earlier reign he would have corresponded in sonnets with sir philip sidney, played with euphuism, been very kind to jonson at the presentation of a masque, and never set foot in the mermaid. later, anthony hamilton might have been his friend, or with the earl of rochester he might have walked up long acre to belabour the watch without dirtying the fine lace of his sleeves. in no age would he have been a writer of the study. he talked and wrote only to show that he could write. his writings are mostly vindications of the belief he had in them while still unwritten. it pleased him to pretend that his plays were written for wagers. after making imaginary backgrounds for him, let us give him his own. this man, who would perhaps have found a perfect setting for himself in the italy of the renaissance, was born in . leigh hunt, de quincey, and macaulay were alive. wordsworth had only been dead four years. tennyson was writing "maud" and "the idylls of the king." borrow was wandering in wild wales and finishing "the romany rye." browning was preparing "men and women" for the press. dickens was the novelist of the day, and had half a dozen books yet to write. thackeray was busy on "the newcomes." matthew arnold was publishing his "poems." fitzgerald was working underground in the mine from which he was to extract the roses of omar. ruskin had just published "stones of venice," was arranging to buy the work of a young man called rossetti, helping with the working men's college, and writing a pamphlet on the crystal palace. william morris, younger even than rossetti, was an undergraduate at oxford, rhyming nightly, and exclaiming that, if this was poetry, it was very easy. it is characteristic of great men that, born out of their time, they should come to represent it. victor hugo, in , was a young man irreverently trying to overturn established tradition. he had to pack a theatre with his friends to save his play from being hissed. now, looking back on that time, his enemies seem to have faded away, tired ghosts, and he to be alone upon the stage laying about him on backs of air. so far was the elizabethan age from a true appreciation of shakespeare that webster could patronise him with praise of "his happy and copious industry." shakespeare was a busy little dramatist, working away on the fringe of the great light cast by the effulgent majesty of elizabeth. to-day shakespeare divides with his queen the honour of naming the years they lived in. the nineties, the early nineties when wilde's talent was in full fruition, seem now, at least in literature, to be coloured by the personality of wilde and the movement foolishly called decadent. but in the nineties, when wilde was writing, he had a very few silent friends and a very great number of vociferous enemies. his books were laughed at, his poetry parodied, his person not kindly caricatured, and, even when his plays won popular applause, this hostility against him was only smothered, not choked. his disaster ungagged it, and few men have been sent to perdition with a louder cry of hounds behind them. there was relief as well as hostility in the cry. wilde had meant a foreign ideal, and one not too easy to follow. if he were right, then his detractors were wrong, and there was joy in the voices of those who taunted, pointing to the old bailey, "that is where the artistic life leads a man." there was also shown a curious inability to distinguish between the destruction of a man's body and the extinction of his mind's produce. when wilde was sent to prison the spokesmen of the nineties were pleased to shout, "we have heard the last of him." to make sure of that they should have used the fires of savonarola as well as the cell of raleigh. they should have burnt his books as well as shutting up the writer. that sentence, so frequently iterated, that "no more would be heard of him," showed a remarkable error in valuation of his powers. there was surprise in england when _salomé_ was played in paris while its author was in prison. it seemed impossible that a man who had been sent to gaol for such offences as his could be an artist honoured out of his own country. only after his death, upon the appearance of _de profundis_, and translations of his writings into french, german, italian, spanish, swedish, yiddish, polish, and russian, did popular opinion recognize (if it has yet recognized) that the old bailey, the public disgrace and the imprisonment were only circumstances in wilde's private tragedy that would have been terrible even without them, and that they were no guarantee of the worthlessness of what he wrote. so far were wilde's name and influence from ending with his personal disaster that they are daily gathering weight. whether his writings are perfectly successful or not, they altered in some degree the course of literature in his time, and are still an active power when the wind has long blown away the dust of newspaper criticism with which they were received. it is already clear that wilde has an historical importance too easily underestimated. his indirect influence is incalculable, for his attitude in writing gave literature new standards of valuation, and men are writing under their influence who would indignantly deny that their work was in any way dictated by wilde. a personality as vivid as his, exercised at once through books and in direct but perhaps less intimate social intercourse, cannot suddenly be wiped away like a picture on a slate. no man's life was crossed by wilde's without experiencing a change. men lived more vividly in his presence, and talked better than themselves. no common man lives and dies without altering, to some extent, the life about him and so the history of the world. how much wider is their influence who live their lives like flames, hurrying to death through their own enjoyment and expenditure alike of their bodies and their brains. "pard-like spirits, beautiful and swift" are sufficiently rare and notable to be ensured against oblivion. his personality was stronger than his will. when, as he often did, he set himself to imitation, he could not prevent himself from leaving his mark upon the counterfeit. he stole freely, but often mounted other men's jewels so well that they are better in his work than in their own. it is impossible to dismiss even his early poetry as without significance. he left no form of literature exactly as he found it. he brought back to the english stage a spirit of comedy that had been for many years in mourning. he wrote a romantic play which necessitated a new manner of production, and may be considered the starting-point of the revolution in stage-management that, happily, is still proceeding. he showed both in practice and theory the possibilities of creation open to the critic. he found a new use for dialogue, and brought to england a new variety of the novel. his work continually upset accepted canons and received views. it placed, for example, the apparently settled question of sincerity in a new obscurity, and the distinction between decoration and realism in a new light. one of the tests of novelty and beauty is that they should be a little out at elbows in an old æsthetic. wilde sets the subtlest problems before us, and i shall not be wasting time in posing them and showing that his work has at least this quality of what is beautiful and new, that it is impossible to apply to it definitions that were sufficient before it. it will be necessary in considering his writing, as i hope to do, to digress again and again from book, or play, or poem into the abstract regions of speculation. only so will it be possible to appreciate this man whose name was to have disappeared in , whose work is likely to preserve that name long after oblivion has swallowed the well-intentioned prophets of its extinction. even so, however carefully i may discuss alike his work and the abstract and technical questions that it raises; however carefully i may gather evidence of his overflowing richness of personality, i shall not be able to make a complete and worthy portrait of the man. there are people, mostly of the generation before my own (though the youngest of us may come to it), who make a practice of suggesting our entire ignorance of a subject by demanding that we shall define it in a few words. "say what you think of him in a sentence." if i could do that, do you think i should be going to the labour of writing a book? one cannot define in a sentence a man whom it has taken god several millions of years to make. in a dozen chapters it is no less impossible. the utmost one can do, and that only with due humility, is to make an essay in definition. footnote: [ ] he died in . wilde wrote in . ii biographical summary "the necessity of complying with times, and of sparing persons, is the great impediment of biography. history may be formed from permanent monuments and records; but lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost for ever. what is known can seldom be immediately told; and when it might be told, it is no longer known. the delicate features of the mind, the nice discriminations of character, and the minute peculiarities of conduct, are soon obliterated; and it is surely better that caprice, obstinacy, frolick, and folly, however they might delight in the description, should be silently forgotten, than that, by wanton merriment and unseasonable detection, a pang should be given to a widow, a daughter, a brother, or a friend. as the process of these narratives is now bringing me among my contemporaries, i begin to feel myself _walking upon ashes under which the fire is not extinguished_, and coming to the time of which it will be proper rather to say _nothing that is false, than all that is true_" (samuel johnson, in his "life of addison"). before proceeding to the main business of the book, an examination of wilde's work, i wish to set before myself and my readers a summary biography which may hereafter be useful for our reference. much of the life of wilde is so bound up with his work as to be incapable of separate treatment; but, on the other hand, dates clog a page, and facts do not always enjoy their just value when dovetailed into criticism. in this chapter i shall set down the facts of wilde's parentage and education, up to the time when it becomes possible and advisable to speak of his life and his work together. thenceforward, i shall do little more than note the dates of events and publications (reserving to myself the right of repeating them when i find it convenient), and make, as it were, a skeleton that shall gather flesh from the ensuing pages of the book. oscar fingal o'flahertie wills wilde was born on october , , at , westland row, dublin. his father was william wilde, knighted in , a celebrated oculist and aurist, a man of great intellectual activity and uncertain temper, a runner after girls, with a lusty enjoyment of life, and a delight in falling stars and thunderstorms. his mother, whose maiden name was elgee, was a clever woman, who, when very young, writing as "speranza" in a revolutionary paper, had tried to rouse irishmen to the storming of dublin castle. she read latin and greek, but was ready to suffer fools for the sake of social adulation. she was clever enough to enjoy astonishing the _bourgeois_, but her cleverness seldom carried her further. when wilde was born, she was twenty-eight and her husband thirty-nine. they were people of consideration in dublin. his schoolfellows did not have to ask wilde who his father was. it is said, that before wilde's birth, his mother had hoped for a girl. he was a second son. his elder brother, william, became a journalist in london, and died in . he had a sister, isola, younger than himself, who died in childhood. her death suggested the poem 'requiescat.' to him, as to de quincey, a sister brought the idea of mortality. there are exceptions to that fine rule of hazlitt's brother: "no young man believes he shall ever die." de quincey looking across his sister's death-bed through an open window on a summer day, and wilde, thinking of "all her bright golden hair tarnished with rust, she that was young and fair fallen to dust," felt the fingers of death before their time. like most of wilde's early melodies, his lament is sung to a borrowed lyre, but the thing is so sweet that it seems ungracious to remember its indebtedness to hood.[ ] both sir william and lady wilde busied themselves in collecting folk-lore. wilde in boyhood travelled with his father to visit ruins and gather superstitions. his childhood must have had a plentiful mythology. wilde and his brother were not excluded from the extravagant conversations of their mother's _salon_. any precocity they showed was encouraged, if only by that curious atmosphere of agile cleverness. there are no valuable anecdotes of his childhood, but it is said that his mother always thought that oscar was less brilliant than her elder son. when he was eleven he was sent to the portora royal school at enniskillen, where he behaved well, did not particularly distinguish himself, did not play games, read a great deal, and was very bad at mathematics. in the holidays he travelled with his mother in france. leaving portora in , he went with a scholarship to trinity college, dublin, where, in , he won the berkeley gold medal for greek. in the same year he left dublin for oxford, matriculating at magdalen and taking a scholarship. in he took a first class in classical moderations, always a sufficient proof of sound learning, and, in , he took a first class in literae humaniores. in he travelled in italy and went to greece with professor mahaffy. this experience had great influence on his attitude towards art, filled the classical dictionary with life, and made the figures of mythology so luminous that he was tempted to overwork them. in he read the newdigate prize poem in the sheldonian theatre. on leaving oxford he brought to london a small income, a determination to conquer the town, and a reputation as a talker. he took rooms in the adelphi. he adopted a fantastic costume to emphasize his personality, and, perhaps to excuse it, spoke of the ugliness of modern dress. in three years he had won the recognition of punch, which, thenceforward, caricatured him several times a month. in he published his first book, a volume of poems, discussed in the next chapter. five editions of it were immediately sold. his costume and identification with the æsthetic movement of that time determined his selection as a lecturer in america. the promoters of his tour there were, however, anxious to help not the æsthetic movement but the success of a play that laughed at it. he went to america in , and again in , on the latter occasion to see the production of _vera_. on his return from the first visit he went to paris, where he finished _the duchess of padua_, which was not published till . in it was produced in new york, when twenty copies were printed for the actors and for private circulation. it is likely that in , while in paris, he began _the sphinx_, upon which he worked at various periods before its publication in . returning to england, he took rooms in charles street, haymarket, and lectured in the provinces. in he married constance mary lloyd, who brought him enough money to enable him to take no. tite street, chelsea, which was his home until . he wrote for a number of periodical newspapers, and, for two years, edited the woman's world. in 'the truth of masks' appeared as 'shakespeare and stage costume' in the nineteenth century. in he began that course of conduct that was to lead to his downfall in . in he published 'lord arthur savile's crime,' 'the canterville ghost,' 'the sphinx without a secret,' and 'the model millionaire,' which were issued together in . in he published _the happy prince and other tales_. in 'the portrait of mr. w. h.' appeared in blackwood's magazine. 'pen, pencil and poison' appeared in the fortnightly review in , 'the decay of lying' in the nineteenth century in the same year, and 'the critic as artist' in the nineteenth century in . _a house of pomegranates_ and _intentions_, in which these three essays were reprinted with 'the truth of masks,' were published in . in the same year 'the soul of man under socialism' appeared in the fortnightly review. _the picture of dorian gray_ appeared in lippincott's magazine in . the preface was published separately in the fortnightly review in . he added several chapters, and _the portrait of dorian gray_ was published in book form in . much of his time was spent in paris, and there, before the end of the year, he wrote _salomé_. in that play was prohibited by the censor when madame sarah bernhardt had begun to rehearse it for production at the palace theatre. it was first produced in paris, at the théâtre de l'oeuvre, in . _lady windermere's fan_ was produced on february , , by mr. george alexander at the st. james's theatre. _a woman of no importance_ was produced on april , , by mr. h. beerbohm tree at the haymarket theatre, where, on january , , he produced _an ideal husband_. on february , , mr. george alexander produced _the importance of being earnest_ at the st. james's. with the production of these plays wilde became not only a caricatured celebrity but a popular success. he lived extravagantly. in the applause was turned to execration, when he lost in a prosecution for criminal libel that he brought against the marquis of queensberry, and was himself arrested on a more serious charge. the jury disagreed, and he was released on bail, perhaps in the hope that he would leave the country. he waited the re-trial, was convicted, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment with hard labour, which sentence he served. towards the end of his time in prison he wrote the letter from which _de profundis_ (published in ) is extracted. after his release he went to berneval-sur-mer, near dieppe, where he began _the ballad of reading gaol_, which he revised in naples and paris, and published pseudonymously in . he also wrote two letters on prison abuses, which were published in the daily chronicle on may , , and march , . he lived in italy, switzerland and france. he died in paris on november , . he was buried on december in the bagneux cemetery. on july , , his remains were moved to père lachaise. footnote: [ ] "take her up tenderly, lift her with care; fashioned so slenderly, young, and so fair!" iii poems it is a relief to turn from a list of bibliographical and biographical dates to the may-day colouring of a young man's first book; to forget for a moment the suffering that is nearly twenty years ahead, and to think of "undergraduate days at oxford; days of lyrical ardour and of studious sonnet-writing; days when one loved the exquisite intricacy and musical repetitions of the ballade, and the villanelle with its linked long-drawn echoes and its curious completeness; days when one solemnly sought to discover the proper temper in which a triolet should be written; delightful days, in which, i am glad to say, there was far more rhyme than reason." it is too easy to forget this note in wilde's personality, that he sounded again and again, and that was not cracked even by the terrible experiences whose symbol was imprisonment. to the end of his life wilde retained the enthusiasm, the power of self-abandon to a moment of emotion, the delight in difficult beauty, in accomplished loveliness, that made his oxford years so happy a memory, and give his first book a savour quite independent of its poetical value. ballade and villanelle, rondeau and triolet, the names of these french forms were enough to set the key for a young craftsman's reverie. but the university at that time was full of lively influences. walter pater's "renaissance" had not long left the press. its author, that grave man, was to be met in his panelled rooms, ready to advise, to point the way to rare books, and to talk of the secrets of his art. pater in those days was a new classic, the private possession of those young men who found his books "the holy writ of beauty." the new classics of the generation before--tennyson and arnold and browning--had not yet faded into that false antiquity that follows swift upon the heels of popular recognition. the scholar gipsy had not long been given his place in the mythology of "oxford riders blithe," and the trees in bagley wood were still a little tremulous at his presence. browning's "the ring and the book" had been published ten years before. queen victoria's approval of tennyson may have somewhat marred him in the eyes of youthful seekers after subtlety, but the early poems offered a pleasant opportunity for discriminating appreciation. it was not very long since swinburne "had set his age on fire by a volume of very perfect and very poisonous poetry." morris, the first edition of whose "defence of guenevere," though published in , was not exhausted till thirteen years later, was a master not yet so widely admired as to deny to his disciples the delight of a personal and almost daring loyalty. rossetti's was a still more powerful influence. all these factors must be remembered in any attempt to reconstruct the atmosphere in which wilde wrote his early poems. nor must we forget that when wilde entered that atmosphere as an undergraduate he had an unusual training behind him. he had known another university, and carried away from it a gold medal for greek. he was an irishman whose nationality had been momentarily intensified by his revolutionary mother and his own name. and, perhaps still more important, he was a very youthful cosmopolitan, had been often abroad, knew a good deal of french poetry, and had been able to date one of his earliest poems from that light-hearted avignon where the popes once held their court, and whence the dancing on the broken bridge has sent a merry song throughout the world. it is curious to see this young lover of théophile gautier and old intricate rhyme-forms, winning the newdigate prize for a poem in decasyllabic couplets on a set subject. many bad and a few good poets have won that prize, and it constitutes, i suppose, a sort of academic recognition that a man writes verse. wilde was always pleased with recognition, of whatever quality, and was, perhaps, induced to compete on finding himself curiously favoured by the subject chosen for the year, which happened to be _ravenna_. he had visited ravenna on his way to greece in the previous long vacation, and so was equipped with memories denied to his rivals. he saw the city "across the sedge and mire," when they could only see her on the map. he knew "the lonely pillar, rising on the plain" where gaston de foix had died. and, in italian woods, he had actually watched, hoping to see and hear "some goat-foot pan make merry minstrelsy amid the reeds! some startled dryad-maid in girlish flight! or lurking in the glade, the soft brown limbs, the wanton treacherous face of woodland god!" the wordy piece of rhetoric that was published after winning him the prize is enriched by some pictorial effects that are almost effects of poetry. but the best that can or need be said of the whole is, that it is an admirable prize poem. three years later he published his first book. _poems_, bound in white vellum, decorated with gold, and beautifully printed, contains work done before and after _ravenna_. the most obvious quality of this work, and that which is most easily and most often emphasized, is its richness in imitations. but there is more in it than that. it is full of variations on other men's music, but they are variations to which the personality of the virtuoso has given a certain uniformity. wilde played the sedulous ape with sufficient self-consciousness and sufficient failure to show that he might himself be somebody. his emulative practice of his art asks for a closer consideration than that usually given to it. let me borrow an admirable phrase from m. remy de gourmont, and say that a "dissociation of ideas" is necessary in thinking of imitation. to describe a young poet's work as derivative is not the same thing as to condemn it. all work is derivative more or less, and to pour indiscriminate contempt on wilde's imitations because they are imitations, is to betray a lamentable ignorance of the history of poetry. there is no need too seriously to defend this early work. wilde's reputation can stand without or even in spite of it. but it is worth while to notice that the worst it suggests is that young poets should be very careful to be bad critics, since they always do ill if they imitate the best contemporary models. they do better to copy poetasters, whom they must believe to be miltons. when coleridge admires bowles, makes forty transcriptions from his poems for distribution among his friends, and imitates him as wholeheartedly as he can, he will but gain in comparison with his original. there is nothing in the master strong enough to impose itself upon the pupil. when keats, full of admiration, imitates leigh hunt, he is not very heavily impeded in his search for keats. but when wilde blows the horn of morris, an echo from that norseman's lungs throws out of harmony the notes of his disciple. when he touches rossetti's lute his melody is blurred by the thrum of the strings that the italian's fingers have so lately left. in fifty years' time it will, perhaps, be safe to imitate swinburne. it is not so at present. even in springing from the ground of prose into the air of song, it is wise to choose ground that age has worn or that is not itself remarkable. when coleridge reads purchas-- "in xamdu did cublai can build a stately palace, encompassing sixteene miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile meddowes, pleasant springs, delightfule streames, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house of pleasure"---- and rewrites it-- "in xanadu did kubla khan a stately pleasure dome decree: where alph the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea. so twice five miles of fertile ground with walls and towers were girdled round: and there were gardens bright with sinuous rills where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; and here were forests ancient as the hills. enfolding sunny spots of greenery"---- he works a true magic, bringing two out of one, and setting beside purchas something that we can independently enjoy. purchas died so long ago. he and coleridge have different worlds behind them. but when wilde remembers a passage in his favourite book, written not a dozen years before, and asks why he should not make personal to himself the description of the manifold life of mona lisa, that ends, "all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes"; when he prefixes two verses of explanation to a rhymed elaboration of that sentence-- "but all this crowded life has been to thee no more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell of viols, or the music of the sea that sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell"---- he only puts it out of drawing. it is impossible to avoid a comparison, because pater and wilde are so close together, alike in time and feeling. 'eleutheria,' a section at the beginning of the book, includes a number of discreet sacrifices on the altar of milton. here wilde does much better. some of these exercises, which are among the most interesting he wrote, suggest a new view of the morale of imitation. with wilde in this mood, imitation (to use one of those renewals of popular sayings that were the playthings of his mind), was the sincerest form of parody. now parody is a branch of criticism. the critics of the music-hall stage are those favourite comedians who imitate their fellow-actors. lewis carroll is a negligible critic neither of longfellow nor of tennyson. parody's criticism is too often facile, seeking applause by the readiest means, holding up to ridicule rather than to examination faults rather than excellences, exaggerating tricks of manner and concerning itself not at all with personality. wilde's parodies are at once more valuable and more sincere. he tries to catch not only the letter but the spirit, and does indeed present a clearer view of milton than is contained in many academic essays. an accusation of mere plagiary is made impossible by his openness. he writes a sonnet on milton, a sonnet on louis napoleon, and then, matching even the title of his model, a sonnet on the massacre of the christians in bulgaria. let me print the sonnet "on the late massacre in piedmont":-- "avenge, o lord, thy slaughter'd saints whose bones lie scatter'd on the alpine mountains cold; ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old, when all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, forget not: in thy book record their groans who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold slain by the bloody piedmontese that roll'd mother with infant down the rocks. their moans the vales redoubled to the hills, and they to heav'n. their martyr'd blood and ashes sow o'er all the italian fields, where still doth sway the triple tyrant; that from these may grow an hundredfold, who having learned thy way early may fly the babylonian woe." and then wilde's:-- "christ, dost thou live indeed? or are thy bones still straitened in their rock-hewn sepulchre? and was thy rising only dreamed by her whose love of thee for all her sin atones? for here the air is horrid with men's groans, the priests who call upon thy name are slain, dost thou not hear the bitter wail of pain from those whose children lie upon the stones? come down, o son of god! incestuous gloom curtains the land, and through the starless night over thy cross a crescent moon i see! if thou in very truth didst burst the tomb come down, o son of man! and show thy might, lest mahomet be crowned instead of thee!" this is a very different thing from the blind plagiary of those who cannot see their own way, and are themselves surprised to find that they have stolen. in their case, mistrust of their own powers is justifiable. but here, when the young poet, as an exercise--indeed as more than an exercise--catches the accent of milton in words that deliberately set the doubtful faith of our day beside the noble assurance of the puritans, and show by implication what that absolute belief meant to milton, we are in the presence not of flattery, but of criticism, of exact appreciation. on the next page is the sonnet 'quantum mutata,' with the lines:-- "witness the men of piedmont, chiefest care of cromwell, when with impotent despair the pontiff in his painted portico trembled before our stern ambassadors"; and the suggestion, certainly not personal to wilde, but chosen for its fitness to the poet of whom he is thinking-- "that luxury with barren merchandise piles up the gate where noble thoughts and deeds should enter by: else might we still be milton's heritors." if we were to take this view of the character of wilde's imitations it would be an easy task to run through most of the book, showing how carefully he acknowledges his indebtedness to arnold, to swinburne, to morris, much as a creative critic like walter pater courteously sets the name of pico della mirandola, or of sir thomas browne, at the head of a piece of his own writing of which they have been less the occasion than the chosen keynote. but there is no need. it is more important to the student of wilde to notice that the book had a popular success, and a success in no way due to any praise from the contemporary critics who, naturally enough, were unable to consider _poems_ as the first book of a great man, could not review it in the light of his later writings, and attacked it wholeheartedly, perhaps because they were flattered by the ease with which they detected its openly-acknowledged borrowings. five editions were sold immediately, and this not very trustworthy success increased or confirmed wilde's confidence in himself. the readiness of the public to throw their opinion in the critics' teeth was partly due, i think, to precisely those qualities for which the book was attacked. much of this unusual eagerness of ordinary people to buy poetry, a commodity that they seldom think worth money, may be attributed to the curiosity which wilde had contrived to stimulate by carefully calculated eccentricity. but such curiosity would be more easily satisfied by the sight of the man than by the reading of his poems. it is hardly enough to explain the sale of five editions of a book of verse. i think we may look for another reason of the book's popularity in the fact that wilde, so far from inventing a new poetry, happened to summarize in himself the poetry of his time. he made himself, as it were, the representative poet of his period, a middleman between the muses and the public. people who had heard of rossetti and swinburne, but never read them, were able to recover their self-respect by purchasing wilde. and this leads us back to the book. all the defects of this young man's verse became qualities that contributed to its popular success. it was imitative: it summed up a period of poetry. it was overweighted with allusion: nothing could be more poetical in the ears of readers not trained by an austere bowyer to a distrust of pierian springs, lutes, lyres, pegasus, and hippocrene. "in fancy i can almost hear him now, exclaiming harp? harp? lyre? pen and ink, boy, you mean! muse, boy, muse. your nurse's daughter, you mean! pierian spring? oh aye! the cloister pump, i suppose." (coleridge on bowyer, in the "biographia literaria.") the presence in verse of certain names of places and persons has come to be taken as implicit evidence of poetry. where venus is, there must poetry be; helicon, narcissus, endymion (after keats), and a score of others have become a sort of poetical counters that careless eyes do not distinguish from the sterling coin. wilde makes full use of them, and, perhaps, trusting to the capital letters to carry them through, frequently decorates his verse with names of similar character not yet so hackneyed as to be immediately recognized as poetry. this kind of allusion flatters the reader's learning. sometimes he brings colour into his verse by the use of a reference that must be unintelligible to a large part of his audience, and seems quite irrelevant to those who take the trouble to follow it, and have not the good fortune to hit upon the correct clue. for example, in 'the new helen':-- "alas, alas, thou wilt not tarry here, but, like that bird, the servant of the sun, who flies before the north wind and the night, so wilt thou fly our evil land and drear, back to the tower of thine old delight, and the red lips of young euphorion." now that, though not poetry, is a pleasant piece of colour. but, leaving aside the question of the bird, the servant of the sun, itself not easy to resolve, young euphorion, who has served wilde's verse well enough in having scarlet lips, is more than a little puzzling. wilde probably remembers part ii of goethe's "faust." achilles and helen are said, as ghosts, to have had a child called euphorion, but goethe makes him the son of faust and helen, named in the legend justus faust. he leaps from earth when "scarcely called to life," and "out of the deep" invites his mother to follow him not to any "tower of old delight," but to "the gloomy realm." the reference is wilful, but euphorion is a wonderful name. sometimes, indeed, the verse gains nothing from such allusion. for example, in the same poem:-- "nay, thou wert hidden in that hollow hill with one who is forgotten utterly, _that discrowned queen men call the erycine_." this is simply learning put in for its own sake by the young scholar delighting in his knowledge of antiquity. the line that i have printed in italics is no more than a riddle whose answer is venus, sometimes called erycina (erycina ridens) because she had a temple on mount eryx. wilde means that helen was hidden with the spirit of beauty (venus) now shamefully neglected. he delighted in such riddles and disguised references, and they certainly helped his less cultured readers to feel that in reading him they were intimate with more poetry than they had read. in 'the burden of itys,' to take a last example, he says, addressing the nightingale:-- "light-winged and bright-eyed miracle of the wood! if ever thou didst soothe with melody one of that little clan, that brotherhood which loved the morning-star of tuscany more than the perfect sun of raphael and is immortal, sing to me! for i too love thee well." sir piercie shafton might choose such a method of referring to the pre-raphaelite brotherhood. indeed, so far does wilde carry his ingenuity that we are reminded of the defects of that school of verse that johnson called the metaphysical, whose virtues are too generally forgotten. he hears the wind in the trees as palæstrina playing the organ in santa maria on easter day. with half an echo of browning he describes a pike as "some mitred old bishop _in partibus_," and, with a true seventeenth-century conceit, speaks of the early rose as "that sweet repentance of the thorny briar." this ready-made or artificial poetry lacked, however, the firm intellectual substructure that could have infused into ornament and elaboration the vitalizing breath of unity. wilde was uncertain of himself, and, in each one of the longer poems, rambled on, gathering flowers that would have seemed better worth having if he had not had so many of them. doubtful of his aim in individual poems, he was doubtful of his inclinations as a poet. nothing could more clearly illustrate this long wavering of his mind than a list of the poets whom he admired sufficiently to imitate. i have mentioned morris, swinburne, arnold, and rossetti; but these are not enough. in swift caprice he rifled a score of orchards. he very honestly confesses in 'amor intellectualis' that he had often "trod the vales of castaly," sailed the sea "which the nine muses hold in empery," and never turned home unladen. "of which despoilèd treasures these remain, sordello's passion, and the honeyed line of young endymion, lordly tamburlaine driving his pampered jades, and more than these the seven-fold vision of the florentine, and grave-browed milton's solemn harmonies." milton, dante, marlowe, keats, and browning, with those i have already named, and others, make up a goodly list of sufferers by this lighthearted corsair's piracies. he built with their help a brilliant coloured book, full of ingenuity, a boy's criticism of the objects of his admiration, almost a rhymed dictionary of mythology, whose incongruity is made apparent by those poems in which, leaving his classics passionately aside, he went, like a scholar gipsy, to seek a new accomplishment in the simplicity of folk-song. wilde's reputation as a poet does not rest on this first book, but on half a dozen poems that include 'the harlot's house,' 'a symphony in yellow,' 'the sphinx' and 'the ballad of reading gaol,' and alone are worthy of a place beside his work in prose. but, though poetry is rare in it, it will presently be recognized that the first books of few men are so rich in autobiography. we have seen that the book is an index to his reading: let us see now how many indications it gives us of his life. threaded through the book, between the longer poems, runs an itinerary of his travels in italy and greece, written by a young man very conscious of being a poet, and keenly sensible of what it was fitting he should feel. in italy, for example, he thought that he owed himself a conversion to the catholic faith:-- "before yon field of trembling gold is garnered into dusty sheaves, or ere the autumn's scarlet leaves flutter as birds adown the wold, i may have run the glorious race, and caught the torch while yet aflame, and called upon the holy name of him who now doth hide his face." he wrote almost as a catholic might write, and spoke of the pope as "the prisoned shepherd of the church of god." but later, when "the silver trumpets ran across the dome: the people knelt upon the ground with awe: and borne upon the necks of men i saw, like some great god, the holy lord of rome," he turned, as a puritan might have turned, from the emblem, triple-crowned, and clothed in red and white, of christ's sovereignty, to remember a passage in the gospels: "foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the son of man hath not where to lay his head." he had a calvinistic, half-shocked and half-exultant vision of his own iniquity, this undergraduate of twenty-three:-- "my heart is as some famine-murdered land whence all good things have perished utterly, and well i know my soul in hell must lie if i this night before god's throne should stand." yet he took hope:-- "my nets gaped wide with many a break and flaw, nathless i threw them as my final cast into the sea, and waited for the end. when lo! a sudden glory! and i saw from the black waters of my tortured past the argent splendour of white limbs ascend!" he had, in short, a religious experience, such as is known by most young men. perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he was disturbed, delightfully disturbed, by feeling that a religious experience was possible to him. he went on to greece, and, remembering plato, forgot the half-hoped, half-feared sensation of a wholly voluntary repose in christianity. he returned to oxford, to win the newdigate prize in the next year, and to remember, with something of a girl's adventurous regret for a lover whom she has rejected, his italian emotion. all this is written down in 'the burden of itys':-- "this english thames is holier far than rome, those harebells like a sudden flush of sea breaking across the woodland, with the foam of meadow-sweet and white anemone to fleck their blue waves,--god is likelier there than hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale monks bear"; and, in a later stanza:-- "strange, a year ago i knelt before some crimson cardinal who bare the host across the esquiline, and now--those common poppies in the wheat seem twice as fine." 'panthea,' in language that suggests that he is looking for approval from the eyes of swinburne, describes his substitute for that refused conversion. it is the creed of a young poet who finds the gods asleep, and does not care, because of darwin, evolution, and the law of the conservation of energy. "with beat of systole and of diastole one grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart, and mighty waves of single being roll from nerveless germ to man, for we are part of every rock and bird and beast and hill, one with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill." and:-- "from lower cells of waking life we pass to full perfection; thus the world grows old:" and:-- "this hot hard flame with which our bodies burn will make some meadow blaze with daffodil, ay! and those argent breasts of thine will turn to water-lilies; the brown fields men till will be more fruitful for our love to-night, nothing is lost in nature, all things live in death's despite." it is boy's thought, as serious as the sentimental dreaming of a girl. there is no need to laugh at either. no young girl ever yet made a great poem out of her inexperience, nor has any young man turned to great art his hurried reading of the universe. but few great men have been without such thoughts in youth, and the noblest women can remember girlish dreams of an incredible unreality. after taking his degree wilde left oxford and came to london to build up that phantom of himself that helped to advertise him, and, at the same time, to make his progress difficult. he dedicates a sonnet to 'my friend henry irving,' another to sarah bernhardt, and two to ellen terry, 'written at the lyceum theatre.' we have an impression of the young man, more elaborately dressed than he can afford, paying extravagant, delightful compliments, and quickly gaining the sort of reputation that was given to gallants of an older time, who knew actors, and had their seats on the stage. finally, and certainly most important in his own eyes, the book contains a record of the love affair which, in a sense, balanced the abortive religious experience. he fell in love with an actress, who found him quite delightful, did not love him, let him love her for a summer, and then told him not to waste his time. wilde, as a young poet, probably came to town prepared to fall in love, just as he had gone to italy prepared to be converted to catholicism. his actress may have recognized that this was so, and been ready, within reason, to play the part assigned her. through wilde's magnificent phrasing there appears a replica of the love affairs of how many boys with women wiser than themselves and not without a sense of humour. "ah! hadst thou liked me less and loved me more, through all these summer days of joy and rain, i had not now been sorrow's heritor, or stood a lackey in the house of pain." but he had not to grumble: he had been able to love her learnedly in sonnets and gallantly in serenades. he had-- "stood face to face with beauty, known indeed the love which moves the sun and all the stars!" that was really all that he had needed, but an awakening critical faculty told him that he won more pain than poetry. "had my lips been smitten into music by the kisses that but made them bleed, you had walked with bice and the angels on that verdant and enamelled mead." he was disappointed, but the fault was not his, not his lady's, but due only to impatience. he who wills to love has rhetoric in his feeling, and, though he wrote-- "i have made my choice, have lived my poems, and, though youth is gone in wasted days, i have found the lover's crown of myrtle better than the poet's crown of bays," we cannot help thinking that we know better. the book is the monument of wilde's boyhood, and contains its history. perhaps that, though it may save it from oblivion, is the reason of its failure. it is too immediate an attempt to translate life into literature. sometimes it even suggests that there has been an attempt to make life simply for the purpose of transcribing it. wilde disguised it in elaboration, but it wears the mask with an ingenuous awkwardness. it is so youthful. indeed, the youth of the book is its justification, and helps it to throw a flickering light upon his later work. for wilde never entirely lost his boyhood, and died, as he had mostly lived, young. five years after the publication of _poems_ he wrote a letter in which, catching exactly the mood of his undergraduate days of ten years before, he said that he wished he could grave his sonnets on an ivory tablet, since sonnets should always look well. that is the precise sentiment of those who seek "to discover the proper temper in which a triolet should be written." it was his whenever he wished. but, though he could recapture the mood, and assume again the attitude, he did not allow himself to imitate the work that mood and attitude had produced. in that white vellum volume were harvested all the wild oats of the intellect that he did not leave to later gleaners. he was free thenceforth, and seldom again, until the magnificent confession _de profundis_, did he allow his experiences the use of the first person.[ ] he had done with the crude subjectivity of boyhood, whose capital "i" seems so unreal beside the complete fusions of soul and body, manner and material, that art demands and that he was later to achieve. footnote: [ ] except, of course, in the lectures. we must remember their occasion, and that it never occurred to him to reprint them or count them among his works. iv Æstheticism "i never object," said coleridge, "to a certain degree of disputatiousness in a young man from the age of seventeen to that of four or five and twenty, provided i find him always arguing on one side of the question." coleridge would seem to reserve legitimate dispute for the very young, did we not remember that academic education began and ended earlier in his day. boys went to college at seventeen. i do not think he would have objected to the disputatiousness of wilde, although he was well over twenty-five before he left the noisy field of argument, if, indeed, he left it at all. wilde, at least, would have pleased coleridge by arguing always on one side of the question, though it is possible that coleridge would not have recognized that that side was his own. at oxford, wilde had already begun to count himself, if not an inventor, at least an exponent of the æsthetic theories of life that were then disturbing with fitful movements the stagnant surface of british philistinism. he did not plan a pantisocracy, and would have turned with fright from coleridge's sturdy proposal to harden the bodies of those accustomed to intellectual and sedentary labour until they were fitted to share in the tilling of the soil. but he was discontented with life as it was commonly lived, and had learnt to hope that it might be beautified by being set among beautiful things. he had expressed a wish that he could "live up to his blue china." his rooms in magdalen, panelled and hung with engravings chosen for their difference from the pictures commonly affected, had been a centre of debate. his attitude had caused discussion and public protest, for he rode but did not hunt, did not play cricket, watched boat-races but did not go on the river, and only once showed much physical activity, when he wheeled ruskin's barrow during the famous expedition of undergraduate navvies to make a road on hinksey marsh.[ ] we shall, perhaps, be better able to understand the first period of wilde's public prominence, if we examine the origins of the movement of which, by accident and inclination, he became the accepted protagonist. continental critics have noticed in his writings theories so closely analogous to those of the french symbolists that they find it difficult not to believe that he was a disciple of that school, and, as it were, an english representative of mallarmé's salon in the rue de rome. it is true that, like the symbolists, he sought intensity in art, and emphasis of its potential at the expense of its kinetic qualities. but in this he was english as well as french. later in his life he was influenced by maeterlinck and by huysmans, but, while he was at oxford and for some time after, he found his rules of art and life in the teaching of the pre-raphaelites. that teaching represents a movement in the same direction as the symbolists, but a movement which, unlike the french, came to be identified with a desire to bring ordinary life into harmony with the intensity it demanded from art. it is worth while to gain a clear perspective by discovering the relation between such men as morris, burne-jones, rossetti, and ruskin, and the cult of knee-breeches and chrysanthemums with which punch and "patience" identified wilde. this cult was not a sudden sporadic flowering of strange blooms in the frail hands of a few undergraduates. it had its origin in , when the members of the pre-raphaelite brotherhood founded the germ, an extraordinarily earnest little monthly magazine, in which appeared rossetti's "blessed damozel," and etchings by holman hunt and madox brown. perhaps, indeed, it had an earlier origin in the poetry of keats, whose pure devotion to art for art's sake foreshadowed the feeling of the pre-raphaelite brethren, or in the poetry of blake, who, like them, emphasized the difference between the sons of david and the philistines. but, if we go back so far, we must go further and find still deeper roots for it in the great figures of the romantic movement, in the figures who made that movement possible, in goethe, in rousseau, in ossian, in percy's "reliques of ancient english poetry." wilde, at least, saw back thus far into his spiritual ancestry. but, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the pre-raphaelites, refusing the abstract art whose beginnings are marked by the technical skill of raphael, finding in early italian painting, whose spirit was less hidden by clear and insistent letter, a vivifying principle, stood, not only for a new kind of painting, but for a new attitude towards art in general, and then for a new attitude towards life. they were attacked, and ruskin, who thought they were trying to realize a prophecy of his own, came to aid them with eloquent defence. their pictures were sold but seldom exhibited, so that a kind of separateness, almost a secrecy, came to belong to their admirers. the public in general looked upon them as something aloof and mad. it happened, perhaps through the accident of miss siddal and mrs. william morris so frequently sitting as their models, perhaps because the ladies exemplified what was already their ideal, that there came into many paintings what is best known as the pre-raphaelite woman, long-necked, and pomegranate lipped. nature, as wilde was never tired of insisting, is assiduous in her imitation of art, and, when sir coutts lindsay opened the grosvenor gallery for the benefit of these artists and their admirers, there were, beside those on the walls, a sufficient number of pre-raphaelite portraits walking about in the flesh to justify the curiosity and amusement of the crowd. a play, "the colonel," of no great value, and the wholly delightful "patience," a comic opera by gilbert with music by sullivan, brought the "green and yallery" gowns of the "grosvenor gallery" elect, with their poets and flowers and feelings towards the intenser life, into a charming masquerade. "patience" was played at the savoy with great success. mr. d'oyly carte, attempting to repeat this success in america, perceived that americans, being without a grosvenor gallery, missed much of the humour of the play, and conceived the napoleonic scheme of sending over a specimen æsthete to show what "patience" was laughing at. this somewhat ignominious position was, with due diplomacy, offered to oscar wilde, on account of his extravagance in dress,[ ] and proudly accepted by him on the wilful supposition that it was a fitting tribute to his recently published _poems_. that is how it came about that on december , , wilde sailed for new york, to say that he was disappointed in the atlantic, to tell the customs officials that he had nothing to declare except his genius, and to lecture throughout america on "the english renaissance of art," "house decoration," and "art and the handicraftsman." youth and vanity helped to blind him to the rather humiliating reason of his lecturing. he wanted the money, but was able to persuade himself that he had really been chosen to represent the æsthetic movement to the american people on account of his book of poems, and that, in any case, he wanted to go to america to have _vera_, a worthless melodrama he had just written, put upon the stage. with his happy power of dramatizing his position, a power he shared with beau brummel and picturesque adventurers of lesser genius, he saw himself, almost immediately, as a sort of combination of william morris and john ruskin, gifted more than they with wit, beauty, and youth. he spoke of himself visiting the south kensington museum on saturday nights, "to see the handicraftsman, the wood-worker, the glass-blower, and the worker in metals." he inspected art-schools, and carried away, to show his audiences, brass dishes beaten by little boys, and wooden bowls painted by little girls. he began to take himself more and more seriously--no doubt punch's caricatures had helped him, and he was alone in america, far from the facts--and was able to tell his listeners "how it first came to me at all to create an artistic movement in england, a movement to show the rich what beautiful things they might enjoy and the poor what beautiful things they might create." by this time i have no doubt that he believed with perfect good faith that the æsthetic movement was the work and aim of his life. only occasionally did he remember that he was living up to "patience." "you have listened to 'patience' for a hundred nights," he said, "and you have heard me for one only. it will make, no doubt, that satire more piquant by knowing something about the subject of it, but you must not judge of æstheticism by the satire of mr. gilbert." once, indeed, he allowed himself to remind his audience of the extravagances at which that opera laughed, but then it was only to defend them with all the solemnity of an apostle. "you have heard, i think, a few of you, of two flowers connected with the æsthetic movement in england, and said (i assure you, erroneously) to be the food of some æsthetic young men. well, let me tell you that the reason we love the lily and the sunflower, in spite of what mr. gilbert may tell you, is not for any vegetable fashion at all. it is because these two lovely flowers are in england the two most perfect models of design, the most naturally adapted for decorative art--the gaudy leonine beauty of the one and the precious loveliness of the other giving to the artist the most entire and perfect joy." this seems insufferable now, and probably was so then, but it is a proof of the perfection with which wilde played the part his stage-manager had assigned him. there is much that is charming in the lectures, together with much that is ridiculous, and some of the charm is in the folly. it is a very young knight who fights with a lily on his helmet and a sunflower tied to his spear-point. he has not perceived that the battle is at all difficult. he does not try with slow argument to undermine the enemy's position, but only says, quite cheerfully, that he would like to win. "when i was at leadville and reflected that all the shining silver that i saw coming from the mines would be made into ugly dollars, it made me sad. it should be made into something more permanent. the golden gates at florence are as beautiful to-day as when michael angelo saw them." he does not ever come to blows, but only says how ready he is for battle. "i have no respect," he quotes from keats, "for the public, nor for anything in existence but the eternal being, the memory of great men and the principle of beauty." and he shows that the great men are on his side. in one lecture alone he appeals to goethe, rousseau, scott, coleridge, wordsworth, blake, homer, dante, morris, keats, chaucer, hunt, millais, rossetti, burne-jones, ruskin, swinburne, tennyson, plato, aristotle, leonardo da vinci, edgar allan poe, phidias, michael angelo, sophocles, milton, fra angelico, rubens, leopardi, titian, giorgione, hugo, balzac, shakespeare, mazzini, petrarch, baudelaire, theocritus, and gautier. indeed, his relation to the æsthetic movement of is not unlike that of gautier to the romantic movement of . gautier, like wilde, was born into an army already on the march, and became its most violent champion and exemplar. gautier's crimson waistcoat balances wilde's knee-breeches. it would be possible to carry the comparison further, and to find in _dorian gray_ a parallel to "mademoiselle de maupin." an identical spirit presided over the writing of both these books. and it would be easy to find in wilde, at any rate before his release from prison, an aloofness from ordinary life not at all unlike that of the man who exclaimed, "je suis un homme des temps homériques;--le monde où je vis n'est pas le mien, et je ne comprends rien à la société qui m'entoure." i can imagine gautier lecturing americans in just such a manner as wilde's, and forgetting, but for his loyalty to hugo, that he had not invented romanticism. wilde's lectures must have amused if they did not edify america. he urged the miners to retain their high boots, their blouses, their sombreros, when, with wealth in their pockets, they should return to the abomination of civilization. surprised audiences in the towns heard him speak seriously of the stolid ugliness of the horse-hair sofa, and still more seriously of stoves decorated with funeral urns in cast iron. he begged them to realize the importance of a definite scheme of colour in their rooms, and to use other kinds of jugs than one. in his independence of the quarrels of his elders, he talked to them as ruskin might have talked, of the craftsman and his place in life, and, at the same time, praised the peacock room and the room in blue and yellow designed by that american whom ruskin had accused of throwing a pot of paint in the public's face. on one or two occasions americans were rude to him. but he spoke with such courtesy and such obvious benevolence that more often they were content to pay their dollars, listen to him attentively, stare at him curiously, and then go to see "patience." wilde took their dollars, left the propagation of beautiful furniture behind him, and went to paris. he was tired of prophecy and ready to take a new part in a new play. he had "... touched the tender stops of various quills, with eager thought warbling his doric lay," and now, seeking the fresh woods of the bois, and the new pastures of the champs Élysées, he "twitched his mantle" and threw it away, and with it sunflower, lily, and knee-breeches, preferring a change of costume with his change of part. he dressed now as a man of fashion, a dandy, but not an æsthete. he even cut his hair. but the reputation he had made swelled before him. he came to paris, after his lecturing, in , but, as late as , for those who had not seen him, wilde "n'était encore que celui qui fumait des cigarettes à bout d'or et qui se promenait dans les rues une fleur de tournesol à la main." he may even have encouraged this reputation. stuart merrill, writing in la plume, said: "certains cochers de hansom affirment même l'avoir vu se promener, vers l'heure des chats et des poètes, avec un lys enorme à la main. oscar wilde récuse comme à regret leur témoignage en répondant que la légende est souvent plus vraie que la réalité." but in wilde had had a surfeit of lilies and sunflowers, and came to paris as a poet, fashionably dressed, with a number of white vellum volumes of verse to distribute among those whose acquaintance he wished to secure. he took rooms at the hôtel voltaire, and saw most of the better known people of the day. but, as always, he was not content to leave a part half played. he was in paris as a poet, and, if he was ready to receive the poet's reward of admiration and homage, he was determined also to earn it, to write poetry, and not to rest on what he had already written. he was, at this time, impressed as much by balzac's power of work as by his genius, and his biographer tells us that, with a view to imitating it, he wore, while working, a white robe with a hood, like the dressing-gown in which balzac sat up at night, drinking coffee and creating his fiery world. he also walked out with an ivory stick, set with turquoises, like the stick that pleased balzac because it set the town talking. at a later time he sought a similar adventitious aid to industry in buying carlyle's writing table. he felt, like balzac, that the special paraphernalia of work was likely to induce the proper spirit. in these circumstances, in the hôtel voltaire, he finished _the duchess of padua_, and possibly either wrote or re-wrote _the sphinx_. _the duchess of padua_ is a play on the elizabethan model of dark and bloody tragedy. it is a sombre spectacle, marred by a constantly shifting perspective. the folds of tragedy's cloak fall over an angular figure, a little stiff in the joints, and the verse has the effect of voluntary draping. it is the performance of a young man who has not yet achieved the knowledge of the stage that was later to be his; the performance of a young man who has not yet achieved a knowledge of himself. it is better built than _vera_ and more interesting, but it has the faults of the volume of _poems_, without the same excuse of eager imitation and criticism. here and there are lines of poetry that seem now afraid and now defiant of the progress of the play. the poet changes faces too often. he has all the elizabethans at his back, and writes like the young shakespeare on one page, and on the next like shakespeare grown mature. his predilections are now for simplicity and now for such overworked conceits as this:-- "guido. oh, how i love you! see, i must steal the cuckoo's voice, and tell this one tale over. duchess. tell no other tale! for, if that is the little cuckoo's song, the nightingale is hoarse, and the loud lark has lost its music." wilde's weakness of grip on himself and his play is shown by the quite purposeless inclusion of cumbersome, would-be-shakespearian comic relief:-- "third citizen. what think you of this young man who stuck the knife into the duke? second citizen. why, that he is a well-behaved, and a well-meaning, and a well-favoured lad, and yet wicked in that he killed the duke. third citizen. 'twas the first time he did it: maybe the law will not be hard on him, as he did not do it before." that is a specimen very favourable to the play, which contains yet duller jokes. it is hard to believe that the same man who wrote them was also the author of _intentions_ and the inventor of bunbury. but there is no need to linger over _the duchess of padua_, which, though it has moments of obscure power, wilde did not, in later years, consider worthy of himself. there is some doubt as to the date of composition of _the sphinx_. a line and a half in it-- "i have hardly seen some twenty summers cast their green for autumn's gaudy liveries"-- not only suggest extreme youth in the writer, but occur in _ravenna_. mr. stuart mason, in his admirable "bibliography to the poems of oscar wilde," says that "altogether some dozen passages of _ravenna_ are taken more or less verbatim from poems published before , while no instance is found of lines in the newdigate prize poem being repeated in poems admittedly of later date, and this," he thinks, "seems fairly strong proof that the lines in _the sphinx_ (if not the whole poem) antedate _ravenna_." mr. ross says that wilde told him the poem was written at the hôtel voltaire during an earlier visit in . this statement, he thinks, was an example of the poetic license in which wilde, like shelley and other men of genius, was willing to indulge. mr. sherard says positively that wilde wrote _the sphinx_ in at the hôtel voltaire. there seems to be no real reason why wilde should not have borrowed from _ravenna_ on this, even if he did so on no other occasion. he was always ready to seem younger than he was, and always ready to use again a phrase that had pleased him, no matter where he had used it before. in _the duchess of padua_, about whose date there is no question, he even went so far as to use two lines from a sonnet that he had previously addressed to ellen terry, and published in _poems_:-- "o hair of gold, o crimson lips, o face made for the luring and the love of man!" there is much in the poem itself that inclines me to trust mr. sherard's memory of its date. it is work more personal to wilde than anything in _poems_. the firm mastery of its technique would, indeed, be overwhelming proof that it was written after _the duchess of padua_ if it were not known that wilde spent some time in revising it in . but revision cannot alter the whole texture of a poem, and _the sphinx_ is full of those decorative effects that are rare in his very early work and give to much of his matured writing its most noticeable quality. no one has suggested that it was written later than , so that we must explain the extraordinary advance that it shows on _the duchess of padua_ as one of those curious phenomena known to most artists: it often happens that, in turning from one kind of work to another, as from dramatic writing to poetry, men come quite suddenly on what seem to be revised and better editions of themselves. the kinetic base, the obvious framework, of _the sphinx_ is an apostrophe addressed by a student to a sphinx that lies in his room, perhaps a dream, perhaps a paperweight, an apostrophe that consists in the enumeration of her possible lovers, and the final selection of one of them as her supposed choice. it is a series rather than a whole, though an effect of form and cumulative weight is given to it by a carefully preserved monotony. in a firm, lava-like verse, the sphinx's paramours are stiffened to a bas-relief. the water-horse, the griffon, the hawk-faced god, the mighty limbs of ammon, are formed into a frieze of reverie; they do not collaborate in a picture, but are left behind as the dream goes on. it goes on, perhaps, just a little too long. so do some of the finest rituals; and _the sphinx_ is among the rare incantations in our language. it is a piece of black magic. of the student who saw such things men might well say:-- "weave a circle round him thrice, and close your eyes with holy dread," but they could never continue:-- "for he on honey-dew hath fed," and, with whatever milk he had been nourished, they would be certain that it was not that of paradise. "dawn follows dawn and nights grow old, and all the while this curious cat lies crouching on the chinese mat with eyes of satin rimmed with gold." to paint the visions she inspires, wilde ransacks the world for magnificent colouring. he does not always secure magnificence in the noblest way, but is satisfied with an opulence, rather of things than of emotion, brought bodily into the verse and not suggested by the proud stepping of the mind. cleopatra's wine, ivory-bodied antinous, the crocodile with jewelled ears, metal-flanked gryphons, gilt-scaled dragons, "some nereid coiled in amber foam with curious rock-crystal breasts," the ethiopian, "whose body was of polished jet," pasht "who had green beryls for her eyes," horus, "whose wings, like strange transparent talc, rose high above his hawk-faced head, painted with silver and with red and ribbed with rods of oreichalch," the marble limbs of ammon, "on pearl and porphyry pedestalled," an ocean emerald on his ivory breast-- "the merchants brought him steatite from sidon in their painted ships: the meanest cup that touched his lips was fashioned from a chrysolite----" the lion's "long flanks of polished brass," the tiger's "amber sides":--i think it is worth while to notice the mineral character of all this imagery. it is as if a man were finding solace for his feverish hands in the touch of cool hard stones, and at the same time, stimulating his fever by the sexual excitement of contrast between the over-sensitive and the utterly insensible. wilde had but a short respite from the trouble of keeping up a reputation and an income. the american dollars were soon spent, and he had to bring to an end his balzacian industry, and the delightful business of being a poet in paris. he returned to london, where he took rooms in charles street, haymarket. he had to earn a livelihood, and poverty and his own extravagance compelled him to do that which he most disliked, to take up again a pose whose fascination he had exhausted. he signed an agreement with a lecture agency, and toured through the english provinces, repeating, as cheerfully as he could, the lectures he had given in america. note on wilde and whistler both before and after his american lecturing tour wilde was one of the frequenters of whistler's studio in chelsea. he had an unbounded admiration for this painter, whose conversation was no less vivid than his work, and whistler's attitude towards him was not so cavalier as that he adopted to others among his admirers. wilde, in spite of his youth, had a reputation, and shared with whistler the applause of any company in which they were together. in , when wilde was to lecture to the academy students, he asked whistler what he should say to them. whistler sketched a lecture for him, and wilde used parts of it with success and repaid him by a tremendous compliment. two years later whistler himself lectured, and, for his "ten o'clock," re-appropriated some of the material he had suggested to his friend. that is the origin of the accusation, so often made, that wilde built a reputation on borrowed bons mots. in the "ten o'clock," whistler, annoyed by wilde's lecturing on art, as he would have been by the lecturing of any other man who was not himself a painter, held a veiled figure of him up to ridicule, and threw a stone from a frail house in jeering at his knee-breeches. "costume is not dress. and the wearers of wardrobes may not be doctors of taste ..." wilde smilingly replied. whistler feinted. wilde parried. whistler thrust:--"what has oscar in common with art except that he dines at our tables and picks from our platters the plums for the pudding that he peddles in the provinces? oscar--the amiable, irresponsible, esurient oscar--with no more sense of a picture than he has of the fit of a coat--has the courage of the opinions ... of others!" wilde answered that "with our james vulgarity begins at home and should be allowed to stay there," and with that their friendship was buried, like the hatchet, "in the side of the enemy." two years later, wilde, with an indifference amusing in any case and delightful if it was conscious, roused further protest by using in "the decay of lying" the phrase, "the courage of the opinions of others," that had been the sting of whistler's reproach. the letters on both sides may be read in "the gentle art of making enemies." the whole story only makes it clear that wilde was better able to appreciate whistler than whistler to appreciate a younger man, whose talent, no less brilliant, was entirely different from his own. as mr. ross has pointed out, all wilde's best work was written after their friendship ceased. footnotes: [ ] "the Æsthetic movement in england," by walter hamilton. [ ] he wore at this time a velvet _béret_ on his head, his shirts turned back with lace over his sleeves, puce velveteen knickerbockers with buckles, and black silk stockings. v miscellaneous prose on may , , oscar wilde was married to constance mary lloyd, the daughter of a dublin barrister. he settled with her in chelsea. they had two children, both boys, born respectively in and . wilde's marriage was not felicitous, though he regretted it more for his wife's sake than his own. it is said that mrs. wilde was rather cruelly made to pose for lady henry wotton in _dorian gray_, that "curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest.... she tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy ... looking like a bird of paradise that had been out all night in the rain...." she was sentimental, pretty, well-meaning and inefficient. she would have been very happy as the wife of an ornamental minor poet, and it is possible that in marrying wilde she mistook his for such a character. it must be remembered that she married the author of _poems_ and the lecturer on the æsthetic movement. his development puzzled her, made her feel inadequate, and so increased her inadequacy. she became more a spectacle for wilde than an influence upon him, and was without the strength that might have prevented the disasters that were to fall through him on herself. she had a passion for leaving things alone, broken only by moments of interference badly timed. she became one of those women whose christian names their husbands, without malice, preface with the epithets "poor dear." her married life was no less ineffectual than unhappy. wilde supplemented his wife's income by writing reviews of books for the pall mall gazette, and articles on the theatre for the dramatic review. from the autumn of to that of he edited the woman's world. little of this was wasted labour, though wilde had no need to fillip his invention by such practice as the writing of reviews provided. conversation was to him what diaries, note-books, and hack-work are to so many others. but there is an ease in the essays of _intentions_ wholly lacking in 'the rise of historical criticism' and in the lectures. it is impossible not to believe that in writing literary notes in the woman's world and reviews in the pall mall gazette, he quickened the turn of his wrist and sharpened the point of his rapier. there is little of any great value in the volume of reviews collected by his executor; little, that is to say, that raises them above the level of reviews written by far less gifted men. here and there are fragments that he improved and used again in more lasting works. here and there are perfectly charming sentences, that show what sort of man would be found if we could lift the mask of the reviewer. throughout the book are uncertain indications of the theories of art that were later to be expounded in _intentions_. but that is all. there is, however, an historical interest in learning what wilde thought of the writers of his time. he railed at the shocking bad grammar of professor saintsbury, and got an undergraduate enjoyment from laughing at professor mahaffy. when he could, he piously drew attention to the works of his father and mother. he was polite to his cousin, w. g. wills, who had happened to be delivered of an epic. among greater men, he had excellent praise for william morris, a just appreciation of pater, an enthusiasm for meredith, the expression of which he afterwards used in _intentions_, and a perspicuous criticism of swinburne. the volume is full of clues to the sources of the inessentials in his later work. the original of the passage in _dorian gray_ on embroideries and tapestries is to be found in a review of a book by ernest lefébure. the starchild's curls "were like the rings of the daffodil." this curious and delightful phrase may be traced to a review of morris' translation of the odyssey, where wilde noticed the line, "with the hair on his head crisp curling as the bloom of the daffodil," and quoted another version published in , "minerva renders him more tall and fair. curling in rings like daffodils his hair." it would be possible to make a long list of such alibis. marriage and journalism slackened for a moment his ambition. he lectured once or twice, though whistler had almost succeeded in discrediting him as an authority upon art. his reputation waned, and he was for some time a young man with a brilliant past. art seemed less worth while than it had been, and he was ready to amuse himself with things that he thought scarcely worth writing, things that required more cleverness than temperament, and did not stretch his genius. it was in this mood that he turned to narrative, and wrote the four stories which, published in magazines in , were collected into a volume in . he had always been accustomed to invent plots for other people, and to compose such anecdotes as were needed to illustrate his conversation and to give it an historical basis. mr. sherard says that he used to devise stories, sometimes as many as six in a morning, for his brother william to write. it occurred to him to write some of these tales himself, and, using the conventions of the popular magazine fiction of his day, yet find means to indulge his mind with the ingenious play in which it delighted. three of these tales need detain no student of wilde. 'the canterville ghost' is just so boisterous as to miss its balance, but, because it is about americans, is very popular in america. 'the sphinx without a secret' betrays its secret in its title. 'the model millionaire' is an empty little thing no better than the popular tales it tries to imitate. 'lord arthur savile's crime,' however, is not only remarkable as an indication of what wilde was to do both as a dramatist and as a storyteller, but is itself a delightful piece of buffoonery. wilde is so serious. the readers of the family herald are fond of lords, and so the story begins with a reception at bentinck house, a delightful parody of the popular descriptions of such a function. "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 kept following a stout prima-donna from room to room, on the staircase stood several royal academicians, disguised as artists, and it was said that at one time the supper-room was absolutely crammed with geniuses." there was a cheiromantist, and a duchess, who, on learning that he was present, "began looking about for a small tortoiseshell fan and a very tattered lace shawl, so as to be ready to go at a moment's notice." the plot is no less moral than simple. lord arthur savile learns from the palmist that at some period of his life it is decreed that he shall commit a murder. unwilling to marry while a potential criminal, he sets about committing the murder at once, to get it over, and be able to marry with the easy conscience of one who knows that his duty has been satisfactorily performed. he tries to kill a charming aunt with a sugared pill, and a benevolent uncle with an explosive clock, and, failing in both these essays, "oppressed with the barrenness of good intentions," walks miserably on the embankment, where he finds mr. podgers, the cheiromantist, observing the river. "a brilliant idea flashed across him, and he stole softly up behind. in a moment he had seized mr. podgers by the legs, and flung him into the thames. there was a coarse oath, a heavy splash, and all was still. lord arthur looked anxiously over, but could see nothing of the cheiromantist but a tall hat, pirouetting in an eddy of moonlit water. after a time it also sank, and no trace of mr. podgers was visible. once he thought that he caught sight of the bulky misshapen figure striking out for the staircase by the bridge, and a horrible feeling of failure came over him, but it turned out to be merely a reflection, and when the moon shone out from behind a cloud it passed away. at last he seemed to have realised the decree of destiny. he heaved a deep sigh of relief, and sybil's name came to his lips." like much of wilde's work, this story is very clever talk, an elaborated anecdote, told with flickering irony, a cigarette now and again lifted to the lips. but, already, a dramatist is learning to use this irony in dialogue, and a decorative artist is restraining his buoyant cleverness, to use it for more subtle purposes. there is a delicate description of dawn in piccadilly, with the waggons on their way to covent garden, white-smocked carters, and a boy with primroses in a battered hat, riding a big grey horse--a promise of the fairy stories. the vegetables against the sky are masses of jade, "masses of green jade against the pink petals of some marvellous rose." and, too, over the sudden death of mr. podgers "the moon peered through a mane of tawny clouds, as if it were a lion's eye, and innumerable stars spangled the hollow vault, like gold dust powdered on a purple dome." _the happy prince and other tales_, published in , with pictures by jacomb hood and walter crane, are very married stories. in reading them, i cannot help feeling that wilde wrote one of them as an experiment, to show, i suppose, that he could have been hans andersen if he had liked, and his wife importuned him to make a book of things so charming, so good, and so true. he made the book, and there is one beautiful thing in it, 'the happy prince,' which was, i suspect, the first he wrote. the rest, except, perhaps, 'the selfish giant,' a delightful essay in christian legend, are tales whose morals are a little too obvious even for grown-up people. children are less willing to be made good. wilde was himself perfectly aware of his danger, and, no doubt, got some pleasure out of saying so, at the end of the story called 'the devoted friend': "'i am rather afraid that i have annoyed him,' answered the linnet. 'the fact is, that i told him a story with a moral.' 'ah! that is always a very dangerous thing to do,' said the duck. and i quite agree with her." there is a moral in 'the happy prince,' but there is this difference between that story and the others, that it is quite clear that wilde wanted to write it. it is andersen, treated exactly as wilde treated milton in the volume of , only with more assurance, and a greater certainty about his own contribution. we recognise wilde by the decorative effects that are scattered throughout the book. he preferred a lyrical pattern to a prosaic perspective, and, even more than his wit, his love of decoration is the distinguishing quality of his work. andersen might well have invented the story of the swallow who died to repay the statue for jewelled eyes and gold-leaf mail given to the poor of the town of which he had once been the happy and unseeing prince, but he would never have let the swallow say: "the king is there in his painted coffin. he is wrapped in yellow linen and embalmed in spices. round his neck is a chain of pale green jade, and his hands are withered leaves." and only a swallow belonging to the author of _the sphinx_ would have said, "to-morrow my friends will fly up to the second cataract. the river horse couches there among the bulrushes, and on a great granite throne sits the god memnon. all night long he watches the stars, and when the morning star shines he utters one cry of joy, and then he is silent. at noon the yellow lions come down to the water's edge to drink. they have eyes like green beryls, and their roar is louder than the roar of the cataract." in the next year he was again amusing himself with fairy tales, writing this time a book alone in english literature; a book of tales not intended for the british child but for those grown-up people who shared wilde's own enjoyment of brilliant-coloured fantasy. he had learnt to control his invention, although he did not choose to do without a tuning fork. andersen still struck the note to which wilde sang, but flaubert had been his singing master, and the curious and beautiful tales collected in _a house of pomegranates_ are like what i imagine "the snow queen" would have been, if it had been written by the author of "saint julien l'hospitalier." in 'the infanta's birthday,' where one of goya's grotesques dances before a painting by velasquez, the flowers pass their opinions on the dwarf quite in the danish manner. in 'the star-child': "the earth is going to be married, and this is her bridal dress," whispered the turtle-doves to each other. "their little pink feet were quite frost-bitten, but they felt that it was their duty to take a romantic view of the situation." that is surely written by the ghost of andersen's english translator. but 'the star-child' ends with the firm, aloof touch of flaubert, who would not tolerate "quite": "yet ruled he not long, so great had been his suffering, and so bitter the fire of his testing, for after the space of three years, he died. and he who came after him ruled evilly." i remember the end of "hérodias" on just such a distant note: "et tous les trois, ayant pris la tête de iaokanaan, s'en allèrent du côté de la galilée. comme elle était très lourde, ils la portaient alternativement." and the picture of the leper in this story is almost a transcription of that in "saint julien l'hospitalier": "over his face hung a cowl of grey linen, and through the eyelets his eyes gleamed like red coals." and flaubert: "il était enveloppé d'une toile en lambeaux, la figure pareille à un masque de platre et les deux yeux plus rouge que des charbons." i do not suggest that one is a copy of the other; but i think that wilde remembered that clay mask with gleaming eyes, and mistook it for a creation of his own whose eyes shone through a grey linen cowl. it is hardly worth while so to carry the study of influence into detail. wilde wrote, with the pen of flaubert, stories that might have been imagined by andersen, and sometimes one and sometimes the other touches his hand. it is not impossible that baudelaire was also present. but all this does not much concern us, except that by subtraction we may come to what we seek, which is the personal, elusive, but unmistakable quality contributed by wilde himself. this is, secondarily, a round mellowness of voice, a smooth solidity of suggested movement, a delight in magnificence; and, primarily, a wonderful feeling for decorative effect. this last is wilde's peculiar contribution to literature. his contribution to thought, his exegesis of the critical attitude, is another matter. but this feeling for decoration, that made him see life itself as a tapestry of ordered and beautiful movements caught in gold and dyed silk, that made him incapable of realizing that life was not so, until at last it became too strong and tore his canvas, was itself enough to prevent the picturesque figure of the dandy from obliterating the artist in the minds of posterity. it is scarcely twenty years since wilde wrote his books, and, in poetry as well as in prose, their influence is already becoming so common as not to be recognized. the historian of the period will have to trace what he may call "the decorative movement in literature" to the works of wilde, and through them to the pre-raphaelite pictures and poems, whose ideals he so fantastically misrepresents. i have implied a distinction between decoration and realism that i have not clearly defined. this distinction is not, though it has often been held to be, a distinction between two different kinds of art, between which runs a sharp dividing line. it is rather a recognition of opposite ends of a scale, like the recognition of heat and cold, both degrees of temperature, but without intrinsic superiority one over the other. in painting we thus distinguish between the attempt to imitate and the willingness (not the intention) to suggest nature. this distinction is best expressed in the old simile of the window and the wall. some pictures represent a pattern on a wall: some pictures represent a vision through a window. in some we look at the canvas: in others we look through the frame. some are decorative: some are realistic. many painters have wished that their pictures should not be found wanting when compared with the pictures of similar subjects that each spectator paints with the brushes and palette of his own brain. sometimes this desire has been carried so far as to preclude all others. painters do not usually read berkeley, and there have been some who forgot that there was no such thing as a world outside their brains, and cared only to be recognised as faithful portrait-painters of nature: that is to say, of what all spectators see, or can see, by training their observation. there have been critics, too, like ruskin, who have chosen to compare painters by their fidelity to this external and observable nature. but painters have other things to do than photograph, other things to do than to select from what a camera would represent. sometimes the idea of imitation fades away, and they are willing, no more, to suggest lilies by a convention, and to distort even the human figure, while they concern themselves with harmonies in which the shapes of flower or figure sound merely incidental notes. we must not forget that these are extremes in a single scale, and that all painting is to some extent realistic, to some extent decorative. its extremes are wholly imitative in aim, and dull, and wholly conventional in aim, and empty. we call the two aims realism and decoration for our convenience. in literature it is possible to trace a similar double aim, separate from but analogous to the duality in speech that we shall have to examine in a later chapter. there are books subservient to what we call reality, and books for which reality is no more than an excuse, books that follow nature, and books that cast nature into their own mould, and, delighting in no accidental harmonies, bend nature to the patterns that please them, and heighten or lower her colours for their private purposes of beautiful creation. even in music we can trace these tendencies: there is music that humbly follows the moods of man, and music whose serenely indifferent patterns compel the dancing attendance of those moods. we have observed in _the sphinx_ the decorative character of wilde's work. these tales provide the best examples of it that are to be found in his prose. to the woodcutters looking down from the forest, the earth seemed "like a flower of silver, and the moon like a flower of gold." the young fisherman speaks to the witch of his "_painted_ boat," and his author is no less aloof from realism. when the young fisherman forgets his nets and his cunning, as he listens to the sweet voice of the mermaid, wilde writes: "vermilion finned and with eyes of bossy gold, the tunnies went by in shoals, but he heeded them not." now that is a picture that the young fisherman could not see. nor can we see it, unless the fisherman is a figure on a tapestry, sewn in stitches of bright-coloured thread. above him three undulating lines are waves, and between them four tunnies, twisting unanimous tails, show their vermilion fins and their eyes of gilded metal, skilfully bedded in the canvas. wilde, always perfectly self-conscious, was not unaware of this difference between his own writing and that of most of his contemporaries. when _dorian gray_ was attacked for immorality, wilde wrote, in a letter to a paper: "my story is an essay on decorative art. it reacts against the brutality of plain realism." _the picture of dorian gray_ was written for publication in a magazine. seven chapters were added to it to make it long enough for publication as a novel, because those who buy books, like those who buy pictures, are unable to distinguish between size and quality, and imagine that value depends upon area. the preface was written to answer assailants of the morality of the story in its first form, and included only when it was printed as a book. these circumstances partly explain the lack of proportion, and of cohesion, that mars, though it does not spoil, the first french novel to be written in the english language. england has a traditional novel-form with which even the greatest students of human comedy and tragedy square their work. in france there is no such tradition, with the result that the novel is a plastic form, moulded in the most various ways by the most various minds. after all, it is a question of name, and it is impossible without elaborate and tedious qualification to discuss classifications of literature. they should not be made, or they should be made differently, for, at present, they deal only with superficial resemblances, depending, sometimes, upon nothing more essential than the price for which a book is sold. they have, however, a distinct influence upon production. in france, flaubert's "tentation de saint antoine," that wonderful dream in which so many strange dialogues are overheard, remy de gourmont's "une nuit au luxembourg," that delightful speculative mirage, and huysmans' "À rebours," that phantasmagoria of intellectual experience, are all included in publishers' lists of novels and sold as such. publishers in england are not so catholic. whatever the reason may be, economical, depending upon the publisher, traditional, depending on the writer, wilde's _the picture of dorian gray_ was the first novel for many years to be written in england with that freedom in choice of matter and manner that has for a long time been in no way extraordinary in france. it has, so far, had no successor free as itself from the enforced interest in a love affair, to which we have grown so mournfully accustomed. the story of the book is a fantastic invention like that of balzac's "le peau de chagrin," in which the scrap of skin from a wild ass shrinks with each wish of its possessor. the picture of dorian gray, painted by his friend, ages with the lines of cruelty, lust and hypocrisy that should mar its ever-youthful subject. he, remaining as beautiful as when at twenty-one he had inspired the painter with a masterpiece, walks in the ways of men, sullying his soul, whose bodily reflection records neither his age nor his sins. it is the sort of invention that would have pleased hawthorne, and the book itself is written with the marked ethical sympathy that wilde, in his preface, denounced as "an unpardonable mannerism of style." perhaps the reason why it was so loudly accused of immorality was that in the popular mind luxury and sin are closely allied, and the unpardonable mannerism that made him preach, in a parable, against the one, did not hide his whole-hearted delight in describing the other. the preface, inspired by the hostility the book aroused, is an essay not in the gentle art of making enemies, but in that of annoying them when made. if his critics tell him that his book leers with the eyes of foulness and dribbles with the lips of prurience, wilde replies, with an ambiguity as disturbing as his smile, that "it is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors," and again that "the highest, as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography." his arrows are not angrily tipped with poison, but are not for that the less displeasing to those against whom they are directed. they are weighted not with anger but with æsthetic theory. they are so far separate from the story that they are best discussed with the essays of _intentions_. there are a few strange books that share the magic of some names, like cornelius agrippa, raymond lully, and paracelsus, names that possibly mean more to us before than after we have investigated the works and personalities that lie behind them. these books are mysterious and kept, like mysteries, for peculiar moods. they are not books for every day, nor even for every night. we keep them for rare moments, as we keep in a lacquer cabinet some crystal-shrined thread of subtle perfume, or some curious gem, to be a solace in a mood that does not often recur, or, perhaps, to be an instrument in its evocation. _dorian gray_, for all its faults, is such a book. it is unbalanced; and that is a fault. it is a mosaic hurriedly made by a man who reached out in all directions and took and used in his work whatever scrap of jasper, or porphyry or broken flint was put into his hand; and that is not a virtue. but in it there is an individual essence, a private perfume, a colour whose secret has been lost. there are moods whose consciousness that essence, perfume, colour, is needed to intensify. there is little need to discuss the minutiæ of the book; to point out that its sayings occur in wilde's plays, poems, reviews and dialogues; that it is, as it were, an epitome of his wit before and after the fact; that the eleventh chapter is a wonderful condensation of a main theme in "À rebours," like an impression of a concerto rendered by a virtuoso upon a violin. there is no need to emphasize wilde's delight in colour and fastidious luxury, as well as in a most amusing kind of dandyism: in the opening scene the studio curtains are of tussore silk, the dust is golden that dances in the sunlight, tea is poured from a fluted georgian urn, there is a heavy scent of roses, the blossoms of the laburnum are honey-coloured as well as honey-sweet, lord henry wotton reclines on a divan of persian saddlebags, and taps "the toe of his patent-leather boot with a tasselled ebony cane." there is no need to point out any of these things, but they help to justify what i have already said, and to define the indefinable character of the book. lord henry wotton would have liked to write "a novel that would be as lovely as a persian carpet, and as unreal." wilde tried to write it, and very nearly succeeded. * * * * * wilde's second period of swift development began towards the end of . this, perhaps, explains the sentence in 'pen, pencil, and poison'--"one can fancy an intense personality being created out of sin." his personality was, certainly, intensified when he became an habitual devotee of the vice for which he was imprisoned. he had first experimented in that vice in ; his experiments became a habit in , and in that year he published 'pen, pencil, and poison' and 'the decay of lying,' revised _the sphinx_, and wrote some, at least, of the stories in _a house of pomegranates_; these were immediately followed by 'the critic as artist' and _salomé_. these things are among his best work. it is possible that a consciousness of separation from the common life of men is a sufficient explanation of an increased vividness in a man's self, a heightened ardour of production. is wilde's exceptional activity in those years to be attributed to an eagerness to justify himself by other men's admiration, of which he had never been careless? was he eager to bring mankind to his side? "it is the spectator, not life, that art really mirrors." this sentence must now be applied to himself, when we consider _the portrait of mr. w. h._ that narrative, now printed at the end of _lord arthur savile's crime_, and first published in blackwood's magazine in , is an essay in criticism. wilde read something of himself into shakespeare's sonnets, and, in reading, became fascinated by a theory that he was unable to prove. where another man would, perhaps, have written a short, serious essay, and whistled his theory down the wind that carries the dead leaves of shakespeare's commentators, wilde tosses it as a belief between three brains, and allows it to unfold itself as the background to a story. the three brains are the narrator, cyril graham, and erskine. graham discovers the mr. w. h. of the sonnets in a boy-actor called will hughes, and by diligent examination of internal evidence, almost persuades erskine to believe him. erskine, however, demands a proof, and graham finds one for him in a portrait of will hughes nailed to an old wooden chest. erskine is persuaded, but discovers that the picture is a forgery, whereupon graham, explaining that he had only had it made for erskine's satisfaction, leaves the picture to his friend, protests that the forgery in no way invalidates the theory, and kills himself as a proof of his good faith. erskine, disbelieving, tells all this to the narrator, who instantly sets to work on the sonnets, finds a quantity of further evidence, but none that sets beyond question the existence in elizabethan times of a boy-actor called william hughes. he writes erskine a letter of passionate reasoning, that, while persuading erskine, wipes away his own belief. he finds that he has become an infidel to the theory of which he has been a successful advocate. it was a favourite idea of wilde's, and the motive of _la sainte courtisane_, that to slough off a belief like a snake's skin, one has only to convert someone else to it. i need not further analyse the story, which is merely the mechanism that wilde used for the display of the evidence to which he desired to draw attention. it would be impossible to build an airier castle in spain than this of the imaginary william hughes; impossible, too, to build one so delightfully designed. the prose and the reasoning seem things of ivory, indian-carved, through which the rarest wind of criticism may freely blow and carry delicate scents away without disturbing the yet more delicate fabric. wilde assumes that shakespeare addressed the sonnets to william hughes, and, that assumption granted (though there is no william hughes to be found), colours his theory with an abundance of persuasive touches, to strengthen what is, at first, only a courtesy belief. though all his argument is special pleading, wilde contrives to make you feel that counsel knows, though he cannot prove, that his client is in the right. the evidence is only for the jury. you are inclined to interrupt him with the exclamation that you are already convinced. but it is a pleasure to listen to him, so you let him go on. after all, "brute reason is quite unbearable. there is something unfair about its use. it is like hitting below the intellect." wilde's _portrait of mr. w. h._ is more than a refutable theory, a charming piece of speculation. it is an illustration of the critic as artist, a foretaste of _intentions_. it is better than 'the truth of masks,' as good as 'the decay of lying.' yet it was not printed in that book, where it might well have had a place. the reason for this is not uninteresting. wilde did not intend to reprint it as it stood. the theory beneath that delicate brain-play had a lasting fascination for him, and, with its proofs, grew in his mind till it overbalanced cyril graham and doubting erskine. he re-wrote it at greater length, after delays. when he was arrested, the publishers, who had already announced it as a forthcoming book, returned it to his house, whence it disappeared on the day of the enforced sale of his effects. it has never been recovered. vi intentions mrs. malaprop classes paradoxes with greek, hebrew, simony and fluxions as inflammatory branches of learning, and, in _de profundis_, wilde says: "what the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the realm of passion." paradox and perversity were matches to set fire to his thought and his dreams. but paradox is not in itself different from direct speech. it is made by the statement of a result and the omission of the steps of reasoning by which that result has been achieved. when somebody accused jean moréas, that brilliant greek, of being paradoxical, he replied: "i do not know what paradox is; i believe it is the name which imbeciles give to the truth." wilde might have made a similar answer, and perhaps did. his paradoxes are only unfamiliar truths. those of them that were thought the wildest are already becoming obvious, for unfamiliarity is a temporal quality like flowers in a road: when a multitude has passed that way the flowers are trodden out of sight. paradox is, however, a proof of vitality and adventurous thought, and these things are sometimes the companions of charm. unfamiliar truth was, at first, the most noticeable characteristic of wilde's _intentions_, but, though paradox may fade to commonplace, "age cannot wither nor custom stale" the fresh and debonair personality that keeps the book alive, tossing thoughts like roses, and playing with them in happiness of heart. there is something of the undergraduate about the book. its pages might be reprinted from a college magazine in which a genius was stretching youthful limbs, instead of from such staid and respectable reviews as the fortnightly and the nineteenth century. it belongs to the days when the most natural thing in life is to talk until "the dusky night rides down the sky," and the pale morning light mocks at our yellow lamp. indeed, i think that such freshness and vivacity of writing is the gift of those authors only who are also talkers. they are accustomed to see their sentences in company, not in solitude. they give them a pleasing strut and swagger and teach them to make graceful entries and exits neither too ceremonious nor yet disorderly. their sentences are men of the world, and of a world where the passport to success is charm. it is not so with lecturers or preachers, whose office puts them in a different category. but men who talk for their own enjoyment and that of those who listen to them are less likely than the others to compose by eye instead of by ear. it is actually difficult to read wilde in silence. his sentences lift the voice as well as the thoughts of their writer from the printed page. wilde loved speech for its own sake, and nothing could be more characteristic of his gift than his choice of that old and inexhaustible form that plato, lucian, erasmus and landor, to name only a few, have turned to such different purposes. dialogue is at once personal and impersonal. "by its means he (the thinker) can both reveal and conceal himself, and give form to every fancy, and reality to every mood. by its means he can exhibit the object from each point of view, and show it us in the round, as a sculptor shows us things, gaining in this manner all the richness and reality of effect that comes from those side issues that are suddenly suggested by the central idea in its progress, and really illumine the idea more completely, or from those felicitous afterthoughts that give a fuller completeness to the central scheme, and yet convey something of the delicate charm of chance." nothing could better describe wilde's own essays in dialogue. the first of these essays is 'the decay of lying,' in which a young gentleman called vivian reads aloud an article on that subject to a slightly older and rather incredulous young gentleman called cyril, commenting as he reads, answering objections, and sometimes laying the manuscript on his knees as he follows the swift-flying swallow of his thought through the airy mazes of her joyous exercise. vivian holds a brief for the artist against the nature that he is supposed to imitate. he behaves like a lawyer, first picking his opponent to pieces, lest the jury should be prejudiced in his favour, and then proving his own case in so far as it is possible to prove it. the dialogue is a delightful thing in itself: it is also of the first importance to the student of wilde's theories of art. under its insouciance and extravagance lie many of the ideas that dictated his attitude as writer and as critic. vivian begins by opposing the comfort of a morris chair to the discomfort of nature's insect-ridden grass, and complains that nature is as indifferent to her cultured critic as to cow or burdock--which is not to be borne. he then, a little more seriously, envisages the history of art as a long warfare between the simian instinct of imitation and the god-like instinct of self-expression. he needs to show that fine art does not imitate, and points out that japanese painting, of which, at that time, everybody was talking, does not concern itself with japan, and that the japan we imagine for ourselves with the help of willow-pattern plates and the drawings of hokusai is no more real in one sense and no less real in another than the slit-eyed girl of gautier's "chinoiserie," who lives in a porcelain tower above the yellow river and the long-necked cormorants. our ideal japan has existed only in the minds of the artists who saw it, and when we cross the seas to look for it, we find nothing but a few fans and coloured lanterns. but that is not enough. we continually see lovely things in nature, strangely like the things we see in books and pictures. there is plagiary here, on one side or on the other, and, with almost ecstatic courage, vivian announces that, so far from art holding the mirror to nature (a view advanced by hamlet as a proof of his insanity), nature imitates art. he may have taken the hint from musset, for fortunio, in the comedy of that name, exclaims with melancholy criticism: "comme ce soleil couchant est manqué ce soir. regarde moi un pen ce vallée là-bas, ces quatre ou cinq méchants nuages qui grimpent sur cette montagne. je faisais des paysages comme celui-là, quand j'avais douze ans, sur la couverture de mes livres de classe." but he made the statement in no spirit of extravagance. it seemed to him that we observe in nature what art has taught us to see, and he chose that way of saying so. he elaborates it delightfully, so that people may forget he has spoken the truth. fogs, for example, did not exist till art had invented them. "now, it must be admitted, fogs are carried to excess. they have become the mere mannerism of a clique, and the exaggerated realism of their method gives dull people bronchitis." then he runs on for a few pages, illustrating these wise saws with modern and ingenious instances of life hurrying after fiction, reproducing the opening of "dr. jekyll and mr. hyde," setting an unreal becky sharp beside thackeray's creation, and going so far, indeed, as to trip up the heels of a serial story with the sordid actuality of fact. he discusses zola and his no less heavy-footed disciples, who stand for the failure of imitation and are the best proofs that the mirror cracks when the artist holds it up to anything except himself. cyril suggests that balzac was a realist, and vivian quotes baudelaire's saying, that "his very scullions have genius," compares him to holbein, and points out that he is far more real than life. "a steady course of balzac reduces our living friends to shadows and our acquaintances to the shadows of shades." then comes an objection to modernity of form, and some reasons for that objection that suggest a very interesting speculation. he thinks that balzac's love for modernity of form prevented him from producing any single book that can rank with the masterpieces of romantic art. and then:--"the public imagine that, because they are interested in their immediate surroundings, art should be interested in them also, and should take them as her subject matter. but the mere fact that they are interested in these things makes them an unsuitable subject for art. the only beautiful things, as somebody once said, are the things that do not concern us. as long as a thing is useful or necessary to us, or affects us in any way, either for pain or for pleasure, or appeals strongly to our sympathies, or is a vital part of the environment in which we live, it is outside the proper sphere of art." these words seemed, in , to be both daring and precarious. the influence of philosophy is not so immediate as is sometimes supposed. it is not extravagant to find in those few words a reflection, direct or indirect, of immanuel kant, who, writing in , said that what is called beautiful is the object of a delight apart from any interest, and showed that charm, or intimate reference to our own circumstances or possible circumstances, so far from being a criterion of beauty, was a disturbing influence upon our judgment. in the preface to _dorian gray_, that little flaunting compendium of wilde's æsthetics, it is easy to trace the ideas of kant, divested of their technical phrasing, freed from their background of reasoning and their foreground of accurate explanation. for example:--"no artist desires to prove anything." this balances kant's banishment of concepts from the beautiful. for another:--"all art is quite useless." this balances kant's distinction between the beautiful and the good. this is not the place for any worthy discussion of the relation between the theory and the practice of art; but it is interesting to notice that what was temperamentally true for wilde, and therefore peculiarly his own, had been logically true for a philosopher a hundred years before. coleridge, whose originality there is no more need to question than wilde's, gave kant's ideas a different colouring. is it that the philosopher is unable to apply in detail what the artist is unable to conceive as a whole? it is important to remember that throughout this dialogue, wilde is speaking of pure art, a thing which possibly does not exist, and, recognising it as an ideal towards which all artists should aspire, is engaged in pointing out the more obvious means of falling short of it. he achieves a triumph, of a kind in which he delighted, by making people read of such a subject. not wishing to be laughed at by the british intellect, and wishing to be listened to, he laughs at it instead, and, near the end of the dialogue, is so daring as to present it with a picture of what is occurring, confident that the individual will disclaim the general, and smile without annoyance at the caricature. "the stolid british intellect lies in the desert sands like the sphinx in flaubert's marvellous tale, and fantasy, _la chimère_, dances round it and calls to it with her false flute-toned voice." and the individual reader did not understand, and wilde danced away until he felt inclined again to make him listen to the flute-toned enunciation of unfamiliar truths. 'pen, pencil, and poison,' the essay on wainewright, not in dialogue, has some of the hard angular outlines of the set article on book or public character. it fills these outlines, however, with picturesque detail and half-ironic speculation. it is impossible not to notice the resemblance between the subject of this essay and its author. it is difficult not to suspect that wilde, in setting in clear perspective wainewright's poisoning and writing, in estimating the possible power of crime to intensify a personality, was analysing himself, and expressing through a psychological account of another man the results of that analysis. perhaps, in that essay we have less analysis than hypothesis. wilde may have happened on the life of wainewright, and taken it, among all the books he had read, as a kind of virgilian omen. my metaphor, as dr. chasuble would say, is drawn from virgil. it used to be customary among those who wished to look into the future to open the works of that poet and to observe the lines covered by the thumb: "which lines, if in any way applicable to one's condition, were accounted prophetic." i think it possible that wilde looked upon the little account of wainewright that gave him a basis for his article as just such a prophetic intimation. he may have written the article to taste his future before the fact. anyhow, he foreshadows the line of defence to be taken by his own apologists when he exclaims that "the fact of a man being a poisoner is nothing against his prose." in any discussion of the influence that wilde's disease or crime exerted on his art, this essay would be a valuable piece of evidence. but in other things than the engaging in a secret activity, wainewright offered wilde a curious parallel with himself. he too introduced a new manner in writing by a new manner in dress, and wilde was able to use his own emotions in the presence of blue china to vitalize the piece of dutch painting, a gabriel metsu or a jan van eyck, in which he paints wainewright with his cats, his curiosities, his crucifixes, his rare books, his cameos, and his "brown-biscuit tea-pots, filigree worked," against a background in which green predominates. "he had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals." wilde also was fond of green. i have not counted occasions, but i have the impression that green is the colour most often mentioned alike in his verse and in his prose. green and jade: these are his keynotes in colour, unless i am mistaken, and in these matters impressions are less likely to err than mathematics. but the most striking and beautiful thing in _intentions_ is that dialogue between the two young men in a library whose windows look over the kaleidoscopic swirl of piccadilly to the trees and lawns of the green park. they talk through the summer night, supping delicately on ortolans and chambertin, and, in the early morning, draw the curtains, see the silver ribbon of the road, the purple mist among the trees, and walk down to covent garden to look at the roses that have come in from the country. there is something of boccaccio in that setting, something, too, of landor in the lucid sentences of their talk, and something of walter pater in the choice of the fruit they so idly pluck from the tree of knowledge. but pater could not have let their conversation change so easily from smooth to ripple and from ripple to smooth; landor would have caught the ripples and carved them in transparent moonstone, and boccaccio would have given them girls to talk of, instead of "the critic as artist." that would seem to be a question for the learned and not for two young exquisites with a taste for music and books and an æsthetic dislike of the german language. but the only critical dialogue in english literature that is at all comparable with wilde's is "the impartial critick" of john dennis, who was ready to prove that choruses were unnecessary in tragedy, that wycherley excelled plautus, and that shakespeare himself was not so bad as thomas rymer had painted him. and there too we have young men, not themselves authors, talking for pleasure's sake, drinking with discretion, now in their lodgings, now at the old devil and now at the cock, reading aloud to each other and commenting verse by verse on mr. waller, whom they admit to be "a great genius and a gallant writer." there is a delightful savour about that dialogue, dry as some of the questions were that those two young sparks discussed with such wet throats. there is a suggestion of the town outside and the country beyond, of stage-coaches passing through the haymarket, and of hampshire gentlemen "being forbid by the perpetual rains to follow the daily labour of their country sports," handing about their brimmers within doors, "as fast as if they had done it for exercise." and those young men talk with just the fine superiority of ernest and gilbert to the authordom whose rules and persons they amuse themselves by discussing. ernest and gilbert are, however, better talkers. in fact, their talk is far too good really to have been heard. they set their excellence as a barrier between themselves and life. not for a moment will they forget that they are the creatures of art: not for a moment will they leave that calm air for the dust and turmoil of human argument. wilde was never so sure of his art as in this dialogue, where ernest, that ethereal sancho panza, and gilbert, that rather languid don quixote, tilt for their hearer's joy. they share the power of visualization that made wilde's own talk like a continuous fairy tale. they turn their ideas into a coloured pageantry, and all the gods of greece and characters of art are ready to grace by their visible presence the exposition, whether of the ideas that are to be confuted or of those that are to take their place. "in the best days of art," says ernest, "there were no art critics," and four pages follow in which the sculptor releases the sleeping figures from the marble, phædrus bathes his feet in the nymph-haunted meadow, the little figures of tanagra are shaped with bone or wooden tool from river clay, artemis and her hounds are cut upon a veined sardonyx, the wanderings of odysseus are stained upon the plaster, and round the earthen wine-jar bacchus dances and silenus sprawls. "but no," says gilbert, "the greeks were a nation of art-critics." he balances with a sequence of ideas his friend's pageant of pictures. the greeks criticized language, and "words have not merely music as sweet as that of viol and lute, colour as rich and vivid as any that makes lovely for us the canvas of the venetian or the spaniard, and plastic form no less sure and certain than that which reveals itself in marble or in bronze, but thought and passion and spirituality are theirs also, are theirs indeed alone. if the greeks had criticized nothing but language, they would still have been the great art-critics of the world. to know the principles of the highest art is to know the principles of all the arts." and so the talk goes on. there is but one defect in this panoramic method of presenting ideas. each time that wilde empties, or seems to spill before us, his wonderful cornucopia of coloured imagery, he seems to build a wave that towers like the blue and silver billow of hokusai's print. now, surely, it will break, we say, and are tempted to echo cyril in 'the decay of lying,' when, at the close of one of these miraculous paragraphs, he remarks, "i like that. i can see it. is that the end?" too many of wilde's paragraphs are perorations. it is easy, in remembering the colour and rhythm of this dialogue, to forget the subtlety of its construction, the richness of its matter, and the care that wilde brought to the consideration of his subject. i have pleased myself by working out a scheme of its contents, such as wilde may have used in building it. perhaps i could have found no better method of illustrating the qualities i have mentioned. he begins with a story in the memoirs of an academician, and, without telling it, goes on to praise autobiographies and biographies and egotism, in order to induce a frame of mind in the reader that shall make him ready to consider without too much hostility a peculiarly subjective form of art. he winds into his subject like a serpent, as goldsmith said of burke, by way of music, returning to the story told by the academician, which is allowed to suggest a remark on the uselessness of art-criticism. the ideas follow in some such order as this. bad criticism. the browning society as an example. browning. a swift and skilful return to the point at issue. the greeks not art critics. the greeks a nation of art critics. life and literature the highest arts. walter pater. greek criticism of language and the test of the spoken word. blind milton writing by ear alone. example of greek criticism in aristotle's "poetics." identification of the creative and critical faculties. all fine art is self-conscious. criticism as such more difficult than creation. action and reverie. sin an element of progress, because it intensifies the individuality. the world made by the singer for the dreamer. criticism itself art, a form of autobiography concerned with thoughts not events. criticism purely subjective, and so independent of obvious subject. for examples, ruskin's prose independent of his views on turner; pater's description of mona lisa independent of the intention of leonardo. "the meaning of a beautiful created thing is as much in the soul of him who looks at it, as it was in his soul who wrought it." music. "beauty has as many meanings as man has moods." the highest criticism "criticizes not merely the individual work of art, but beauty itself, and fills with wonder a form which the artist may have left void, or not understood, or understood incompletely." a work of art is to the critic a suggestion for a new work of his own. modern painting. too intelligible pictures do not challenge the critic. imitation and suggestion. "the æsthetic critic rejects those obvious modes of art that have but one message to deliver, and having delivered it become dumb and sterile." at this point, supper, with a promise to discuss the critic as interpreter. part ii picks up the discussion and continues. works of art need interpretation. a true appreciation of milton, for example, impossible without scholarship. but the truth of a critic's interpretation depends on the intensity of his own personality. all arts have their critics. the actor a critic of the drama. the executant a critic of the composer. critics "will be always showing us the work of art in some new relation to our age." tendency towards finding experience in art rather than in life. life a failure from the artistic point of view, if only because a moment of life can never be lived again, whereas in literature, one can be sure of finding the particular emotion for which one looks. a pageantry of the things that have been happening in dante for six hundred years. baudelaire and others. the transference of emotion. not through life but through art can we realize perfection. the immorality of art. "for emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of art, and emotion for the sake of action is the aim of life, and of that practical organization of life that we call society." a further comparison between action and contemplation. ernest asks, "we exist, then, to do nothing," and gilbert answers, "it is to do nothing that the elect exist." there follows one of the few passages that contains any outspoken mention of a decadence. (this word was freely used as a label in england and france at this time.) "but we who are born at the close of this wonderful age are at once too cultured and too critical, too intellectually subtle and too curious of exquisite pleasures, to accept any speculations about life in exchange for life itself." "in the development of the critical spirit we shall be able to realise, not merely our own lives, but the collective life of the race." heredity, "the only one of the gods whose real name we know," brings gifts of strange temperaments and impossible desires, and the power of living a thousand lives. imagination is "concentrated race-experience." being and becoming compared with doing. defence of egotism. "the sure way of knowing nothing about life is to try to make oneself useful." schoolmasters. self-culture, not the culture of others, the proper aim of man. the idea is dangerous: so are all ideas. ernest suggests that the fact that a critical work is subjective places it below the greatest work, which is impersonal and objective. gilbert replies that "the difference between objective and subjective work is one of external form merely. it is accidental, not essential. all artistic creation is absolutely subjective." critics not even limited to the more obviously subjective forms of expression, but may use drama, dialogues, narrative, or poetry. he then turns more particularly to the critic's qualifications. he must not be fair, not be rational, not be sincere, except in his devotion to the principle of beauty, journalism, reviewing, and prurience. intrusion of morals into art. further consideration of the critic's qualifications. temperament, its cultivation through decorative art. a digression on modern painting, returning to the subject of decorative art. the influence of the critic should be the mere fact of his existence. "you must not ask of him to have any aim other than the perfecting of himself." it is not his business to reform bad artists, who are probably quite irreclaimable. remembering, but not alluding to whistler's attack, he lets ernest ask, "but may it not be that the poet is the best judge of poetry, and the painter of painting?" gilbert replies, "the appeal of all art is simply to the artistic temperament." great artists unable to recognize the beauty of work different from their own. examples:--wordsworth on keats, shelley on wordsworth, byron on all three, sophocles on euripides, milton on shakespeare, reynolds on gainsborough. the future belongs to criticism. "the subject-matter at the disposal of creation is always diminishing, while the subject-matter of criticism increases daily." the use of criticism. it makes culture possible, makes the mind a fine instrument, "takes the cumbersome mass of creative work, and distils it into a finer essence." it recreates the past. it makes us cosmopolitan. goethe could not hate france even during her invasion of germany. comparison between ethics and æsthetics. "to discern the beauty of a thing is the finest point to which we can arrive." "creation is always behind the age. it is criticism that leads us." a swift summary, with a graceful transition to the dawn and opening windows over piccadilly. such is the skeleton of thought that connects all that is said, and, disguised by a wonderful skill, makes even the transitions delightful, and remembers the main purpose again and again without ever wearying us by allowing us to be conscious of repetition. but, forgetting these mechanics and listening to that light-hearted conversation, we become aware that we are enjoying the exposition of a point of view without an understanding of which wilde would be unintelligible as either man or writer. it does not represent him completely; a man's points of views are as various as his moods. but, with 'the decay of lying,' it does represent what was, perhaps, the dominant mood of his life. the dialogues overlap, but do not contradict each other. it can hardly have been chance that divided them in _intentions_, by 'pen, pencil, and poison,' that reflects the mood directly opposite, the mood in which he delighted to see a personality express itself in clothes, in vice, in action of any kind other than the vivid inaction of art. it is more likely to have been self-knowledge. for the mood that dictated the study of wainewright was akin to that in which he found it an astounding adventure to entertain poisonous things. "it was like feasting with panthers; the danger was half the excitement." wilde's tragedy may be traced to the conflict between these moods, the one inviting him to life, the other to art. in either case, life or art matched its colours to seduce his temperament. the mood of the dialogues was that in which he turned, not necessarily always to writing, but to seek experience in art. in this mood he preferred, if you like to put it so, to take life at second-hand, and was happier to speak of corot than of twilight, of turner than of sunset. in this mood, like vivian, he did not seek in japanese art to know japan, but rather to learn a new country "anywhere out of the world." ancient greece did not mean to him the peloponnesian war, but the candour of grecian statuary and the small figures of tanagra, in the folds of whose dancing dresses, that seem always to have caught the tint of the evening sky in their terra-cotta, he found the secret of quite another country than the greece of the historian. it was always his pleasure to begin where others had ended, and criticism rather than creation came to mean for him the delicate adventures of the intellect, such a life as was the best part of his own. and so criticism became creation for him, building its impressions into things beautiful in themselves, and transforming the life of the critic into something no less delightful than the subjects of his contemplation. such a theory of criticism had not been stated before his time, though there had been such critics and such criticism. the abstract usually follows the concrete, and the practice dictates the precept. wilde had in his mind as he wrote such fine flaming things as swinburne's study of blake, and such slow-moving magnificent pageants as "marius the epicurean," in which pater had criticized a century of manners and ideas. and, perhaps, he did not forget his own 'pen, pencil, and poison,' that was "a study in green," as well as a summary of the life and talents of janus weathercock of the london magazine. beautiful criticism had been made as long ago as when sidney wrote of the "blind crowder," whose song moved his heart like the sound of a trumpet. but men had not known what they were doing, and made lovely things with quite another purpose. coleridge set the key for many men's playing when he said that "the ultimate end of criticism is much more to establish the principles of writing, than to furnish rules how to pass judgments on what has been written by others; if indeed it were possible that the two could be separated." and mr. arthur symons, who has in our own day made fine critical things, yet says, quite humbly, that "the aim of criticism is to distinguish what is essential in the work of a writer," and again, that "criticism is a valuation of forces." hazlitt was no further from the truth when he wrote, in a pleasant, rather malicious article on the critics of his time, that "a genuine criticism should, as i take it, reflect the colours, the light and shade, the soul and body of a work." criticism, as wilde saw it, was free to do all these things, but had a further duty to itself. hazlitt, and those who read him in his own day, thought that he was giving opinions, talking, reflecting "the soul and body of a work"; but it is for himself that we read him now, and his subjects and opinions matter little beside the gusto and the fresh wind of the chalk downs that make his essays things in themselves and fit for such criticism as he liked. wainewright too, who learnt from hazlitt, "deals," as wilde saw, "with his impressions of the work as an artistic whole, and tries to translate these impressions into words, to give, as it were, the literary equivalent for his imaginative and mental effect." but he did not say so, and perhaps walter pater's essays were the first to make it impossible not to recognize that criticism was more than a series of judgments, opinions and ideas, necessarily subordinate to the thing criticized. wilde, at any rate, recognized this, and carried passive recognition into active proclamation of a new creed for critics. he gave them a new creed and a new charter, and, if he had done nothing else, would have earned a place in the history of our literature. he showed that they were free to do all they had ever attempted, to track the secret stream of inspiration to its source, to work out alike the melody and counterpoint of art, to discover its principles, to enjoy its examples, to paint portraits, to talk with their sitters, to enounce ideas, to catch the fleeting sunlight and shadow of impression. they were free to do all this, and for a creed he taught them that criticism is itself a creative art, perhaps the most creative of the arts, certainly an art to be practised with no less delicate care than that of the maker of poems, the teller of stories, the painter of pictures, the man who captures a melody, or the man who shapes a dream in stone. my private predilections may have led me to lay too much emphasis on the main contention of 'the critic as artist.' i hope not, but must take this opportunity of remembering that, like 'the decay of lying,' this dialogue is rich in other matter than theory. wilde never, unless in the essay on wainewright, deliberately set himself to estimate an artist or to paint a portrait. but throughout the two dialogues are scattered fragments of vivid criticism, sometimes a little swift and careless, always subordinated as notes of colour to the prevailing scheme of the whole, but never impersonal or dull. it is impossible to read a page of _intentions_ without experiencing a delightful stimulus. it is, in my opinion, that one of wilde's books that most nearly represents him. in nothing else that he wrote did he come so near to pouring into literature the elixir of intellectual vitality that he royally spilled over his conversation. the fourth essay in the book is not on the high level of the others. it is more practical and less beautiful, was written earlier than the rest, and published in the year after wilde's marriage. it is interesting, but less as a thing in itself than as an indication of the character of wilde's knowledge of the theatre. i have therefore passed it over to the next chapter. vii the theatre there is a public glory in the art of the theatre, a direct and immediate applause that is nearer to the face-to-face praise and visible worship that is won by conversation than the discreet approval of readers of books. of all the arts that of the drama is most likely to attract the talker for talk's sake. by its means he can set his fancies moving on the boards, fling his metaphors dressed and coloured on a monstrous screen, and entertain a thousand listeners at once. hazlitt never wrote a play; but his was talk with a purpose. he talked to learn, to teach, to think aloud. but lamb, who talked for the delight of himself and his friends, tried to amuse a larger audience with "mr. h.," and, when that play was damned, joined heartily in the hisses, for fear of being mistaken for the author. those who conspired at the mermaid tavern to send brave argosies of wit trafficking on a bluer sea than ever sailed drake's galleons were playwrights to a man. particularly the theatre attracts those dandies among authors and talkers, for whom social means as much as artistic success--steele, congreve, wilde. congreve, like wilde, went to trinity college, dublin (though he was not an irishman), came to london with but little money, was a public character before he was twenty-five, cared as much for society as for art, grew fat with success, and became a gentleman of the world. the differences between his comedies and wilde's are not due to different aims in writing, but only to differences in their personalities, and to the change in public taste during the two centuries that passed between "love for love" and _the importance of being earnest_. not until congreve had had three plays successfully acted did he write one of which "but little ... was prepared for that general taste which seems now to be predominant in the palates of our audience." it is important in considering wilde's early comedies to remember the character of the audience with which he had to contend. his was a public that asked to feel as well as to smile, a public that had grown accustomed to smile with tears in its eyes, a public that was best pleased to laugh loudly and to sob into handkerchiefs, and judged a play by the loudness of the laughs and the number of the handkerchiefs that it made necessary. he had not a restoration audience of men and women with sharpened wits and a delight in their exercise, ready to smile and quite unready to take anything seriously except amusement. it is for that reason that he called _lady windermere's fan_ "a play about a good woman," instead of making mrs. erlynne a sylvia and punishing lord darlington with a marriage. the spectacular effects of the theatre, the possibilities of delightful dialogue, the public glory, of which he was always rather greedy, drew wilde to the writing of plays. but beside these less intimate motives he had a genuine dramatic instinct that kept him from his early youth intermittently preparing himself as a playwright. the first thing he wrote after the publication of _poems_ was a play. he took it with him to america, and on his return wrote another. with the charming braggadocio of one who was quite determined that there should be an op. xxx. he printed op. ii. on the title-page of the private issue of _the duchess of padua_. his public recognition as a playwright was deferred till , but after the writing of _vera_, which, i suppose, was op. i., he seldom ceased to observe and to plan for the stage. the character of wilde's study of the theatre was shown in 'the truth of masks,' and in the dramatic criticism that he wrote in the years immediately following his marriage. it was a study of methods and concerned no less with stage-management than with the drama. nearly thirty years ago he made a plea for beautiful scenery, and asked for that harmony between costumier and scene-painter that has been achieved in our day by charles ricketts and cayley robinson under the management of mr. herbert trench. he remarked that painted doors were superior to real ones, and pointed out that properties which need light from more than one side destroy the illumination suggested by the scene-painter's shadings. from the first his dramatic criticism was written in the wings, not from the point of view of an audience careless of means, observant only of effects. _vera_ may have been dull, and _the duchess of padua_ unplayable, but actors, at least, shall have no fault to find in the technique of _lady windermere's fan_. that play seems to me to be no more than a conscious experiment in the use of the knowledge that wilde had sedulously worked to obtain. there was a continuity in wilde's interest in the theatre wholly lacking in his passing fancies for narrative or essay-writing. this, with the fact that his plays brought him his first financial success, has made it usual to consider him as a dramatist whose recreations are represented by his books. even mr. symons, in his article on wilde as "an artist in attitudes," finds that his plays, "the wittiest that have been seen upon the modern stage," expressed, "as it happened by accident, precisely what he himself was best able to express." i cannot help feeling that this is a little unjust to him. his most perfectly successful works, those which most exactly accomplish what they attempt, without sacrificing any part of themselves, are, perhaps, _the importance of being earnest_ and _salomé_. both these are plays. but neither of them seems to me so characteristic, so inclusive of wilde as _intentions_, _de profundis_, _the portrait of mr. w. h._, or even _the picture of dorian gray_. his plays are wilfully limited, subordinated to an aim outside themselves, and, except in the two i have just mentioned, these limitations are not such as to justify themselves by giving freedom to the artist. some limitations set an artist free for an achievement otherwise impossible. but the limitations of which i complain only made wilde a little contemptuous of his work. they did not save his talent from preoccupations, but compelled it to a labour in whose success alone he could take an interest. it is impossible not to feel that wilde was impatient of the methods and the meanings of his first three successful plays, like a juggler, conscious of being able to toss up six balls, who is admired for tossing three. these good women, these unselfish, pseudonymous mothers, these men of wit and fashion discomfited to make a british holiday; their temptations, their sacrifices, their defeats, are not taken from any drama played in wilde's own mind. he saw them and their adventures quite impersonally; and no good art is impersonal. salomé kissing the pale lips of iokanaan may once have moved him when he saw her behind the ghostly footlights of that secret theatre in which each man is his own dramatist, his own stage-manager, and his own audience. but lady windermere did not return to her husband for wilde's sake, and he did not feel that sir robert chiltern's future mattered either way. he cared only that an audience he despised should be relieved at her return, and that to them the career of a politician should seem to be important. not until the production of _the importance of being earnest_ did he share the pleasure of the pit. i know a travelling showman who makes "enjoy" an active verb, and speaks of "enjoying the poor folk" when, for coppers, he lets them ride on merry-go-rounds, and agitate themselves in swing-boats, which offer him no manner of amusement. in just this way wilde "enjoyed" the london audiences with his early plays. he did not enjoy them himself. hazlitt said of congreve that "the workmanship overlays the materials; in wycherley the casting of the parts and the fable are alone sufficient to ensure success." wilde may not have read hazlitt on "the english comic writers," but his earlier plays suggest a determination to "ensure success" after the manner of wycherley, and to overlay the base material necessary for that purpose with wit's fine workmanship after the manner of congreve. the fables, the characters, the settings, were chosen on account of their experience; all were veterans with reputations untarnished by any failure in popularity. some were taken from the english stage, some from the french; all served as the machinery to keep an audience interested and carry wilde's voice across the footlights. in the theatre, as in storytelling, he was not unready to work to _bouts-rimés_. i say, to carry wilde's voice across the footlights: that is exactly what his plays do. those neat, polished sentences, snapping like snuffboxes, are often taken from the books that hold what he chose to preserve of his conversation. an aphorism that has served the author of _the soul of man_ and shone for a moment in _dorian gray_ is given a new vitality by lord illingworth, and what is good enough for lady narborough is a little better in the mouth of dumby. wilde was never without the power, shared by all amateurs of genius, of using up the odds and ends from one pastime to fill out the detail of another. doing things, like merimée, for wagers with himself, he would make plays that should be powerful in their effect on other people, but he would reserve the right to show, even while making them, that he could do something else. he learnt from musset, and believed, with fortunio, that "a pun is a consolation for many ills, and a play upon words as good a way as another of playing with thoughts, actions, and people." he consoled himself for his plots by taking extraordinary liberties with them, and amused himself with quips, bons-mots, epigrams and repartee that had really nothing to do with the business in hand. most of his witty sayings would bear transplanting from one play to another, and it is necessary to consult the book if we would remember in whose mouth they were placed. this is a very different thing from the dialogue of congreve on the one hand or of j. m. synge on the other. the whole arrangement in conversation, as he might appropriately have called either _lady windermere's fan_, _an ideal husband_, or _a woman of no importance_, was very much lighter than the story that served as its excuse and sometimes rudely interrupted it. it was so sparkling, good-humoured and novel that even the audience for whom he had constructed the story forgave him for putting a brake upon its speed with this quite separate verbal entertainment. i suppose that this forgiveness encouraged him to believe that the situations and emotional appeals he borrowed from melodrama were not necessary to his success. in _the importance of being earnest_ he threw them bravely overboard, and wrote a play whose very foundation was a pun. nothing could be a better proof of the inessential nature of those tricks with which he had been making sure of his audience than the immense superiority of this play to the others. free from the necessity of living up to any drama more serious than its conversation, it preserves a unity of feeling and of tone that sets it upon a higher level. wit is a little heartless, a little jarring, when flashed over a crisis of conscience, even when we know that the agitated politician is only a figure cut from an illustrated paper and mounted on cardboard. and passion, whether of repentance or of indignation, is a little _outré_ in a picture-gallery where lord illingworth has said that a well-tied tie is the first serious step in life. in those first three plays, even when wilde makes a serious effort to get dramatic value out of, for example, the lord illingworth's worldly wisdom, he is quite unable to disguise the fact that it is an effort and serious. those plays are interesting, amusing, clever, what you will, but their contradictions have cost them beauty. it is not in the least surprising that _the importance of being earnest_, the most trivial of the social plays, should be the only one of them that gives that peculiar exhilaration of spirit by which we recognise the beautiful. it is precisely because it is consistently trivial that it is not ugly. if only once it marred its triviality with a bruise of passion, its beauty would vanish with the blow. but it never contradicts itself, and it is worth noticing that its unity, its dovetailing of dialogue and plot, so that the one helps the other, is not achieved at the expense of the conversation, but at that of the mechanical contrivances for filling a theatre that wilde had not at first felt sure of being able to do without. the dialogue has not been weighted to trudge with the plot; the plot has been lightened till it can fly with the wings of the dialogue. the two are become one, and the lambent laughter of this comedy is due to the radioactivity of the thing itself, and not to glow-worms incongruously stuck over its surface. it is not easy to define the quality of that laughter. it is not uproarious enough to provide the sore throat of farce. it is not thoughtful enough to pass meredith's test of comedy. it is not due to a sense of superior intellect, like much of mr. shaw's. it is the laughter of complicity. we do not laugh at but with the persons of the play. we would, if we could, abet the duplicity of mr. worthing, and be accessories after the fact to the bunburying of algernon. we would even encourage lady bracknell's determined statement, for we are in the secret, and we know-- she only does it to amuse, because she knows it pleases. the simultaneous speech of cecily and gwendolen is no insult to our intelligence, nor do we boggle for a moment over the delightful impossibility of lane. we are caught from the beginning by a spirit of delicate fun. we busy ourselves in the intrigues, and would on no account draw back. _the importance of being earnest_ is to solid comedy what filigree is to a silver bowl. we are relieved of our corporeal envelopes, and share with wilde the pleasure of sporting in the fourth dimension. * * * * * nothing better illustrates wilde's extraordinary versatility than his almost simultaneous business as two entirely different dramatists. the one wrote the plays we have been discussing, the other, plays so different from these in character that it is hard to believe that they are the work of the same man. these other plays have been called "romantic," a word that hardly distinguishes them from the "romantic" comedy of _the importance of being earnest_. still, gautier and flaubert have made it possible to attribute to that word a flavour of the south and the east, and these plays have southern and eastern settings that are harmonious with their contents. there is no laughter in these plays. they are nearer to _the duchess of padua_ than to comedy. wilde delighted in laughter, but also in a quality in emotion almost hostile to laughter, a quality that i can best describe as magnificence. in his prose books both are expressed; if his dramatic writing had been limited to the four plays that brought him success, it would have seemed that the wilde who wrote _the sphinx_ had not been represented on the stage. but, when he was writing _lady windermere's fan_, or a little earlier, he wrote down, swiftly, as if to relieve himself, a play whose mood was at the opposite end of his range. and, while _the importance of being earnest_ was filling the st. james's theatre, he was trying to finish _la sainte courtisane_, and had submitted to a manager the latter part of _a florentine tragedy_, which he had never been able to begin. when he was released from prison, he left the manuscript of the first in a cab, and did not complete the second. he had imagined, while in reading gaol, two other such plays as _salomé--ahab and isabel_, and _pharaoh_. these, unfortunately, like _the cardinal of arragon_, portions of which wilde was accustomed to recite, were never written. the non-existence and the incompleteness of these plays are explicable on other grounds than those of inclination. i think that if _salomé_ had been produced with success as soon as it was written, wilde would very likely not have written his plays about good women and conscience-stricken men of state, or, having written one, would have written no more. it is possible that we owe _the importance of being earnest_ to the fact that the censor prevented sarah bernhardt from playing _salomé_ at the palace theatre. for though wilde had the secret of a wonderful laughter, he preferred to think of himself as a person with magnificent dreams. he would rather have been a magician than a jester. the well-dressed modern plays starved too many of his intimate desires. he was unable to clothe magnificent emotions in evening dress. but applause was necessary to him. he made sure of it by the modern plays, and had not a chance of securing it by anything else. and so there are four social comedies, and only one _salomé_. of the unfinished plays, as they are printed in his works, there is little to be said. _la sainte courtisane_ is a beautiful fragment, suggesting a story rather intellectual than emotional, but an admirable framework on which to drape a cloak of imagery. the motive is the same as that of _the portrait of mr. w. h._ the woman covered with jewels is converted by the hermit to the love of god, and he by her to the love of the flesh. they lose their own beliefs in imparting them, and the hermit goes to alexandria, while the woman remains in the desert. the dialogue is of the same character as that of _salomé_, which we shall presently discuss. we cannot tell how fine a play it might have been. _the florentine tragedy_ is less fragmentary. as wilde left it, it was the latter part of a play in one act in blank verse, beginning with the surprisal of the lovers by the husband. the whole of the conversation between the three had been written. to fit the play for presentation on the stage, mr. sturge moore wrote a preparation for it that cannot be far different from wilde's design, and is now printed with the rest. it is not the business of this book to consider the brilliant and vigorous poetry of mr. sturge moore, though it is impossible not to remember with delight passages from many of his books, always rich in ore, and again and again melting into purest gold. his induction to wilde's play is perfectly calculated. he catches the spirit of wilde's verse, and subdues his own to agreement. his is the difficult task of so drawing bianca's character that she shall be able without incongruity to beg the young lord to kill her husband, and, when the young lord is himself killed, to come dazed towards the merchant she has despised, with the question-- "why did you not tell me you were so strong?" and receive the answer-- "why did you not tell me you were beautiful?" wilde's is a piece of cumulative drama that keeps up an increasing tension in the audience from the moment that the husband enters till the moment when the lover dies and those two sentences are spoken. the play resembles _the duchess of padua_ in being unable to disguise an aloof intention, an extraneous will-power, that is perfectly hidden in the earlier _salomé_. it is surprising to think that _salomé_ was not written with a view to production. it was only offered to sarah bernhardt when she asked wilde why he had not written a play for her. the stage-directions, i am told, set almost insoluble problems to the manager, whose ideas are limited by the conventions of the modern theatre. the final speech of salomé is of a length that demands, if abridgment is to be avoided, a consummate actress and an audience in a state of extraordinary tension. but, since the play induces such a tension, the lack of an actress can hardly be urged as a blemish on its technique. and since, when the play is produced it is extremely successful, we can only rejoice that it has shown, if only accidentally, the inadequacy of once accepted dogmas of theatrical presentation. an appeal to the populace is not good criticism, but no badly built play can show such a record of success as _salomé_. mr. ross will, i am sure, allow me to use some of the heavy fire of facts with which he answered those critics who spoke of the play as having been "dragged from obscurity" when it was produced in england in . "in , within a year of the author's death, it was produced in berlin; from that moment it has held the european stage. it has run for a longer consecutive period in germany than any play by any englishman, not excepting shakespeare. its popularity has extended to all countries where it is not prohibited. it is performed throughout europe, asia, and america. it is played even in yiddish." but before discussing the play itself let me set down the facts on both sides of the mild controversy over the writing of it in french. wilde had talked of the play for some time before he wrote it, and talked of it chiefly in paris. frenchmen had applauded the fragments he recited. it was to them that he wished to show it when completed. this is the reason why it shares with "vathek" and "the grammont memoirs" the distinction of being a work written in french by an english-speaking man of genius. it has been suggested that the language made it possible, but _la sainte courtisane_ is enough to show that it could have been written in english. there are slight disagreements over wilde's knowledge of french. m. andré gide says that "he knew french admirably, but pretended to have to look for the words for which he meant his listeners to wait. he had almost no accent, or at most only what it pleased him to retain to give a new and strange aspect to his words." on the other hand, m. stuart merrill writes of his speaking french with a fantasy that, pleasant enough in conversation, would have produced a deplorable impression in the theatre. for example, wilde ended one of his stories with "et puis, alors, le roi il est mouru." these pieces of evidence must be remembered when we consider the composition of _salomé_. mr. ross says: "the play was passed for press by no less a writer than marcel schwob, whose letter to the paris publisher, returning the proofs and mentioning two or three slight alterations, is still in my possession. marcel schwob told me some years afterwards that he thought it would have spoiled the spontaneity and character of wilde's style if he had tried to harmonize it with the diction demanded by the french academy." m. merrill says: "un jour wilde me remit son drame qu'il avait écrit très rapidement, de premier jet, en français, et me demanda d'en corriger les erreurs manifestes. ce ne fut pas chose facile de faire accepter à wilde toutes mes corrections.... je me rappelle que la plupart des tirades de ses personnages commençaient par l'explétif: _enfin!_ en ai-je assez biffé, des _enfin!_ mais je m'apercus bientôt que le bon wilde n'avait en mon gout qu'une confiance relative, et je le recommandai aux soins de retté. celui-ci continua mon travail de correction et d'émendation. mais wilde finit par se méfier de retté autant que de moi, et ce fut pierre louys qui donna le dernier coup de lime au texte de _salomé_." in comment, i shall do no more than notice that the play was written in , and not published till . the two stories do not necessarily contradict each other, for marcel schwob did not suggest that he saw the manuscript, and m. merrill's reminiscence is concerned with _salomé_ long before it was sent to the printers. the question is not one of any great importance. it is sufficient for our purpose to observe that the french of _salomé_, whether as wilde wrote it or as it survived the emendations of his friends, is very simple in construction. salomé, daughter of herodias, princess of judæa, did not use the finer subtleties of the language in which she loved iokanaan. a perusal of maeterlinck's "les sept princesses" had taught her to use a speech whose power depends on its simplicity. she, herod, herodias and all their entourage, speak like children who have had a french nurse. their speech is made of short sentences, direct assertions and negations, that run like pages beside the progress of the play. they show, these short sentences, what is happening, the more forcefully, because they are themselves aloof from it and busied with their own concerns. for example:-- "_herode._ qu'est-ce que cela me fait qu'elle danse ou non? cela ne me fait rien. je suis heureux ce soir. je suis très heureux. jamais je n'ai été si heureux. _le premier soldat._ il a l'air sombre, le tétrarque. n'est-ce pas qu'il a l'air sombre? _le second soldat._ il a l'air sombre." the effect of the play is won by the cumulative weight of these short contradictory sentences, that fall like continual drops of water on a stone, never argue, are never loud enough to be quarrelsome, and sometimes amuse themselves by reflecting, as if in a box of mirrors, a single object in a hundred ways. the moon is translated into many moods. for the page of herodias she is a dead woman coming from the tomb to look for dead men. salomé's lover sees her as a little dancing princess, with yellow veil and silver feet. for salomé she is a little piece of money, cold, chaste, a virgin. the page of herodias sees her again as a dead woman, covering herself with a winding-sheet, and when the young syrian dies, laments that, knowing she was seeking a dead man, he had not hidden his friend in a cavern where she could not see him. herod finds her an hysterical woman seeking lovers everywhere, naked, and refusing to be veiled by the clouds. herodias finds that the moon resembles the moon, and that is all. then in the eyes of herod she becomes red in accordance with the prophecy, and herodias replies, jeering, "and the kings of the earth have fear." and finally, when salomé is speaking to the head, when all is over but her death, herod cries aloud that the moon should be put out with the torches and the stars, because he begins to be afraid. the drama, reflected in these images of the moon that show the changing colours of the minds that look at her, is thrown inward, and must be read between the lines. rather than describe the strength of an emotion, or show it in immediate action, wilde shows what it compels its possessor to disregard. salomé answers the question of the young syrian with irrelevant remarks, because she is obsessed by the mole's eyes of her stepfather. when iokanaan speaks, and the young syrian suggests that she should go into the garden in her litter, she replies simply, "il dit des choses monstrueuses à propos de ma mère, n'est-ce pas?" when he kills himself, on account of her words to the prophet, and falls before her feet, she does not see him. the page laments, and a soldier tells her of what has happened before her eyes:-- "_le premier soldat._ princesse, le jeune capitaine vient de se tuer. _salomé._ laisse-moi baiser ta bouche, iokanaan." this is potential as opposed to kinetic drama, and expresses itself not in action, but in being unmoved by action. it is an expression of the aspiration towards purely potential speech characteristic of the french symbolists, and of all who seek "a literature in which the visible world is no longer a reality, and the unseen world no longer a dream." it was, perhaps, the fear that such drama of the mind would be impossible on the stage that made maeterlinck write as sub-title to a book of plays, "little dramas for marionettes." for the speech maps out by avoidance what is really said, and whereas some plays would lose little by being acted in dumb show, these appeal less to the eye than to the ear. in writing _salomé_, however, wilde did not neglect the wonderful visual sense of the theatre that was, later, to suggest to him the appearance on the stage of jack in mourning for his non-existent brother. he was able to see the play from the point of view of the audience, and refused no means of intensifying its effect. when salomé is leaning over the cistern, listening for the death of iokanaan, he does not allow the executioner to come up with the head. the man would have shared the attention of the audience, and made the head a piece of meat. instead: "un grand bras noir, le bras du bourreau, sort de la citerne apportant sur un bouclier d'argent la tête d'iokanaan. salomé la saisit. hérode se cache le visage avec son manteau. hérodias sourit et s'évente. les nazaréens s'agenouillent et commencent à prier." the head, like a dramatic moment, isolated upon the stage, compels a group of characteristic actions. its appearance is a significant speech. the strength of the emotion in the play blinds many to the beauty without which it would be worthless. salomé's lust, wreaking itself on dead lips because it was denied them living, is, indeed, a powerful demon to subdue to the service of beauty. and the prurient, who are most intimately moved by it, make up most of those who cannot see beyond it. but this emotion is but part of a larger harmony, which, though still more powerful, is not allowed to confuse the delicate, careful fingering of the artist. control is never lost, and, when the play is done, when we return to it in our waking dreams, we return to that elevation only given by the beautiful, undisturbed by the vividness, the clearness with which we realise the motive of passion playing its part in that deeper motive of doom, that fills the room in which we read, or the theatre in which we listen, with the beating of the wings of the angel of death. viii disaster before the success of the plays, wilde had been an adventurer on thin ice, exhibiting a brave superiority to fortune, but painfully conscious that his income was far smaller than that on which it was possible to live with the happy extravagance that was natural to him. he had been born with the ghost of a silver spoon in his mouth, but had never been able to materialize it. it was his right to live luxuriously, since that task was one that he was peculiarly fitted to perform. some carelessness in the inviting of his fairy godmothers, some inattention on the part of the presiding gods, had denied him that right. when the success of the plays suddenly raised his income to several thousands of pounds a year, he lost no time in living up to and above it. some of his extravagances were of the simplest, most childish kind. he over-fed, like a schoolboy in a tuckshop with an unexpected sovereign in his hand. flowers he had always worn, hansom-cabs he had always used, but now he bought the most expensive button-holes, and kept his cab waiting all day. his friendships became proportionately costly, for he denied nothing to those he liked, and some of them never forgot to ask. he hurriedly ruined himself with prosperity, like the poor man in the fairy tale, whose wish for all the gold in the world was granted by a mischievous destiny. the success of the plays and the extravagance that it permitted placed him in so strong a light of public attention that he could do nothing in secret. he became one of those people whose celebrity lends a savour to gossip. scandal borrowed wings from the knowledge that it had a beginning in truth. in , before the maleficent flood of gold was poured upon him, he had become accustomed to indulge the vice that, openly alluded to in the days and verses of catullus, is generally abhorred and hidden in our own. he had been in youth a runner after girls, but, as a man, he ceased to take any interest in women. in the moment of his success, when many were ready to throw themselves at his feet, one, perhaps, of the reasons of his power was his own indifference to his conquests. many excuses have been made for him. it has been suggested, for example, that in his absorption in antiquity he allowed himself to forget that he was not living in it. but wilde was not a scholar with a rampart of books between himself and the present. our business here is scientific, not apologetic, and such evidence as we have shows that the vice needs none but a pathological explanation. it was a disease, a malady of the brain, not the necessary consequence of a delight in classical literature. opulence permitted its utmost development, but did not create it. opulence did, however, make it noticeable, and prepared the circumstances in which it was publicly punished. wilde had always been laughed at, and, even before the facts of his conduct were generally known, the laughter was coloured by dislike. a book that was written by a small, prehensile mind, gifted with a limber cleverness, enables us to see him through the eyes of the early nineties. this book, "the green carnation," is a limited but faithful caricature. wilde was accused of having written it, but characteristically replied: "i invented that magnificent flower. but with the middle-class and mediocre book that usurps its strangely beautiful name, i have, i need hardly say, nothing whatsoever to do. the flower is a work of art. the book is not." here, as in the matter of "patience," he could not forgo the perversity of lending colour to other people's parodies of himself. "the green carnation" shows us esmé amarinth and a youthful patrician who models himself upon him expounding the art of being self-consciously foolish, wearing green carnations, and teaching choir-boys to sing a catch about "rose-white youth" in the presence of the widow of a strong and silent british soldier. lady locke thinks that england has changed, and though fascinated by amarinth's under-study, does not marry him, for fear her "soldier's son," a stout jehu of the governess-cart, should learn from him a soul-destroying and effeminate love of carnations pickled in arsenic. this book is like a clever statue, brightly painted, of britannia refusing the advances of the æsthete. the æsthete is made to look rather a fool; and so is britannia. such sections of the public as took pleasure in it thought wilde a peculiarly arrogant coxcomb, a disconcerting and polished reply to the victorian tradition of muscular manhood in which they had long been secure. they were ready to rejoice in his discomfiture, and their hostility to wilde spread swiftly and gave a quality of triumph to the delight of all classes as soon as he was arrested. an elaborate account of the various trials would in no way serve the purpose of this book. it is sufficient to say that on may , , he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment with hard labour. ix de profundis the book called _de profundis_, first published in , five years after wilde's death, is not printed as it was written, but is composed of passages from a long letter whose complete publication would be impossible in this generation. the passages were selected and put together by mr. robert ross with a skill that it is impossible sufficiently to admire. the letter, a manuscript of "eighty close-written pages on twenty folio sheets," was not addressed to mr. ross but to a man to whom wilde felt that he owed some, at least, of the circumstances of his public disgrace. it was begun as a rebuke of this friend, whose actions, even subsequent to the trials, had been such as to cause wilde considerable pain. it was not delivered to him, but given to mr. ross by wilde, who also gave instructions as to its partial publication. it is not often possible to detect the original intention of rebuke in the published portions of _de profundis_. i suppose that as wilde pointed out his friend's share in his disaster, and set down on paper what that disaster was, he came to examine its ulterior effect on his own mind, for those pages that are open to us contain such an examination. he is in prison, and is at pains to realize exactly what this means to him: where he is unchanged, where he has lost, and where and how he has gained. he would draw up a profit and loss account, of the loaves that are sustenance for the body and the flowers of the white narcissus that are food for the soul, and in this way give himself courage to face the world with the knowledge that he had kept his soul alive. he will discover where he stands with regard to christianity, and where with regard to flaubert. a critic and artist, he will realize himself among masterpieces, and discover what is altered in the personality for whose notation he has been accustomed to use his criticism of works of art. "to the artist, expression is the only mode under which he can conceive life at all. to him what is dumb is dead." wilde's life in prison was lived on two planes. only one of them is represented in _de profundis_. in writing that letter he was able to pick up the frayed threads of his intellectual existence, to find that some were gold and some were crimson, and to learn that whatever else he might have lost he had not lost his lordship over words. the existence whose threads he thus collected was not that which was at the moment determining the further development of his character. it was an aftermath of that summer of the intellect that had given him _intentions_. instead of the debonair personality of an ernest or a gilbert, he painted now a no less ideal vision of himself in circumstances similar to those that now surrounded him. behind this imaginary and as it were dramatic life was another in which he shared the days and the day's business of his fellow convicts. "we tore the tarry rope to shreds with blunt and bleeding nails; we rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors and cleaned the shining rails: and rank by rank, we soaped the plank, and clattered with the pails." there was the routine of the prison, the daily walk for one hour round a circular path, watched by warders, inside a wall that hid all but the sky and the topmost branches of a tree, upon whose bare twigs, buds, and green and ruddy leaves, the prisoners depended for news of the magnificent passage of the seasons. these daily walks, like all the work of the prison, took place in silence, broken only by the warders' words of command delivered in the raucous voice that tradition has dictated. as speech is the greatest of man's privileges, so its deprivation is the least bearable of his punishments. during the daily walks even those convicts who in other things are obedient to the prison discipline, learn to speak without a perceptible motion of the lips. for six weeks wilde walked in silence, but one evening at the end of that time, he heard the man walking behind him say: "oscar wilde, i am sorry for you. it must be worse for you than for us." he nearly fainted, and replied: "no; it's the same for all of us." in this way he made the acquaintanceship of his fellows. one by one he talked with all of them, and these scraps of conversation, he told m. andré gide, made his life so far tolerable that he lost his first desire of killing himself. "the only humanizing influence in prison is the prisoners," he wrote after he came out. except in the matter of permission to write (a permission not granted until near the end of his term, and then only on the recommendation of the doctor), the prison discipline was in no way relaxed for wilde. he slept on a plank bed. he did not, like wainewright, remain "a gentleman," and share a cell with a bricklayer and a sweep, neither of whom ever offered him the brush. he cleaned out his cell, polished his tin drinking cup, turned the crank, and picked the oakum like the rest. echoes of these things are heard in _de profundis_, but if, as wilde had, we have made ourselves "misers of sound and syllable, no less than midas of his coinage," it is not in what books say but in their style that we look for the secrets of their writers. and it is impossible not to notice that the character of wilde's prose in this book is not very different from that in _intentions_. he observed changes in himself, and foresaw others, but the real alteration of his point of view was not accomplished until he came out of prison. in gaol he was in retreat, like a man who has gone into a monastery. the world was still the world that he had left, and not until he was again free did he realize more vividly than by speculation how different his life was to be, and across what a gulf he would look back at the existence that had been broken off by his disaster. his artistic attitude had not yet been changed. it is for this reason that the book raises so easily a question dear to those who prefer praising or blaming to understanding. is it sincere? they ask. is it possible that a man who felt such things sincerely could write of his feelings in such mellifluous prose? is it sincere? they ask, with particular insistence, pointing to the character of wilde's life after leaving prison as a proof that it was not. and if not, what then? why then, they say, it is worthless. "blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold a sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least that to the faithful herdsman's art belongs! what recks it them? what need they? they are sped; and, when they list, their lean and flashy songs grate on their scrannel-pipes of wretched straw." they demand that the truth shall be told in a hoarse voice, that they may recognize it, and yet the ugly, conscientious noise of their scrannel-pipes is no nearer than _de profundis_ to the sincerity they admire. sincerity, in the sense that they give to that word, does not exist in art. "what people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities." that sentence, from the mouth of one of the personalities that wilde was able to assume, explains the obvious variety of his work. it throws also no dubious light upon the general nature of art. for in art no attitude is insincere whose result is beautiful, and no attitude is possible whose result may not be beautiful. all depends on the artist and on the depth and abandon of his insincerity. for art tolerates many contradictions, but a work of art tolerates none. the man who takes an attitude and is unable to sustain it, who smirks at the audience, who plays as it were the traitor to his own choice, can produce nothing but what is ugly, since, like him, it will contain a contradiction. but the man who chooses an attitude, and preserves it consistently in any work of art, is thereby fulfilling a condition of beauty. he may make a lovely thing, and then, taking another attitude, may contradict himself in a thing of no less loveliness. repentance like that in _de profundis_ is a guarantee of a moment of humility, but not of a life of reform. shakespeare wrote hamlet's soliloquy and also juliet's murmuring from the balcony. yet he was not always in love, nor always melancholy with inaction. we are accustomed to insincerity in play-writing, and do not expect each character, fool or wise, young or old, to represent its author. we allow, as, for an obvious example, in restoration comedy, plays to be written from a standpoint that their authors could not possibly maintain in private life. in poetry also, we do not consider browning insincere because he speaks now for lippo lippi, and now for andrea del sarto. in novels we allow fielding to write "jonathan wild" as a satirist, and "joseph andrews" as a comic romancer, and we are not shocked when he relishes in imagination deeds that as a magistrate he would be bound to censure. i think we have to learn that all fine literature is dramatic. no man pours from his mouth in any single speech all the roses and the vomit that would represent his soul. men speak and hold their peace. they make and their hands are still. and many moods flit by while they are silent, and myriad souls agitate the blood in the veins of those motionless hands. the artist is he who, remembering this mood or that, can hold it fast and maintain it long enough for the making of a work of art. we do not ask him to retain it further. the shaping of his mood in words or in clay has already changed his personality. the writer of a mad song need not gibber in the streets. golden phrases lose none of their magnificence if he who made them wears plain homespun when we meet him in the marketplace. he has been a king for a moment, and given us his kingship for ever. we can ask no more. wilde, perhaps more than other men, insisted on the dramatic character of his work. in considering any of it we should remember those sentences in the last paragraph of 'the truth of masks':--"not that i agree with everything that i have said in this essay. there is much with which i entirely disagree. the essay simply represents an artistic standpoint, and in æsthetic criticism attitude is everything." i am not sure that this confession does not spoil 'the truth of masks.' it is perilously like an aside; but wilde was sufficiently subtle to have chosen a mood which such an aside would illustrate rather than contradict. in considering his work, we must remember, first, that all work is dramatic, true to an individual mood only; and, secondly, that wilde, more clearly conscious of this than most artists, was better able to take advantage of it. he was freed from those qualms of conscience which made swinburne glad to differentiate his earlier from his later work by saying:--"in my next work it should be superfluous to say that there is no touch of dramatic impersonation or imaginary emotion." this sentence, that denies together what is universal and what does not exist (since you cannot imagine an emotion without feeling it) points to no blemish in swinburne's work, but only to a discomfort of mind that some of it must have caused him. from this discomfort wilde was free. he had many tuning-forks, and distrusted none of them because it happened to be pitched differently from another. there is no doubt that, when _de profundis_ was finished, wilde regarded it as a document of historical value, as a veracious confession. this is clear from the tone in which he wrote of it to mr. ross:--"i don't defend my conduct. i explain it. also there are in my letter certain passages which deal with my mental development in prison, and the inevitable evolution of my character and intellectual attitude towards life that has taken place; and i want you and others who still stand by me and have affection for me to know exactly in what mood and manner i hope to face the world." those sentences certainly let us see the attitude that wilde hoped to induce in his readers, but, if we would turn to wilde himself, and, careless of the beauty of the work, pry past it to discover the private feelings of the author, we must take them not as a statement of the truth, but, seeking the truth, take that statement into account. that statement, the published _de profundis_, those unpublished portions of the letter which, probably, will never be read in our lifetime, the whole of wilde's works, the whole of his life, the character of that person to whom he was immediately writing, the character of those other friends by whom he desired to be read, the character which, without deliberate choice, he had himself grown accustomed to present to them: we must know all these things, and be able to weigh them exactly, and balance them justly against each other. have i not said enough to show that it is a vain task to seek for the absolute truth in such a matter, and that we are better and more hopefully employed when we concern ourselves simply with a wonderful piece of literature dictated by certain conditions that we admit are impossible accurately to discover? in pointing out that the details of wilde's life in prison did not affect the manner of his thought, but only provided him with fresh material, i do not wish to suggest that prison was unimportant to him. it might have been. he might, in revolt against it, have made it no more than a hideous accident, stunting his nature by not refusing to allow it to assimilate the black bread that had been thrown to it as well as the sweetened cakes. if he had been earlier released, as he said, this might have happened. he was not released, and revolt was changed to acceptance, and, at last, he was able to say, as he had hoped, that society's sending him to prison ranked with his father's sending him to oxford, as a turning point in his life. but that is a question for the next chapter, for imprisonment did not radically alter him until he was again in the world. in prison, however, the anæsthetic of magnificent living was denied him, and he turned to magnificent thought, recovering the power that had been his before popular success had narrowed his horizon. "knowing the possible, see thou try beyond it into impossible things, unlikely ends; and thou shalt find thy knowledgeable desire grow large as all the regions of thy soul."[ ] in he had known the possible, and achieved it in _the importance of being earnest_. but in he had been trying far beyond it, and now again, in prison, he found his desires growing far beyond the possible, and covering the regions of his soul. he needed an idea that should make this bread-and-water existence one with that of wine and lilies, an idea that should make it possible for him to conceive his life as a whole, and, in the conception, make it so. in _de profundis_ he tries to make his friend realize what he has scarcely realized himself; the depth of his fall, the twilight in his cell, the twilight in his heart, the nature of suffering, the nature of the sorrow that does not allow itself to be forgotten. he writes passages so poignant as to blind us to their beauty, for sorrow is no less sorrow when it walks in purple than when in rags it lies in the dust. then, after showing the ruins of his life, he paints a picture, no less poignant, of himself rebuilding that broken edifice with those things that he has hitherto rejected. he has learnt, he tells himself, the value of pain and the virtue of humility. he has once believed that pain was a blemish on creation, and that the sobbing of a child made the gods hide their faces for shame. he now believes that suffering is a means for the purification of the spirit, a fire through which vessels of clay must pass to their perfection. and, for humility, he discovers that there is no defiance so lofty as that of self-accusation. he has been told to forget who he is; life in prison almost compels him to rebellion; but he has learnt that only by remembering his identity, by shifting to his own shoulders the burden of his disaster, and by an absolute acceptance of all that has happened in and to him, will he be able to win the pride that humility confers and that rebellion makes impossible. this purpose, to give his life the unity he demanded from a poem; these motives, of suffering and humility, run waveringly through _de profundis_, carrying with them here and there fragments of mournful experience. through them he came to contemplate christ, not only as a type of humility and suffering, but also as an example of one whose life was a work of art. in such books as _de profundis_, the continuous wandering speech of a mind following itself, some paragraphs seem to withdraw themselves a little, as the keynotes of the rest. such paragraphs are, i think, those in which he wrote of christ as the supreme artist, of christ's influence on art, and of his philosophy as wilde interpreted it. these paragraphs have seemed blasphemous to some and unreasonable to others. i cannot consider them more blasphemous than a madonna and child by murillo, or a christ and his father by milton, or more unreasonable than those persons who are unable to perceive that religion, no less than the sabbath, was made for man, and not for the delectation of the almighty. man makes god in his own image, or as he would like himself to be, and, as man's image changes, so is his god continually recast. wilde's prose-poem of the artist and the bronze is the story of the making and remaking of religion. the christ of the roman slaves who escaped from their masters' rods to worship their god in cellars was indeed a man of sorrows, who found in misery and low estate the means of creating loveliness. as they hoped, he promised, and each labourer's penny was minted with the superscription he had himself designed. with the renaissance of joy came new christs. one taught the irish monks to build their wattled cells. another, delighting in richness no less than in simplicity, designed the stone lacework of the french cathedrals. later, the sombre, fiery calvin saw a divinity of black and scarlet. milton's god conceived humanity as an epic, whose conclusion must neither be hurried nor delayed. there have been gods of war and gods of peace, changing with man's desires. it is for that reason that we are warned to make no graven images, lest we should commit ourselves to a god of a single mood. it was quite natural that the christ whom wilde saw, as he sat on the wooden bench in his cell and turned the pages of his greek testament, should be a christ who showed that in all the acts of his life there had been hope, a christ who perceived "the enormous importance of living completely for the moment," swept aside the tyranny of orthodoxy, and "regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful holy things and modes of perfection." wilde expresses his conception with incomparable wit and charm. when he speaks of christ's love of the sinner, he remarks that "the conversion of a publican into a pharisee would not have seemed to him a great achievement." on christ's view that "one should not bother too much over affairs," he comments, "the birds didn't, why should man?" and again: "the beggar goes to heaven because he has been unhappy. i cannot conceive a better reason for his being sent there. the people who work for an hour in the vineyard in the cool of the evening receive just as much reward as those who have toiled there all day long in the hot sun. why shouldn't they? probably no one deserved anything." and i cannot refrain from reminding myself by writing it down, of his beautiful comparison of the greek testament with the version that endless repetition without choice of occasion has made an empty noise in our ears: "when one returns to the greek, it is like going into a garden of lilies out of some narrow and dark house." it pleased him to accept the not generally received view of some scholars, that greek was the language actually spoken by christ, and that [greek: tetelestai][ ] was indeed his last word and not a mere translation of a similar expression in a nazarene dialect of aramaic. but wilde's study of the gospels had left him more than a handful of phrases, and these chance flowers must not blind us to the garden of thought in which they grew. among the subjects on which he planned to write was "christ as the precursor of the romantic movement in life." this essay was never written, but wilde had made it almost unnecessary by those suggestive paragraphs in the letter to his friend. christ, for him, was a supreme artist, who chose to build a beautiful thing in life instead of in marble or song. marble and song are to the artist means of living, indeed the medium of the highest life of which he is capable. christ essayed the more difficult task of giving life itself the unity and the loveliness that another might have given stone or melody. and this beautiful and complete life, more moving in its completeness than that of any of the gods of greece, who "in spite of the white and red of their fair fleet limbs were not really what they appeared to be," was at once a work of art and the life of an artist. christ, wilde saw, cared more for intensity than for magnificence, for the soul more than raiment. his teaching was not one of the refusal of experience, but of self-development. he set personality above possessions, and told his followers to forgive their enemies, for their own sake, not because their enemies wished to be forgiven; it is very annoying to be forgiven. "but," says wilde, "while christ did not say to men 'live for others,' he pointed out that there was no difference at all between the lives of others and one's own life." and it is this truth that marks the difference between ancient and modern art. in reading ancient critics of ancient art, we perceive that their view of the tragedies whose performance they were privileged to see in the open amphitheatres of greece was narrower than ours. theirs was the spectacle of a good man or a good woman at odds with tragic circumstance. we have made tragic circumstance human, and, though we walk with christ to calvary, we also wash trembling hands with pontius pilate. it is just this widened sympathy, this vitalization of other things in a story besides the hero that divides what is called romantic from what is called classical art. to greek tragedy there was a background of the fates; but nobody sympathized with them. in whatever is classical as opposed to romantic in modern art, we shall find a background of fates with whom nobody sympathizes, in whom nobody believes. but all the world was alive to st. francis. shakespeare is myriad-mouthed as well as myriad-minded. daffodils are alive for him no less than kings, and iago is a man no less than othello. and in all art that springs from the spirit, thought wilde, "wherever there is a romantic movement in art, there somehow, and under some form, is christ, or the soul of christ." wilde, thinking in prison of christianity in art, saw through the stone walls the cathedral at chartres in the blue morning mist, dante and virgil walking in hell, the painted ship of the ancient mariner idly rocking upon the painted ocean, juliet leaning from her balcony, pierre vidal flying as a wolf before the hounds, the irises of baudelaire, the bird-song of verlaine, the breaking heart of russian storytelling, tannhauser in the venusberg, and all the flowers and children who have laughed in a wind of song. for the mind, as for love, "stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." wilde had all the art of the world before him as he wrote. seldom in his life did his thought move more magnificently and with greater wealth of illustration than in the cell where, in a perpetual twilight, his mind alone could illumine itself, and in its own light pursue that game of thinking whose essential it is to be free and harmonious.[ ] its harmonies are those of agreement with its own character, like the harmonies of art. its freedom is that of the consistent representation of the character chosen by the thinker. in _de profundis_ wilde wrote as harmoniously and freely as if his life were spent in conversation instead of in silence, in looking at books and pictures instead of in shredding oakum or in swinging the handle of a crank. it is impossible too firmly to emphasize the division between the texture of the life in _de profundis_ and that of wilde's life in prison, a division not only needing explanation but explicable in the light of later events. when he left prison he wrote _the ballad of reading gaol_. now that ballad would have been obscured or enriched by a silver cobweb of scarcely perceptible sensations if it had been written before or during his imprisonment. wilde could not then have suffered some of the harsh and crude effects that are harmonious with its character and necessary to its success. the newly-learnt insensibility, that allowed him to use in the ballad emotions that once he would have carefully guarded himself from perceiving, had been taught him in prison. in prison his nerves had been so jangled that they responded only to a violent agitation, so jarred that a delicate touch left them silent. but at the time of the writing of _de profundis_ these janglings and jarrings were too immediate to affect him. they disappeared like print held too close to the eye. he escaped from them as he wrote, for he wrote from memory. while the events were happening, had just happened, and might happen again, that produced the insensibility without which he could not have secured the broad and violent effects of his later work, he returned, in writing, to an earlier life. when he took up his pen, it was as if none of these things were, unless as material for the use of an aloof and conscious artist. he was outside the prison as he wrote, and only saw as if in vision the tall man, with roughened hands, who had once been "king of life," and now was writing in a cell. footnotes: [ ] from _the sale of st. thomas_. by lascelles abercrombie. [ ] [greek: kata iÔannÊn], xix, . [ ] "l'exercice de la pensée est un jeu, mais il faut que ce jeu soit libre et harmonieux."--remy de gourmont. x - "all trials," wrote wilde, "are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences of death; and three times have i been tried. the first time i left the box to be arrested, the second time to be led back to the house of detention, the third time to pass into a prison for two years. society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where i may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence i may weep undisturbed. she will hang the night with stars so that i may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole." he asked too much, both from nature and from himself. society would indeed have none of him, as he had foreseen, but nature could only harbour for a moment this liver in great cities who had told her that her use was to illustrate quotations from the poets, and had said that he preferred to have her captive on his walls in the canvases of corot and of constable, than to live in her cruder landscapes. he had never intended to make too elaborate an advance to her. he had learnt from stevenson's letters that that ingenious man had "merely extended the sphere of the artificial by taking to digging." he knew that reading baudelaire in a café would be more natural to him than an agricultural existence. he was determined, however, not to return to the extravagances of his life before prison, and he hoped that the country would help him to keep this resolve. he was to learn that "one merely wanders round and round within the circle of one's personality." when he left prison he did not know that one must keep moving, but hoped to choose a pleasant point in his personality, and stay there. released from prison on may , , he crossed the channel to dieppe, where he stayed for some days, and drove about with mr. robert ross and mr. reginald turner, examining the surrounding villages, most of which seemed uninhabitable. at the end of a week he took rooms in the inn at the little hamlet of berneval. here, for the first time, he lost his power of turning life into tapestry. alone in his cell he had written the magnificent pageant of _de profundis_, a pageant of purple and fine linen, though he who wrote it wore the coarse cloth of convict dress. set suddenly in the world again, he was cut off more sharply from his former existence than ever he had been cut off in prison. he became blithe and smiling, like a child who has had no past. he bathed, and was amused at the simplicity of his experience, which he laughingly attributed to having attended mass and so not bathing as a pagan.... "i was not tempted by either sirens or mermaidens, or any of the green-haired following of glaucus. i really think this is a remarkable thing. in my neronian days the sea was always full of tritons blowing conches, and other unpleasant things. now it is quite different." "prison has completely changed me," he said to m. andré gide, who visited him at berneval; "i counted on it for that." he spoke with disparagement of a man who urged him to take up his former life, a thing, he said, which one must never do. "ma vie est comme un oeuvre d'art; un artiste ne recommence jamais deux fois la même chose ... ou bien c'est qu'il n'avait pas réussi. ma vie d'avant la prison a été aussi réussie que possible. maintenant c'est une chose achevée." he felt that a continuation of a life that had, as it were, ended in prison, would be like adding a sixth act and a happy ending to a tragedy, a deed repulsive to an artist, who finds it hard enough to bear when murdered cæsar doffs his wig and smiles upon the audience that has witnessed the agony of his death. he did not wish to appear in paris until he had had time to lay aside the costume he had worn in the play that, he was glad to think, was now concluded. he did not wish to be received as a released convict, but as the author of a new work of art. "if i can produce only one beautiful work of art i shall be able to rob malice of its venom, and cowardice of its sneer, and to pluck out the tongue of scorn by the roots." for the moment, at any rate, he was content in the country, and asked m. gide to send him a life of st. francis. "if i live in paris," he wrote, "i may be doomed to things i don't desire. i am afraid of big towns. here i get up at . .... i am happy all day. i go to bed at o'clock. i am frightened of paris.... i want to live here." he visited the little chapel of notre dame de liesse, and persuaded the curé to celebrate mass there. he made friends with a farmer and urged him to adopt three children. he found that the customs-officers were bored, and lent them the novels of dumas père. and on the day of the queen's diamond jubilee he entertained forty children from the school with their master so successfully that for days after they cheered when he passed: "vive monsieur melmoth[ ] et la reine d'angleterre." in his first enthusiasm for berneval he wished to build a house there, and did, indeed, take a chalet for the season, giving mr. ross, through whom his allowance passed, all sorts of amusing reasons for doing so, and for hurrying on the necessary preliminaries. he planned the arrangement of the house with something of the impatient delight of a student furnishing his first independent rooms. he asked for his pictures, and for japanese gold paper that should provide a fitting background for lithographs by rothenstein and shannon. the châlet bourgeat was ready for habitation on june . a month later he wrote of _the ballad of reading gaol_: "the poem is nearly finished. some of the verses are awfully good." he had left prison with an improved physique, and, now that he was able to work, there was hope that he would not risk the loss of it by leaving this life of comparative simplicity. suddenly, however, he flung aside his plans and resolutions, desperately explaining that his folly was inevitable. the iterated entreaty of a man whose friendship had already cost him more than it was worth, and a newly-felt loneliness at berneval, destroyed his resolution. he became restless and went to rouen, where it rained and he was miserable; then back to dieppe; a few days later, with his poem still unfinished, he was in naples sharing a momentary magnificence with the friend whose conduct he had condemned, whose influence he had feared. * * * * * i have particularly noticed the change in his mental attitude that became apparent at berneval, because i think that it throws light on the character of the work he did after leaving prison, so markedly different from that of _de profundis_, or _intentions_, or _the sphinx_, or any other of the delightful designs it had pleased him to embroider. what is remarkable in _the ballad of reading gaol_, apart from its strength, or its violence of emotion, is a change in the quality of wilde's language. a distinction between decoration and realism, though it immediately suggests itself, is too blunt to enable us to state clearly a change in wilde's writing that it is impossible to overlook. we require a more sensitive instrument, and must seek it in a definition of literature, a formula that is concerned with the actual medium that literature employs. to make such a definition i have borrowed two words from the terminology of physical science. energy is described by physicists as kinetic and potential. kinetic energy is force actually exerted. potential energy is force that a body is in a position to exert. applying these terms to language, without attempting too strict an analogy, i wish to define the medium of literature as a combination of kinetic with potential speech. there is no such thing in literature as speech purely kinetic or purely potential. purely kinetic speech is prose, not good prose, not literature, but colourless prose, prose without atmosphere, the sort of prose that m. jourdain discovered he had been speaking all his life. it says things. an example of purely potential speech may be found in music. i do not think it can be made with words, though we can give our minds a taste of it in listening to a meaningless but narcotic incantation, or a poem in a language that we do not understand. the proportion between kinetic and potential speech and the energy of the combination vary with different poems and with the poetry of different ages. let me take an example of fine poetry, and show that it does perform in itself this dual function of language. let us examine the first stanza of blake's "the tiger":-- "tiger! tiger! burning bright in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?" it is impossible to deny the power of suggestion wielded by those four lines, a power utterly disproportionate to what is actually said. the kinetic base of that stanza is only the proposition to a supposed tiger of a difficult problem in metaphysics. but above, below, and on either side of that question, completely enveloping it, is the phosphorescence of another speech, that we cannot so easily overhear.[ ] let me now apply this formula of kinetic and potential speech to a definition of the change in wilde's aims as a writer, that is illustrated by _the ballad of reading gaol_. i have said that the proportion between kinetic and potential speech varies with different poems and the poetry of different ages. the poets of the eighteenth century, for example, cared greatly for kinetic speech, though the white fire of their better work shows that they were fortunately prevented from its invariable achievement. the symbolists of the nineteenth century cared greatly for potential speech. "nommer un objet," said mallarmé, "c'est supprimer les trois quarts de la jouissance du poème qui est faite du bonheur de deviner peu à peu. le suggérer, voilà le rêve." mallarmé, indeed, went so far as to work over a poem, destroying where he could its kinetic speech, its direct statement, in the effort to make it purely potential. he is not intelligible, except where he failed in this. wilde grew up with the symbolists, and under the influence of the pre-raphaelites. his criticism of pictures accurately reflects his aims as a writer. the critic, he says, will turn from pictures that are too intelligible that "do not stir the imagination but set definite bounds to it"; "he will turn from them to such works as make him brood and dream and fancy, to works that possess the subtle quality of suggestion, and seem to tell us that even from them there is an escape into a wider world." he will have none of "those obvious modes of art that have but one message to deliver, and having delivered it become dumb and sterile." he recognized suggestion or, as i prefer to say, potentiality, in pictures that were decorations rather than anecdotes, and, in his preference of potential over kinetic speech, made his own work decorative rather than realistic. decoration was for him a mode of potentiality. like the symbolists, he had a sort of contempt for kinetic speech, because while it obviously preponderates in the kind of writing that he considered bad, he did not perceive that it is also essential in the writing that he admitted to be good. this view was intimately connected with his character, and before he could write a poem whose kinetic was comparable to its potential power he had to change completely his attitude towards life. he could not, without doing violence to himself, have written _the ballad of reading gaol_ before his imprisonment. such an alteration in his attitude became apparent when he was released: not before. and he then proceeded to write a poem whose potentiality was not won at the expense of directness. the difference between the work he did before and after his release is the same, though not so exaggerated, as that between mallarmé and the eighteenth-century poets. the later work falls midway between these two extremes. it is writing that depends, far more nearly than anything he had yet done, in verse, upon its actual statements. _the ballad of reading gaol_ is not more powerfully suggestive than _the sphinx_, but what it says, its translatable element, is more important to its effect than the catalogue of the sphinx's lovers. we can more accurately observe this change of attitude if we examine the early version of the ballad. this version, as it is now printed by the side of that originally published, represents the poem as it was when wilde wrote to say that it was nearly finished. it is probably very like what the poem would have been if he had not broken short his stay at berneval. the momentary retaste of his former life at naples gave him the more decorative verses that were then added, and the contrast between the two moods made possible his disregard of the beliefs he once had held concerning the evil effect of a message on a work of art. at the same time, he realized at naples how far he had departed from his old standards, and added a certain recklessness to his already altered equipment. for example, he had written at berneval one stanza of direct statement that he had afterwards deleted with others from the first version that he sent to england:-- "the governor was strong upon the regulation act: the doctor said that death was but a scientific fact: and twice a day the chaplain called and left a little tract." at naples he replaced it. he admits, in a letter to mr. ross, that "the poetry is not good," and says, "i have put 'the governor was strict upon the regulation act'--i now think that strong is better. the verse is meant to be colloquial--g. r. sims at best--and when one is going for a coarse effect, one had better be coarse. so please restore 'strong.'" i think that nothing could more clearly illustrate the difference between wilde as artist before and after he was released. the change was radical, and appeared not only in the medium of his work but in its intention. he had once said that nothing was sadder in the history of literature than the career of charles reade, who, after writing "the cloister and the hearth," "wasted the rest of his life in a foolish attempt to be modern, to draw public attention to the state of our convict prisons." now, he cheerfully labelled his ballad, "poetry and propaganda," and admitted that though the poem should end with the fifth canto, he had something to say and must therefore go on a little longer. he had once written for his own admiration, and, to his disadvantage, for that of people he might meet at dinner. he now wished to publish his ballad in one of the more widely read newspapers, to reach the sort of people who had shared his life in gaol. he had become anxious to speak and to be heard, and was no longer content to make and to be admired. little trace of the friction of change is left in the poem. it is true that in certain lights a reader may perceive that he is examining a palimpsest, and wonder what manner of writer he was whose writing is obliterated. but there is an energy in the ballad that swings even the more obvious propaganda into the powerful motion of the poetry. nowhere else in wilde's work is there such a feeling of tense muscles, of difficult, because passionate, articulation. and this was the effect that he was willing to achieve. the blemishes on the poem, its moments of bad verse, its metaphors only half conceived (like the filling of an urn that has long been broken) scarcely mar the impression. it is felt that a relaxed watchfulness is due to the effort of reticence. i know of no other poem that so intensifies our horror of mortality. beside it wordsworth's sonnets on capital punishment debate with aloof, respectable philosophy the expediency of taking blood for blood, and suggest the palliatives with which a tender heart may soothe the pain of its acquiescence. even villon, who, like wilde, had been in prison, and, unlike wilde, had been himself under sentence of death, is infinitely less actual. he sees only after death: the gibbet, the row of corpses, their heads hanging, the eyes picked from their sockets by the crows, a row of blackened, sun-dried bodies swinging in wind and rain. he sees that, and thinks it a pitiful spectacle, but his only prayer is "qu'enfer n'ayt de nous la maistrie!" for wilde it is life that matters. after it, who knows? a pall of burning lime, a barren spot where might be roses. but he lives an hundred times life's last moments, and multiplies the agony of the man who dies in the hearts of all those others who feel with him how frail is their own perilous hold. * * * * * wilde's two letters to the daily chronicle, 'on the case of warder martin,' and 'on prison reform,' show just such a change in his attitude towards social questions as that which the ballad shows in his attitude towards poetry. i have not, so far, said anything of _the soul of man under socialism_, and i left undiscussed the consciousness of social problems that is apparent in some of the fairy tales. it seemed better to consider these things later in the book, when it should be possible to compare his attitudes towards the social system before and after he had come in conflict with it. at the beginning of his career he had written republican poetry, but had prefaced it with the avowal:-- "not that i love thy children, whose dull eyes see nothing save their own unlovely woe, whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,-- but that the roar of thy democracies, thy reigns of terror, thy great anarchies, mirror my wildest passions like the sea and give my rage a brother----!" but for this, he says, nations might be wronged and he remain unmoved, "... and yet, and yet, these christs that die upon the barricades, god knows it i am with them, in some things." for several years this double attitude persisted, though, as wilde left boyhood he left also the rage and the passions, if he had ever had them, that could only be mirrored by turbulent oceans and fiery revolutions. he was, however, increasingly troubled by the knowledge that he could not accept the comfortable belief of dr. pangloss, that this is the best of all possible worlds. if he had lived among the poor, he would, perhaps, have amused them by pointing out the undeserved misery of the rich. as he happened, mostly, to live among the rich, he stimulated their enjoyment of their position by reminding them of the insecurity of their tenure, of the existence of the poor, and of the inadequacy of the means adopted to eliminate them. at that time in england many charitable movements, now institutions, had only lately started upon their curious careers, and, as wilde pointed out, men "tried to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor." wilde suggested no remedies, but used his own clear perception of the difficulty, and the uneasiness of other people's minds, as a background for much delightful conversation, and for such stories as that of 'the young king,' who sees in dreams the pain that is hidden in the pearl that the diver has brought for his sceptre, the toil woven into the golden tissues of his robes, and the blood that fills with light the rubies of his crown. yet wilde was not without a personal stake in the solution of the problem, for, though he lived among the rich, he was himself one of the poor. he had not had enough money to write as he pleased and when he pleased. he had had to lecture, to write in newspapers, and to edit a magazine for women. perhaps the solution of the problem of poverty would also solve that of unpopular art and of the cakes and wine of the unpopular artist. i cannot easily understand the extraordinary position that, i am told, _the soul of man_ has taken in the literature of revolution. it does, it is true, say many just things of the poor, as for example, its rebuke of thrift: "man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly fed animal." it upholds agitators. it praises the ingratitude of those to whom is given only a little of what is their own. but the essay as a whole is scarcely at all concerned with popular revolt. it is concerned less with socialism than with individualism. "the chief advantage that would result from the establishment of socialism, is, undoubtedly, the fact that socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. in fact, scarcely anyone at all escapes." wilde had not escaped himself. "under socialism," he says, "all this will, of course, be altered." there is no need to estimate the precise quality of the irony in that "of course." if socialism meant the ruling of the people by the people, wilde disliked it, as a new form of an old tyranny. he took it simply as an hypothesis of free food for everybody and the abolition of property. rich and poor alike, he supposed, were to sell all they had and give ... to the state. he was interested solely in the development of personality, which, he thought, was hindered by the existence of private property, whether possessed or not possessed, a plus or a minus quantity. "socialism itself," he says, "will be of value simply because it will lead to individualism," an individualism now difficult and rare, because it consists in the free development of personality that property, plus or minus, makes almost impossible except in special cases. that seems to me to be a very different socialism from that of the people who, accepting greedily the sops thrown to cerberus in the course of the essay, are willing to accept the whole as a manifesto of social revolution. wilde keeps aloof from rich and poor alike, and, throughout a long paper, more carelessly written than most of his, is simply speculating upon what art can gain by social reform, and of what kind that reform must be, if art is not to be left in a worse case than before it. the essay is like notes from half a dozen charming, and, at that time, daring talks, thrown together, and loosely brought into some sort of unity by a frail connecting thread. in its airy distance from practical politics, nothing could be more dissimilar than _the soul of man_ from the two letters to the daily chronicle. while he lived in it, wilde had been able to disguise, at least sometimes, his lack of independence from society. when society put him in prison he was face to face with that unpleasing fact. from being the subject of ironical discussion, society and its reform became most powerful and insistent realities. the poor were no longer people whose unlovely woe he did not like to remember, but men whom he had met, men from whom he had received kindness when he, like them, was "in trouble." reform was no longer a vague idea with possibilities at once dangerous and delightful, but concrete, and with an immediate end. it was concerned not with the development of individuality, but with saving from disaster one poor man who had disobeyed regulations in giving a biscuit to a starving child, and many poor men from sleeping unnecessarily in an atmosphere of decaying excreta. _the ballad of reading gaol_ was poetry and propaganda; the two letters scarcely troubled about anything but their urgent purpose, though wilde was incapable of writing sentences that should not be dignified and urbane. a beggar had been allowed into the palace of art, and would not be denied. * * * * * soon after wilde left berneval for naples, those who controlled the allowance that enabled him to live with his friend purposely stopped it. his friend, as soon as there was no money, left him. "it was," said wilde, "a most bitter experience in a bitter life." he went to paris. in february , the ballad, that he had not been able to sell to a newspaper, was published as a book. in march the daily chronicle printed the second of the letters on prison abuses. he wrote nothing else after he left prison, but revised _the importance of being earnest_ and _an ideal husband_ for publication, and supervised the french translation of the ballad made by m. davray, who, as he pointed out, had not had the advantage of imprisonment, and was consequently puzzled to find equivalents to some of the words. he suggested the plot of a play that another man wrote. there was talk of his adapting a french play for the english stage; but nothing came of it. he complained that he found it "not easy to recapture the artistic mood of detachment from the activity of life." he often left paris. in december, , he went to napoule, and in the following spring to switzerland. his work was done, and, after the writing of the ballad, he was impotent of any sustained effort, whether in life or in literature. he lost, however, little of his intellectual activity, and none of his power of enjoyment. when he was in rome in the spring of , he learnt how to use a photographic camera, and took innumerable photographs with a most childlike enthusiasm. he was blessed by the pope, not once only but seven times. his pleasure in watching the ceremonies of the church recalled the year when, as an oxford undergraduate, he had half-hoped, half-feared to find salvation, or, at least, a religious experience. in may he returned to paris, where his life cannot but have been humiliating to one who had been "le roi de la vie." many doors were closed to him and others he was too proud to enter. he spent days and nights in cafés, drank too much, and wasted his conversation on students who treated him without respect. he had sufficient money, but his extravagances often left him penniless. m. stuart merrill has a note from him asking for a very little sum, "afin de finir ma semaine." he was not starving, as has been suggested, nor was he entirely deserted by his friends, though most of the french writers ignored in misfortune the man they had worshipped in success. m. paul fort, almost the only french poet of whom in his last illness wilde spoke with affection, spent much time with him, and remembers him not outwardly unhappy, less capable than he had been of concealing his depths, and interested in everything, like a child. another frenchman who saw him during these months thought him dazed, like a man who has had a blow on the head. the two opinions are not contradictory. they represent a man whose power of will has been suddenly taken from him. wilde no longer picked and chose; he no longer, a critic in life as in art, directed his doings with intention and self-knowledge. he could no longer dominate life and twist her to the patterns he desired, but was become flotsam in a stream now obviously much stronger than himself. he could smile as he drifted, but he could not stop. as the year went on, he fell ill, and though he rallied more than once, and never lost the brilliance and clarity of his intellect except in delirium, he grew steadily worse. his death was hurried by his inability to give up the drinking to which he had become accustomed. it was directly due to meningitis, the legacy of an attack of tertiary syphilis. for some months he had increasingly painful headaches. on october , he was operated upon. he rallied after the operation, and, a fortnight later, was in a condition to talk with wit and charm, as, for example, when he said that he was dying beyond his means. on october , he got up and went to a café. on the th, he was less well, though he drove in the bois. throughout november he grew steadily weaker, and was often hysterical and delirious. specialists were called in consultation but could do little more than label the manner of his death. on november , a priest, brought by mr. robert ross, baptized him into the catholic church, and administered extreme unction. the following account of his last hours is taken from a letter written by mr. ross to a friend, ten days after wilde's death. mr. reginald turner had nursed wilde for some time before his death and, with mr. ross and the proprietor of the hotel,[ ] was present when he died. "about five-thirty in the morning (november ) a complete change came over him, the lines of the face altered, and i believe what is called the death-rattle began, but i had never heard anything like it before, it sounded like the horrible turning of a crank, and it never ceased until the end. his eyes did not respond to the light test any longer. foam and blood came continually from his mouth.... from one o'clock we did not leave the room, the painful noise from the throat became louder and louder. (we) destroyed letters to keep ourselves from breaking down. the two nurses were out and the proprietor of the hotel had come up to take their place; at . the time of his breathing altered. i went to the bedside and held his hand, his pulse began to flutter. he heaved a deep sigh, the only natural one i had heard since i arrived, the limbs seemed to stretch involuntarily, the breathing became fainter, he passed at ten minutes to two exactly." on december , , oscar wilde was buried in the cemetery of bagneux. on july , , his remains were moved to père lachaise. footnotes: [ ] after he left prison he took the name of sebastian melmoth. [ ] for a longer but still inadequate discussion of the question, see an article in "the oxford and cambridge review" for october, . [ ] hôtel d'alsace, rue des beaux arts. xi afterthought wilde has been dead for nearly a dozen years. already the more swiftly fading colours of his work are vanishing; already critics who fix their eyes on that departing brilliance are helping his books into the neglect that often precedes and invariably follows popularity. his life is already midway between fact and legend, between realism and glamour. his life and his books alternately illumine and obscure each other. the mutilated _de profundis_ is given a biographical importance that it does not, in its present state, possess, and the scarlet and drab contrasts of his tattered tapestry of existence blind the eyes of people who would otherwise read his books. * * * * * there is a word, often applied to wilde in his lifetime, that has, since his death, been used to justify a careless neglect of his work. that word is "pose." in all such popular characterizations there is hidden a distorted morsel of truth. such a morsel of truth is hidden here. we need not examine the dull envy of brilliance, the envy felt by timid persons of a man who dared to display the hopes and the intentions that were making holiday within him, the envy that used that word as a reproach, and sought to veil the fact that it was a confession. but we shall do well to discover what it was beside that envy that made the word applicable to wilde. wilde "posed" as an æsthete. he was an æsthete. he "posed" as brilliant. he was brilliant. he "posed" as cultured. he was cultured. the quality in him to which that word was applied was not pretence, though that was willingly suggested, but display. wilde let people see, as soon as he could, and in any way that was possible, who and what he was or wished to be. no bushel hid his lamp. he arranged it where it could best be seen, and beat drums before it to summon the spectators. he had every quality of a charlatan, except one: the inability to keep his promises. wilde promised nothing that he could not perform. but, because he promised so loudly, he earned the scorn of those whom charlatans do not outwit. he has even met with the scorn of charlatans, who cannot understand why he made so much noise when he really could do what he promised. the noise and the display that were inseparable from any stage of wilde's career, and were not without an indirect echo and repetition in his books, were partly due to the self-consciousness that was among his most valuable assets. he knew himself, and he knew his worth, and, conscious of an intellectual pre-eminence over most of his fellows, assumed its recognition, and was in a hurry to bring the facts level with his assumption. he had, more than most men, a dramatic conception of himself. "there is a fatality," says the painter of dorian gray, "about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog the faltering steps of kings. it is better not to be different from one's fellows." wilde was always profoundly conscious of his own "physical and intellectual distinction," not with the almost scornful consciousness of poe, but with a deprecating pride and a sense of what was due to it from himself and from others. wilde's "pose"--call it what you will--is easily adopted by talent since wilde created it with genius. its origin was a sense of the possession of genius, of being distinct from the rest of the world. poe emphasized this distinction by looking at people from a distance. wilde emphasized it by charming them, with a kind of desperate generosity. he knew that he had largesse to scatter, and not till the end of his life did he begin to feel that he had wasted it, that in him a vivid personality had passed through the world and was not leaving behind it a worthy memorial. this was not the common regret at having been unable to accomplish things. it was a regret at leaving insufficient proof of a power of accomplishment that he did not doubt, but had never exerted to the uttermost. in thinking of the virtuosity of wilde's manner, a thing not at all common in english literature, we must remember the consciousness of power that wrapped his days in a bright light, served him sometimes as a mantle of invisibility, and made him loved and hated with equal vehemence. his tasks were always too easy for him. he never strained for achievement, and nothing requires more generosity to forgive than success without effort. this consciousness of his power excused in him an extravagance that in a lesser man would have been laughable. he would have it recognised at all costs, for confirmation's sake. he needed admiration at once, from the world, from england, from london, from any small company in which he happened to be. the same desires whose gratification earned him the epithet "poseur," made him expend in conversation energies that would have multiplied many times the volume if not the value of his writings. he pawned much of himself to the moment, and was never able to redeem it. he leaves three things behind him, a legend, his conversation, and his works. the legend will be that of a beautiful boy, so gifted that all things were possible to him, so brilliant that in middle age men still thought him young, stepping through imaginary fields of lilies and poisonous irises, and finding the flowers turned suddenly to dung, and his feet caught in a quagmire not only poisonous but ugly. it will include the less intimate horror of a further punishment, an imprisonment without the glamour of murder, as with wainewright, or that of burglary, as with deacon brodie, but a hideous publication to the world of the sordid transformation of those imagined flowers. the lives of villon and of a few saints can alone show such swift passage from opulence to wretchedness, from ease to danger, from the world to a cell. we are not here concerned to blame or palliate the deeds that made this catastrophe possible, but only to remark that to wilde himself, in comparison with the life of his intellect, they probably seemed infinitely unimportant and insignificant. the life of the thinker is in thought, of the artist in art. he feels it almost unfair that mere actions should be forced into a position where they have power over his destiny. as time goes on, the legend will, no doubt, be modified. it is too dramatic to be easily forgotten. in earlier chapters i have spoken of the conversational quality of wilde's prose, but not, so far, of his conversation, which, to some of those who knew him best, seemed more valuable than the echo of it in his books. it varied at different periods and in different companies. more than one writer has described it, and the descriptions do not agree. with an audience that he thought stupid he was startling, said extravagant things and asked impossible questions. with another, he would trace an idea through history, filling out the facts he needed for his argument with bright pageants of colour, like the paragraphs of _intentions_. at one dinner-table he discoursed; at another he told stories. wilde "ne causait pas; il contait," says m. gide. he spoke in parables, and, as he was an artist, he made more of the parables than of their meanings. an idea of this fairy-tale talk may be gathered from his _poems in prose_. these things, among the most wonderful that wilde wrote, are said to be less beautiful in their elaborate form than as he told them over the dinner-table, suggested by the talk that passed. they are certainly a little heavy with gold and precious stones. they are wistful, like princesses in fairy-tales who look out on the world from under their crowns, when other children toss their hair in the wind. but we may well fail to imagine the conversation in which such anecdotes could have a part, not as excrescences but one in texture with the rest. no other english talker has talked in this style, and the queen scheherazada did not surpass it when she talked to save her life. beside lamb's stuttered jests, hazlitt's incisions, coleridge's billowy eloquence, wilde's tapestried speech must be set among the regrettable things of which time has carelessly deprived us. i have heard it said that wilde talked for effect. the peacock spreads his tail in burning blue and gold against the emerald lawn, and as whistler made a room of it, so wilde made conversation. he talked less to say than to make, and his manner is suggested by his own description of the talk of lord henry wotton in _the picture of dorian gray_:-- "he played with the idea, and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox. the praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow silenus for being sober. facts fled before her like frightened forest things. her white feet trod the huge press at which wise omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides. it was an extraordinary improvisation." wilde improvised like that. a metaphor would suddenly grow more important in his eyes than the idea that had called it into being. the idea would vanish in the picture; the picture would elaborate itself and become story, and then, dissolving like a pattern in a kaleidoscope, turn to idea again, and allow him to continue on his way. wilde talked tapestries, as he wrote them. he saw his conversation, and made other men see it. they thought him a magician. and now that mouth is closed, from which, as from alain chartier's, "so many golden words have proceeded." death has given the kiss of the lady anne of brittany, and the glittering words are blown away, or fallen in the pages of other men's books to gild a meagre ground. in fifty years' time the last of those who heard him speak will be old men and dull of memory, or garrulous with tedious invention. the talk is gone. wilde had no boswell. all that largesse of genius has been carried away and spent, or thrown away and forgotten. a talker is like an actor. it is only possible to say, he was wonderful on such an evening, or on such another, and, as time goes on and this becomes matter of hearsay, why, it is as if his achievement had never been. for the flowers of his talk bloom only in dead men's memories, and have been buried with their skulls. wilde's talk is gone, but its effects remain in the conversational ease of his prose, and in the mental attitude that his writings perpetuate. the talker is, almost of necessity, a dilettante, a man who delights in, but is not the slave of, his subject of the moment. the existence of the dilettante is changeful and playful, resembling the bee-like, sweet-seeking pilgrimage of the critic, but quite distinct from it. conversation fosters criticism and dilettantism alike, and these are wilde's most noticeable characteristics. i have already insisted, perhaps too often, on the critical attitude of his work. he insisted on it himself. much in his poetry and in his tales is imitative criticism, his dialogues are critical, the subject of the best of them is "the critic as artist," and he did not call _dorian gray_ a story, but "an essay on decorative art." i have not insisted on the dilettantism that made even his multiform criticism a by-product rather than the object of his life, and allowed it to look for applause, and to reflect his conversation instead of letting his conversation borrow from its less fleeting radiance. wilde's work is distinguished from the greatest in this: it is not overheard. wilde provides us with the rare spectacle of a man most of whose powers are those of a spectator, a connoisseur, a man for whom pictures are painted and books written, the perfect collaborator for whom the artist hopes in his heart; the spectacle of such a man, delighting in the delicacies of life no less than in those of art, and yet able to turn the pleasures of the dilettante and the amateur into the motives of the artist. in some ages, when talk has been more highly valued than in ours, he would have been ready to let his criticism die in the air: he would have been content that all who knew him should credit him with the power of doing wonderful things if he chose, and with the preference of touching with the tips of his fingers the baked and painted figurine over the modelling of it in cold and sticky clay. such credit is not to be had in our time, and he had to take the clay in his fingers and prove his mastery. besides, he had not the money that would have let him live at ease among blue china, books wonderfully bound, and men and women as strange as the moods it would have pleased him to induce. if he had been rich, i think it possible that he would have been a des esseintes or a dorian gray, and left nothing but a legend and a poem or two, and a few curiosities of luxury to find their way into the sale-rooms. wilde preserved, even in those of his writings that cost him most dearly, a feeling of recreation. his books are those of a wonderfully gifted and accomplished man who is an author only in his moments of leisure. only one comparison is possible, and that is with horace walpole; but wilde's was infinitely the richer intellect. walpole is weighted by his distinction. wilde wears his like a flower. walpole is without breadth, or depth, and equals only as a gossip wilde's enchanting freedom as a juggler with ideas. wilde was indolent and knew it. indolence was, perhaps, the only sin that stared him in the face as he lay dying, for it was the only one that he had committed with a bad conscience. it had lessened his achievement, and left its marks on what he had done. even in his best work he is sometimes ready to secure an effect too easily. "meredith is a prose browning, and so is browning," may be regarded as an example of such effects. much of his work fails; much of it has faded, but _intentions_, _the sphinx_, _the ballad of reading gaol_, _salomé_, _the importance of being earnest_, one or two of the fairy tales, and _de profundis_, are surely enough with which to challenge the attention of posterity. these things were the toys of a critical spirit, of a critic as artist, of a critic who took up first one and then another form of art, and played with it almost idly, one and then another form of thought, and gave it wings for the pleasure of seeing it in the light; of a man of action with the eyes of a child; of a man of contemplation curious of all the secrets of life, not only of those that serve an end; of a virtuoso with a distaste for the obvious and a delight in disguising subtlety behind a mask of the very obvious that he disliked. his love for the delicate and the rare brought him into the power of things that are vulgar and coarse. his attempt to weave his life as a tapestry clothed him in a soiled and unbeautiful reality. even this he was able to subdue. nihil tetigit quod non ornavit. he touched nothing that he did not decorate. he touched nothing that he did not turn into a decoration. i do not care to prophesy which in particular of these decorations, of these friezes and tapestries of vision and thought, will enjoy that prolongation of life, insignificant in the eternal progress of time, which, for us, seems immortality. art is, perhaps, our only method of putting off death's victory, but what does it matter to us if the books that feed the intellectual life of our generation are stones to the next and manna to the generation after that? of this, at least, we may be sure: whether remembered or no, the works that move us now will have an echo that cannot be denied them, unheard but still disturbing, or, perhaps, carefully listened for and picked out, among the myriad roaring of posterity along the furthest and least imaginable corridors of time. william brendon and son, ltd. printers, plymouth _uniform with this volume._ edgar allan poe a critical study by arthur ransome "this very interesting study." times. "this book describes poe's sad and extremely lonely life, with all its pride and morbidness, and it also gives a subtle and clear analysis of his brilliant gifts." standard. "mr. arthur ransome has given us a workmanlike and readable book." chronicle. "the study is thorough and conscientious, and as entertaining as a whole as it is in parts provocative." saturday review. "always interesting, often ingenious, sometimes brilliantly written." nation. "prefaced with a biographical account which is quite one of the best sketches of poe's oddly vagabond life that we have in english." pall mall gazette. "it is possible that the grace and charm of mr. ransome's style may deceive some as to the serious import of his work; but it seems clear to us that in his critical study of poe, mr. ransome has made a potent but mysterious person much more truthfully visible than before; and, in the larger matters, has shown himself one of the present time's most vital and original writers on philosophic criticism, one in whom the right instincts are mated with an enthusiastic and careful precision of analysis." liverpool courier. _uniform with this volume._ thomas love peacock a critical study by a. martin freeman "mr. freeman's study will be eagerly welcomed. he deals with all peacock's known writings, giving analysis of each; and he writes with a freshness, a searching clearness and thoroughness delightful in these days of so much slovenly, slipshod criticism. he sends one to peacock, and thereby does the best service a critic of peacock can do." evening standard. "it is distinguished and critical, and captures the atmosphere of peacock." observer. "we recommend it to peacockians, and also to those who would become such; it reveals him better than any anthology could.... the book contains biography and criticism in a manner quite sufficient to equip the casual reader with a knowledge of the man and his books." world. "mr. freeman's monograph recounts all that is known about the circumstances of peacock's career, and it contains also a good deal of acute criticism of his writings. it gives us many clues to interpretation, and helps us to understand the whimsical characteristics of a man who had a magic pen, and who was nothing if not original." standard. oscar wilde his life and confessions by frank harris volume i [illustration: oscar wilde at about thirty] printed and published by the author waverley place new york city mcmxviii imprime en allemagne printed in germany copyright, , by frank harris contents volume i chapter page introduction iii i. oscar's father and mother on trial ii. oscar wilde as a schoolboy iii. trinity, dublin: magdalen, oxford iv. formative influences: oscar's poems v. oscar's quarrel with whistler and marriage vi. oscar wilde's faith and practice vii. oscar's reputation and supporters viii. oscar's growth to originality about ix. the summer of success: oscar's first play x. the first meeting with lord alfred douglas xi. the threatening cloud draws nearer xii. danger signals: the challenge xiii. oscar attacks queensberry and is worsted xiv. how genius is persecuted in england xv. the queen _vs._ wilde: the first trial xvi. escape rejected: the second trial and sentence volume ii [transcriber's note: volume ii is also available on project gutenberg.] xvii. prison and the effects of punishment xviii. mitigation of punishment; but not release xix. his st. martin's summer: his best work xx. the results of his second fall: his genius xxi. his sense of rivalry; his love of life and laziness xxii. "a great romantic passion!" xxiii. his judgments of writers and of women xxiv. we argue about his "pet vice" and punishment xxv. the last hope lost xxvi. the end xxvii. a last word shaw's "memories" - the appendix, list of illustrations volume i oscar wilde at about thirty frontispiece facing page dr. sir william wilde oscar wilde at twenty-seven, as he first appeared in america oscar wilde [transcriber's note: this illustration is not in the original list.] volume ii oscar wilde and lord alfred douglas about "speranza": lady wilde as a young woman note to warder martin the crucifixion of the guilty is still more awe-inspiring than the crucifixion of the innocent; what do we men know of innocence? introduction i was advised on all hands not to write this book, and some english friends who have read it urge me not to publish it. "you will be accused of selecting the subject," they say, "because sexual viciousness appeals to you, and your method of treatment lays you open to attack. "you criticise and condemn the english conception of justice, and english legal methods: you even question the impartiality of english judges, and throw an unpleasant light on english juries and the english public--all of which is not only unpopular but will convince the unthinking that you are a presumptuous, or at least an outlandish, person with too good a conceit of himself and altogether too free a tongue." i should be more than human or less if these arguments did not give me pause. i would do nothing willingly to alienate the few who are still friendly to me. but the motives driving me are too strong for such personal considerations. i might say with the latin: "non me tua fervida terrent, dicta, ferox: di me terrent, et jupiter hostis." even this would be only a part of the truth. youth it seems to me should always be prudent, for youth has much to lose: but i am come to that time of life when a man can afford to be bold, may even dare to be himself and write the best in him, heedless of knaves and fools or of anything this world may do. the voyage for me is almost over: i am in sight of port: like a good shipman, i have already sent down the lofty spars and housed the captious canvas in preparation for the long anchorage: i have little now to fear. and the immortals are with me in my design. greek tragedy treated of far more horrible and revolting themes, such as the banquet of thyestes: and dante did not shrink from describing the unnatural meal of ugolino. the best modern critics approve my choice. "all depends on the subject," says matthew arnold, talking of great literature: "choose a fitting action--a great and significant action--penetrate yourself with the feeling of the situation: this done, everything else will follow; for expression is subordinate and secondary." socrates was found guilty of corrupting the young and was put to death for the offence. his accusation and punishment constitute surely a great and significant action such as matthew arnold declared was alone of the highest and most permanent literary value. the action involved in the rise and ruin of oscar wilde is of the same kind and of enduring interest to humanity. critics may say that wilde is a smaller person than socrates, less significant in many ways: but even if this were true, it would not alter the artist's position; the great portraits of the world are not of napoleon or dante. the differences between men are not important in comparison with their inherent likeness. to depict the mortal so that he takes on immortality--that is the task of the artist. there are special reasons, too, why i should handle this story. oscar wilde was a friend of mine for many years: i could not help prizing him to the very end: he was always to me a charming, soul-animating influence. he was dreadfully punished by men utterly his inferiors: ruined, outlawed, persecuted till death itself came as a deliverance. his sentence impeaches his judges. the whole story is charged with tragic pathos and unforgettable lessons. i have waited for more than ten years hoping that some one would write about him in this spirit and leave me free to do other things, but nothing such as i propose has yet appeared. oscar wilde was greater as a talker, in my opinion, than as a writer, and no fame is more quickly evanescent. if i do not tell his story and paint his portrait, it seems unlikely that anyone else will do it. english "strachery" may accuse me of attacking morality: the accusation is worse than absurd. the very foundations of this old world are moral: the charred ember itself floats about in space, moves and has its being in obedience to inexorable law. the thinker may define morality: the reformer may try to bring our notions of it into nearer accord with the fact: human love and pity may seek to soften its occasional injustices and mitigate its intolerable harshness: but that is all the freedom we mortals enjoy, all the breathing-space allotted to us. in this book the reader will find the figure of the prometheus-artist clamped, so to speak, with bands of steel to the huge granitic cliff of english puritanism. no account was taken of his manifold virtues and graces: no credit given him for his extraordinary achievements: he was hounded out of life because his sins were not the sins of the english middle-class. the culprit was in[ ] much nobler and better than his judges. here are all the elements of pity and sorrow and fear that are required in great tragedy. the artist who finds in oscar wilde a great and provocative subject for his art needs no argument to justify his choice. if the picture is a great and living portrait, the moralist will be satisfied: the dark shadows must all be there, as well as the high lights, and the effect must be to increase our tolerance and intensify our pity. if on the other hand the portrait is ill-drawn or ill-painted, all the reasoning in the world and the praise of all the sycophants will not save the picture from contempt and the artist from censure. there is one measure by which intention as apart from accomplishment can be judged, and one only: "if you think the book well done," says pascal, "and on re-reading find it strong; be assured that the man who wrote it, wrote it on his knees." no book could have been written more reverently than this book of mine. frank harris. nice, . footnotes: [ ] [transcriber's note: printer error. in the u.s. edition the word "in" is deleted.] oscar wilde: his life and confessions chapter i on the th of december, , dublin society was abuzz with excitement. a tidbit of scandal which had long been rolled on the tongue in semi-privacy was to be discussed in open court, and all women and a good many men were agog with curiosity and expectation. the story itself was highly spiced and all the actors in it well known. a famous doctor and oculist, recently knighted for his achievements, was the real defendant. he was married to a woman with a great literary reputation as a poet and writer who was idolized by the populace for her passionate advocacy of ireland's claim to self-government; "speranza" was regarded by the irish people as a sort of irish muse. the young lady bringing the action was the daughter of the professor of medical jurisprudence at trinity college, who was also the chief at marsh's library. it was said that this miss travers, a pretty girl just out of her teens, had been seduced by dr. sir william wilde while under his care as a patient. some went so far as to say that chloroform had been used, and that the girl had been violated. the doctor was represented as a sort of minotaur: lustful stories were invented and repeated with breathless delight; on all faces, the joy of malicious curiosity and envious denigration. the interest taken in the case was extraordinary: the excitement beyond comparison; the first talents of the bar were engaged on both sides; serjeant armstrong led for the plaintiff, helped by the famous mr. butt, q.c., and mr. heron, q.c., who were in turn backed by mr. hamill and mr. quinn; while serjeant sullivan was for the defendant, supported by mr. sidney, q.c., and mr. morris, q.c., and aided by mr. john curran and mr. purcell. the court of common pleas was the stage; chief justice monahan presiding with a special jury. the trial was expected to last a week, and not only the court but the approaches to it were crowded. to judge by the scandalous reports, the case should have been a criminal case, should have been conducted by the attorney-general against sir william wilde; but that was not the way it presented itself. the action was not even brought directly by miss travers or by her father, dr. travers, against sir william wilde for rape or criminal assault, or seduction. it was a civil action brought by miss travers, who claimed £ , damages for a libel written by lady wilde to her father, dr. travers. the letter complained of ran as follows:-- tower, bray, may th. sir, you may not be aware of the disreputable conduct of your daughter at bray where she consorts with all the low newspaper boys in the place, employing them to disseminate offensive placards in which my name is given, and also tracts in which she makes it appear that she has had an intrigue with sir william wilde. if she chooses to disgrace herself, it is not my affair, but as her object in insulting me is in the hope of extorting money for which she has several times applied to sir william wilde with threats of more annoyance if not given, i think it right to inform you, as no threat of additional insult shall ever extort money from our hands. the wages of disgrace she has so basely treated for and demanded shall never be given her. jane f. wilde. to dr. travers. the summons and plaint charged that this letter written to the father of the plaintiff by lady wilde was a libel reflecting on the character and chastity of miss travers, and as lady wilde was a married woman, her husband sir william wilde was joined in the action as a co-defendant for conformity. the defences set up were:-- first, a plea of "no libel": secondly, that the letter did not bear the defamatory sense imputed by the plaint: thirdly, a denial of the publication, and, fourthly, a plea of privilege. this last was evidently the real defence and was grounded upon facts which afforded some justification of lady wilde's bitter letter. it was admitted that for a year or more miss travers had done her uttermost to annoy both sir william wilde and his wife in every possible way. the trouble began, the defence stated, by miss travers fancying that she was slighted by lady wilde. she thereupon published a scandalous pamphlet under the title of "florence boyle price, a warning; by speranza," with the evident intention of causing the public to believe that the booklet was the composition of lady wilde under the assumed name of florence boyle price. in this pamphlet miss travers asserted that a person she called dr. quilp had made an attempt on her virtue. she put the charge mildly. "it is sad," she wrote, "to think that in the nineteenth century a lady must not venture into a physician's study without being accompanied by a bodyguard to protect her." miss travers admitted that dr. quilp was intended for sir william wilde; indeed she identified dr. quilp with the newly made knight in a dozen different ways. she went so far as to describe his appearance. she declared that he had "an animal, sinister expression about his mouth which was coarse and vulgar in the extreme: the large protruding under lip was most unpleasant. nor did the upper part of his face redeem the lower part. his eyes were small and round, mean and prying in expression. there was no candour in the doctor's countenance, where one looked for candour." dr. quilp's quarrel with his victim, it appeared, was that she was "unnaturally passionless." the publication of such a pamphlet was calculated to injure both sir william and lady wilde in public esteem, and miss travers was not content to let the matter rest there. she drew attention to the pamphlet by letters to the papers, and on one occasion, when sir william wilde was giving a lecture to the young men's christian association at the metropolitan hall, she caused large placards to be exhibited in the neighbourhood having upon them in large letters the words "sir william wilde and speranza." she employed one of the persons bearing a placard to go about ringing a large hand bell which she, herself, had given to him for the purpose. she even published doggerel verses in the _dublin weekly advertiser_, and signed them "speranza," which annoyed lady wilde intensely. one read thus:-- your progeny is quite a pest to those who hate such "critters"; some sport i'll have, or i'm blest i'll fry the wilde breed in the west then you can call them fritters. she wrote letters to _saunders newsletter_, and even reviewed a book of lady wilde's entitled "the first temptation," and called it a "blasphemous production." moreover, when lady wilde was staying at bray, miss travers sent boys to offer the pamphlet for sale to the servants in her house. in fine miss travers showed a keen feminine ingenuity and pertinacity in persecution worthy of a nobler motive. but the defence did not rely on such annoyance as sufficient provocation for lady wilde's libellous letter. the plea went on to state that miss travers had applied to sir william wilde for money again and again, and accompanied these applications with threats of worse pen-pricks if the requests were not acceded to. it was under these circumstances, according to lady wilde, that she wrote the letter complained of to dr. travers and enclosed it in a sealed envelope. she wished to get dr. travers to use his parental influence to stop miss travers from further disgracing herself and insulting and annoying sir william and lady wilde. the defence carried the war into the enemy's camp by thus suggesting that miss travers was blackmailing sir william and lady wilde. the attack in the hands of serjeant armstrong was still more deadly and convincing. he rose early on the monday afternoon and declared at the beginning that the case was so painful that he would have preferred not to have been engaged in it--a hypocritical statement which deceived no one, and was just as conventional-false as his wig. but with this exception the story he told was extraordinarily clear and gripping. some ten years before, miss travers, then a young girl of nineteen, was suffering from partial deafness, and was recommended by her own doctor to go to dr. wilde, who was the chief oculist and aurist in dublin. miss travers went to dr. wilde, who treated her successfully. dr. wilde would accept no fees from her, stating at the outset that as she was the daughter of a brother-physician, he thought it an honour to be of use to her. serjeant armstrong assured his hearers that in spite of miss travers' beauty he believed that at first dr. wilde took nothing but a benevolent interest in the girl. even when his professional services ceased to be necessary, dr. wilde continued his friendship. he wrote miss travers innumerable letters: he advised her as to her reading and sent her books and tickets for places of amusement: he even insisted that she should be better dressed, and pressed money upon her to buy bonnets and clothes and frequently invited her to his house for dinners and parties. the friendship went on in this sentimental kindly way for some five or six years till . the wily serjeant knew enough about human nature to feel that it was necessary to discover some dramatic incident to change benevolent sympathy into passion, and he certainly found what he wanted. miss travers, it appeared, had been burnt low down on her neck when a child: the cicatrice could still be seen, though it was gradually disappearing. when her ears were being examined by dr. wilde, it was customary for her to kneel on a hassock before him, and he thus discovered this burn on her neck. after her hearing improved he still continued to examine the cicatrice from time to time, pretending to note the speed with which it was disappearing. some time in ' or ' miss travers had a corn on the sole of her foot which gave her some pain. dr. wilde did her the honour of paring the corn with his own hands and painting it with iodine. the cunning serjeant could not help saying with some confusion, natural or assumed, "that it would have been just as well--at least there are men of such temperament that it would be dangerous to have such a manipulation going on." the spectators in the court smiled, feeling that in "manipulation" the serjeant had found the most neatly suggestive word. naturally at this point serjeant sullivan interfered in order to stem the rising tide of interest and to blunt the point of the accusation. sir william wilde, he said, was not the man to shrink from any investigation: but he was only in the case formally and he could not meet the allegations, which therefore were "one-sided and unfair" and so forth and so on. after the necessary pause, serjeant armstrong plucked his wig straight and proceeded to read letters of dr. wilde to miss travers at this time, in which he tells her not to put too much iodine on her foot, but to rest it for a few days in a slipper and keep it in a horizontal position while reading a pleasant book. if she would send in, he would try and send her one. "i have now," concluded the serjeant, like an actor carefully preparing his effect, "traced this friendly intimacy down to a point where it begins to be dangerous: i do not wish to aggravate the gravity of the charge in the slightest by any rhetoric or by an unconscious over-statement; you shall therefore, gentlemen of the jury, hear from miss travers herself what took place between her and dr. wilde and what she complains of." miss travers then went into the witness-box. though thin and past her first youth, she was still pretty in a conventional way, with regular features and dark eyes. she was examined by mr. butt, q.c. after confirming point by point what serjeant armstrong had said, she went on to tell the jury that in the summer of ' she had thought of going to australia, where her two brothers lived, who wanted her to come out to them. dr. wilde lent her £ to go, but told her she must say it was £ or her father might think the sum too large. she missed the ship in london and came back. she was anxious to impress on the jury the fact that she had repaid dr. wilde, that she had always repaid whatever he had lent her. she went on to relate how one day dr. wilde had got her in a kneeling position at his feet, when he took her in his arms, declaring that he would not let her go until she called him william. miss travers refused to do this, and took umbrage at the embracing and ceased to visit at his house: but dr. wilde protested extravagantly that he had meant nothing wrong, and begged her to forgive him and gradually brought about a reconciliation which was consummated by pressing invitations to parties and by a loan of two or three pounds for a dress, which loan, like the others, had been carefully repaid. the excitement in the court was becoming breathless. it was felt that the details were cumulative; the doctor was besieging the fortress in proper form. the story of embracings, reconciliations and loans all prepared the public for the great scene. the girl went on, now answering questions, now telling bits of the story in her own way, mr. butt, the great advocate, taking care that it should all be consecutive and clear with a due crescendo of interest. in october, , it appeared lady wilde was not in the house at merrion square, but was away at bray, as one of the children had not been well, and she thought the sea air would benefit him. dr. wilde was alone in the house. miss travers called and was admitted into dr. wilde's study. he put her on her knees before him and bared her neck, pretending to examine the burn; he fondled her too much and pressed her to him: she took offence and tried to draw away. somehow or other his hand got entangled in a chain at her neck. she called out to him, "you are suffocating me," and tried to rise: but he cried out like a madman: "i will, i want to," and pressed what seemed to be a handkerchief over her face. she declared that she lost consciousness. when she came to herself she found dr. wilde frantically imploring her to come to her senses, while dabbing water on her face, and offering her wine to drink. "if you don't drink," he cried, "i'll pour it over you." for some time, she said, she scarcely realized where she was or what had occurred, though she heard him talking. but gradually consciousness came back to her, and though she would not open her eyes she understood what he was saying. he talked frantically: "do be reasonable, and all will be right.... i am in your power ... spare me, oh, spare me ... strike me if you like. i wish to god i could hate you, but i can't. i swore i would never touch your hand again. attend to me and do what i tell you. have faith and confidence in me and you may remedy the past and go to australia. think of the talk this may give rise to. keep up appearances for your own sake...." he then took her up-stairs to a bedroom and made her drink some wine and lie down for some time. she afterwards left the house; she hardly knew how; he accompanied her to the door, she thought; but could not be certain; she was half dazed. the judge here interposed with the crucial question: "did you know that you had been violated?" the audience waited breathlessly; after a short pause miss travers replied: "yes." then it was true, the worst was true. the audience, excited to the highest pitch, caught breath with malevolent delight. but the thrills were not exhausted. miss travers next told how in dr. wilde's study one evening she had been vexed at some slight, and at once took four pennyworth of laudanum which she had bought. dr. wilde hurried her round to the house of dr. walsh, a physician in the neighbourhood, who gave her an antidote. dr. wilde was dreadfully frightened lest something should get out.... she admitted at once that she had sometimes asked dr. wilde for money: she thought nothing of it as she had again and again repaid him the monies which he had lent her. miss travers' examination in chief had been intensely interesting. the fashionable ladies had heard all they had hoped to hear, and it was noticed that they were not so eager to get seats in the court from this time on, though the room was still crowded. the cross-examination of miss travers was at least as interesting to the student of human nature as the examination in chief had been, for in her story of what took place on that th of october, weaknesses and discrepancies of memory were discovered and at length improbabilities and contradictions in the narrative itself. first of all it was elicited that she could not be certain of the day; it might have been the th or the th: it was friday the th, she thought.... it was a great event to her; the most awful event in her whole life; yet she could not remember the day for certain. "did you tell anyone of what had taken place?" "no." "not even your father?" "no." "why not?" "i did not wish to give him pain." "but you went back to dr. wilde's study after the awful assault?" "yes." "you went again and again, did you not?" "yes." "did he ever attempt to repeat the offence?" "yes." the audience was thunderstruck; the plot was deepening. miss travers went on to say that the doctor was rude to her again; she did not know his intention; he took hold of her and tried to fondle her; but she would not have it. "after the second offence you went back?" "yes." "did he ever repeat it again?" "yes." miss travers said that once again dr. wilde had been rude to her. "yet you returned again?" "yes." "and you took money from this man who had violated you against your will?" "yes." "you asked him for money?" "yes." "this is the first time you have told about this second and third assault, is it not?" "yes," the witness admitted. so far all that miss travers had said hung together and seemed eminently credible; but when she was questioned about the chloroform and the handkerchief she became confused. at the outset she admitted that the handkerchief might have been a rag. she was not certain it was a rag. it was something she saw the doctor throw into the fire when she came to her senses. "had he kept it in his hands, then, all the time you were unconscious?" "i don't know." "just to show it to you?" the witness was silent. when she was examined as to her knowledge of chloroform, she broke down hopelessly. she did not know the smell of it; could not describe it; did not know whether it burnt or not; could not in fact swear that it was chloroform dr. wilde had used; would not swear that it was anything; believed that it was chloroform or something like it because she lost consciousness. that was her only reason for saying that chloroform had been given to her. again the judge interposed with the probing question: "did you say anything about chloroform in your pamphlet?" "no," the witness murmured. it was manifest that the strong current of feeling in favour of miss travers had begun to ebb. the story was a toothsome morsel still: but it was regretfully admitted that the charge of rape had not been pushed home. it was felt to be disappointing, too, that the chief prosecuting witness should have damaged her own case. it was now the turn of the defence, and some thought the pendulum might swing back again. lady wilde was called and received an enthusiastic reception. the ordinary irishman was willing to show at any time that he believed in his muse, and was prepared to do more than cheer for one who had fought with her pen for "oireland" in the _nation_ side by side with tom davis. lady wilde gave her evidence emphatically, but was too bitter to be a persuasive witness. it was tried to prove from her letter that she believed that miss travers had had an intrigue with sir william wilde, but she would not have it. she did not for a moment believe in her husband's guilt. miss travers wished to make it appear, she said, that she had an intrigue with sir william wilde, but in her opinion it was utterly untrue. sir william wilde was above suspicion. there was not a particle of truth in the accusation; _her_ husband would never so demean himself. lady wilde's disdainful speeches seemed to persuade the populace, but had small effect on the jury, and still less on the judge. when she was asked if she hated miss travers, she replied that she did not hate anyone, but she had to admit that she disliked miss travers' methods of action. "why did you not answer miss travers when she wrote telling you of your husband's attempt on her virtue?" "i took no interest in the matter," was the astounding reply. the defence made an even worse mistake than this. when the time came, sir william wilde was not called. in his speech for miss travers, mr. butt made the most of this omission. he declared that the refusal of sir william wilde to go into the witness box was an admission of guilt; an admission that miss travers' story of her betrayal was true and could not be contradicted. but the refusal of sir william wilde to go into the box was not, he insisted, the worst point in the defence. he reminded the jury that he had asked lady wilde why she had not answered miss travers when she wrote to her. he recalled lady wilde's reply: "i took no interest in the matter." every woman would be interested in such a thing, he declared, even a stranger; but lady wilde hated her husband's victim and took no interest in her seduction beyond writing a bitter, vindictive and libellous letter to the girl's father.... the speech was regarded as a masterpiece and enhanced the already great reputation of the man who was afterwards to become the home rule leader. it only remained for the judge to sum up, for everyone was getting impatient to hear the verdict. chief justice monahan made a short, impartial speech, throwing the dry, white light of truth upon the conflicting and passionate statements. first of all, he said, it was difficult to believe in the story of rape whether with or without chloroform. if the girl had been violated she would be expected to cry out at the time, or at least to complain to her father as soon as she reached home. had it been a criminal trial, he pointed out, no one would have believed this part of miss travers' story. when you find a girl does not cry out at the time and does not complain afterwards, and returns to the house to meet further rudeness, it must be presumed that she consented to the seduction. but was there a seduction? the girl asserted that there was guilty intimacy, and sir william wilde had not contradicted her. it was said that he was only formally a defendant; but he was the real defendant and he could have gone into the box if he had liked and given his version of what took place and contradicted miss travers in whole or in part. "it is for you, gentlemen of the jury, to draw your own conclusions from his omission to do what one would have thought would be an honourable man's first impulse and duty." finally it was for the jury to consider whether the letter was a libel and if so what the amount of damages should be. his lordship recalled the jury at mr. butt's request to say that in assessing damages they might also take into consideration the fact that the defence was practically a justification of the libel. the fair-mindedness of the judge was conspicuous from first to last, and was worthy of the high traditions of the irish bench. after deliberating for a couple of hours the jury brought in a verdict which had a certain humour in it. they awarded to miss travers a farthing damages and intimated that the farthing should carry costs. in other words they rated miss travers' virtue at the very lowest coin of the realm, while insisting that sir william wilde should pay a couple of thousands of pounds in costs for having seduced her. it was generally felt that the verdict did substantial justice; though the jury, led away by patriotic sympathy with lady wilde, the true "speranza," had been a little hard on miss travers. no one doubted that sir william wilde had seduced his patient. he had, it appeared, an unholy reputation, and the girl's admission that he had accused her of being "unnaturally passionless" was accepted as the true key of the enigma. this was why he had drawn away from the girl, after seducing her. and it was not unnatural under the circumstances that she should become vindictive and revengeful. such inferences as these, i drew from the comments of the irish papers at the time; but naturally i wished if possible to hear some trustworthy contemporary on the matter. fortunately such testimony was forthcoming. a fellow of trinity, who was then a young man, embodied the best opinion of the time in an excellent pithy letter. he wrote to me that the trial simply established, what every one believed, that "sir william wilde was a pithecoid person of extraordinary sensuality and cowardice (funking the witness-box left him without a defender!) and that his wife was a highfalutin' pretentious creature whose pride was as extravagant as her reputation founded on second-rate verse-making.... even when a young woman she used to keep her rooms in merrion square in semi-darkness; she laid the paint on too thick for any ordinary light, and she gave herself besides all manner of airs." this incisive judgment of an able and fairly impartial contemporary observer[ ] corroborates, i think, the inferences which one would naturally draw from the newspaper accounts of the trial. it seems to me that both combine to give a realistic photograph, so to speak, of sir william and lady wilde. an artist, however, would lean to a more kindly picture. trying to see the personages as they saw themselves he would balance the doctor's excessive sensuality and lack of self-control by dwelling on the fact that his energy and perseverance and intimate adaptation to his surroundings had brought him in middle age to the chief place in his profession, and if lady wilde was abnormally vain, a verse-maker and not a poet, she was still a talented woman of considerable reading and manifold artistic sympathies. such were the father and mother of oscar wilde. footnotes: [ ] as he has died since this was written, there is no longer any reason for concealing his name: r.y. tyrrell, for many years before his death regius professor of greek in trinity college, dublin. chapter ii the wildes had three children, two sons and a daughter. the first son was born in , a year after the marriage, and was christened after his father william charles kingsbury wills. the second son was born two years later, in and the names given to him seem to reveal the nationalist sympathies and pride of his mother. he was christened oscar fingal o'flahertie wills wilde; but he appears to have suffered from the pompous string only in extreme youth. at school he concealed the "fingal," as a young man he found it advisable to omit the "o'flahertie." in childhood and early boyhood oscar was not considered as quick or engaging or handsome as his brother, willie. both boys had the benefit of the best schooling of the time. they were sent as boarders to the portora school at enniskillen, one of the four royal schools of ireland. oscar went to portora in at the age of nine, a couple of years after his brother. he remained at the school for seven years and left it on winning an exhibition for trinity college, dublin, when he was just seventeen. the facts hitherto collected and published about oscar as a schoolboy are sadly meagre and insignificant. fortunately for my readers i have received from sir edward sullivan, who was a contemporary of oscar both at school and college, an exceedingly vivid and interesting pen-picture of the lad, one of those astounding masterpieces of portraiture only to be produced by the plastic sympathies of boyhood and the intimate intercourse of years lived in common. it is love alone which in later life can achieve such a miracle of representment. i am very glad to be allowed to publish this realistic miniature, in the very words of the author. "i first met oscar wilde in the early part of at portora royal school. he was thirteen or fourteen years of age. his long straight fair hair was a striking feature of his appearance. he was then, as he remained for some years after, extremely boyish in nature, very mobile, almost restless when out of the schoolroom. yet he took no part in the school games at any time. now and then he would be seen in one of the school boats on loch erne: yet he was a poor hand at an oar. "even as a schoolboy he was an excellent talker: his descriptive power being far above the average, and his humorous exaggerations of school occurrences always highly amusing. "a favourite place for the boys to sit and gossip in the late afternoon in winter time was round a stove which stood in 'the stone hall.' here oscar was at his best; although his brother willie was perhaps in those days even better than he was at telling a story. "oscar would frequently vary the entertainment by giving us extremely quaint illustrations of holy people in stained-glass attitudes: his power of twisting his limbs into weird contortions being very great. (i am told that sir william wilde, his father, possessed the same power.) it must not be thought, however, that there was any suggestion of irreverence in the exhibition. "at one of these gatherings, about the year , i remember a discussion taking place about an ecclesiastical prosecution that made a considerable stir at the time. oscar was present, and full of the mysterious nature of the court of arches; he told us there was nothing he would like better in after life than to be the hero of such a _cause celèbre_ and to go down to posterity as the defendant in such a case as 'regina versus wilde!' "at school he was almost always called 'oscar'--but he had a nick-name, 'grey-crow,' which the boys would call him when they wished to annoy him, and which he resented greatly. it was derived in some mysterious way from the name of an island in the upper loch erne, within easy reach of the school by boat. "it was some little time before he left portora that the boys got to know of his full name, oscar fingal o'flahertie wills wilde. just at the close of his school career he won the 'carpenter' greek testament prize,--and on presentation day was called up to the dais by dr. steele, by all his names--much to oscar's annoyance; for a great deal of schoolboy chaff followed. "he was always generous, kindly, good-tempered. i remember he and myself were on one occasion mounted as opposing jockeys on the backs of two bigger boys in what we called a 'tournament,' held in one of the class-rooms. oscar and his horse were thrown, and the result was a broken arm for wilde. knowing that it was an accident, he did not let it make any difference in our friendship. "he had, i think, no very special chums while at school. i was perhaps as friendly with him all through as anybody, though his junior in class by a year.... "willie wilde was never very familiar with him, treating him always, in those days, as a younger brother.... "when in the head class together, we with two other boys were in the town of enniskillen one afternoon, and formed part of an audience who were listening to a street orator. one of us, for the fun of the thing, got near the speaker and with a stick knocked his hat off and then ran for home followed by the other three. several of the listeners, resenting the impertinence, gave chase, and oscar in his hurry collided with an aged cripple and threw him down--a fact which was duly reported to the boys when we got safely back. oscar was afterwards heard telling how he found his way barred by an angry giant with whom he fought through many rounds and whom he eventually left for dead in the road after accomplishing prodigies of valour on his redoubtable opponent. romantic imagination was strong in him even in those schoolboy days; but there was always something in his telling of such a tale to suggest that he felt his hearers were not really being taken in; it was merely the romancing indulged in so humorously by the two principal male characters in 'the importance of being earnest.'... "he never took any interest in mathematics either at school or college. he laughed at science and never had a good word for a mathematical or science master, but there was nothing spiteful or malignant in anything he said against them; or indeed against anybody. "the romances that impressed him most when at school were disraeli's novels. he spoke slightingly of dickens as a novelist.... "the classics absorbed almost his whole attention in his later school days, and the flowing beauty of his oral translations in class, whether of thucydides, plato or virgil, was a thing not easily to be forgotten." this photograph, so to speak, of oscar as a schoolboy is astonishingly clear and lifelike; but i have another portrait of him from another contemporary, who has since made for himself a high name as a scholar at trinity, which, while confirming the general traits sketched by sir edward sullivan, takes somewhat more notice of certain mental qualities which came later to the fruiting. this observer who does not wish his name given, writes: "oscar had a pungent wit, and nearly all the nicknames in the school were given by him. he was very good on the literary side of scholarship, with a special leaning to poetry.... "we noticed that he always liked to have editions of the classics that were of stately size with large print.... he was more careful in his dress than any other boy. "he was a wide reader and read very fast indeed; how much he assimilated i never could make out. he was poor at music. "we thought him a fair scholar but nothing extraordinary. however, he startled everyone the last year at school in the classical medal examination, by walking easily away from us all in the _viva voce_ of the greek play ('the agamemnon')." i may now try and accentuate a trait or two of these photographs, so to speak, and then realise the whole portrait by adding an account given to me by oscar himself. the joy in humorous romancing and the sweetness of temper recorded by sir edward sullivan were marked traits in oscar's character all through his life. his care in dressing too, and his delight in stately editions; his love of literature "with a special leaning to poetry" were all qualities which distinguished him to the end. "until the last year of my school life at portora," he said to me once, "i had nothing like the reputation of my brother willie. i read too many english novels, too much poetry, dreamed away too much time to master the school tasks. "knowledge came to me through pleasure, as it always comes, i imagine.... "i was nearly sixteen when the wonder and beauty of the old greek life began to dawn upon me. suddenly i seemed to see the white figures throwing purple shadows on the sun-baked palæstra; 'bands of nude youths and maidens'--you remember gautier's words--'moving across a background of deep blue as on the frieze of the parthenon.' i began to read greek eagerly for love of it all, and the more i read the more i was enthralled: oh what golden hours were for us as we sat together there, while the white vests of the chorus seemed to wave up a light air; while the cothurns trod majestic down the deep iambic lines and the rolling anapæstics curled like vapour over shrines. "the head master was always holding my brother willie up to me as an example; but even he admitted that in my last year at portora i had made astounding progress. i laid the foundation there of whatever classical scholarship i possess." it occurred to me once to ask oscar in later years whether the boarding school life of a great, public school was not responsible for a good deal of sensual viciousness. "englishmen all say so," he replied, "but it did not enter into my experience. i was very childish, frank; a mere boy till i was over sixteen. of course i was sensual and curious, as boys are, and had the usual boy imaginings; but i did not indulge in them excessively. "at portora nine out of ten boys only thought of football or cricket or rowing. nearly every one went in for athletics--running and jumping and so forth; no one appeared to care for sex. we were healthy young barbarians and that was all." "did you go in for games?" i asked. "no," oscar replied smiling, "i never liked to kick or be kicked." "surely you went about with some younger boy, did you not, to whom you told your dreams and hopes, and whom you grew to care for?" the question led to an intimate personal confession, which may take its place here. "it is strange you should have mentioned it," he said. "there was one boy, and," he added slowly, "one peculiar incident. it occurred in my last year at portora. the boy was a couple of years younger than i--we were great friends; we used to take long walks together and i talked to him interminably. i told him what i should have done had i been alexander, or how i'd have played king in athens, had i been alcibiades. as early as i can remember i used to identify myself with every distinguished character i read about, but when i was fifteen or sixteen i noticed with some wonder that i could think of myself as alcibiades or sophocles more easily than as alexander or cæsar. the life of books had begun to interest me more than real life.... "my friend had a wonderful gift for listening. i was so occupied with talking and telling about myself that i knew very little about him, curiously little when i come to think of it. but the last incident of my school life makes me think he was a sort of mute poet, and had much more in him than i imagined. it was just before i first heard that i had won an exhibition and was to go to trinity. dr. steele had called me into his study to tell me the great news; he was very glad, he said, and insisted that it was all due to my last year's hard work. the 'hard' work had been very interesting to me, or i would not have done much of it. the doctor wound up, i remember, by assuring me that if i went on studying as i had been studying during the last year i might yet do as well as my brother willie, and be as great an honour to the school and everybody connected with it as he had been. "this made me smile, for though i liked willie, and knew he was a fairly good scholar, i never for a moment regarded him as my equal in any intellectual field. he knew all about football and cricket and studied the school-books assiduously, whereas i read everything that pleased me, and in my own opinion always went about 'crowned.'" here he laughed charmingly with amused deprecation of the conceit. "it was only about the quality of the crown, frank, that i was in any doubt. if i had been offered the triple tiara, it would have appeared to me only the meet reward of my extraordinary merit.... "when i came out from the doctor's i hurried to my friend to tell him all the wonderful news. to my surprise he was cold and said, a little bitterly, i thought: "'you seem glad to go?' "'glad to go,' i cried; 'i should think i was; fancy going to trinity college, dublin, from this place; why, i shall meet men and not boys. of course i am glad, wild with delight; the first step to oxford and fame.' "'i mean,' my chum went on, still in the same cold way, 'you seem glad to leave me.' "his tone startled me. "'you silly fellow,' i exclaimed, 'of course not; i'm always glad to be with you: but perhaps you will be coming up to trinity too; won't you?' "'i'm afraid not,' he said, 'but i shall come to dublin frequently.' "'then we shall meet,' i remarked; 'you must come and see me in my rooms. my father will give me a room to myself in our house, and you know merrion square is the best part of dublin. you must come and see me.' "he looked up at me with yearning, sad, regretful eyes. but the future was beckoning to me, and i could not help talking about it, for the golden key of wonderland was in my hand, and i was wild with desires and hopes. "my friend was very silent, i remember, and only interrupted me to ask: "'when do you go, oscar?' "'early,' i replied thoughtlessly, or rather full of my own thoughts, 'early to-morrow morning, i believe; the usual train.' "in the morning just as i was starting for the station, having said 'goodbye' to everyone, he came up to me very pale and strangely quiet. "'i'm coming with you to the station, oscar,' he said; 'the doctor gave me permission, when i told him what friends we had been.' "'i'm glad,' i cried, my conscience pricking me that i had not thought of asking for his company. 'i'm very glad. my last hours at school will always be associated with you.' "he just glanced up at me, and the glance surprised me; it was like a dog looks at one. but my own hopes soon took possession of me again, and i can only remember being vaguely surprised by the appeal in his regard. "when i was settled in my seat in the train, he did not say 'goodbye' and go, and leave me to my dreams; but brought me papers and things and hung about. "the guard came and said: "'now, sir, if you are going.' "i liked the 'sir.' to my surprise my friend jumped into the carriage and said: "'all right, guard, i'm not going, but i shall slip out as soon as you whistle.' "the guard touched his cap and went. i said something, i don't know what; i was a little embarrassed. "'you will write to me, oscar, won't you, and tell me about everything?' "'oh, yes,' i replied, 'as soon as i get settled down, you know. there will be such a lot to do at first, and i am wild to see everything. i wonder how the professors will treat me. i do hope they will not be fools or prigs; what a pity it is that all professors are not poets....' and so i went on merrily, when suddenly the whistle sounded and a moment afterwards the train began to move. "'you must go now,' i said to him. "'yes,' he replied, in a queer muffled voice, while standing with his hand on the door of the carriage. suddenly he turned to me and cried: "'oh, oscar,' and before i knew what he was doing he had caught my face in his hot hands, and kissed me on the lips. the next moment he had slipped out of the door and was gone.... "i sat there all shaken. suddenly i became aware of cold, sticky drops trickling down my face--his tears. they affected me strangely. as i wiped them off i said to myself in amaze: "'this is love: this is what he meant--love.'... "i was trembling all over. for a long while i sat, unable to think, all shaken with wonder and remorse." chapter iii oscar wilde did well at school, but he did still better at college, where the competition was more severe. he entered trinity on october th, , just three days after his seventeenth birthday. sir edward sullivan writes me that when oscar matriculated at trinity he was already "a thoroughly good classical scholar of a brilliant type," and he goes on to give an invaluable snap-shot of him at this time; a likeness, in fact, the chief features of which grew more and more characteristic as the years went on. "he had rooms in college at the north side of one of the older squares, known as botany bay. these rooms were exceedingly grimy and ill-kept. he never entertained there. on the rare occasions when visitors were admitted, an unfinished landscape in oils was always on the easel, in a prominent place in his sitting room. he would invariably refer to it, telling one in his humorously unconvincing way that 'he had just put in the butterfly.' those of us who had seen his work in the drawing class presided over by 'bully' wakeman at portora were not likely to be deceived in the matter.... "his college life was mainly one of study; in addition to working for his classical examinations, he devoured with voracity all the best english writers. "he was an intense admirer of swinburne and constantly reading his poems; john addington symond's works too, on the greek authors, were perpetually in his hands. he never entertained any pronounced views on social, religious or political questions while in college; he seemed to be altogether devoted to literary matters. "he mixed freely at the same time in dublin society functions of all kinds, and was always a very vivacious and welcome guest at any house he cared to visit. all through his dublin university days he was one of the purest minded men that could be met with. "he was not a card player, but would on occasions join in a game of limited loo at some man's rooms. he was also an extremely moderate drinker. he became a member of the junior debating society, the philosophical, but hardly ever took any part in their discussions. [illustration: dr. sir william wilde] "he read for the berkeley medal (which he afterwards gained) with an excellent, but at the same time broken-down, classical scholar, john townsend mills, and, besides instruction, he contrived to get a good deal of amusement out of his readings with his quaint teacher. he told me for instance that on one occasion he expressed his sympathy for mills on seeing him come into his rooms wearing a tall hat completely covered in crape. mills, however, replied, with a smile, that no one was dead--it was only the evil condition of his hat that had made him assume so mournful a disguise. i have often thought that the incident was still fresh in oscar wilde's mind when he introduced john worthing in 'the importance of being earnest,' in mourning for his fictitious brother.... "shortly before he started on his first trip to italy, he came into my rooms in a very striking pair of trousers. i made some chaffing remark on them, but he begged me in the most serious style of which he was so excellent a master not to jest about them. "'they are my trasimene trousers, and i mean to wear them there.'" already his humour was beginning to strike all his acquaintances, and what sir edward sullivan here calls his "puremindedness," or what i should rather call his peculiar refinement of nature. no one ever heard oscar wilde tell a suggestive story; indeed he always shrank from any gross or crude expression; even his mouth was vowed always to pure beauty. the trinity don whom i have already quoted about oscar's school-days sends me a rather severe critical judgment of him as a student. there is some truth in it, however, for in part at least it was borne out and corroborated by oscar's later achievement. it must be borne in mind that the don was one of his competitors at trinity, and a successful one; oscar's mind could not limit itself to college tasks and prescribed books. "when oscar came to college he did excellently during the first year; he was top of his class in classics; but he did not do so well in the long examinations for a classical scholarship in his second year. he was placed fifth, which was considered very good, but he was plainly not, the man for the [greek: dolichos] (or long struggle), though first-rate for a short examination." oscar himself only completed these spirit-photographs by what he told me of his life at trinity. "it was the fascination of greek letters, and the delight i took in greek life and thought," he said to me once, "which made me a scholar. i got my love of the greek ideal and my intimate knowledge of the language at trinity from mahaffy and tyrrell; they were trinity to me; mahaffy was especially valuable to me at that time. though not so good a scholar as tyrrell, he had been in greece, had lived there and saturated himself with greek thought and greek feeling. besides he took deliberately the artistic standpoint towards everything, which was coming more and more to be my standpoint. he was a delightful talker, too, a really great talker in a certain way--an artist in vivid words and eloquent pauses. tyrrell, too, was very kind to me--intensely sympathetic and crammed with knowledge. if he had known less he would have been a poet. learning is a sad handicap, frank, an appalling handicap," and he laughed irresistibly. "what were the students like in dublin?" i asked. "did you make friends with any of them?" "they were worse even than the boys at portora," he replied; "they thought of nothing but cricket and football, running and jumping; and they varied these intellectual exercises with bouts of fighting and drinking. if they had any souls they diverted them with coarse _amours_ among barmaids and the women of the streets; they were simply awful. sexual vice is even coarser and more loathsome in ireland than it is in england:-- "'lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.' "when i tried to talk they broke into my thought with stupid gibes and jokes. their highest idea of humour was an obscene story. no, no, tyrrell and mahaffy represent to me whatever was good in trinity." in oscar wilde won the gold medal for greek. the subject of the year was "the fragments of the greek comic poets, as edited by meineke." in this year, too, he won a classical scholarship--a demyship of the annual value of £ , which was tenable for five years, which enabled him to go to oxford without throwing an undue strain on his father's means. he noticed with delight that his success was announced in the _oxford university gazette_ of july th, . he entered magdalen college, oxford, on october th, a day after his twentieth birthday. just as he had been more successful at trinity than at school, so he was destined to be far more successful and win a far greater reputation at oxford than in dublin. he had the advantage of going to oxford a little later than most men, at twenty instead of eighteen, and thus was enabled to win high honours with comparative ease, while leading a life of cultured enjoyment. he was placed in the first class in "moderations" in and had even then managed to make himself talked about in the life of the place. the trinity don whom i have already quoted, after admitting that there was not a breath against his character either at school or trinity, goes on to write that "at trinity he did not strike us as a very exceptional person," and yet there must have been some sharp eyes at trinity, for our don adds with surprising divination: "i fancy his rapid development took place after he went to oxford, where he was able to specialize more; in fact where he could study what he most affected. it is, i feel sure, from his oxford life more than from his life in ireland that one would be able to trace the good and bad features by which he afterwards attracted the attention of the world." in oscar won a first class in "greats." in this same trinity term, , he further distinguished himself by gaining the newdigate prize for english verse with his poem "ravenna," which he recited at the annual commemoration in the sheldonian theatre on june th. his reciting of the poem was the literary event of the year in oxford. there had been great curiosity about him; he was said to be the best talker of the day, and one of the ripest scholars. there were those in the university who predicted an astonishing future for him, and indeed all possibilities seemed within his reach. "his verses were listened to," said _the oxford and cambridge undergraduates' journal_, "with rapt attention." it was just the sort of thing, half poetry, half rhythmic rhetoric, which was sure to reach the hearts and minds of youth. his voice, too, was of beautiful tenor quality, and exquisitely used. when he sat down people crowded to praise him and even men of great distinction in life flattered him with extravagant compliments. strange to say he used always to declare that his appearance about the same time as prince rupert, at a fancy dress ball, given by mrs. george morrell, at headington hill hall, afforded him a far more gratifying proof of the exceptional position he had won. "everyone came round me, frank, and made me talk. i hardly danced at all. i went as prince rupert, and i talked as he charged but with more success, for i turned all my foes into friends. i had the divinest evening; oxford meant so much to me.... "i wish i could tell you all oxford did for me. "i was the happiest man in the world when i entered magdalen for the first time. oxford--the mere word to me is full of an inexpressible, an incommunicable charm. oxford--the home of lost causes and impossible ideals; matthew arnold's oxford--with its dreaming spires and grey colleges, set in velvet lawns and hidden away among the trees, and about it the beautiful fields, all starred with cowslips and fritillaries where the quiet river winds its way to london and the sea.... the change, frank, to me was astounding; trinity was as barbarian as school, with coarseness superadded. if it had not been for two or three people, i should have been worse off at trinity than at portora; but oxford--oxford was paradise to me. my very soul seemed to expand within me to peace and joy. oxford--the enchanted valley, holding in its flowerlet cup all the idealism of the middle ages.[ ] oxford is the capital of romance, frank; in its own way as memorable as athens, and to me it was even more entrancing. in oxford, as in athens, the realities of sordid life were kept at a distance. no one seemed to know anything about money or care anything for it. everywhere the aristocratic feeling; one must have money, but must not bother about it. and all the appurtenances of life were perfect: the food, the wine, the cigarettes; the common needs of life became artistic symbols, our clothes even won meaning and significance. it was at oxford i first dressed in knee breeches and silk stockings. i almost reformed fashion and made modern dress æsthetically beautiful; a second and greater reformation, frank. what a pity it is that luther knew nothing of dress, had no sense of the becoming. he had courage but no fineness of perception. i'm afraid his neckties would always have been quite shocking!" and he laughed charmingly. "what about the inside of the platter, oscar?" "ah, frank, don't ask me, i don't know; there was no grossness, no coarseness; but all delicate delights! "'fair passions and bountiful pities and loves without pain,'"[ ] and he laughed mischievously at the misquotation. "loves?" i questioned, and he nodded his head smiling; but would not be drawn. "all romantic and ideal affections. every successive wave of youths from the public schools brought some chosen spirits, perfectly wonderful persons, the most graceful and fascinating disciples that a poet could desire, and i preached the old-ever-new gospel of individual revolt and individual perfection. i showed them that sin with its curiosities widened the horizons of life. prejudices and prohibitions are mere walls to imprison the soul. indulgence may hurt the body, frank, but nothing except suffering hurts the spirit; it is self-denial and abstinence that maim and deform the soul." "then they knew you as a great talker even at oxford?" i asked in some surprise. "frank," he cried reprovingly, laughing at the same time delightfully, "i was a great talker at school. i did nothing at trinity but talk, my reading was done at odd hours. i was the best talker ever seen in oxford." "and did you find any teacher there like mahaffy?" i asked, "any professor with a touch of the poet?" he came to seriousness at once. "there were two or three teachers, frank," he replied, "greater than mahaffy; teachers of the world as well as of oxford. there was ruskin for instance, who appealed to me intensely--a wonderful man and a most wonderful writer. a sort of exquisite romantic flower; like a violet filling the whole air with the ineffable perfume of belief. ruskin has always seemed to me the plato of england--a prophet of the good and true and beautiful, who saw as plato saw that the three are one perfect flower. but it was his prose i loved, and not his piety. his sympathy with the poor bored me: the road he wanted us to build was tiresome. i could see nothing in poverty that appealed to me, nothing; i shrank away from it as from a degradation of the spirit; but his prose was lyrical and rose on broad wings into the blue. he was a great poet and teacher, frank, and therefore of course a most preposterous professor; he bored you to death when he taught, but was an inspiration when he sang. "then there was pater, pater the classic, pater the scholar, who had already written the greatest english prose: i think a page or two of the greatest prose in all literature. pater meant everything to me. he taught me the highest form of art: the austerity of beauty. i came to my full growth with pater. he was a sort of silent, sympathetic elder brother. fortunately for me he could not talk at all; but he was an admirable listener, and i talked to him by the hour. i learned the instrument of speech with him, for i could see by his face when i had said anything extraordinary. he did not praise me but quickened me astonishingly, forced me always to do better than my best--an intense vivifying influence, the influence of greek art at its supremest." "he was the gamaliel then?" i questioned, "at whose feet you sat?" "oh, no, frank," he chided, "everyone sat at my feet even then. but pater was a very great man. dear pater! i remember once talking to him when we were seated together on a bench under some trees in oxford. i had been watching the students bathing in the river: the beautiful white figures all grace and ease and virile strength. i had been pointing out how christianity had flowered into romance, and how the crude hebraic materialism and all the later formalities of an established creed had fallen away from the tree of life and left us the exquisite ideals of the new paganism.... "the pale christ had been outlived: his renunciations and his sympathies were mere weaknesses: we were moving to a synthesis of art where the enchanting perfume of romance should be wedded to the severe beauty of classic form. i really talked as if inspired, and when i paused, pater--the stiff, quiet, silent pater--suddenly slipped from his seat and knelt down by me and kissed my hand. i cried: "'you must not, you really must not. what would people think if they saw you?' "he got up with a white strained face. "'i had to,' he muttered, glancing about him fearfully, 'i had to--once....'" i must warn my readers that this whole incident is ripened and set in a higher key of thought by the fact that oscar told it more than ten years after it happened. footnotes: [ ] oscar was always fond of loosely quoting or paraphrasing in conversation the purple passages from contemporary writers. he said them exquisitely and sometimes his own embroidery was as good as the original. this discipleship, however, always suggested to me a lack of originality. in especial matthew arnold had an extraordinary influence upon him, almost as great indeed as pater. [ ] "stain," not "pain," in the original. chapter iv the most important event in oscar's early life happened while he was still an undergraduate at oxford: his father, sir william wilde, died in , leaving to his wife, lady wilde, nearly all he possessed, some £ , , the interest of which was barely enough to keep her in genteel poverty. the sum is so small that one is constrained to believe the report that sir william wilde in his later years kept practically open house--"lashins of whisky and a good larder," and was besides notorious for his gallantries. oscar's small portion, a little money and a small house with some land, came to him in the nick of time: he used the cash partly to pay some debts at oxford, partly to defray the expenses of a trip to greece. it was natural that oscar wilde, with his eager sponge-like receptivity, should receive the best academic education of his time, and should better that by travel. we all get something like the education we desire, and oscar wilde, it always seemed to me, was over-educated, had learned, that is, too much from books and not enough from life and had thought too little for himself; but my readers will be able to judge of this for themselves. in he accompanied professor mahaffy on a long tour through greece. the pleasure and profit oscar got from the trip were so great that he failed to return to oxford on the date fixed. the dons fined him forty-five pounds for the breach of discipline; but they returned the money to him in the following year when he won first honours in "greats" and the newdigate prize. this visit to greece when he was twenty-three confirmed the view of life which he had already formed and i have indicated sufficiently perhaps in that talk with pater already recorded. but no one will understand oscar wilde who for a moment loses sight of the fact that he was a pagan born: as gautier says, "one for whom the visible world alone exists," endowed with all the greek sensuousness and love of plastic beauty; a pagan, like nietzsche and gautier, wholly out of sympathy with christianity, one of "the confraternity of the faithless who _cannot_ believe,"[ ] to whom a sense of sin and repentance are symptoms of weakness and disease. oscar used often to say that the chief pleasure he had in visiting rome was to find the greek gods and the heroes and heroines of greek story throned in the vatican. he preferred niobe to the mater dolorosa and helen to both; the worship of sorrow must give place, he declared, to the worship of the beautiful. another dominant characteristic of the young man may here find its place. while still at oxford his tastes--the bent of his mind, and his temperament--were beginning to outline his future. he spent his vacations in dublin and always called upon his old school friend edward sullivan in his rooms at trinity. sullivan relates that when they met oscar used to be full of his occasional visits to london and could talk of nothing but the impression made upon him by plays and players. from youth on the theatre drew him irresistibly; he had not only all the vanity of the actor; but what might be called the born dramatist's love for the varied life of the stage--its paintings, costumings, rhetoric--and above all the touch of emphasis natural to it which gives such opportunity for humorous exaggeration. "i remember him telling me," sullivan writes, "about irving's 'macbeth,' which made a great impression on him; he was fascinated by it. he feared, however, that the public might be similarly affected--a thing which, he declared, would destroy his enjoyment of an extraordinary performance." he admired miss ellen terry, too, extravagantly, as he admired marion terry, mrs. langtry, and mary anderson later. the death of sir william wilde put an end to the family life in dublin, and set the survivors free. lady wilde had lost her husband and her only daughter in merrion square: the house was full of sad memories to her, she was eager to leave it all and settle in london. the _requiescat_ in oscar's first book of poems was written in memory of this sister who died in her teens, whom he likened to "a ray of sunshine dancing about the house." he took his vocation seriously even in youth: he felt that he should sing his sorrow, give record of whatever happened to him in life. but he found no new word for his bereavement. willie wilde came over to london and got employment as a journalist and was soon given almost a free hand by the editor of the society paper _the world_. with rare unselfishness, or, if you will, with celtic clannishness, he did a good deal to make oscar's name known. every clever thing that oscar said or that could be attributed to him, willie reported in _the world_. this puffing and oscar's own uncommon power as a talker; but chiefly perhaps a whispered reputation for strange sins, had thus early begun to form a sort of myth around him. he was already on the way to becoming a personage; there was a certain curiosity about him, a flutter of interest in whatever he did. he had published poems in the trinity college magazine, _kottabos_, and elsewhere. people were beginning to take him at his own valuation as a poet and a wit; and the more readily as that ambition did not clash in any way with their more material strivings. the time had now come for oscar to conquer london as he had conquered oxford. he had finished the first class in the great world-school and was eager to try the next, where his mistakes would be his only tutors and his desires his taskmasters. his university successes flattered him with the belief that he would go from triumph to triumph and be the exception proving the rule that the victor in the academic lists seldom repeats his victories on the battlefield of life. it is not sufficiently understood that the learning of latin and greek and the forming of expensive habits at others' cost are a positive disability and handicap in the rough-and-tumble tussle of the great city, where greed and unscrupulous resolution rule, and where there are few prizes for feats of memory or taste in words. when the graduate wins in life he wins as a rule in spite of his so-called education and not because of it. it is true that the majority of english 'varsity men give themselves an infinitely better education than that provided by the authorities. they devote themselves to athletic sports with whole-hearted enthusiasm. fortunately for them it is impossible to develop the body without at the same time steeling the will. the would-be athlete has to live laborious days; he may not eat to his liking, nor drink to his thirst. he learns deep lessons almost unconsciously; to conquer his desires and make light of pain and discomfort. he needs no aristotle to teach him the value of habits; he is soon forced to use them as defences against his pet weaknesses; above all he finds that self-denial has its reward in perfect health; that the thistle pain, too, has its flower. it is a truism that 'varsity athletes generally succeed in life, spartan discipline proving itself incomparably superior to greek accidence. oscar wilde knew nothing of this discipline. he had never trained his body to endure or his will to steadfastness. he was the perfect flower of academic study and leisure. at magdalen he had been taught luxurious living, the delight of gratifying expensive tastes; he had been brought up and enervated so to speak in capua. his vanity had been full-fed with cloistered triumphs; he was at once pleasure-loving, vainly self-confident and weak; he had been encouraged for years to give way to his emotions and to pamper his sensations, and as the cap-and-bells of folly to cherish a fantastic code of honour even in mortal combat, while despising the religion which might have given him some hold on the respect of his compatriots. what chance had this cultured honour-loving sybarite in the deadly grapple of modern life where the first quality is will power, the only knowledge needed a knowledge of the value of money. i must not be understood here as in any degree disparaging oscar. i can surely state that a flower is weaker than a weed without exalting the weed or depreciating the flower. the first part of life's voyage was over for oscar wilde; let us try to see him as he saw himself at this time and let us also determine his true relations to the world. fortunately he has given us his own view of himself with some care. in foster's _alumni oxonienses_, oscar wilde described himself on leaving oxford as a "professor of Æsthetics, and a critic of art"--an announcement to me at once infinitely ludicrous and pathetic. "ludicrous" because it betrays such complete ignorance of life all given over to men industrious with muck-rakes: "gadarene swine," as carlyle called them, "busily grubbing and grunting in search of pignuts." "pathetic" for it is boldly ingenuous as youth itself with a touch of youthful conceit and exaggeration. another eager human soul on the threshold longing to find some suitable high work in the world, all unwitting of the fact that ideal strivings are everywhere despised and discouraged--jerry-built cottages for the million being the day's demand and not oratories or palaces of art or temples for the spirit. not the time for a "professor of æsthetics," one would say, and assuredly not the place. one wonders whether zululand would not be more favourable for such a man than england. germany, france, and italy have many positions in universities, picture-galleries, museums, opera houses for lovers of the beautiful, and above all an educated respect for artists and writers just as they have places too for servants of truth in chemical laboratories and polytechnics endowed by the state with excellent results even from the utilitarian point of view. but rich england has only a few dozen such places in all at command and these are usually allotted with a cynical contempt for merit; miserable anarchic england, soul-starved amid its creature comforts, proving now by way of example to helots that man cannot live by bread alone:--england and oscar wilde! the "black country" and "the professor of æsthetics"--a mad world, my masters! it is necessary for us now to face this mournful truth that in the quarrel between these two the faults were not all on one side, mayhap england was even further removed from the ideal than the would-be professor of æsthetics, which fact may well give us pause and food for thought. organic progress we have been told; indeed, might have seen if we had eyes, evolution so-called is from the simple to the complex; our rulers therefore should have provided for the ever-growing complexity of modern life and modern men. the good gardener will even make it his ambition to produce new species; our politicians, however, will not take the trouble to give even the new species that appear a chance of living; they are too busy, it appears, in keeping their jobs. no new profession has been organized in england since the middle ages. in the meantime we have invented new arts, new sciences and new letters; when will these be organized and regimented in new and living professions, so that young ingenuous souls may find suitable fields for their powers and may not be forced willy-nilly to grub for pignuts when it would be more profitable for them and for us to use their nobler faculties? not only are the poor poorer and more numerous in england than elsewhere; but there is less provision made for the "intellectuals" too, consequently the organism is suffering at both extremities. it is high time that both maladies were taken in hand, for by universal consent england is now about the worst organized of all modern states, the furthest from the ideal. something too should be done with the existing professions to make them worthy of honourable ambition. one of them, the church, is a noble body without a soul; the soul, our nostrils tell us, died some time ago, while the medical profession has got a noble spirit with a wretched half-organized body. it says much for the inherent integrity and piety of human nature that our doctors persist in trying to cure diseases when it is clearly to their self-interest to keep their patients ailing--an anarchic world, this english one, and stupefied with self-praise. what will this professor of Æsthetics make of it? here he is, the flower of english university training, a winner of some of the chief academic prizes without any worthy means of earning a livelihood, save perchance by journalism. and journalism in england suffers from the prevailing anarchy. in france, italy, and germany journalism is a career in which an eloquent and cultured youth may honourably win his spurs. in many countries this way of earning one's bread can still be turned into an art by the gifted and high-minded; but in england thanks in the main to the anonymity of the press cunningly contrived by the capitalist, the journalist or modern preacher is turned into a venal voice, a soulless cheapjack paid to puff his master's wares. clearly our "professor of Æsthetics and critic of art" is likely to have a doleful time of it in nineteenth century london. oscar had already dipped into his little patrimony, as we have seen, and he could not conceal from himself that he would soon have to live on what he could earn--a few pounds a week. but then he was a poet and had boundless confidence in his own ability. to the artist nature the present is everything; just for to-day he resolved that he would live as he had always lived; so he travelled first class to london and bought all the books and papers that could distract him on the way: "give me the luxuries," he used to say, "and anyone can have the necessaries." in the background of his mind there were serious misgivings. long afterwards he told me that his father's death and the smallness of his patrimony had been a heavy blow to him. he encouraged himself, however, at the moment by dwelling on his brother's comparative success and waved aside fears and doubts as unworthy. it is to his credit that at first he tried to cut down expenses and live laborious days. he took a couple of furnished rooms in salisbury street off the strand, a very grub street for a man of fashion, and began to work at journalism while getting together a book of poems for publication. his journalism at first was anything but successful. it was his misfortune to appeal only to the best heads and good heads are not numerous anywhere. his appeal, too, was still academic and laboured. his brother willie with his commoner sympathies appeared to be better equipped for this work. but oscar had from the first a certain social success. as soon as he reached london he stepped boldly into the limelight, going to all "first nights" and taking the floor on all occasions. he was not only an admirable talker but he was invariably smiling, eager, full of life and the joy of living, and above all given to unmeasured praise of whatever and whoever pleased him. this gift of enthusiastic admiration was not only his most engaging characteristic, but also, perhaps, the chief proof of his extraordinary ability. it was certainly, too, the quality which served him best all through his life. he went about declaring that mrs. langtry was more beautiful than the "venus of milo," and lady archie campbell more charming than rosalind and mr. whistler an incomparable artist. such enthusiasm in a young and brilliant man was unexpected and delightful and doors were thrown open to him in all sets. those who praise passionately are generally welcome guests and if oscar could not praise he shrugged his shoulders and kept silent; scarcely a bitter word ever fell from those smiling lips. no tactics could have been more successful in england than his native gift of radiant good-humour and enthusiasm. he got to know not only all the actors and actresses, but the chief patrons and frequenters of the theatre: lord lytton, lady shrewsbury, lady dorothy nevill, lady de grey and mrs. jeune; and, on the other hand, hardy, meredith, browning, swinburne, and matthew arnold--all bohemia, in fact, and all that part of mayfair which cares for the things of the intellect. but though he went out a great deal and met a great many distinguished people, and won a certain popularity, his social success put no money in his purse. it even forced him to spend money; for the constant applause of his hearers gave him self-confidence. he began to talk more and write less, and cabs and gloves and flowers cost money. he was soon compelled to mortgage his little property in ireland. at the same time it must be admitted he was still indefatigably intent on bettering his mind, and in london he found more original teachers than in oxford, notably morris and whistler. morris, though greatly overpraised during his life, had hardly any message for the men of his time. he went for his ideals to an imaginary past and what he taught and praised was often totally unsuited to modern conditions. whistler on the other hand was a modern of the moderns, and a great artist to boot: he had not only assimilated all the newest thought of the day, but with the alchemy of genius had transmuted it and made it his own. before even the de goncourts he had admired chinese porcelain and japanese prints and his own exquisite intuition strengthened by japanese example had shown that his impression of life was more valuable than any mere transcript of it. modern art he felt should be an interpretation and not a representment of reality, and he taught the golden rule of the artist that the half is usually more expressive than the whole. he went about london preaching new schemes of decoration and another renaissance of art. had he only been a painter he would never have exercised an extraordinary influence; but he was a singularly interesting appearance as well and an admirable talker gifted with picturesque phrases and a most caustic wit. oscar sat at his feet and imbibed as much as he could of the new æsthetic gospel. he even ventured to annex some of the master's most telling stories and thus came into conflict with his teacher. one incident may find a place here. the art critic of _the times_, mr. humphry ward, had come to see an exhibition of whistler's pictures. filled with an undue sense of his own importance, he buttonholed the master and pointing to one picture said: "that's good, first-rate, a lovely bit of colour; but that, you know," he went on, jerking his finger over his shoulder at another picture, "that's bad, drawing all wrong ... bad!" "my dear fellow," cried whistler, "you must never say that this painting's good or that bad, never! good and bad are not terms to be used by you; but say, i like this, and i dislike that, and you'll be within your right. and now come and have a whiskey for you're sure to like that." carried away by the witty fling, oscar cried: "i wish i had said that." "you will, oscar, you will," came whistler's lightning thrust. of all the personal influences which went to the moulding of oscar wilde's talent, that of whistler, in my opinion, was the most important; whistler taught him that men of genius stand apart and are laws unto themselves; showed him, too, that all qualities--singularity of appearance, wit, rudeness even, count doubly in a democracy. but neither his own talent nor the bold self-assertion learned from whistler helped him to earn money; the conquest of london seemed further off and more improbable than ever. where whistler had missed the laurel how could he or indeed anyone be sure of winning? a weaker professor of Æsthetics would have been discouraged by the monetary and other difficulties of his position and would have lost heart at the outset in front of the impenetrable blank wall of english philistinism and contempt. but oscar wilde was conscious of great ability and was driven by an inordinate vanity. instead of diminishing his pretensions in the face of opposition he increased them. he began to go abroad in the evening in knee breeches and silk stockings wearing strange flowers in his coat--green cornflowers and gilded lilies--while talking about baudelaire, whose name even was unfamiliar, as a world poet, and proclaiming the strange creed that "nothing succeeds like excess." very soon his name came into everyone's mouth; london talked of him and discussed him at a thousand tea-tables. for one invitation he had received before, a dozen now poured in; he became a celebrity. of course he was still sneered at by many as a mere _poseur_; it still seemed to be all lombard street to a china orange that he would be beaten down under the myriad trampling feet of middle-class indifference and disdain. some circumstances were in his favour. though the artistic movement inaugurated years before by the pre-raphaelites was still laughed at and scorned by the many as a craze, a few had stood firm, and slowly the steadfast minority had begun to sway the majority as is often the case in democracies. oscar wilde profited by the victory of these art-loving forerunners. here and there among the indifferent public, men were attracted by the artistic view of life and women by the emotional intensity of the new creed. oscar wilde became the prophet of an esoteric cult. but notoriety even did not solve the monetary question, which grew more and more insistent. a dozen times he waved it aside and went into debt rather than restrain himself. somehow or other he would fall on his feet, he thought. men who console themselves in this way usually fall on someone else's feet and so did oscar wilde. at twenty-six years of age and curiously enough at the very moment of his insolent-bold challenge of the world with fantastic dress, he stooped to ask his mother for money, money which she could ill spare, though to do her justice she never wasted a second thought on money where her affections were concerned, and she not only loved oscar but was proud of him. still she could not give him much; the difficulty was only postponed; what was to be done? his vanity had grown with his growth; the dread of defeat was only a spur to the society favourite; he cast about for some means of conquering the philistines, and could think of nothing but his book of poems. he had been trying off and on for nearly a year to get it published. the publishers told him roundly that there was no money in poetry and refused the risk. but the notoriety of his knee-breeches and silken hose, and above all the continual attacks in the society papers, came to his aid and his book appeared in the early summer of with all the importance that imposing form, good paper, broad margins, and high price ( / ) could give it. the truth was, he paid for the printing and production of the book himself, and david bogue, the publisher, put his name on for a commission. oscar had built high fantastic hopes on this book. to the very end of his life he believed himself a poet and in the creative sense of the word he was assuredly justified, but he meant it in the singing sense as well, and there his claim can only be admitted with serious qualifications. but whether he was a singer or not the hopes founded on this book were extravagant; he expected to make not only reputation by it, but a large amount of money, and money is not often made in england by poetry. the book had an extraordinary success, greater, it may safely be said, than any first book of real poetry has ever had in england or indeed is ever likely to have: four editions were sold in a few weeks. two of the sonnets in the book were addressed to ellen terry, one as "portia," the other as "henrietta maria"; and these partly account for the book's popularity, for miss terry was delighted with them and praised the book and its author to the skies.[ ] i reproduce the "henrietta maria" sonnet here as a fair specimen of the work: queen henrietta maria in the lone tent, waiting for victory, she stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain, like some wan lily overdrenched with rain: the clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguined sky, war's ruin, and the wreck of chivalry, to her proud soul no common fear can bring: bravely she tarrieth for her lord the king, her soul aflame with passionate ecstasy. o hair of gold! o crimson lips! o face! made for the luring and the love of man! with thee i do forget the toil and stress, the loveless road that knows no resting-place, time's straitened pulse, the soul's dread weariness, my freedom and my life republican. lyric poetry is by its excellence the chief art of england, as music is the art of germany. a book of poetry is almost sure of fair appreciation in the english press which does not trouble to notice a "sartor resartus" or the first essays of an emerson. the excessive consideration given to oscar's book by the critics showed that already his personality and social success had affected the reporters. _the athenæum_ gave the book the place of honour in its number for the rd of july. the review was severe; but not unjust. "mr. wilde's volume of poems," it says, "may be regarded as the evangel of a new creed. from other gospels it differs in coming after, instead of before, the cult it seeks to establish.... we fail to see, however, that the apostle of the new worship has any distinct message." the critic then took pains to prove that "nearly all the book is imitative" ... and concluded: "work of this nature has no element of endurance." _the saturday review_ dismissed the book at the end of an article on "recent poetry" as "neither good nor bad." the reviewer objected in the english fashion to the sensual tone of the poems; but summed up fairly enough: "this book is not without traces of cleverness, but it is marred everywhere by imitation, insincerity, and bad taste." at the same time the notices in _punch_ were extravagantly bitter, while of course the notices in _the world_, mainly written by oscar's brother, were extravagantly eulogistic. _punch_ declared that "mr. wilde may be æsthetic, but he is not original ... a volume of echoes ... swinburne and water." now what did _the athenæum_ mean by taking a new book of imitative verse so seriously and talking of it as the "evangel of a new creed," besides suggesting that "it comes after the cult," and so forth? it seems probable that _the athenæum_ mistook oscar wilde for a continuator of the pre-raphaelite movement with the sub-conscious and peculiarly english suggestion that whatever is "æsthetic" or "artistic" is necessarily weak and worthless, if not worse. soon after oscar left oxford _punch_ began to caricature him and ridicule the cult of what it christened "the too utterly utter." nine englishmen out of ten took delight in the savage contempt poured upon what was known euphemistically as "the æsthetic craze" by the pet organ of the english middle class. this was the sort of thing _punch_ published under the title of "a poet's day": "oscar at breakfast! oscar at luncheon!! oscar at dinner!!! oscar at supper!!!!" "'you see i am, after all, mortal,' remarked the poet, with an ineffable affable smile, as he looked up from an elegant but substantial dish of ham and eggs. passing a long willowy hand through his waving hair, he swept away a stray curl-paper, with the nonchalance of a d'orsay. "after this effort mr. wilde expressed himself as feeling somewhat faint; and with a half apologetic smile ordered another portion of ham and eggs." _punch's_ verses on the subject were of the same sort, showing spite rather than humour. under the heading of "sage green" (by a fading-out Æsthete) it published such stuff as this: my love is as fair as a lily flower. (_the peacock blue has a sacred sheen!_) oh, bright are the blooms in her maiden bower. (_sing hey! sing ho! for the sweet sage green!_) * * * * * and woe is me that i never may win; (_the peacock blue has a sacred sheen!_) for the bard's hard up, and she's got no tin. (_sing hey! sing ho! for the sweet sage green!_) taking the criticism as a whole it would be useless to deny that there is an underlying assumption of vicious sensuality in the poet which is believed to be reflected in the poetry. this is the only way to explain the condemnation which is much more bitter than the verse deserves. the poems gave oscar pocket money for a season; increased too his notoriety; but did him little or no good with the judicious: there was not a memorable word or a new cadence, or a sincere cry in the book. still, first volumes of poetry are as a rule imitative and the attempt, if inferior to "venus and adonis," was not without interest. oscar was naturally disappointed with the criticism, but the sales encouraged him and the stir the book made and he was as determined as ever to succeed. what was to be done next? footnotes: [ ] his own words in "de profundis." [ ] in her "recollections" miss terry says that she was more impressed by the genius of oscar wilde and of whistler than by that of any other men. chapter v the first round in the battle with fate was inconclusive. oscar wilde had managed to get known and talked about and had kept his head above water for a couple of years while learning something about life and more about himself. on the other hand he had spent almost all his patrimony, had run into some debt besides; yet seemed as far as ever from earning a decent living. the outlook was disquieting. even as a young man oscar had a very considerable understanding of life. he could not make his way as a journalist, the english did not care for his poetry; but there was still the lecture-platform. in his heart he knew that he could talk better than he wrote. he got his brother to announce boldly in _the world_ that owing to the "astonishing success of his 'poems' mr. oscar wilde had been invited to lecture in america." the invitation was imaginary; but oscar had resolved to break into this new field; there was money in it, he felt sure. besides he had another string to his bow. when the first rumblings of the social storm in russia reached england, our aristocratic republican seized occasion by the forelock and wrote a play on the nihilist conspiracy called _vera_. this drama was impregnated with popular english liberal sentiment. with the interest of actuality about it _vera_ was published in september, ; but fell flat. the assassination of the tsar alexander, however, in march, ; the way oscar's poems published in june of that year were taken up by miss terry and puffed in the press, induced mrs. bernard beere, an actress of some merit, to accept _vera_ for the stage. it was suddenly announced that _vera_ would be put on by mrs. bernard beere at the adelphi in december, ' ; but the author had to be content with this advertisement. december came and went and _vera_ was not staged. it seemed probable to oscar that it might be accepted in america; at any rate, there could be no harm in trying: he sailed for new york. it was on the cards that he might succeed in his new adventure. the taste of america in letters and art is still strongly influenced, if not formed, by english taste, and, if oscar wilde had been properly accredited, it is probable that his extraordinary gift of speech would have won him success in america as a lecturer. [illustration: oscar wilde as he appeared at twenty-seven: on his first visit to america] his phrase to the revenue officers on landing: "i have nothing to declare except my genius," turned the limelight full upon him and excited comment and discussion all over the country. but the fuglemen of his caste whose praise had brought him to the front in england were almost unrepresented in the states, and never bold enough to be partisans. oscar faced the american philistine public without his accustomed _claque_, and under these circumstances a half-success was evidence of considerable power. his subjects were "the english renaissance" and "house decoration." his first lecture at chickering hall on january , , was so much talked about that the famous impresario, major pond, engaged him for a tour which, however, had to be cut short in the middle as a monetary failure. _the nation_ gave a very fair account of his first lecture: "mr. wilde is essentially a foreign product and can hardly succeed in this country. what he has to say is not new, and his extravagance is not extravagant enough to amuse the average american audience. his knee-breeches and long hair are good as far as they go; but bunthorne has really spoiled the public for wilde." _the nation_ underrated american curiosity. oscar lectured some ninety times from january till july, when he returned to new york. the gross receipts amounted to some £ , : he received about £ , , which left him with a few hundreds above his expenses. his optimism regarded this as a triumph. one is fain to confess today that these lectures make very poor reading. there is not a new thought in them; not even a memorable expression; they are nothing but student work, the best passages in them being mere paraphrases of pater and arnold, though the titles were borrowed from whistler. dr. ernest bendz in his monograph on _the influence of pater and matthew arnold in the prose-writings of oscar wilde_ has established this fact with curious erudition and completeness. still, the lecturer was a fine figure of a man: his knee-breeches and silk stockings set all the women talking, and he spoke with suave authority. even the dullest had to admit that his elocution was excellent, and the manner of speech is keenly appreciated in america. in some of the eastern towns, in new york especially, he had a certain success, the success of sensation and of novelty, such success as every large capital gives to the strange and eccentric. in boston he scored a triumph of character. fifty or sixty harvard students came to his lecture dressed to caricature him in "swallow tail coats, knee breeches, flowing wigs and green ties. they all wore large lilies in their buttonholes and each man carried a huge sunflower as he limped along." that evening oscar appeared in ordinary dress and went on with his lecture as if he had not noticed the rudeness. the chief boston paper gave him due credit: "everyone who witnessed the scene on tuesday evening must feel about it very much as we do, and those who came to scoff, if they did not exactly remain to pray, at least left the music hall with feelings of cordial liking, and, perhaps to their own surprise, of respect for oscar wilde."[ ] as he travelled west to louisville and omaha his popularity dwined and dwindled. still he persevered and after leaving the states visited canada, reaching halifax in the autumn. one incident must find a place here. on september he sent £ to lady wilde. i have been told that this was merely a return of money she had advanced; but there can be no doubt that oscar, unlike his brother willie, helped his mother again and again most generously, though willie was always her favourite. oscar returned to england in april, , and lectured to the art students at their club in golden square. this at once brought about a break with whistler who accused him of plagiarism:--"picking from our platters the plums for the puddings he peddles in the provinces." if one compares this lecture with oscar's on "the english renaissance of art," delivered in new york only a year before, and with whistler's well-known opinions, it is impossible not to admit that the charge was justified. such phrases as "artists are not to copy beauty but to create it ... a picture is a purely decorative thing," proclaim their author. the long newspaper wrangle between the two was brought to a head in , when whistler gave his famous _ten o'clock_ discourse on art. this lecture was infinitely better than any of oscar wilde's. twenty odd years older than wilde, whistler was a master of all his resources: he was not only witty, but he had new views on art and original ideas. as a great artist he knew that "there never was an artistic period. there never was an art-loving nation." again and again he reached pure beauty of expression. the masterly persiflage, too, filled me with admiration and i declared that the lecture ranked with the best ever heard in london with coleridge's on shakespeare and carlyle's on heroes. to my astonishment oscar would not admit the superlative quality of whistler's talk; he thought the message paradoxical and the ridicule of the professors too bitter. "whistler's like a wasp," he cried, "and carries about with him a poisoned sting." oscar's kindly sweet nature revolted against the disdainful aggressiveness of whistler's attitude. besides, in essence, whistler's lecture was an attack on the academic theory taught in the universities, and defended naturally by a young scholar like oscar wilde. whistler's view that the artist was sporadic, a happy chance, a "sport," in fact, was a new view, and oscar had not yet reached this level; he reviewed the master in the _pall mall gazette_, a review remarkable for one of the earliest gleams of that genial humour which later became his most characteristic gift: "whistler," he said, "is indeed one of the very greatest masters of painting in my opinion. and i may add that in this opinion mr. whistler himself entirely concurs." whistler retorted in _the world_ and oscar replied, but whistler had the best of the argument.... "oscar--the amiable, irresponsible, esurient oscar--with no more sense of a picture than of the fit of a coat, has the courage of the opinions ... of others!" it should be noted here that one of the bitterest of tongues could not help doing homage to oscar wilde's "amiability": whistler even preferred to call him "amiable and irresponsible" rather than give his plagiarism a harsher attribute. oscar wilde learned almost all he knew of art[ ] and of controversy from whistler, but he was never more than a pupil in either field; for controversy in especial he was poorly equipped: he had neither the courage, nor the contempt, nor the joy in conflict of his great exemplar. unperturbed by whistler's attacks, oscar went on lecturing about the country on "personal impressions of america," and in august crossed again to new york to see his play "vera" produced by marie prescott at the union square theatre. it was a complete failure, as might have been expected; the serious part of it was such as any talented young man might have written. nevertheless i find in this play for the first time, a characteristic gleam of humour, an unexpected flirt of wing, so to speak, which, in view of the future, is full of promise. at the time it passed unappreciated. september, , saw oscar again in england. the platform gave him better results than the theatre, but not enough for freedom or ease. it is the more to his credit that as soon as he got a couple of hundred pounds ahead, he resolved to spend it in bettering his mind. his longing for wider culture, and perhaps in part, the example of whistler, drove him to paris. he put up at the little provincial hotel voltaire on the quai voltaire and quickly made acquaintance with everyone of note in the world of letters, from victor hugo to paul bourget. he admired verlaine's genius to the full but the grotesque physical ugliness of the man himself (verlaine was like a masque of socrates) and his sordid and unclean way of living prevented oscar from really getting to know him. during this stay in paris oscar read enormously and his french, which had been school-boyish, became quite good. he always said that balzac, and especially his poet, lucien de rubempré, had been his teachers. while in paris he completed his blank-verse play, "the duchess of padua," and sent it to miss mary anderson in america, who refused it, although she had commissioned him, he always said, to write it. it seems to me inferior even to "vera" in interest, more academic and further from life, and when produced in new york in it was a complete frost. in a few months oscar wilde had spent his money and had skimmed the cream from paris, as he thought; accordingly he returned to london and took rooms again, this time in charles street, mayfair. he had learned some rude lessons in the years since leaving oxford, and the first and most impressive lesson was the fear of poverty. yet his taking rooms in the fashionable part of town showed that he was more determined than ever to rise and not to sink. it was lady wilde who urged him to take rooms near her; she never doubted his ultimate triumph. she knew all his poems by heart, took the strass for diamonds and welcomed the chance of introducing her brilliant son to the irish nationalist members and other pinchbeck celebrities who flocked about her. it was about this time that i first saw lady wilde. i was introduced to her by willie, oscar's elder brother, whom i had met in fleet street. willie was then a tall, well-made fellow of thirty or thereabouts with an expressive taking face, lit up with a pair of deep blue laughing eyes. he had any amount of physical vivacity, and told a good story with immense verve, without for a moment getting above the commonplace: to him the corinthian journalism of _the daily telegraph_ was literature. still he had the surface good nature and good humour of healthy youth and was generally liked. he took me to his mother's house one afternoon; but first he had a drink here and a chat there so that we did not reach the west end till after six o'clock. the room and its occupants made an indelible grotesque impression on me. it seemed smaller than it was because overcrowded with a score of women and half a dozen men. it was very dark and there were empty tea-cups and cigarette ends everywhere. lady wilde sat enthroned behind the tea-table looking like a sort of female buddha swathed in wraps--a large woman with a heavy face and prominent nose; very like oscar indeed, with the same sallow skin which always looked dirty; her eyes too were her redeeming feature--vivacious and quick-glancing as a girl's. she "made up" like an actress and naturally preferred shadowed gloom to sunlight. her idealism came to show as soon as she spoke. it was a necessity of her nature to be enthusiastic; unfriendly critics said hysterical, but i should prefer to say high-falutin' about everything she enjoyed or admired. she was at her best in misfortune; her great vanity gave her a certain proud stoicism which was admirable. the land league was under discussion as we entered, and parnell's attitude to it. lady wilde regarded him as the predestined saviour of her country. "parnell," she said with a strong accent on the first syllable, "is the man of destiny; he will strike off the fetters and free ireland, and throne her as queen among the nations." a murmur of applause came from a thin bird-like woman standing opposite, who floated towards us clad in a sage-green gown, which sheathed her like an umbrella case; had she had any figure the dress would have been indecent. "how like 'speranza'!" she cooed, "dear lady wilde!" i noticed that her glance went towards willie, who was standing on the other side of his mother, talking to a tall, handsome girl. willie's friend seemed amused at the lyrical outburst of the green spinster, for smiling a little she questioned him: "'speranza' is lady wilde?" she asked with a slight american accent. lady wilde informed the company with all the impressiveness she had at command that she did not expect oscar that afternoon; "he is so busy with his new poems, you know; they say there has been no such sensation since byron," she added; "already everyone is talking of them." "indeed, yes," sighed the green lily, "do you remember, dear speranza, what he said about 'the sphinx,' that he read to us. he told us the written verse was quite different from what the printed poem would be just as the sculptor's clay model differs from the marble. subtle, wasn't it?" "perfectly true, too!" cried a man, with a falsetto voice, moving into the circle; "leonardo himself might have said that." the whole scene seemed to me affected and middle-class, untidy, too, with an un-english note about it of shiftlessness; the æsthetic dresses were extravagant, the enthusiasms pumped up and exaggerated. i was glad to leave quietly. it was on this visit to lady wilde, or a later one, that i first heard of that other poem of oscar, "the harlot's house," which was also said to have been written in paris. though published in an obscure sheet and in itself commonplace enough it made an astonishing stir. time and advertisement had been working for him. academic lectures and imitative poetry alike had made him widely known; and, thanks to the small body of enthusiastic admirers whom i have already spoken of, his reputation instead of waning out had grown like the jinn when released from the bottle. the fuglemen were determined to find something wonderful in everything he did, and the title of "the harlot's house," shocking philistinism, gave them a certain opportunity which they used to the uttermost. on all sides one was asked: "have you seen oscar's latest?" and then the last verse would be quoted:--"divine, don't ye think?" "and down the long and silent street, the dawn, with silver-sandalled feet, crept like a frightened girl." in spite of all this extravagant eulogy oscar wilde's early plays and poems, like his lectures, were unimportant. the small remnant of people in england who really love the things of the spirit were disappointed in them, failed to find in them the genius so loudly and so arrogantly vaunted. but, if oscar wilde's early writings were failures, his talk was more successful than ever. he still tried to show off on all occasions and sometimes fell flat in consequence; but his failures in this field were few and merely comparative; constant practice was ripening his extraordinary natural gift. about this time, too, he began to develop that humorous vein in conversation, which later lent a singular distinction to his casual utterances. his talk brought him numerous invitations to dinner and lunch and introduced him to some of the best houses in london, but it produced no money. he was earning very little and he needed money, comparatively large sums of money, from week to week. oscar wilde was extravagant in almost every possible way. he wished to be well-fed, well-dressed, well-wined, and prodigal of "tips." he wanted first editions of the poets; had a liking for old furniture and old silver, for fine pictures, eastern carpets and renascence bronzes; in fine, he had all the artist's desires as well as those of the poet and _viveur_. he was constantly in dire need of cash and did not hesitate to borrow fifty pounds from anyone who would lend it to him. he was beginning to experience the truth of the old verse: 'tis a very good world to live in, to lend or to spend or to give in, but to beg or to borrow or get a man's own, 'tis the very worst world that ever was known. the difficulties of life were constantly increasing upon him. he despised bread and butter and talked only of champagne and caviare; but without bread, hunger is imminent. victory no longer seemed indubitable. it was possible, it began even to be probable that the fair ship of his fame might come to wreck on the shoals of poverty. it was painfully clear that he must do something without further delay, must either conquer want or overleap it. would he bridle his desires, live savingly, and write assiduously till such repute came as would enable him to launch out and indulge his tastes? he was wise enough to see the advantages of such a course. every day his reputation as a talker was growing. had he had a little more self-control, had he waited a little longer till his position in society was secured, he could easily have married someone with money and position who would have placed him above sordid care and fear for ever. but he could not wait; he was colossally vain; he would wear the peacock's feathers at all times and all costs: he was intensely pleasure-loving, too; his mouth watered for every fruit. besides, he couldn't write with creditors at the door. like bossuet he was unable to work when bothered about small economies:--_s'il était à l'étroit dans son domestique_. what was to be done? suddenly he cut the knot and married the daughter of a q.c., a miss constance lloyd, a young lady without any particular qualities or beauty, whom he had met in dublin on a lecture tour. miss lloyd had a few hundreds a year of her own, just enough to keep the wolf from the door. the couple went to live in tite street, chelsea, in a modest little house. the drawing-room, however, was decorated by godwin and quickly gained a certain notoriety. it was indeed a charming room with an artistic distinction and appeal of its own. as soon as the dreadful load of poverty was removed, oscar began to go about a great deal, and his wife would certainly have been invited with him if he had refused invitations addressed to himself alone; but from the beginning he accepted them and consequently after the first few months of marriage his wife went out but little, and later children came and kept her at home. having earned a respite from care by his marriage, oscar did little for the next three years but talk. critical observers began to make up their minds that he was a talker and not a writer. "he was a power in the art," as de quincey said of coleridge; "and he carried a new art into the power." every year this gift grew with him: every year he talked more and more brilliantly, and he was allowed now, and indeed expected, to hold the table. in london there is no such thing as conversation. now and then one hears a caustic or witty phrase, but nothing more. the tone of good society everywhere is to be pleasant without being prominent. in every other european country, however, able men are encouraged to talk; in england alone they are discouraged. people in society use a debased jargon or slang, snobbish shibboleths for the most part, and the majority resent any one man monopolising attention. but oscar wilde was allowed this privileged position, was encouraged to hold forth to amuse people, as singers are brought in to sing after dinner. though his fame as a witty and delightful talker grew from week to week, even his marriage did not stifle the undertone of dislike and disgust. now indignantly, now with contempt, men spoke of him as abandoned, a creature of unnatural viciousness. there were certain houses in the best set of london society the doors of which were closed to him. [illustration: oscar wilde] footnotes: [ ] by way of heaping coals of fire on the students' heads oscar presented a cast of the hermes (then recently unearthed) to the university of harvard. [ ] cfr. appendix: "criticisms by robert ross." chapter vi from on i met oscar wilde continually, now at the theatre, now in some society drawing room; most often, i think, at mrs. jeune's (afterwards lady st. helier). his appearance was not in his favour; there was something oily and fat about him that repelled me. naturally being british-born and young i tried to give my repugnance a moral foundation; fleshly indulgence and laziness, i said to myself, were written all over him. the snatches of his monologues which i caught from time to time seemed to me to consist chiefly of epigrams almost mechanically constructed of proverbs and familiar sayings turned upside down. two of balzac's characters, it will be remembered, practised this form of humour. the desire to astonish and dazzle, the love of the uncommon for its own sake, was so evident that i shrugged my shoulders and avoided him. one evening, however, at mrs. jeune's, i got to know him better. at the very door mrs. jeune came up to me: "have you ever met mr. oscar wilde? you ought to know him: he is so delightfully clever, so brilliant!" i went with her and was formally introduced to him. he shook hands in a limp way i disliked; his hands were flabby, greasy; his skin looked bilious and dirty. he wore a great green scarab ring on one finger. he was over-dressed rather than well-dressed; his clothes fitted him too tightly; he was too stout. he had a trick which i noticed even then, which grew on him later, of pulling his jowl with his right hand as he spoke, and his jowl was already fat and pouchy. his appearance filled me with distaste. i lay stress on this physical repulsion, because i think most people felt it, and in itself, it is a tribute to the fascination of the man that he should have overcome the first impression so completely and so quickly. i don't remember what we talked about, but i noticed almost immediately that his grey eyes were finely expressive; in turn vivacious, laughing, sympathetic; always beautiful. the carven mouth, too, with its heavy, chiselled, purple-tinged lips, had a certain attraction and significance in spite of a black front tooth which shocked one when he laughed. he was over six feet in height and both broad and thick-set; he looked like a roman emperor of the decadence. we had a certain interest in each other, an interest of curiosity, for i remember that he led the way almost at once into the inner drawing room in order to be free to talk in some seclusion. after half an hour or so i asked him to lunch next day at _the café royal_, then the best restaurant in london. at this time he was a superb talker, more brilliant than any i have ever heard in england, but nothing like what he became later. his talk soon made me forget his repellant physical peculiarities; indeed i soon lost sight of them so completely that i have wondered since how i could have been so disagreeably affected by them at first sight. there was an extraordinary physical vivacity and geniality in the man, an extraordinary charm in his gaiety, and lightning-quick intelligence. his enthusiasms, too, were infectious. every mental question interested him, especially if it had anything to do with art or literature. his whole face lit up as he spoke and one saw nothing but his soulful eyes, heard nothing but his musical tenor voice; he was indeed what the french call a _charmeur_. in ten minutes i confessed to myself that i liked him, and his talk was intensely quickening. he had something unexpected to say on almost every subject. his mind was agile and powerful and he took a delight in using it. he was well-read too, in several languages, especially in french, and his excellent memory stood him in good stead. even when he merely reproduced what the great writers had said perfectly, he added a new colouring. and already his characteristic humour was beginning to illumine every topic with lambent flashes. it was at our first lunch, i think, that he told me he had been asked by harper's to write a book of one hundred thousand words and offered a large sum for it--i think some five thousand dollars--in advance. he wrote to them gravely that there were not one hundred thousand words in english, so he could not undertake the work, and laughed merrily like a child at the cheeky reproof. "i have sent their letters and my reply to the press," he added, and laughed again, while probing me with inquisitive eyes: how far did i understand the need of self-advertisement? about this time an impromptu of his moved the town to laughter. at some dinner party it appeared the ladies sat a little too long; oscar wanted to smoke. suddenly the hostess drew his attention to a lamp the shade of which was smouldering. "please put it out, mr. wilde," she said, "it's smoking." oscar turned to do as he was told with the remark: "happy lamp!" the delightful impertinence had an extraordinary success. early in our friendship i was fain to see that the love of the uncommon, his paradoxes and epigrams were natural to him, sprang immediately from his taste and temperament. perhaps it would be well to define once for all his attitude towards life with more scope and particularity than i have hitherto done. it is often assumed that he had no clear and coherent view of life, no belief, no faith to guide his vagrant footsteps; but such an opinion does him injustice. he had his own philosophy, and held to it for long years with astonishing tenacity. his attitude towards life can best be seen if he is held up against goethe. he took the artist's view of life which goethe was the first to state and indeed in youth had overstated with an astonishing persuasiveness: "the beautiful is more than the good," said goethe; "for it includes the good." it seemed to oscar, as it had seemed to young goethe, that "the extraordinary alone survives"; the extraordinary whether good or bad; he therefore sought after the extraordinary, and naturally enough often fell into the extravagant. but how stimulating it was in london, where sordid platitudes drip and drizzle all day long, to hear someone talking brilliant paradoxes. goethe did not linger long in the halfway house of unbelief; the murderer may win notoriety as easily as the martyr, but his memory will not remain. "_the fashion of this world passeth away_," said goethe, "i would fain occupy myself with that which endures." midway in life goethe accepted kant's moral imperative and restated his creed: "a man must resolve to live," he said, "for the good, and beautiful, and for the common weal." oscar did not push his thought so far: the transcendental was not his field. it was a pity, i sometimes felt, that he had not studied german as thoroughly as french; goethe might have done more for him than baudelaire or balzac, for in spite of all his stodgy german faults, goethe is the best guide through the mysteries of life whom the modern world has yet produced. oscar wilde stopped where the religion of goethe began; he was far more of a pagan and individualist than the great german; he lived for the beautiful and extraordinary, but not for the good and still less for the whole; he acknowledged no moral obligation; _in commune bonis_ was an ideal which never said anything to him; he cared nothing for the common weal; he held himself above the mass of the people with an englishman's extravagant insularity and aggressive pride. politics, social problems, religion--everything interested him simply as a subject of art; life itself was merely material for art. he held the position goethe had abandoned in youth. the view was astounding in england and new everywhere in its onesidedness. its passionate exaggeration, however, was quickening, and there is, of course, something to be said for it. the artistic view of life is often higher than the ordinary religious view; at least it does not deal in condemnations and exclusions; it is more reasonable, more catholic, more finely perceptive. "the artist's view of life is the only possible one," oscar used to say, "and should be applied to everything, most of all to religion and morality. cavaliers and puritans are interesting for their costumes and not for their convictions.... "there is no general rule of health; it is all personal, individual.... i only demand that freedom which i willingly concede to others. no one condemns another for preferring green to gold. why should any taste be ostracised? liking and disliking are not under our control. i want to choose the nourishment which suits _my_ body and _my_ soul." i can almost hear him say the words with his charming humorous smile and exquisite flash of deprecation, as if he were half inclined to make fun of his own statement. it was not his views on art, however, which recommended him to the aristocratic set in london; but his contempt for social reform, or rather his utter indifference to it, and his english love of inequality. the republicanism he flaunted in his early verses was not even skin deep; his political beliefs and prejudices were the prejudices of the english governing class and were all in favour of individual freedom, or anarchy under the protection of the policeman. "the poor are poor creatures," was his real belief, "and must always be hewers of wood and drawers of water. they are merely the virgin soil out of which men of genius and artists grow like flowers. their function is to give birth to genius and nourish it. they have no other _raison d'être_. were men as intelligent as bees, all gifted individuals would be supported by the community, as the bees support their queen. we should be the first charge on the state just as socrates declared that he should be kept in the prytaneum at the public expense. "don't talk to me, frank, about the hardships of the poor. the hardships of the poor are necessities, but talk to me of the hardships of men of genius, and i could weep tears of blood. i was never so affected by any book in my life as i was by the misery of balzac's poet, lucien de rubempré." naturally this creed of an exaggerated individualism appealed peculiarly to the best set in london. it was eminently aristocratic and might almost be defended as scientific, for to a certain extent it found corroboration in darwinism. all progress according to darwin comes from peculiar individuals; "sports" as men of science call them, or the "heaven-sent" as rhetoricians prefer to style them. the many are only there to produce more "sports" and ultimately to benefit by them. all this is valid enough; but it leaves the crux of the question untouched. the poor in aristocratic england are too degraded to produce "sports" of genius, or indeed any "sports" of much value to humanity. such an extravagant inequality of condition obtains there that the noble soul is miserable, the strongest insecure. but wilde's creed was intensely popular with the "smart set" because of its very one-sidedness, and he was hailed as a prophet partly because he defended the cherished prejudices of the "landed" oligarchy. it will be seen from this that oscar wilde was in some danger of suffering from excessive popularity and unmerited renown. indeed if he had loved athletic sports, hunting and shooting instead of art and letters, he might have been the selected representative of aristocratic england. in addition to his own popular qualities a strong current was sweeping him to success. he was detested by the whole of the middle or shop-keeping class which in england, according to matthew arnold, has "the sense of conduct--and has but little else." this class hated and feared him; feared him for his intellectual freedom and his contempt of conventionality, and hated him because of his light-hearted self-indulgence, and also because it saw in him none of its own sordid virtues. _punch_ is peculiarly the representative of this class and of all english prejudices, and _punch_ jeered at him now in prose, now in verse, week after week. under the heading, "more impressions" (by oscuro wildgoose) i find this: "my little fancy's clogged with gush, my little lyre is false in tone, and when i lyrically moan, i hear the impatient critic's 'tush!' "but i've 'impressions.' these are grand! mere dabs of words, mere blobs of tint, displayed on canvas or in print, men laud, and think they understand. "a smudge of brown, a smear of yellow, no tale, no subject,--there you are! impressions!--and the strangest far is--that the bard's a clever fellow." a little later these lines appeared: "my languid lily, my lank limp lily, my long, lithe lily-love, men may grin-- say that i'm soft and supremely silly-- what care i, while you whisper still; what care i, while you smile? not a pin! while you smile, while you whisper-- 'tis sweet to decay! i have watered with chlorodine, tears of chagrin, the churchyard mould i have planted thee in, upside down, in an intense way, in a rough red flower-pot, _sweeter than sin_, that i bought for a halfpenny, yesterday!" the italics are mine; but the suggestion was always implicit; yet this constant wind of puritanic hatred blowing against him helped instead of hindering his progress: strong men are made by opposition; like kites they go up against the wind. chapter vii "believe me, child, all the gentleman's misfortunes arose from his being educated at a public school...."--fielding. in england success is a plant of slow growth. the tone of good society, though responsive to political talent, and openly, eagerly sensitive to money-making talent, is contemptuous of genius and rates the utmost brilliancy of the talker hardly higher than the feats of an acrobat. men are obstinate, slow, trusting a bank-balance rather than brains; and giving way reluctantly to sharp-witted superiority. the road up to power or influence in england is full of pitfalls and far too arduous for those who have neither high birth nor wealth to help them. the natural inequality of men instead of being mitigated by law or custom is everywhere strengthened and increased by a thousand effete social distinctions. even in the best class where a certain easy familiarity reigns there is circle above circle, and the summits are isolated by heredity. the conditions of english society being what they are, it is all but impossible at first to account for the rapidity of oscar wilde's social success; yet if we tell over his advantages and bring one or two into the account which have not yet been reckoned, we shall find almost every element that conduces to popularity. by talent and conviction he was the natural pet of the aristocracy whose selfish prejudices he defended and whose leisure he amused. the middle class, as has been noted, disliked and despised him: but its social influence is small and its papers, and especially _punch_, made him notorious by attacking him in and out of season. the comic weekly, indeed, helped to build up his reputation by the almost inexplicable bitterness of its invective. another potent force was in his favour. from the beginning he set himself to play the game of the popular actor, and neglected no opportunity of turning the limelight on his own doings. as he said, his admiration of himself was "a lifelong devotion," and he proclaimed his passion on the housetops. our names happened to be mentioned together once in some paper, i think it was _the pall mall gazette_. he asked me what i was going to reply. "nothing," i answered, "why should i bother? i've done nothing yet that deserves trumpeting." "you're making a mistake," he said seriously. "if you wish for reputation and fame in this world, and success during your lifetime, you ought to seize every opportunity of advertising yourself. you remember the latin word, 'fame springs from one's own house.' like other wise sayings, it's not quite true; fame comes from oneself," and he laughed delightedly; "you must go about repeating how great you are till the dull crowd comes to believe it." "the prophet must proclaim himself, eh? and declare his own mission?" "that's it," he replied with a smile; "that's it. "every time my name is mentioned in a paper, i write at once to admit that i am the messiah. why is pears' soap successful? not because it is better or cheaper than any other soap, but because it is more strenuously puffed. the journalist is my 'john the baptist.' what would you give, when a book of yours comes out, to be able to write a long article drawing attention to it in _the pall mall gazette_? here you have the opportunity of making your name known just as widely; why not avail yourself of it? i miss no chance," and to do him justice he used occasion to the utmost. curiously enough bacon had the same insight, and i have often wondered since whether oscar's worldly wisdom was original or was borrowed from the great elizabethan climber. bacon says: "'boldly sound your own praises and some of them will stick.'... it will stick with the more ignorant and the populace, though men of wisdom may smile at it; and the reputation won with many will amply countervail the disdain of a few.... and surely no small number of those who are of solid nature, and who, from the want of this ventosity, cannot spread all sail in pursuit of their own honour, suffer some prejudice and lose dignity by their moderation." many of oscar's letters to the papers in these years were amusing, some of them full of humour. for example, when he was asked to give a list of the hundred best books, as lord avebury and other mediocrities had done, he wrote saying that "he could not give a list of the hundred best books, as he had only written five." winged words of his were always passing from mouth to mouth in town. some theatre was opened which was found horribly ugly: one spoke of it as "early victorian." "no, no," replied oscar, "nothing so distinctive. 'early maple,' rather." even his impertinences made echoes. at a great reception, a friend asked him in passing, how the hostess, lady s----, could be recognised. lady s---- being short and stout, oscar replied, smiling: "go through this room, my dear fellow, and the next and so on till you come to someone looking like a public monument, say the effigy of britannia or victoria--that's lady s----." though he used to pretend that all this self-advertisement was premeditated and planned, i could hardly believe him. he was eager to write about himself because of his exaggerated vanity and reflection afterwards found grounds to justify his inclination. but whatever the motive may have been the effect was palpable: his name was continually in men's mouths, and his fame grew by repetition. as tiberius said of mucianus: "_omnium quæ dixerat feceratque, arte quadam ostentator_" (he had a knack of showing off and advertising whatever he said or did). but no personal qualities, however eminent, no gifts, no graces of heart or head or soul could have brought a young man to oscar wilde's social position and popularity in a few years. another cause was at work lifting him steadily. from the time he left oxford he was acclaimed and backed by a small minority of passionate admirers whom i have called his fuglemen. these admirers formed the constant factor in his progress from social height to height. for the most part they were persons usually called "sexual inverts," who looked to the brilliancy of his intellect to gild their esoteric indulgence. this class in england is almost wholly recruited from the aristocracy and the upper middle-class that apes the "smart set." it is an inevitable product of the english boarding school and university system; indeed one of the most characteristic products. i shall probably bring upon myself a host of enemies by this assertion, but it has been weighed and must stand. fielding has already put the same view on record: he says: "a public school, joseph, was the cause of all the calamities which he afterwards suffered. public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality. all the wicked fellows whom i remember at the university were bred at them...." if boarding-school life with its close intimacies between boys from twelve to eighteen years of age were understood by english mothers, it is safe to say that every boarding-house in every school would disappear in a single night, and eton, harrow, winchester and the rest would be turned into day-schools. those who have learned bad habits at school or in the 'varsity are inclined to continue the practices in later life. naturally enough these men are usually distinguished by a certain artistic sympathy, and often by most attractive, intellectual qualities. as a rule the epicene have soft voices and ingratiating manners, and are bold enough to make a direct appeal to the heart and emotions; they are considered the very cream of london society. these admirers and supporters praised and defended oscar wilde from the beginning with the persistence and courage of men who if they don't hang together are likely to hang separately. after his trial and condemnation _the daily telegraph_ spoke with contempt of these "decadents" and "æsthetes" who, it asserted, "could be numbered in london society on the fingers of one hand"; but even _the daily telegraph_ must have known that in the "smart set" alone there are hundreds of these acolytes whose intellectual and artistic culture gives them an importance out of all proportion to their number. it was the passionate support of these men in the first place which made oscar wilde notorious and successful. this fact may well give pause to the thoughtful reader. in the middle ages, when birth and position had a disproportionate power in life, the catholic church supplied a certain democratic corrective to the inequality of social conditions. it was a sort of "jacob's ladder" leading from the lowest strata of society to the very heavens and offering to ingenuous, youthful talent a career of infinite hope and unlimited ambition. this great power of the roman church in the middle-ages may well be compared to the influence exerted by those whom i have designated as oscar wilde's fuglemen in the england of today. the easiest way to success in london society is to be notorious in this sense. whatever career one may have chosen, however humble one's birth, one is then certain of finding distinguished friends and impassioned advocates. if you happen to be in the army and unmarried, you are declared to be a strategist like cæsar, or an organizer like moltke; if you are an artist, instead of having your faults proclaimed and your failings scourged, your qualifications are eulogised and you find yourself compared to michel angelo or titian! i would not willingly exaggerate here; but i could easily give dozens of instances to prove that sexual perversion is a "jacob's ladder" to most forms of success in our time in london. it seems a curious effect of the great compensatory balance of things that a masculine rude people like the english, who love nothing so much as adventures and warlike achievements, should allow themselves to be steered in ordinary times by epicene æsthetes. but no one who knows the facts will deny that these men are prodigiously influential in london in all artistic and literary matters, and it was their constant passionate support which lifted oscar wilde so quickly to eminence. from the beginning they fought for him. he was regarded as a leader among them when still at oxford. yet his early writings show no trace of such a prepossession; they are wholly void of offence, without even a suggestion of coarseness, as pure indeed as his talk. nevertheless, as soon as his name came up among men in town, the accusation of abnormal viciousness was either made or hinted. everyone spoke as if there were no doubt about his tastes, and this in spite of the habitual reticence of englishmen. i could not understand how the imputation came to be so bold and universal; how so shameful a calumny, as i regarded it, was so firmly established in men's minds. again and again i protested against the injustice, demanded proofs; but was met only by shrugs and pitying glances as if my prejudice must indeed be invincible if i needed evidence of the obvious. i have since been assured, on what should be excellent authority, that the evil reputation which attached to oscar wilde in those early years in london was completely undeserved. i, too, must say that in the first period of our friendship, i never noticed anything that could give colour even to suspicion of him; but the belief in his abnormal tastes was widespread and dated from his life in oxford. from about - on, however, there was a notable change in oscar wilde's manners and mode of life. he had been married a couple of years, two children had been born to him; yet instead of settling down he appeared suddenly to have become wilder. in he accepted the editorship of a lady's paper, _the woman's world_, and was always mocking at the selection of himself as the "fittest" for such a post: he had grown noticeably bolder. i told myself that an assured income and position give confidence; but at bottom a doubt began to form in me. it can't be denied that from - on, incidents occurred from time to time which kept the suspicion of him alive, and indeed pointed and strengthened it. i shall have to deal now with some of the more important of these occurrences. chapter viii the period of growth of any organism is the most interesting and most instructive. and there is no moment of growth in the individual life which can be compared in importance with the moment when a man begins to outtop his age, and to suggest the future evolution of humanity by his own genius. usually this final stage is passed in solitude: _es bildet ein talent sich in der stille,_ _sich ein charakter in dem strome der welt._ after writing a life of schiller which almost anyone might have written, carlyle retired for some years to craigenputtoch, and then brought forth _sartor resartus_, which was personal and soul-revealing to the verge of eccentricity. in the same way wagner was a mere continuator of weber in _lohengrin_ and _tannhaeuser_, and first came to his own in the _meistersinger_ and _tristan_, after years of meditation in switzerland. this period for oscar wilde began with his marriage; the freedom from sordid anxieties allowed him to lift up his head and be himself. kepler, i think, it is who praises poverty as the foster-mother of genius; but bernard palissy was nearer the truth when he said:--_pauvreté empêche bons esprits de parvenir_ (poverty hinders fine minds from succeeding). there is no such mortal enemy of genius as poverty except riches: a touch of the spur from time to time does good; but a constant rowelling disables. as editor of _the woman's world_ oscar had some money of his own to spend. though his salary was only some six pounds a week, it made him independent, and his editorial work gave him an excuse for not exhausting himself by writing. for some years after marriage; in fact, till he lost his editorship, he wrote little and talked a great deal. during this period we were often together. he lunched with me once or twice a week and i began to know his method of work. everything came to him in the excitement of talk, epigrams, paradoxes and stories; and when people of great position or title were about him he generally managed to surpass himself: all social distinctions appealed to him intensely. i chaffed him about this one day and he admitted the snobbishness gaily. "i love even historic names, frank, as shakespeare did. surely everyone prefers norfolk, hamilton and buckingham to jones or smith or robinson." as soon as he lost his editorship he took to writing for the reviews; his articles were merely the _résumé_ of his monologues. after talking for months at this and that lunch and dinner he had amassed a store of epigrams and humorous paradoxes which he could embody in a paper for _the fortnightly review_ or _the nineteenth century_. these papers made it manifest that wilde had at length, as heine phrased it, reached the topmost height of the culture of his time and was now able to say new and interesting things. his _lehrjahre_ or student-time may be said to have ended with his editorship. the articles which he wrote on "the decay of lying," "the critic as artist," and "pen, pencil and poison"; in fact, all the papers which in were gathered together and published in book form under the title of "intentions," had about them the stamp of originality. they achieved a noteworthy success with the best minds, and laid the foundation of his fame. every paper contained, here and there, a happy phrase, or epigram, or flirt of humour, which made it memorable to the lover of letters. they were all, however, conceived and written from the standpoint of the artist, and the artist alone, who never takes account of ethics, but uses right and wrong indifferently as colours of his palette. "the decay of lying" seemed to the ordinary, matter-of-fact englishman a cynical plea in defence of mendacity. to the majority of readers, "pen, pencil and poison" was hardly more than a shameful attempt to condone cold-blooded murder. the very articles which grounded his fame as a writer, helped to injure his standing and repute. in he published a paper which did him even more damage by appearing to justify the peculiar rumours about his private life. he held the opinion, which was universal at that time, that shakespeare had been abnormally vicious. he believed with the majority of critics that lord william herbert was addressed in the first series of sonnets; but his fine sensibility or, if you will, his peculiar temperament, led him to question whether thorpe's dedication to "mr. w.h." could have been addressed to lord william herbert. he preferred the old hypothesis that the dedication was addressed to a young actor named mr. william hughes, a supposition which is supported by a well-known sonnet. he set forth this idea with much circumstance and considerable ingenuity in an article which he sent to me for publication in _the fortnightly review_. the theme was scabrous; but his treatment of it was scrupulously reserved and adroit and i saw no offence in the paper, and to tell the truth, no great ability in his handling of the subject.[ ] he had talked over the article with me while he was writing it, and i told him that i thought the whole theory completely mistaken. shakespeare was as sensual as one could well be; but there was no evidence of abnormal vice; indeed, all the evidence seemed to me to be against this universal belief. the assumption that the dedication was addressed to lord william herbert i had found it difficult to accept, at first; the wording of it is not only ambiguous but familiar. if i assumed that "mr. w.h." was meant for lord william herbert, it was only because that seemed the easiest way out of the maze. in fine, i pointed out to oscar that his theory had very little that was new in it, and more that was untrue, and advised him not to publish the paper. my conviction that shakespeare was not abnormally vicious, and that the first series of sonnets proved snobbishness and toadying and not corrupt passion, seemed to oscar the very madness of partisanship. he smiled away my arguments, and sent his paper to the _fortnightly_ office when i happened to be abroad. much to my chagrin, my assistant rejected it rudely, whereupon oscar sent it to blackwoods, who published it in their magazine. it set everyone talking and arguing. to judge by the discussion it created, the wind of hatred and of praise it caused, one would have thought that the paper was a masterpiece, though in truth it was nothing out of the common. had it been written by anybody else it would have passed unnoticed. but already oscar wilde had a prodigious notoriety, and all his sayings and doings were eagerly canvassed from one end of society to the other. "the portrait of mr. w.h." did oscar incalculable injury. it gave his enemies for the first time the very weapon they wanted, and they used it unscrupulously and untiringly with the fierce delight of hatred. oscar seemed to revel in the storm of conflicting opinions which the paper called forth. he understood better than most men that notoriety is often the forerunner of fame and is always commercially more valuable. he rubbed his hands with delight as the discussion grew bitter, and enjoyed even the sneering of the envious. a wind that blows out a little fire, he knew, plays bellows to a big one. so long as people talked about him, he didn't much care what they said, and they certainly talked interminably about everything he wrote. the inordinate popular success increased his self-confidence, and with time his assurance took on a touch of defiance. the first startling sign of this gradual change was the publication in _lippincott's magazine_ of "the picture of dorian gray." it was attacked immediately in _the daily chronicle_, a liberal paper usually distinguished for a certain leaning in favour of artists and men of letters, as a "tale spawned from the leprous literature of the french _decadents_--a poisonous book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction." oscar as a matter of course replied and the tone of his reply is characteristic of his growth in self-assurance: he no longer dreads the imputation of viciousness; he challenges it: "it is poisonous, if you like; but you cannot deny that it is also perfect, and perfection is what we artists aim at." when oscar republished "the picture of dorian gray" in book form in april, , he sent me a large paper copy and with the copy he wrote a little note, asking me to tell him what i thought of the book. i got the volume and note early one morning and read the book until noon. i then sent him a note by hand: "other men," i wrote, "have given us wine; some claret, some burgundy, some moselle; you are the first to give us pure champagne. much of this book is wittier even than congreve and on an equal intellectual level: at length, it seems to me, you have justified yourself." half an hour later i was told that oscar wilde had called. i went down immediately to see him. he was bubbling over with content. "how charming of you, frank," he cried, "to have written me such a divine letter." "i have only read a hundred pages of the book," i said; "but they are delightful: no one now can deny you a place among the wittiest and most humorous writers in english." "how wonderful of you, frank; what do you like so much?" like all artists, he loved praise and i was enthusiastic, happy to have the opportunity of making up for some earlier doubting that now seemed unworthy: "whatever the envious may say, you're with burke and sheridan, among the very ablest irishmen.... "of course i have heard most of the epigrams from you before, but you have put them even better in this book." "do you think so, really?" he asked, smiling with pleasure. it is worth notice that some of the epigrams in "dorian gray" were bettered again before they appeared in his first play. for example, in "dorian gray" lord henry wotton, who is peculiarly oscar's mouthpiece, while telling how he had to bargain for a piece of old brocade in wardour street, adds, "nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing." in "lady windermere's fan" the same epigram is perfected, "the cynic is one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." nearly all the literary productions of our time suffer from haste: one must produce a good deal, especially while one's reputation is in the making, in order to live by one's pen. yet great works take time to form, and fine creations are often disfigured by the stains of hurried parturition. oscar wilde contrived to minimise this disability by talking his works before writing them. the conversation of lord henry wotton with his uncle, and again at lunch when he wishes to fascinate dorian gray, is an excellent reproduction of oscar's ordinary talk. the uncle wonders why lord dartmoor wants to marry an american and grumbles about her people: "has she got any?" lord henry shook his head. "american girls are as clever at concealing their parents as english women are at concealing their past," he said, rising to go. "they are pork-packers, i suppose?" "i hope so, uncle george, for dartmoor's sake. i am told that pork-packing is the most lucrative profession in america, after politics." all this seems to me delightful humour. the latter part of the book, however, tails off into insignificance. the first hundred pages held the result of months and months of oscar's talk, the latter half was written offhand to complete the story. "dorian gray" was the first piece of work which proved that oscar wilde had at length found his true vein. a little study of it discovers both his strength and his weakness as a writer. the initial idea of the book is excellent, finer because deeper than the commonplace idea that is the foundation of balzac's "peau de chagrin," though it would probably never have been written if balzac had not written his book first; but balzac's sincerity and earnestness grapple with the theme and wring a blessing out of it, whereas the subtler idea in oscar's hands dwindles gradually away till one wonders if the book would not have been more effective as a short story. oscar did not know life well enough or care enough for character to write a profound psychological study: he was at his best in a short story or play. one day about this time oscar first showed me the aphorisms he had written as an introduction to "dorian gray." several of them i thought excellent; but i found that oscar had often repeated himself. i cut these repetitions out and tried to show him how much better the dozen best were than eighteen of which six were inferior. i added that i should like to publish the best in "the fortnightly." he thanked me and said it was very kind of me. next morning i got a letter from him telling me that he had read over my corrections and thought that the aphorisms i had rejected were the best, but he hoped i'd publish them as he had written them. naturally i replied that the final judgment must rest with him and i published them at once. the delight i felt in his undoubted genius and success was not shared by others. friends took occasion to tell me that i should not go about with oscar wilde. "why not?" i asked. "he has a bad name," was the reply. "strange things are said about him. he came down from oxford with a vile reputation. you have only got to look at the man." "whatever the disease may be," i replied, "it's not catching--unfortunately." the pleasure men take in denigration of the gifted is one of the puzzles of life to those who are not envious. men of letters, even people who ought to have known better, were slow to admit his extraordinary talent; he had risen so quickly, had been puffed into such prominence that they felt inclined to deny him even the gifts which he undoubtedly possessed. i was surprised once to find a friend of mine taking this attitude: francis adams, the poet and writer, chaffed me one day about my liking for oscar. "what on earth can you see in him to admire?" he asked. "he is not a great writer, he is not even a good writer; his books have no genius in them; his poetry is tenth rate, and his prose is not much better. his talk even is fictitious and extravagant." i could only laugh at him and advise him to read "the picture of dorian gray." this book, however, gave oscar's puritanic enemies a better weapon against him than even "the portrait of mr. w.h." the subject, they declared, was the same as that of "mr. w.h.," and the treatment was simply loathsome. more than one middle-class paper, such as _to-day_ in the hands of mr. jerome k. jerome, condemned the book as "corrupt," and advised its suppression. freedom of speech in england is more feared than licence of action: a speck on the outside of the platter disgusts your puritan, and the inside is never peeped at, much less discussed. walter pater praised "dorian gray" in the _bookman_; but thereby only did himself damage without helping his friend. oscar meanwhile went about boldly, meeting criticism now with smiling contempt. one incident from this time will show how unfairly he was being judged and how imprudent he was to front defamation with defiance. one day i met a handsome youth in his company named john gray, and i could not wonder that oscar found him interesting, for gray had not only great personal distinction, but charming manners and a marked poetic gift, a much greater gift than oscar possessed. he had besides an eager, curious mind, and of course found extraordinary stimulus in oscar's talk. it seemed to me that intellectual sympathy and the natural admiration which a younger man feels for a brilliant senior formed the obvious bond between them. but no sooner did oscar republish "dorian gray" than ill-informed and worse-minded persons went about saying that the eponymous hero of the book was john gray, though "dorian gray" was written before oscar had met or heard of john gray. one cannot help admitting that this was partly oscar's own fault. in talk he often alluded laughingly to john gray as his hero, "dorian." it is just an instance of the challenging contempt which he began to use about this time in answer to the inventions of hatred. late in this year, , he published four stories completely void of offence, calling the collection "a house of pomegranates." he dedicated each of the tales to a lady of distinction and the book made many friends; but it was handled contemptuously in the press and had no sale. by this time people expected a certain sort of book from oscar wilde and wanted nothing else. they hadn't to wait long. early in we heard that oscar had written a drama in french called _salome_, and at once it was put about that sarah bernhardt was going to produce it in london. then came dramatic surprise on surprise: while it was being rehearsed, the lord chamberlain refused to license it on the ground that it introduced biblical characters. oscar protested in a brilliant interview against the action of the censor as "odious and ridiculous." he pointed out that all the greatest artists--painters and sculptors, musicians and writers--had taken many of their best subjects from the bible, and wanted to know why the dramatist should be prevented from treating the great soul-tragedies most proper to his art. when informed that the interdict was to stand, he declared in a pet that he would settle in france and take out letters of naturalisation: "i am not english. i am irish--which is quite another thing." of course the press made all the fun it could of his show of temper. mr. robert ross considers "salome" "the most powerful and perfect of all oscar's dramas." i find it almost impossible to explain, much less justify, its astonishing popularity. when it appeared, the press, both in france and in england, was critical and contemptuous; but by this time oscar had so captured the public that he could afford to disdain critics and calumny. the play was praised by his admirers as if it had been a masterpiece, and london discussed it the more because it was in french and not clapper-clawed by the vulgar. the indescribable cold lewdness and cruelty of "salome" quickened the prejudice and strengthened the dislike of the ordinary english reader for its author. and when the drama was translated into english and published with the drawings of aubrey beardsley, it was disparaged and condemned by all the leaders of literary opinion. the colossal popularity of the play, which mr. robert ross proves so triumphantly, came from germany and russia and is to be attributed in part to the contempt educated germans and russians feel for the hypocritical vagaries of english prudery. the illustrations of aubrey beardsley, too, it must be admitted, were an additional offence to the ordinary english reader, for they intensified the peculiar atmosphere of the drama. oscar used to say that he invented aubrey beardsley; but the truth is, it was mr. robert ross who first introduced aubrey to oscar and persuaded him to commission the "salome" drawings which gave the english edition its singular value. strange to say, oscar always hated the illustrations and would not have the book in his house. his dislike even extended to the artist, and as aubrey beardsley was of easy and agreeable intercourse, the mutual repulsion deserves a word of explanation. aubrey beardsley's genius had taken london by storm. at seventeen or eighteen this auburn-haired, blue-eyed, fragile looking youth had reached maturity with his astounding talent, a talent which would have given him position and wealth in any other country. in perfection of line his drawings were superior to anything we possess. but the curious thing about the boy was that he expressed the passions of pride and lust and cruelty more intensely even than rops, more spontaneously than anyone who ever held pencil. beardsley's precocity was simply marvellous. he seemed to have an intuitive understanding not only of his own art but of every art and craft, and it was some time before one realised that he attained this miraculous virtuosity by an absolute disdain for every other form of human endeavour. he knew nothing of the great general or millionaire or man of science, and he cared as little for them as for fishermen or 'bus-drivers. the current of his talent ran narrow between stone banks, so to speak; it was the bold assertion of it that interested oscar. one phase of beardsley's extraordinary development may be recorded here. when i first met him his letters, and even his talk sometimes, were curiously youthful and immature, lacking altogether the personal note of his drawings. as soon as this was noticed he took the bull by the horns and pretended that his style in writing was out of date; he wished us to believe that he hesitated to shock us with his "archaic sympathies." of course we laughed and challenged him to reveal himself. shortly afterwards i got an article from him written with curious felicity of phrase, in modish polite eighteenth-century english. he had reached personal expression in a new medium in a month or so, and apparently without effort. it was beardsley's writing that first won oscar to recognition of his talent, and for a while he seemed vaguely interested in what he called his "orchid-like personality." they were both at lunch one day when oscar declared that he could drink nothing but absinthe when beardsley was present. "absinthe," he said, "is to all other drinks what aubrey's drawings are to other pictures: it stands alone: it is like nothing else: it shimmers like southern twilight in opalescent colouring: it has about it the seduction of strange sins. it is stronger than any other spirit, and brings out the sub-conscious self in man. it is just like your drawings, aubrey; it gets on one's nerves and is cruel. "baudelaire called his poems _fleurs du mal_, i shall call your drawings _fleurs du péché_--flowers of sin. "when i have before me one of your drawings i want to drink absinthe, which changes colour like jade in sunlight and takes the senses thrall, and then i can live myself back in imperial rome, in the rome of the later cæsars." "don't forget the simple pleasures of that life, oscar," said aubrey; "nero set christians on fire, like large tallow candles; the only light christians have ever been known to give," he added in a languid, gentle voice. this talk gave me the key. in personal intercourse oscar wilde was more english than the english: he seldom expressed his opinion of person or prejudice boldly; he preferred to hint dislike and disapproval. his insistence on the naked expression of lust and cruelty in beardsley's drawings showed me that direct frankness displeased him; for he could hardly object to the qualities which were making his own "salome" world-famous. the complete history of the relations between oscar wilde and beardsley, and their mutual dislike, merely proves how difficult it is for original artists to appreciate one another: like mountain peaks they stand alone. oscar showed a touch of patronage, the superiority of the senior, in his intercourse with beardsley, and often praised him ineptly, whereas beardsley to the last spoke of oscar as a showman, and hoped drily that he knew more about literature than he did about art. for a moment, they worked in concert, and it is important to remember that it was beardsley who influenced oscar, and not oscar who influenced beardsley. beardsley's contempt of critics and the public, his artistic boldness and self-assertion, had a certain hardening influence on oscar: as things turned out a most unfortunate influence. in spite of mr. robert ross's opinion i regard "salome," as a student work, an outcome of oscar's admiration for flaubert and his "herodias," on the one hand, and "les sept princesses," of maeterlinck on the other. he has borrowed the colour and oriental cruelty with the banquet-scene from the frenchman, and from the fleming the simplicity of language and the haunting effect produced by the repetition of significant phrases. yet "salome" is original through the mingling of lust and hatred in the heroine, and by making this extraordinary virgin the chief and centre of the drama oscar has heightened the interest of the story and bettered flaubert's design. i feel sure he copied maeterlinck's simplicity of style because it served to disguise his imperfect knowledge of french and yet this very artlessness adds to the weird effect of the drama. the lust that inspires the tragedy was characteristic, but the cruelty was foreign to oscar; both qualities would have injured him in england, had it not been for two things. first of all only a few of the best class of english people know french at all well, and for the most part they disdain the sex-morality of their race; while the vast mass of the english public regard french as in itself an immoral medium and is inclined to treat anything in that tongue with contemptuous indifference. one can only say that "salome" confirmed oscar's growing reputation for abnormal viciousness. it was in that some of oscar's friends struck me for the first time as questionable, to say the best of them. i remember giving a little dinner to some men in rooms i had in jermyn street. i invited oscar, and he brought a young friend with him. after dinner i noticed that the youth was angry with oscar and would scarcely speak to him, and that oscar was making up to him. i heard snatches of pleading from oscar--"i beg of you.... it is not true.... you have no cause".... all the while oscar was standing apart from the rest of us with an arm on the young man's shoulder; but his coaxing was in vain, the youth turned away with petulant, sullen ill-temper. this is a mere snap-shot which remained in my memory, and made me ask myself afterwards how i could have been so slow of understanding. looking back and taking everything into consideration--his social success, the glare of publicity in which he lived, the buzz of talk and discussion that arose about everything he did and said, the increasing interest and value of his work and, above all, the ever-growing boldness of his writing and the challenge of his conduct--it is not surprising that the black cloud of hate and slander which attended him persistently became more and more threatening. footnotes: [ ] cfr. appendix: "criticisms by robert ross." chapter ix no season, it is said, is so beautiful as the brief northern summer. three-fourths of the year is cold and dark, and the ice-bound landscape is swept by snowstorm and blizzard. summer comes like a goddess; in a twinkling the snow vanishes and nature puts on her robes of tenderest green; the birds arrive in flocks; flowers spring to life on all sides, and the sun shines by night as by day. such a summertide, so beautiful and so brief, was accorded to oscar wilde before the final desolation. i want to give a picture of him at the topmost height of happy hours, which will afford some proof of his magical talent of speech besides my own appreciation of it, and, fortunately, the incident has been given to me. mr. ernest beckett, now lord grimthorpe, a lover of all superiorities, who has known the ablest men of the time, takes pleasure in telling a story which shows oscar wilde's influence over men who were anything but literary in their tastes. mr. beckett had a party of yorkshire squires, chiefly fox-hunters and lovers of an outdoor life, at kirkstall grange when he heard that oscar wilde was in the neighbouring town of leeds. immediately he asked him to lunch at the grange, chuckling to himself beforehand at the sensational novelty of the experiment. next day "mr. oscar wilde" was announced and as he came into the room the sportsmen forthwith began hiding themselves behind newspapers or moving together in groups in order to avoid seeing or being introduced to the notorious writer. oscar shook hands with his host as if he had noticed nothing, and began to talk. "in five minutes," grimthorpe declares, "all the papers were put down and everyone had gathered round him to listen and laugh." at the end of the meal one yorkshireman after the other begged the host to follow the lunch with a dinner and invite them to meet the wonder again. when the party broke up in the small hours they all went away delighted with oscar, vowing that no man ever talked more brilliantly. grimthorpe cannot remember a single word oscar said: "it was all delightful," he declares, "a play of genial humour over every topic that came up, like sunshine dancing on waves." the extraordinary thing about oscar's talent was that he did not monopolise the conversation: he took the ball of talk wherever it happened to be at the moment and played with it so humorously that everyone was soon smiling delightedly. the famous talkers of the past, coleridge, macaulay, carlyle and the others, were all lecturers: talk to them was a discourse on a favourite theme, and in ordinary life they were generally regarded as bores. but at his best oscar wilde never dropped the tone of good society: he could afford to give place to others; he was equipped at all points: no subject came amiss to him: he saw everything from a humorous angle, and dazzled one now with word-wit, now with the very stuff of merriment. though he was the life and soul of every social gathering, and in constant demand, he still read omnivorously, and his mind naturally occupied itself with high themes. for some years, the story of jesus fascinated him and tinged all his thought. we were talking about renan's "life" one day: a wonderful book he called it, one of the three great biographies of the world, plato's dialogues with socrates as hero and boswell's "life of johnson" being the other two. it was strange, he thought, that the greatest man had written the worst biography; plato made of socrates a mere phonograph, into which he talked his own theories: renan did better work, and boswell, the humble loving friend, the least talented of the three, did better still, though being english, he had to keep to the surface of things and leave the depths to be divined. oscar evidently expected plato and renan to have surpassed comparison. it seemed to me, however, that the illiterate galilean fishermen had proved themselves still more consummate painters than boswell, though they, too, left a great deal too much to the imagination. love is the best of artists; the puddle of rain in the road can reflect a piece of sky marvellously. the gospel story had a personal interest for oscar; he was always weaving little fables about himself as the master. in spite of my ignorance of hebrew the story of jesus had always had the strongest attraction for me, and so we often talked about him, though from opposite poles. renan i felt had missed jesus at his highest. he was far below the sincerity, the tenderness and sweet-thoughted wisdom of that divine spirit. frenchman-like, he stumbled over the miracles and came to grief. claus sluter's head of jesus in the museum of dijon is a finer portrait, and so is the imaginative picture of fra angelico. it seemed to me possible to do a sketch from the gospels themselves which should show the growth of the soul of jesus and so impose itself as a true portrait. oscar's interest in the theme was different; he put himself frankly in the place of his model, and appeared to enjoy the jarring antinomy which resulted. one or two of his stories were surprising in ironical suggestion; surprising too because they showed his convinced paganism. here is one which reveals his exact position: "when joseph of arimathea came down in the evening from mount calvary where jesus had died he saw on a white stone a young man seated weeping. and joseph went near him and said, 'i understand how great thy grief must be, for certainly that man was a just man.' but the young man made answer, 'oh, it is not for that i am weeping. i am weeping because i too have wrought miracles. i also have given sight to the blind, i have healed the palsied and i have raised the dead; i too have caused the barren fig tree to wither away and i have turned water into wine ... and yet they have not crucified me.'" at the time this apologue amused me; in the light of later events it assumed a tragic significance. oscar wilde ought to have known that in this world every real superiority is pursued with hatred, and every worker of miracles is sure to be persecuted. but he had no inkling that the gospel story is symbolic--the life-story of genius for all time, eternally true. he never looked outside himself, and as the fruits of success were now sweet in his mouth, a pursuing fate seemed to him the most mythical of myths. his child-like self-confidence was pathetic. the laws that govern human affairs had little interest for the man who was always a law unto himself. yet by some extraordinary prescience, some inexplicable presentiment, the approaching catastrophe cast its shadow over his mind and he felt vaguely that the life-journey of genius would be incomplete and farcical without the final tragedy: whoever lives for the highest must be crucified. it seems memorable to me that in this brief summer of his life, oscar wilde should have concerned himself especially with the life-story of the man of sorrows who had sounded all the depths of suffering. just when he himself was about to enter the dark valley, jesus was often in his thoughts and he always spoke of him with admiration. but after all how could he help it? even dekker saw as far as that: "the best of men that e'er wore earth about him." this was the deeper strain in oscar wilde's nature though he was always disinclined to show it. habitually he lived in humorous talk, in the epithets and epigrams he struck out in the desire to please and astonish his hearers. one evening i learned almost by chance that he was about to try a new experiment and break into a new field. he took up the word "lose" at the table, i remember. "we lose our chances," he said, laughing, "we lose our figures, we even lose our characters; but we must never lose our temper. that is our duty to our neighbour, frank; but sometimes we mislay it, don't we?" "is that going in a book, oscar?" i asked, smiling, "or in an article? you have written nothing lately." "i have a play in my mind," he replied gravely. "to-morrow i am going to shut myself up in my room, and stay there until it is written. george alexander has been bothering me to write a play for some time and i've got an idea i rather like. i wonder can i do it in a week, or will it take three? it ought not to take long to beat the pineros and the joneses." it always annoyed oscar when any other name but his came into men's mouths: his vanity was extraordinarily alert. naturally enough he minimised mr. alexander's initiative. the well-known actor had "bothered" oscar by advancing him £ before the scenario was even outlined. a couple of months later he told me that alexander had accepted his comedy, and was going to produce "lady windermere's fan." i thought the title excellent. "territorial names," oscar explained, gravely, "have always a _cachet_ of distinction: they fall on the ear full toned with secular dignity. that's how i get all the names of my personages, frank. i take up a map of the english counties, and there they are. our english villages have often exquisitely beautiful names. windermere, for instance, or hunstanton," and he rolled the syllables over his tongue with a soft sensual pleasure. i had a box the first night and, thinking it might do oscar some good, i took with me arthur walter of _the times_. the first scene of the first act was as old as the hills, but the treatment gave charm to it if not freshness. the delightful, unexpected humour set off the commonplace incident; but it was only the convention that arthur walter would see. the play was poor, he thought, which brought me to wonder. after the first act i went downstairs to the _foyer_ and found the critics in much the same mind. there was an enormous gentleman called joseph knight, who cried out: "the humour is mechanical, unreal." seeing that i did not respond he challenged me: "what do you think of it?" "that is for you critics to answer," i replied. "i might say," he laughed, "in oscar's own peculiar way, 'little promise and less performance.' ha! ha! ha!" "that's the exact opposite to oscar's way," i retorted. "it is the listeners who laugh at his humour." "come now, really," cried knight, "you cannot think much of the play?" for the first time in my life i began to realise that nine critics out of ten are incapable of judging original work. they seem to live in a sort of fog, waiting for someone to give them the lead, and accordingly they love to discuss every new play right and left. "i have not seen the whole play," i answered. "i was not at any of the rehearsals; but so far it is surely the best comedy in english, the most brilliant: isn't it?" the big man started back and stared at me; then burst out laughing. "that's good," he cried with a loud unmirthful guffaw. "'lady windermere's fan' better than any comedy of shakespeare! ha! ha! ha! 'more brilliant!' ho! ho!" "yes," i persisted, angered by his disdain, "wittier, and more humorous than 'as you like it,' or 'much ado.' strange to say, too, it is on a higher intellectual level. i can only compare it to the best of congreve, and i think it's better." with a grunt of disapproval or rage the great man of the daily press turned away to exchange bleatings with one of his _confrères_. the audience was a picked audience of the best heads in london, far superior in brains therefore to the average journalist, and their judgment was that it was a most brilliant and interesting play. though the humour was often prepared, the construction showed a rare mastery of stage-effect. oscar wilde had at length come into his kingdom. at the end the author was called for, and oscar appeared before the curtain. the house rose at him and cheered and cheered again. he was smiling, with a cigarette between his fingers, wholly master of himself and his audience. "i am so glad, ladies and gentlemen, that you like my play.[ ] i feel sure you estimate the merits of it almost as highly as i do myself." the house rocked with laughter. the play and its humour were a seven days' wonder in london. people talked of nothing but "lady windermere's fan." the witty words in it ran from lip to lip like a tidbit of scandal. some clever jewesses and, strange to say, one scotchman were the loudest in applause. mr. archer, the well-known critic of _the world_, was the first and only journalist to perceive that the play was a classic by virtue of "genuine dramatic qualities." mrs. leverson turned the humorous sayings into current social coin in _punch_, of all places in the world, and from a favourite oscar wilde rapidly became the idol of smart london. the play was an intellectual triumph. this time oscar had not only won success but had won also the suffrages of the best. nearly all the journalist-critics were against him and made themselves ridiculous by their brainless strictures; _truth_ and _the times_, for example, were poisonously puritanic, but thinking people came over to his side in a body. the halo of fame was about him, and the incense of it in his nostrils made him more charming, more irresponsibly gay, more genial-witty than ever. he was as one set upon a pinnacle with the sunshine playing about him, lighting up his radiant eyes. all the while, however, the foul mists from the underworld were wreathing about him, climbing higher and higher. footnotes: [ ] cfr. appendix: "criticisms by robert ross." chapter x thou hast led me like an heathen sacrifice, with music and with fatal pomp of flowers, to my eternal ruin.--webster's _the white devil_. "lady windermere's fan" was a success in every sense of the word, and during its run london was at oscar's feet. there were always a few doors closed to him; but he could afford now to treat his critics with laughter, call them fogies and old-fashioned and explain that they had not a decalogue but a millelogue of sins forbidden and persons tabooed because it was easier to condemn than to understand. i remember a lunch once when he talked most brilliantly and finished up by telling the story now published in his works as "a florentine tragedy." he told it superbly, making it appear far more effective than in its written form. a well-known actor, piqued at being compelled to play listener, made himself ridiculous by half turning his back on the narrator. but after lunch willie grenfell (now lord desborough), a model english athlete gifted with peculiar intellectual fairness, came round to me: "oscar wilde is most surprising, most charming, a wonderful talker." at the same moment mr. k. h---- came over to us. he was a man who went everywhere and knew everyone. he had quiet, ingratiating manners, always spoke in a gentle smiling way and had a good word to say for everyone, especially for women; he was a bachelor, too, and wholly unattached. he surprised me by taking up grenfell's praise and breaking into a lyric: "the best talker who ever lived," he said; "most extraordinary. i am so infinitely obliged to you for asking me to meet him--a new delight. he brings a supernal air into life. i am in truth indebted to you"--all this in an affected purring tone. i noticed for the first time that there was a touch of rouge on his face; grenfell turned away from us rather abruptly i thought. at this first roseate dawn of complete success and universal applause, new qualities came to view in oscar. praise gave him the fillip needed in order to make him surpass himself. his talk took on a sort of autumnal richness of colour, and assumed a new width of range; he now used pathos as well as humour and generally brought in a story or apologue to lend variety to the entertainment. his little weaknesses, too, began to show themselves and they grew rankly in the sunshine. he always wanted to do himself well, as the phrase goes, but now he began to eat and drink more freely than before. his vanity became defiant. i noticed one day that he had signed himself, oscar o'flahertie wilde, i think under some verses which he had contributed years before to his college magazine. i asked him jokingly what the o'flahertie stood for. to my astonishment he answered me gravely: "the o'flaherties were kings in ireland, and i have a right to the name; i am descended from them." i could not help it; i burst out laughing. "what are you laughing at, frank?" he asked with a touch of annoyance. "it seems humorous to me," i explained, "that oscar wilde should want to be an o'flahertie," and as i spoke a picture of the greatest of the o'flaherties, with bushy head and dirty rags, warming enormous hairy legs before a smoking peat-fire, flashed before me. i think something of the sort must have occurred to oscar, too, for, in spite of his attempt to be grave, he could not help laughing. "it's unkind of you, frank," he said. "the irish were civilised and christians when the english kept themselves warm with tattooings." he could not help telling one in familiar talk of clumber or some other great house where he had been visiting; he was intoxicated with his own popularity, a little surprised, perhaps, to find that he had won fame so easily and on the primrose path, but one could forgive him everything, for he talked more delightfully than ever. it is almost inexplicable, but nevertheless true that life tries all of us, tests every weak point to breaking, and sets off and exaggerates our powers. burns saw this when he wrote: "wha does the utmost that he can will whyles do mair." and the obverse is true: whoever yields to a weakness habitually, some day goes further than he ever intended, and comes to worse grief than he deserved. the old prayer: _lead us not into temptation_, is perhaps a half-conscious recognition of this fact. but we moderns are inclined to walk heedlessly, no longer believing in pitfalls or in the danger of gratified desires. and oscar wilde was not only an unbeliever; but he had all the heedless confidence of the artist who has won world-wide popularity and has the halo of fame on his brow. with high heart and smiling eyes he went to his fate unsuspecting. it was in the autumn of that he first met lord alfred douglas. he was thirty-six and lord alfred douglas a handsome, slim youth of twenty-one, with large blue eyes and golden-fair hair. his mother, the dowager lady queensberry, preserves a photograph of him taken a few years before, when he was still at winchester, a boy of sixteen with an expression which might well be called angelic. when i met him, he was still girlishly pretty, with the beauty of youth, coloring and fair skin; though his features were merely ordinary. it was lionel johnson, the writer, a friend and intimate of douglas at winchester, who brought him to tea at oscar's house in tite street. their mutual attraction had countless hooks. oscar was drawn by the lad's personal beauty, and enormously affected besides by lord alfred douglas' name and position: he was a snob as only an english artist can be a snob; he loved titular distinctions, and douglas is one of the few great names in british history with the gilding of romance about it. no doubt oscar talked better than his best because he was talking to lord alfred douglas. to the last the mere name rolled on his tongue gave him extraordinary pleasure. besides, the boy admired him, hung upon his lips with his soul in his eyes; showed, too, rare intelligence in his appreciation, confessed that he himself wrote verses and loved letters passionately. could more be desired than perfection perfected? and alfred douglas on his side was almost as powerfully attracted; he had inherited from his mother all her literary tastes--and more: he was already a master-poet with a singing faculty worthy to be compared with the greatest. what wonder if he took this magical talker, with the luminous eyes and charming voice, and a range and play of thought beyond his imagining, for a world's miracle, one of the immortals. before he had listened long, i have been told, the youth declared his admiration passionately. they were an extraordinary pair and were complementary in a hundred ways, not only in mind, but in character. oscar had reached originality of thought and possessed the culture of scholarship, while alfred douglas had youth and rank and beauty, besides being as articulate as a woman with an unsurpassable gift of expression. curiously enough, oscar was as yielding and amiable in character as the boy was self-willed, reckless, obstinate and imperious. years later oscar told me that from the first he dreaded alfred douglas' aristocratic, insolent boldness: "he frightened me, frank, as much as he attracted me, and i held away from him. but he wouldn't have it; he sought me out again and again and i couldn't resist him. that is my only fault. that's what ruined me. he increased my expenses so that i could not meet them; over and over again i tried to free myself from him; but he came back and i yielded--alas!" though this is oscar's later gloss on what actually happened, it is fairly accurate. he was never able to realise how his meeting with lord alfred douglas had changed the world to him and him to the world. the effect on the harder fibre of the boy was chiefly mental: to alfred douglas, oscar was merely a quickening, inspiring, intellectual influence; but the boy's effect on oscar was of character and induced imitation. lord alfred douglas' boldness gave oscar _outrecuidance_, an insolent arrogance: artist-like he tried to outdo his model in aristocratic disdain. without knowing the cause the change in oscar astonished me again and again, and in the course of this narrative i shall have to notice many instances of it. one other effect the friendship had of far-reaching influence. oscar always enjoyed good living; but for years he had had to earn his bread: he knew the value of money; he didn't like to throw it away; he was accustomed to lunch or dine at a cheap italian restaurant for a few shillings. but to lord alfred douglas money was only a counter and the most luxurious living a necessity. as soon as oscar wilde began to entertain him, he was led to the dearest hotels and restaurants; his expenses became formidable and soon outran his large earnings. for the first time since i had known him he borrowed heedlessly right and left, and had, therefore, to bring forth play after play with scant time for thought. lord alfred douglas has declared recently: "i spent much more in entertaining oscar wilde than he did in entertaining me"; but this is preposterous self-deception. an earlier confession of his was much nearer the truth: "it was a sweet humiliation to me to let oscar wilde pay for everything and to ask him for money." there can be no doubt that lord alfred douglas' habitual extravagance kept oscar wilde hard up, and drove him to write without intermission. there were other and worse results of the intimacy which need not be exposed here in so many words, though they must be indicated; for they derived of necessity from that increased self-assurance which has already been recorded. as oscar devoted himself to lord alfred douglas and went about with him continually, he came to know his friends and his familiars, and went less into society so-called. again and again lord alfred douglas flaunted acquaintance with youths of the lowest class; but no one knew him or paid much attention to him; oscar wilde, on the other hand, was already a famous personage whose every movement provoked comment. from this time on the rumours about oscar took definite form and shaped themselves in specific accusations: his enemies began triumphantly to predict his ruin and disgrace. everything is known in london society; like water on sand the truth spreads wider and wider as it gradually filters lower. the "smart set" in london has almost as keen a love of scandal as a cathedral town. about this time one heard of a dinner which oscar wilde had given at a restaurant in soho, which was said to have degenerated into a sort of roman orgy. i was told of a man who tried to get money by blackmailing him in his own house. i shrugged my shoulders at all these scandals, and asked the talebearers what had been said about shakespeare to make him rave as he raved again and again against "back-wounding calumny"; and when they persisted in their malicious stories i could do nothing but show disbelief. though i saw but little of oscar during the first year or so of his intimacy with lord alfred douglas, one scene from this time filled me with suspicion and an undefined dread. i was in a corner of the café royal one night downstairs, playing chess, and, while waiting for my opponent to move, i went out just to stretch my legs. when i returned i found oscar throned in the very corner, between two youths. even to my short-sighted eyes they appeared quite common: in fact they looked like grooms. in spite of their vulgar appearance, however, one was nice looking in a fresh boyish way; the other seemed merely depraved. oscar greeted me as usual, though he seemed slightly embarrassed. i resumed my seat, which was almost opposite him, and pretended to be absorbed in the game. to my astonishment he was talking as well as if he had had a picked audience; talking, if you please, about the olympic games, telling how the youths wrestled and were scraped with strigulæ and threw the discus and ran races and won the myrtle-wreath. his impassioned eloquence brought the sun-bathed palæstra before one with a magic of representment. suddenly the younger of the boys asked: "did you sy they was niked?" "of course," oscar replied, "nude, clothed only in sunshine and beauty." "oh, my," giggled the lad in his unspeakable cockney way. i could not stand it. "i am in an impossible position," i said to my opponent, who was the amateur chess player, montagu gattie. "come along and let us have some dinner." with a nod to oscar i left the place. on the way out gattie said to me: "so that's the famous oscar wilde." "yes," i replied, "that's oscar, but i never saw him in such company before." "didn't you?" remarked gattie quietly; "he was well known at oxford. i was at the 'varsity with him. his reputation was always rather--'_high_,' shall we call it?" i wanted to forget the scene and blot it out of my memory, and remember my friend as i knew him at his best. but that cockney boy would not be banned; he leered there with rosy cheeks, hair plastered down in a love-lock on his forehead, and low cunning eyes. i felt uncomfortable. i would not think of it. i recalled the fact that in all our talks i had never heard oscar use a gross word. his mind, i said to myself, is like spenser's, vowed away from coarseness and vulgarity: he's the most perfect intellectual companion in the world. he may have wanted to talk to the boys just to see what effect his talk would have on them. his vanity is greedy enough to desire even such applause as theirs.... of course, that was the explanation--vanity. my affection for him, tormented by doubt, had found at length a satisfactory solution. it was the artist in him, i said to myself, that wanted a model. but why not boys of his own class? the answer suggested itself; boys of his own class could teach him nothing; his own boyhood would supply him with all the necessary information about well-bred youth. but if he wanted a gutter-snipe in one of his plays, he would have to find a gutter-lad and paint him from life. that was probably the truth, i concluded. so satisfied was i with my discovery that i developed it to gattie; but he would not hear of it. "gattie has nothing of the artist in him," i decided, "and therefore cannot understand." and i went on arguing, if gattie were right, why _two_ boys? it seemed evident to me that my reading of the riddle was the only plausible one. besides it left my affection unaffected and free. still, the giggle, the plastered oily hair and the venal leering eyes came back to me again and again in spite of myself. chapter xi there is a secret apprehension in man counselling sobriety and moderation, a fear born of expediency distinct from conscience, which is ethical; though it seems to be closely connected with conscience acting, as it does, by warnings and prohibitions. the story of polycrates and his ring is a symbol of the instinctive feeling that extraordinary good fortune is perilous and can not endure. a year or so after the first meeting between oscar wilde and lord alfred douglas i heard that they were being pestered on account of some amorous letters which had been stolen from them. there was talk of blackmail and hints of an interesting exposure. towards the end of the year it was announced that lord alfred douglas had gone to egypt; but this "flight into egypt," as it was wittily called, was gilded by the fact that a little later he was appointed an honorary attaché to lord cromer. i regarded his absence as a piece of good fortune, for when he was in london, oscar had no time to himself, and was seen in public with associates he would have done better to avoid. time and again he had praised lord alfred douglas to me as a charming person, a poet, and had grown lyrical about his violet eyes and honey-coloured hair. i knew nothing of lord alfred douglas, and had no inkling of his poetic talent. i did not like several of oscar's particular friends, and i had a special dislike for the father of lord alfred douglas. i knew queensberry rather well. i was a member of the old pelican club, and i used to go there frequently for a talk with tom, dick or harry, about athletics, or for a game of chess with george edwards. queensberry was there almost every night, and someone introduced me to him. i was eager to know him because he had surprised me. at some play,[ ] i think it was "the promise of may," by tennyson, produced at the globe, in which atheists were condemned, he had got up in his box and denounced the play, proclaiming himself an atheist. i wanted to know the englishman who could be so contemptuous of convention. had he acted out of aristocratic insolence, or was he by any possibility high-minded? to one who knew the man the mere question must seem ridiculous. queensberry was perhaps five feet nine or ten in height, with a plain, heavy, rather sullen face, and quick, hot eyes. he was a mass of self-conceit, all bristling with suspicion, and in regard to money, prudent to meanness. he cared nothing for books, but liked outdoor sports and under a rather abrupt, but not discourteous, manner hid an irritable, violent temper. he was combative and courageous as very nervous people sometimes are, when they happen to be strong-willed--the sort of man who, just because he was afraid of a bull and had pictured the dreadful wound it could give, would therefore seize it by the horns. the insane temper of the man got him into rows at the pelican more than once. i remember one evening he insulted a man whom i liked immensely. haseltine was a stockbroker, i think, a big, fair, handsome fellow who took queensberry's insults for some time with cheerful contempt. again and again he turned queensberry's wrath aside with a fair word, but queensberry went on working himself into a passion, and at last made a rush at him. haseltine watched him coming and hit out in the nick of time; he caught queensberry full in the face and literally knocked him heels over head. queensberry got up in a sad mess: he had a swollen nose and black eye and his shirt was all stained with blood spread about by hasty wiping. any other man would have continued the fight or else have left the club on the spot; queensberry took a seat at a table, and there sat for hours silent. i could only explain it to myself by saying that his impulse to fly at once from the scene of his disgrace was very acute, and therefore he resisted it, made up his mind not to budge, and so he sat there the butt of the derisive glances and whispered talk of everyone who came into the club in the next two or three hours. he was just the sort of person a wise man would avoid and a clever one would use--a dangerous, sharp, ill-handled tool. disliking his father, i did not care to meet lord alfred douglas, oscar's newest friend. i saw oscar less frequently after the success of his first play; he no longer needed my editorial services, and was, besides, busily engaged; but i have one good trait to record of him. some time before i had lent him £ ; so long as he was hard up i said nothing about it; but after the success of his second play, i wrote to him saying that the £ would be useful to me if he could spare it. he sent me a cheque at once with a charming letter. he was now continually about again with lord alfred douglas who, it appeared, had had a disagreement with lord cromer and returned to london. almost immediately scandalous stories came into circulation concerning them: "have you heard the latest about lord alfred and oscar? i'm told they're being watched by the police," and so forth and so on interminably. one day a story came to me with such wealth of weird detail that it was manifestly at least founded on fact. oscar was said to have written extraordinary letters to lord alfred douglas: a youth called alfred wood had stolen the letters from lord alfred douglas' rooms in oxford and had tried to blackmail oscar with them. the facts were so peculiar and so precise that i asked oscar about it. he met the accusation at once and very fairly, i thought, and told me the whole story. it puts the triumphant power and address of the man in a strong light, and so i will tell it as he told it to me. "when i was rehearsing 'a woman of no importance' at the haymarket," he began, "beerbohm tree showed me a letter i had written a year or so before to alfred douglas. he seemed to think it dangerous, but i laughed at him and read the letter with him, and of course he came to understand it properly. a little later a man called wood told me he had found some letters which i had written to lord alfred douglas in a suit of clothes which lord alfred had given to him. he gave me back some of the letters and i gave him a little money. but the letter, a copy of which had been sent to beerbohm tree, was not amongst them. "some time afterwards a man named allen called upon me one night in tite street, and said he had got a letter of mine which i ought to have. "the man's manner told me that he was the real enemy. 'i suppose you mean that beautiful letter of mine to lord alfred douglas,' i said. 'if you had not been so foolish as to send a copy of it to mr. beerbohm tree, i should have been glad to have paid you a large sum for it, as i think it is one of the best i ever wrote.' allen looked at me with sulky, cunning eyes and said: "'a curious construction could be put upon that letter.' "'no doubt, no doubt,' i replied lightly; 'art is not intelligible to the criminal classes.' he looked me in the face defiantly and said: "'a man has offered me £ for it.' "'you should take the offer,' i said gravely; '£ is a great price. i myself have never received such a large sum for any prose work of that length. but i am glad to find that there is someone in england who will pay such a large sum for a letter of mine. i don't know why you come to me,' i added, rising, 'you should sell the letter at once.' "of course, frank, as i spoke my body seemed empty with fear. the letter could be misunderstood, and i have so many envious enemies; but i felt that there was nothing else for it but bluff. as i went to the door allen rose too, and said that the man who had offered him the money was out of town. i turned to him and said: "'he will no doubt return, and i don't care for the letter at all.' "at this allen changed his manner, said he was very poor, he hadn't a penny in the world, and had spent a lot trying to find me and tell me about the letter. i told him i did not mind relieving his distress, and gave him half a sovereign, assuring him at the same time that the letter would shortly be published as a sonnet in a delightful magazine. i went to the door with him, and he walked away. i closed the door; but didn't shut it at once, for suddenly i heard a policeman's step coming softly towards my house--pad, pad! a dreadful moment, then he passed by. i went into the room again all shaken, wondering whether i had done right, whether allen would hawk the letter about--a thousand vague apprehensions. "suddenly a knock at the street door. my heart was in my mouth, still i went and opened it: a man named cliburn was there. "'i have come to you with a letter of allen's.' "'i cannot be bothered any more,' i cried, 'about that letter; i don't care twopence about it. let him do what he likes with it.' "to my astonishment cliburn said: "'allen has asked me to give it back to you,' and he produced it. "'why does he give it back to me?' i asked carelessly. "'he says you were kind to him and that it is no use trying to "rent" you; you only laugh at us.' "i looked at the letter; it was very dirty, and i said: "'i think it is unpardonable that better care should not have been taken of a manuscript of mine.' "he said he was sorry; but it had been in many hands. i took the letter up casually: "'well, i will accept the letter back. you can thank mr. allen for me.' "i gave cliburn half a sovereign for his trouble, and said to him: "'i am afraid you are leading a desperately wicked life.' "'there's good and bad in every one of us,' he replied. i said something about his being a philosopher, and he went away. that's the whole story, frank." "but the letter?" i questioned. "the letter is nothing," oscar replied; "a prose poem. i will give you a copy of it." here is the letter: "my own boy,--your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvel that those red rose-leaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing. your slim-gilt soul walks between passion and poetry. no hyacinthus followed love so madly as you in greek days. why are you alone in london, and when do you go to salisbury? do go there and cool your hands in the grey twilight of gothic things. come here whenever you like. it is a lovely place and only lacks you. do go to salisbury first. always with undying love, yours, oscar." * * * * * this letter startled me; "slim-gilt" and the "madness of kissing" were calculated to give one pause; but after all, i thought, it may be merely an artist's letter, half pose, half passionate admiration. another thought struck me. "but how did such a letter," i cried, "ever get into the hands of a blackmailer?" "i don't know," he replied, shrugging his shoulders. "lord alfred douglas is very careless and inconceivably bold. you should know him, frank; he's a delightful poet." "but how did he come to know a creature like wood?" i persisted. "how can i tell, frank," he answered a little shortly; and i let the matter drop, though it left in me a certain doubt, an uncomfortable suspicion. the scandal grew from hour to hour, and the tide of hatred rose in surges. one day i was lunching at the savoy, and while talking to the head waiter, cesari, who afterwards managed the elysée palace hotel in paris, i thought i saw oscar and douglas go out together. being a little short-sighted, i asked: "isn't that mr. oscar wilde?" "yes," said cesari, "and lord alfred douglas. we wish they would not come here; it does us a lot of harm." "how do you mean?" i asked sharply. "some people don't like them," the quick italian answered immediately. "oscar wilde," i remarked casually, "is a great friend of mine," but the super-subtle italian was already warned. "a clever writer, i believe," he said, smiling in bland acquiescence. this incident gave me warning, strengthened again in me the exact apprehension and suspicion which the douglas letter had bred. oscar i knew was too self-centred, went about too continually with admirers to have any understanding of popular feeling. he would be the last man to realize how fiercely hate, malice and envy were raging against him. i wanted to warn him; but hardly knew how to do it effectively and without offence: i made up my mind to keep my eyes open and watch an opportunity. a little later i gave a dinner at the savoy and asked him to come. he was delightful, his vivacious gaiety as exhilarating as wine. but he was more like a roman emperor than ever: he had grown fat: he ate and drank too much; not that he was intoxicated, but he became flushed, and in spite of his gay and genial talk he affected me a little unpleasantly; he was gross and puffed up. but he gave one or two splendid snapshots of actors and their egregious vanity. it seemed to him a great pity that actors should be taught to read and write: they should learn their pieces from the lips of the poet. "just as work is the curse of the drinking classes of this country," he said laughing, "so education is the curse of the acting classes." yet even when making fun of the mummers there was a new tone in him of arrogance and disdain. he used always to be genial and kindly even to those he laughed at; now he was openly contemptuous. the truth is that his extraordinarily receptive mind went with an even more abnormal receptivity of character: unlike most men of marked ability, he took colour from his associates. in this as in love of courtesies and dislike of coarse words he was curiously feminine. intercourse with beardsley, for example, had backed his humorous gentleness with a sort of challenging courage; his new intimacy with lord alfred douglas, coming on the top of his triumph as a playwright, was lending him aggressive self-confidence. there was in him that [greek: hubris] (insolent self-assurance) which the greek feared, the pride which goeth before destruction. i regretted the change in him and was nervously apprehensive. after dinner we all went out by the door which gives on the embankment, for it was after . . one of the party proposed that we should walk for a minute or two--at least as far as the strand, before driving home. oscar objected. he hated walking; it was a form of penal servitude to the animal in man, he declared; but he consented, nevertheless, under protest, laughing. when we were going up the steps to the strand he again objected, and quoted dante's famous lines: "tu proverai si come sa di sale lo pane altrui; e com' è duro calle lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale." the impression made by oscar that evening was not only of self-indulgence but of over-confidence. i could not imagine what had given him this insolent self-complacence. i wanted to get by myself and think. prosperity was certainly doing him no good. all the while the opposition to him, i felt, was growing in force. how could i verify this impression, i asked myself, so as to warn him effectually? i decided to give a lunch to him, and on purpose i put on the invitations: "to meet mr. oscar wilde and hear a new story." out of a dozen invitations sent out to men, seven or eight were refused, three or four telling me in all kindness that they would rather not meet oscar wilde. this confirmed my worst fears: when englishmen speak out in this way the dislike must be near revolt. i gave the lunch and saw plainly enough that my forebodings were justified. oscar was more self-confident, more contemptuous of criticism, more gross of body than ever, but his talk did not suffer; indeed, it seemed to improve. at this lunch he told the charming fable of "narcissus," which is certainly one of his most characteristic short stories. "when narcissus died the flowers of the field were plunged in grief, and asked the river for drops of water that they might mourn for him. "'oh,' replied the river, 'if only my drops of water were tears, i should not have enough to weep for narcissus myself--i loved him.' "'how could you help loving narcissus?' said the flowers, 'so beautiful was he.' "'was he beautiful?' asked the river. "'who should know that better than you?' said the flowers, 'for every day, lying on your bank, he would mirror his beauty in your waters.'" oscar paused here, and then went on: "'if i loved him,' replied the river, 'it is because, when he hung over me, i saw the reflection of my own loveliness in his eyes.'" after lunch i took him aside and tried to warn him, told him that unpleasant stories were being put about against him; but he paid no heed to me. "all envy, frank, and malice. what do i care? i go to clumber this summer; besides i am doing another play which i rather like. i always knew that play-writing was my province. as a youth i tried to write plays in verse; that was my mistake. now i know better; i'm sure of myself and of success." somehow or other in spite of his apparent assurance i felt he was in danger and i doubted his quality as a fighter. but after all it was not my business: wilful man must have his way. it seems to me now that my mistrust dated from the second paper war with whistler, wherein to the astonishment of everyone oscar did not come off victorious. as soon as he met with opposition his power of repartee seemed to desert him and whistler, using mere rudeness and man-of-the-world sharpness, held the field. oscar was evidently not a born fighter. i asked him once how it was he let whistler off so lightly. he shrugged his shoulders and showed some irritation. "what could i say, frank? why should i belabour the beaten? the man is a wasp and delights in using his sting. i have done more perhaps than anyone to make him famous. i had no wish to hurt him." was it magnanimity or weakness or, as i think, a constitutional, a feminine shrinking from struggle and strife. whatever the cause, it was clear that oscar was what shakespeare called himself, "an unhurtful opposite." it is quite possible that if he had been attacked face to face, oscar would have given a better account of himself. at mrs. grenfell's (now lady desborough) he crossed swords once with the prime minister and came off victorious. mr. asquith began by bantering him, in appearance lightly, in reality, seriously, for putting many of his sentences in italics. "the man who uses italics," said the politician, "is like the man who raises his voice in conversation and talks loudly in order to make himself heard." it was the well-known objection which emerson had taken to carlyle's overwrought style, pointed probably by dislike of the way oscar monopolised conversation. oscar met the stereotyped attack with smiling good-humour. "how delightful of you, mr. asquith, to have noticed that! the brilliant phrase, like good wine, needs no bush. but just as the orator marks his good things by a dramatic pause, or by raising or lowering his voice, or by gesture, so the writer marks his epigrams with italics, setting the little gem, so to speak, like a jeweller--an excusable love of one's art, not all mere vanity, i like to think"--all this with the most pleasant smile and manner. in measure as i distrusted oscar's fighting power and admired his sweetness of nature i took sides with him and wanted to help him. one day i heard some talk at the pelican club which filled me with fear for him and quickened my resolve to put him on his guard. i was going in just as queensberry was coming out with two or three of his special cronies. "i'll do it," i heard him cry, "i'll teach the fellow to leave my son alone. i'll not have their names coupled together." i caught a glimpse of the thrust-out combative face and the hot grey eyes. "what's it all about?" i asked. "only queensberry," said someone, "swearing he'll stop oscar wilde going about with that son of his, alfred douglas." suddenly my fears took form: as in a flash i saw oscar, heedless and smiling, walking along with his head in the air, and that violent combative insane creature pouncing on him. i sat down at once and wrote begging oscar to lunch with me the next day alone, as i had something important to say to him. he turned up in park lane, manifestly anxious, a little frightened, i think. "what is it, frank?" i told him very seriously what i had heard and gave besides my impression of queensberry's character, and his insane pugnacity. "what can i do, frank?" said oscar, showing distress and apprehension. "it's all bosie." "who is bosie?" i asked. "that is lord alfred douglas' pet name. it's all bosie's fault. he has quarrelled with his father, or rather his father has quarrelled with him. he quarrels with everyone; with lady queensberry, with percy douglas, with bosie, everyone. he's impossible. what can i do?" "avoid him," i said. "don't go about with lord alfred douglas. give queensberry his triumph. you could make a friend of him as easily as possible, if you wished. write him a conciliatory letter." "but he'll want me to drop bosie, and stop seeing lady queensberry, and i like them all; they are charming to me. why should i cringe to this madman?" "because he is a madman." "oh, frank, i can't," he cried. "bosie wouldn't let me." "'wouldn't let you'? i repeated angrily. "how absurd! that queensberry man will go to violence, to any extremity. don't you fight other people's quarrels: you may have enough of your own some day." "you're not sympathetic, frank," he chided weakly. "i know you mean it kindly, but it's impossible for me to do as you advise. i cannot give up my friend. i really cannot let lord queensberry choose my friends for me. it's too absurd." "but it's wise," i replied. "there's a very bad verse in one of hugo's plays. it always amused me--he likens poverty to a low door and declares that when we have to pass through it the man who stoops lowest is the wisest. so when you meet a madman, the wisest thing to do is to avoid him and not quarrel with him." "it's very hard, frank; of course i'll think over what you say. but really queensberry ought to be in a madhouse. he's too absurd," and in that spirit he left me, outwardly self-confident. he might have remembered chaucer's words: beware also to spurne again a nall; strive not as doeth a crocke with a wall; deme thy selfe that demest others dede, and trouth thee shall deliver, it is no drede. footnotes: [ ] "the promise of may" was produced in november, . chapter xii these two years - saw oscar wilde at the very zenith of success. thackeray, who always felt himself a monetary failure in comparison with dickens, calls success "one of the greatest of a great man's qualities," and oscar was not successful merely, he was triumphant. not sheridan the day after his marriage, not byron when he awoke to find himself famous, ever reached such a pinnacle. his plays were bringing in so much that he could spend money like water; he had won every sort of popularity; the gross applause of the many, and the finer incense of the few who constitute the jury of fame; his personal popularity too was extraordinary; thousands admired him, many liked him; he seemed to have everything that heart could desire and perfect health to boot. even his home life was without a cloud. two stories which he told at this time paint him. one was about his two boys, vyvyan and cyril. "children are sometimes interesting," he began. "the other night i was reading when my wife came and asked me to go upstairs and reprove the elder boy: cyril, it appeared, would not say his prayers. he had quarrelled with vyvyan, and beaten him, and when he was shaken and told he must say his prayers, he would not kneel down, or ask god to make him a good boy. of course i had to go upstairs and see to it. i took the chubby little fellow on my knee, and told him in a grave way that he had been very naughty; naughty to hit his younger brother, and naughty because he had given his mother pain. he must kneel down at once, and ask god to forgive him and make him a good boy. "'i was not naughty,' he pouted, 'it was vyvyan; he was naughty.' "i explained to him that his temper was naughty, and that he must do as he was told. with a little sigh he slipped off my knee, and knelt down and put his little hands together, as he had been taught, and began 'our father.' when he had finished the 'lord's prayer,' he looked up at me and said gravely, 'now i'll pray to myself.' "he closed his eyes and his lips moved. when he had finished i took him in my arms again and kissed him. 'that's right,' i said. "'you said you were sorry,' questioned his mother, leaning over him, 'and asked god to make you a good boy?' "'yes, mother,' he nodded, 'i said i was sorry and asked god to make vyvyan a good boy.' "i had to leave the room, frank, or he would have seen me smiling. wasn't it delightful of him! we are all willing to ask god to make others good." this story shows the lovable side of him. there was another side not so amiable. in april, , "a woman of no importance" was produced by herbert beerbohm tree at the haymarket and ran till the end of the season, august th, surviving even the festival of st. grouse. the astonishing success of this second play confirmed oscar wilde's popularity, gave him money to spend and increased his self-confidence. in the summer he took a house up the river at goring, and went there to live with lord alfred douglas. weird stories came to us in london about their life together. some time in september, i think it was, i asked him what was the truth underlying these reports. "scandals and slanders, frank, have no relation to truth," he replied. "i wonder if that's true," i said, "slander often has some substratum of truth; it resembles the truth like a gigantic shadow; there is a likeness at least in outline." "that would be true," he retorted, "if the canvas, so to speak, on which the shadows fall were even and true; but it is not. scandals and slander are related to the hatred of the people who invent them and are not in any shadowy sense even, effigies or images of the person attacked." "much smoke, then," i queried, "and no fire?" "only little fires," he rejoined, "show much smoke. the foundation for what you heard is both small and harmless. the summer was very warm and beautiful, as you know, and i was up at goring with bosie. often in the middle of the day we were too hot to go on the river. one afternoon it was sultry-close, and bosie proposed that i should turn the hose pipe on him. he went in and threw his things off and so did i. a few minutes later i was seated in a chair with a bath towel round me and bosie was lying on the grass about ten yards away, when the vicar came to pay us a call. the servant told him that we were in the garden, and he came and found us there. frank, you have no idea the sort of face he pulled. what could i say?" "'i am the vicar of the parish,' he bowed pompously. "'i'm delighted to see you,' i said, getting up and draping myself carefully, 'you have come just in time to enjoy a perfectly greek scene. i regret that i am scarcely fit to receive you, and bosie there'--and i pointed to bosie lying on the grass. the vicar turned his head and saw bosie's white limbs; the sight was too much for him; he got very red, gave a gasp and fled from the place. "i simply sat down in my chair and shrieked with laughter. how he may have described the scene, what explanation he gave of it, what vile gloss he may have invented, i don't know and i don't care. i have no doubt he wagged his head and pursed his lips and looked unutterable things. but really it takes a saint to suffer such fools gladly." i could not help smiling when i thought of the vicar's face, but oscar's tone was not pleasant. the change in him had gone further than i had feared. he was now utterly contemptuous of criticism and would listen to no counsel. he was gross, too, the rich food and wine seemed to ooze out of him and his manner was defiant, hard. he was like some great pagan determined to live his own life to the very fullest, careless of what others might say or think or do. even the stories which he wrote about this time show the worst side of his paganism: "when jesus was minded to return to nazareth, nazareth was so changed that he no longer recognised his own city. the nazareth where he had lived was full of lamentations and tears; this city was filled with outbursts of laughter and song.... "christ went out of the house and, behold, in the street he saw a woman whose face and raiment were painted and whose feet were shod with pearls, and behind her walked a man who wore a cloak of two colours, and whose eyes were bright with lust. and christ went up to the man and laid his hand on his shoulder, and said to him, 'tell me, why art thou following this woman, and why dost thou look at her in such wise?' the man turned round, recognised him and said, 'i was blind; thou didst heal me; what else should i do with my sight?'" the same note is played on in two or three more incidents, but the one i have given is the best, and should have been allowed to stand alone. it has been called blasphemous; it is not intentionally blasphemous; as i have said, oscar always put himself quite naïvely in the place of any historical character. the disdain of public opinion which oscar now showed not only in his writings, but in his answers to criticism, quickly turned the public dislike into aggressive hatred. in a book appeared, "the green carnation," which was a sort of photograph of oscar as a talker and a caricature of his thought. the gossipy story had a surprising success, altogether beyond its merits, which simply testified to the intense interest the suspicion of extraordinary viciousness has for common minds. oscar's genius was not given in the book at all, but his humour was indicated and a malevolent doubt of his morality insisted upon again and again. rumour had it that the book was true in every particular, that mr. hichens had taken down oscar's talks evening after evening and simply reproduced them. i asked oscar if this was true. "true enough, frank," he replied with a certain contempt which was foreign to him. "hichens got to know bosie douglas in egypt. they went up the nile together, i believe with 'dodo' benson. naturally bosie talked a great deal about me and hichens wanted to know me. when they returned to town, i thought him rather pleasant, and saw a good deal of him. i had no idea that he was going to play reporter; it seems to me a breach of confidence--ignoble." "it is not a picture of you," i said, "but there is a certain likeness." "a photograph is always like and unlike, frank," he replied; "the sun too, when used mechanically, is merely a reporter, and traduces instead of reproducing you." "the green carnation" ruined oscar wilde's character with the general public. on all sides the book was referred to as confirming the worst suspicions: the cloud which hung over him grew continually darker. during the summer of he wrote the "ideal husband," which was the outcome of a story i had told him. i had heard it from an american i had met in cairo, a mr. cope whitehouse. he told me that disraeli had made money by entrusting the rothschilds with the purchase of the suez canal shares. it seemed to me strange that this statement, if true, had never been set forth authoritatively; but the story was peculiarly modern, and had possibilities in it. oscar admitted afterwards that he had taken the idea and used it in "an ideal husband." it was in this summer also that he wrote "the importance of being earnest," his finest play. he went to the seaside and completed it, he said, in three weeks, and, when i spoke of the delight he must feel at having two plays performed in london at the same time, he said: "next year, frank, i may have four or five; i could write one every two months with the greatest ease. it all depends on money. if i need money i shall write half a dozen plays next year." his words reminded me of what goethe had said about himself: in each of the ten years he spent on his "theory of light" he could have written a couple of plays as good as his best. the land of might-have-been is peopled with these gorgeous shadow-shapes. oscar had already found his public, a public capable of appreciating the very best he could do. as soon as "the importance of being earnest" was produced it had an extraordinary success, and success of the best sort. even journalist critics had begun to cease exhibiting their own limitations in foolish fault-finding, and now imitated their betters, parroting phrases of extravagant laudation. oscar took the praise as he had taken the scandal and slander, with complacent superiority. he had changed greatly and for the worse: he was growing coarser and harder every year. all his friends noticed this. even m. andré gide, who was a great admirer and wrote, shortly after his death, the best account of him that appeared, was compelled to deplore his deterioration. he says: "one felt that there was less tenderness in his looks, that there was something harsh in his laughter, and a wild madness in his joy. he seemed at the same time to be sure of pleasing, and less ambitious to succeed therein. he had grown reckless, hardened and conceited. strangely enough he no longer spoke in fables...." his brother willie made a similar complaint to sir edward sullivan. sir edward writes: "william wilde told me, when oscar was in prison, that the only trouble between him and his brother was caused by oscar's inordinate vanity in the period before his conviction. 'he had surrounded himself,' william said, 'with a gang of parasites who praised him all day long, and to whom he used to give his cigarette-cases, breast pins, etc., in return for their sickening flattery. no one, not even i, his brother, dared offer any criticism on his works without offending him.'" if proof were needed both of his reckless contempt for public opinion and the malignancy with which he was misjudged, it could be found in an incident which took place towards the end of . a journal entitled _the chameleon_ was produced by some oxford undergraduates. oscar wrote for it a handful of sayings which he called "phrases and philosophies for the use of the young." his epigrams were harmless enough; but in the same number there appeared a story entitled "the priest and the acolyte" which could hardly be defended. the mere fact that his work was printed in the same journal called forth a storm of condemnation though he had never seen the story before it was published nor had he anything to do with its insertion. nemesis was following hard after him. late in this year he spoke to me of his own accord about lord queensberry. he wanted my advice: "lord queensberry is annoying me," he said; "i did my best to reconcile him and bosie. one day at the café royal, while bosie and i were lunching there, queensberry came in and i made bosie go over and fetch his father and bring him to lunch with us. he was half friendly with me till quite recently; though he wrote a shameful letter to bosie about us. what am i to do?" i asked him what lord queensberry objected to. "he objects to my friendship with bosie." "then why not cease to see bosie?" i asked. "it is impossible, frank, and ridiculous; why should i give up my friends for queensberry?" "i should like to see queensberry's letter," i said. "is it possible?" "i'll bring it to you, frank, but there's nothing in it." a day or two later he showed me the letter, and after i had read it he produced a copy of the telegram which lord alfred douglas had sent to his father in reply. here they both are; they speak for themselves loudly enough: alfred,-- it is extremely painful for me to have to write to you in the strain i must; but please understand that i decline to receive any answers from you in writing in return. after your recent hysterical impertinent ones i refuse to be annoyed with such, and i decline to read any more letters. if you have anything to say do come here and say it in person. firstly, am i to understand that, having left oxford as you did, with discredit to yourself, the reasons of which were fully explained to me by your tutor, you now intend to loaf and loll about and do nothing? all the time you were wasting at oxford i was put off with an assurance that you were eventually to go into the civil service or to the foreign office, and then i was put off with an assurance that you were going to the bar. it appears to me that you intend to do nothing. i utterly decline, however, to just supply you with sufficient funds to enable you to loaf about. you are preparing a wretched future for yourself, and it would be most cruel and wrong for me to encourage you in this. secondly, i come to the more painful part of this letter--your intimacy with this man wilde. it must either cease or i will disown you and stop all money supplies. i am not going to try and analyse this intimacy, and i make no charge; but to my mind to pose as a thing is as bad as to be it. with my own eyes i saw you both in the most loathsome and disgusting relationship as expressed by your manner and expression. never in my experience have i ever seen such a sight as that in your horrible features. no wonder people are talking as they are. also i now hear on good authority, but this may be false, that his wife is petitioning to divorce him for sodomy and other crimes. is this true, or do you not know of it? if i thought the actual thing was true, and it became public property, i should be quite justified in shooting him at sight. these christian english cowards and men, as they call themselves, want waking up. your disgusted so-called father, queensberry. in reply to this letter lord alfred douglas telegraphed: "what a funny little man you are! alfred douglas." this telegram was excellently calculated to drive queensberry frantic with rage. there was feminine cunning in its wound to vanity. a little later oscar told me that queensberry accompanied by a friend had called on him. "what happened?" i asked. "i said to him, 'i suppose, lord queensberry, you have come to apologise for the libellous letter you wrote about me?' "'no,' he replied, 'the letter was privileged; it was written to my son.' "'how dared you say such a thing about your son and me?' "'you were both kicked out of the savoy hotel for disgusting conduct,' he replied. "'that's untrue,' i said, 'absolutely untrue.' "'you were blackmailed too for a disgusting letter you wrote my son,' he went on. "'i don't know who has been telling you all these silly stories,' i replied, 'but they are untrue and quite ridiculous.' "he ended up by saying that if he caught me and his son together again he would thrash me. "'i don't know what the queensberry rules are,' i retorted, 'but my rule is to shoot at sight in case of personal violence,' and with that i told him to leave my house." "of course he defied you?" i questioned. "he was rude, frank, and preposterous to the end." as oscar was telling me the story, it seemed to me as if another person were speaking through his mouth. the idea of oscar "standing up" to queensberry or "shooting at sight" was too absurd. who was inspiring him? alfred douglas? "what has happened since?" i enquired. "nothing," he replied, "perhaps he will be quiet now. bosie has written him a terrible letter; he must see now that, if he goes on, he will only injure his own flesh and blood." "that won't stop him," i replied, "if i read him aright. but if i could see what alfred douglas wrote, i should be better able to judge of the effect it will have on queensberry." a little later i saw the letter: it shows better than words of mine the tempers of the chief actors in this squalid story: "as you return my letters unopened, i am obliged to write on a postcard. i write to inform you that i treat your absurd threats with absolute indifference. ever since your exhibition at o.w.'s house, i have made a point of appearing with him at many public restaurants such as the berkeley, willis's rooms, the café royal, etc., and i shall continue to go to any of these places whenever i choose and with whom i choose. i am of age and my own master. you have disowned me at least a dozen times, and have very meanly deprived me of money. you have therefore no right over me, either legal or moral. if o.w. was to prosecute you in the central criminal court for libel, you would get seven years' penal servitude for your outrageous libels. much as i detest you, i am anxious to avoid this for the sake of the family; but if you try to assault me, i shall defend myself with a loaded revolver, which i always carry; and if i shoot you or if he shoots you, we shall be completely justified, as we shall be acting in self-defence against a violent and dangerous rough, and i think if you were dead many people would not miss you.--a.d." this letter of the son seemed to me appalling. my guess was right; it was he who was speaking through oscar; the threat of shooting at sight came from him. i did not then understand all the circumstances; i had not met lady queensberry. i could not have imagined how she had suffered at the hands of her husband--a charming, cultivated woman, with exquisite taste in literature and art; a woman of the most delicate, aspen-like sensibilities and noble generosities, coupled with that violent, coarse animal with the hot eyes and combative nature. her married life had been a martyrdom. naturally the children had all taken her side in the quarrel, and lord alfred douglas, her especial favourite, had practically identified himself with her, which explains to some extent, though nothing can justify, the unnatural animosity of his letter. the letter showed me that the quarrel was far deeper, far bitterer than i had imagined--one of those dreadful family quarrels, where the intimate knowledge each has of the other whips anger to madness. all i could do was to warn oscar. "it's the old, old story," i said. "you are putting your hand between the bark and the tree, and you will suffer for it." but he would not or could not see it. "what is one to do with such a madman?" he asked pitiably. "avoid him," i replied, "as you would avoid a madman, who wanted to fight with you; or conciliate him; there is nothing else to do." he would not be warned. a little later the matter came up again. at the first production of "the importance of being earnest" lord queensberry appeared at the theatre carrying a large bouquet of turnips and carrots. what the meaning was of those vegetables only the man himself and his like could divine. i asked oscar about the matter. he seemed annoyed but on the whole triumphant. "queensberry," he said, "had engaged a stall at the st. james's theatre, no doubt to kick up a row; but as soon as i heard of it i got alick (george alexander) to send him back his money. on the night of the first performance queensberry appeared carrying a large bundle of carrots. he was refused admittance at the box-office, and when he tried to enter the gallery the police would not let him in. he must be mad, frank, don't you think? i am glad he was foiled." "he is insanely violent," i said, "he will keep on attacking you." "but what can i do, frank?" "don't ask for advice you won't take," i replied. "there's a french proverb i've always liked: 'in love and war don't seek counsel.' but for god's sake, don't drift. stop while you can." but oscar would have had to take a resolution and act in order to stop, and he was incapable of such energy. the wild horses of fate had run away with the light chariot of his fortune, and what the end would be no one could foresee. it came with appalling suddenness. one evening, in february, ' , i heard that the marquis of queensberry had left an insulting card for oscar at the albemarle club. my informant added gleefully that now oscar would have to face the music and we'd all see what was in him. there was no malice in this, just an englishman's pleasure in a desperate fight, and curiosity as to the issue. a little later i received a letter from oscar, asking me if he could call on me that afternoon. i stayed in, and about four o'clock he came to see me. at first he used the old imperious mask, which he had lately accustomed himself to wear. "i am bringing an action against queensberry, frank," he began gravely, "for criminal libel. he is a mere wild beast. my solicitors tell me that i am certain to win. but they say some of the things i have written will be brought up against me in court. now you know all i have written. would you in your position as editor of _the fortnightly_ come and give evidence for me, testify for instance that 'dorian gray' is not immoral?" "yes," i replied at once, "i should be perfectly willing, and i could say more than that; i could say that you are one of the very few men i have ever known whose talk and whose writings were vowed away from grossness of any sort." "oh! frank, would you? it would be so kind of you," he cried out. "my solicitors said i ought to ask you, but they were afraid you would not like to come: your evidence will win the case. it is good of you." his whole face was shaken; he turned away to hide the tears. "anything i can do, oscar," i said, "i shall do with pleasure, and, as you know, to the uttermost; but i want you to consider the matter carefully. an english court of law gives me no assurance of a fair trial or rather i am certain that in matters of art or morality an english court is about the worst tribunal in the civilised world." he shook his head impatiently. "i cannot help it, i cannot alter it," he said. "you must listen to me," i insisted. "you remember the whistler and ruskin action. you know that whistler ought to have won. you know that ruskin was shamelessly in fault; but the british jury and the so-called british artists treated whistler and his superb work with contempt. take a different case altogether, the belt case, where all the academicians went into the witness box, and asserted honestly enough that belt was an impostor, yet the jury gave him a verdict of £ , , though a year later he was sent to penal servitude for the very frauds which the jury in the first trial had declared by their verdict he had not committed. an english law court is all very well for two average men, who are fighting an ordinary business dispute. that's what it's made for, but to judge a whistler or the ability or the immorality of an artist is to ask the court to do what it is wholly unfit to do. there is not a judge on the bench whose opinion on such a matter is worth a moment's consideration, and the jury are a thousand years behind the judge." "that may be true, frank; but i cannot help it." "don't forget," i persisted, "all british prejudices will be against you. here is a father, the fools will say, trying to protect his young son. if he has made a mistake, it is only through excess of laudable zeal; you would have to prove yourself a religious maniac in order to have any chance against him in england." "how terrible you are, frank. you know it is bosie douglas who wants me to fight, and my solicitors tell me i shall win." "solicitors live on quarrels. of course they want a case that will bring hundreds if not thousands of pounds into their pockets. besides they like the fight. they will have all the kudos of it and the fun, and you will pay the piper. for god's sake don't be led into it: that way madness lies." "but, frank," he objected weakly, "how can i sit down under such an insult. i must do something." "that's another story," i replied. "let us by all means weigh what is to be done. but let us begin by putting the law-courts out of the question. don't forget that you are challenged to mortal combat. let us consider how the challenge should be met, but we won't fight under queensberry rules because queensberry happens to be the aggressor. don't forget that if you lose and queensberry goes free, everyone will hold that you have been guilty of nameless vice. put the law courts out of your head. whatever else you do, you must not bring an action for criminal libel against queensberry. you are sure to lose it; you haven't a dog's chance, and the english despise the beaten--_væ victis_! don't commit suicide." nothing was determined when the time came to part. this conversation took place, i believe, on the friday or saturday. i spent the whole of sunday trying to find out what was known about oscar wilde and what would be brought up against him. i wanted to know too how he was regarded in an ordinary middle-class english home. my investigations had appalling results. everyone assumed that oscar wilde was guilty of the worst that had ever been alleged against him; the very people who received him in their houses condemned him pitilessly and, as i approached the fountain-head of information, the charges became more and more definite; to my horror, in the public prosecutor's office, his guilt was said to be known and classified. all "people of importance" agreed that he would lose his case against queensberry; "no english jury would give oscar wilde a verdict against anyone," was the expert opinion. "how unjust!" i cried. a careless shrug was the only reply. i returned home from my enquiries late on sunday afternoon, and in a few minutes oscar called by appointment. i told him i was more convinced than ever that he must not go on with the prosecution; he would be certain to lose. without beating about the bush i declared that he had no earthly chance. "there are letters," i said, "which are infinitely worse than your published writings, which will be put in evidence against you." "what letters do you mean, frank?" he questioned. "the wood letters to lord alfred douglas i told you about? i can explain all of them." "you paid blackmail to wood for letters you had written to douglas," i replied, "and you will not be able to explain that fact to the satisfaction of a jury. i am told it is possible that witnesses will be called against you. take it from me, oscar, you have not a ghost of a chance." "tell me what you mean, frank, for god's sake," he cried. "i can tell you in a word," i replied; "you will lose your case. i have promised not to say more." i tried to persuade him by his vanity. "you must remember," i said, "that you are a sort of standard bearer for future generations. if you lose you will make it harder for all writers in england; though god knows it is hard enough already; you will put back the hands of the clock for fifty years." i seemed almost to have persuaded him. he questioned me: "what is the alternative, frank, the wisest thing to do in your opinion? tell me that." "you ought to go abroad," i replied, "go abroad with your wife, and let queensberry and his son fight out their own miserable quarrels; they are well-matched." "oh, frank," he cried, "how can i do that?" "sleep on it," i replied; "i am going to, and we can talk it all over in a day or two." "but i must know," he said wistfully, "to-morrow morning, frank." "bernard shaw is lunching with me to-morrow," i replied, "at the café royal." he made an impatient movement of his head. "he usually goes early," i went on, "and if you like to come after three o'clock we can have a talk and consider it all." "may i bring bosie?" he enquired. "i would rather you did not," i replied, "but it is for you to do just as you like. i don't mind saying what i have to say, before anyone," and on that we parted. somehow or other next day at lunch both shaw and i got interested in our talk, and we were both at the table when oscar came in. i introduced them, but they had met before. shaw stood up and proposed to go at once, but oscar with his usual courtesy assured him that he would be glad if he stayed. "then, oscar," i said, "perhaps you won't mind shaw hearing what i advise?" "no, frank, i don't mind," he sighed with a pitiful air of depression. i am not certain and my notes do not tell me whether bosie douglas came in with oscar or a little later, but he heard the greater part of our talk. i put the matter simply. "first of all," i said, "we start with the certainty that you are going to lose the case against queensberry. you must give it up, drop it at once; but you cannot drop it and stay in england. queensberry would probably attack you again and again. i know him well; he is half a savage and regards pity as a weakness; he has absolutely no consideration for others. "you should go abroad, and, as ace of trumps, you should take your wife with you. now for the excuse: i would sit down and write such a letter as you alone can write to _the times_. you should set forth how you have been insulted by the marquis of queensberry, and how you went naturally to the courts for a remedy, but you found out very soon that this was a mistake. no jury would give a verdict against a father, however mistaken he might be. the only thing for you to do therefore is to go abroad, and leave the whole ring, with its gloves and ropes, its sponges and pails, to lord queensberry. you are a maker of beautiful things, you should say, and not a fighter. whereas the marquis of queensberry takes joy only in fighting. you refuse to fight with a father under these circumstances." oscar seemed to be inclined to do as i proposed. i appealed to shaw, and shaw said he thought i was right; the case would very likely go against oscar, a jury would hardly give a verdict against a father trying to protect his son. oscar seemed much moved. i think it was about this time that bosie douglas came in. at oscar's request, i repeated my argument and to my astonishment douglas got up at once, and cried with his little white, venomous, distorted face: "such advice shows you are no friend of oscar's." "what do you mean?" i asked in wonderment; but he turned and left the room on the spot. to my astonishment oscar also got up. "it is not friendly of you, frank," he said weakly. "it really is not friendly." i stared at him: he was parrotting douglas' idiotic words. "don't be absurd," i said; but he repeated: "no, frank, it is not friendly," and went to the door and disappeared. like a flash i saw part at least of the truth. it was not oscar who had ever misled douglas, but lord alfred douglas who was driving oscar whither he would. i turned to shaw. "did i say anything in the heat of argument that could have offended oscar or douglas?" "nothing," said shaw, "not a word: you have nothing to reproach yourself with."[ ] left to myself i was at a loss to imagine what lord alfred douglas proposed to himself by hounding oscar on to attack his father. i was still more surprised by his white, bitter face. i could not get rid of the impression it left on me. while groping among these reflections i was suddenly struck by a sort of likeness, a similarity of expression and of temper between lord alfred douglas and his unhappy father. i could not get it out of my head--that little face blanched with rage and the wild, hating eyes; the shrill voice, too, was queensberry's. footnotes: [ ] i am very glad that bernard shaw has lately put in print his memory of this conversation. the above account was printed, though not published, in , and in shaw published his recollection of what took place at this consultation. readers may judge from the comparison how far my general story is worthy of credence. in the introduction to his playlet, "the dark lady of the sonnets," shaw writes: "yet he (harris) knows the taste and the value of humour. he was one of the few men of letters who really appreciated oscar wilde, though he did not rally fiercely to wilde's side until the world deserted oscar in his ruin. i myself was present at a curious meeting between the two when harris on the eve of the queensberry trial prophesied to wilde with miraculous precision exactly what immediately afterwards happened to him and warned him to leave the country. it was the first time within my knowledge that such a forecast proved true. wilde, though under no illusion as to the folly of the quite unselfish suit-at-law he had been persuaded to begin, nevertheless so miscalculated the force of the social vengeance he was unloosing on himself that he fancied it could be stayed by putting up the editor of _the saturday review_ (as mr. harris then was) to declare that he considered _dorian gray_ a highly moral book, which it certainly is. when harris foretold him the truth, wilde denounced him as a faint-hearted friend who was failing him in his hour of need and left the room in anger. harris's idiosyncratic power of pity saved him from feeling or showing the smallest resentment; and events presently proved to wilde how insanely he had been advised in taking the action, and how accurately harris had gauged the situation." chapter xiii it was weakness in oscar and not strength that allowed him to be driven to the conflict by lord alfred douglas; it was his weakness again which prevented him from abandoning the prosecution, once it was begun. such a resolution would have involved a breaking away from his associates and from his friends; a personal assertion of will of which he was incapable. again and again he answered my urging with: "i can't, frank, i can't." when i pointed out to him that the defence was growing bolder--it was announced one morning in the newspapers that lord queensberry, instead of pleading paternal privilege and minimising his accusation, was determined to justify the libel and declare that it was true in every particular--oscar could only say weakly: "i can't help it, frank, i can't do anything; you only distress me by predicting disaster." the fibres of resolution, never strong in him, had been destroyed by years of self-indulgence, while the influence whipping him was stronger than i guessed. he was hurried like a sheep to the slaughter. although everyone who cared to think knew that queensberry would win the case, many persons believed that oscar would make a brilliant intellectual fight, and carry off the honours, if not the verdict. the trial took place at the central criminal court on april rd, . mr. justice collins was the judge and the case was conducted at first with the outward seemliness and propriety which are so peculiarly english. an hour before the opening of the case the court was crowded, not a seat to be had for love or money: even standing room was at a premium. the counsel were the best at the bar; sir edward clarke, q.c., mr. charles mathews, and mr. travers humphreys for the prosecution; mr. carson, q.c., mr. g.c. gill and mr. a. gill for the defence. mr. besley, q.c., and mr. monckton watched the case, it was said, for the brothers, lord douglas of hawick and lord alfred douglas. while waiting for the judge, the buzz of talk in the court grew loud; everybody agreed that the presence of sir edward clarke gave oscar an advantage. mr. carson was not so well known then as he has since become; he was regarded as a sharp-witted irishman who had still his spurs to win. some knew he had been at school with oscar, and at trinity college was as high in the second class as oscar was in the first. it was said he envied oscar his reputation for brilliance. suddenly the loud voice of the clerk called for silence. as the judge appeared everyone stood up and in complete stillness sir edward clarke opened for the prosecution. the bleak face, long upper lip and severe side whiskers made the little man look exactly like a nonconformist parson of the old days, but his tone and manner were modern--quiet and conversational. the charge, he said, was that the defendant had published a false and malicious libel against mr. oscar wilde. the libel was in the form of a card which lord queensberry had left at a club to which mr. oscar wilde belonged: it could not be justified unless the statements written on the card were true. it would, however, have been possible to have excused the card by a strong feeling, a mistaken feeling, on the part of a father, but the plea which the defendant had brought before the court raised graver issues. he said that the statement was true and was made for the public benefit. there were besides a series of accusations in the plea (everyone held his breath), mentioning names of persons, and it was said with regard to these persons that mr. wilde had solicited them to commit a grave offence and that he had been guilty with each and all of them of indecent practices...." my heart seemed to stop. my worst forebodings were more than justified. vaguely i heard clarke's voice, "grave responsibility ... serious allegations ... credible witnesses ... mr. oscar wilde was the son of sir william wilde ..." the voice droned on and i awoke to feverish clearness of brain. queensberry had turned the defence into a prosecution. why had he taken the risk? who had given him the new and precise information? i felt that there was nothing before oscar but ruin absolute. could anything be done? even now he could go abroad--even now. i resolved once more to try and induce him to fly. my interest turned from these passionate imaginings to the actual. would sir edward clarke fight the case as it should be fought? he had begun to tell of the friendship between oscar wilde and lord alfred douglas; the friendship too between oscar wilde and lady queensberry, who on her own petition had been divorced from the marquis; would he go on to paint the terrible ill-feeling that existed between lord alfred douglas and his father, and show how oscar had been dragged into the bitter family squabble? to the legal mind this had but little to do with the case. we got, instead, a dry relation of the facts which have already been set forth in this history. wright, the porter of the albemarle club, was called to say that lord queensberry had handed him the card produced. witness had looked at the card; did not understand it; but put it in an envelope and gave it to mr. wilde. mr. oscar wilde was then called and went into the witness box. he looked a little grave but was composed and serious. sir edward clarke took him briefly through the incidents of his life: his successes at school and the university; the attempts made to blackmail him, the insults of lord queensberry, and then directed his attention to the allegations in the plea impugning his conduct with different persons. mr. oscar wilde declared that there was no truth in any of these statements. hereupon sir edward clarke sat down. mr. carson rose and the death duel began. mr. carson brought out that oscar wilde was forty years of age and lord alfred douglas twenty-four. down to the interview in tite street lord queensberry had been friendly with mr. wilde. "had mr. wilde written in a publication called _the chameleon_?" "yes." "had he written there a story called 'the priest and the acolyte'?" "no." "was that story immoral?" oscar amused everyone by replying: "much worse than immoral, it was badly written," but feeling that this gibe was too light for the occasion he added: "it was altogether offensive and perfect twaddle." he admitted at once that he did not express his disapproval of it; it was "beneath him to concern himself with the effusions of an illiterate undergraduate." "did mr. wilde ever consider the effect in his writings of inciting to immorality?" oscar declared that he aimed neither at good nor evil, but tried to make a beautiful thing. when questioned as to the immorality in thought in the article in _the chameleon_, he retorted "that there is no such thing as morality or immorality in thought." a hum of understanding and approval ran through the court; the intellect is profoundly amoral. again and again he scored in this way off mr. carson. "no work of art ever puts forward views; views belong to the philistines and not to artists."... "what do you think of this view?" "i don't think of any views except my own." all this while mr. carson had been hitting at a man on his own level; but oscar wilde was above him and not one of his blows had taken effect. every moment, too, oscar grew more and more at his ease, and the combat seemed to be turning completely in his favour. mr. carson at length took up "dorian gray" and began cross-examining on passages in it. "you talk about one man adoring another. did you ever adore any man?" "no," replied oscar quietly, "i have never adored anyone but myself." the court roared with laughter. oscar went on: "there are people in the world, i regret to say, who cannot understand the deep affection that an artist can feel for a friend with a beautiful personality." he was then questioned about his letter (already quoted here) to lord alfred douglas. it was a prose-poem, he said, written in answer to a sonnet. he had not written to other people in the same strain, not even to lord alfred douglas again: he did not repeat himself in style. mr. carson read another letter from oscar wilde to lord alfred douglas, which paints their relations with extraordinary exactness. here it is: savoy hotel, victoria embankment, london. dearest of all boys,-- your letter was delightful, red and yellow wine to me; but i am sad and out of sorts. bosie, you must not make scenes with me. they kill me, they wreck the loveliness of life. i cannot see you, so greek and gracious, distorted with passion. i cannot listen to your curved lips saying hideous things to me. i would sooner ('here a word is indecipherable,' mr. carson went on, 'but i will ask the witness')[ ]--than have you bitter, unjust, hating.... i must see you soon. you are the divine thing i want, the thing of genius and beauty; but i don't know how to do it. shall i come to salisbury? my bill here is £ for a week. i have also got a new sitting-room.... why are you not here, my dear, my wonderful boy? i fear i must leave--no money, no credit, and a heart of lead. your own oscar. oscar said that it was an expression of his tender admiration for lord alfred douglas. "you have said," mr. carson went on, "that all the statements about persons in the plea of justification were false. do you still hold to that assertion?" "i do." mr. carson then paused and looked at the judge. justice collins shuffled his papers together and announced that the cross-examination would be continued on the morrow. as the judge went out, all the tongues in the court broke loose. oscar was surrounded by friends congratulating him and rejoicing. i was not so happy and went away to think the matter out. i tried to keep up my courage by recalling the humorous things oscar had said during the cross-examination. i recalled too the dull commonplaces of mr. carson. i tried to persuade myself that it was all going on very well. but in the back of my mind i realised that oscar's answers, characteristic and clever as many of them were, had not impressed the jury, were indeed rather calculated to alienate them. he had taken the purely artistic standpoint, had not attempted to go higher and reach a synthesis which would conciliate the philistine jurymen as well as the thinking public, and the judge. mr. carson was in closer touch with the jury, being nearer their intellectual level, and there was a terrible menace in his last words. to-morrow, i said to myself, he will begin to examine about persons and not books. he did not win on the literary question, but he was right to bring it in. the passages he had quoted, and especially oscar's letters to lord alfred douglas, had created a strong prejudice in the minds of the jury. they ought not to have had this effect, i thought, but they had. my contempt for courts of law deepened: those twelve jurymen were anything but the peers of the accused: how could they judge him? * * * * * the second day of the trial was very different from the first. there seemed to be a gloom over the court. oscar went into the box as if it had been the dock; he had lost all his spring. mr. carson settled down to the cross-examination with apparent zest. it was evident from his mere manner that he was coming to what he regarded as the strong part of his case. he began by examining oscar as to his intimacy with a person named taylor. "has taylor been to your house and to your chambers?" "yes." "have you been to taylor's rooms to afternoon tea parties?" "yes." "did taylor's rooms strike you as peculiar?" "they were pretty rooms." "have you ever seen them lit by anything else but candles even in the day time?" "i think so. i'm not sure." "have you ever met there a young man called wood?" "on one occasion." "have you ever met sidney mavor there at tea?" "it is possible." "what was your connection with taylor?" "taylor was a friend, a young man of intelligence and education: he had been to a good english school." "did you know taylor was being watched by the police?" "no." "did you know that taylor was arrested with a man named parker in a raid made last year on a house in fitzroy square?" "i read of it in the newspaper." "did that cause you to drop your acquaintance with taylor?" "no; taylor explained to me that he had gone there to a dance, and that the magistrate had dismissed the case against him." "did you get taylor to arrange dinners for you to meet young men?" "no; i have dined with taylor at a restaurant." "how many young men has taylor introduced to you?" "five in all." "did you give money or presents to these five?" "i may have done." "did they give you anything?" "nothing." "among the five men taylor introduced you to, was one named parker?" "yes." "did you get on friendly terms with him?" "yes." "did you call him 'charlie' and allow him to call you 'oscar'?" "yes." "how old was parker?" "i don't keep a census of people's ages. it would be vulgar to ask people their age." "where did you first meet parker?" "i invited taylor to kettner's[ ] on the occasion of my birthday, and told him to bring what friends he liked. he brought parker and his brother." "did you know parker was a gentleman's servant out of work, and his brother a groom?" "no; i did not." "but you did know that parker was not a literary character or an artist, and that culture was not his strong point?" "i did." "what was there in common between you and charlie parker?" "i like people who are young, bright, happy, careless and original. i do not like them sensible, and i do not like them old; i don't like social distinctions of any kind, and the mere fact of youth is so wonderful to me that i would sooner talk to a young man for half an hour than be cross examined by an elderly q.c." everyone smiled at this retort. "had you chambers in st. james's place?" "yes, from october, ' , to april, ' ." "did charlie parker go and have tea with you there?" "yes." "did you give him money?" "i gave him three or four pounds because he said he was hard up." "what did he give you in return?" "nothing." "did you give charlie parker a silver cigarette case at christmas?" "i did." "did you visit him one night at : at park walk, chelsea?" "i did not." "did you write him any beautiful prose-poems?" "i don't think so." "did you know that charlie parker had enlisted in the army?" "i have heard so." "when you heard that taylor was arrested what did you do?" "i was greatly distressed and wrote to tell him so." "when did you first meet fred atkins?" "in october or november, ' ." "did he tell you that he was employed by a firm of bookmakers?" "he may have done." "not a literary man or an artist, was he?" "no." "what age was he?" "nineteen or twenty." "did you ask him to dinner at kettner's?" "i think i met him at a dinner at kettner's." "was taylor at the dinner?" "he may have been." "did you meet him afterwards?" "i did." "did you call him 'fred' and let him call you 'oscar'?" "yes." "did you go to paris with him?" "yes." "did you give him money?" "yes." "was there ever any impropriety between you?" "no." "when did you first meet ernest scarfe?" "in december, ." "who introduced him to you?" "taylor." "scarfe was out of work, was he not?" "he may have been." "did taylor bring scarfe to you at st. james's place?" "yes." "did you give scarfe a cigarette case?" "yes: it was my custom to give cigarette cases to people i liked." "when did you first meet mavor?" "in ' ." "did you give him money or a cigarette case?" "a cigarette case." "did you know walter grainger?"... and so on till the very air in the court seemed peopled with spectres. on the whole oscar bore the cross-examination very well; but he made one appalling slip. mr. carson was pressing him as to his relations with the boy grainger, who had been employed in lord alfred douglas' rooms in oxford. "did you ever kiss him?" he asked. oscar answered carelessly, "oh, dear, no. he was a peculiarly plain boy. he was, unfortunately, extremely ugly. i pitied him for it." "was that the reason why you did not kiss him?" "oh, mr. carson, you are pertinently insolent." "did you say that in support of your statement that you never kissed him?" "no. it is a childish question." but carson was not to be warded off; like a terrier he sprang again and again: "why, sir, did you mention that this boy was extremely ugly?" "for this reason. if i were asked why i did not kiss a door-mat, i should say because i do not like to kiss door-mats."... "why did you mention his ugliness?" "it is ridiculous to imagine that any such thing could have occurred under any circumstances." "then why did you mention his ugliness, i ask you?" "because you insulted me by an insulting question." "was that a reason why you should say the boy was ugly?" (here the witness began several answers almost inarticulately and finished none of them. his efforts to collect his ideas were not aided by mr. carson's sharp staccato repetition: "why? why? why did you add that?") at last the witness answered: "you sting me and insult me and at times one says things flippantly." then came the re-examination by sir edward clarke, which brought out very clearly the hatred of lord alfred douglas for his father. letters were read and in one letter queensberry declared that oscar had plainly shown the white feather when he called on him. one felt that this was probably true: queensberry's word on such a point could be accepted. in the re-examination sir edward clarke occupied himself chiefly with two youths, shelley and conway, who had been passed over casually by mr. carson. in answer to his questions oscar stated that shelley was a youth in the employ of mathews and lane, the publishers. shelley had very good taste in literature and a great desire for culture. shelley had read all his books and liked them. shelley had dined with him and his wife at tite street. shelley was in every way a gentleman. he had never gone with charlie parker to the savoy hotel. a juryman wanted to know at this point whether the witness was aware of the nature of the article, "the priest and the acolyte," in _the chameleon_. "i knew nothing of it; it came as a terrible shock to me." this answer contrasted strangely with the light tone of his reply to the same question on the previous day. the re-examination did not improve oscar's position. it left all the facts where they were, and at least a suspicion in every mind. sir edward clarke intimated that this concluded the evidence for the prosecution, whereupon mr. carson rose to make the opening speech for the defence. i was shivering with apprehension. he began by admitting the grave responsibility resting on lord queensberry, who accepted it to the fullest. lord queensberry was justified in doing all he could do to cut short an acquaintance which must be disastrous to his son. mr. carson wished to draw the attention of the jury to the fact that all these men with whom mr. wilde went about were discharged servants and grooms, and that they were all about the same age. he asked the jury also to note that taylor, who was the pivot of the whole case, had not yet been put in the box. why not? he pointed out to the jury that the very same idea that was set forth in "the priest and the acolyte" was contained in oscar wilde's letters to lord alfred douglas, and the same idea was to be found in lord alfred douglas' poem, "the two loves,"[ ] which was published in _the chameleon_. he went on to say that when, in the story of "the priest and the acolyte," the boy was discovered in the priest's bed,[ ] the priest made the same defence as mr. wilde had made, that the world does not understand the beauty of this love. the same idea was found again in "dorian gray," and he read two or three passages from the book in support of this statement. mr. wilde had described his letter to lord alfred douglas as a prose sonnet. he would read it again to the court, and he read both the letters. "mr. wilde says they are beautiful," he went on, "i call them an abominable piece of disgusting immorality." at this the judge again shuffled his papers together and whispered in a quiet voice that the court would sit on the morrow, and left the room. the honours of the day had all been with mr. carson. oscar left the box in a depressed way. one or two friends came towards him, but the majority held aloof, and in almost unbroken silence everyone slipped out of the court. strange to say in my mind there was just a ray of hope. mr. carson was still laying stress on the article in _the chameleon_ and scattered passages in "dorian gray"; on oscar's letters to lord alfred douglas and lord alfred douglas' poems in _the chameleon_. he must see, i thought, that all this was extremely weak. sir edward clarke could be trusted to tear all such arguments, founded on literary work, to shreds. there was room for more than reasonable doubt about all such things. why had not mr. carson put some of the young men he spoke of in the box? would he be able to do that? he talked of taylor as "the pivot of the case," and gibed at the prosecution for not putting taylor in the box. would he put taylor in the box? and why, if he had such witnesses at his beck and call, should he lay stress on the flimsy, weak evidence to be drawn from passages in books and poems and letters? one thing was clear: if he was able to put any of the young men in the box about whom he had examined oscar, oscar was ruined. even if he rested his defence on the letters and poems he'd win and oscar would be discredited, for already it was clear that no jury would give oscar wilde a verdict against a father trying to protect his son. the issue had narrowed down to terrible straits: would it be utter ruin to oscar or merely loss of the case and reputation? we had only sixteen hours to wait; they seemed to me to hold the last hope. i drove to tite street, hoping to see oscar. i was convinced that carson had important witnesses at his command, and that the outcome of the case would be disastrous. why should not oscar even now, this very evening, cross to calais, leaving a letter for his counsel and the court abandoning the idiotic prosecution. the house at tite street seemed deserted. for some time no one answered my knocking and ringing, and then a man-servant simply told me that mr. wilde was not in: he did not know whether mr. wilde was expected back or not; did not think he was coming back. i turned and went home. i thought oscar would probably say to me again: "i can do nothing, frank, nothing." * * * * * the feeling in the court next morning was good tempered, even jaunty. the benches were filled with young barristers, all of whom had made up their minds that the testimony would be what one of them called "nifty." everyone treated the case as practically over. "but will carson call witnesses?" i asked. "of course he will," they said, "but in any case wilde does not stand a ghost of a chance of getting a verdict against queensberry; he was a bally fool to bring such an action." "the question is," said someone, "will wilde face the music?" my heart leapt. perhaps he had gone, fled already to france to avoid this dreadful, useless torture. i could see the hounds with open mouths, dripping white fangs, and greedy eyes all closing in on the defenceless quarry. would the huntsman give the word? we were not left long in doubt. mr. carson continued his statement for the defence. he had sufficiently demonstrated to the jury, he thought, that, so far as lord queensberry was concerned, he was absolutely justified in bringing to a climax in the way he had, the connection between mr. oscar wilde and his son. a dramatic pause. a moment later the clever advocate resumed: unfortunately he had a more painful part of the case to approach. it would be his painful duty to bring before them one after the other the young men he had examined mr. wilde about and allow them to tell their tales. in no one of these cases were these young men on an equality in any way with mr. wilde. mr. wilde had told them that there was something beautiful and charming about youth which led him to make these acquaintances. that was a travesty of the facts. mr. wilde preferred to know nothing of these young men and their antecedents. he knew nothing about wood; he knew nothing about parker; he knew nothing about scarfe, nothing about conway, and not much about taylor. the truth was taylor was the procurer for mr. wilde and the jury would hear from this young man parker, who would have to tell his unfortunate story to them, that he was poor, out of a place, had no money, and unfortunately fell a victim to mr. wilde. (sir edward clarke here left the court.) on the first evening they met, mr. wilde called parker "charlie" and parker called mr. wilde "oscar." it may be a very noble instinct in some people to wish to break down social barriers, but mr. wilde's conduct was not ordered by generous instincts. luxurious dinners and champagne were not the way to assist a poor man. parker would tell them that, after this first dinner, mr. wilde invited him to drive with him to the savoy hotel. mr. wilde had not told them why he had that suite of rooms at the savoy hotel. parker would tell them what happened on arriving there. this was the scandal lord queensberry had referred to in his letter as far back as june or july last year. the jury would wonder not at the reports having reached lord queensberry's ears, but that oscar wilde had been tolerated in london society as long as he had been. parker had since enlisted in the army, and bore a good character. mr. wilde himself had said that parker was respectable. parker would reluctantly present himself to tell his story to the jury. all this time the court was hushed with awe and wonder; everyone was asking what on earth had induced wilde to begin the prosecution; what madness had driven him and why had he listened to the insane advice to bring the action when he must have known the sort of evidence which could be brought against him. after promising to produce parker and the others mr. carson stopped speaking and began looking through his papers; when he began again, everyone held his breath; what was coming now? he proceeded in the same matter-of-fact and serious way to deal with the case of the youth, conway. conway, it appeared, had known mr. wilde and his family at worthing. conway was sixteen years of age.... at this moment sir edward clarke returned with mr. charles mathews, and asked permission of the judge to have a word or two with mr. carson. at the close of a few minutes' talk between the counsel, sir edward clarke rose and told the judge that after communicating with mr. oscar wilde he thought it better to withdraw the prosecution and submit to a verdict of "not guilty." he minimised the defeat. he declared that, in respect to matters connected with literature and the letters, he could not resist the verdict of "not guilty," having regard to the fact that lord queensberry had not used a direct accusation, but the words "posing as," etc. besides, he wished to spare the jury the necessity of investigating in detail matter of the most appalling character. he wished to make an end of the case--and he sat down. why on earth did sir edward clarke not advise oscar in this way weeks before? why did he not tell him his case could not possibly be won? i have heard since on excellent authority that before taking up the case sir edward clarke asked oscar wilde whether he was guilty or not, and accepted in good faith his assurance that he was innocent. as soon as he realised, in court, the strength of the case against oscar he advised him to abandon the prosecution. to his astonishment oscar was eager to abandon it. sir edward clarke afterwards defended his unfortunate client out of loyalty and pity, oscar again assuring him of his innocence. mr. carson rose at once and insisted, as was his right, that this verdict of "not guilty" must be understood to mean that lord queensberry had succeeded in his plea of justification. mr. justice collins thought that it was not part of the function of the judge and jury to insist on wading through prurient details, which had no bearing on the matter at issue, which had already been decided by the consent of the prosecutors to a verdict of "not guilty." such a verdict meant of course that the plea of justification was proved. the jury having consulted for a few moments, the clerk of arraigns asked: "do you find the plea of justification has been proved or not?" foreman: "yes." "you say that the defendant is 'not guilty,' and that is the verdict of you all?" foreman: "yes, and we also find that it is for the public benefit." the last kick to the dead lion. as the verdict was read out the spectators in the court burst into cheers. mr. carson: "of course the costs of the defence will follow?" mr. justice collins: "yes." mr. c.f. gill: "and lord queensberry may be discharged?" mr. justice collins: "certainly." the marquis of queensberry left the dock amid renewed cheering, which was taken up again and again in the street. footnotes: [ ] the words which mr. carson could not read were: "i would sooner be rented than, etc." rent is a slang term for blackmail. [ ] a famous italian restaurant in soho: it had several "private rooms." [ ] this early poem of lord alfred douglas is reproduced in the appendix at the end of this book together with another poem by the same author, which was also mentioned in the course of the trial. [ ] mr. carson here made a mistake; there is no such incident in the story: the error merely shows how prejudiced his mind was. chapter xiv the english are very proud of their sense of justice, proud too of their roman law and the practice of the courts in which they have incorporated it. they boast of their fair play in all things as the french boast of their lightness, and if you question it, you lose caste with them, as one prejudiced or ignorant or both. english justice cannot be bought, they say, and if it is dear, excessively dear even, they rather like to feel they have paid a long price for a good article. yet it may be that here, as in other things, they take outward propriety and decorum for the inward and ineffable grace. that a judge should be incorruptible is not so important as that he should be wise and humane. english journalists and barristers were very much amused at the conduct of the dreyfus case; yet, when dreyfus was being tried for the second time in france, two or three instances of similar injustice in england were set forth with circumstance in one of the london newspapers, but no one paid any effective attention to them. if dreyfus had been convicted in england, it is probable that no voice would ever have been raised in his favour; it is absolutely certain that there would never have been a second trial. a keen sense of abstract justice is only to be found in conjunction with a rich fount of imaginative sympathy. the english are too self-absorbed to take much interest in their neighbours' affairs, too busy to care for abstract questions of right or wrong. before the trial of oscar wilde i still believed that in a criminal case rough justice would be done in england. the bias of an english judge, i said to myself, is always in favour of the accused. it is an honourable tradition of english procedure that even the treasury barristers should state rather less than they can prove against the unfortunate person who is being attacked by all the power and authority of the state. i was soon forced to see that these honourable and praiseworthy conventions were as withes of straw in the fire of english prejudice. the first thing to set me doubting was that the judge did not try to check the cheering in court after the verdict in favour of lord queensberry. english judges always resent and resist such popular outbursts: why not in this case? after all, no judge could think queensberry a hero: he was too well known for that, and yet the cheering swelled again and again, and the judge gathered up his papers without a word and went his way as if he were deaf. a dreadful apprehension crept over me: in spite of myself i began to realise that my belief in english justice might be altogether mistaken. it was to me as if the solid earth had become a quaking bog, or indeed as if a child had suddenly discovered its parent to be shameless. the subsequent trials are among the most painful experiences of my life. i shall try to set down all the incidents fairly. one peculiarity had first struck me in the conduct of the case between oscar wilde and lord queensberry that did not seem to occur to any of the numberless journalists and writers who commented on the trial. it was apparent from his letter to his son (which i published in a previous chapter), and from the fact that he called at oscar wilde's house that lord queensberry at the beginning did not believe in the truth of his accusations; he set them forth as a violent man sets forth hearsay and suspicion, knowing that as a father he could do this with impunity, and accordingly at first he pleaded privilege. some time between the beginning of the prosecution and the trial, he obtained an immense amount of unexpected evidence. he then justified his libel and gave the names of the persons whom he intended to call to prove his case. where did he get this new knowledge? i have spoken again and again in the course of this narrative of oscar's enemies, asserting that the english middle-class as puritans detested his attitude and way of life, and if some fanatic or representative of the nonconformist conscience had hunted up evidence against wilde and brought him to ruin there would have been nothing extraordinary in a vengeance which might have been regarded as a duty. strange to say the effective hatred of oscar wilde was shown by a man of the upper class who was anything but a puritan. it was mr. charles brookfield, i believe, who constituted himself private prosecutor in this case and raked piccadilly to find witnesses against oscar wilde. mr. brookfield was afterwards appointed censor of plays on the strength apparently of having himself written one of the "riskiest" plays of the period. as i do not know mr. brookfield, i will not judge him. but his appointment always seemed to me, even before i knew that he had acted against wilde, curiously characteristic of english life and of the casual, contemptuous way englishmen of the governing class regard letters. in the same spirit lord salisbury as prime minister made a journalist poet laureate simply because he had puffed him for years in the columns of _the standard_. lord salisbury probably neither knew nor cared that alfred austin had never written a line that could live. one thing mr. brookfield's witnesses established: every offence alleged against oscar wilde dated from or later--after his first meeting with lord alfred douglas. but at the time all such matters were lost for me in the questions: would the authorities arrest oscar? or would they allow him to escape? had the police asked for a warrant? knowing english custom and the desire of englishmen to pass in silence over all unpleasant sexual matters, i thought he would be given the hint to go abroad and allowed to escape. that is the ordinary, the usual english procedure. everyone knows the case of a certain lord, notorious for similar practices, who was warned by the police that a warrant had been issued against him: taking the hint he has lived for many years past in leisured ease as an honoured guest in florence. nor is it only aristocrats who are so favoured by english justice: everyone can remember the case of a canon of westminster who was similarly warned and also escaped. we can come down the social scale to the very bottom and find the same practice. a certain journalist unwittingly offended a great personage. immediately he was warned by the police that a warrant issued against him in india seventeen years before would at once be acted upon if he did not make himself scarce. for some time he lived in peaceful retirement in belgium. moreover, in all these cases the warrants had been issued on the sworn complaints of the parties damnified or of their parents and guardians: no one had complained of oscar wilde. naturally i thought the dislike of publicity which dictated such lenience to the lord and the canon and the journalist would be even more operative in the case of a man of genius like oscar wilde. in certain ways he had a greater position than even the son of a duke: the shocking details of his trial would have an appalling, a world-wide publicity. besides, i said to myself, the governing class in england is steeped in aristocratic prejudice, and particularly when threatened by democratic innovations, all superiorities, whether of birth or wealth, or talent, are conscious of the same _raison d'être_ and have the same self-interest. the lord, the millionaire and the genius have all the same reason for standing up for each other, and this reason is usually effective. everyone knows that in england the law is emphatically a respecter of persons. it is not there to promote equality, much less is it the defender of the helpless, the weak and the poor; it is a rampart for the aristocracy and the rich, a whip in the hands of the strong. it is always used to increase the effect of natural and inherited inequality, and it is not directed by a high feeling of justice; but perverted by aristocratic prejudice and snobbishness; it is not higher than democratic equality, but lower and more sordid. the case was just a case where an aristocratic society could and should have shown its superiority over a democratic society with its rough rule of equality. for equality is only half-way on the road to justice. more than once the house of commons has recognised this fundamental truth; it condemned clive but added that he had rendered "great and distinguished services to his country"; and no one thought of punishing him for his crimes. our time is even more tolerant and more corrupt. for a worse crime than extortion cecil rhodes was not even brought to trial, but honoured and fêted, while his creatures, who were condemned by the house of commons committee, were rewarded by the government. had not wilde also rendered distinguished services to his country? the wars waged against the mashonas and matabeles were a doubtful good; but the plays of oscar wilde had already given many hours of innocent pleasure to thousands of persons, and were evidently destined to benefit tens of thousands in the future. such a man is a benefactor of humanity in the best and truest sense, and deserves peculiar consideration. to the society favourite the discredit of the trial with lord queensberry was in itself a punishment more than sufficient. everyone knew when oscar wilde left the court that he left it a ruined and disgraced man. was it worth while to stir up all the foul mud again, in order to beat the beaten? alas! the english are pedants, as goethe saw; they think little of literary men, or of merely spiritual achievements. they love to abide by rules and pay no heed to exceptions, unless indeed the exceptions are men of title or great wealth, or "persons of importance" to the government. the majority of the people are too ignorant to know the value of a book and they regard poetry as the thistle-down of speech. it does not occur to englishmen that a phrase may be more valuable and more enduring in its effects than a long campaign and a dozen victories. yet, the sentence, "let him that is without sin among you first cast the stone," or shakespeare's version of the same truth: "if we had our deserts which of us would escape whipping?" is likely to outlast the british empire, and prove of more value to humanity. the man of genius in great britain is feared and hated in exact proportion to his originality, and if he happens to be a writer or a musician he is despised to boot. the prejudice against oscar wilde showed itself virulently on all hands. mr. justice collins did not attempt to restrain the cheering of the court that greeted the success of lord queensberry. not one of the policemen who stood round the door tried to stop the "booing" of the crowd who pursued oscar wilde with hootings and vile cries when he left the court. he was judged already and condemned before being tried. the police, too, acted against him with extraordinary vigour. it has been stated by mr. sherard in his "life" that the police did not attempt to execute the warrant against wilde, "till after the last train had left for dover," and that it was only oscar's obstinacy in remaining in london that necessitated his arrest. this idea is wholly imaginary. it is worth while to know exactly what took place at this juncture. from oscar's conduct in this crisis the reader will be able to judge whether he has been depicted faithfully or not in this book. he has been described as amiable, weak, of a charming disposition--easily led in action, though not in thought: now we shall see how far we were justified, for he is at one of those moments which try the soul. fortunately every incident of that day is known: oscar himself told me generally what happened and the minutest details of the picture were filled in for me a little later by his best friend, robert ross. in the morning mr. mathews, one of oscar's counsel, came to him and said: "if you wish it, clarke and i will keep the case going and give you time to get to calais." oscar refused to stir. "i'll stay," was all he would say. robert ross urged him to accept mathew's offer; but he would not: why? i am sure he had no reason, for i put the question to him more than once, and even after reflecting, he had no explanation to give. he stayed because to stay was easier than to make an immediate decision and act on it energetically. he had very little will power to begin with and his mode of life had weakened his original endowment. after the judgment had been given in favour of queensberry, oscar drove off in a brougham, accompanied by alfred douglas, to consult with his solicitor, humphreys. at the same time he gave ross a cheque on his bank in st. james's street. at that moment he intended to fly. ross noticed that he was followed by a detective. he drew about £ from the bank and raced off to meet oscar at the cadogan hotel, in sloane street, where lord alfred douglas had been staying for the past four or five weeks. ross reached the cadogan hotel about . and found oscar there with reggie turner. both of them advised oscar to go at once to dover and try to get to france; but he would only say, "the train has gone; it is too late." he had again lapsed into inaction. he asked ross to go to see his wife and tell her what had occurred. ross did this and had a very painful scene: mrs. wilde wept and said, "i hope oscar is going away abroad." ross returned to the cadogan hotel and told oscar what his wife had said, but even this didn't move him to action. he sat as if glued to his chair, and drank hock and seltzer steadily in almost unbroken silence. about four o'clock george wyndham came to see his cousin, alfred douglas; not finding him, he wanted to see oscar, but oscar, fearing reproaches, sent ross instead. wyndham said it was a pity that bosie douglas should be with oscar, and ross immediately told him that wilde's friends for years past had been trying to separate them and that if he, wyndham, would keep his cousin away, he would be doing oscar the very greatest kindness. at this wyndham grew more civil, though still "frightfully agitated," and begged ross to get oscar to leave the country at once to avoid scandal. ross replied that he and turner had been trying to bring that about for hours. in the middle of the conversation bosie, having returned, burst into the room with: "i want to see my cousin," and ross rejoined oscar. in a quarter of an hour bosie followed him to say that he was going out with wyndham to see someone of importance. about five o'clock a reporter of the _star_ newspaper came to see oscar, a mr. marlowe, who is now editor of _the daily mail_, but again oscar refused to see him and sent ross. mr. marlowe was sympathetic and quite understood the position; he informed ross that a tape message had come through to the paper saying that a warrant for oscar wilde had already been issued. ross immediately went into the other room and told oscar, who said nothing, but "went very grey in the face." a moment later oscar asked ross to give him the money he had got at the bank, though he had refused it several times in the course of the day. ross gave it to him, naturally taking it for a sign that he had at length made up his mind to start, but immediately afterwards oscar settled down in his chair and said, "i shall stay and do my sentence whatever it is"--a man evidently incapable of action. for the next hour the trio sat waiting for the blow to fall. once or twice oscar asked querulously where bosie was, but no one could tell him. at ten past six the waiter knocked at the door and ross answered it. there were two detectives. the elder entered and said, "we have a warrant here, mr. wilde, for your arrest on a charge of committing indecent acts." wilde wanted to know whether he would be given bail; the detective replied: "that is a question for the magistrate." oscar then rose and asked, "where shall i be taken?" "to bow street," was the reply. as he picked up a copy of the yellow book and groped for his overcoat, they all noticed that he was "very drunk" though still perfectly conscious of what he was doing. he asked ross to go to tite street and get him a change of clothes and bring them to bow street. the two detectives took him away in a four-wheeler, leaving ross and turner on the curb. ross hurried to tite street. he found that mrs. oscar wilde had gone to the house of a relative and there was only wilde's man servant, arthur, in the house, who afterwards went out of his mind, and is still, it is said, in an asylum. he had an intense affection for oscar. ross found that mrs. oscar wilde had locked up oscar's bedroom and study. he burst open the bedroom door and, with the help of arthur, packed up a change of things. he then hurried to bow street, where he found a howling mob shouting indecencies. he was informed by an inspector that it was impossible to see wilde or to leave any clothes for him. ross returned at once to tite street, forced open the library door and removed a certain number of letters and manuscripts of wilde's; but unluckily he couldn't find the two mss. which he knew had been returned to tite street two days before, namely, "a florentine tragedy" and the enlarged version of "the portrait of mr. w.h." ross then drove to his mother's and collapsed. mrs. ross insisted that he should go abroad, and in order to induce him to do it gave £ for oscar's defence. ross went to the terminus hotel at calais, where bosie douglas joined him a little later. they both stayed there while oscar was being tried before mr. justice charles and one day george wyndham crossed the channel to see bosie douglas. there is of course some excuse to be made for the chief actor. oscar was physically tired and morally broken. he had pulled the fair building of reputation and success down upon his own head, and, with the "booing" of the mob still in his ears, he could think of nothing but the lost hours when he ought to have used his money to take him beyond the reach of his pursuers. his enemies, on the other hand, had acted with the utmost promptitude. lord queensberry's solicitor, mr. charles russell, had stated that it was not his client's intention to take the initiative in any criminal prosecution of mr. oscar wilde, but, on the very same morning when wilde withdrew from the prosecution, mr. russell sent a letter to the hon. hamilton cuffe, the director of public prosecutions, with a copy of "all our witnesses' statements, together with a copy of the shorthand notes of the trial." the treasury authorities were at least as eager. as soon as possible after leaving the court mr. c.f. gill, mr. angus lewis, and mr. charles russell waited on sir john bridge at bow street in his private room and obtained a warrant for the arrest of oscar wilde, which was executed, as we have seen, the same evening. the police showed him less than no favour. about eight o'clock lord alfred douglas drove to bow street and wanted to know if wilde could be bailed out, but was informed that his application could not be entertained. he offered to procure comforts for the prisoner: this offer also was peremptorily refused by the police inspector just as ross's offer of night clothes had been refused. it is a common belief that in england a man is treated as innocent until he has been proved guilty, but those who believe this pleasant fiction, have never been in the hands of the english police. as soon as a man is arrested on any charge he is at once treated as if he were a dangerous criminal; he is searched, for instance, with every circumstance of indignity. before his conviction a man is allowed to wear his own clothes; but a change of linen or clothes is denied him, or accorded in part and grudgingly, for no earthly reason except to gratify the ill-will of the gaolers. the warrant on which oscar wilde was arrested charged him with an offence alleged to have been committed under section xi. of the criminal amendment act of ; in other words, he was arrested and tried for an offence which was not punishable by law ten years before. this act was brought in as a result of the shameful and sentimental stories (evidently for the most part manufactured) which mr. stead had published in _the pall mall gazette_ under the title of "modern babylon." in order to cover and justify their prophet some of the "unco guid" pressed forward this so-called legislative reform, by which it was made a criminal offence to take liberties with a girl under thirteen years of age--even with her own consent. intimacy with minors under sixteen was punishable if they consented or even tempted. mr. labouchere, the radical member, inflamed, it is said, with a desire to make the law ridiculous, gravely proposed that the section be extended, so as to apply to people of the same sex who indulged in familiarities or indecencies. the puritan faction had no logical objection to the extension, and it became the law of the land. it was by virtue of this piece of legislative wisdom, which is without a model and without a copy in the law of any other civilised country, that oscar wilde was arrested and thrown into prison. his arrest was the signal for an orgy of philistine rancour such as even london had never known before. the puritan middle class, which had always regarded wilde with dislike as an artist and intellectual scoffer, a mere parasite of the aristocracy, now gave free scope to their disgust and contempt, and everyone tried to outdo his neighbour in expressions of loathing and abhorrence. this middle class condemnation swept the lower class away in its train. to do them justice, the common people, too, felt a natural loathing for the peculiar vice attributed to wilde; most men condemn the sins they have no mind to; but their dislike was rather contemptuous than profound, and with customary humour they soon turned the whole case into a bestial, obscene joke. "oscar" took the place of their favourite word as a term of contempt, and they shouted it at each other on all sides; bus-drivers, cabbies and paper sellers using it in and out of season with the keenest relish. for the moment the upper classes lay mum-chance and let the storm blow over. some of them of course agreed with the condemnation of the puritans, and many of them felt that oscar and his associates had been too bold, and ought to be pulled up. the english journals, which are nothing but middle-class shops, took the side of their patrons. without a single exception they outdid themselves in condemnation of the man and all his works. you might have thought to read their bitter diatribes that they themselves lived saintly lives, and were shocked at sensual sin. one rubbed one's eyes in amazement. the strand and fleet street, which practically belong to this class and have been fashioned by them, are the haunt of as vile a prostitution as can be found in europe; the public houses which these men frequent are low drinking dens; yet they all lashed oscar wilde with every variety of insult as if they themselves had been above reproach. the whole of london seemed to have broken loose in a rage of contempt and loathing which was whipped up and justified each morning by the hypocritical articles of the "unco guid" in the daily this and the weekly that. in the streets one heard everywhere the loud jests of the vulgar, decked out with filthy anecdotes and punctuated by obscene laughter, as from the mouth of the pit. in spite of the hatred of the journalists pandering to the prejudice of their paymasters, one could hope still that the magistrate would show some regard for fair play. the expectation, reasonable or unreasonable, was doomed to disappointment. on saturday morning, the th, oscar wilde, "described as a gentleman," the papers said in derision, was brought before sir john bridge. mr. c.f. gill, who had been employed in the queensberry trial, was instructed by mr. angus lewis of the treasury, and conducted the prosecution; alfred taylor was placed in the dock charged with conspiracy with oscar wilde. the witnesses have already been described in connection with the queensberry case. charles parker, william parker, alfred wood, sidney mavor and shelley all gave evidence. after lasting all day the case was adjourned till the following thursday. mr. travers humphreys applied for bail for mr. wilde, on the ground that he knew the warrant against him was being applied for on friday afternoon, but he made no attempt to leave london. sir john bridge refused bail. on thursday, the th, the case was continued before sir john bridge, and in the end both the accused were committed for trial. again mr. humphreys applied for bail, and again the magistrate refused to accept bail. now to refuse bail in cases of serious crime may be defended, but in the case of indecent conduct it is usually granted. to run away is regarded as a confession of guilt, and what could one wish for more than the perpetual banishment of the corrupt liver, consequently there is no reason to refuse bail. but in this case, though bail was offered to any amount, it was refused peremptorily in spite of the fact that every consideration should have been shown to an accused person who had already had a good opportunity to leave the country and had refused to budge. moreover, oscar wilde had already been criticised and condemned in a hundred papers. there was widespread prejudice against him, no risk to the public in accepting bail, and considerable injury done to the accused in refusing it. his affairs were certain to be thrown into confusion; he was known not to be rich and yet he was deprived of the power to get money together and to collect evidence just when the power which freedom confers was most needed by him. the magistrate was as prejudiced as the public; he had no more idea of standing for justice and fair play than pilate; probably, indeed, he never gave himself the trouble to think of fairness in the matter. a large salary is paid to magistrates in london, £ , a year, but it is rare indeed that any of them rises above the vulgarest prejudice. sir john bridge not only refused bail but he was careful to give his reasons for refusing it: he had not the slightest scruple about prejudicing the case even before he had heard a word of the defence. after hearing the evidence for the prosecution he said: "the responsibility of accepting or refusing bail rests upon me. the considerations that weigh with me are the gravity of the offences and the strength of the evidence. i must absolutely refuse bail and send the prisoners for trial." now these reasons, which he proffered voluntarily, and especially the use of the word "absolutely," showed not only prejudice on the part of sir john bridge, but the desire to injure the unfortunate prisoner in the public mind and so continue the evil work of the journalists. the effect of this prejudice and rancour on the part of the whole community had various consequences. the mere news that oscar wilde had been arrested and taken to holloway startled london and gave the signal for a strange exodus. every train to dover was crowded; every steamer to calais thronged with members of the aristocratic and leisured classes, who seemed to prefer paris, or even nice out of the season, to a city like london, where the police might act with such unexpected vigour. the truth was that the cultured æsthetes whom i have already described had been thunderstruck by the facts which the queensberry trial had laid bare. for the first time they learned that such houses as taylor's were under police supervision, and that creatures like wood and parker were classified and watched. they had imagined that in "the home of liberty" such practices passed unnoticed. it came as a shock to their preconceived ideas that the police in london knew a great many things which they were not supposed to concern themselves with, and this unwelcome glare of light drove the vicious forth in wild haste. never was paris so crowded with members of the english governing classes; here was to be seen a famous ex-minister; there the fine face of the president of a royal society; at one table in the café de la paix, a millionaire recently ennobled, and celebrated for his exquisite taste in art; opposite to him a famous general. it was even said that a celebrated english actor took a return ticket for three or four days to paris, just to be in the fashion. the mummer returned quickly; but the majority of the migrants stayed abroad for some time. the wind of terror which had swept them across the channel opposed their return, and they scattered over the continent from naples to monte carlo and from palermo to seville under all sorts of pretexts. the gravest result of the magistrate's refusal to accept bail was purely personal. oscar's income dried up at the source. his books were withdrawn from sale; no one went to see his plays; every shop keeper to whom he owed a penny took immediate action against him. judgments were obtained and an execution put into his house in tite street. within a month, at the very moment when he most needed money to fee counsel and procure evidence, he was beggared and sold up, and because of his confinement in prison the sale was conducted under such conditions that, whereas in ordinary times his effects would have covered the claims against him three times over, all his belongings went for nothing, and the man who was making £ , or £ , a year by his plays was adjudicated a bankrupt for a little over £ , . £ of this sum were for lord queensberry's costs which the queensberry family--lord douglas of hawick, lord alfred douglas and their mother--had promised in writing to pay, but when the time came, absolutely refused to pay. most unfortunately many of oscar's mss. were stolen or lost in the disorder of the sheriff's legal proceedings. wilde could have cried, with shylock, "you take my life when you do take away the means whereby i live." but at the time nine englishmen out of ten applauded what was practically persecution. a worse thing remains to be told. the right of free speech which englishmen pride themselves on had utterly disappeared, as it always does disappear in england when there is most need of it. it was impossible to say one word in wilde's defence or even in extenuation of his sin in any london print. at this time i owned the greater part of the _saturday review_ and edited it. here at any rate one might have thought i could have set forth in a christian country a sane and liberal view. i had no wish to minimise the offence. no one condemned unnatural vice more than i, but oscar wilde was a distinguished man of letters; he had written beautiful things, and his good works should have been allowed to speak in his favour. i wrote an article setting forth this view. my printers immediately informed me that they thought the article ill-advised, and when i insisted they said they would prefer not to print it. yet there was nothing in it beyond a plea to suspend judgment and defer insult till after the trial. messrs. smith and sons, the great booksellers, who somehow got wind of the matter (through my publisher, i believe), sent to say that they would not sell any paper that attempted to defend oscar wilde; it would be better even, they added, not to mention his name. the english tradesman-censors were determined that this man should have jedburg justice. i should have ruined the _saturday review_ by the mere attempt to treat the matter fairly. in this extremity i went to the great leader of public opinion in england. mr. arthur walter, the manager of _the times_, had always been kind to me; he was a man of balanced mind, who had taken high honours at oxford in his youth, and for twenty years had rubbed shoulders with the leading men in every rank of life. i went down to stay with him in berkshire, and i urged upon him what i regarded as the aristocratic view. in england it was manifest that under the circumstances there was no chance of a fair trial, and it seemed to me the duty of _the times_ to say plainly that this man should not be condemned beforehand, and that if he were condemned his merits should be taken into consideration in his punishment, as well as his demerits. while willing to listen to me, mr. walter did not share my views. a man who had written a great poem or a great play did not rank in his esteem with a man who had won a skirmish against a handful of unarmed savages, or one who had stolen a piece of land from some barbarians and annexed it to the empire. in his heart he held the view of the english landed aristocracy, that the ordinary successful general or admiral or statesman was infinitely more important than a shakespeare or a browning. he could not be persuaded to believe that the names of gladstone, disraeli, wolseley, roberts, and wood, would diminish and fade from day to day till in a hundred years they would scarcely be known, even to the educated; whereas the fame of browning, swinburne, meredith, or even oscar wilde, would increase and grow brighter with time, till, in one hundred or five hundred years, no one would dream of comparing pushful politicians like gladstone or beaconsfield with men of genius like swinburne or wilde. he simply would not see it and when he perceived that the weight of argument was against him he declared that if it were true, it was so much the worse for humanity. in his opinion anyone living a clean life was worth more than a writer of love songs or the maker of clever comedies--mr. john smith worth more than shakespeare! he was as deaf as only englishmen can be deaf to the plea for abstract justice. "you don't even say wilde's innocent," he threw at me more than once. "i believe him to be innocent," i declared truthfully, "but it is better that a hundred guilty men go free than that one man should not have a fair trial. and how can this man have a fair trial now when the papers for weeks past have been filled with violent diatribes against him and his works?" one point, peculiarly english, he used again and again. "so long as substantial justice is done," he said, "it is all we care about." "substantial justice will never be done," i cried, "so long as that is your ideal. your arrow can never go quite so high as it is aimed." but i got no further. if oscar wilde had been a general or a so-called empire builder, _the times_ might have affronted public opinion and called attention to his virtues, and argued that they should be taken in extenuation of his offences; but as he was only a writer no one seemed to owe him anything or to care what became of him. mr. walter was fair-minded in comparison with most men of his class. there was staying with him at this very time an irish gentleman, who listened to my pleading for wilde with ill-concealed indignation. excited by arthur walter's obstinacy to find fresh arguments, i pointed out that wilde's offence was pathological and not criminal and would not be punished in a properly constituted state. "you admit," i said, "that we punish crime to prevent it spreading; wipe this sin off the statute book and you would not increase the sinners by one: then why punish them?" "oi'd whip such sinners to death, so i would," cried the irishman; "hangin's too good for them." "you only punished lepers," i went on, "in the middle ages, because you believed that leprosy was catching: this malady is not even catching." "faith, oi'd punish it with extermination," cried the irishman. exasperated by the fact that his idiot prejudice was hurting my friend, i said at length with a smile: "you are very bitter: i'm not; you see, i have no sexual jealousy to inflame me." on this mr. walter had to interfere between us to keep the peace, but the mischief was done: my advocacy remained without effect. it is very curious how deep-rooted and enduring is the prejudice against writers in england. not only is no attempt made to rate them at their true value, at the value which posterity puts upon their work; but they are continually treated as outcasts and denied the most ordinary justice. the various trials of oscar wilde are to the thinker an object lesson in the force of this prejudice, but some may explain the prejudice against wilde on the score of the peculiar abhorrence with which the offence ascribed to him is regarded in england. let me take an example from the papers of to-day--i am writing in january, . i find in my _daily mail_ that at bow street police court a london magistrate, sir albert de rutzen, ordered the destruction of volumes of the english translation of balzac's "les contes drolatiques" on the ground that the book was obscene. "les contes drolatiques" is an acknowledged masterpiece, and is not nearly so free spoken as "lear" or "hamlet" or "tom jones" or "anthony and cleopatra." what would be thought of a french magistrate or a german magistrate who ordered a fair translation of "hamlet" or of "lear" to be burnt, because of its obscenity? he would be regarded as demented. one can only understand such a judgment as an isolated fact. but in england this monstrous stupidity is the rule. sir a. de rutzen was not satisfied with ordering the books to be burnt and fining the bookseller; he went on to justify his condemnation and praise the police: "it is perfectly clear to my mind that a more foul and filthy black spot has not been found in london for a long time, and the police have done uncommonly well in bringing the matter to light. i consider that the books are likely to do a great deal of harm." fancy the state of mind of the man who can talk such poisonous nonsense; who, with the knowledge of what piccadilly is at night in his mind, can speak of the translation of a masterpiece as one of the "most filthy black spots" to be found in london. to say that such a man is insane is, i suppose, going too far; but to say that he does not know the value or the meaning of the words he uses, to say that he is driven by an extraordinary and brainless prejudice, is certainly the modesty of truth. it is this sort of perversity on the part of sir a. de rutzen and of nine out of ten englishmen that makes frenchmen, germans and italians speak of them as ingrained hypocrites. but they are not nearly so hypocritical as they are uneducated and unintelligent, rebellious to the humanising influence of art and literature. the ordinary englishman would much prefer to be called an athlete than a poet. the puritan commonwealth parliament ordered the pictures of charles i. to be sold, but such of them as were indecent to be burnt; accordingly half a dozen titians were solemnly burnt and the nucleus of a great national gallery destroyed. one can see sir a. de rutzen solemnly assisting at this holocaust and devoutly deciding that all the masterpieces which showed temptingly a woman's beautiful breasts were "foul and filthy black spots" and must be burnt as harmful. or rather one can see that sir a. de rutzen has in two and a half centuries managed to get a little beyond this primitive puritan standpoint: he might allow a pictorial masterpiece to-day to pass unburnt, but a written masterpiece is still to him anathema. a part of this prejudice comes from the fact that the english have a special dislike for every form of sexual indulgence. it is not consistent with their ideal of manhood, and, like the poor foolish magistrate, they have not yet grasped the truth, which one might have thought the example of the japanese would have made plain by now to the dullest, that a nation may be extraordinarily brave, vigorous and self-sacrificing and at the same time intensely sensuous, and sensitive to every refinement of passion. if the great english middle class were as well educated as the german middle class, such a judgment as this of sir a. de rutzen would be scouted as ridiculous and absurd, or rather would be utterly unthinkable. in anglo-saxon countries both the artist and the sexual passion are under a ban. the race is more easily moved martially than amorously and it regards its overpowering combative instincts as virtuous just as it is apt to despise what it likes to call "languishing love." the poet middleton couldn't put his dream city in england--a city of fair skies and fairer streets: and joy was there; in all the city's length i saw no fingers trembling for the sword; nathless they doted on their bodies' strength, that they might gentler be. love was their lord. both america and england to-day offer terrifying examples of the despotism of an unenlightened and vulgar public opinion in all the highest concerns of man--in art, in literature and in religion. there is no despotism on earth so soul-destroying to the artist: it is baser and more degrading than anything known in russia. the consequences of this tyranny of an uneducated middle class and a barbarian aristocracy are shown in detail in the trial of oscar wilde and in the savagery with which he was treated by the english officers of justice. chapter xv as soon as i heard that oscar wilde was arrested and bail refused, i tried to get permission to visit him in holloway. i was told i should have to see him in a kind of barred cage; and talk to him from the distance of at least a yard. it seemed to me too painful for both of us, so i went to the higher authorities and got permission to see him in a private room. the governor met me at the entrance of the prison: to my surprise he was more than courteous; charmingly kind and sympathetic. "we all hope," he said, "that he will soon be free; this is no place for him. everyone likes him, everyone. it is a great pity." he evidently felt much more than he said, and my heart went out to him. he left me in a bare room furnished with a small square deal table and two kitchen chairs. in a moment or two oscar came in accompanied by a warder. in silence we clasped hands. he looked miserably anxious and pulled down and i felt that i had nothing to do but cheer him up. "i am glad to see you," i cried. "i hope the warders are kind to you?" "yes, frank," he replied in a hopeless way, "but everyone else is against me: it is hard." "don't harbour that thought," i answered; "many whom you don't know, and whom you will never know, are on your side. stand for them and for the myriads who are coming afterwards and make a fight of it." "i'm afraid i'm not a fighter, frank, as you once said," he replied sadly, "and they won't give me bail. how can i get evidence or think in this place of torture? fancy refusing me bail," he went on, "though i stayed in london when i might have gone abroad." "you should have gone," i cried in french, hot with indignation; "why didn't you go, the moment you came out of the court?" "i couldn't think at first," he answered in the same tongue; "i couldn't think at all: i was numbed." "your friends should have thought of it," i insisted, not knowing then that they had done their best. at this moment the warder, who had turned away towards the door, came back. "you are not allowed, sir, to talk in a foreign language," he said quietly. "you will understand we have to obey the rules. besides, the prisoner must not speak of this prison as a place of torture. i ought to report that; i'm sorry." the misery of it all brought tears to my eyes: his gaolers even felt sorry for him. i thanked the warder and turned again to oscar. "don't let yourself fear at all," i exclaimed. "you will have your chance again and must take it; only don't lose heart and don't be witty next time in court. the jury hate it. they regard it as intellectual superiority and impudence. treat all things seriously and with grave dignity. defend yourself as david would have defended his love for jonathan. make them all listen to you. i would undertake to get free with half your talent even if i were guilty; a resolution not to be beaten is always half the battle.... make your trial memorable from your entrance into the court to the decision of the jury. use every opportunity and give your real character a chance to fight for you." i spoke with tears in my eyes and rage in my heart. "i will do my best, frank," he said despondingly, "i will do my best. if i were out of this place, i might think of something, but it is dreadful to be here. one has to go to bed by daylight and the nights are interminable." "haven't you a watch?" i cried. "they don't allow you to have a watch in prison," he replied. "but why not?" i asked in amazement. i did not know that every rule in an english prison is cunningly devised to annoy and degrade the unfortunate prisoner. oscar lifted his hands hopelessly: "one may not smoke; not even a cigarette; and so i cannot sleep. all the past comes back; the golden hours; the june days in london with the sunshine dappling the grass and the silken rustling of the wind in the trees. do you remember wordsworth speaks 'of the wind in the trees'? how i wish i could hear it now, breathe it once again. i might get strength then to fight." "is the food good?" i asked. "it's all right; i get it from outside. the food doesn't matter. it is the smoking i miss, the freedom, the companionship. my mind will not act when i'm alone. i can only think of what has been and torment myself. already i've been punished enough for the sins of a lifetime." "is there nothing i can do for you, nothing you want?" i asked. "no, frank," he answered, "it was kind of you to come to see me, i wish i could tell you how kind." "don't think of it," i said; "if i'm any good send for me at any moment: a word will bring me. they allow you books, don't they?" "yes, frank." "i wish you would get the 'apologia of plato'," i said, "and take a big draught of that deathless smiling courage of socrates." "ah, frank, how much more humane were the greeks. they let his friends see him and talk to him by the hour, though he was condemned to death. there were no warders there to listen, no degrading conditions." "quite true," i cried, suddenly realising how much better oscar wilde would have been treated in athens two thousand years ago. "our progress is mainly change; we don't shed our cruelty; even christ has not been able to humanise us." he nodded his head. at first he seemed greatly distressed; but i managed to encourage him a little, for at the close of the talk he questioned me: "do you really think i may win, frank?" "of course you'll win," i replied. "you must win: you must not think of being beaten. take it that they will not want to convict you. say it to yourself in the court; don't let yourself fear for a moment. your enemies are merely stupid, unhappy creatures crawling about for a few miserable years between earth and sun; fated to die and leave no trace, no memory. remember you are fighting for all of us, for every artist and thinker who is to be born into the english world.... it is better to win like galileo than to be burnt like giordano bruno. don't let them make another martyr. use all your brains and eloquence and charm. don't be afraid. they will not condemn you if they know you." "i have been trying to think," he said, "trying to make up my mind to bear one whole year of this life. it's dreadful, frank, i had no idea that prison was so dreadful." the warder again drew down his brows. i hastened to change the subject. "that's why you must resolve not to have any more of it," i said; "i wish i had seen you when you came out of court, but i really thought you didn't want me; you turned away from me." "oh, frank, how could i?" he cried. "i should have been so grateful to you." "i'm very shortsighted," i rejoined, "and i thought you did. it is our foolish little vanities which prevent us acting as we should. but let me know if i can do anything for you. if you want me, i'll come at any moment." i said this because the warder had already given me a sign; he now said: "time is up." once again we clasped hands. "you must win," i said; "don't think of defeat. even your enemies are human. convert them. you can do it, believe me," and i went with dread in my heart, and pity and indignation. be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season: let us endure an hour and see injustice done. the governor met me almost at the door. "it is terrible," i exclaimed. "this is no place for him," he answered. he has nothing to do with us here. everyone likes him and pities him: the warders, everyone. anything i can do to make his stay tolerable shall be done." we shook hands. i think there were tears in both our eyes as we parted. this humane governor had taught me that oscar's gentleness and kindness--his sweetness of nature--would win all hearts if it had time to make itself known. yet there he was in prison. his face and figure came before me again and again: the unshaven face; the frightened, sad air; the hopeless, toneless voice. the cleanliness even of the bare hard room was ugly; the english are foolish enough to degrade those they punish. revolt was blazing in me. as i went away i looked up at the mediæval castellated gateway of the place, and thought how perfectly the architecture suited the spirit of the institution. the whole thing belongs to the middle ages, and not to our modern life. fancy having both prison and hospital side by side; indeed a hospital even in the prison; torture and lovingkindness; punishment and pity under the same roof. what a blank contradiction and stupidity. will civilisation never reach humane ideals? will men always punish most severely the sins they do not understand and which hold for them no temptation? did jesus suffer in vain? * * * * * oscar wilde was committed on the th of april; a "true bill" was found against him by the grand jury on the th; and, as the case was put down for trial at the old bailey almost immediately, a postponement was asked for till the may sessions, on the ground first that the defence had not had time to prepare their case and further, that in the state of popular feeling at the moment, mr. wilde would not get a fair and impartial trial. mr. justice charles, who was to try the case, heard the application and refused it peremptorily: "any suggestion that the defendant would not have a fair trial was groundless," he declared; yet he knew better. in his summing up of the case on may st he stated that "for weeks it had been impossible to open a newspaper without reading some reference to the case," and when he asked the jury not to allow "preconceived opinions to weigh with them" he was admitting the truth that every newspaper reference was charged with dislike and contempt of oscar wilde. a fair trial indeed! the trial took place at the old bailey, three days later, april th, , before mr. justice charles. mr. c.f. gill and a. gill with mr. horace avory appeared for the public prosecutor. mr. wilde was again defended by sir edward clarke, mr. charles mathews and mr. travers humphreys, while mr. j.p. grain and mr. paul taylor were counsel for the other prisoner. the trial began on a saturday and the whole of the day was taken up with a legal argument. i am not going to give the details of the case. i shall only note the chief features of it and the unfairness which characterised it. sir edward clarke pointed out that there was one set of charges under the criminal law amendment act and another set of charges of conspiracy. he urged that the charges of conspiracy should be dropped. under the counts alleging conspiracy, the defendants could not be called on as witnesses, which put the defence at a disadvantage. in the end the judge decided that there were inconveniences; but he would not accede to sir edward clarke's request. later in the trial, however, mr. gill himself withdrew the charges of conspiracy, and the judge admitted explicitly in his summing up that, if he had known the evidence which was to be offered, he would not have allowed these charges of conspiracy to be made. by this confession he apparently cleared his conscience just as pilate washed his hands. but the wrong had already been done. not only did this charge of conspiracy embarrass the defence, but if it had never been made, as it should never have been made, then sir edward clarke would have insisted and could have insisted properly that the two men should be tried separately, and wilde would not have been discredited by being coupled with taylor, whose character was notorious and who had already been in the hands of the police on a similar charge. this was not the only instance of unfairness in the conduct of the prosecution. the treasury put a youth called atkins in the box, thus declaring him to be at least a credible witness; but atkins was proved by sir edward clarke to have perjured himself in the court in the most barefaced way. in fact the treasury witnesses against wilde were all blackmailers and people of the lowest character, with two exceptions. the exceptions were a boy named mavor and a youth named shelley. with regard to mavor the judge admitted that no evidence had been offered that he could place before the jury; but in his summing up he was greatly affected by the evidence of shelley. shelley was a young man who seemed to be afflicted with a species of religious mania. mr. justice charles gave great weight to his testimony. he invited the jury to say that "although there was, in his correspondence which had been read, evidence of excitability, to talk of him as a young man who did not know what he was saying was to exaggerate the effect of his letters." he went on to ask with much solemnity: "why should this young man have invented a tale, which must have been unpleasant to him to present from the witness box?" in the later trial before mr. justice wills the judge had to rule out the evidence of shelley _in toto_, because it was wholly without corroboration. if the case before mr. justice charles had not been confused with the charges of conspiracy, there is no doubt that he too would have ruled out the evidence of shelley, and then his summing up must have been entirely in favour of wilde. the singular malevolence of the prosecution also can be estimated by their use of the so-called "literary argument." wilde had written in a magazine called _the chameleon_. _the chameleon_ contained an immoral story, with which wilde had nothing to do, and which he had repudiated as offensive. yet the prosecution tried to make him responsible in some way for the immorality of a writing which he knew nothing about. wilde had said two poems of lord alfred douglas were "beautiful." the prosecution declared that these poems were in essence a defence of the vilest immorality, but is it not possible for the most passionate poem, even the most vicious, to be "beautiful"? nothing was ever written more passionate than one of the poems of sappho. yet a fragment has been selected out and preserved by the admiration of a hundred generations of men. the prosecution was in the position all the time of one who declared that a man who praised a nude picture must necessarily be immoral. such a contention would be inconceivable in any other civilised country. even the judge was on much the same intellectual level. it would not be fair, he admitted, to condemn a poet or dramatic writer by his works and he went on: "it is unfortunately true that while some of our greatest writers have passed long years in writing nothing but the most wholesome literature--literature of the highest genius, and which anybody can read, such as the literature of sir walter scott and charles dickens; it is also true that there were other great writers, more especially in the eighteenth century, perfectly noble-minded men themselves, who somehow or other have permitted themselves to pen volumes which it is painful for persons of ordinary modesty and decency to read." it would have been more honest and more liberal to have brushed away the nonsensical indictment in a sentence. would the treasury have put shakespeare on trial for "hamlet" or "lear," or would they have condemned the writer of "the song of solomon" for immorality, or sent st. paul to prison for his "epistle to the corinthians"? middle-class prejudice and hypocritic canting twaddle from judge and advocate dragged their weary length along for days and days. on wednesday sir edward clarke made his speech for the defence. he pointed out the unfairness of the charges of conspiracy which had tardily been withdrawn. he went on to say that the most remarkable characteristic of the case was the fact that it had been the occasion for conduct on the part of certain sections of the press which was disgraceful, and which imperilled the administration of justice, and was in the highest degree injurious to the client for whom he was pleading. nothing, he concluded, could be more unfair than the way mr. wilde had been criticised in the press for weeks and weeks. but no judge interfered on his behalf. sir edward clarke evidently thought that to prove unfairness would not even influence the minds of the london jury. he was content to repudiate the attempt to judge mr. wilde by his books or by an article which he had condemned, or by poems which he had not written. he laid stress on the fact that mr. wilde had himself brought the charge against lord queensberry which had provoked the whole investigation: "on march th, mr. wilde," he said, "knew the catalogue of accusations"; and he asked: did the jury believe that, if he had been guilty, he would have stayed in england and brought about the first trial? insane would hardly be the word for such conduct, if mr. wilde really had been guilty. moreover, before even hearing the specific accusations, mr. wilde had gone into the witness box to deny them. clarke's speech was a good one, but nothing out of the common: no new arguments were used in it; not one striking illustration. needless to say the higher advocacy of sympathy was conspicuous by its absence. again, the interesting part of the trial was the cross-examination of oscar wilde. mr. gill examined him at length on the two poems which lord alfred douglas had contributed to _the chameleon_, which mr. wilde had called "beautiful." the first was in "praise of shame," the second was one called "two loves." sir edward clarke, interposing, said: "that's not mr. wilde's, mr. gill." mr. gill: "i am not aware that i said it was." sir edward clarke: "i thought you would be glad to say it was not." mr. gill insisted that mr. wilde should explain the poem in "praise of shame." mr. wilde said that the first poem seemed obscure, but, when pressed as to the "love" described in the second poem, he let himself go for the first time and perhaps the only time during the trial; he said: "the 'love' that dare not speak its name in this century is such a great affection of an older for a younger man as there was between david and jonathan, such as plato made the very base of his philosophy and such as you find in the sonnets of michaelangelo and shakespeare--a deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect, and dictates great works of art like those of shakespeare and michaelangelo and those two letters of mine, such as they are, and which is in this century misunderstood--so misunderstood that, on account of it, i am placed where i am now. it is beautiful; it is fine; it is the noblest form of affection. it is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life. that it should be so the world does not understand. it mocks at it and sometimes puts one into the pillory for it." at this stage there was loud applause in the gallery of the court, and the learned judge at once said: "i shall have the court cleared if there is the slightest manifestation of feeling. there must be complete silence preserved." mr. justice charles repressed the cheering in favour of mr. oscar wilde with great severity, though mr. justice collins did not attempt to restrain the cheering which filled his court and accompanied the dispersing crowd into the street on the acquittal of lord queensberry. in spite, however, of the unfair criticisms of the press; in spite of the unfair conduct of the prosecution, and in spite of the manifest prejudice and philistine ignorance of the judge, the jury disagreed. then followed the most dramatic incident of the whole trial. once more sir edward clarke applied for bail on behalf of oscar wilde. "after what has happened," he said, "i do not think the crown will make any objection to this application." the crown left the matter to the judge, no doubt in all security; for the judge immediately refused the application. sir edward clarke then went on to say that, in the case of a re-trial, it ought not to take place immediately. he continued: "the burden of those engaged in the case is very heavy, and i think it only right that the treasury should have an opportunity between this and another session of considering the mode in which the case should be presented, if indeed it is presented at all." mr. gill immediately rose to the challenge. "the case will certainly be tried again," he declared, "whether it is to be tried again at once or in the next sessions will be a matter of convenience. probably the most desirable course will be for the case to go to the next sessions. that is the usual course." mr. justice charles: "if that is the usual course, let it be so." the next session of the central criminal court opened on the th of the same month. not three weeks' respite, still it might be enough: it was inconceivable that a judge in chambers would refuse to accept bail: fortunately the law allows him no option. * * * * * the application for bail was made in due course to a judge in chambers, and in spite of the bad example of the magistrate, and of mr. justice charles, it was granted and wilde was set free in his own recognizance of £ , with two other sureties for £ , each. it spoke volumes for the charm and fascination of the man that people were found to undertake this onerous responsibility. their names deserve to be recorded; one was lord douglas of hawick, the other a clergyman, the rev. stewart headlam. i offered to be one bail: but i was not a householder at the time and my name was, therefore, not acceptable. i suppose the treasury objected, which shows, i am inclined to think, some glimmering of sense on its part. as soon as the bail was accepted i began to think of preparations for oscar's escape. it was high time something was done to save him from the wolves. the day after his release a london morning journal was not ashamed to publish what it declared was a correct analysis of the voting of the jury on the various counts. according to this authority, ten jurors were generally for conviction and two against, in the case of wilde; the statement was widely accepted because it added that the voting was more favourable to taylor than to wilde, which was so unexpected and so senseless that it carried with it a certain plausibility: _credo quia incredible_. i had seen enough of english justice and english judges and english journals to convince me that oscar wilde had no more chance of a fair trial than if he had been an irish "invincible." everyone had made up his mind and would not even listen to reason: he was practically certain to be convicted, and if convicted perfectly certain to be punished with savage ferocity. the judge would probably think he was showing impartiality by punishing him for his qualities of charm and high intelligence. for the first time in my life i understood the full significance of montaigne's confession that if he were accused of stealing the towers of notre dame, he would fly the kingdom rather than risk a trial, and montaigne was a lawyer. i set to work at once to complete my preparations. i did not think i ran any risk in helping oscar to get away. the newspapers had seized the opportunity of the trials before the magistrate and before mr. justice charles and had overwhelmed the public with such a sea of nauseous filth and impurity as could only be exposed to the public nostrils in pudibond england. everyone, i thought, must be sick of the testimony and eager to have done with the whole thing. in this i may have been mistaken. the hatred of wilde seemed universal and extraordinarily malignant. i wanted a steam yacht. curiously enough on the very day when i was thinking of running down to cowes to hire one, a gentleman at lunch mentioned that he had one in the thames. i asked him could i charter it? "certainly," he replied, "and i will let you have it for the bare cost for the next month or two." "one month will do for me," i said. "where are you going?" he asked. i don't know why, but a thought came into my head: i would tell him the truth, and see what he would say. i took him aside and told him the bare facts. at once he declared that the yacht was at my service for such work as that without money: he would be too glad to lend it to me: it was horrible that such a man as wilde should be treated as a common criminal. he felt as henry viii felt in shakespeare's play of that name: "... there's some of ye, i see, more out of malice than integrity, would try him to the utmost, ..." it was not the generosity in my friend's offer that astonished me, but the consideration for wilde; i thought the lenity so singular in england that i feel compelled to explain it. though an englishman born and bred my friend was by race a jew--a man of the widest culture, who had no sympathy whatever with the vice attributed to oscar. feeling consoled because there was at least one generous, kind heart in the world, i went next day to willie wilde's house in oakley street to see oscar. i had written to him on the previous evening that i was coming to take oscar out to lunch. willie wilde met me at the door; he was much excited apparently by the notoriety attaching to oscar; he was volubly eager to tell me that, though we had not been friends, yet my support of oscar was most friendly and he would therefore bury the hatchet. he had never interested me, and i was unconscious of any hatchet and careless whether he buried it or blessed it. i repeated drily that i had come to take oscar to lunch. "i know you have," he said, "and it's most kind of you; but he can't go." "why not?" i asked as i went in. oscar was gloomy, depressed, and evidently suffering. willie's theatrical insincerity had annoyed me a little, and i was eager to get away. suddenly i saw sherard, who has since done his best for oscar's memory. in his book there is a record of this visit of mine. he was standing silently by the wall. "i've come to take you to lunch," i said to oscar. "but he cannot go out," cried willie. "of course he can," i insisted, "i've come to take him." "but where to?" asked willie. "yes, frank, where to?" repeated oscar meekly. "anywhere you like," i said, "the savoy if you like, the café royal for choice." "oh, frank, i dare not," cried oscar. "no, no," cried willie, "there would be a scandal; someone'll insult him and it would do harm; set people's backs up." "oh, frank, i dare not," echoed oscar. "no one will insult him. there will be no scandal," i replied, "and it will do good." "but what will people say?" cried willie. "no one ever knows what people will say," i retorted, "and people always speak best of those who don't care a damn what they do say." "oh, frank, i could not go to a place like the savoy where i am well known," objected oscar. "all right," i agreed, "you shall go where you like. all london is before us. i must have a talk with you, and it will do you good to get out into the air, and sun yourself and feel the wind in your face. come, there's a hansom at the door." it was not long before i had conquered his objections and willie's absurdities and taken him with me. scarcely had we left the house when his spirits began to lift, and he rippled into laughter. "really, frank, it is strange, but i do not feel frightened and depressed any more, and the people don't boo and hiss at me. is it not dreadful the way they insult the fallen?" "we are not going to talk about it," i said; "we are going to talk of victories and not of defeats." "ah, frank, there will be no more victories for me." "nonsense," i cried; "now where are we going?" "some quiet place where i shall not be known." "you really would not like the café royal?" i asked. "nothing will happen to you, and i think you would probably find that one or two people would wish you luck. you have had a rare bad time, and there must be some people who understand what you have gone through and know that it is sufficient punishment for any sin." "no, frank," he persisted, "i cannot, i really cannot." at length we decided on a restaurant in great portland street. we drove there and had a private room. i had two purposes in me, springing from the one root, the intense desire to help him. i felt sure that if the case came up again for trial he would only be convicted through what i may call good, honest testimony. the jury with their english prejudice; or rather i should say with their healthy english instincts would not take the evidence of vile blackmailers against him; he could only be convicted through untainted evidence such as the evidence of the chambermaids at the savoy hotel, and their evidence was over two years old and was weak, inasmuch as the facts, if facts, were not acted upon by the management. still their testimony was very clear and very positive, and, taken together with that of the blackmailers, sufficient to ensure conviction. after our lunch i laid this view before oscar. he agreed with me that it was probably the chambermaids' testimony which had weighed most heavily against him. their statement and shelley's had brought about the injurious tone in the judge's summing up. the judge himself had admitted as much. "the chambermaids' evidence is wrong," oscar declared. "they are mistaken, frank. it was not me they spoke about at the savoy hotel. it was ----. i was never bold enough. i went to see ---- in the morning in his room." "thank god," i said, "but why didn't sir edward clarke bring that out?" "he wanted to; but i would not let him. i told him he must not. i must be true to my friend. i could not let him." "but he must," i said, "at any rate if he does not i will. i have three weeks and in that three weeks i am going to find the chambermaid. i am going to get a plan of your room and your friend's room, and i'm going to make her understand that she was mistaken. she probably remembered you because of your size: she mistook you for the guilty person; everybody has always taken you for the ringleader and not the follower." "but what good is it, frank, what good is it?" he cried. "even if you convinced the chambermaid and she retracted; there would still be shelley, and the judge laid stress on shelley's evidence as untainted." "shelley is an accomplice," i cried, "his testimony needs corroboration. you don't understand these legal quibbles; but there was not a particle of corroboration. sir edward clarke should have had his testimony ruled out. 'twas that conspiracy charge," i cried, "which complicated the matter. shelley's evidence, too, will be ruled out at the next trial, you'll see." "oh, frank," he said, "you talk with passion and conviction, as if i were innocent." "but you are innocent," i cried in amaze, "aren't you?" "no, frank," he said, "i thought you knew that all along." i stared at him stupidly. "no," i said dully, "i did not know. i did not believe the accusation. i did not believe it for a moment." i suppose the difference in my tone and manner struck him, for he said, timidly putting out his hand: "this will make a great difference to you, frank?" "no," i said, pulling myself together and taking his hand; and after a pause i went on: "no: curiously enough it has made no difference to me at all. i do not know why; i suppose i have got more sympathy than morality in me. it has surprised me, dumbfounded me. the thing has always seemed fantastic and incredible to me and now you make it exist for me; but it has no effect on my friendship; none upon my resolve to help you. but i see that the battle is going to be infinitely harder than i imagined. in fact, now i don't think we have a chance of winning a verdict. i came here hoping against fear that it could be won, though i always felt that it would be better in the present state of english feeling to go abroad and avoid the risk of a trial. now there is no question: you would be insane, as clarke said, to stay in england. but why on earth did alfred douglas, knowing the truth, ever wish you to attack queensberry?" "he's very bold and obstinate, frank," said oscar weakly. "well, now i must play crito," i resumed, smiling, "and take you away before the ship comes from delos." "oh, frank, that would be wonderful; but it's impossible, quite impossible. i should be arrested before i left london, and shamed again in public: they would boo at me and shout insults.... oh, it is impossible; i could not risk it." "nonsense," i replied, "i believe the authorities would be only too glad if you went. i think clarke's challenge to gill was curiously ill-advised. he should have let sleeping dogs lie. combative gill was certain to take up the gauntlet. if clarke had lain low there might have been no second trial. but that can't be helped now. don't believe that it's even difficult to get away; it's easy. i don't propose to go by folkestone or dover." "but, frank, what about the people who have stood bail for me? i couldn't leave them to suffer; they would lose their thousands." "i shan't let them lose," i replied, "i am quite willing to take half on my own shoulders at once and you can pay the other thousand or so within a very short time by writing a couple of plays. american papers would be only too glad to pay you for an interview. the story of your escape would be worth a thousand pounds; they would give you almost any price for it. "leave everything to me, but in the meantime i want you to get out in the air as much as possible. you are not looking well; you are not yourself." "that house is depressing, frank. willie makes such a merit of giving me shelter; he means well, i suppose; but it is all dreadful." my notes of this talk finish in this way, but the conversation left on me a deep impression of oscar's extraordinary weakness or rather extraordinary softness of nature backed up and redeemed by a certain magnanimity: he would not leave the friends in the lurch who had gone bail for him; he would not give his friend away even to save himself; but neither would he exert himself greatly to win free. he was like a woman, i said to myself in wonder, and my pity for him grew keener. he seemed mentally stunned by the sudden fall, by the discovery of how violently men can hate. he had never seen the wolf in man before; the vile brute instinct that preys upon the fallen. he had not believed that such exultant savagery existed; it had never come within his ken; now it appalled him. and so he stood there waiting for what might happen without courage to do anything but suffer. my heart ached with pity for him, and yet i felt a little impatient with him as well. why give up like that? the eternal quarrel of the combative nature with those who can't or won't fight. before getting into the carriage to drive back to his brother's, i ascertained that he did not need any money. he told me that he had sufficient even for the expenses of a second trial: this surprised me greatly, for he was very careless about money; but i found out from him later that a very noble and cultured woman, a friend of both of us, miss s----, a jewess by race tho' not by religion, had written to him asking if she could help him financially, as she had been distressed by hearing of his bankruptcy, and feared that he might be in need. if that were the case she begged him to let her be his banker, in order that he might be properly defended. he wrote in reply, saying that he was indeed in uttermost distress, that he wanted money, too, to help his mother as he had always helped her, and that he supposed the expenses of the second trial would be from £ to £ , . thereupon miss s---- sent him a cheque for £ , , assuring him that it cost her little even in self-sacrifice, and declaring that it was only inadequate recognition of the pleasure she had had through his delightful talks. such actions are beyond praise; it is the perfume of such sweet and noble human sympathy that makes this wild beasts' cage of a world habitable for men. before parting we had agreed to meet a few nights afterwards at mrs. leverson's, where he had been invited to dinner, and where i also had been invited. by that time, i thought to myself, all my preparations would be perfected. looking back now i see clearly that my affection for oscar wilde dates from his confession to me that afternoon. i had been a friend of his for years; but what had bound us together had been purely intellectual, a community of literary tastes and ambitions. now his trust in me and frankness had thrown down the barrier between us; and made me conscious of the extraordinary femininity and gentle weakness of his nature, and, instead of condemning him as i have always condemned that form of sexual indulgence, i felt only pity for him and a desire to protect and help him. from that day on our friendship became intimate: i began to divine him; i knew now that his words would always be more generous and noble than his actions; knew too that i must take his charm of manner and vivacity of intercourse for real virtues, and indeed they were as real as the beauty of flowers; and i was aware as by some sixth sense that, where his vanity was concerned, i might expect any injustice from him. i was sure beforehand, however, that i should always forgive him, or rather that i should always accept whatever he did and love him for the charm and sweetness and intellect in him and hold myself more than recompensed for anything i might be able to do, by his delightful companionship. chapter xvi in spite of the wit of the hostess and her exquisite cordiality, our dinner at mrs. leverson's was hardly a success. oscar was not himself; contrary to his custom he sat silent and downcast. from time to time he sighed heavily, and his leaden dejection gradually infected all of us. i was not sorry, for i wanted to get him away early; by ten o'clock we had left the house and were in the cromwell road. he preferred to walk: without his noticing it i turned up queen's gate towards the park. after walking for ten minutes i said to him: "i want to speak to you seriously. do you happen to know where erith is?" "no, frank." "it is a little landing place on the thames," i went on, "not many miles away: it can be reached by a fast pair of horses and a brougham in a very short time. there at erith is a steam yacht ready to start at a moment's notice; she has steam up now, one hundred pounds pressure to the square inch in her boilers; her captain's waiting, her crew ready--a greyhound in leash; she can do fifteen knots an hour without being pressed. in one hour she would be free of the thames and on the high seas--(delightful phrase, eh?)--high seas indeed where there is freedom uncontrolled. "if one started now one could breakfast in france, at boulogne, let us say, or dieppe; one could lunch at st. malo or st. enogat or any place you like on the coast of normandy, and one could dine comfortably at the sables d'olonne, where there is not an englishman to be found, and where sunshine reigns even in may from morning till night. "what do you say, oscar, will you come and try a homely french bourgeois dinner to-morrow evening at an inn i know almost at the water's edge? we could sit out on the little terrace and take our coffee in peace under the broad vine leaves while watching the silver pathway of the moon widen on the waters. we could smile at the miseries of london and its wolfish courts shivering in cold grey mist hundreds of miles away. does not the prospect tempt you?" i spoke at leisure, tasting each delight, looking for his gladness. "oh, frank," he cried, "how wonderful; but how impossible!" "impossible! don't be absurd," i retorted. "do you see those lights yonder?" and i showed him some lights at the park gate on the top of the hill in front of us. "yes, frank." "that's a brougham," i said, "with a pair of fast horses. it will take us for a midnight visit to the steam yacht in double-quick time. there's a little library on board of french books and english; i've ordered supper in the cabin--lobster à l'americaine and a bottle of pommery. you've never seen the mouth of the thames at night, have you? it's a scene from wonderland; houses like blobs of indigo fencing you in; ships drifting past like black ghosts in the misty air, and the purple sky above never so dark as the river, the river with its shifting lights of ruby and emerald and topaz, like an oily, opaque serpent gliding with a weird life of its own.... come; you must visit the yacht." i turned to him, but he was no longer by my side. i gasped; what had happened? the mist must have hidden him; i ran back ten yards, and there he was leaning against the railing, hung up with his head on his arm shaking. "what's the matter, oscar?" i cried. "what on earth's the matter?" "oh, frank, i can't go," he cried, "i can't. it would be too wonderful; but it's impossible. i should be seized by the police. you don't know the police." "nonsense," i cried, "the police can't stop you and not a man of them will see you from start to finish. besides, i have loose money for any i do meet, and none of them can resist a 'tip.' you will simply get out of the brougham and walk fifty yards and you will be on the yacht and free. in fact, if you like you shall not come out of the brougham until the sailors surround you as a guard of honour. on board the yacht no one will touch you. no warrant runs there. come on, man!" "oh, frank," he groaned, "it's impossible!" "what's impossible?" i insisted. "let's consider everything anew at breakfast to-morrow morning in france. if you want to come back, there's nothing to prevent you. the yacht will take you back in twenty-four hours. you will not have broken your bail; you'll have done nothing wrong. you can go to france, germany or siberia so long as you come back by the twentieth of may. take it that i offer you a holiday in france for ten days. surely it is better to spend a week with me than in that dismal house in oakley street, where the very door gives one the creeps." "oh, frank, i'd love to," he groaned. "i see everything you say, but i can't. i dare not. i'm caught, frank, in a trap, i can only wait for the end." i began to get impatient; he was weaker than i had imagined, weaker a hundred times. "come for a trip, then, man," i cried, and i brought him within twenty yards of the carriage; but there he stopped as if he had made up his mind. "no, no, i can't come. i could not go about in france feeling that the policeman's hand might fall on my shoulder at any moment. i could not live a life of fear and doubt: it would kill me in a month." his tone was decided. "why let your imagination run away with you?" i pleaded. "do be reasonable for once. fear and doubt would soon be over. if the police don't get you in france within a week after the date fixed for the trial, you need have no further fear, for they won't get you at all: they don't want you. you're making mountains out of molehills with nervous fancies." "i should be arrested." "nonsense," i replied, "who would arrest you? no one has the right. you are out on bail: your bail answers for you till the th. money talks, man; englishmen always listen to money. it'll do you good with the public and the jury to come back from france to stand your trial. do come," and i took him by the arm; but he would not move. to my astonishment he faced me and said: "and my sureties?" "we'll pay 'em," i replied, "both of 'em, if you break your bail. come," but he would not. "frank, if i were not in oakley street to-night willie would tell the police." "your brother?" i cried. "yes," he said, "willie." "good god!" i exclaimed; "but let him tell. i have not mentioned erith or the steam yacht to a soul. it's the last place in the world the police would suspect and before he talks we shall be out of reach. besides they cannot do anything; you are doing nothing wrong. please trust me, you do nothing questionable even till you omit to enter the old bailey on the th of may." "you don't know willie," he continued, "he has made my solicitors buy letters of mine; he has blackmailed me." "whew!" i whistled. "but in that case you'll have no compunction in leaving him without saying 'goodbye.' let's go and get into the brougham." "no, no," he repeated, "you don't understand; i can't go, i cannot go." "do you mean it really?" i asked. "do you mean you will not come and spend a week yachting with me?" "i cannot." i drew him a few paces nearer the carriage: something of desolation and despair in his voice touched me: i looked at him. tears were pouring down his face; he was the picture of misery, yet i could not move him. "come into the carriage," i said, hoping that the swift wind in his face would freshen him up, give him a moment's taste of the joy of living and sharpen the desire of freedom. "yes, frank," he said, "if you will take me to oakley street." "i would as soon take you to prison," i replied; "but as you wish." the next moment we had got in and were swinging down queen's gate. the mist seemed to lend keenness to the air. at the bottom of queen's gate the coachman swept of himself to the left into the cromwell road; oscar seemed to wake out of his stupor. "no, frank," he cried, "no, no," and he fumbled at the handle of the door, "i must get out; i will not go. i will not go." "sit still," i said in despair, "i'll tell the coachman," and i put my head out of the window and cried: "oakley street, oakley street, chelsea, robert." i do not think i spoke again till we got to oakley street. i was consumed with rage and contemptuous impatience. i had done the best i knew and had failed. why? i had no idea. i have never known why he refused to come. i don't think he knew himself. such resignation i had never dreamt of. it was utterly new to me. i used to think of resignation in a vague way as of something rather beautiful; ever since, i have thought of it with impatience: resignation is the courage of the irresolute. oscar's obstinacy was the obverse of his weakness. it is astonishing how inertia rules some natures. the attraction of waiting and doing nothing is intense for those who live in thought and detest action. as we turned into oakley street, oscar said to me: "you are not angry with me, frank?" and he put out his hand. "no, no," i said, "why should i be angry? you are the master of your fate. i can only offer advice." "do come and see me soon," he pleaded. "my bolt is shot," i replied; "but i'll come in two or three days' time, as soon as i have anything of importance to say.... don't forget, oscar, the yacht is there and will be there waiting until the th; the yacht will always be ready and the brougham." "good night, frank," he said, "good night, and thank you." he got out and went into the house, the gloomy sordid house where the brother lived who would sell his blood for a price! * * * * * three or four days later we met again, but to my amaze oscar had not changed his mind. to talk of him as cast down is the precise truth; he seemed to me as one who had fallen from a great height and lay half conscious, stunned on the ground. the moment you moved him, even to raise his head, it gave him pain and he cried out to be left alone. there he lay prone, and no one could help him. it was painful to witness his dumb misery: his mind even, his sunny bright intelligence, seemed to have deserted him. once again he came out with me to lunch. afterwards we drove through regent's park as the quietest way to hampstead and had a talk. the air and swift motion did him good. the beauty of the view from the heath seemed to revive him. i tried to cheer him up. "you must know," i said, "that you can win if you want to. you can not only bring the jury to doubt, but you can make the judge doubt as well. i was convinced of your innocence in spite of all the witnesses, and i knew more about you than they did. in the trial before mr. justice charles, the thing that saved you was that you spoke of the love of david and jonathan and the sweet affection which the common world is determined not to understand. there is another point against you which you have not touched on yet: gill asked you what you had in common with those serving-men and stable boys. you have not explained that. you have explained that you love youth, the brightness and the gaiety of it, but you have not explained what seems inexplicable to most men, that you should go about with servants and strappers." "difficult to explain, frank, isn't it, without the truth?" evidently his mind was not working. "no," i replied, "easy, simple. think of shakespeare. how did he know dogberry and pistol, bardolph and doll tearsheet? he must have gone about with them. you don't go about with public school boys of your own class, for you know them; you have nothing to learn from them: they can teach you nothing. but the stable boy and servant you cannot sketch in your plays without knowing him, and you can't know him without getting on his level, and letting him call you 'oscar' and calling him 'charlie.' if you rub this in, the judge will see that he is face to face with the artist in you and will admit at least that your explanation is plausible. he will hesitate to condemn you, and once he hesitates you'll win. "you fought badly because you did not show your own nature sufficiently; you did not use your brains in the witness box and alas--" i did not continue; the truth was i was filled with fear; for i suddenly realised that he had shown more courage and self-possession in the queensberry trial than in the trial before mr. justice charles when so much more was at stake; and i felt that in the next trial he would be more depressed still, and less inclined to take the initiative than ever. i had already learned too that i could not help him; that he would not be lifted out of that "sweet way of despair," which so attracts the artist spirit. but still i would do my best. "do you understand?" i asked. "of course, frank, of course, but you have no conception how weary i am of the whole thing, of the shame and the struggling and the hatred. to see those people coming into the box one after the other to witness against me makes me sick. the self-satisfied grin of the barristers, the pompous foolish judge with his thin lips and cunning eyes and hard jaw. oh, it's terrible. i feel inclined to stretch out my hands and cry to them, 'do what you will with me, in god's name, only do it quickly; cannot you see that i am worn out? if hatred gives you pleasure, indulge it.' they worry one, frank, with ravening jaws, as dogs worry a rabbit. yet they call themselves men. it is appalling." the day was dying, the western sky all draped with crimson, saffron and rosy curtains: a slight mist over london, purple on the horizon, closer, a mere wash of blue; here and there steeples pierced the thin veil like fingers pointing upward. on the left the dome of st. paul's hung like a grey bubble over the city; on the right the twin towers of westminster with the river and bridge which wordsworth sang. peace and beauty brooding everywhere, and down there lost in the mist the "rat pit" that men call the courts of justice. there they judge their fellows, mistaking indifference for impartiality, as if anyone could judge his fellowman without love, and even with love how far short we all come of that perfect sympathy which is above forgiveness and takes delight in succouring the weak, comforting the broken-hearted. * * * * * the days went swiftly by and my powerlessness to influence him filled me with self-contempt. of course, i said to myself, if i knew him better i should be able to help him. would vanity do anything? it was his mainspring; i could but try. he might be led by the hope of making englishmen talk of him again, talk of him as one who had dared to escape; wonder what he would do next. i would try, and i did try. but his dejection foiled me: his dislike of the struggle seemed to grow from day to day. he would scarcely listen to me. he was counting the days to the trial: willing to accept an adverse decision; even punishment and misery and shame seemed better than doubt and waiting. he surprised me by saying: "a year, frank, they may give me a year? half the possible sentence: the middle course, that english judges always take: the sort of compromise they think safe?" and his eyes searched my face for agreement. i felt no such confidence in english judges; their compromises are usually bargainings; when they get hold of an artist they give rein to their intuitive fear and hate. but i would not discourage him. i repeated: "you can win, oscar, if you like:--" my litany to him. his wan dejected smile brought tears to my eyes. * * * * * "don't you want to make them all speak of you and wonder at you again? if you were in france, everyone would be asking: will he come back or disappear altogether? or will he manifest himself henceforth in some new comedies, more joyous and pagan than ever?" i might as well have talked to the dead: he seemed numbed, hypnotised with despair. the punishment had already been greater than he could bear. i began to fear that prison, if he were condemned to it, would rob him of his reason; i sometimes feared that his mind was already giving way, so profound was his depression, so hopeless his despair. * * * * * the trial opened before mr. justice wills on the st of may, . the treasury had sent sir frank lockwood, q.c., m.p., to lead mr. c.f. gill, mr. horace avory, and mr. sutton. oscar was represented by the same counsel as on the previous occasion. the whole trial to me was a nightmare, and it was characterised from the very beginning by atrocious prejudice and injustice. the high priests of law were weary of being balked; eager to make an end. as soon as the judge took his seat, sir edward clarke applied that the defendants should be tried separately. as they had already been acquitted on the charge of conspiracy, there was no reason why they should be tried together. the judge called on the solicitor-general to answer the application. the solicitor-general had nothing to say, but thought it was in the interests of the defendants to be tried together; for, in case they were tried separately, it would be necessary to take the defendant taylor first. sir edward clarke tore this pretext to pieces, and mr. justice wills brought the matter to a conclusion by saying that he was in possession of all the evidence that had been taken at the previous trials, and his opinion was that the two defendants should be tried separately. sir edward clarke then applied that the case of mr. wilde should be taken first as his name stood first on the indictment, and as the first count was directed against him and had nothing to do with taylor.... "there are reasons present, i am sure, too, in your lordship's mind, why wilde should not be tried immediately after the other defendant." mr. justice wills remarked, with seeming indifference, "it ought not to make the least difference, sir edward. i am sure i and the jury will do our best to take care that the last trial has no influence at all on the present." sir edward clarke stuck to his point. he urged respectfully that as mr. wilde's name stood first on the indictment his case should be taken first. mr. justice wills said he could not interfere with the discretion of the prosecution, nor vary the ordinary procedure. justice and fair play on the one side and precedent on the other: justice was waved out of court with serene indifference. thereupon sir edward clarke pressed that the trial of mr. oscar wilde should stand over till the next sessions. but again mr. justice wills refused. precedent was silent now but prejudice was strong as ever. the case against taylor went on the whole day and was resumed next morning. taylor went into the box and denied all the charges. the judge summed up dead against him, and at . the jury retired to consider their verdict: in forty-five minutes they came into court again with a question which was significant. in answer to the judge the foreman stated that "they had agreed that taylor had introduced parker to wilde, but they were not satisfied with wilde's guilt in the matter." mr. justice wills: "were you agreed as to the charge on the other counts?" foreman: "yes, my lord." mr. justice wills: "well, possibly it would be as well to take your verdict upon the other counts." through the foreman the jury accordingly intimated that they found taylor guilty with regard to charles and william parker. in answer to his lordship, sir f. lockwood said he would take the verdict given by the jury of "guilty" upon the two counts. a formal verdict having been entered, the judge ordered the prisoner to stand down, postponing sentence. did he postpone the sentence in order not to frighten the next jury by the severity of it? other reason i could find none. sir edward clarke then got up and said that as it was getting rather late, perhaps after the second jury had disagreed as to mr. wilde's guilt-- sir f. lockwood here interposed hotly: "i object to sir edward clarke making these little speeches." mr. justice wills took the matter up as well. "you can hardly call it a disagreement, sir edward," though what else he could call it, i was at a loss to imagine. he then adjourned the case against oscar wilde till the next day, when a different jury would be impanelled. but whatever jury might be called they would certainly hear that their forerunners had found taylor guilty and they would know that every london paper without exception had approved the finding. what a fair chance to give wilde! it was like trying an irish secretary before a jury of fenians. the next morning, may d, oscar wilde appeared in the dock. the solicitor-general opened the case, and then called his witnesses. one of the first was edward shelley, who in cross-examination admitted that he had been mentally ill when he wrote mr. wilde those letters which had been put in evidence. he was "made nervous from over-study," he said. alfred wood admitted that he had had money given him quite recently, practically blackmailing money. he was as venomous as possible. "when he went to america," he said, "he told wilde that he wanted to get away from mixing with him (wilde) and douglas." charlie parker next repeated his disgusting testimony with ineffable impudence and a certain exultation. bestial ignominy could go no lower; he admitted that since the former trial he had been kept at the expense of the prosecution. after this confession the case was adjourned and we came out of court. when i reached fleet street i was astonished to hear that there had been a row that same afternoon in piccadilly between lord douglas of hawick and his father, the marquis of queensberry. lord queensberry, it appears, had been writing disgusting letters about the wilde case to lord douglas's wife. meeting him in piccadilly percy douglas stopped him and asked him to cease writing obscene letters to his wife. the marquis said he would not and the father and son came to blows. queensberry it seems was exasperated by the fact that douglas of hawick was one of those who had gone bail for oscar wilde. one of the telegrams which the marquis of queensberry had sent to lady douglas i must put in just to show the insane nature of the man who could exult in a trial which was damning the reputation of his own son. the letter was manifestly written after the result of the taylor trial: must congratulate on verdict, cannot on percy's appearance. looks like a dug up corpse. fear too much madness of kissing. taylor guilty. wilde's turn to-morrow. queensberry. in examination before the magistrate, mr. hannay, it was stated that lord queensberry had been sending similar letters to lady douglas "full of the most disgusting charges against lord douglas, his wife, and lord queensberry's divorced wife and her family." but mr. hannay thought all this provocation was of no importance and bound over both father and son to keep the peace--an indefensible decision, a decision only to be explained by the sympathy everywhere shown to queensberry because of his victory over wilde, otherwise surely any honest magistrate would have condemned the father who sent obscene letters to his son's wife--a lady above reproach. these vile letters and the magistrate's bias, seemed to me to add the final touch of the grotesque to the horrible vileness of the trial. it was all worthy of the seventh circle of dante, but dante had never imagined such a father and such judges! * * * * * next morning oscar wilde was again put in the dock. the evidence of the queensberry trial was read and therewith the case was closed for the crown. sir edward clarke rose and submitted that there was no case to go to the jury on the general counts. after a long legal argument for and against, mr. justice wills said that he would reserve the question for the court of appeal. the view he took was that "the evidence was of the slenderest kind"; but he thought the responsibility must be left with the jury. to this judge "the slenderest kind" of evidence was worthful so long as it told against the accused. sir edward clarke then argued that the cases of shelley, parker and wood failed on the ground of the absence of corroboration. mr. justice wills admitted that shelley showed "a peculiar exaltation" of mind; there was, too, mental derangement in his family, and worst of all there was no corroboration of his statements. accordingly, in spite of the arguments of the solicitor-general, shelley's evidence was cut out. but shelley's evidence had already been taken, had already prejudiced the jury. indeed, it had been the evidence which had influenced mr. justice charles in the previous trial to sum up dead against the defendant: mr. justice charles called shelley "the only serious witness." now it appeared that shelley's evidence should never have been taken at all, that the jury ought never to have heard shelley's testimony or the judge's acceptance of it! * * * * * when the court opened next morning i knew that the whole case depended on oscar wilde, and the showing he would make in the box, but alas! he was broken and numbed. he was not a fighter, and the length of this contest might have wearied a combative nature. the solicitor-general began by examining him on his letters to lord alfred douglas and we had the "prose poem" again and the rest of the ineffable nonsensical prejudice of the middle-class mind against passionate sentiment. it came out in evidence that lord alfred douglas was now in calais. his hatred of his father was the _causa causans_ of the whole case; he had pushed oscar into the fight and oscar, still intent on shielding him, declared that he had asked him to go abroad. sir edward clarke again did his poor best. he pointed out that the trial rested on the evidence of mere blackmailers. he would not quarrel with that and discuss it, but it was impossible not to see that if blackmailers were to be listened to and believed, their profession might speedily become a more deadly mischief and danger to society than it had ever been. the speech was a weak one; but the people in court cheered sir edward clarke; the cheers were immediately suppressed by the judge. the solicitor-general took up the rest of the day with a rancorous reply. sir edward clarke even had to remind him that law officers of the crown should try to be impartial. one instance of his prejudice may be given. examining oscar as to his letters to lord alfred douglas, sir frank lockwood wanted to know whether he thought them "decent"? the witness replied, "yes." "do you know the meaning of the word, sir?" was this gentleman's retort. i went out of the court feeling certain that the case was lost. oscar had not shown himself at all; he had not even spoken with the vigour he had used at the queensberry trial. he seemed too despairing to strike a blow. the summing up of the judge on may th was perversely stupid and malevolent. he began by declaring that he was "absolutely impartial," though his view of the facts had to be corrected again and again by sir edward clarke: he went on to regret that the charge of conspiracy should have been introduced, as it had to be abandoned. he then pointed out that he could not give a colourless summing up, which was "of no use to anybody." his intelligence can be judged from one crucial point: he fastened on the fact that oscar had burnt the letters which he bought from wood, which he said were of no importance, except that they concerned third parties. the judge had persuaded himself that the letters were indescribably bad, forgetting apparently that wood or his associates had selected and retained the very worst of them for purposes of blackmail and that this judge himself, after reading it, couldn't attribute any weight to it; still he insisted that burning the letters was an act of madness; whereas it seemed to everyone of the slightest imagination the most natural thing in the world for an innocent man to do. at the time oscar burnt the letters he had no idea that he would ever be on trial. his letters had been misunderstood and the worst of them was being used against him, and when he got the others he naturally threw them into the fire. the judge held that it was madness, and built upon this inference a pyramid of guilt. "nothing said by wood should be believed, as he belongs to the vilest class of criminals; the strength of the accusation depends solely upon the character of the original introduction of wood to wilde as illustrated and fortified by the story with regard to the letters and their burning." a pyramid of guilt carefully balanced on its apex! if the foolish judge had only read his shakespeare! what does henry vi say: proceed no straiter 'gainst our uncle gloucester than from true evidence of good esteem he be approved in practice culpable. there was no "true evidence of good esteem" against wilde, but the judge turned a harmless action into a confession of guilt. then came an interruption which threw light on the english conception of justice. the foreman of the jury wanted to know, in view of the intimate relations between lord alfred douglas and the defendant, whether a warrant against lord alfred douglas was ever issued. mr. justice wills: "i should say not; we have never heard of it." foreman: "or ever contemplated?" mr. justice wills: "that i cannot say, nor can we discuss it. the issue of such a warrant would not depend upon the testimony of the parties, but whether there was evidence of such act. letters pointing to such relations would not be sufficient. lord alfred douglas was not called, and you can give what weight you like to that." foreman: "if we are to deduce any guilt from these letters, it would apply equally to lord alfred douglas." mr. justice wills concurred in that view, but after all he thought it had nothing to do with the present trial, which was the guilt of the accused. the jury retired to consider their verdict at half past three. after being absent two hours they returned to know whether there was any evidence of charles parker having slept at st. james's place. his lordship replied, "no." the jury shortly afterwards returned again with the verdict of "guilty" on all the counts. it may be worth while to note again that the judge himself admitted that the evidence on some of the counts was of "the slenderest kind"; but, when backed by his prejudiced summing up, it was more than sufficient for the jury. sir edward clarke pleaded that sentence should be postponed till the next sessions, when the legal argument would be heard. mr. justice wills would not be balked: sentence, he thought, should be given immediately. then, addressing the prisoners, he said, and again i give his exact words, lest i should do him wrong: "oscar wilde and alfred taylor, the crime of which you have been convicted is so bad that one has to put stern restraint upon one's self to prevent one's self from describing in language which i would rather not use the sentiments which must rise to the breast of every man of honour who has heard the details of these two terrible trials. "that the jury have arrived at a correct verdict in this case i cannot persuade myself to entertain the shadow of a doubt; and i hope, at all events, that those who sometimes imagine that a judge is half-hearted in the cause of decency and morality because he takes care no prejudice shall enter into the case may see that that is consistent at least with the utmost sense of indignation at the horrible charges brought home to both of you. "it is no use for me to address you. people who can do these things must be dead to all sense of shame, and one cannot hope to produce any effect upon them. it is the worst case i have ever tried.... that you, wilde, have been the centre of a circle of extensive corruption of the most hideous kind among young men it is impossible to doubt. "i shall under such circumstances be expected to pass the severest sentence that the law allows. in my judgment it is totally inadequate for such a case as this. "the sentence of the court is that each of you be imprisoned and kept to hard labour for two years." the sentence hushed the court in shocked surprise. wilde rose and cried, "can i say anything, my lord?" mr. justice wills waved his hand deprecatingly amid cries of "shame" and hisses from the public gallery; some of the cries and hisses were certainly addressed to the judge and well deserved. what did he mean by saying that oscar was a "centre of extensive corruption of the most hideous kind"? no evidence of this had been brought forward by the prosecution. it was not even alleged that a single innocent person had been corrupted. the accusation was invented by this "absolutely impartial" judge to justify his atrocious cruelty. the unmerited insults and appalling sentence would have disgraced the worst judge of the inquisition. mr. justice wills evidently suffered from the peculiar "exaltation" of mind which he had recognised in shelley. this peculiarity is shared in a lesser degree by several other judges on the english bench in all matters of sexual morality. what distinguished mr. justice wills was that he was proud of his prejudice and eager to act on it. he evidently did not know, or did not care, that the sentence which he had given, declaring it was "totally inadequate," had been condemned by a royal commission as "inhuman." he would willingly have pushed "inhumanity" to savagery, out of sheer bewigged stupidity, and that he was probably well-meaning only intensified the revolt one felt at such brainless malevolence. the bitterest words in dante are not bitter enough to render my feeling: "non ragioniam di lor ma guarda e passa." the whole scene had sickened me. hatred masquerading as justice, striking vindictively and adding insult to injury. the vile picture had its fit setting outside. we had not left the court when the cheering broke out in the streets, and when we came outside there were troops of the lowest women of the town dancing together and kicking up their legs in hideous abandonment, while the surrounding crowd of policemen and spectators guffawed with delight. as i turned away from the exhibition, as obscene and soul-defiling as anything witnessed in the madness of the french revolution, i caught a glimpse of wood and the parkers getting into a cab, laughing and leering. these were the venal creatures oscar wilde was punished for having corrupted! transcribed from the edition by david price, email ccx @coventry.ac.uk miscellanies by oscar wilde dedication: to walter ledger since these volumes are sure of a place in your marvellous library i trust that with your unrivalled knowledge of the various editions of wilde you may not detect any grievous error whether of taste or type, of omission or commission. but should you do so you must blame the editor, and not those who so patiently assisted him, the proof readers, the printers, or the publishers. some day, however, i look forward to your bibliography of the author, in which you will be at liberty to criticise my capacity for anything except regard and friendship for yourself.--sincerely yours, robert ross may , . introduction the concluding volume of any collected edition is unavoidably fragmentary and desultory. and if this particular volume is no exception to a general tendency, it presents points of view in the author's literary career which may have escaped his greatest admirers and detractors. the wide range of his knowledge and interests is more apparent than in some of his finished work. what i believed to be only the fragment of an essay on historical criticism was already in the press, when accidentally i came across the remaining portions, in wilde's own handwriting; it is now complete though unhappily divided in this edition. { a} any doubt as to its authenticity, quite apart from the calligraphy, would vanish on reading such a characteristic passage as the following:--' . . . for, it was in vain that the middle ages strove to guard the buried spirit of progress. when the dawn of the greek spirit arose, the sepulchre was empty, the grave clothes laid aside. humanity had risen from the dead.' it was only wilde who could contrive a literary conceit of that description; but readers will observe with different feelings, according to their temperament, that he never followed up the particular trend of thought developed in the essay. it is indeed more the work of the berkeley gold medallist at dublin, or the brilliant young magdalen demy than of the dramatist who was to write salome. the composition belongs to his oxford days when he was the unsuccessful competitor for the chancellor's english essay prize. perhaps magdalen, which has never forgiven herself for nurturing the author of ravenna, may be felicitated on having escaped the further intolerable honour that she might have suffered by seeing crowned again with paltry academic parsley the most highly gifted of all her children in the last century. compared with the crude criticism on the grosvenor gallery (one of the earliest of wilde's published prose writings), historical criticism is singularly advanced and mature. apart from his mere scholarship wilde developed his literary and dramatic talent slowly. he told me that he was never regarded as a particularly precocious or clever youth. indeed many old family friends and contemporary journalists maintain sturdily that the talent of his elder brother william was much more remarkable. in this opinion they are fortified, appropriately enough, by the late clement scott. i record this interesting view because it symbolises the familiar phenomenon that those nearest the mountain cannot appreciate its height. the exiguous fragment of la sainte courtisane is the next unpublished work of importance. at the time of wilde's trial the nearly completed drama was entrusted to mrs. leverson, who in went to paris on purpose to restore it to the author. wilde immediately left the manuscript in a cab. a few days later he laughingly informed me of the loss, and added that a cab was a very proper place for it. i have explained elsewhere that he looked on his plays with disdain in his last years, though he was always full of schemes for writing others. all my attempts to recover the lost work failed. the passages here reprinted are from some odd leaves of a first draft. the play is of course not unlike salome, though it was written in english. it expanded wilde's favourite theory that when you convert some one to an idea, you lose your faith in it; the same motive runs through mr. w. h. honorius the hermit, so far as i recollect the story, falls in love with the courtesan who has come to tempt him, and he reveals to her the secret of the love of god. she immediately becomes a christian, and is murdered by robbers; honorius the hermit goes back to alexandria to pursue a life of pleasure. two other similar plays wilde invented in prison, ahab and isabel and pharaoh; he would never write them down, though often importuned to do so. pharaoh was intensely dramatic and perhaps more original than any of the group. none of these works must be confused with the manuscripts stolen from tite street in --namely the enlarged version of mr. w. h., the completed form of a florentine tragedy, and the duchess of padua (which existing in a prompt copy was of less importance than the others); nor with the cardinal of arragon, the manuscript of which i never saw. i scarcely think it ever existed, though wilde used to recite proposed passages for it. in regard to printing the lectures i have felt some diffidence: the majority of them were delivered from notes, and the same lectures were repeated in different towns in england and america. the reports of them in the papers are never trustworthy; they are often grotesque travesties, like the reports of after-dinner speeches in the london press of today. i have included only those lectures of which i possess or could obtain manuscript. the aim of this edition has been completeness; and it is complete so far as human effort can make it; but besides the lost manuscripts there must be buried in the contemporary press many anonymous reviews which i have failed to identify. the remaining contents of this book do not call for further comment, other than a reminder that wilde would hardly have consented to their republication. but owing to the number of anonymous works wrongly attributed to him, chiefly in america, and spurious works published in his name, i found it necessary to violate the laws of friendship by rejecting nothing i knew to be authentic. it will be seen on reference to the letters on the ethics of journalism that wilde's name appearing at the end of poems and articles was not always a proof of authenticity even in his lifetime. of the few letters wilde wrote to the press, those addressed to whistler i have included with greater misgiving than anything else in this volume. they do not seem to me more amusing than those to which they were the intended rejoinders. but the dates are significant. wilde was at one time always accused of plagiarising his ideas and his epigrams from whistler, especially those with which he decorated his lectures, the accusation being brought by whistler himself and his various disciples. it should be noted that all the works by which wilde is known throughout europe were written _after_ the two friends quarrelled. that wilde derived a great deal from the older man goes without saying, just as he derived much in a greater degree from pater, ruskin, arnold and burne- jones. yet the tedious attempt to recognise in every jest of his some original by whistler induces the criticism that it seems a pity the great painter did not get them off on the public before he was forestalled. reluctance from an appeal to publicity was never a weakness in either of the men. some of wilde's more frequently quoted sayings were made at the old bailey (though their provenance is often forgotten) or on his death- bed. as a matter of fact, the genius of the two men was entirely different. wilde was a humourist and a humanist before everything; and his wittiest jests have neither the relentlessness nor the keenness characterising those of the clever american artist. again, whistler could no more have obtained the berkeley gold medal for greek, nor have written the importance of being earnest, nor the soul of man, than wilde, even if equipped as a painter, could ever have evinced that superb restraint distinguishing the portraits of 'miss alexander,' 'carlyle,' and other masterpieces. wilde, though it is not generally known, was something of a draughtsman in his youth. i possess several of his drawings. a complete bibliography including all the foreign translations and american piracies would make a book of itself much larger than the present one. in order that wilde collectors (and there are many, i believe) may know the authorised editions and authentic writings from the spurious, mr. stuart mason, whose work on this edition i have already acknowledged, has supplied a list which contains every _genuine_ and _authorised_ english edition. this of course does not preclude the chance that some of the american editions are authorised, and that some of wilde's genuine works even are included in the pirated editions. i am indebted to the editors and proprietors of the queen for leave to reproduce the article on 'english poetesses'; to the editor and proprietors of the sunday times for the article entitled 'art at willis's rooms'; and to mr. william waldorf astor for those from the pall mall gazette. robert ross the tomb of keats (irish monthly, july .) as one enters rome from the via ostiensis by the porta san paolo, the first object that meets the eye is a marble pyramid which stands close at hand on the left. there are many egyptian obelisks in rome--tall, snakelike spires of red sandstone, mottled with strange writings, which remind us of the pillars of flame which led the children of israel through the desert away from the land of the pharaohs; but more wonderful than these to look upon is this gaunt, wedge-shaped pyramid standing here in this italian city, unshattered amid the ruins and wrecks of time, looking older than the eternal city itself, like terrible impassiveness turned to stone. and so in the middle ages men supposed this to be the sepulchre of remus, who was slain by his own brother at the founding of the city, so ancient and mysterious it appears; but we have now, perhaps unfortunately, more accurate information about it, and know that it is the tomb of one caius cestius, a roman gentleman of small note, who died about b.c. yet though we cannot care much for the dead man who lies in lonely state beneath it, and who is only known to the world through his sepulchre, still this pyramid will be ever dear to the eyes of all english-speaking people, because at evening its shadows fall on the tomb of one who walks with spenser, and shakespeare, and byron, and shelley, and elizabeth barrett browning in the great procession of the sweet singers of england. for at its foot there is a green, sunny slope, known as the old protestant cemetery, and on this a common-looking grave, which bears the following inscription: this grave contains all that was mortal of a young english poet, who on his deathbed, in the bitterness of his heart, desired these words to be engraven on his tombstone: here lies one whose name was writ in water. february , . and the name of the young english poet is john keats. lord houghton calls this cemetery 'one of the most beautiful spots on which the eye and heart of man can rest,' and shelley speaks of it as making one 'in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place'; and indeed when i saw the violets and the daisies and the poppies that overgrow the tomb, i remembered how the dead poet had once told his friend that he thought the 'intensest pleasure he had received in life was in watching the growth of flowers,' and how another time, after lying a while quite still, he murmured in some strange prescience of early death, 'i feel the flowers growing over me.' but this time-worn stone and these wildflowers are but poor memorials { } of one so great as keats; most of all, too, in this city of rome, which pays such honour to her dead; where popes, and emperors, and saints, and cardinals lie hidden in 'porphyry wombs,' or couched in baths of jasper and chalcedony and malachite, ablaze with precious stones and metals, and tended with continual service. for very noble is the site, and worthy of a noble monument; behind looms the grey pyramid, symbol of the world's age, and filled with memories of the sphinx, and the lotus leaf, and the glories of old nile; in front is the monte testaccio, built, it is said, with the broken fragments of the vessels in which all the nations of the east and the west brought their tribute to rome; and a little distance off, along the slope of the hill under the aurelian wall, some tall gaunt cypresses rise, like burnt-out funeral torches, to mark the spot where shelley's heart (that 'heart of hearts'!) lies in the earth; and, above all, the soil on which we tread is very rome! as i stood beside the mean grave of this divine boy, i thought of him as of a priest of beauty slain before his time; and the vision of guido's st. sebastian came before my eyes as i saw him at genoa, a lovely brown boy, with crisp, clustering hair and red lips, bound by his evil enemies to a tree, and though pierced by arrows, raising his eyes with divine, impassioned gaze towards the eternal beauty of the opening heavens. and thus my thoughts shaped themselves to rhyme: heu miserande puer rid of the world's injustice and its pain, he rests at last beneath god's veil of blue; taken from life while life and love were new the youngest of the martyrs here is lain, fair as sebastian and as foully slain. no cypress shades his grave, nor funeral yew, but red-lipped daisies, violets drenched with dew, and sleepy poppies, catch the evening rain. o proudest heart that broke for misery! o saddest poet that the world hath seen! o sweetest singer of the english land! thy name was writ in water on the sand, but our tears shall keep thy memory green, and make it flourish like a basil-tree. borne, . note.--a later version of this sonnet, under the title of 'the grave of keats,' is given in the poems, page . the grosvenor gallery, (dublin university magazine, july .) that 'art is long and life is short' is a truth which every one feels, or ought to feel; yet surely those who were in london last may, and had in one week the opportunities of hearing rubenstein play the sonata impassionata, of seeing wagner conduct the spinning-wheel chorus from the flying dutchman, and of studying art at the grosvenor gallery, have very little to complain of as regards human existence and art-pleasures. descriptions of music are generally, perhaps, more or less failures, for music is a matter of individual feeling, and the beauties and lessons that one draws from hearing lovely sounds are mainly personal, and depend to a large extent on one's own state of mind and culture. so leaving rubenstein and wagner to be celebrated by franz huffer, or mr. haweis, or any other of our picturesque writers on music, i will describe some of the pictures now being shown in the grosvenor gallery. the origin of this gallery is as follows: about a year ago the idea occurred to sir coutts lindsay of building a public gallery, in which, untrammelled by the difficulties or meannesses of 'hanging committees,' he could exhibit to the lovers of art the works of certain great living artists side by side: a gallery in which the student would not have to struggle through an endless monotony of mediocre works in order to reach what was worth looking at; one in which the people of england could have the opportunity of judging of the merits of at least one great master of painting, whose pictures had been kept from public exhibition by the jealousy and ignorance of rival artists. accordingly, last may, in new bond street, the grosvenor gallery was opened to the public. as far as the gallery itself is concerned, there are only three rooms, so there is no fear of our getting that terrible weariness of mind and eye which comes on after the 'forced marches' through ordinary picture galleries. the walls are hung with scarlet damask above a dado of dull green and gold; there are luxurious velvet couches, beautiful flowers and plants, tables of gilded and inlaid marbles, covered with japanese china and the latest 'minton,' globes of 'rainbow glass' like large soap-bubbles, and, in fine, everything in decoration that is lovely to look on, and in harmony with the surrounding works of art. burne-jones and holman hunt are probably the greatest masters of colour that we have ever had in england, with the single exception of turner, but their styles differ widely. to draw a rough distinction, holman hunt studies and reproduces the colours of natural objects, and deals with historical subjects, or scenes of real life, mostly from the east, touched occasionally with a certain fancifulness, as in the shadow of the cross. burne-jones, on the contrary, is a dreamer in the land of mythology, a seer of fairy visions, a symbolical painter. he is an imaginative colourist too, knowing that all colour is no mere delightful quality of natural things, but a 'spirit upon them by which they become expressive to the spirit,' as mr. pater says. watts's power, on the other hand, lies in his great originative and imaginative genius, and he reminds us of aeschylus or michael angelo in the startling vividness of his conceptions. although these three painters differ much in aim and in result, they yet are one in their faith, and love, and reverence, the three golden keys to the gate of the house beautiful. on entering the west gallery the first picture that meets the eye is mr. watts's love and death, a large painting, representing a marble doorway, all overgrown with white-starred jasmine and sweet brier-rose. death, a giant form, veiled in grey draperies, is passing in with inevitable and mysterious power, breaking through all the flowers. one foot is already on the threshold, and one relentless hand is extended, while love, a beautiful boy with lithe brown limbs and rainbow-coloured wings, all shrinking like a crumpled leaf, is trying, with vain hands, to bar the entrance. a little dove, undisturbed by the agony of the terrible conflict, waits patiently at the foot of the steps for her playmate; but will wait in vain, for though the face of death is hidden from us, yet we can see from the terror in the boy's eyes and quivering lips, that, medusa-like, this grey phantom turns all it looks upon to stone; and the wings of love are rent and crushed. except on the ceiling of the sistine chapel in rome, there are perhaps few paintings to compare with this in intensity of strength and in marvel of conception. it is worthy to rank with michael angelo's god dividing the light from the darkness. next to it are hung five pictures by millais. three of them are portraits of the three daughters of the duke of westminster, all in white dresses, with white hats and feathers; the delicacy of the colour being rather injured by the red damask background. these pictures do not possess any particular merit beyond that of being extremely good likenesses, especially the one of the marchioness of ormonde. over them is hung a picture of a seamstress, pale and vacant-looking, with eyes red from tears and long watchings in the night, hemming a shirt. it is meant to illustrate hood's familiar poem. as we look on it, a terrible contrast strikes us between this miserable pauper-seamstress and the three beautiful daughters of the richest duke in the world, which breaks through any artistic reveries by its awful vividness. the fifth picture is a profile head of a young man with delicate aquiline nose, thoughtful oval face, and artistic, abstracted air, which will be easily recognised as a portrait of lord ronald gower, who is himself known as an artist and sculptor. but no one would discern in these five pictures the genius that painted the home at bethlehem and the portrait of john ruskin which is at oxford. then come eight pictures by alma tadema, good examples of that accurate drawing of inanimate objects which makes his pictures so real from an antiquarian point of view, and of the sweet subtlety of colouring which gives to them a magic all their own. one represents some roman girls bathing in a marble tank, and the colour of the limbs in the water is very perfect indeed; a dainty attendant is tripping down a flight of steps with a bundle of towels, and in the centre a great green sphinx in bronze throws forth a shower of sparkling water for a very pretty laughing girl, who stoops gleefully beneath it. there is a delightful sense of coolness about the picture, and one can almost imagine that one hears the splash of water, and the girls' chatter. it is wonderful what a world of atmosphere and reality may be condensed into a very small space, for this picture is only about eleven by two and a half inches. the most ambitious of these pictures is one of phidias showing the frieze of the parthenon to his friends. we are supposed to be on a high scaffolding level with the frieze, and the effect of great height produced by glimpses of light between the planking of the floor is very cleverly managed. but there is a want of individuality among the connoisseurs clustered round phidias, and the frieze itself is very inaccurately coloured. the greek boys who are riding and leading the horses are painted egyptian red, and the whole design is done in this red, dark blue, and black. this sombre colouring is un-greek; the figures of these boys were undoubtedly tinted with flesh colour, like the ordinary greek statues, and the whole tone of the colouring of the original frieze was brilliant and light; while one of its chief beauties, the reins and accoutrements of burnished metal, is quite omitted. this painter is more at home in the greco-roman art of the empire and later republic than he is in the art of the periclean age. the most remarkable of mr. richmond's pictures exhibited here is his electra at the tomb of agamemnon--a very magnificent subject, to which, however, justice is not done. electra and her handmaidens are grouped gracefully around the tomb of the murdered king; but there is a want of humanity in the scene: there is no trace of that passionate asiatic mourning for the dead to which the greek women were so prone, and which aeschylus describes with such intensity; nor would greek women have come to pour libations to the dead in such bright-coloured dresses as mr. richmond has given them; clearly this artist has not studied aeschylus' play of the choephori, in which there is an elaborate and pathetic account of this scene. the tall, twisted tree-stems, however, that form the background are fine and original in effect, and mr. richmond has caught exactly that peculiar opal-blue of the sky which is so remarkable in greece; the purple orchids too, and daffodil and narcissi that are in the foreground are all flowers which i have myself seen at argos. sir coutts lindsay sends a life-size portrait of his wife, holding a violin, which has some good points of colour and position, and four other pictures, including an exquisitely simple and quaint little picture of the dower house at balcarres, and a daphne with rather questionable flesh- painting, and in whom we miss the breathlessness of flight. i saw the blush come o'er her like a rose; the half-reluctant crimson comes and goes; her glowing limbs make pause, and she is stayed wondering the issue of the words she prayed. it is a great pity that holman hunt is not represented by any of his really great works, such as the finding of christ in the temple, or isabella mourning over the pot of basil, both of which are fair samples of his powers. four pictures of his are shown here: a little italian child, painted with great love and sweetness, two street scenes in cairo full of rich oriental colouring, and a wonderful work called the afterglow in egypt. it represents a tall swarthy egyptian woman, in a robe of dark and light blue, carrying a green jar on her shoulder, and a sheaf of grain on her head; around her comes fluttering a flock of beautiful doves of all colours, eager to be fed. behind is a wide flat river, and across the river a stretch of ripe corn, through which a gaunt camel is being driven; the sun has set, and from the west comes a great wave of red light like wine poured out on the land, yet not crimson, as we see the afterglow in northern europe, but a rich pink like that of a rose. as a study of colour it is superb, but it is difficult to feel a human interest in this egyptian peasant. mr. albert moore sends some of his usual pictures of women, which as studies of drapery and colour effects are very charming. one of them, a tall maiden, in a robe of light blue clasped at the neck with a glowing sapphire, and with an orange headdress, is a very good example of the highest decorative art, and a perfect delight in colour. mr. spencer stanhope's picture of eve tempted is one of the remarkable pictures of the gallery. eve, a fair woman, of surpassing loveliness, is leaning against a bank of violets, underneath the apple tree; naked, except for the rich thick folds of gilded hair which sweep down from her head like the bright rain in which zeus came to danae. the head is drooped a little forward as a flower droops when the dew has fallen heavily, and her eyes are dimmed with the haze that comes in moments of doubtful thought. one arm falls idly by her side; the other is raised high over her head among the branches, her delicate fingers just meeting round one of the burnished apples that glow amidst the leaves like 'golden lamps in a green night.' an amethyst-coloured serpent, with a devilish human head, is twisting round the trunk of the tree and breathes into the woman's ear a blue flame of evil counsel. at the feet of eve bright flowers are growing, tulips, narcissi, lilies, and anemones, all painted with a loving patience that reminds us of the older florentine masters; after whose example, too, mr. stanhope has used gilding for eve's hair and for the bright fruits. next to it is another picture by the same artist, entitled love and the maiden. a girl has fallen asleep in a wood of olive trees, through whose branches and grey leaves we can see the glimmer of sky and sea, with a little seaport town of white houses shining in the sunlight. the olive wood is ever sacred to the virgin pallas, the goddess of wisdom; and who would have dreamed of finding eros hidden there? but the girl wakes up, as one wakes from sleep one knows not why, to see the face of the boy love, who, with outstretched hands, is leaning towards her from the midst of a rhododendron's crimson blossoms. a rose-garland presses the boy's brown curls, and he is clad in a tunic of oriental colours, and delicately sensuous are his face and his bared limbs. his boyish beauty is of that peculiar type unknown in northern europe, but common in the greek islands, where boys can still be found as beautiful as the charmides of plato. guido's st. sebastian in the palazzo rosso at genoa is one of those boys, and perugino once drew a greek ganymede for his native town, but the painter who most shows the influence of this type is correggio, whose lily-bearer in the cathedral at parma, and whose wild- eyed, open-mouthed st. johns in the 'incoronata madonna' of st. giovanni evangelista, are the best examples in art of the bloom and vitality and radiance of this adolescent beauty. and so there is extreme loveliness in this figure of love by mr. stanhope, and the whole picture is full of grace, though there is, perhaps, too great a luxuriance of colour, and it would have been a relief had the girl been dressed in pure white. mr. frederick burton, of whom all irishmen are so justly proud, is represented by a fine water-colour portrait of mrs. george smith; one would almost believe it to be in oils, so great is the lustre on this lady's raven-black hair, and so rich and broad and vigorous is the painting of a japanese scarf she is wearing. then as we turn to the east wall of the gallery we see the three great pictures of burne-jones, the beguiling of merlin, the days of creation, and the mirror of venus. the version of the legend of merlin's beguiling that mr. burne-jones has followed differs from mr. tennyson's and from the account in the morte d'arthur. it is taken from the romance of merlin, which tells the story in this wise: it fell on a day that they went through the forest of breceliande, and found a bush that was fair and high, of white hawthorn, full of flowers, and there they sat in the shadow. and merlin fell on sleep; and when she felt that he was on sleep she arose softly, and began her enchantments, such as merlin had taught her, and made the ring nine times, and nine times the enchantments. . . . . . and then he looked about him, and him seemed he was in the fairest tower of the world, and the most strong; neither of iron was it fashioned, nor steel, nor timber, nor of stone, but of the air, without any other thing; and in sooth so strong it is that it may never be undone while the world endureth. so runs the chronicle; and thus mr. burne-jones, the 'archimage of the esoteric unreal,' treats the subject. stretched upon a low branch of the tree, and encircled with the glory of the white hawthorn-blossoms, half sits, half lies, the great enchanter. he is not drawn as mr. tennyson has described him, with the 'vast and shaggy mantle of a beard,' which youth gone out had left in ashes; smooth and clear-cut and very pale is his face; time has not seared him with wrinkles or the signs of age; one would hardly know him to be old were it not that he seems very weary of seeking into the mysteries of the world, and that the great sadness that is born of wisdom has cast a shadow on him. but now what availeth him his wisdom or his arts? his eyes, that saw once so clear, are dim and glazed with coming death, and his white and delicate hands that wrought of old such works of marvel, hang listlessly. vivien, a tall, lithe woman, beautiful and subtle to look on, like a snake, stands in front of him, reading the fatal spell from the enchanted book; mocking the utter helplessness of him whom once her lying tongue had called her lord and liege, her seer, her bard, her silver star of eve, her god, her merlin, the one passionate love of her whole life. in her brown crisp hair is the gleam of a golden snake, and she is clad in a silken robe of dark violet that clings tightly to her limbs, more expressing than hiding them; the colour of this dress is like the colour of a purple sea-shell, broken here and there with slight gleams of silver and pink and azure; it has a strange metallic lustre like the iris-neck of the dove. were this mr. burne-jones's only work it would be enough of itself to make him rank as a great painter. the picture is full of magic; and the colour is truly a spirit dwelling on things and making them expressive to the spirit, for the delicate tones of grey, and green, and violet seem to convey to us the idea of languid sleep, and even the hawthorn-blossoms have lost their wonted brightness, and are more like the pale moonlight to which shelley compared them, than the sheet of summer snow we see now in our english fields. the next picture is divided into six compartments, each representing a day in the creation of the world, under the symbol of an angel holding a crystal globe, within which is shown the work of a day. in the first compartment stands the lonely angel of the first day, and within the crystal ball light is being separated from darkness. in the fourth compartment are four angels, and the crystal glows like a heated opal, for within it the creation of the sun, moon, and stars is passing; the number of the angels increases, and the colours grow more vivid till we reach the sixth compartment, which shines afar off like a rainbow. within it are the six angels of the creation, each holding its crystal ball; and within the crystal of the sixth angel one can see adam's strong brown limbs and hero form, and the pale, beautiful body of eve. at the feet also of these six winged messengers of the creator is sitting the angel of the seventh day, who on a harp of gold is singing the glories of that coming day which we have not yet seen. the faces of the angels are pale and oval-shaped, in their eyes is the light of wisdom and love, and their lips seem as if they would speak to us; and strength and beauty are in their wings. they stand with naked feet, some on shell-strewn sands whereon tide has never washed nor storm broken, others it seems on pools of water, others on strange flowers; and their hair is like the bright glory round a saint's head. the scene of the third picture is laid on a long green valley by the sea; eight girls, handmaidens of the goddess of love, are collected by the margin of a long pool of clear water, whose surface no wandering wind or flapping bird has ruffled; but the large flat leaves of the water-lily float on it undisturbed, and clustering forget-me-nots rise here and there like heaps of scattered turquoise. in this mirror of venus each girl is reflected as in a mirror of polished steel. some of them bend over the pool in laughing wonder at their own beauty, others, weary of shadows, are leaning back, and one girl is standing straight up; and nothing of her is reflected in the pool but a glimmer of white feet. this picture, however, has not the intense pathos and tragedy of the beguiling of merlin, nor the mystical and lovely symbolism of the days of the creation. above these three pictures are hung five allegorical studies of figures by the same artist, all worthy of his fame. mr. walter crane, who has illustrated so many fairy tales for children, sends an ambitious work called the renaissance of venus, which in the dull colour of its 'sunless dawn,' and in its general want of all the glow and beauty and passion that one associates with this scene reminds one of botticelli's picture of the same subject. after mr. swinburne's superb description of the sea-birth of the goddess in his hymn to proserpine, it is very strange to find a cultured artist of feeling producing such a vapid venus as this. the best thing in it is the painting of an apple tree: the time of year is spring, and the leaves have not yet come, but the tree is laden with pink and white blossoms, which stand out in beautiful relief against the pale blue of the sky, and are very true to nature. m. alphonse legros sends nine pictures, and there is a natural curiosity to see the work of a gentleman who holds at cambridge the same professorship as mr. ruskin does at oxford. four of these are studies of men's heads, done in two hours each for his pupils at the slade schools. there is a good deal of vigorous, rough execution about them, and they are marvels of rapid work. his portrait of mr. carlyle is unsatisfactory; and even in no. , a picture of two scarlet-robed bishops, surrounded by spanish monks, his colour is very thin and meagre. a good bit of painting is of some metal pots in a picture called le chaudronnier. mr. leslie, unfortunately, is represented only by one small work, called palm-blossom. it is a picture of a perfectly lovely child that reminds one of sir joshua's cherubs in the national gallery, with a mouth like two petals of a rose; the under-lip, as rossetti says quaintly somewhere, 'sucked in, as if it strove to kiss itself.' then we come to the most abused pictures in the whole exhibition--the 'colour symphonies' of the 'great dark master,' mr. whistler, who deserves the name of '[greek] as much as heraclitus ever did. their titles do not convey much information. no. is called nocturne in black and gold, no. a nocturne in blue and silver, and so on. the first of these represents a rocket of golden rain, with green and red fires bursting in a perfectly black sky, two large black smudges on the picture standing, i believe, for a tower which is in 'cremorne gardens' and for a crowd of lookers-on. the other is rather prettier; a rocket is breaking in a pale blue sky over a large dark blue bridge and a blue and silver river. these pictures are certainly worth looking at for about as long as one looks at a real rocket, that is, for somewhat less than a quarter of a minute. no. is called arrangement in black no. , apparently some pseudonym for our greatest living actor, for out of black smudgy clouds comes looming the gaunt figure of mr. henry irving, with the yellow hair and pointed beard, the ruff, short cloak, and tight hose in which he appeared as philip ii. in tennyson's play queen mary. one hand is thrust into his breast, and his legs are stuck wide apart in a queer stiff position that mr. irving often adopts preparatory to one of his long, wolflike strides across the stage. the figure is life-size, and, though apparently one- armed, is so ridiculously like the original that one cannot help almost laughing when one sees it. and we may imagine that any one who had the misfortune to be shut up at night in the grosvenor gallery would hear this arrangement in black no. murmuring in the well-known lyceum accents: by st. james, i do protest, upon the faith and honour of a spaniard, i am vastly grieved to leave your majesty. simon, is supper ready? nos. and are life-size portraits of two young ladies, evidently caught in a black london fog; they look like sisters, but are not related probably, as one is a harmony in amber and black, the other only an arrangement in brown. mr. whistler, however, sends one really good picture to this exhibition, a portrait of mr. carlyle, which is hung in the entrance hall; the expression on the old man's face, the texture and colour of his grey hair, and the general sympathetic treatment, show mr. whistler { } to be an artist of very great power when he likes. there is not so much in the east gallery that calls for notice. mr. leighton is unfortunately represented only by two little heads, one of an italian girl, the other called a study. there is some delicate flesh painting of red and brown in these works that reminds one of a russet apple, but of course they are no samples of this artist's great strength. there are two good portraits--one of mrs. burne-jones, by mr. poynter. this lady has a very delicate, artistic face, reminding us, perhaps, a little of one of the angels her husband has painted. she is represented in a white dress, with a perfectly gigantic old-fashioned watch hung to her waist, drinking tea from an old blue china cup. the other is a head of the duchess of westminster by mr. forbes-robertson, who both as an actor and an artist has shown great cleverness. he has succeeded very well in reproducing the calm, beautiful profile and lustrous golden hair, but the shoulders are ungraceful, and very unlike the original. the figure of a girl leaning against a wonderful screen, looking terribly 'misunderstood,' and surrounded by any amount of artistic china and furniture, by mrs. louise jopling, is worth looking at too. it is called it might have been, and the girl is quite fit to be the heroine of any sentimental novel. the two largest contributors to this gallery are mr. ferdinand heilbuth and mr. james tissot. the first of these two artists sends some delightful pictures from rome, two of which are particularly pleasing. one is of an old cardinal in the imperial scarlet of the caesars meeting a body of young italian boys in purple soutanes, students evidently in some religious college, near the church of st. john lateran. one of the boys is being presented to the cardinal, and looks very nervous under the operation; the rest gaze in wonder at the old man in his beautiful dress. the other picture is a view in the gardens of the villa borghese; a cardinal has sat down on a marble seat in the shade of the trees, and is suspending his meditation for a moment to smile at a pretty child to whom a french bonne is pointing out the gorgeously dressed old gentleman; a flunkey in attendance on the cardinal looks superciliously on. nearly all of mr. tissot's pictures are deficient in feeling and depth; his young ladies are too fashionably over-dressed to interest the artistic eye, and he has a hard unscrupulousness in painting uninteresting objects in an uninteresting way. there is some good colour and drawing, however, in his painting of a withered chestnut tree, with the autumn sun glowing through the yellow leaves, in a picnic scene, no. ; the remainder of the picture being something in the photographic style of frith. what a gap in art there is between such a picture as the banquet of the civic guard in holland, with its beautiful grouping of noble-looking men, its exquisite venetian glass aglow with light and wine, and mr. tissot's over-dressed, common-looking people, and ugly, painfully accurate representation of modern soda-water bottles! mr. tissot's widower, however, shines in qualities which his other pictures lack; it is full of depth and suggestiveness; the grasses and wild, luxuriant growth of the foreground are a revel of natural life. we must notice besides in this gallery mr. watts's two powerful portraits of mr. burne-jones and lady lindsay. to get to the water-colour room we pass through a small sculpture gallery, which contains some busts of interest, and a pretty terra-cotta figure of a young sailor, by count gleichen, entitled cheeky, but it is not remarkable in any way, and contrasts very unfavourably with the exhibition of sculpture at the royal academy, in which are three really fine works of art--mr. leighton's man struggling with a snake, which may be thought worthy of being looked on side by side with the laocoon of the vatican, and lord ronald gower's two statues, one of a dying french guardsman at the battle of waterloo, the other of marie antoinette being led to execution with bound hands, queenlike and noble to the last. the collection of water-colours is mediocre; there is a good effect of mr. poynter's, the east wind seen from a high cliff sweeping down on the sea like the black wings of some god; and some charming pictures of fairy land by mr. richard doyle, which would make good illustrations for one of mr. allingham's fairy-poems, but the tout-ensemble is poor. taking a general view of the works exhibited here, we see that this dull land of england, with its short summer, its dreary rains and fogs, its mining districts and factories, and vile deification of machinery, has yet produced very great masters of art, men with a subtle sense and love of what is beautiful, original, and noble in imagination. nor are the art-treasures of this country at all exhausted by this exhibition; there are very many great pictures by living artists hidden away in different places, which those of us who are yet boys have never seen, and which our elders must wish to see again. holman hunt has done better work than the afterglow in egypt; neither millais, leighton, nor poynter has sent any of the pictures on which his fame rests; neither burne-jones nor watts shows us here all the glories of his art; and the name of that strange genius who wrote the vision of love revealed in sleep, and the names of dante rossetti and of the marchioness of waterford, cannot be found in the catalogue. and so it is to be hoped that this is not the only exhibition of paintings that we shall see in the grosvenor gallery; and sir coutts lindsay, in showing us great works of art, will be most materially aiding that revival of culture and love of beauty which in great part owes its birth to mr. ruskin, and which mr. swinburne, and mr. pater, and mr. symonds, and mr. morris, and many others, are fostering and keeping alive, each in his own peculiar fashion. the grosvenor gallery (saunders' irish daily news, may , .) while the yearly exhibition of the royal academy may be said to present us with the general characteristics of ordinary english art at its most commonplace level, it is at the grosvenor gallery that we are enabled to see the highest development of the modern artistic spirit as well as what one might call its specially accentuated tendencies. foremost among the great works now exhibited at this gallery are mr. burne-jones's annunciation and his four pictures illustrating the greek legend of pygmalion--works of the very highest importance in our aesthetic development as illustrative of some of the more exquisite qualities of modern culture. in the first the virgin mary, a passionless, pale woman, with that mysterious sorrow whose meaning she was so soon to learn mirrored in her wan face, is standing, in grey drapery, by a marble fountain, in what seems the open courtyard of an empty and silent house, while through the branches of a tall olive tree, unseen by the virgin's tear-dimmed eyes, is descending the angel gabriel with his joyful and terrible message, not painted as angelico loved to do, in the varied splendour of peacock-like wings and garments of gold and crimson, but somewhat sombre in colour, set with all the fine grace of nobly-fashioned drapery and exquisitely ordered design. in presence of what may be called the mediaeval spirit may be discerned both the idea and the technique of the work, and even still more so in the four pictures of the story of pygmalion, where the sculptor is represented in dress and in looks rather as a christian st. francis, than as a pure greek artist in the first morning tide of art, creating his own ideal, and worshipping it. for delicacy and melody of colour these pictures are beyond praise, nor can anything exceed the idyllic loveliness of aphrodite waking the statue into sensuous life: the world above her head like a brittle globe of glass, her feet resting on a drift of the blue sky, and a choir of doves fluttering around her like a fall of white snow. following in the same school of ideal and imaginative painting is miss evelyn pickering, whose picture of st. catherine, in the dudley of some years ago, attracted such great attention. to the present gallery she has contributed a large picture of night and sleep, twin brothers floating over the world in indissoluble embrace, the one spreading the cloak of darkness, while from the other's listless hands the leathean poppies fall in a scarlet shower. mr. strudwich sends a picture of isabella, which realises in some measure the pathos of keats's poem, and another of the lover in the lily garden from the song of solomon, both works full of delicacy of design and refinement of detail, yet essentially weak in colour, and in comparison with the splendid giorgione-like work of mr. fairfax murray, are more like the coloured drawings of the modern german school than what we properly call a painting. the last-named artist, while essentially weak in draughtsmanship, yet possesses the higher quality of noble colour in the fullest degree. the draped figures of men and women in his garland makers, and pastoral, some wrought in that single note of colour which the earlier florentines loved, others with all the varied richness and glow of the venetian school, show what great results may be brought about by a youth spent in italian cities. and finally i must notice the works contributed to this gallery by that most powerful of all our english artists, mr. g. f. watts, the extraordinary width and reach of whose genius were never more illustrated than by the various pictures bearing his name which are here exhibited. his paolo and francesca, and his orpheus and eurydice, are creative visions of the very highest order of imaginative painting; marked as it is with all the splendid vigour of nobly ordered design, the last-named picture possesses qualities of colour no less great. the white body of the dying girl, drooping like a pale lily, and the clinging arms of her lover, whose strong brown limbs seem filled with all the sensuous splendour of passionate life, form a melancholy and wonderful note of colour to which the eye continually returns as indicating the motive of the conception. yet here i would dwell rather on two pictures which show the splendid simplicity and directness of his strength, the one a portrait of himself, the other that of a little child called dorothy, who has all that sweet gravity and look of candour which we like to associate with that old-fashioned name: a child with bright rippling hair, tangled like floss silk, open brown eyes and flower-like mouth; dressed in faded claret, with little lace about the neck and throat, toned down to a delicate grey--the hands simply clasped before her. this is the picture; as truthful and lovely as any of those brignoli children which vandyke has painted in genoa. nor is his own picture of himself--styled in the catalogue merely a portrait--less wonderful, especially the luminous treatment of the various shades of black as shown in the hat and cloak. it would be quite impossible, however, to give any adequate account or criticism of the work now exhibited in the grosvenor gallery within the limits of a single notice. richmond's noble picture of sleep and death bearing the slain body of sarpedon, and his bronze statue of the greek athlete, are works of the very highest order of artistic excellence, but i will reserve for another occasion the qualities of his power. mr. whistler, whose wonderful and eccentric genius is better appreciated in france than in england, sends a very wonderful picture entitled the golden girl, a life-size study in amber, yellow and browns, of a child dancing with a skipping-rope, full of birdlike grace and exquisite motion; as well as some delightful specimens of etching (an art of which he is the consummate master), one of which, called the little forge, entirely done with the dry point, possesses extraordinary merit; nor have the philippics of the fors clavigera deterred him from exhibiting some more of his 'arrangements in colour,' one of which, called a harmony in green and gold, i would especially mention as an extremely good example of what ships lying at anchor on a summer evening are from the 'impressionist point of view.' mr. eugene benson, one of the most cultured of those many americans who seem to have found their mecca in modern rome, has sent a picture of narcissus, a work full of the true theocritean sympathy for the natural picturesqueness of shepherd life, and entirely delightful to all who love the peculiar qualities of italian scenery. the shadows of the trees drifting across the grass, the crowding together of the sheep, and the sense of summer air and light which fills the picture, are full of the highest truth and beauty; and mr. forbes-robertson, whose picture of phelps as cardinal wolsey has just been bought by the garrick club, and who is himself so well known as a young actor of the very highest promise, is represented by a portrait of mr. hermann vezin which is extremely clever and certainly very lifelike. nor amongst the minor works must i omit to notice miss stuart-wortley's view on the river cherwell, taken from the walks of magdalen college, oxford,--a little picture marked by great sympathy for the shade and coolness of green places and for the stillness of summer waters; or mrs. valentine bromley's misty day, remarkable for the excellent drawing of a breaking wave, as well as for a great delicacy of tone. besides the marchioness of waterford, whose brilliant treatment of colour is so well known, and mr. richard doyle, whose water-colour drawings of children and of fairy scenes are always so fresh and bright, the qualities of the irish genius in the field of art find an entirely adequate exponent in mr. wills, who as a dramatist and a painter has won himself such an honourable name. three pictures of his are exhibited here: the spirit of the shell, which is perhaps too fanciful and vague in design; the nymph and satyr, where the little goat-footed child has all the sweet mystery and romance of the woodlands about him; and the parting of ophelia and laertes, a work not only full of very strong drawing, especially in the modelling of the male figure, but a very splendid example of the power of subdued and reserved colour, the perfect harmony of tone being made still more subtle by the fitful play of reflected light on the polished armour. i shall reserve for another notice the wonderful landscapes of mr. cecil lawson, who has caught so much of turner's imagination and mode of treatment, as well as a consideration of the works of herkomer, tissot and legros, and others of the modern realistic school. note.--the other notice mentioned above did not appear. l'envoi an introduction to rose leaf and apple leaf by rennell rodd, published by j. m. stoddart and co., philadelphia, . amongst the many young men in england who are seeking along with me to continue and to perfect the english renaissance--jeunes guerriers du drapeau romantique, as gautier would have called us--there is none whose love of art is more flawless and fervent, whose artistic sense of beauty is more subtle and more delicate--none, indeed, who is dearer to myself--than the young poet whose verses i have brought with me to america; verses full of sweet sadness, and yet full of joy; for the most joyous poet is not he who sows the desolate highways of this world with the barren seed of laughter, but he who makes his sorrow most musical, this indeed being the meaning of joy in art--that incommunicable element of artistic delight which, in poetry, for instance, comes from what keats called the 'sensuous life of verse,' the element of song in the singing, made so pleasurable to us by that wonder of motion which often has its origin in mere musical impulse, and in painting is to be sought for, from the subject never, but from the pictorial charm only--the scheme and symphony of the colour, the satisfying beauty of the design: so that the ultimate expression of our artistic movement in painting has been, not in the spiritual visions of the pre-raphaelites, for all their marvel of greek legend and their mystery of italian song, but in the work of such men as whistler and albert moore, who have raised design and colour to the ideal level of poetry and music. for the quality of their exquisite painting comes from the mere inventive and creative handling of line and colour, from a certain form and choice of beautiful workmanship, which, rejecting all literary reminiscence and all metaphysical idea, is in itself entirely satisfying to the aesthetic sense--is, as the greeks would say, an end in itself; the effect of their work being like the effect given to us by music; for music is the art in which form and matter are always one--the art whose subject cannot be separated from the method of its expression; the art which most completely realises for us the artistic ideal, and is the condition to which all the other arts are constantly aspiring. now, this increased sense of the absolutely satisfying value of beautiful workmanship, this recognition of the primary importance of the sensuous element in art, this love of art for art's sake, is the point in which we of the younger school have made a departure from the teaching of mr. ruskin,--a departure definite and different and decisive. master indeed of the knowledge of all noble living and of the wisdom of all spiritual things will he be to us ever, seeing that it was he who by the magic of his presence and the music of his lips taught us at oxford that enthusiasm for beauty which is the secret of hellenism, and that desire for creation which is the secret of life, and filled some of us, at least, with the lofty and passionate ambition to go forth into far and fair lands with some message for the nations and some mission for the world, and yet in his art criticism, his estimate of the joyous element of art, his whole method of approaching art, we are no longer with him; for the keystone to his aesthetic system is ethical always. he would judge of a picture by the amount of noble moral ideas it expresses; but to us the channels by which all noble work in painting can touch, and does touch, the soul are not those of truths of life or metaphysical truths. to him perfection of workmanship seems but the symbol of pride, and incompleteness of technical resource the image of an imagination too limitless to find within the limits of form its complete expression, or of a love too simple not to stammer in its tale. but to us the rule of art is not the rule of morals. in an ethical system, indeed, of any gentle mercy good intentions will, one is fain to fancy, have their recognition; but of those that would enter the serene house of beauty the question that we ask is not what they had ever meant to do, but what they have done. their pathetic intentions are of no value to us, but their realised creations only. pour moi je prefere les poetes qui font des vers, les medecins qui sachent guerir, les peintres qui sachent peindre. nor, in looking at a work of art, should we be dreaming of what it symbolises, but rather loving it for what it is. indeed, the transcendental spirit is alien to the spirit of art. the metaphysical mind of asia may create for itself the monstrous and many-breasted idol, but to the greek, pure artist, that work is most instinct with spiritual life which conforms most closely to the perfect facts of physical life also. nor, in its primary aspect, has a painting, for instance, any more spiritual message or meaning for us than a blue tile from the wall of damascus, or a hitzen vase. it is a beautifully coloured surface, nothing more, and affects us by no suggestion stolen from philosophy, no pathos pilfered from literature, no feeling filched from a poet, but by its own incommunicable artistic essence--by that selection of truth which we call style, and that relation of values which is the draughtsmanship of painting, by the whole quality of the workmanship, the arabesque of the design, the splendour of the colour, for these things are enough to stir the most divine and remote of the chords which make music in our soul, and colour, indeed, is of itself a mystical presence on things, and tone a kind of sentiment. this, then--the new departure of our younger school--is the chief characteristic of mr. rennell rodd's poetry; for, while there is much in his work that may interest the intellect, much that will excite the emotions, and many-cadenced chords of sweet and simple sentiment--for to those who love art for its own sake all other things are added--yet, the effect which they pre-eminently seek to produce is purely an artistic one. such a poem as the sea-king's grave, with all its majesty of melody as sonorous and as strong as the sea by whose pine-fringed shores it was thus nobly conceived and nobly fashioned; or the little poem that follows it, whose cunning workmanship, wrought with such an artistic sense of limitation, one might liken to the rare chasing of the mirror that is its motive; or in a church, pale flower of one of those exquisite moments when all things except the moment itself seem so curiously real, and when the old memories of forgotten days are touched and made tender, and the familiar place grows fervent and solemn suddenly with a vision of the undying beauty of the gods that died; or the scene in chartres cathedral, sombre silence brooding on vault and arch, silent people kneeling on the dust of the desolate pavement as the young priest lifts lord christ's body in a crystal star, and then the sudden beams of scarlet light that break through the blazoned window and smite on the carven screen, and sudden organ peals of mighty music rolling and echoing from choir to canopy, and from spire to shaft, and over all the clear glad voice of a singing boy, affecting one as a thing over-sweet, and striking just the right artistic keynote for one's emotions; or at lanuvium, through the music of whose lines one seems to hear again the murmur of the mantuan bees straying down from their own green valleys and inland streams to find what honeyed amber the sea-flowers might be hiding; or the poem written in the coliseum, which gives one the same artistic joy that one gets watching a handicraftsman at his work, a goldsmith hammering out his gold into those thin plates as delicate as the petals of a yellow rose, or drawing it out into the long wires like tangled sunbeams, so perfect and precious is the mere handling of it; or the little lyric interludes that break in here and there like the singing of a thrush, and are as swift and as sure as the beating of a bird's wing, as light and bright as the apple-blossoms that flutter fitfully down to the orchard grass after a spring shower, and look the lovelier for the rain's tears lying on their dainty veinings of pink and pearl; or the sonnets--for mr. rodd is one of those qui sonnent le sonnet, as the ronsardists used to say--that one called on the border hills, with its fiery wonder of imagination and the strange beauty of its eighth line; or the one which tells of the sorrow of the great king for the little dead child--well, all these poems aim, as i said, at producing a purely artistic effect, and have the rare and exquisite quality that belongs to work of that kind; and i feel that the entire subordination in our aesthetic movement of all merely emotional and intellectual motives to the vital informing poetic principle is the surest sign of our strength. but it is not enough that a work of art should conform to the aesthetic demands of the age: there should be also about it, if it is to give us any permanent delight, the impress of a distinct individuality. whatever work we have in the nineteenth century must rest on the two poles of personality and perfection. and so in this little volume, by separating the earlier and more simple work from the work that is later and stronger and possesses increased technical power and more artistic vision, one might weave these disconnected poems, these stray and scattered threads, into one fiery-coloured strand of life, noting first a boy's mere gladness of being young, with all its simple joy in field and flower, in sunlight and in song, and then the bitterness of sudden sorrow at the ending by death of one of the brief and beautiful friendships of one's youth, with all those unanswered longings and questionings unsatisfied by which we vex, so uselessly, the marble face of death; the artistic contrast between the discontented incompleteness of the spirit and the complete perfection of the style that expresses it forming the chief element of the aesthetic charm of these particular poems;--and then the birth of love, and all the wonder and the fear and the perilous delight of one on whose boyish brows the little wings of love have beaten for the first time; and the love-songs, so dainty and delicate, little swallow- flights of music, and full of such fragrance and freedom that they might all be sung in the open air and across moving water; and then autumn, coming with its choirless woods and odorous decay and ruined loveliness, love lying dead; and the sense of the mere pity of it. one might stop there, for from a young poet one should ask for no deeper chords of life than those that love and friendship make eternal for us; and the best poems in the volume belong clearly to a later time, a time when these real experiences become absorbed and gathered up into a form which seems from such real experiences to be the most alien and the most remote; when the simple expression of joy or sorrow suffices no longer, and lives rather in the stateliness of the cadenced metre, in the music and colour of the linked words, than in any direct utterance; lives, one might say, in the perfection of the form more than in the pathos of the feeling. and yet, after the broken music of love and the burial of love in the autumn woods, we can trace that wandering among strange people, and in lands unknown to us, by which we try so pathetically to heal the hurts of the life we know, and that pure and passionate devotion to art which one gets when the harsh reality of life has too suddenly wounded one, and is with discontent or sorrow marring one's youth, just as often, i think, as one gets it from any natural joy of living; and that curious intensity of vision by which, in moments of overmastering sadness and despair ungovernable, artistic things will live in one's memory with a vivid realism caught from the life which they help one to forget--an old grey tomb in flanders with a strange legend on it, making one think how, perhaps, passion does live on after death; a necklace of blue and amber beads and a broken mirror found in a girl's grave at rome, a marble image of a boy habited like eros, and with the pathetic tradition of a great king's sorrow lingering about it like a purple shadow,--over all these the tired spirit broods with that calm and certain joy that one gets when one has found something that the ages never dull and the world cannot harm; and with it comes that desire of greek things which is often an artistic method of expressing one's desire for perfection; and that longing for the old dead days which is so modern, so incomplete, so touching, being, in a way, the inverted torch of hope, which burns the hand it should guide; and for many things a little sadness, and for all things a great love; and lastly, in the pinewood by the sea, once more the quick and vital pulse of joyous youth leaping and laughing in every line, the frank and fearless freedom of wave and wind waking into fire life's burnt-out ashes and into song the silent lips of pain,--how clearly one seems to see it all, the long colonnade of pines with sea and sky peeping in here and there like a flitting of silver; the open place in the green, deep heart of the wood with the little moss-grown altar to the old italian god in it; and the flowers all about, cyclamen in the shadowy places, and the stars of the white narcissus lying like snow-flakes over the grass, where the quick, bright-eyed lizard starts by the stone, and the snake lies coiled lazily in the sun on the hot sand, and overhead the gossamer floats from the branches like thin, tremulous threads of gold,--the scene is so perfect for its motive, for surely here, if anywhere, the real gladness of life might be revealed to one's youth--the gladness that comes, not from the rejection, but from the absorption, of all passion, and is like that serene calm that dwells in the faces of the greek statues, and which despair and sorrow cannot touch, but intensify only. in some such way as this we could gather up these strewn and scattered petals of song into one perfect rose of life, and yet, perhaps, in so doing, we might be missing the true quality of the poems; one's real life is so often the life that one does not lead; and beautiful poems, like threads of beautiful silks, may be woven into many patterns and to suit many designs, all wonderful and all different: and romantic poetry, too, is essentially the poetry of impressions, being like that latest school of painting, the school of whistler and albert moore, in its choice of situation as opposed to subject; in its dealing with the exceptions rather than with the types of life; in its brief intensity; in what one might call its fiery-coloured momentariness, it being indeed the momentary situations of life, the momentary aspects of nature, which poetry and painting now seek to render for us. sincerity and constancy will the artist, indeed, have always; but sincerity in art is merely that plastic perfection of execution without which a poem or a painting, however noble its sentiment or human its origin, is but wasted and unreal work, and the constancy of the artist cannot be to any definite rule or system of living, but to that principle of beauty only through which the inconstant shadows of his life are in their most fleeting moment arrested and made permanent. he will not, for instance, in intellectual matters acquiesce in that facile orthodoxy of our day which is so reasonable and so artistically uninteresting, nor yet will he desire that fiery faith of the antique time which, while it intensified, yet limited the vision; still less will he allow the calm of his culture to be marred by the discordant despair of doubt or the sadness of a sterile scepticism; for the valley perilous, where ignorant armies clash by night, is no resting- place meet for her to whom the gods have assigned the clear upland, the serene height, and the sunlit air,--rather will he be always curiously testing new forms of belief, tinging his nature with the sentiment that still lingers about some beautiful creeds, and searching for experience itself, and not for the fruits of experience; when he has got its secret, he will leave without regret much that was once very precious to him. 'i am always insincere,' says emerson somewhere, 'as knowing that there are other moods': 'les emotions,' wrote theophile gautier once in a review of arsene houssaye, 'les emotions ne se ressemblent pas, mais etre emu--voila l'important.' now, this is the secret of the art of the modern romantic school, and gives one the right keynote for its apprehension; but the real quality of all work which, like mr. rodd's, aims, as i said, at a purely artistic effect, cannot be described in terms of intellectual criticism; it is too intangible for that. one can perhaps convey it best in terms of the other arts, and by reference to them; and, indeed, some of these poems are as iridescent and as exquisite as a lovely fragment of venetian glass; others as delicate in perfect workmanship and as single in natural motive as an etching by whistler is, or one of those beautiful little greek figures which in the olive woods round tanagra men can still find, with the faint gilding and the fading crimson not yet fled from hair and lips and raiment; and many of them seem like one of corot's twilights just passing into music; for not merely in visible colour, but in sentiment also--which is the colour of poetry--may there be a kind of tone. but i think that the best likeness to the quality of this young poet's work i ever saw was in the landscape by the loire. we were staying once, he and i, at amboise, that little village with its grey slate roofs and steep streets and gaunt, grim gateway, where the quiet cottages nestle like white pigeons into the sombre clefts of the great bastioned rock, and the stately renaissance houses stand silent and apart--very desolate now, but with some memory of the old days still lingering about the delicately-twisted pillars, and the carved doorways, with their grotesque animals, and laughing masks, and quaint heraldic devices, all reminding one of a people who could not think life real till they had made it fantastic. and above the village, and beyond the bend of the river, we used to go in the afternoon, and sketch from one of the big barges that bring the wine in autumn and the wood in winter down to the sea, or lie in the long grass and make plans pour la gloire, et pour ennuyer les philistins, or wander along the low, sedgy banks, 'matching our reeds in sportive rivalry,' as comrades used in the old sicilian days; and the land was an ordinary land enough, and bare, too, when one thought of italy, and how the oleanders were robing the hillsides by genoa in scarlet, and the cyclamen filling with its purple every valley from florence to rome; for there was not much real beauty, perhaps, in it, only long, white dusty roads and straight rows of formal poplars; but, now and then, some little breaking gleam of broken light would lend to the grey field and the silent barn a secret and a mystery that were hardly their own, would transfigure for one exquisite moment the peasants passing down through the vineyard, or the shepherd watching on the hill, would tip the willows with silver and touch the river into gold; and the wonder of the effect, with the strange simplicity of the material, always seemed to me to be a little like the quality of these the verses of my friend. mrs. langtry as hester grazebrook (new york world, november , .) it is only in the best greek gems, on the silver coins of syracuse, or among the marble figures of the parthenon frieze, that one can find the ideal representation of the marvellous beauty of that face which laughed through the leaves last night as hester grazebrook. pure greek it is, with the grave low forehead, the exquisitely arched brow; the noble chiselling of the mouth, shaped as if it were the mouthpiece of an instrument of music; the supreme and splendid curve of the cheek; the augustly pillared throat which bears it all: it is greek, because the lines which compose it are so definite and so strong, and yet so exquisitely harmonised that the effect is one of simple loveliness purely: greek, because its essence and its quality, as is the quality of music and of architecture, is that of beauty based on absolutely mathematical laws. but while art remains dumb and immobile in its passionless serenity, with the beauty of this face it is different: the grey eyes lighten into blue or deepen into violet as fancy succeeds fancy; the lips become flower- like in laughter or, tremulous as a bird's wing, mould themselves at last into the strong and bitter moulds of pain or scorn. and then motion comes, and the statue wakes into life. but the life is not the ordinary life of common days; it is life with a new value given to it, the value of art: and the charm to me of hester grazebrook's acting in the first scene of the play { } last night was that mingling of classic grace with absolute reality which is the secret of all beautiful art, of the plastic work of the greeks and of the pictures of jean francois millet equally. i do not think that the sovereignty and empire of women's beauty has at all passed away, though we may no longer go to war for them as the greeks did for the daughter of leda. the greatest empire still remains for them--the empire of art. and, indeed, this wonderful face, seen last night for the first time in america, has filled and permeated with the pervading image of its type the whole of our modern art in england. last century it was the romantic type which dominated in art, the type loved by reynolds and gainsborough, of wonderful contrasts of colour, of exquisite and varying charm of expression, but without that definite plastic feeling which divides classic from romantic work. this type degenerated into mere facile prettiness in the hands of lesser masters, and, in protest against it, was created by the hands of the pre-raphaelites a new type, with its rare combination of greek form with florentine mysticism. but this mysticism becomes over-strained and a burden, rather than an aid to expression, and a desire for the pure hellenic joy and serenity came in its place; and in all our modern work, in the paintings of such men as albert moore and leighton and whistler, we can trace the influence of this single face giving fresh life and inspiration in the form of a new artistic ideal. as regards hester grazebrook's dresses, the first was a dress whose grace depended entirely on the grace of the person who wore it. it was merely the simple dress of a village girl in england. the second was a lovely combination of blue and creamy lace. but the masterpiece was undoubtedly the last, a symphony in silver-grey and pink, a pure melody of colour which i feel sure whistler would call a scherzo, and take as its visible motive the moonlight wandering in silver mist through a rose-garden; unless indeed he saw this dress, in which case he would paint it and nothing else, for it is a dress such as velasquez only could paint, and whistler very wisely always paints those things which are within reach of velasquez only. the scenery was, of course, prepared in a hurry. still, much of it was very good indeed: the first scene especially, with its graceful trees and open forge and cottage porch, though the roses were dreadfully out of tone and, besides their crudity of colour, were curiously badly grouped. the last scene was exceedingly clever and true to nature as well, being that combination of lovely scenery and execrable architecture which is so specially characteristic of a german spa. as for the drawing-room scene, i cannot regard it as in any way a success. the heavy ebony doors are entirely out of keeping with the satin panels; the silk hangings and festoons of black and yellow are quite meaningless in their position and consequently quite ugly; the carpet is out of all colour relation with the rest of the room, and the table-cover is mauve. still, to have decorated ever so bad a room in six days must, i suppose, be a subject of respectful wonder, though i should have fancied that mr. wallack had many very much better sets in his own stock. but i am beginning to quarrel generally with most modern scene-painting. a scene is primarily a decorative background for the actors, and should always be kept subordinate, first to the players, their dress, gesture, and action; and secondly, to the fundamental principle of decorative art, which is not to imitate but to suggest nature. if the landscape is given its full realistic value, the value of the figures to which it serves as a background is impaired and often lost, and so the painted hangings of the elizabethan age were a far more artistic, and so a far more rational form of scenery than most modern scene-painting is. from the same master- hand which designed the curtain of madison square theatre i should like very much to see a good decorative landscape in scene-painting; for i have seen no open-air scene in any theatre which did not really mar the value of the actors. one must either, like titian, make the landscape subordinate to the figures, or, like claude, the figures subordinate to the landscape; for if we desire realistic acting we cannot have realistic scene-painting. i need not describe, however, how the beauty of hester grazebrook survived the crude roses and the mauve tablecloth triumphantly. that it is a beauty that will be appreciated to the full in america i do not doubt for a moment, for it is only countries which possess great beauty that can appreciate beauty at all. it may also influence the art of america as it has influenced the art of england, for of the rare greek type it is the most absolutely perfect example. the philistine may, of course, object that to be absolutely perfect is impossible. well, that is so: but then it is only the impossible things that are worth doing nowadays! woman's dress (pall mall gazette, october , .) mr. oscar wilde, who asks us to permit him 'that most charming of all pleasures, the pleasure of answering one's critics,' sends us the following remarks:-- the 'girl graduate' must of course have precedence, not merely for her sex but for her sanity: her letter is extremely sensible. she makes two points: that high heels are a necessity for any lady who wishes to keep her dress clean from the stygian mud of our streets, and that without a tight corset 'the ordinary number of petticoats and etceteras' cannot be properly or conveniently held up. now, it is quite true that as long as the lower garments are suspended from the hips a corset is an absolute necessity; the mistake lies in not suspending all apparel from the shoulders. in the latter case a corset becomes useless, the body is left free and unconfined for respiration and motion, there is more health, and consequently more beauty. indeed all the most ungainly and uncomfortable articles of dress that fashion has ever in her folly prescribed, not the tight corset merely, but the farthingale, the vertugadin, the hoop, the crinoline, and that modern monstrosity the so-called 'dress improver' also, all of them have owed their origin to the same error, the error of not seeing that it is from the shoulders, and from the shoulders only, that all garments should be hung. and as regards high heels, i quite admit that some additional height to the shoe or boot is necessary if long gowns are to be worn in the street; but what i object to is that the height should be given to the heel only, and not to the sole of the foot also. the modern high-heeled boot is, in fact, merely the clog of the time of henry vi., with the front prop left out, and its inevitable effect is to throw the body forward, to shorten the steps, and consequently to produce that want of grace which always follows want of freedom. why should clogs be despised? much art has been expended on clogs. they have been made of lovely woods, and delicately inlaid with ivory, and with mother-of-pearl. a clog might be a dream of beauty, and, if not too high or too heavy, most comfortable also. but if there be any who do not like clogs, let them try some adaptation of the trouser of the turkish lady, which is loose round the limb and tight at the ankle. the 'girl graduate,' with a pathos to which i am not insensible, entreats me not to apotheosise 'that awful, befringed, beflounced, and bekilted divided skirt.' well, i will acknowledge that the fringes, the flounces, and the kilting do certainly defeat the whole object of the dress, which is that of ease and liberty; but i regard these things as mere wicked superfluities, tragic proofs that the divided skirt is ashamed of its own division. the principle of the dress is good, and, though it is not by any means perfection, it is a step towards it. here i leave the 'girl graduate,' with much regret, for mr. wentworth huyshe. mr. huyshe makes the old criticism that greek dress is unsuited to our climate, and, to me the somewhat new assertion, that the men's dress of a hundred years ago was preferable to that of the second part of the seventeenth century, which i consider to have been the exquisite period of english costume. now, as regards the first of these two statements, i will say, to begin with, that the warmth of apparel does not depend really on the number of garments worn, but on the material of which they are made. one of the chief faults of modern dress is that it is composed of far too many articles of clothing, most of which are of the wrong substance; but over a substratum of pure wool, such as is supplied by dr. jaeger under the modern german system, some modification of greek costume is perfectly applicable to our climate, our country and our century. this important fact has already been pointed out by mr. e. w. godwin in his excellent, though too brief, handbook on dress, contributed to the health exhibition. i call it an important fact because it makes almost any form of lovely costume perfectly practicable in our cold climate. mr. godwin, it is true, points out that the english ladies of the thirteenth century abandoned after some time the flowing garments of the early renaissance in favour of a tighter mode, such as northern europe seems to demand. this i quite admit, and its significance; but what i contend, and what i am sure mr. godwin would agree with me in, is that the principles, the laws of greek dress may be perfectly realised, even in a moderately tight gown with sleeves: i mean the principle of suspending all apparel from the shoulders, and of relying for beauty of effect not on the stiff ready- made ornaments of the modern milliner--the bows where there should be no bows, and the flounces where there should be no flounces--but on the exquisite play of light and line that one gets from rich and rippling folds. i am not proposing any antiquarian revival of an ancient costume, but trying merely to point out the right laws of dress, laws which are dictated by art and not by archaeology, by science and not by fashion; and just as the best work of art in our days is that which combines classic grace with absolute reality, so from a continuation of the greek principles of beauty with the german principles of health will come, i feel certain, the costume of the future. and now to the question of men's dress, or rather to mr. huyshe's claim of the superiority, in point of costume, of the last quarter of the eighteenth century over the second quarter of the seventeenth. the broad- brimmed hat of kept the rain of winter and the glare of summer from the face; the same cannot be said of the hat of one hundred years ago, which, with its comparatively narrow brim and high crown, was the precursor of the modern 'chimney-pot': a wide turned-down collar is a healthier thing than a strangling stock, and a short cloak much more comfortable than a sleeved overcoat, even though the latter may have had 'three capes'; a cloak is easier to put on and off, lies lightly on the shoulder in summer, and wrapped round one in winter keeps one perfectly warm. a doublet, again, is simpler than a coat and waistcoat; instead of two garments one has one; by not being open also it protects the chest better. short loose trousers are in every way to be preferred to the tight knee- breeches which often impede the proper circulation of the blood; and finally, the soft leather boots which could be worn above or below the knee, are more supple, and give consequently more freedom, than the stiff hessian which mr. huyshe so praises. i say nothing about the question of grace and picturesqueness, for i suppose that no one, not even mr. huyshe, would prefer a maccaroni to a cavalier, a lawrence to a vandyke, or the third george to the first charles; but for ease, warmth and comfort this seventeenth-century dress is infinitely superior to anything that came after it, and i do not think it is excelled by any preceding form of costume. i sincerely trust that we may soon see in england some national revival of it. more radical ideas upon dress reform (pall mall gazette, november , .) i have been much interested at reading the large amount of correspondence that has been called forth by my recent lecture on dress. it shows me that the subject of dress reform is one that is occupying many wise and charming people, who have at heart the principles of health, freedom, and beauty in costume, and i hope that 'h. b. t.' and 'materfamilias' will have all the real influence which their letters--excellent letters both of them--certainly deserve. i turn first to mr. huyshe's second letter, and the drawing that accompanies it; but before entering into any examination of the theory contained in each, i think i should state at once that i have absolutely no idea whether this gentleman wears his hair longer short, or his cuffs back or forward, or indeed what he is like at all. i hope he consults his own comfort and wishes in everything which has to do with his dress, and is allowed to enjoy that individualism in apparel which he so eloquently claims for himself, and so foolishly tries to deny to others; but i really could not take mr. wentworth huyshe's personal appearance as any intellectual basis for an investigation of the principles which should guide the costume of a nation. i am not denying the force, or even the popularity, of the ''eave arf a brick' school of criticism, but i acknowledge it does not interest me. the gamin in the gutter may be a necessity, but the gamin in discussion is a nuisance. so i will proceed at once to the real point at issue, the value of the late eighteenth-century costume over that worn in the second quarter of the seventeenth: the relative merits, that is, of the principles contained in each. now, as regards the eighteenth-century costume, mr. wentworth huyshe acknowledges that he has had no practical experience of it at all; in fact, he makes a pathetic appeal to his friends to corroborate him in his assertion, which i do not question for a moment, that he has never been 'guilty of the eccentricity' of wearing himself the dress which he proposes for general adoption by others. there is something so naive and so amusing about this last passage in mr. huyshe's letter that i am really in doubt whether i am not doing him a wrong in regarding him as having any serious, or sincere, views on the question of a possible reform in dress; still, as irrespective of any attitude of mr. huyshe's in the matter, the subject is in itself an interesting one, i think it is worth continuing, particularly as i have myself worn this late eighteenth- century dress many times, both in public and in private, and so may claim to have a very positive right to speak on its comfort and suitability. the particular form of the dress i wore was very similar to that given in mr. godwin's handbook, from a print of northcote's, and had a certain elegance and grace about it which was very charming; still, i gave it up for these reasons:--after a further consideration of the laws of dress i saw that a doublet is a far simpler and easier garment than a coat and waistcoat, and, if buttoned from the shoulder, far warmer also, and that tails have no place in costume, except on some darwinian theory of heredity; from absolute experience in the matter i found that the excessive tightness of knee-breeches is not really comfortable if one wears them constantly; and, in fact, i satisfied myself that the dress is not one founded on any real principles. the broad-brimmed hat and loose cloak, which, as my object was not, of course, historical accuracy but modern ease, i had always worn with the costume in question, i have still retained, and find them most comfortable. well, although mr. huyshe has no real experience of the dress he proposes, he gives us a drawing of it, which he labels, somewhat prematurely, 'an ideal dress.' an ideal dress of course it is not; 'passably picturesque,' he says i may possibly think it; well, passably picturesque it may be, but not beautiful, certainly, simply because it is not founded on right principles, or, indeed, on any principles at all. picturesqueness one may get in a variety of ways; ugly things that are strange, or unfamiliar to us, for instance, may be picturesque, such as a late sixteenth-century costume, or a georgian house. ruins, again, may be picturesque, but beautiful they never can be, because their lines are meaningless. beauty, in fact, is to be got only from the perfection of principles; and in 'the ideal dress' of mr. huyshe there are no ideas or principles at all, much less the perfection of either. let us examine it, and see its faults; they are obvious to any one who desires more than a 'fancy-dress ball' basis for costume. to begin with, the hat and boots are all wrong. whatever one wears on the extremities, such as the feet and head, should, for the sake of comfort, be made of a soft material, and for the sake of freedom should take its shape from the way one chooses to wear it, and not from any stiff, stereotyped design of hat or boot maker. in a hat made on right principles one should be able to turn the brim up or down according as the day is dark or fair, dry or wet; but the hat brim of mr. huyshe's drawing is perfectly stiff, and does not give much protection to the face, or the possibility of any at all to the back of the head or the ears, in case of a cold east wind; whereas the bycocket, a hat made in accordance with the right laws, can be turned down behind and at the sides, and so give the same warmth as a hood. the crown, again, of mr. huyshe's hat is far too high; a high crown diminishes the stature of a small person, and in the case of any one who is tall is a great inconvenience when one is getting in and out of hansoms and railway carriages, or passing under a street awning: in no case is it of any value whatsoever, and being useless it is of course against the principles of dress. as regards the boots, they are not quite so ugly or so uncomfortable as the hat; still they are evidently made of stiff leather, as otherwise they would fall down to the ankle, whereas the boot should be made of soft leather always, and if worn high at all must be either laced up the front or carried well over the knee: in the latter case one combines perfect freedom for walking together with perfect protection against rain, neither of which advantages a short stiff boot will ever give one, and when one is resting in the house the long soft boot can be turned down as the boot of was. then there is the overcoat: now, what are the right principles of an overcoat? to begin with, it should be capable of being easily put on or off, and worn over any kind of dress; consequently it should never have narrow sleeves, such as are shown in mr. huyshe's drawing. if an opening or slit for the arm is required it should be made quite wide, and may be protected by a flap, as in that excellent overall the modern inverness cape; secondly, it should not be too tight, as otherwise all freedom of walking is impeded. if the young gentleman in the drawing buttons his overcoat he may succeed in being statuesque, though that i doubt very strongly, but he will never succeed in being swift; his super-totus is made for him on no principle whatsoever; a super-totus, or overall, should be capable of being worn long or short, quite loose or moderately tight, just as the wearer wishes; he should be able to have one arm free and one arm covered, or both arms free or both arms covered, just as he chooses for his convenience in riding, walking, or driving; an overall again should never be heavy, and should always be warm: lastly, it should be capable of being easily carried if one wants to take it off; in fact, its principles are those of freedom and comfort, and a cloak realises them all, just as much as an overcoat of the pattern suggested by mr. huyshe violates them. the knee-breeches are of course far too tight; any one who has worn them for any length of time--any one, in fact, whose views on the subject are not purely theoretical--will agree with me there; like everything else in the dress, they are a great mistake. the substitution of the jacket for the coat and waistcoat of the period is a step in the right direction, which i am glad to see; it is, however, far too tight over the hips for any possible comfort. whenever a jacket or doublet comes below the waist it should be slit at each side. in the seventeenth century the skirt of the jacket was sometimes laced on by points and tags, so that it could be removed at will, sometimes it was merely left open at the sides: in each case it exemplified what are always the true principles of dress, i mean freedom and adaptability to circumstances. finally, as regards drawings of this kind, i would point out that there is absolutely no limit at all to the amount of 'passably picturesque' costumes which can be either revived or invented for us; but that unless a costume is founded on principles and exemplified laws, it never can be of any real value to us in the reform of dress. this particular drawing of mr. huyshe's, for instance, proves absolutely nothing, except that our grandfathers did not understand the proper laws of dress. there is not a single rule of right costume which is not violated in it, for it gives us stiffness, tightness and discomfort instead of comfort, freedom and ease. now here, on the other hand, is a dress which, being founded on principles, can serve us as an excellent guide and model; it has been drawn for me, most kindly, by mr. godwin from the duke of newcastle's delightful book on horsemanship, a book which is one of our best authorities on our best era of costume. i do not of course propose it necessarily for absolute imitation; that is not the way in which one should regard it; it is not, i mean, a revival of a dead costume, but a realisation of living laws. i give it as an example of a particular application of principles which are universally right. this rationally dressed young man can turn his hat brim down if it rains, and his loose trousers and boots down if he is tired--that is, he can adapt his costume to circumstances; then he enjoys perfect freedom, the arms and legs are not made awkward or uncomfortable by the excessive tightness of narrow sleeves and knee-breeches, and the hips are left quite untrammelled, always an important point; and as regards comfort, his jacket is not too loose for warmth, nor too close for respiration; his neck is well protected without being strangled, and even his ostrich feathers, if any philistine should object to them, are not merely dandyism, but fan him very pleasantly, i am sure, in summer, and when the weather is bad they are no doubt left at home, and his cloak taken out. _the value of the dress is simply that every separate article of it expresses a law_. my young man is consequently apparelled with ideas, while mr. huyshe's young man is stiffened with facts; the latter teaches one nothing; from the former one learns everything. i need hardly say that this dress is good, not because it is seventeenth century, but because it is constructed on the true principles of costume, just as a square lintel or a pointed arch is good, not because one may be greek and the other gothic, but because each of them is the best method of spanning a certain-sized opening, or resisting a certain weight. the fact, however, that this dress was generally worn in england two centuries and a half ago shows at least this, that the right laws of dress have been understood and realised in our country, and so in our country may be realised and understood again. as regards the absolute beauty of this dress and its meaning, i should like to say a few words more. mr. wentworth huyshe solemnly announces that 'he and those who think with him' cannot permit this question of beauty to be imported into the question of dress; that he and those who think with him take 'practical views on the subject,' and so on. well, i will not enter here into a discussion as to how far any one who does not take beauty and the value of beauty into account can claim to be practical at all. the word practical is nearly always the last refuge of the uncivilised. of all misused words it is the most evilly treated. but what i want to point out is that beauty is essentially organic; that is, it comes, not from without, but from within, not from any added prettiness, but from the perfection of its own being; and that consequently, as the body is beautiful, so all apparel that rightly clothes it must be beautiful also in its construction and in its lines. i have no more desire to define ugliness than i have daring to define beauty; but still i would like to remind those who mock at beauty as being an unpractical thing of this fact, that an ugly thing is merely a thing that is badly made, or a thing that does not serve its purpose; that ugliness is want of fitness; that ugliness is failure; that ugliness is uselessness, such as ornament in the wrong place, while beauty, as some one finely said, is the purgation of all superfluities. there is a divine economy about beauty; it gives us just what is needful and no more, whereas ugliness is always extravagant; ugliness is a spendthrift and wastes its material; in fine, ugliness--and i would commend this remark to mr. wentworth huyshe--ugliness, as much in costume as in anything else, is always the sign that somebody has been unpractical. so the costume of the future in england, if it is founded on the true laws of freedom, comfort, and adaptability to circumstances, cannot fail to be most beautiful also, because beauty is the sign always of the rightness of principles, the mystical seal that is set upon what is perfect, and upon what is perfect only. as for your other correspondent, the first principle of dress that all garments should be hung from the shoulders and not from the waist seems to me to be generally approved of, although an 'old sailor' declares that no sailors or athletes ever suspend their clothes from the shoulders, but always from the hips. my own recollection of the river and running ground at oxford--those two homes of hellenism in our little gothic town--is that the best runners and rowers (and my own college turned out many) wore always a tight jersey, with short drawers attached to it, the whole costume being woven in one piece. as for sailors it is true, i admit, and the bad custom seems to involve that constant 'hitching up' of the lower garments which, however popular in transpontine dramas, cannot, i think, but be considered an extremely awkward habit; and as all awkwardness comes from discomfort of some kind, i trust that this point in our sailor's dress will be looked to in the coming reform of our navy, for, in spite of all protests, i hope we are about to reform everything, from torpedoes to top-hats, and from crinolettes to cruises. then as regards clogs, my suggestion of them seems to have aroused a great deal of terror. fashion in her high-heeled boots has screamed, and the dreadful word 'anachronism' has been used. now, whatever is useful cannot be an anachronism. such a word is applicable only to the revival of some folly; and, besides, in the england of our own day clogs are still worn in many of our manufacturing towns, such as oldham. i fear that in oldham they may not be dreams of beauty; in oldham the art of inlaying them with ivory and with pearl may possibly be unknown; yet in oldham they serve their purpose. nor is it so long since they were worn by the upper classes of this country generally. only a few days ago i had the pleasure of talking to a lady who remembered with affectionate regret the clogs of her girlhood; they were, according to her, not too high nor too heavy, and were provided, besides, with some kind of spring in the sole so as to make them the more supple for the foot in walking. personally, i object to all additional height being given to a boot or shoe; it is really against the proper principles of dress, although, if any such height is to be given it should be by means of two props, not one; but what i should prefer to see is some adaptation of the divided skirt or long and moderately loose knickerbockers. if, however, the divided skirt is to be of any positive value, it must give up all idea of 'being identical in appearance with an ordinary skirt'; it must diminish the moderate width of each of its divisions, and sacrifice its foolish frills and flounces; the moment it imitates a dress it is lost; but let it visibly announce itself as what it actually is, and it will go far towards solving a real difficulty. i feel sure that there will be found many graceful and charming girls ready to adopt a costume founded on these principles, in spite of mr. wentworth huyshe's terrible threat that he will not propose to them as long as they wear it, for all charges of a want of womanly character in these forms of dress are really meaningless; every right article of apparel belongs equally to both sexes, and there is absolutely no such thing as a definitely feminine garment. one word of warning i should like to be allowed to give: the over-tunic should be made full and moderately loose; it may, if desired, be shaped more or less to the figure, but in no case should it be confined at the waist by any straight band or belt; on the contrary, it should fall from the shoulder to the knee, or below it, in fine curves and vertical lines, giving more freedom and consequently more grace. few garments are so absolutely unbecoming as a belted tunic that reaches to the knees, a fact which i wish some of our rosalinds would consider when they don doublet and hose; indeed, to the disregard of this artistic principle is due the ugliness, the want of proportion, in the bloomer costume, a costume which in other respects is sensible. mr. whistler's ten o'clock (pall mall gazette, february , .) last night, at prince's hall, mr. whistler made his first public appearance as a lecturer on art, and spoke for more than an hour with really marvellous eloquence on the absolute uselessness of all lectures of the kind. mr. whistler began his lecture with a very pretty aria on prehistoric history, describing how in earlier times hunter and warrior would go forth to chase and foray, while the artist sat at home making cup and bowl for their service. rude imitations of nature they were first, like the gourd bottle, till the sense of beauty and form developed and, in all its exquisite proportions, the first vase was fashioned. then came a higher civilisation of architecture and armchairs, and with exquisite design, and dainty diaper, the useful things of life were made lovely; and the hunter and the warrior lay on the couch when they were tired, and, when they were thirsty, drank from the bowl, and never cared to lose the exquisite proportion of the one, or the delightful ornament of the other; and this attitude of the primitive anthropophagous philistine formed the text of the lecture and was the attitude which mr. whistler entreated his audience to adopt towards art. remembering, no doubt, many charming invitations to wonderful private views, this fashionable assemblage seemed somewhat aghast, and not a little amused, at being told that the slightest appearance among a civilised people of any joy in beautiful things is a grave impertinence to all painters; but mr. whistler was relentless, and, with charming ease and much grace of manner, explained to the public that the only thing they should cultivate was ugliness, and that on their permanent stupidity rested all the hopes of art in the future. the scene was in every way delightful; he stood there, a miniature mephistopheles, mocking the majority! he was like a brilliant surgeon lecturing to a class composed of subjects destined ultimately for dissection, and solemnly assuring them how valuable to science their maladies were, and how absolutely uninteresting the slightest symptoms of health on their part would be. in fairness to the audience, however, i must say that they seemed extremely gratified at being rid of the dreadful responsibility of admiring anything, and nothing could have exceeded their enthusiasm when they were told by mr. whistler that no matter how vulgar their dresses were, or how hideous their surroundings at home, still it was possible that a great painter, if there was such a thing, could, by contemplating them in the twilight and half closing his eyes, see them under really picturesque conditions, and produce a picture which they were not to attempt to understand, much less dare to enjoy. then there were some arrows, barbed and brilliant, shot off, with all the speed and splendour of fireworks, and the archaeologists, who spend their lives in verifying the birthplaces of nobodies, and estimate the value of a work of art by its date or its decay; at the art critics who always treat a picture as if it were a novel, and try and find out the plot; at dilettanti in general and amateurs in particular; and (o mea culpa!) at dress reformers most of all. 'did not velasquez paint crinolines? what more do you want?' having thus made a holocaust of humanity, mr. whistler turned to nature, and in a few moments convicted her of the crystal palace, bank holidays, and a general overcrowding of detail, both in omnibuses and in landscapes, and then, in a passage of singular beauty, not unlike one that occurs in corot's letters, spoke of the artistic value of dim dawns and dusks, when the mean facts of life are lost in exquisite and evanescent effects, when common things are touched with mystery and transfigured with beauty, when the warehouses become as palaces and the tall chimneys of the factory seem like campaniles in the silver air. finally, after making a strong protest against anybody but a painter judging of painting, and a pathetic appeal to the audience not to be lured by the aesthetic movement into having beautiful things about them, mr. whistler concluded his lecture with a pretty passage about fusiyama on a fan, and made his bow to an audience which he had succeeded in completely fascinating by his wit, his brilliant paradoxes, and, at times, his real eloquence. of course, with regard to the value of beautiful surroundings i differ entirely from mr. whistler. an artist is not an isolated fact; he is the resultant of a certain milieu and a certain entourage, and can no more be born of a nation that is devoid of any sense of beauty than a fig can grow from a thorn or a rose blossom from a thistle. that an artist will find beauty in ugliness, le beau dans l'horrible, is now a commonplace of the schools, the argot of the atelier, but i strongly deny that charming people should be condemned to live with magenta ottomans and albert-blue curtains in their rooms in order that some painter may observe the side-lights on the one and the values of the other. nor do i accept the dictum that only a painter is a judge of painting. i say that only an artist is a judge of art; there is a wide difference. as long as a painter is a painter merely, he should not be allowed to talk of anything but mediums and megilp, and on those subjects should be compelled to hold his tongue; it is only when he becomes an artist that the secret laws of artistic creation are revealed to him. for there are not many arts, but one art merely--poem, picture and parthenon, sonnet and statue--all are in their essence the same, and he who knows one knows all. but the poet is the supreme artist, for he is the master of colour and of form, and the real musician besides, and is lord over all life and all arts; and so to the poet beyond all others are these mysteries known; to edgar allan poe and to baudelaire, not to benjamin west and paul delaroche. however, i should not enjoy anybody else's lectures unless in a few points i disagreed with them, and mr. whistler's lecture last night was, like everything that he does, a masterpiece. not merely for its clever satire and amusing jests will it be remembered, but for the pure and perfect beauty of many of its passages--passages delivered with an earnestness which seemed to amaze those who had looked on mr. whistler as a master of persiflage merely, and had not known him as we do, as a master of painting also. for that he is indeed one of the very greatest masters of painting is my opinion. and i may add that in this opinion mr. whistler himself entirely concurs. the relation of dress to art: a note in black and white on mr. whistler's lecture (pall mall gazette, february , .) 'how can you possibly paint these ugly three-cornered hats?' asked a reckless art critic once of sir joshua reynolds. 'i see light and shade in them,' answered the artist. 'les grands coloristes,' says baudelaire, in a charming article on the artistic value of frock coats, 'les grands coloristes savent faire de la couleur avec un habit noir, une cravate blanche, et un fond gris.' 'art seeks and finds the beautiful in all times, as did her high priest rembrandt, when he saw the picturesque grandeur of the jews' quarter of amsterdam, and lamented not that its inhabitants were not greeks,' were the fine and simple words used by mr. whistler in one of the most valuable passages of his lecture. the most valuable, that is, to the painter: for there is nothing of which the ordinary english painter needs more to be reminded than that the true artist does not wait for life to be made picturesque for him, but sees life under picturesque conditions always--under conditions, that is to say, which are at once new and delightful. but between the attitude of the painter towards the public and the attitude of a people towards art, there is a wide difference. that, under certain conditions of light and shade, what is ugly in fact may in its effect become beautiful, is true; and this, indeed, is the real modernite of art: but these conditions are exactly what we cannot be always sure of, as we stroll down piccadilly in the glaring vulgarity of the noonday, or lounge in the park with a foolish sunset as a background. were we able to carry our chiaroscuro about with us, as we do our umbrellas, all would be well; but this being impossible, i hardly think that pretty and delightful people will continue to wear a style of dress as ugly as it is useless and as meaningless as it is monstrous, even on the chance of such a master as mr. whistler spiritualising them into a symphony or refining them into a mist. for the arts are made for life, and not life for the arts. nor do i feel quite sure that mr. whistler has been himself always true to the dogma he seems to lay down, that a painter should paint only the dress of his age and of his actual surroundings: far be it from me to burden a butterfly with the heavy responsibility of its past: i have always been of opinion that consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative: but have we not all seen, and most of us admired, a picture from his hand of exquisite english girls strolling by an opal sea in the fantastic dresses of japan? has not tite street been thrilled with the tidings that the models of chelsea were posing to the master, in peplums, for pastels? whatever comes from mr whistler's brush is far too perfect in its loveliness to stand or fall by any intellectual dogmas on art, even by his own: for beauty is justified of all her children, and cares nothing for explanations: but it is impossible to look through any collection of modern pictures in london, from burlington house to the grosvenor gallery, without feeling that the professional model is ruining painting and reducing it to a condition of mere pose and pastiche. are we not all weary of him, that venerable impostor fresh from the steps of the piazza di spagna, who, in the leisure moments that he can spare from his customary organ, makes the round of the studios and is waited for in holland park? do we not all recognise him, when, with the gay insouciance of his nation, he reappears on the walls of our summer exhibitions as everything that he is not, and as nothing that he is, glaring at us here as a patriarch of canaan, here beaming as a brigand from the abruzzi? popular is he, this poor peripatetic professor of posing, with those whose joy it is to paint the posthumous portrait of the last philanthropist who in his lifetime had neglected to be photographed,--yet he is the sign of the decadence, the symbol of decay. for all costumes are caricatures. the basis of art is not the fancy ball. where there is loveliness of dress, there is no dressing up. and so, were our national attire delightful in colour, and in construction simple and sincere; were dress the expression of the loveliness that it shields and of the swiftness and motion that it does not impede; did its lines break from the shoulder instead of bulging from the waist; did the inverted wineglass cease to be the ideal of form; were these things brought about, as brought about they will be, then would painting be no longer an artificial reaction against the ugliness of life, but become, as it should be, the natural expression of life's beauty. nor would painting merely, but all the other arts also, be the gainers by a change such as that which i propose; the gainers, i mean, through the increased atmosphere of beauty by which the artists would be surrounded and in which they would grow up. for art is not to be taught in academies. it is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes the artist. the real schools should be the streets. there is not, for instance, a single delicate line, or delightful proportion, in the dress of the greeks, which is not echoed exquisitely in their architecture. a nation arrayed in stove-pipe hats and dress-improvers might have built the pantechnichon possibly, but the parthenon never. and finally, there is this to be said: art, it is true, can never have any other claim but her own perfection, and it may be that the artist, desiring merely to contemplate and to create, is wise in not busying himself about change in others: yet wisdom is not always the best; there are times when she sinks to the level of common-sense; and from the passionate folly of those--and there are many--who desire that beauty shall be confined no longer to the bric- a-brac of the collector and the dust of the museum, but shall be, as it should be, the natural and national inheritance of all,--from this noble unwisdom, i say, who knows what new loveliness shall be given to life, and, under these more exquisite conditions, what perfect artist born? le milieu se renouvelant, l'art se renouvelle. speaking, however, from his own passionless pedestal, mr. whistler, in pointing out that the power of the painter is to be found in his power of vision, not in his cleverness of hand, has expressed a truth which needed expression, and which, coming from the lord of form and colour, cannot fail to have its influence. his lecture, the apocrypha though it be for the people, yet remains from this time as the bible for the painter, the masterpiece of masterpieces, the song of songs. it is true he has pronounced the panegyric of the philistine, but i fancy ariel praising caliban for a jest: and, in that he has read the commination service over the critics, let all men thank him, the critics themselves, indeed, most of all, for he has now relieved them from the necessity of a tedious existence. considered, again, merely as an orator, mr. whistler seems to me to stand almost alone. indeed, among all our public speakers i know but few who can combine so felicitously as he does the mirth and malice of puck with the style of the minor prophets. keats's sonnet on blue (century guild hobby horse, july .) during my tour in america i happened one evening to find myself in louisville, kentucky. the subject i had selected to speak on was the mission of art in the nineteenth century, and in the course of my lecture i had occasion to quote keats's sonnet on blue as an example of the poet's delicate sense of colour-harmonies. when my lecture was concluded there came round to see me a lady of middle age, with a sweet gentle manner and a most musical voice. she introduced herself to me as mrs. speed, the daughter of george keats, and invited me to come and examine the keats manuscripts in her possession. i spent most of the next day with her, reading the letters of keats to her father, some of which were at that time unpublished, poring over torn yellow leaves and faded scraps of paper, and wondering at the little dante in which keats had written those marvellous notes on milton. some months afterwards, when i was in california, i received a letter from mrs. speed asking my acceptance of the original manuscript of the sonnet which i had quoted in my lecture. this manuscript i have had reproduced here, as it seems to me to possess much psychological interest. it shows us the conditions that preceded the perfected form, the gradual growth, not of the conception but of the expression, and the workings of that spirit of selection which is the secret of style. in the case of poetry, as in the case of the other arts, what may appear to be simply technicalities of method are in their essence spiritual, not mechanical, and although, in all lovely work, what concerns us is the ultimate form, not the conditions that necessitate that form, yet the preference that precedes perfection, the evolution of the beauty, and the mere making of the music, have, if not their artistic value, at least their value to the artist. it will be remembered that this sonnet was first published in by lord houghton in his life, letters, and literary remains of john keats. lord houghton does not definitely state where he found it, but it was probably among the keats manuscripts belonging to mr. charles brown. it is evidently taken from a version later than that in my possession, as it accepts all the corrections, and makes three variations. as in my manuscript the first line is torn away, i give the sonnet here as it appears in lord houghton's edition. answer to a sonnet ending thus: dark eyes are dearer far than those that make the hyacinthine bell. { } by j. h. reynolds. blue! 'tis the life of heaven,--the domain of cynthia,--the wide palace of the sun,-- the tent of hesperus and all his train,-- the bosomer of clouds, gold, grey and dun. blue! 'tis the life of waters--ocean and all its vassal streams: pools numberless may rage, and foam, and fret, but never can subside if not to dark-blue nativeness. blue! gentle cousin of the forest green, married to green in all the sweetest flowers, forget-me-not,--the blue-bell,--and, that queen of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers hast thou, as a mere shadow! but how great, when in an eye thou art alive with fate! feb. . in the athenaeum of the rd of june , appeared a letter from mr. a. j. horwood, stating that he had in his possession a copy of the garden of florence in which this sonnet was transcribed. mr. horwood, who was unaware that the sonnet had been already published by lord houghton, gives the transcript at length. his version reads hue for life in the first line, and bright for wide in the second, and gives the sixth line thus: with all his tributary streams, pools numberless, a foot too long: it also reads to for of in the ninth line. mr. buxton forman is of opinion that these variations are decidedly genuine, but indicative of an earlier state of the poem than that adopted in lord houghton's edition. however, now that we have before us keats's first draft of his sonnet, it is difficult to believe that the sixth line in mr. horwood's version is really a genuine variation. keats may have written, ocean his tributary streams, pools numberless, and the transcript may have been carelessly made, but having got his line right in his first draft, keats probably did not spoil it in his second. the athenaeum version inserts a comma after art in the last line, which seems to me a decided improvement, and eminently characteristic of keats's method. i am glad to see that mr. buxton forman has adopted it. as for the corrections that lord houghton's version shows keats to have made in the eighth and ninth lines of this sonnet, it is evident that they sprang from keats's reluctance to repeat the same word in consecutive lines, except in cases where a word's music or meaning was to be emphasised. the substitution of 'its' for 'his' in the sixth line is more difficult of explanation. it was due probably to a desire on keats's part not to mar by any echo the fine personification of hesperus. it may be noticed that keats's own eyes were brown, and not blue, as stated by mrs. proctor to lord houghton. mrs. speed showed me a note to that effect written by mrs. george keats on the margin of the page in lord houghton's life (p. , vol. i.), where mrs. proctor's description is given. cowden clarke made a similar correction in his recollections, and in some of the later editions of lord houghton's book the word 'blue' is struck out. in severn's portraits of keats also the eyes are given as brown. the exquisite sense of colour expressed in the ninth and tenth lines may be paralleled by the ocean with its vastness, its blue green, of the sonnet to george keats. the american invasion (court and society review, march , .) a terrible danger is hanging over the americans in london. their future and their reputation this season depend entirely on the success of buffalo bill and mrs. brown-potter. the former is certain to draw; for english people are far more interested in american barbarism than they are in american civilisation. when they sight sandy hook they look to their rifles and ammunition; and, after dining once at delmonico's, start off for colorado or california, for montana or the yellow stone park. rocky mountains charm them more than riotous millionaires; they have been known to prefer buffaloes to boston. why should they not? the cities of america are inexpressibly tedious. the bostonians take their learning too sadly; culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their 'hub,' as they call it, is the paradise of prigs. chicago is a sort of monster-shop, full of bustle and bores. political life at washington is like political life in a suburban vestry. baltimore is amusing for a week, but philadelphia is dreadfully provincial; and though one can dine in new york one could not dwell there. better the far west with its grizzly bears and its untamed cow-boys, its free open- air life and its free open-air manners, its boundless prairie and its boundless mendacity! this is what buffalo bill is going to bring to london; and we have no doubt that london will fully appreciate his show. with regard to mrs. brown-potter, as acting is no longer considered absolutely essential for success on the english stage, there is really no reason why the pretty bright-eyed lady who charmed us all last june by her merry laugh and her nonchalant ways, should not--to borrow an expression from her native language--make a big boom and paint the town red. we sincerely hope she will; for, on the whole, the american invasion has done english society a great deal of good. american women are bright, clever, and wonderfully cosmopolitan. their patriotic feelings are limited to an admiration for niagara and a regret for the elevated railway; and, unlike the men, they never bore us with bunkers hill. they take their dresses from paris and their manners from piccadilly, and wear both charmingly. they have a quaint pertness, a delightful conceit, a native self-assertion. they insist on being paid compliments and have almost succeeded in making englishmen eloquent. for our aristocracy they have an ardent admiration; they adore titles and are a permanent blow to republican principles. in the art of amusing men they are adepts, both by nature and education, and can actually tell a story without forgetting the point--an accomplishment that is extremely rare among the women of other countries. it is true that they lack repose and that their voices are somewhat harsh and strident when they land first at liverpool; but after a time one gets to love these pretty whirlwinds in petticoats that sweep so recklessly through society and are so agitating to all duchesses who have daughters. there is something fascinating in their funny, exaggerated gestures and their petulant way of tossing the head. their eyes have no magic nor mystery in them, but they challenge us for combat; and when we engage we are always worsted. their lips seem made for laughter and yet they never grimace. as for their voices, they soon get them into tune. some of them have been known to acquire a fashionable drawl in two seasons; and after they have been presented to royalty they all roll their r's as vigorously as a young equerry or an old lady-in-waiting. still, they never really lose their accent; it keeps peeping out here and there, and when they chatter together they are like a bevy of peacocks. nothing is more amusing than to watch two american girls greeting each other in a drawing-room or in the row. they are like children with their shrill staccato cries of wonder, their odd little exclamations. their conversation sounds like a series of exploding crackers; they are exquisitely incoherent and use a sort of primitive, emotional language. after five minutes they are left beautifully breathless and look at each other half in amusement and half in affection. if a stolid young englishman is fortunate enough to be introduced to them he is amazed at their extraordinary vivacity, their electric quickness of repartee, their inexhaustible store of curious catchwords. he never really understands them, for their thoughts flutter about with the sweet irresponsibility of butterflies; but he is pleased and amused and feels as if he were in an aviary. on the whole, american girls have a wonderful charm and, perhaps, the chief secret of their charm is that they never talk seriously except about amusements. they have, however, one grave fault--their mothers. dreary as were those old pilgrim fathers who left our shores more than two centuries ago to found a new england beyond seas, the pilgrim mothers who have returned to us in the nineteenth century are drearier still. here and there, of course, there are exceptions, but as a class they are either dull, dowdy or dyspeptic. it is only fair to the rising generation of america to state that they are not to blame for this. indeed, they spare no pains at all to bring up their parents properly and to give them a suitable, if somewhat late, education. from its earliest years every american child spends most of its time in correcting the faults of its father and mother; and no one who has had the opportunity of watching an american family on the deck of an atlantic steamer, or in the refined seclusion of a new york boarding-house, can fail to have been struck by this characteristic of their civilisation. in america the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience. a boy of only eleven or twelve years of age will firmly but kindly point out to his father his defects of manner or temper; will never weary of warning him against extravagance, idleness, late hours, unpunctuality, and the other temptations to which the aged are so particularly exposed; and sometimes, should he fancy that he is monopolising too much of the conversation at dinner, will remind him, across the table, of the new child's adage, 'parents should be seen, not heard.' nor does any mistaken idea of kindness prevent the little american girl from censuring her mother whenever it is necessary. often, indeed, feeling that a rebuke conveyed in the presence of others is more truly efficacious than one merely whispered in the quiet of the nursery, she will call the attention of perfect strangers to her mother's general untidiness, her want of intellectual boston conversation, immoderate love of iced water and green corn, stinginess in the matter of candy, ignorance of the usages of the best baltimore society, bodily ailments and the like. in fact, it may be truly said that no american child is ever blind to the deficiencies of its parents, no matter how much it may love them. yet, somehow, this educational system has not been so successful as it deserved. in many cases, no doubt, the material with which the children had to deal was crude and incapable of real development; but the fact remains that the american mother is a tedious person. the american father is better, for he is never seen in london. he passes his life entirely in wall street and communicates with his family once a month by means of a telegram in cipher. the mother, however, is always with us, and, lacking the quick imitative faculty of the younger generation, remains uninteresting and provincial to the last. in spite of her, however, the american girl is always welcome. she brightens our dull dinner parties for us and makes life go pleasantly by for a season. in the race for coronets she often carries off the prize; but, once she has gained the victory, she is generous and forgives her english rivals everything, even their beauty. warned by the example of her mother that american women do not grow old gracefully, she tries not to grow old at all and often succeeds. she has exquisite feet and hands, is always bien chaussee et bien gantee and can talk brilliantly upon any subject, provided that she knows nothing about it. her sense of humour keeps her from the tragedy of a grande passion, and, as there is neither romance nor humility in her love, she makes an excellent wife. what her ultimate influence on english life will be it is difficult to estimate at present; but there can be no doubt that, of all the factors that have contributed to the social revolution of london, there are few more important, and none more delightful, than the american invasion. sermons in stones at bloomsbury: the new sculpture room at the british museum (pall mall gazette, october , .) through the exertions of sir charles newton, to whom every student of classic art should be grateful, some of the wonderful treasures so long immured in the grimy vaults of the british museum have at last been brought to light, and the new sculpture room now opened to the public will amply repay the trouble of a visit, even from those to whom art is a stumbling-block and a rock of offence. for setting aside the mere beauty of form, outline and mass, the grace and loveliness of design and the delicacy of technical treatment, here we have shown to us what the greeks and romans thought about death; and the philosopher, the preacher, the practical man of the world, and even the philistine himself, cannot fail to be touched by these 'sermons in stones,' with their deep significance, their fertile suggestion, their plain humanity. common tombstones they are, most of them, the work not of famous artists but of simple handicraftsmen, only they were wrought in days when every handicraft was an art. the finest specimens, from the purely artistic point of view, are undoubtedly the two stelai found at athens. they are both the tombstones of young greek athletes. in one the athlete is represented handing his strigil to his slave, in the other the athlete stands alone, strigil in hand. they do not belong to the greatest period of greek art, they have not the grand style of the phidian age, but they are beautiful for all that, and it is impossible not to be fascinated by their exquisite grace and by the treatment which is so simple in its means, so subtle in its effect. all the tombstones, however, are full of interest. here is one of two ladies of smyrna who were so remarkable in their day that the city voted them honorary crowns; here is a greek doctor examining a little boy who is suffering from indigestion; here is the memorial of xanthippus who, probably, was a martyr to gout, as he is holding in his hand the model of a foot, intended, no doubt, as a votive offering to some god. a lovely stele from rhodes gives us a family group. the husband is on horseback and is bidding farewell to his wife, who seems as if she would follow him but is being held back by a little child. the pathos of parting from those we love is the central motive of greek funeral art. it is repeated in every possible form, and each mute marble stone seems to murmur [greek]. roman art is different. it introduces vigorous and realistic portraiture and deals with pure family life far more frequently than greek art does. they are very ugly, those stern-looking roman men and women whose portraits are exhibited on their tombs, but they seem to have been loved and respected by their children and their servants. here is the monument of aphrodisius and atilia, a roman gentleman and his wife, who died in britain many centuries ago, and whose tombstone was found in the thames; and close by it stands a stele from rome with the busts of an old married couple who are certainly marvellously ill-favoured. the contrast between the abstract greek treatment of the idea of death and the roman concrete realisation of the individuals who have died is extremely curious. besides the tombstones, the new sculpture room contains some most fascinating examples of roman decorative art under the emperors. the most wonderful of all, and this alone is worth a trip to bloomsbury, is a bas-relief representing a marriage scene. juno pronuba is joining the hands of a handsome young noble and a very stately lady. there is all the grace of perugino in this marble, all the grace of raphael even. the date of it is uncertain, but the particular cut of the bridegroom's beard seems to point to the time of the emperor hadrian. it is clearly the work of greek artists and is one of the most beautiful bas-reliefs in the whole museum. there is something in it which reminds one of the music and the sweetness of propertian verse. then we have delightful friezes of children. one representing children playing on musical instruments might have suggested much of the plastic art of florence. indeed, as we view these marbles it is not difficult to see whence the renaissance sprang and to what we owe the various forms of renaissance art. the frieze of the muses, each of whom wears in her hair a feather plucked from the wings of the vanquished sirens, is extremely fine; there is a lovely little bas-relief of two cupids racing in chariots; and the frieze of recumbent amazons has some splendid qualities of design. a frieze of children playing with the armour of the god mars should also be mentioned. it is full of fancy and delicate humour. on the whole, sir charles newton and mr. murray are warmly to be congratulated on the success of the new room. we hope, however, that some more of the hidden treasures will shortly be catalogued and shown. in the vaults at present there is a very remarkable bas-relief of the marriage of cupid and psyche, and another representing the professional mourners weeping over the body of the dead. the fine cast of the lion of chaeronea should also be brought up, and so should the stele with the marvellous portrait of the roman slave. economy is an excellent public virtue, but the parsimony that allows valuable works of art to remain in the grime and gloom of a damp cellar is little short of a detestable public vice. the unity of the arts: a lecture and a five o'clock (pall mall gazette, december , .) last saturday afternoon, at willis's rooms, mr. selwyn image delivered the first of a series of four lectures on modern art before a select and distinguished audience. the chief point on which he dwelt was the absolute unity of all the arts and, in order to convey this idea, he framed a definition wide enough to include shakespeare's king lear and michael angelo's creation, paul veronese's picture of alexander and darius, and gibbon's description of the entry of heliogabalus into rome. all these he regarded as so many expressions of man's thoughts and emotions on fine things, conveyed through visible or audible modes; and starting from this point he approached the question of the true relation of literature to painting, always keeping in view the central motive of his creed, credo in unam artem multipartitam, indivisibilem, and dwelling on resemblances rather than differences. the result at which he ultimately arrived was this: the impressionists, with their frank artistic acceptance of form and colour as things absolutely satisfying in themselves, have produced very beautiful work, but painting has something more to give us than the mere visible aspect of things. the lofty spiritual visions of william blake, and the marvellous romance of dante gabriel rossetti, can find their perfect expression in painting; every mood has its colour and every dream has its form. the chief quality of mr. image's lecture was its absolute fairness, but this was, to a certain portion of the audience, its chief defect. 'sweet reasonableness,' said one, 'is always admirable in a spectator, but from a leader we want something more.' 'it is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art,' said another; while a third sighed over what he called 'the fatal sterility of the judicial mind,' and expressed a perfectly groundless fear that the century guild was becoming rational. for, with a courtesy and a generosity that we strongly recommend to other lecturers, mr. image provided refreshments for his audience after his address was over, and it was extremely interesting to listen to the various opinions expressed by the great five-o'clock-tea school of criticism which was largely represented. for our own part, we found mr. image's lecture extremely suggestive. it was sometimes difficult to understand in what exact sense he was using the word 'literary,' and we do not think that a course of drawing from the plaster cast of the dying gaul would in the slightest degree improve the ordinary art critic. the true unity of the arts is to be found, not in any resemblance of one art to another, but in the fact that to the really artistic nature all the arts have the same message and speak the same language though with different tongues. no amount of daubing on a cellar wall will make a man understand the mystery of michael angelo's sybils, nor is it necessary to write a blank verse drama before one can appreciate the beauty of hamlet. it is essential that an art critic should have a nature receptive of beautiful impressions, and sufficient intuition to recognise style when he meets with it, and truth when it is shown to him; but, if he does not possess these qualities, a reckless career of water-colour painting will not give them to him, for, if from the incompetent critic all things be hidden, to the bad painter nothing shall be revealed. art at willis's rooms (sunday times, december , .) accepting a suggestion made by a friendly critic last week, mr. selwyn image began his second lecture by explaining more fully what he meant by literary art, and pointed out the difference between an ordinary illustration to a book and such creative and original works as michael angelo's fresco of the expulsion from eden and rossetti's beata beatrix. in the latter case the artist treats literature as if it were life itself, and gives a new and delightful form to what seer or singer has shown us; in the former we have merely a translation which misses the music and adds no marvel. as for subject, mr. image protested against the studio-slang that no subject is necessary, defining subject as the thought, emotion or impression which a man desires to embody in form and colour, and admitting mr. whistler's fireworks as readily as giotto's angels, and van huysum's roses no less than mantegna's gods. here, we think that mr. image might have pointed out more clearly the contrast between the purely pictorial subject and the subject that includes among its elements such things as historical associations or poetic memories; the contrast, in fact, between impressive art and the art that is expressive also. however, the topics he had to deal with were so varied that it was, no doubt, difficult for him to do more than suggest. from subject he passed to style, which he described as 'that masterful but restrained individuality of manner by which one artist is differentiated from another.' the true qualities of style he found in restraint which is submission to law; simplicity which is unity of vision; and severity, for le beau est toujours severe. the realist he defined as one who aims at reproducing the external phenomena of nature, while the idealist is the man who 'imagines things of fine interest.' yet, while he defined them he would not separate them. the true artist is a realist, for he recognises an external world of truth; an idealist, for he has selection, abstraction and the power of individualisation. to stand apart from the world of nature is fatal, but it is no less fatal merely to reproduce facts. art, in a word, must not content itself simply with holding the mirror up to nature, for it is a re-creation more than a reflection, and not a repetition but rather a new song. as for finish, it must not be confused with elaboration. a picture, said mr. image, is finished when the means of form and colour employed by the artist are adequate to convey the artist's intention; and, with this definition and a peroration suitable to the season, he concluded his interesting and intellectual lecture. light refreshments were then served to the audience, and the five-o'clock- tea school of criticism came very much to the front. mr. image's entire freedom from dogmatism and self-assertion was in some quarters rather severely commented on, and one young gentleman declared that such virtuous modesty as the lecturer's might easily become a most vicious mannerism. everybody, however, was extremely pleased to learn that it is no longer the duty of art to hold the mirror up to nature, and the few philistines who dissented from this view received that most terrible of all punishments--the contempt of the highly cultured. mr. image's third lecture will be delivered on january and will, no doubt, be largely attended, as the subjects advertised are full of interest, and though 'sweet reasonableness' may not convert, it always charms. mr. morris on tapestry (pall mall gazette, november , .) yesterday evening mr. william morris delivered a most interesting and fascinating lecture on carpet and tapestry weaving at the arts and crafts exhibition now held at the new gallery. mr. morris had small practical models of the two looms used, the carpet loom where the weaver sits in front of his work; the more elaborate tapestry loom where the weaver sits behind, at the back of the stuff, has his design outlined on the upright threads and sees in a mirror the shadow of the pattern and picture as it grows gradually to perfection. he spoke at much length on the question of dyes--praising madder and kermes for reds, precipitate of iron or ochre for yellows, and for blue either indigo or woad. at the back of the platform hung a lovely flemish tapestry of the fourteenth century, and a superb persian carpet about two hundred and fifty years old. mr. morris pointed out the loveliness of the carpet--its delicate suggestion of hawthorn blossom, iris and rose, its rejection of imitation and shading; and showed how it combined the great quality of decorative design--being at once clear and well defined in form: each outline exquisitely traced, each line deliberate in its intention and its beauty, and the whole effect being one of unity, of harmony, almost of mystery, the colours being so perfectly harmonised together and the little bright notes of colour being so cunningly placed either for tone or brilliancy. tapestries, he said, were to the north of europe what fresco was to the south--our climate, amongst other reasons, guiding us in our choice of material for wall-covering. england, france, and flanders were the three great tapestry countries--flanders with its great wool trade being the first in splendid colours and superb gothic design. the keynote of tapestry, the secret of its loveliness, was, he told the audience, the complete filling up of every corner and square inch of surface with lovely and fanciful and suggestive design. hence the wonder of those great gothic tapestries where the forest trees rise in different places, one over the other, each leaf perfect in its shape and colour and decorative value, while in simple raiment of beautiful design knights and ladies wandered in rich flower gardens, and rode with hawk on wrist through long green arcades, and sat listening to lute and viol in blossom- starred bowers or by cool gracious water springs. upon the other hand, when the gothic feeling died away, and boucher and others began to design, they gave us wide expanses of waste sky, elaborate perspective, posing nymphs and shallow artificial treatment. indeed, boucher met with scant mercy at mr. morris's vigorous hands and was roundly abused, and modern gobelins, with m. bougereau's cartoons, fared no better. mr. morris told some delightful stories about old tapestry work from the days when in the egyptian tombs the dead were laid wrapped in picture cloths, some of which are now in the south kensington museum, to the time of the great turk bajazet who, having captured some christian knights, would accept nothing for their ransom but the 'storied tapestries of france' and gerfalcons. as regards the use of tapestry in modern days, he pointed out that we were richer than the middle ages, and so should be better able to afford this form of lovely wall-covering, which for artistic tone is absolutely without rival. he said that the very limitation of material and form forced the imaginative designer into giving us something really beautiful and decorative. 'what is the use of setting an artist in a twelve-acre field and telling him to design a house? give him a limited space and he is forced by its limitation to concentrate, and to fill with pure loveliness the narrow surface at his disposal.' the worker also gives to the original design a very perfect richness of detail, and the threads with their varying colours and delicate reflections convey into the work a new source of delight. here, he said, we found perfect unity between the imaginative artist and the handicraftsman. the one was not too free, the other was not a slave. the eye of the artist saw, his brain conceived, his imagination created, but the hand of the weaver had also its opportunity for wonderful work, and did not copy what was already made, but re-created and put into a new and delightful form a design that for its perfection needed the loom to aid, and had to pass into a fresh and marvellous material before its beauty came to its real flower and blossom of absolutely right expression and artistic effect. but, said mr. morris in conclusion, to have great work we must be worthy of it. commercialism, with its vile god cheapness, its callous indifference to the worker, its innate vulgarity of temper, is our enemy. to gain anything good we must sacrifice something of our luxury--must think more of others, more of the state, the commonweal: 'we cannot have riches and wealth both,' he said; we must choose between them. the lecture was listened to with great attention by a very large and distinguished audience, and mr. morris was loudly applauded. the next lecture will be on sculpture by mr. george simonds, and if it is half so good as mr. morris it will well repay a visit to the lecture-room. mr. crane deserves great credit for his exertions in making this exhibition what it should be, and there is no doubt but that it will exercise an important and a good influence on all the handicrafts of our country. sculpture at the arts and crafts (pall mall gazette, november , .) the most satisfactory thing in mr. simonds' lecture last night was the peroration, in which he told the audience that 'an artist cannot be made.' but for this well-timed warning some deluded people might have gone away under the impression that sculpture was a sort of mechanical process within the reach of the meanest capabilities. for it must be confessed that mr. simonds' lecture was at once too elementary and too elaborately technical. the ordinary art student, even the ordinary studio-loafer, could not have learned anything from it, while the 'cultured person,' of whom there were many specimens present, could not but have felt a little bored at the careful and painfully clear descriptions given by the lecturer of very well-known and uninteresting methods of work. however, mr. simonds did his best. he described modelling in clay and wax; casting in plaster and in metal; how to enlarge and how to diminish to scale; bas-reliefs and working in the round; the various kinds of marble, their qualities and characteristics; how to reproduce in marble the plaster or clay bust; how to use the point, the drill, the wire and the chisel; and the various difficulties attending each process. he exhibited a clay bust of mr. walter crane on which he did some elementary work; a bust of mr. parsons; a small statuette; several moulds, and an interesting diagram of the furnace used by balthasar keller for casting a great equestrian statue of louis xiv. in - . what his lecture lacked were ideas. of the artistic value of each material; of the correspondence between material or method and the imaginative faculty seeking to find expression; of the capacities for realism and idealism that reside in each material; of the historical and human side of the art--he said nothing. he showed the various instruments and how they are used, but he treated them entirely as instruments for the hand. he never once brought his subject into any relation either with art or with life. he explained forms of labour and forms of saving labour. he showed the various methods as they might be used by an artisan. mr. morris, last week, while explaining the technical processes of weaving, never forgot that he was lecturing on an art. he not merely taught his audience, but he charmed them. however, the audience gathered together last night at the arts and crafts exhibition seemed very much interested; at least, they were very attentive; and mr. walter crane made a short speech at the conclusion, in which he expressed his satisfaction that in spite of modern machinery sculpture had hardly altered one of its tools. for our own part we cannot help regretting the extremely commonplace character of the lecture. if a man lectures on poets he should not confine his remarks purely to grammar. next week mr. emery walker lectures on printing. we hope--indeed we are sure, that he will not forget that it is an art, or rather it was an art once, and can be made so again. printing and printers (pall mall gazette, november , .) nothing could have been better than mr. emery walker's lecture on letterpress printing and illustration, delivered last night at the arts and crafts. a series of most interesting specimens of old printed books and manuscripts was displayed on the screen by means of the magic-lantern, and mr. walker's explanations were as clear and simple as his suggestions were admirable. he began by explaining the different kinds of type and how they are made, and showed specimens of the old block-printing which preceded the movable type and is still used in china. he pointed out the intimate connection between printing and handwriting--as long as the latter was good the printers had a living model to go by, but when it decayed printing decayed also. he showed on the screen a page from gutenberg's bible (the first printed book, date about - ) and a manuscript of columella; a printed livy of , with the abbreviations of handwriting, and a manuscript of the history of pompeius by justin of . the latter he regarded as an example of the beginning of the roman type. the resemblance between the manuscripts and the printed books was most curious and suggestive. he then showed a page out of john of spier's edition of cicero's letters, the first book printed at venice, an edition of the same book by nicholas jansen in , and a wonderful manuscript petrarch of the sixteenth century. he told the audience about aldus, who was the first publisher to start cheap books, who dropped abbreviations and had his type cut by francia pictor et aurifex, who was said to have taken it from petrarch's handwriting. he exhibited a page of the copy-book of vicentino, the great venetian writing-master, which was greeted with a spontaneous round of applause, and made some excellent suggestions about improving modern copy-books and avoiding slanting writing. a superb plautus printed at florence in for lorenzo di medici, polydore virgil's history with the fine holbein designs, printed at basle in , and other interesting books, were also exhibited on the screen, the size, of course, being very much enlarged. he spoke of elzevir in the seventeenth century when handwriting began to fall off, and of the english printer caslon, and of baskerville whose type was possibly designed by hogarth, but is not very good. latin, he remarked, was a better language to print than english, as the tails of the letters did not so often fall below the line. the wide spacing between lines, occasioned by the use of a lead, he pointed out, left the page in stripes and made the blanks as important as the lines. margins should, of course, be wide except the inner margins, and the headlines often robbed the page of its beauty of design. the type used by the pall mall was, we are glad to say, rightly approved of. with regard to illustration, the essential thing, mr. walker said, is to have harmony between the type and the decoration. he pleaded for true book ornament as opposed to the silly habit of putting pictures where they are not wanted, and pointed out that mechanical harmony and artistic harmony went hand in hand. no ornament or illustration should be used in a book which cannot be printed in the same way as the type. for his warnings he produced rogers's italy with a steel-plate engraving, and a page from an american magazine which being florid, pictorial and bad, was greeted with some laughter. for examples we had a lovely boccaccio printed at ulm, and a page out of la mer des histoires printed in . blake and bewick were also shown, and a page of music designed by mr. horne. the lecture was listened to with great attention by a large audience, and was certainly most attractive. mr. walker has the keen artistic instinct that comes out of actually working in the art of which he spoke. his remarks about the pictorial character of modern illustration were well timed, and we hope that some of the publishers in the audience will take them to heart. next thursday mr. cobden-sanderson lectures on bookbinding, a subject on which few men in england have higher qualifications for speaking. we are glad to see these lectures are so well attended. the beauties of bookbinding (pall mall gazette, november , .) 'the beginning of art,' said mr. cobden-sanderson last night in his charming lecture on bookbinding, 'is man thinking about the universe.' he desires to give expression to the joy and wonder that he feels at the marvels that surround him, and invents a form of beauty through which he utters the thought or feeling that is in him. and bookbinding ranks amongst the arts: 'through it a man expresses himself.' this elegant and pleasantly exaggerated exordium preceded some very practical demonstrations. 'the apron is the banner of the future!' exclaimed the lecturer, and he took his coat off and put his apron on. he spoke a little about old bindings for the papyrus roll, about the ivory or cedar cylinders round which old manuscripts were wound, about the stained covers and the elaborate strings, till binding in the modern sense began with literature in a folded form, with literature in pages. a binding, he pointed out, consists of two boards, originally of wood, now of mill-board, covered with leather, silk or velvet. the use of these boards is to protect the 'world's written wealth.' the best material is leather, decorated with gold. the old binders used to be given forests that they might always have a supply of the skins of wild animals; the modern binder has to content himself with importing morocco, which is far the best leather there is, and is very much to be preferred to calf. mr. sanderson mentioned by name a few of the great binders such as le gascon, and some of the patrons of bookbinding like the medicis, grolier, and the wonderful women who so loved books that they lent them some of the perfume and grace of their own strange lives. however, the historical part of the lecture was very inadequate, possibly necessarily so through the limitations of time. the really elaborate part of the lecture was the practical exposition. mr. sanderson described and illustrated the various processes of smoothing, pressing, cutting, paring, and the like. he divided bindings into two classes, the useful and the beautiful. among the former he reckoned paper covers such as the french use, paper boards and cloth boards, and half leather or calf bindings. cloth he disliked as a poor material, the gold on which soon fades away. as for beautiful bindings, in them 'decoration rises into enthusiasm.' a beautiful binding is 'a homage to genius.' it has its ethical value, its spiritual effect. 'by doing good work we raise life to a higher plane,' said the lecturer, and he dwelt with loving sympathy on the fact that a book is 'sensitive by nature,' that it is made by a human being for a human being, that the design must 'come from the man himself, and express the moods of his imagination, the joy of his soul.' there must, consequently, be no division of labour. 'i make my own paste and enjoy doing it,' said mr. sanderson as he spoke of the necessity for the artist doing the whole work with his own hands. but before we have really good bookbinding we must have a social revolution. as things are now, the worker diminished to a machine is the slave of the employer, and the employer bloated into a millionaire is the slave of the public, and the public is the slave of its pet god, cheapness. the bookbinder of the future is to be an educated man who appreciates literature and has freedom for his fancy and leisure for his thought. all this is very good and sound. but in treating bookbinding as an imaginative, expressive human art we must confess that we think that mr. sanderson made something of an error. bookbinding is essentially decorative, and good decoration is far more often suggested by material and mode of work than by any desire on the part of the designer to tell us of his joy in the world. hence it comes that good decoration is always traditional. where it is the expression of the individual it is usually either false or capricious. these handicrafts are not primarily expressive arts; they are impressive arts. if a man has any message for the world he will not deliver it in a material that always suggests and always conditions its own decoration. the beauty of bookbinding is abstract decorative beauty. it is not, in the first instance, a mode of expression for a man's soul. indeed, the danger of all these lofty claims for handicraft is simply that they show a desire to give crafts the province and motive of arts such as poetry, painting and sculpture. such province and such motive they have not got. their aim is different. between the arts that aim at annihilating their material and the arts that aim at glorifying it there is a wide gulf. however, it was quite right of mr. cobden-sanderson to extol his own art, and though he seemed often to confuse expressive and impressive modes of beauty, he always spoke with great sincerity. next week mr. crane delivers the final lecture of this admirable 'arts and crafts' series and, no doubt, he will have much to say on a subject to which he has devoted the whole of his fine artistic life. for ourselves, we cannot help feeling that in bookbinding art expresses primarily not the feeling of the worker but simply itself, its own beauty, its own wonder. the close of the arts and crafts (pall mall gazette, november , .) mr. walter crane, the president of the society of arts and crafts, was greeted last night by such an enormous audience that at one time the honorary secretary became alarmed for the safety of the cartoons, and many people were unable to gain admission at all. however, order was soon established, and mr. cobden-sanderson stepped up on to the platform and in a few pleasantly sententious phrases introduced mr. crane as one who had always been 'the advocate of great and unpopular causes,' and the aim of whose art was 'joy in widest commonalty spread.' mr. crane began his lecture by pointing out that art had two fields, aspect and adaptation, and that it was primarily with the latter that the designer was concerned, his object being not literal fact but ideal beauty. with the unstudied and accidental effects of nature the designer had nothing to do. he sought for principles and proceeded by geometric plan and abstract line and colour. pictorial art is isolated and unrelated, and the frame is the last relic of the old connection between painting and architecture. but the designer does not desire primarily to produce a picture. he aims at making a pattern and proceeds by selection; he rejects the 'hole in the wall' idea, and will have nothing to do with the 'false windows of a picture.' three things differentiate designs. first, the spirit of the artist, that mode and manner by which durer is separated from flaxman, by which we recognise the soul of a man expressing itself in the form proper to it. next comes the constructive idea, the filling of spaces with lovely work. last is the material which, be it leather or clay, ivory or wood, often suggests and always controls the pattern. as for naturalism, we must remember that we see not with our eyes alone but with our whole faculties. feeling and thought are part of sight. mr. crane then drew on a blackboard the naturalistic oak-tree of the landscape painter and the decorative oak-tree of the designer. he showed that each artist is looking for different things, and that the designer always makes appearance subordinate to decorative motive. he showed also the field daisy as it is in nature and the same flower treated for panel decoration. the designer systematises and emphasises, chooses and rejects, and decorative work bears the same relation to naturalistic presentation that the imaginative language of the poetic drama bears to the language of real life. the decorative capabilities of the square and the circle were then shown on the board, and much was said about symmetry, alternation and radiation, which last principle mr. crane described as 'the home rule of design, the perfection of local self-government,' and which, he pointed out, was essentially organic, manifesting itself in the bird's wing as well as in the tudor vaulting of gothic architecture. mr. crane then passed to the human figure, 'that expressive unit of design,' which contains all the principles of decoration, and exhibited a design of a nude figure with an axe couched in an architectural spandrel, a figure which he was careful to explain was, in spite of the axe, not that of mr. gladstone. the designer then leaving chiaroscuro, shading and other 'superficial facts of life' to take care of themselves, and keeping the idea of space limitation always before him, then proceeds to emphasise the beauty of his material, be it metal with its 'agreeable bossiness,' as ruskin calls it, or leaded glass with its fine dark lines, or mosaic with its jewelled tesserae, or the loom with its crossed threads, or wood with its pleasant crispness. much bad art comes from one art trying to borrow from another. we have sculptors who try to be pictorial, painters who aim at stage effects, weavers who seek for pictorial motives, carvers who make life and not art their aim, cotton printers 'who tie up bunches of artificial flowers with streamers of artificial ribbons' and fling them on the unfortunate textile. then came the little bit of socialism, very sensible and very quietly put. 'how can we have fine art when the worker is condemned to monotonous and mechanical labour in the midst of dull or hideous surroundings, when cities and nature are sacrificed to commercial greed, when cheapness is the god of life?' in old days the craftsman was a designer; he had his 'prentice days of quiet study; and even the painter began by grinding colours. some little old ornament still lingers, here and there, on the brass rosettes of cart-horses, in the common milk-cans of antwerp, in the water-vessels of italy. but even this is disappearing. 'the tourist passes by' and creates a demand that commerce satisfies in an unsatisfactory manner. we have not yet arrived at a healthy state of things. there is still the tottenham court road and a threatened revival of louis seize furniture, and the 'popular pictorial print struggles through the meshes of the antimacassar.' art depends on life. we cannot get it from machines. and yet machines are bad only when they are our masters. the printing press is a machine that art values because it obeys her. true art must have the vital energy of life itself, must take its colours from life's good or evil, must follow angels of light or angels of darkness. the art of the past is not to be copied in a servile spirit. for a new age we require a new form. mr. crane's lecture was most interesting and instructive. on one point only we would differ from him. like mr. morris he quite underrates the art of japan, and looks on the japanese as naturalists and not as decorative artists. it is true that they are often pictorial, but by the exquisite finesse of their touch, the brilliancy and beauty of their colour, their perfect knowledge of how to make a space decorative without decorating it (a point on which mr. crane said nothing, though it is one of the most important things in decoration), and by their keen instinct of where to place a thing, the japanese are decorative artists of a high order. next year somebody must lecture the arts and crafts on japanese art. in the meantime, we congratulate mr. crane and mr. cobden-sanderson on the admirable series of lectures that has been delivered at this exhibition. their influence for good can hardly be over-estimated. the exhibition, we are glad to hear, has been a financial success. it closes tomorrow, but is to be only the first of many to come. english poetesses (queen, december , .) england has given to the world one great poetess, elizabeth barrett browning. by her side mr. swinburne would place miss christina rossetti, whose new year hymn he describes as so much the noblest of sacred poems in our language, that there is none which comes near it enough to stand second. 'it is a hymn,' he tells us, 'touched as with the fire, and bathed as in the light of sunbeams, tuned as to chords and cadences of refluent sea-music beyond reach of harp and organ, large echoes of the serene and sonorous tides of heaven.' much as i admire miss rossetti's work, her subtle choice of words, her rich imagery, her artistic naivete, wherein curious notes of strangeness and simplicity are fantastically blended together, i cannot but think that mr. swinburne has, with noble and natural loyalty, placed her on too lofty a pedestal. to me, she is simply a very delightful artist in poetry. this is indeed something so rare that when we meet it we cannot fail to love it, but it is not everything. beyond it and above it are higher and more sunlit heights of song, a larger vision, and an ampler air, a music at once more passionate and more profound, a creative energy that is born of the spirit, a winged rapture that is born of the soul, a force and fervour of mere utterance that has all the wonder of the prophet, and not a little of the consecration of the priest. mrs. browning is unapproachable by any woman who has ever touched lyre or blown through reed since the days of the great aeolian poetess. but sappho, who, to the antique world was a pillar of flame, is to us but a pillar of shadow. of her poems, burnt with other most precious work by byzantine emperor and by roman pope, only a few fragments remain. possibly they lie mouldering in the scented darkness of an egyptian tomb, clasped in the withered hands of some long-dead lover. some greek monk at athos may even now be poring over an ancient manuscript, whose crabbed characters conceal lyric or ode by her whom the greeks spoke of as 'the poetess' just as they termed homer 'the poet,' who was to them the tenth muse, the flower of the graces, the child of eros, and the pride of hellas--sappho, with the sweet voice, the bright, beautiful eyes, the dark hyacinth-coloured hair. but, practically, the work of the marvellous singer of lesbos is entirely lost to us. we have a few rose-leaves out of her garden, that is all. literature nowadays survives marble and bronze, but in old days, in spite of the roman poet's noble boast, it was not so. the fragile clay vases of the greeks still keep for us pictures of sappho, delicately painted in black and red and white; but of her song we have only the echo of an echo. of all the women of history, mrs. browning is the only one that we could name in any possible or remote conjunction with sappho. sappho was undoubtedly a far more flawless and perfect artist. she stirred the whole antique world more than mrs. browning ever stirred our modern age. never had love such a singer. even in the few lines that remain to us the passion seems to scorch and burn. but, as unjust time, who has crowned her with the barren laurels of fame, has twined with them the dull poppies of oblivion, let us turn from the mere memory of a poetess to one whose song still remains to us as an imperishable glory to our literature; to her who heard the cry of the children from dark mine and crowded factory, and made england weep over its little ones; who, in the feigned sonnets from the portuguese, sang of the spiritual mystery of love, and of the intellectual gifts that love brings to the soul; who had faith in all that is worthy, and enthusiasm for all that is great, and pity for all that suffers; who wrote the vision of poets and casa guidi windows and aurora leigh. as one, to whom i owe my love of poetry no less than my love of country, has said of her: still on our ears the clear 'excelsior' from a woman's lip rings out across the apennines, although the woman's brow lies pale and cold in death with all the mighty marble dead in florence. for while great songs can stir the hearts of men, spreading their full vibrations through the world in ever-widening circles till they reach the throne of god, and song becomes a prayer, and prayer brings down the liberating strength that kindles nations to heroic deeds, she lives--the great-souled poetess who saw from casa guidi windows freedom dawn on italy, and gave the glory back in sunrise hymns to all humanity! she lives indeed, and not alone in the heart of shakespeare's england, but in the heart of dante's italy also. to greek literature she owed her scholarly culture, but modern italy created her human passion for liberty. when she crossed the alps she became filled with a new ardour, and from that fine, eloquent mouth, that we can still see in her portraits, broke forth such a noble and majestic outburst of lyrical song as had not been heard from woman's lips for more than two thousand years. it is pleasant to think that an english poetess was to a certain extent a real factor in bringing about that unity of italy that was dante's dream, and if florence drove her great singer into exile, she at least welcomed within her walls the later singer that england had sent to her. if one were asked the chief qualities of mrs. browning's work, one would say, as mr. swinburne said of byron's, its sincerity and its strength. faults it, of course, possesses. 'she would rhyme moon to table,' used to be said of her in jest; and certainly no more monstrous rhymes are to be found in all literature than some of those we come across in mrs. browning's poems. but her ruggedness was never the result of carelessness. it was deliberate, as her letters to mr. horne show very clearly. she refused to sandpaper her muse. she disliked facile smoothness and artificial polish. in her very rejection of art she was an artist. she intended to produce a certain effect by certain means, and she succeeded; and her indifference to complete assonance in rhyme often gives a splendid richness to her verse, and brings into it a pleasurable element of surprise. in philosophy she was a platonist, in politics an opportunist. she attached herself to no particular party. she loved the people when they were king-like, and kings when they showed themselves to be men. of the real value and motive of poetry she had a most exalted idea. 'poetry,' she says, in the preface of one of her volumes, 'has been as serious a thing to me as life itself; and life has been a very serious thing. there has been no playing at skittles for me in either. i never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry, nor leisure for the hour of the poet. i have done my work so far, not as mere hand and head work apart from the personal being, but as the completest expression of that being to which i could attain.' it certainly is her completest expression, and through it she realises her fullest perfection. 'the poet,' she says elsewhere, 'is at once richer and poorer than he used to be; he wears better broadcloth, but speaks no more oracles.' these words give us the keynote to her view of the poet's mission. he was to utter divine oracles, to be at once inspired prophet and holy priest; and as such we may, i think, without exaggeration, conceive her. she was a sibyl delivering a message to the world, sometimes through stammering lips, and once at least with blinded eyes, yet always with the true fire and fervour of lofty and unshaken faith, always with the great raptures of a spiritual nature, the high ardours of an impassioned soul. as we read her best poems we feel that, though apollo's shrine be empty and the bronze tripod overthrown, and the vale of delphi desolate, still the pythia is not dead. in our own age she has sung for us, and this land gave her new birth. indeed, mrs. browning is the wisest of the sibyls, wiser even than that mighty figure whom michael angelo has painted on the roof of the sistine chapel at rome, poring over the scroll of mystery, and trying to decipher the secrets of fate; for she realised that, while knowledge is power, suffering is part of knowledge. to her influence, almost as much as to the higher education of women, i would be inclined to attribute the really remarkable awakening of woman's song that characterises the latter half of our century in england. no country has ever had so many poetesses at once. indeed, when one remembers that the greeks had only nine muses, one is sometimes apt to fancy that we have too many. and yet the work done by women in the sphere of poetry is really of a very high standard of excellence. in england we have always been prone to underrate the value of tradition in literature. in our eagerness to find a new voice and a fresh mode of music, we have forgotten how beautiful echo may be. we look first for individuality and personality, and these are, indeed, the chief characteristics of the masterpieces of our literature, either in prose or verse; but deliberate culture and a study of the best models, if united to an artistic temperament and a nature susceptible of exquisite impressions, may produce much that is admirable, much that is worthy of praise. it would be quite impossible to give a complete catalogue of all the women who since mrs. browning's day have tried lute and lyre. mrs. pfeiffer, mrs. hamilton king, mrs. augusta webster, graham tomson, miss mary robinson, jean ingelow, miss may kendall, miss nesbit, miss may probyn, mrs. craik, mrs. meynell, miss chapman, and many others have done really good work in poetry, either in the grave dorian mode of thoughtful and intellectual verse, or in the light and graceful forms of old french song, or in the romantic manner of antique ballad, or in that 'moment's monument,' as rossetti called it, the intense and concentrated sonnet. occasionally one is tempted to wish that the quick, artistic faculty that women undoubtedly possess developed itself somewhat more in prose and somewhat less in verse. poetry is for our highest moods, when we wish to be with the gods, and in our poetry nothing but the very best should satisfy us; but prose is for our daily bread, and the lack of good prose is one of the chief blots on our culture. french prose, even in the hands of the most ordinary writers, is always readable, but english prose is detestable. we have a few, a very few, masters, such as they are. we have carlyle, who should not be imitated; and mr. pater, who, through the subtle perfection of his form, is inimitable absolutely; and mr. froude, who is useful; and matthew arnold, who is a model; and mr. george meredith, who is a warning; and mr. lang, who is the divine amateur; and mr. stevenson, who is the humane artist; and mr. ruskin, whose rhythm and colour and fine rhetoric and marvellous music of words are entirely unattainable. but the general prose that one reads in magazines and in newspapers is terribly dull and cumbrous, heavy in movement and uncouth or exaggerated in expression. possibly some day our women of letters will apply themselves more definitely to prose. their light touch, and exquisite ear, and delicate sense of balance and proportion would be of no small service to us. i can fancy women bringing a new manner into our literature. however, we have to deal here with women as poetesses, and it is interesting to note that, though mrs. browning's influence undoubtedly contributed very largely to the development of this new song-movement, if i may so term it, still there seems to have been never a time during the last three hundred years when the women of this kingdom did not cultivate, if not the art, at least the habit, of writing poetry. who the first english poetess was i cannot say. i believe it was the abbess juliana berners, who lived in the fifteenth century; but i have no doubt that mr. freeman would be able at a moment's notice to produce some wonderful saxon or norman poetess, whose works cannot be read without a glossary, and even with its aid are completely unintelligible. for my own part, i am content with the abbess juliana, who wrote enthusiastically about hawking; and after her i would mention anne askew, who in prison and on the eve of her fiery martyrdom wrote a ballad that has, at any rate, a pathetic and historical interest. queen elizabeth's 'most sweet and sententious ditty' on mary stuart is highly praised by puttenham, a contemporary critic, as an example of 'exargasia, or the gorgeous in literature,' which somehow seems a very suitable epithet for such a great queen's poems. the term she applies to the unfortunate queen of scots, 'the daughter of debate,' has, of course, long since passed into literature. the countess of pembroke, sir philip sidney's sister, was much admired as a poetess in her day. in the 'learned, virtuous, and truly noble ladie,' elizabeth carew, published a tragedie of marian, the faire queene of jewry, and a few years later the 'noble ladie diana primrose' wrote a chain of pearl, which is a panegyric on the 'peerless graces' of gloriana. mary morpeth, the friend and admirer of drummond of hawthornden; lady mary wroth, to whom ben jonson dedicated the alchemist; and the princess elizabeth, the sister of charles i., should also be mentioned. after the restoration women applied themselves with still greater ardour to the study of literature and the practice of poetry. margaret, duchess of newcastle, was a true woman of letters, and some of her verses are extremely pretty and graceful. mrs. aphra behn was the first englishwoman who adopted literature as a regular profession. mrs. katharine philips, according to mr. gosse, invented sentimentality. as she was praised by dryden, and mourned by cowley, let us hope she may be forgiven. keats came across her poems at oxford when he was writing endymion, and found in one of them 'a most delicate fancy of the fletcher kind'; but i fear nobody reads the matchless orinda now. of lady winchelsea's nocturnal reverie wordsworth said that, with the exception of pope's windsor forest, it was the only poem of the period intervening between paradise lost and thomson's seasons that contained a single new image of external nature. lady rachel russell, who may be said to have inaugurated the letter-writing literature of england; eliza haywood, who is immortalised by the badness of her work, and has a niche in the dunciad; and the marchioness of wharton, whose poems waller said he admired, are very remarkable types, the finest of them being, of course, the first named, who was a woman of heroic mould and of a most noble dignity of nature. indeed, though the english poetesses up to the time of mrs. browning cannot be said to have produced any work of absolute genius, they are certainly interesting figures, fascinating subjects for study. amongst them we find lady mary wortley montague, who had all the caprice of cleopatra, and whose letters are delightful reading; mrs. centlivre, who wrote one brilliant comedy; lady anne barnard, whose auld robin gray was described by sir walter scott as 'worth all the dialogues corydon and phillis have together spoken from the days of theocritus downwards,' and is certainly a very beautiful and touching poem; esther vanhomrigh and hester johnson, the vanessa and the stella of dean swift's life; mrs. thrale, the friend of the great lexicographer; the worthy mrs. barbauld; the excellent mrs. hannah more; the industrious joanna baillie; the admirable mrs. chapone, whose ode to solitude always fills me with the wildest passion for society, and who will at least be remembered as the patroness of the establishment at which becky sharp was educated; miss anna seward, who was called 'the swan of lichfield'; poor l. e. l., whom disraeli described in one of his clever letters to his sister as 'the personification of brompton--pink satin dress, white satin shoes, red cheeks, snub nose, and her hair a la sappho'; mrs. ratcliffe, who introduced the romantic novel, and has consequently much to answer for; the beautiful duchess of devonshire, of whom gibbon said that she was 'made for something better than a duchess'; the two wonderful sisters, lady dufferin and mrs. norton; mrs. tighe, whose psyche keats read with pleasure; constantia grierson, a marvellous blue-stocking in her time; mrs. hemans; pretty, charming 'perdita,' who flirted alternately with poetry and the prince regent, played divinely in the winter's tale, was brutally attacked by gifford, and has left us a pathetic little poem on the snowdrop; and emily bronte, whose poems are instinct with tragic power, and seem often on the verge of being great. old fashions in literature are not so pleasant as old fashions in dress. i like the costume of the age of powder better than the poetry of the age of pope. but if one adopts the historical standpoint--and this is, indeed, the only standpoint from which we can ever form a fair estimate of work that is not absolutely of the highest order--we cannot fail to see that many of the english poetesses who preceded mrs. browning were women of no ordinary talent, and that if the majority of them looked upon poetry simply as a department of belles lettres, so in most cases did their contemporaries. since mrs. browning's day our woods have become full of singing birds, and if i venture to ask them to apply themselves more to prose and less to song, it is not that i like poetical prose, but that i love the prose of poets. london models (english illustrated magazine, january .) professional models are a purely modern invention. to the greeks, for instance, they were quite unknown. mr. mahaffy, it is true, tells us that pericles used to present peacocks to the great ladies of athenian society in order to induce them to sit to his friend phidias, and we know that polygnotus introduced into his picture of the trojan women the face of elpinice, the celebrated sister of the great conservative leader of the day, but these grandes dames clearly do not come under our category. as for the old masters, they undoubtedly made constant studies from their pupils and apprentices, and even their religious pictures are full of the portraits of their friends and relations, but they do not seem to have had the inestimable advantage of the existence of a class of people whose sole profession is to pose. in fact the model, in our sense of the word, is the direct creation of academic schools. every country now has its own models, except america. in new york, and even in boston, a good model is so great a rarity that most of the artists are reduced to painting niagara and millionaires. in europe, however, it is different. here we have plenty of models, and of every nationality. the italian models are the best. the natural grace of their attitudes, as well as the wonderful picturesqueness of their colouring, makes them facile--often too facile--subjects for the painter's brush. the french models, though not so beautiful as the italian, possess a quickness of intellectual sympathy, a capacity, in fact, of understanding the artist, which is quite remarkable. they have also a great command over the varieties of facial expression, are peculiarly dramatic, and can chatter the argot of the atelier as cleverly as the critic of the gil bias. the english models form a class entirely by themselves. they are not so picturesque as the italian, nor so clever as the french, and they have absolutely no tradition, so to speak, of their order. now and then some old veteran knocks at a studio door, and proposes to sit as ajax defying the lightning, or as king lear upon the blasted heath. one of them some time ago called on a popular painter who, happening at the moment to require his services, engaged him, and told him to begin by kneeling down in the attitude of prayer. 'shall i be biblical or shakespearean, sir?' asked the veteran. 'well--shakespearean,' answered the artist, wondering by what subtle nuance of expression the model would convey the difference. 'all right, sir,' said the professor of posing, and he solemnly knelt down and began to wink with his left eye! this class, however, is dying out. as a rule the model, nowadays, is a pretty girl, from about twelve to twenty-five years of age, who knows nothing about art, cares less, and is merely anxious to earn seven or eight shillings a day without much trouble. english models rarely look at a picture, and never venture on any aesthetic theories. in fact, they realise very completely mr. whistler's idea of the function of an art critic, for they pass no criticisms at all. they accept all schools of art with the grand catholicity of the auctioneer, and sit to a fantastic young impressionist as readily as to a learned and laborious academician. they are neither for the whistlerites nor against them; the quarrel between the school of facts and the school of effects touches them not; idealistic and naturalistic are words that convey no meaning to their ears; they merely desire that the studio shall be warm, and the lunch hot, for all charming artists give their models lunch. as to what they are asked to do they are equally indifferent. on monday they will don the rags of a beggar-girl for mr. pumper, whose pathetic pictures of modern life draw such tears from the public, and on tuesday they will pose in a peplum for mr. phoebus, who thinks that all really artistic subjects are necessarily b.c. they career gaily through all centuries and through all costumes, and, like actors, are interesting only when they are not themselves. they are extremely good-natured, and very accommodating. 'what do you sit for?' said a young artist to a model who had sent him in her card (all models, by the way, have cards and a small black bag). 'oh, for anything you like, sir,' said the girl, 'landscape if necessary!' intellectually, it must be acknowledged, they are philistines, but physically they are perfect--at least some are. though none of them can talk greek, many can look greek, which to a nineteenth-century painter is naturally of great importance. if they are allowed, they chatter a great deal, but they never say anything. their observations are the only banalites heard in bohemia. however, though they cannot appreciate the artist as artist, they are quite ready to appreciate the artist as a man. they are very sensitive to kindness, respect and generosity. a beautiful model who had sat for two years to one of our most distinguished english painters, got engaged to a street vendor of penny ices. on her marriage the painter sent her a pretty wedding present, and received in return a nice letter of thanks with the following remarkable postscript: 'never eat the green ices!' when they are tired a wise artist gives them a rest. then they sit in a chair and read penny dreadfuls, till they are roused from the tragedy of literature to take their place again in the tragedy of art. a few of them smoke cigarettes. this, however, is regarded by the other models as showing a want of seriousness, and is not generally approved of. they are engaged by the day and by the half-day. the tariff is a shilling an hour, to which great artists usually add an omnibus fare. the two best things about them are their extraordinary prettiness, and their extreme respectability. as a class they are very well behaved, particularly those who sit for the figure, a fact which is curious or natural according to the view one takes of human nature. they usually marry well, and sometimes they marry the artist. for an artist to marry his model is as fatal as for a gourmet to marry his cook: the one gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinners. on the whole the english female models are very naive, very natural, and very good-humoured. the virtues which the artist values most in them are prettiness and punctuality. every sensible model consequently keeps a diary of her engagements, and dresses neatly. the bad season is, of course, the summer, when the artists are out of town. however, of late years some artists have engaged their models to follow them, and the wife of one of our most charming painters has often had three or four models under her charge in the country, so that the work of her husband and his friends should not be interrupted. in france the models migrate en masse to the little seaport villages or forest hamlets where the painters congregate. the english models, however, wait patiently in london, as a rule, till the artists come back. nearly all of them live with their parents, and help to support the house. they have every qualification for being immortalised in art except that of beautiful hands. the hands of the english model are nearly always coarse and red. as for the male models, there is the veteran whom we have mentioned above. he has all the traditions of the grand style, and is rapidly disappearing with the school he represents. an old man who talks about fuseli is, of course, unendurable, and, besides, patriarchs have ceased to be fashionable subjects. then there is the true academy model. he is usually a man of thirty, rarely good-looking, but a perfect miracle of muscles. in fact he is the apotheosis of anatomy, and is so conscious of his own splendour that he tells you of his tibia and his thorax, as if no one else had anything of the kind. then come the oriental models. the supply of these is limited, but there are always about a dozen in london. they are very much sought after as they can remain immobile for hours, and generally possess lovely costumes. however, they have a very poor opinion of english art, which they regard as something between a vulgar personality and a commonplace photograph. next we have the italian youth who has come over specially to be a model, or takes to it when his organ is out of repair. he is often quite charming with his large melancholy eyes, his crisp hair, and his slim brown figure. it is true he eats garlic, but then he can stand like a faun and couch like a leopard, so he is forgiven. he is always full of pretty compliments, and has been known to have kind words of encouragement for even our greatest artists. as for the english lad of the same age, he never sits at all. apparently he does not regard the career of a model as a serious profession. in any case he is rarely, if ever, to be got hold of. english boys, too, are difficult to find. sometimes an ex-model who has a son will curl his hair, and wash his face, and bring him the round of the studios, all soap and shininess. the young school don't like him, but the older school do, and when he appears on the walls of the royal academy he is called the infant samuel. occasionally also an artist catches a couple of gamins in the gutter and asks them to come to his studio. the first time they always appear, but after that they don't keep their appointments. they dislike sitting still, and have a strong and perhaps natural objection to looking pathetic. besides, they are always under the impression that the artist is laughing at them. it is a sad fact, but there is no doubt that the poor are completely unconscious of their own picturesqueness. those of them who can be induced to sit do so with the idea that the artist is merely a benevolent philanthropist who has chosen an eccentric method of distributing alms to the undeserving. perhaps the school board will teach the london gamin his own artistic value, and then they will be better models than they are now. one remarkable privilege belongs to the academy model, that of extorting a sovereign from any newly elected associate or r.a. they wait at burlington house till the announcement is made, and then race to the hapless artist's house. the one who arrives first receives the money. they have of late been much troubled at the long distances they have had to run, and they look with disfavour on the election of artists who live at hampstead or at bedford park, for it is considered a point of honour not to employ the underground railway, omnibuses, or any artificial means of locomotion. the race is to the swift. besides the professional posers of the studio there are posers of the row, the posers at afternoon teas, the posers in politics and the circus posers. all four classes are delightful, but only the last class is ever really decorative. acrobats and gymnasts can give the young painter infinite suggestions, for they bring into their art an element of swiftness of motion and of constant change that the studio model necessary lacks. what is interesting in these 'slaves of the ring' is that with them beauty is an unconscious result not a conscious aim, the result in fact of the mathematical calculation of curves and distances, of absolute precision of eye, of the scientific knowledge of the equilibrium of forces, and of perfect physical training. a good acrobat is always graceful, though grace is never his object; he is graceful because he does what he has to do in the best way in which it can be done--graceful because he is natural. if an ancient greek were to come to life now, which considering the probable severity of his criticisms would be rather trying to our conceit, he would be found far oftener at the circus than at the theatre. a good circus is an oasis of hellenism in a world that reads too much to be wise, and thinks too much to be beautiful. if it were not for the running-ground at eton, the towing- path at oxford, the thames swimming-baths, and the yearly circuses, humanity would forget the plastic perfection of its own form, and degenerate into a race of short-sighted professors and spectacled precieuses. not that the circus proprietors are, as a rule, conscious of their high mission. do they not bore us with the haute ecole, and weary us with shakespearean clowns?--still, at least, they give us acrobats, and the acrobat is an artist. the mere fact that he never speaks to the audience shows how well he appreciates the great truth that the aim of art is not to reveal personality but to please. the clown may be blatant, but the acrobat is always beautiful. he is an interesting combination of the spirit of greek sculpture with the spangles of the modern costumier. he has even had his niche in the novels of our age, and if manette salomon be the unmasking of the model, les freres zemganno is the apotheosis of the acrobat. as regards the influence of the ordinary model on our english school of painting, it cannot be said that it is altogether good. it is, of course, an advantage for the young artist sitting in his studio to be able to isolate 'a little corner of life,' as the french say, from disturbing surroundings, and to study it under certain effects of light and shade. but this very isolation leads often to mere mannerism in the painter, and robs him of that broad acceptance of the general facts of life which is the very essence of art. model-painting, in a word, while it may be the condition of art, is not by any means its aim. it is simply practice, not perfection. its use trains the eye and the hand of the painter, its abuse produces in his work an effect of mere posing and prettiness. it is the secret of much of the artificiality of modern art, this constant posing of pretty people, and when art becomes artificial it becomes monotonous. outside the little world of the studio, with its draperies and its bric-a-brac, lies the world of life with its infinite, its shakespearean variety. we must, however, distinguish between the two kinds of models, those who sit for the figure and those who sit for the costume. the study of the first is always excellent, but the costume- model is becoming rather wearisome in modern pictures. it is really of very little use to dress up a london girl in greek draperies and to paint her as a goddess. the robe may be the robe of athens, but the face is usually the face of brompton. now and then, it is true, one comes across a model whose face is an exquisite anachronism, and who looks lovely and natural in the dress of any century but her own. this, however, is rather rare. as a rule models are absolutely de notre siecle, and should be painted as such. unfortunately they are not, and, as a consequence, we are shown every year a series of scenes from fancy dress balls which are called historical pictures, but are little more than mediocre representations of modern people masquerading. in france they are wiser. the french painter uses the model simply for study; for the finished picture he goes direct to life. however, we must not blame the sitters for the shortcomings of the artists. the english models are a well-behaved and hard-working class, and if they are more interested in artists than in art, a large section of the public is in the same condition, and most of our modern exhibitions seem to justify its choice. letter to joaquin miller written to mr. joaquin miller in reply to a letter, dated february , , in reference to the behaviour of a section of the audience at wilde's lecture on the english renaissance at the grand opera house, rochester, new york state, on february . it was first published in a volume called decorative art in america, containing unauthorised reprints of certain reviews and letters contributed by wilde to english newspapers. (new york: brentano's, .) st. louis, february , . my dear joaquin miller,--i thank you for your chivalrous and courteous letter. believe me, i would as lief judge of the strength and splendour of sun and sea by the dust that dances in the beam and the bubble that breaks on the wave, as take the petty and profitless vulgarity of one or two insignificant towns as any test or standard of the real spirit of a sane, strong and simple people, or allow it to affect my respect for the many noble men or women whom it has been my privilege in this great country to know. for myself and the cause which i represent i have no fears as regards the future. slander and folly have their way for a season, but for a season only; while, as touching the few provincial newspapers which have so vainly assailed me, or that ignorant and itinerant libeller of new england who goes lecturing from village to village in such open and ostentatious isolation, be sure i have no time to waste on them. youth being so glorious, art so godlike, and the very world about us so full of beautiful things, and things worthy of reverence, and things honourable, how should one stop to listen to the lucubrations of a literary gamin, to the brawling and mouthing of a man whose praise would be as insolent as his slander is impotent, or to the irresponsible and irrepressible chatter of the professionally unproductive? it is a great advantage, i admit, to have done nothing, but one must not abuse even that advantage. who, after all, that i should write of him, is this scribbling anonymuncule in grand old massachusetts who scrawls and screams so glibly about what he cannot understand? this apostle of inhospitality, who delights to defile, to desecrate, and to defame the gracious courtesies he is unworthy to enjoy? who are these scribes who, passing with purposeless alacrity from the police news to the parthenon, and from crime to criticism, sway with such serene incapacity the office which they so lately swept? 'narcissuses of imbecility,' what should they see in the clear waters of beauty and in the well undefiled of truth but the shifting and shadowy image of their own substantial stupidity? secure of that oblivion for which they toil so laboriously and, i must acknowledge, with such success, let them peer at us through their telescopes and report what they like of us. but, my dear joaquin, should we put them under the microscope there would be really nothing to be seen. i look forward to passing another delightful evening with you on my return to new york, and i need not tell you that whenever you visit england you will be received with that courtesy with which it is our pleasure to welcome all americans, and that honour with which it is our privilege to greet all poets.--most sincerely and affectionately yours, oscar wilde. notes on whistler i. (world, november , .) from oscar wilde, exeter, to j. m'neill whistler, tite street.--punch too ridiculous--when you and i are together we never talk about anything except ourselves. ii. (world, february , .) dear butterfly,--by the aid of a biographical dictionary i made the discovery that there were once two painters, called benjamin west and paul delaroche, who rashly lectured upon art. as of their works nothing at all remains, i conclude that they explained themselves away. be warned in time, james; and remain, as i do, incomprehensible. to be great is to be misunderstood.--tout a vous, oscar wilde. iii. (world, november , .) atlas,--this is very sad! with our james vulgarity begins at home, and should be allowed to stay there.--a vous, oscar wilde. reply to whistler (truth, january , .) to the editor of truth. sir,--i can hardly imagine that the public is in the very smallest degree interested in the shrill shrieks of 'plagiarism' that proceed from time to time out of the lips of silly vanity or incompetent mediocrity. however, as mr. james whistler has had the impertinence to attack me with both venom and vulgarity in your columns, i hope you will allow me to state that the assertions contained in his letter are as deliberately untrue as they are deliberately offensive. the definition of a disciple as one who has the courage of the opinions of his master is really too old even for mr. whistler to be allowed to claim it, and as for borrowing mr. whistler's ideas about art, the only thoroughly original ideas i have ever heard him express have had reference to his own superiority as a painter over painters greater than himself. it is a trouble for any gentleman to have to notice the lucubrations of so ill-bred and ignorant a person as mr. whistler, but your publication of his insolent letter left me no option in the matter.--i remain, sir, faithfully yours, oscar wilde. tite street, chelsea, s. w. letters on dorian gray i. mr. wilde's bad case (st. james's gazette, june , .) to the editor of the st. james's gazette. sir,--i have read your criticism of my story, the picture of dorian gray; and i need hardly say that i do not propose to discuss its merits or demerits, its personalities or its lack of personality. england is a free country, and ordinary english criticism is perfectly free and easy. besides, i must admit that, either from temperament or taste, or from both, i am quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticised from a moral standpoint. the sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate; and it is to the confusion between the two that we owe the appearance of mrs. grundy, that amusing old lady who represents the only original form of humour that the middle classes of this country have been able to produce. what i do object to most strongly is that you should have placarded the town with posters on which was printed in large letters:-- mr. oscar wilde's latest advertisement: a bad case. whether the expression 'a bad case' refers to my book or to the present position of the government, i cannot tell. what was silly and unnecessary was the use of the term 'advertisement.' i think i may say without vanity--though i do not wish to appear to run vanity down--that of all men in england i am the one who requires least advertisement. i am tired to death of being advertised--i feel no thrill when i see my name in a paper. the chronicle does not interest me any more. i wrote this book entirely for my own pleasure, and it gave me very great pleasure to write it. whether it becomes popular or not is a matter of absolute indifference to me. i am afraid, sir, that the real advertisement is your cleverly written article. the english public, as a mass, takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral, and your reclame will, i have no doubt, largely increase the sale of the magazine; in which sale i may mention with some regret, i have no pecuniary interest.--i remain, sir, your obedient servant, oscar wilde. tite street, chelsea, june . ii. mr. oscar wilde again (st. james's gazette, june , .) sir,--in your issue of today you state that my brief letter published in your columns is the 'best reply' i can make to your article upon dorian gray. this is not so. i do not propose to discuss fully the matter here, but i feel bound to say that your article contains the most unjustifiable attack that has been made upon any man of letters for many years. the writer of it, who is quite incapable of concealing his personal malice, and so in some measure destroys the effect he wishes to produce, seems not to have the slightest idea of the temper in which a work of art should be approached. to say that such a book as mine should be 'chucked into the fire' is silly. that is what one does with newspapers. of the value of pseudo-ethical criticism in dealing with artistic work i have spoken already. but as your writer has ventured into the perilous grounds of literary criticism i ask you to allow me, in fairness not merely to myself but to all men to whom literature is a fine art, to say a few words about his critical method. he begins by assailing me with much ridiculous virulence because the chief personages in my story are puppies. they _are_ puppies. does he think that literature went to the dogs when thackeray wrote about puppydom? i think that puppies are extremely interesting from an artistic as well as from a psychological point of view. they seem to me to be certainly far more interesting than prigs; and i am of opinion that lord henry wotton is an excellent corrective of the tedious ideal shadowed forth in the semi-theological novels of our age. he then makes vague and fearful insinuations about my grammar and my erudition. now, as regards grammar, i hold that, in prose at any rate, correctness should always be subordinate to artistic effect and musical cadence; and any peculiarities of syntax that may occur in dorian gray are deliberately intended, and are introduced to show the value of the artistic theory in question. your writer gives no instance of any such peculiarity. this i regret, because i do not think that any such instances occur. as regards erudition, it is always difficult, even for the most modest of us, to remember that other people do not know quite as much as one does one's self. i myself frankly admit i cannot imagine how a casual reference to suetonius and petronius arbiter can be construed into evidence of a desire to impress an unoffending and ill-educated public by an assumption of superior knowledge. i should fancy that the most ordinary of scholars is perfectly well acquainted with the lives of the caesars and with the satyricon. the lives of the caesars, at any rate, forms part of the curriculum at oxford for those who take the honour school of literae humaniores; and as for the satyricon it is popular even among pass-men, though i suppose they are obliged to read it in translations. the writer of the article then suggests that i, in common with that great and noble artist count tolstoi, take pleasure in a subject because it is dangerous. about such a suggestion there is this to be said. romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace, type, are artistically uninteresting. bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. they represent colour, variety and strangeness. good people exasperate one's reason; bad people stir one's imagination. your critic, if i must give him so honourable a title, states that the people in my story have no counterpart in life; that they are, to use his vigorous if somewhat vulgar phrase, 'mere catchpenny revelations of the non-existent.' quite so. if they existed they would not be worth writing about. the function of the artist is to invent, not to chronicle. there are no such people. if there were i would not write about them. life by its realism is always spoiling the subject-matter of art. the superior pleasure in literature is to realise the non-existent. and finally, let me say this. you have reproduced, in a journalistic form, the comedy of much ado about nothing and have, of course, spoilt it in your reproduction. the poor public, hearing, from an authority so high as your own, that this is a wicked book that should be coerced and suppressed by a tory government, will, no doubt, rush to it and read it. but, alas! they will find that it is a story with a moral. and the moral is this: all excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment. the painter, basil hallward, worshipping physical beauty far too much, as most painters do, dies by the hand of one in whose soul he has created a monstrous and absurd vanity. dorian gray, having led a life of mere sensation and pleasure, tries to kill conscience, and at that moment kills himself. lord henry wotton seeks to be merely the spectator of life. he finds that those who reject the battle are more deeply wounded than those who take part in it. yes, there is a terrible moral in dorian gray--a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. is this an artistic error? i fear it is. it is the only error in the book.--i remain, sir, your obedient servant, oscar wilde. tite street, chelsea, june . iii. mr. oscar wilde's defence (st. james's gazette, june , .) to the editor of the st. james's gazette. sir,--as you still keep up, though in a somewhat milder form than before, your attacks on me and my book, you not only confer on me the right, but you impose upon me the duty of reply. you state, in your issue of today, that i misrepresented you when i said that you suggested that a book so wicked as mine should be 'suppressed and coerced by a tory government.' now, you did not propose this, but you did suggest it. when you declare that you do not know whether or not the government will take action about my book, and remark that the authors of books much less wicked have been proceeded against in law, the suggestion is quite obvious. in your complaint of misrepresentation you seem to me, sir, to have been not quite candid. however, as far as i am concerned, this suggestion is of no importance. what is of importance is that the editor of a paper like yours should appear to countenance the monstrous theory that the government of a country should exercise a censorship over imaginative literature. this is a theory against which i, and all men of letters of my acquaintance, protest most strongly; and any critic who admits the reasonableness of such a theory shows at once that he is quite incapable of understanding what literature is, and what are the rights that literature possesses. a government might just as well try to teach painters how to paint, or sculptors how to model, as attempt to interfere with the style, treatment and subject-matter of the literary artist, and no writer, however eminent or obscure, should ever give his sanction to a theory that would degrade literature far more than any didactic or so-called immoral book could possibly do. you then express your surprise that 'so experienced a literary gentleman' as myself should imagine that your critic was animated by any feeling of personal malice towards him. the phrase 'literary gentleman' is a vile phrase, but let that pass. i accept quite readily your assurance that your critic was simply criticising a work of art in the best way that he could, but i feel that i was fully justified in forming the opinion of him that i did. he opened his article by a gross personal attack on myself. this, i need hardly say, was an absolutely unpardonable error of critical taste. there is no excuse for it except personal malice; and you, sir, should not have sanctioned it. a critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author. this, in fact, is the beginning of criticism. however, it was not merely his personal attack on me that made me imagine that he was actuated by malice. what really confirmed me in my first impression was his reiterated assertion that my book was tedious and dull. now, if i were criticising my book, which i have some thoughts of doing, i think i would consider it my duty to point out that it is far too crowded with sensational incident, and far too paradoxical in style, as far, at any rate, as the dialogue goes. i feel that from a standpoint of art these are true defects in the book. but tedious and dull the book is not. your critic has cleared himself of the charge of personal malice, his denial and yours being quite sufficient in the matter; but he has done so only by a tacit admission that he has really no critical instinct about literature and literary work, which, in one who writes about literature, is, i need hardly say, a much graver fault than malice of any kind. finally, sir, allow me to say this. such an article as you have published really makes me despair of the possibility of any general culture in england. were i a french author, and my book brought out in paris, there is not a single literary critic in france on any paper of high standing who would think for a moment of criticising it from an ethical standpoint. if he did so he would stultify himself, not merely in the eyes of all men of letters, but in the eyes of the majority of the public. you have yourself often spoken against puritanism. believe me, sir, puritanism is never so offensive and destructive as when it deals with art matters. it is there that it is radically wrong. it is this puritanism, to which your critic has given expression, that is always marring the artistic instinct of the english. so far from encouraging it, you should set yourself against it, and should try to teach your critics to recognise the essential difference between art and life. the gentleman who criticised my book is in a perfectly hopeless confusion about it, and your attempt to help him out by proposing that the subject- matter of art should be limited does not mend matters. it is proper that limitation should be placed on action. it is not proper that limitation should be placed on art. to art belong all things that are and all things that are not, and even the editor of a london paper has no right to restrain the freedom of art in the selection of subject-matter. i now trust, sir, that these attacks on me and on my book will cease. there are forms of advertisement that are unwarranted and unwarrantable.--i am, sir, your obedient servant, oscar wilde. tite street, s. w., june . iv. (st. james's gazette, june , .) to the editor of the st. james's gazette. sir,--in your issue of this evening you publish a letter from 'a london editor' which clearly insinuates in the last paragraph that i have in some way sanctioned the circulation of an expression of opinion, on the part of the proprietors of lippincott's magazine, of the literary and artistic value of my story of the picture of dorian gray. allow me, sir, to state that there are no grounds for this insinuation. i was not aware that any such document was being circulated; and i have written to the agents, messrs. ward and lock--who cannot, i feel sure, be primarily responsible for its appearance--to ask them to withdraw it at once. no publisher should ever express an opinion of the value of what he publishes. that is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. i must admit, as one to whom contemporary literature is constantly submitted for criticism, that the only thing that ever prejudices me against a book is the lack of literary style; but i can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. a publisher is simply a useful middleman. it is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism. i may, however, while expressing my thanks to the 'london editor' for drawing my attention to this, i trust, purely american method of procedure, venture to differ from him in one of his criticisms. he states that he regards the expression 'complete' as applied to a story, as a specimen of the 'adjectival exuberance of the puffer.' here, it seems to me, he sadly exaggerates. what my story is is an interesting problem. what my story is not is a 'novelette'--a term which you have more than once applied to it. there is no such word in the english language as novelette. it should not be used. it is merely part of the slang of fleet street. in another part of your paper, sir, you state that i received your assurance of the lack of malice in your critic 'somewhat grudgingly.' this is not so. i frankly said that i accepted that assurance 'quite readily,' and that your own denial and that of your own critic were 'sufficient.' nothing more generous could have been said. what i did feel was that you saved your critic from the charge of malice by convicting him of the unpardonable crime of lack of literary instinct. i still feel that. to call my book an ineffective attempt at allegory, that in the hands of mr. anstey might have been made striking, is absurd. mr. anstey's sphere in literature and my sphere are different. you then gravely ask me what rights i imagine literature possesses. that is really an extraordinary question for the editor of a newspaper such as yours to ask. the rights of literature, sir, are the rights of intellect. i remember once hearing m. renan say that he would sooner live under a military despotism than under the despotism of the church, because the former merely limited the freedom of action, while the latter limited the freedom of mind. you say that a work of art is a form of action. it is not. it is the highest mode of thought. in conclusion, sir, let me ask you not to force on me this continued correspondence by daily attacks. it is a trouble and a nuisance. as you assailed me first, i have a right to the last word. let that last word be the present letter, and leave my book, i beg you, to the immortality that it deserves.--i am, sir, your obedient servant, oscar wilde. tite street, s.w., june . v. 'dorian gray' (daily chronicle, july , .) to the editor of the daily chronicle. sir,--will you allow me to correct some errors into which your critic has fallen in his review of my story, the picture of dorian gray, published in today's issue of your paper? your critic states, to begin with, that i make desperate attempts to 'vamp up' a moral in my story. now, i must candidly confess that i do not know what 'vamping' is. i see, from time to time, mysterious advertisements in the newspapers about 'how to vamp,' but what vamping really means remains a mystery to me--a mystery that, like all other mysteries, i hope some day to explore. however, i do not propose to discuss the absurd terms used by modern journalism. what i want to say is that, so far from wishing to emphasise any moral in my story, the real trouble i experienced in writing the story was that of keeping the extremely obvious moral subordinate to the artistic and dramatic effect. when i first conceived the idea of a young man selling his soul in exchange for eternal youth--an idea that is old in the history of literature, but to which i have given new form--i felt that, from an aesthetic point of view, it would be difficult to keep the moral in its proper secondary place; and even now i do not feel quite sure that i have been able to do so. i think the moral too apparent. when the book is published in a volume i hope to correct this defect. as for what the moral is, your critic states that it is this--that when a man feels himself becoming 'too angelic' he should rush out and make a 'beast of himself.' i cannot say that i consider this a moral. the real moral of the story is that all excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its punishment, and this moral is so far artistically and deliberately suppressed that it does not enunciate its law as a general principle, but realises itself purely in the lives of individuals, and so becomes simply a dramatic element in a work of art, and not the object of the work of art itself. your critic also falls into error when he says that dorian gray, having a 'cool, calculating, conscienceless character,' was inconsistent when he destroyed the picture of his own soul, on the ground that the picture did not become less hideous after he had done what, in his vanity, he had considered his first good action. dorian gray has not got a cool, calculating, conscienceless character at all. on the contrary, he is extremely impulsive, absurdly romantic, and is haunted all through his life by an exaggerated sense of conscience which mars his pleasures for him and warns him that youth and enjoyment are not everything in the world. it is finally to get rid of the conscience that had dogged his steps from year to year that he destroys the picture; and thus in his attempt to kill conscience dorian gray kills himself. your critic then talks about 'obtrusively cheap scholarship.' now, whatever a scholar writes is sure to display scholarship in the distinction of style and the fine use of language; but my story contains no learned or pseudo-learned discussions, and the only literary books that it alludes to are books that any fairly educated reader may be supposed to be acquainted with, such as the satyricon of petronius arbiter, or gautier's emaux et camees. such books as le conso's clericalis disciplina belong not to culture, but to curiosity. anybody may be excused for not knowing them. finally, let me say this--the aesthetic movement produced certain curious colours, subtle in their loveliness and fascinating in their almost mystical tone. they were, and are, our reaction against the crude primaries of a doubtless more respectable but certainly less cultivated age. my story is an essay on decorative art. it reacts against the crude brutality of plain realism. it is poisonous if you like, but you cannot deny that it is also perfect, and perfection is what we artists aim at.--i remain, sir, your obedient servant, oscar wilde. tite street, june . vi. mr. wilde's rejoinder (scots observer, july , .) to the editor of the scots observer. sir,--you have published a review of my story, the picture of dorian gray. as this review is grossly unjust to me as an artist, i ask you to allow me to exercise in your columns my right of reply. your reviewer, sir, while admitting that the story in question is 'plainly the work of a man of letters,' the work of one who has 'brains, and art, and style,' yet suggests, and apparently in all seriousness, that i have written it in order that it should be read by the most depraved members of the criminal and illiterate classes. now, sir, i do not suppose that the criminal and illiterate classes ever read anything except newspapers. they are certainly not likely to be able to understand anything of mine. so let them pass, and on the broad question of why a man of letters writes at all let me say this. the pleasure that one has in creating a work of art is a purely personal pleasure, and it is for the sake of this pleasure that one creates. the artist works with his eye on the object. nothing else interests him. what people are likely to say does not even occur to him. he is fascinated by what he has in hand. he is indifferent to others. i write because it gives me the greatest possible artistic pleasure to write. if my work pleases the few i am gratified. if it does not, it causes me no pain. as for the mob, i have no desire to be a popular novelist. it is far too easy. your critic then, sir, commits the absolutely unpardonable crime of trying to confuse the artist with his subject-matter. for this, sir, there is no excuse at all. of one who is the greatest figure in the world's literature since greek days, keats remarked that he had as much pleasure in conceiving the evil as he had in conceiving the good. let your reviewer, sir, consider the bearings of keats's fine criticism, for it is under these conditions that every artist works. one stands remote from one's subject-matter. one creates it and one contemplates it. the further away the subject-matter is, the more freely can the artist work. your reviewer suggests that i do not make it sufficiently clear whether i prefer virtue to wickedness or wickedness to virtue. an artist, sir, has no ethical sympathies at all. virtue and wickedness are to him simply what the colours on his palette are to the painter. they are no more and they are no less. he sees that by their means a certain artistic effect can be produced and he produces it. iago may be morally horrible and imogen stainlessly pure. shakespeare, as keats said, had as much delight in creating the one as he had in creating the other. it was necessary, sir, for the dramatic development of this story to surround dorian gray with an atmosphere of moral corruption. otherwise the story would have had no meaning and the plot no issue. to keep this atmosphere vague and indeterminate and wonderful was the aim of the artist who wrote the story. i claim, sir, that he has succeeded. each man sees his own sin in dorian gray. what dorian gray's sins are no one knows. he who finds them has brought them. in conclusion, sir, let me say how really deeply i regret that you should have permitted such a notice as the one i feel constrained to write on to have appeared in your paper. that the editor of the st. james's gazette should have employed caliban as his art-critic was possibly natural. the editor of the scots observer should not have allowed thersites to make mows in his review. it is unworthy of so distinguished a man of letters.--i am, etc., oscar wilde. tite street, chelsea, july . vii. art and morality (scots observer, august , .) to the editor of the scots observer. sir,--in a letter dealing with the relations of art to morals recently published in your columns--a letter which i may say seems to me in many respects admirable, especially in its insistence on the right of the artist to select his own subject-matter--mr. charles whibley suggests that it must be peculiarly painful for me to find that the ethical import of dorian gray has been so strongly recognised by the foremost christian papers of england and america that i have been greeted by more than one of them as a moral reformer. allow me, sir, to reassure, on this point, not merely mr. charles whibley himself but also your, no doubt, anxious readers. i have no hesitation in saying that i regard such criticisms as a very gratifying tribute to my story. for if a work of art is rich, and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. it will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame. it will be to each man what he is himself. it is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. and so in the case of dorian gray the purely literary critic, as in the speaker and elsewhere, regards it as a 'serious' and 'fascinating' work of art: the critic who deals with art in its relation to conduct, as the christian leader and the christian world, regards it as an ethical parable: light, which i am told is the organ of the english mystics, regards it as a work of high spiritual import; the st. james's gazette, which is seeking apparently to be the organ of the prurient, sees or pretends to see in it all kinds of dreadful things, and hints at treasury prosecutions; and your mr. charles whibley genially says that he discovers in it 'lots of morality.' it is quite true that he goes on to say that he detects no art in it. but i do not think that it is fair to expect a critic to be able to see a work of art from every point of view. even gautier had his limitations just as much as diderot had, and in modern england goethes are rare. i can only assure mr. charles whibley that no moral apotheosis to which he has added the most modest contribution could possibly be a source of unhappiness to an artist.--i remain, sir, your obedient servant, oscar wilde. tite street, chelsea, july . viii. (scots observer, august , .) to the editor of the scots observer. sir,--i am afraid i cannot enter into any newspaper discussion on the subject of art with mr. whibley, partly because the writing of letters is always a trouble to me, and partly because i regret to say that i do not know what qualifications mr. whibley possesses for the discussion of so important a topic. i merely noticed his letter because, i am sure without in any way intending it, he made a suggestion about myself personally that was quite inaccurate. his suggestion was that it must have been painful to me to find that a certain section of the public, as represented by himself and the critics of some religious publications, had insisted on finding what he calls 'lots of morality' in my story of the picture of dorian gray. being naturally desirous of setting your readers right on a question of such vital interest to the historian, i took the opportunity of pointing out in your columns that i regarded all such criticisms as a very gratifying tribute to the ethical beauty of the story, and i added that i was quite ready to recognise that it was not really fair to ask of any ordinary critic that he should be able to appreciate a work of art from every point of view. i still hold this opinion. if a man sees the artistic beauty of a thing, he will probably care very little for its ethical import. if his temperament is more susceptible to ethical than to aesthetic influences, he will be blind to questions of style, treatment and the like. it takes a goethe to see a work of art fully, completely and perfectly, and i thoroughly agree with mr. whibley when he says that it is a pity that goethe never had an opportunity of reading dorian gray. i feel quite certain that he would have been delighted by it, and i only hope that some ghostly publisher is even now distributing shadowy copies in the elysian fields, and that the cover of gautier's copy is powdered with gilt asphodels. you may ask me, sir, why i should care to have the ethical beauty of my story recognised. i answer, simply because it exists, because the thing is there. the chief merit of madame bovary is not the moral lesson that can be found in it, any more than the chief merit of salammbo is its archaeology; but flaubert was perfectly right in exposing the ignorance of those who called the one immoral and the other inaccurate; and not merely was he right in the ordinary sense of the word, but he was artistically right, which is everything. the critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic. allow me to make one more correction, sir, and i will have done with mr. whibley. he ends his letter with the statement that i have been indefatigable in my public appreciation of my own work. i have no doubt that in saying this he means to pay me a compliment, but he really overrates my capacity, as well as my inclination for work. i must frankly confess that, by nature and by choice, i am extremely indolent. cultivated idleness seems to me to be the proper occupation for man. i dislike newspaper controversies of any kind, and of the two hundred and sixteen criticisms of dorian gray that have passed from my library table into the wastepaper basket i have taken public notice of only three. one was that which appeared in the scots observer. i noticed it because it made a suggestion, about the intention of the author in writing the book, which needed correction. the second was an article in the st. james's gazette. it was offensively and vulgarly written, and seemed to me to require immediate and caustic censure. the tone of the article was an impertinence to any man of letters. the third was a meek attack in a paper called the daily chronicle. i think my writing to the daily chronicle was an act of pure wilfulness. in fact, i feel sure it was. i quite forget what they said. i believe they said that dorian gray was poisonous, and i thought that, on alliterative grounds, it would be kind to remind them that, however that may be, it is at any rate perfect. that was all. of the other two hundred and thirteen criticisms i have taken no notice. indeed, i have not read more than half of them. it is a sad thing, but one wearies even of praise. as regards mr. brown's letter, it is interesting only in so far as it exemplifies the truth of what i have said above on the question of the two obvious schools of critics. mr. brown says frankly that he considers morality to be the 'strong point' of my story. mr. brown means well, and has got hold of a half truth, but when he proceeds to deal with the book from the artistic standpoint he, of course, goes sadly astray. to class dorian gray with m. zola's la terre is as silly as if one were to class musset's fortunio with one of the adelphi melodramas. mr. brown should be content with ethical appreciation. there he is impregnable. mr. cobban opens badly by describing my letter, setting mr. whibley right on a matter of fact, as an 'impudent paradox.' the term 'impudent' is meaningless, and the word 'paradox' is misplaced. i am afraid that writing to newspapers has a deteriorating influence on style. people get violent and abusive and lose all sense of proportion, when they enter that curious journalistic arena in which the race is always to the noisiest. 'impudent paradox' is neither violent nor abusive, but it is not an expression that should have been used about my letter. however, mr. cobban makes full atonement afterwards for what was, no doubt, a mere error of manner, by adopting the impudent paradox in question as his own, and pointing out that, as i had previously said, the artist will always look at the work of art from the standpoint of beauty of style and beauty of treatment, and that those who have not got the sense of beauty, or whose sense of beauty is dominated by ethical considerations, will always turn their attention to the subject-matter and make its moral import the test and touchstone of the poem or novel or picture that is presented to them, while the newspaper critic will sometimes take one side and sometimes the other, according as he is cultured or uncultured. in fact, mr. cobban converts the impudent paradox into a tedious truism, and, i dare say, in doing so does good service. the english public likes tediousness, and likes things to be explained to it in a tedious way. mr. cobban has, i have no doubt, already repented of the unfortunate expression with which he has made his debut, so i will say no more about it. as far as i am concerned he is quite forgiven. and finally, sir, in taking leave of the scots observer i feel bound to make a candid confession to you. it has been suggested to me by a great friend of mine, who is a charming and distinguished man of letters, and not unknown to you personally, that there have been really only two people engaged in this terrible controversy, and that those two people are the editor of the scots observer and the author of dorian gray. at dinner this evening, over some excellent chianti, my friend insisted that under assumed and mysterious names you had simply given dramatic expression to the views of some of the semi-educated classes of our community, and that the letters signed 'h.' were your own skilful, if somewhat bitter, caricature of the philistine as drawn by himself. i admit that something of the kind had occurred to me when i read 'h.'s' first letter--the one in which he proposes that the test of art should be the political opinions of the artist, and that if one differed from the artist on the question of the best way of misgoverning ireland, one should always abuse his work. still, there are such infinite varieties of philistines, and north britain is so renowned for seriousness, that i dismissed the idea as one unworthy of the editor of a scotch paper. i now fear that i was wrong, and that you have been amusing yourself all the time by inventing little puppets and teaching them how to use big words. well, sir, if it be so--and my friend is strong upon the point--allow me to congratulate you most sincerely on the cleverness with which you have reproduced that lack of literary style which is, i am told, essential for any dramatic and lifelike characterisation. i confess that i was completely taken in; but i bear no malice; and as you have, no doubt, been laughing at me up your sleeve, let me now join openly in the laugh, though it be a little against myself. a comedy ends when the secret is out. drop your curtain and put your dolls to bed. i love don quixote, but i do not wish to fight any longer with marionettes, however cunning may be the master-hand that works their wires. let them go, sir, on the shelf. the shelf is the proper place for them. on some future occasion you can re-label them and bring them out for our amusement. they are an excellent company, and go well through their tricks, and if they are a little unreal, i am not the one to object to unreality in art. the jest was really a good one. the only thing that i cannot understand is why you gave your marionettes such extraordinary and improbable names.--i remain, sir, your obedient servant, oscar wilde. tite street, chelsea, august . an anglo-indian's complaint (times, september , .) to the editor of the times. sir,--the writer of a letter signed 'an indian civilian' that appears in your issue of today makes a statement about me which i beg you to allow me to correct at once. he says i have described the anglo-indians as being vulgar. this is not the case. indeed, i have never met a vulgar anglo-indian. there may be many, but those whom i have had the pleasure of meeting here have been chiefly scholars, men interested in art and thought, men of cultivation; nearly all of them have been exceedingly brilliant talkers; some of them have been exceedingly brilliant writers. what i did say--i believe in the pages of the nineteenth century { }--was that vulgarity is the distinguishing note of those anglo-indians whom mr. rudyard kipling loves to write about, and writes about so cleverly. this is quite true, and there is no reason why mr. rudyard kipling should not select vulgarity as his subject-matter, or as part of it. for a realistic artist, certainly, vulgarity is a most admirable subject. how far mr. kipling's stories really mirror anglo- indian society i have no idea at all, nor, indeed, am i ever much interested in any correspondence between art and nature. it seems to me a matter of entirely secondary importance. i do not wish, however, that it should be supposed that i was passing a harsh and saugrenu judgment on an important and in many ways distinguished class, when i was merely pointing out the characteristic qualities of some puppets in a prose-play.--i remain, sir, your obedient servant, oscar wilde. september . a house of pomegranates i. (speaker, december , .) sir.--i have just purchased, at a price that for any other english sixpenny paper i would have considered exorbitant, a copy of the speaker at one of the charming kiosks that decorate paris; institutions, by the way, that i think we should at once introduce into london. the kiosk is a delightful object, and, when illuminated at night from within, as lovely as a fantastic chinese lantern, especially when the transparent advertisements are from the clever pencil of m. cheret. in london we have merely the ill-clad newsvendor, whose voice, in spite of the admirable efforts of the royal college of music to make england a really musical nation, is always out of tune, and whose rags, badly designed and badly worn, merely emphasise a painful note of uncomely misery, without conveying that impression of picturesqueness which is the only thing that makes the poverty of others at all bearable. it is not, however, about the establishment of kiosks in london that i wish to write to you, though i am of opinion that it is a thing that the county council should at once take in hand. the object of my letter is to correct a statement made in a paragraph of your interesting paper. the writer of the paragraph in question states that the decorative designs that make lovely my book, a house of pomegranates, are by the hand of mr. shannon, while the delicate dreams that separate and herald each story are by mr. ricketts. the contrary is the case. mr. shannon is the drawer of the dreams, and mr. ricketts is the subtle and fantastic decorator. indeed, it is to mr. ricketts that the entire decorative design of the book is due, from the selection of the type and the placing of the ornamentation, to the completely beautiful cover that encloses the whole. the writer of the paragraph goes on to state that he does not 'like the cover.' this is, no doubt, to be regretted, though it is not a matter of much importance, as there are only two people in the world whom it is absolutely necessary that the cover should please. one is mr. ricketts, who designed it, the other is myself, whose book it binds. we both admire it immensely! the reason, however, that your critic gives for his failure to gain from the cover any impression of beauty seems to me to show a lack of artistic instinct on his part, which i beg you will allow me to try to correct. he complains that a portion of the design on the left-hand side of the cover reminds him of an indian club with a house-painter's brush on top of it, while a portion of the design on the right-hand side suggests to him the idea of 'a chimney-pot hat with a sponge in it.' now, i do not for a moment dispute that these are the real impressions your critic received. it is the spectator, and the mind of the spectator, as i pointed out in the preface to the picture of dorian gray, that art really mirrors. what i want to indicate is this: the artistic beauty of the cover of my book resides in the delicate tracing, arabesques, and massing of many coral-red lines on a ground of white ivory, the colour effect culminating in certain high gilt notes, and being made still more pleasurable by the overlapping band of moss-green cloth that holds the book together. what the gilt notes suggest, what imitative parallel may be found to them in that chaos that is termed nature, is a matter of no importance. they may suggest, as they do sometimes to me, peacocks and pomegranates and splashing fountains of gold water, or, as they do to your critic, sponges and indian clubs and chimney-pot hats. such suggestions and evocations have nothing whatsoever to do with the aesthetic quality and value of the design. a thing in nature becomes much lovelier if it reminds us of a thing in art, but a thing in art gains no real beauty through reminding us of a thing in nature. the primary aesthetic impression of a work of art borrows nothing from recognition or resemblance. these belong to a later and less perfect stage of apprehension. properly speaking, they are no part of a real aesthetic impression at all, and the constant preoccupation with subject-matter that characterises nearly all our english art-criticism, is what makes our art- criticisms, especially as regards literature, so sterile, so profitless, so much beside the mark, and of such curiously little account.--i remain, sir, your obedient servant, oscar wilde. boulevard des capucines, paris. ii. (pall mall gazette, december , .) to the editor of the pall mall gazette. sir,--i have just had sent to me from london a copy of the pall mall gazette, containing a review of my book a house of pomegranates. { } the writer of this review makes a certain suggestion which i beg you will allow me to correct at once. he starts by asking an extremely silly question, and that is, whether or not i have written this book for the purpose of giving pleasure to the british child. having expressed grave doubts on this subject, a subject on which i cannot conceive any fairly educated person having any doubts at all, he proceeds, apparently quite seriously, to make the extremely limited vocabulary at the disposal of the british child the standard by which the prose of an artist is to be judged! now, in building this house of pomegranates, i had about as much intention of pleasing the british child as i had of pleasing the british public. mamilius is as entirely delightful as caliban is entirely detestable, but neither the standard of mamilius nor the standard of caliban is my standard. no artist recognises any standard of beauty but that which is suggested by his own temperament. the artist seeks to realise, in a certain material, his immaterial idea of beauty, and thus to transform an idea into an ideal. that is the way an artist makes things. that is why an artist makes things. the artist has no other object in making things. does your reviewer imagine that mr. shannon, for instance, whose delicate and lovely illustrations he confesses himself quite unable to see, draws for the purpose of giving information to the blind?--i remain, sir, your obedient servant, oscar wilde. boulevard des capucines, paris. puppets and actors (daily telegraph, february , .) to the editor of the daily telegraph. sir,--i have just been sent an article that seems to have appeared in your paper some days ago, { } in which it is stated that, in the course of some remarks addressed to the playgoers' club on the occasion of my taking the chair at their last meeting, i laid it down as an axiom that the stage is only 'a frame furnished with a set of puppets.' now, it is quite true that i hold that the stage is to a play no more than a picture-frame is to a painting, and that the actable value of a play has nothing whatsoever to do with its value as a work of art. in this century, in england, to take an obvious example, we have had only two great plays--one is shelley's cenci, the other mr. swinburne's atalanta in calydon, and neither of them is in any sense of the word an actable play. indeed, the mere suggestion that stage representation is any test of a work of art is quite ridiculous. in the production of browning's plays, for instance, in london and at oxford, what was being tested was obviously the capacity of the modern stage to represent, in any adequate measure or degree, works of introspective method and strange or sterile psychology. but the artistic value of strqfford or in a balcony was settled when robert browning wrote their last lines. it is not, sir, by the mimes that the muses are to be judged. so far, the writer of the article in question is right. where he goes wrong is in saying that i describe this frame--the stage--as being furnished with a set of puppets. he admits that he speaks only by report, but he should have remembered, sir, that report is not merely a lying jade, which, personally, i would willingly forgive her, but a jade who lies without lovely invention is a thing that i, at any rate, can forgive her, never. what i really said was that the frame we call the stage was 'peopled with either living actors or moving puppets,' and i pointed out briefly, of necessity, that the personality of the actor is often a source of danger in the perfect presentation of a work of art. it may distort. it may lead astray. it may be a discord in the tone or symphony. for anybody can act. most people in england do nothing else. to be conventional is to be a comedian. to act a particular part, however, is a very different thing, and a very difficult thing as well. the actor's aim is, or should be, to convert his own accidental personality into the real and essential personality of the character he is called upon to personate, whatever that character may be; or perhaps i should say that there are two schools of action--the school of those who attain their effect by exaggeration of personality, and the school of those who attain it by suppression. it would be too long to discuss these schools, or to decide which of them the dramatist loves best. let me note the danger of personality, and pass to my puppets. there are many advantages in puppets. they never argue. they have no crude views about art. they have no private lives. we are never bothered by accounts of their virtues, or bored by recitals of their vices; and when they are out of an engagement they never do good in public or save people from drowning, nor do they speak more than is set down for them. they recognise the presiding intellect of the dramatist, and have never been known to ask for their parts to be written up. they are admirably docile, and have no personalities at all. i saw lately, in paris, a performance by certain puppets of shakespeare's tempest, in m. maurice boucher's translation. miranda was the mirage of miranda, because an artist has so fashioned her; and ariel was true ariel, because so had she been made. their gestures were quite sufficient, and the words that seemed to come from their little lips were spoken by poets who had beautiful voices. it was a delightful performance, and i remember it still with delight, though miranda took no notice of the flowers i sent her after the curtain fell. for modern plays, however, perhaps we had better have living players, for in modern plays actuality is everything. the charm--the ineffable charm--of the unreal is here denied us, and rightly. suffer me one more correction. your writer describes the author of the brilliant fantastic lecture on 'the modern actor' as a protege of mine. allow me to state that my acquaintance with mr. john gray is, i regret to say, extremely recent, and that i sought it because he had already a perfected mode of expression both in prose and verse. all artists in this vulgar age need protection certainly. perhaps they have always needed it. but the nineteenth-century artist finds it not in prince, or pope, or patron, but in high indifference of temper, in the pleasure of the creation of beautiful things, and the long contemplation of them, in disdain of what in life is common and ignoble and in such felicitous sense of humour as enables one to see how vain and foolish is all popular opinion, and popular judgment, upon the wonderful things of art. these qualities mr. john gray possesses in a marked degree. he needs no other protection, nor, indeed, would he accept it.--i remain, sir, your obedient servant, oscar wilde. lady windermere's fan: an explanation (st. james's gazette, february , .) to the editor of the st. james's gazette. sir,--allow me to correct a statement put forward in your issue of this evening to the effect that i have made a certain alteration in my play in consequence of the criticism of some journalists who write very recklessly and very foolishly in the papers about dramatic art. this statement is entirely untrue and grossly ridiculous. the facts are as follows. on last saturday night, after the play was over, and the author, cigarette in hand, had delivered a delightful and immortal speech, i had the pleasure of entertaining at supper a small number of personal friends; and as none of them was older than myself i, naturally, listened to their artistic views with attention and pleasure. the opinions of the old on matters of art are, of course, of no value whatsoever. the artistic instincts of the young are invariably fascinating; and i am bound to state that all my friends, without exception, were of opinion that the psychological interest of the second act would be greatly increased by the disclosure of the actual relationship existing between lady windermere and mrs. erlynne--an opinion, i may add, that had previously been strongly held and urged by mr. alexander. as to those of us who do not look on a play as a mere question of pantomime and clowning psychological interest is everything, i determined, consequently, to make a change in the precise moment of revelation. this determination, however, was entered into long before i had the opportunity of studying the culture, courtesy, and critical faculty displayed in such papers as the referee, reynolds', and the sunday sun. when criticism becomes in england a real art, as it should be, and when none but those of artistic instinct and artistic cultivation is allowed to write about works of art, artists will, no doubt, read criticisms with a certain amount of intellectual interest. as things are at present, the criticisms of ordinary newspapers are of no interest whatsoever, except in so far as they display, in its crudest form, the boeotianism of a country that has produced some athenians, and in which some athenians have come to dwell.--i am, sir, your obedient servant, oscar wilde. february . salome (times, march , .) to the editor of the times. sir,--my attention has been drawn to a review of salome which was published in your columns last week. { } the opinions of english critics on a french work of mine have, of course, little, if any, interest for me. i write simply to ask you to allow me to correct a misstatement that appears in the review in question. the fact that the greatest tragic actress of any stage now living saw in my play such beauty that she was anxious to produce it, to take herself the part of the heroine, to lend to the entire poem the glamour of her personality, and to my prose the music of her flute-like voice--this was naturally, and always will be, a source of pride and pleasure to me, and i look forward with delight to seeing mme. bernhardt present my play in paris, that vivid centre of art, where religious dramas are often performed. but my play was in no sense of the words written for this great actress. i have never written a play for any actor or actress, nor shall i ever do so. such work is for the artisan in literature--not for the artist.--i remain, sir, your obedient servant, oscar wilde. the thirteen club (times, january , .) at a dinner of the thirteen club held at the holborn restaurant on january , , the chairman (mr. harry furniss) announced that from mr. oscar wilde the following letter had been received:-- i have to thank the members of your club for their kind invitation, for which convey to them, i beg you, my sincere thanks. but i love superstitions. they are the colour element of thought and imagination. they are the opponents of common sense. common sense is the enemy of romance. the aim of your society seems to be dreadful. leave us some unreality. do not make us too offensively sane. i love dining out, but with a society with so wicked an object as yours i cannot dine. i regret it. i am sure you will all be charming, but i could not come, though is a lucky number. the ethics of journalism i. (pall mall gazette, september , .) to the editor of the pall mall gazette. sir,--will you allow me to draw your attention to a very interesting example of the ethics of modern journalism, a quality of which we have all heard so much and seen so little? about a month ago mr. t. p. o'connor published in the sunday sun some doggerel verses entitled 'the shamrock,' and had the amusing impertinence to append my name to them as their author. as for some years past all kinds of scurrilous personal attacks had been made on me in mr. o'connor's newspapers, i determined to take no notice at all of the incident. enraged, however, by my courteous silence, mr. o'connor returns to the charge this week. he now solemnly accuses me of plagiarising the poem he had the vulgarity to attribute to me. { } this seems to me to pass beyond even those bounds of coarse humour and coarser malice that are, by the contempt of all, conceded to the ordinary journalist, and it is really very distressing to find so low a standard of ethics in a sunday newspaper.--i remain, sir, your obedient servant, oscar wilde. september . ii. (pall mall gazette, september , .) to the editor of the pall mall gazette. sir,--the assistant editor of the sunday sun, on whom seems to devolve the arduous duty of writing mr. t. p. o'connor's apologies for him, does not, i observe with regret, place that gentleman's conduct in any more attractive or more honourable light by the attempted explanation that appears in the letter published in your issue of today. for the future it would be much better if mr. o'connor would always write his own apologies. that he can do so exceedingly well no one is more ready to admit than myself. i happen to possess one from him. the assistant editor's explanation, stripped of its unnecessary verbiage, amounts to this: it is now stated that some months ago, somebody, whose name, observe, is not given, forwarded to the office of the sunday sun a manuscript in his own handwriting, containing some fifth-rate verses with my name appended to them as their author. the assistant editor frankly admits that they had grave doubts about my being capable of such an astounding production. to me, i must candidly say, it seems more probable that they never for a single moment believed that the verses were really from my pen. literary instinct is, of course, a very rare thing, and it would be too much to expect any true literary instinct to be found among the members of the staff of an ordinary newspaper; but had mr. o'connor really thought that the production, such as it is, was mine, he would naturally have asked my permission before publishing it. great licence of comment and attack of every kind is allowed nowadays to newspapers, but no respectable editor would dream of printing and publishing a man's work without first obtaining his consent. mr. o'connor's subsequent conduct in accusing me of plagiarism, when it was proved to him on unimpeachable authority that the verses he had vulgarly attributed to me were not by me at all, i have already commented on. it is perhaps best left to the laughter of the gods and the sorrow of men. i would like, however, to point out that when mr. o'connor, with the kind help of his assistant editor, states, as a possible excuse for his original sin, that he and the members of his staff 'took refuge' in the belief that the verses in question might conceivably be some very early and useful work of mine, he and the members of his staff showed a lamentable ignorance of the nature of the artistic temperament. only mediocrities progress. an artist revolves in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is no less perfect than the last. in conclusion, allow me to thank you for your courtesy in opening to me the columns of your valuable paper, and also to express the hope that the painful expose of mr. o'connor's conduct that i have been forced to make will have the good result of improving the standard of journalistic ethics in england.--i remain, sir, your obedient servant, oscar wilde. worthing, september . the green carnation (pall mall gazette, october , .) to the editor of the pall mall gazette. sir,--kindly allow me to contradict, in the most emphatic manner, the suggestion, made in your issue of thursday last, and since then copied into many other newspapers, that i am the author of the green carnation. i invented that magnificent flower. but with the middle-class and mediocre book that usurps its strangely beautiful name i have, i need hardly say, nothing whatsoever to do. the flower is a work of art. the book is not.--i remain, sir, your obedient servant, oscar wilde. worthing, october . phrases and philosophies for the use of the young (chameleon, december ) the first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. what the second duty is no one has as yet discovered. wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others. if the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the problem of poverty. those who see any difference between soul and body have neither. a really well-made buttonhole is the only link between art and nature. religions die when they are proved to be true. science is the record of dead religions. the well-bred contradict other people. the wise contradict themselves. nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance. dulness is the coming of age of seriousness. in all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. in all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. if one tells the truth one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out. pleasure is the only thing one should live for. nothing ages like happiness. it is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes. no crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime. vulgarity is the conduct of others. only the shallow know themselves. time is waste of money. one should always be a little improbable. there is a fatality about all good resolutions. they are invariably made too soon. the only way to atone for being occasionally a little overdressed is by being always absolutely over-educated. to be premature is to be perfect. any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. ambition is the last refuge of the failure. a truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it. in examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer. greek dress was in its essence inartistic. nothing should reveal the body but the body. one should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art. it is only the superficial qualities that last. man's deeper nature is soon found out. industry is the root of all ugliness. the ages live in history through their anachronisms. it is only the gods who taste of death. apollo has passed away, but hyacinth, whom men say he slew, lives on. nero and narcissus are always with us. the old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything. the condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth. only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure. there is something tragic about the enormous number of young men there are in england at the present moment who start life with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful profession. to love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance. the rise of historical criticism the first portion of this essay is given at the end of the volume containing lord arthur savile's crime and other prose pieces. recently the remainder of the original manuscript has been discovered, and is here published for the first time. it was written for the chancellor's english essay prize at oxford in , the subject being 'historical criticism among the ancients.' the prize was not awarded. to professor j. w. mackail thanks are due for revising the proofs. iv. it is evident that here thucydides is ready to admit the variety of manifestations which external causes bring about in their workings on the uniform character of the nature of man. yet, after all is said, these are perhaps but very general statements: the ordinary effects of peace and war are dwelt on, but there is no real analysis of the immediate causes and general laws of the phenomena of life, nor does thucydides seem to recognise the truth that if humanity proceeds in circles, the circles are always widening. perhaps we may say that with him the philosophy of history is partly in the metaphysical stage, and see, in the progress of this idea from herodotus to polybius, the exemplification of the comtian law of the three stages of thought, the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific: for truly out of the vagueness of theological mysticism this conception which we call the philosophy of history was raised to a scientific principle, according to which the past was explained and the future predicted by reference to general laws. now, just as the earliest account of the nature of the progress of humanity is to be found in plato, so in him we find the first explicit attempt to found a universal philosophy of history upon wide rational grounds. having created an ideally perfect state, the philosopher proceeds to give an elaborate theory of the complex causes which produce revolutions of the moral effects of various forms of government and education, of the rise of the criminal classes and their connection with pauperism, and, in a word, to create history by the deductive method and to proceed from a priori psychological principles to discover the governing laws of the apparent chaos of political life. there have been many attempts since plato to deduce from a single philosophical principle all the phenomena which experience subsequently verifies for us. fichte thought he could predict the world-plan from the idea of universal time. hegel dreamed he had found the key to the mysteries of life in the development of freedom, and krause in the categories of being. but the one scientific basis on which the true philosophy of history must rest is the complete knowledge of the laws of human nature in all its wants, its aspirations, its powers and its tendencies: and this great truth, which thucydides may be said in some measure to have apprehended, was given to us first by plato. now, it cannot be accurately said of this philosopher that either his philosophy or his history is entirely and simply a priori. on est de son siecle meme quand on y proteste, and so we find in him continual references to the spartan mode of life, the pythagorean system, the general characteristics of greek tyrannies and greek democracies. for while, in his account of the method of forming an ideal state, he says that the political artist is indeed to fix his gaze on the sun of abstract truth in the heavens of the pure reason, but is sometimes to turn to the realisation of the ideals on earth: yet, after all, the general character of the platonic method, which is what we are specially concerned with, is essentially deductive and a priori. and he himself, in the building up of his nephelococcygia, certainly starts with a [greek], making a clean sweep of all history and all experience; and it was essentially as an a priori theorist that he is criticised by aristotle, as we shall see later. to proceed to closer details regarding the actual scheme of the laws of political revolutions as drawn out by plato, we must first note that the primary cause of the decay of the ideal state is the general principle, common to the vegetable and animal worlds as well as to the world of history, that all created things are fated to decay--a principle which, though expressed in the terms of a mere metaphysical abstraction, is yet perhaps in its essence scientific. for we too must hold that a continuous redistribution of matter and motion is the inevitable result of the normal persistence of force, and that perfect equilibrium is as impossible in politics as it certainly is in physics. the secondary causes which mar the perfection of the platonic 'city of the sun' are to be found in the intellectual decay of the race consequent on injudicious marriages and in the philistine elevation of physical achievements over mental culture; while the hierarchical succession of timocracy and oligarchy, democracy and tyranny, is dwelt on at great length and its causes analysed in a very dramatic and psychological manner, if not in that sanctioned by the actual order of history. and indeed it is apparent at first sight that the platonic succession of states represents rather the succession of ideas in the philosophic mind than any historical succession of time. aristotle meets the whole simply by an appeal to facts. if the theory of the periodic decay of all created things, he urges, be scientific, it must be universal, and so true of all the other states as well as of the ideal. besides, a state usually changes into its contrary and not to the form next to it; so the ideal state would not change into timocracy; while oligarchy, more often than tyranny, succeeds democracy. plato, besides, says nothing of what a tyranny would change to. according to the cycle theory it ought to pass into the ideal state again, but as a fact one tyranny is changed into another as at sicyon, or into a democracy as at syracuse, or into an aristocracy as at carthage. the example of sicily, too, shows that an oligarchy is often followed by a tyranny, as at leontini and gela. besides, it is absurd to represent greed as the chief motive of decay, or to talk of avarice as the root of oligarchy, when in nearly all true oligarchies money-making is forbidden by law. and finally the platonic theory neglects the different kinds of democracies and of tyrannies. now nothing can be more important than this passage in aristotle's politics (v. .), which may be said to mark an era in the evolution of historical criticism. for there is nothing on which aristotle insists so strongly as that the generalisations from facts ought to be added to the data of the a priori method--a principle which we know to be true not merely of deductive speculative politics but of physics also: for are not the residual phenomena of chemists a valuable source of improvement in theory? his own method is essentially historical though by no means empirical. on the contrary, this far-seeing thinker, rightly styled il maestro di color che sanno, may be said to have apprehended clearly that the true method is neither exclusively empirical nor exclusively speculative, but rather a union of both in the process called analysis or the interpretation of facts, which has been defined as the application to facts of such general conceptions as may fix the important characteristics of the phenomena, and present them permanently in their true relations. he too was the first to point out, what even in our own day is incompletely appreciated, that nature, including the development of man, is not full of incoherent episodes like a bad tragedy, that inconsistency and anomaly are as impossible in the moral as they are in the physical world, and that where the superficial observer thinks he sees a revolution the philosophical critic discerns merely the gradual and rational evolution of the inevitable results of certain antecedents. and while admitting the necessity of a psychological basis for the philosophy of history, he added to it the important truth that man, to be apprehended in his proper position in the universe as well as in his natural powers, must be studied from below in the hierarchical progression of higher function from the lower forms of life. the important maxim, that to obtain a clear conception of anything we must 'study it in its growth from the very beginning' is formally set down in the opening of the politics, where, indeed, we shall find the other characteristic features of the modern evolutionary theory, such as the 'differentiation of function' and the 'survival of the fittest' explicitly set forth. what a valuable step this was in the improvement of the method of historical criticism it is needless to point out. by it, one may say, the true thread was given to guide one's steps through the bewildering labyrinth of facts. for history (to use terms with which aristotle has made us familiar) may be looked at from two essentially different standpoints; either as a work of art whose [greek] or final cause is external to it and imposed on it from without; or as an organism containing the law of its own development in itself, and working out its perfection merely by the fact of being what it is. now, if we adopt the former, which we may style the theological view, we shall be in continual danger of tripping into the pitfall of some a priori conclusion--that bourne from which, it has been truly said, no traveller ever returns. the latter is the only scientific theory and was apprehended in its fulness by aristotle, whose application of the inductive method to history, and whose employment of the evolutionary theory of humanity, show that he was conscious that the philosophy of history is nothing separate from the facts of history but is contained in them, and that the rational law of the complex phenomena of life, like the ideal in the world of thought, is to be reached through the facts, not superimposed on them-- [greek] not [greek]. and finally, in estimating the enormous debt which the science of historical criticism owes to aristotle, we must not pass over his attitude towards those two great difficulties in the formation of a philosophy of history on which i have touched above. i mean the assertion of extra-natural interference with the normal development of the world and of the incalculable influence exercised by the power of free will. now, as regards the former, he may be said to have neglected it entirely. the special acts of providence proceeding from god's immediate government of the world, which herodotus saw as mighty landmarks in history, would have been to him essentially disturbing elements in that universal reign of law, the extent of whose limitless empire he of all the great thinkers of antiquity was the first explicitly to recognise. standing aloof from the popular religion as well as from the deeper conceptions of herodotus and the tragic school, he no longer thought of god as of one with fair limbs and treacherous face haunting wood and glade, nor would he see in him a jealous judge continually interfering in the world's history to bring the wicked to punishment and the proud to a fall. god to him was the incarnation of the pure intellect, a being whose activity was the contemplation of his own perfection, one whom philosophy might imitate but whom prayers could never move, to the sublime indifference of whose passionless wisdom what were the sons of men, their desires or their sins? while, as regards the other difficulty and the formation of a philosophy of history, the conflict of free will with general laws appears first in greek thought in the usual theological form in which all great ideas seem to be cradled at their birth. it was such legends as those of oedipus and adrastus, exemplifying the struggles of individual humanity against the overpowering force of circumstances and necessity, which gave to the early greeks those same lessons which we of modern days draw, in somewhat less artistic fashion, from the study of statistics and the laws of physiology. in aristotle, of course, there is no trace of supernatural influence. the furies, which drive their victim into sin first and then punishment, are no longer 'viper-tressed goddesses with eyes and mouth aflame,' but those evil thoughts which harbour within the impure soul. in this, as in all other points, to arrive at aristotle is to reach the pure atmosphere of scientific and modern thought. but while he rejected pure necessitarianism in its crude form as essentially a reductio ad absurdum of life, he was fully conscious of the fact that the will is not a mysterious and ultimate unit of force beyond which we cannot go and whose special characteristic is inconsistency, but a certain creative attitude of the mind which is, from the first, continually influenced by habits, education and circumstance; so absolutely modifiable, in a word, that the good and the bad man alike seem to lose the power of free will; for the one is morally unable to sin, the other physically incapacitated for reformation. and of the influence of climate and temperature in forming the nature of man (a conception perhaps pressed too far in modern days when the 'race theory' is supposed to be a sufficient explanation of the hindoo, and the latitude and longitude of a country the best guide to its morals { }) aristotle is completely unaware. i do not allude to such smaller points as the oligarchical tendencies of a horse-breeding country and the democratic influence of the proximity of the sea (important though they are for the consideration of greek history), but rather to those wider views in the seventh book of his politics, where he attributes the happy union in the greek character of intellectual attainments with the spirit of progress to the temperate climate they enjoyed, and points out how the extreme cold of the north dulls the mental faculties of its inhabitants and renders them incapable of social organisation or extended empire; while to the enervating heat of eastern countries was due that want of spirit and bravery which then, as now, was the characteristic of the population in that quarter of the globe. thucydides has shown the causal connection between political revolutions and the fertility of the soil, but goes a step farther and points out the psychological influences on a people's character exercised by the various extremes of climate--in both cases the first appearance of a most valuable form of historical criticism. to the development of dialectic, as to god, intervals of time are of no account. from plato and aristotle we pass direct to polybius. the progress of thought from the philosopher of the academe to the arcadian historian may be best illustrated by a comparison of the method by which each of the three writers, whom i have selected as the highest expressions of the rationalism of his respective age, attained to his ideal state: for the latter conception may be in a measure regarded as representing the most spiritual principle which they could discern in history. now, plato created his on a priori principles: aristotle formed his by an analysis of existing constitutions; polybius found his realised for him in the actual world of fact. aristotle criticised the deductive speculations of plato by means of inductive negative instances, but polybius will not take the 'cloud city' of the republic into account at all. he compares it to an athlete who has never run on 'constitution hill,' to a statue so beautiful that it is entirely removed from the ordinary conditions of humanity, and consequently from the canons of criticism. the roman state had attained in his eyes, by means of the mutual counteraction of three opposing forces, { } that stable equilibrium in politics which was the ideal of all the theoretical writers of antiquity. and in connection with this point it will be convenient to notice here how much truth there is contained in the accusation so often brought against the ancients that they knew nothing of the idea of progress, for the meaning of many of their speculations will be hidden from us if we do not try and comprehend first what their aim was, and secondly why it was so. now, like all wide generalities, this statement is at least inaccurate. the prayer of plato's ideal city--[greek], might be written as a text over the door of the last temple to humanity raised by the disciples of fourier and saint simon, but it is certainly true that their ideal principle was order and permanence, not indefinite progress. for, setting aside the artistic prejudices which would have led the greeks to reject this idea of unlimited improvement, we may note that the modern conception of progress rests partly on the new enthusiasm and worship of humanity, partly on the splendid hopes of material improvements in civilisation which applied science has held out to us, two influences from which ancient greek thought seems to have been strangely free. for the greeks marred the perfect humanism of the great men whom they worshipped, by imputing to them divinity and its supernatural powers; while their science was eminently speculative and often almost mystic in its character, aiming at culture and not utility, at higher spirituality and more intense reverence for law, rather than at the increased facilities of locomotion and the cheap production of common things about which our modern scientific school ceases not to boast. and lastly, and perhaps chiefly, we must remember that the 'plague spot of all greek states,' as one of their own writers has called it, was the terrible insecurity to life and property which resulted from the factions and revolutions which ceased not to trouble greece at all times, raising a spirit of fanaticism such as religion raised in the middle ages of europe. these considerations, then, will enable us to understand first how it was that, radical and unscrupulous reformers as the greek political theorists were, yet, their end once attained, no modern conservatives raised such outcry against the slightest innovation. even acknowledged improvements in such things as the games of children or the modes of music were regarded by them with feelings of extreme apprehension as the herald of the drapeau rouge of reform. and secondly, it will show us how it was that polybius found his ideal in the commonwealth of rome, and aristotle, like mr. bright, in the middle classes. polybius, however, is not content merely with pointing out his ideal state, but enters at considerable length into the question of those general laws whose consideration forms the chief essential of the philosophy of history. he starts by accepting the general principle that all things are fated to decay (which i noticed in the case of plato), and that 'as iron produces rust and as wood breeds the animals that destroy it, so every state has in it the seeds of its own corruption.' he is not, however, content to rest there, but proceeds to deal with the more immediate causes of revolutions, which he says are twofold in nature, either external or internal. now, the former, depending as they do on the synchronous conjunction of other events outside the sphere of scientific estimation, are from their very character incalculable; but the latter, though assuming many forms, always result from the over-great preponderance of any single element to the detriment of the others, the rational law lying at the base of all varieties of political changes being that stability can result only from the statical equilibrium produced by the counteraction of opposing parts, since the more simple a constitution is the more it is insecure. plato had pointed out before how the extreme liberty of a democracy always resulted in despotism, but polybius analyses the law and shows the scientific principles on which it rests. the doctrine of the instability of pure constitutions forms an important era in the philosophy of history. its special applicability to the politics of our own day has been illustrated in the rise of the great napoleon, when the french state had lost those divisions of caste and prejudice, of landed aristocracy and moneyed interest, institutions in which the vulgar see only barriers to liberty but which are indeed the only possible defences against the coming of that periodic sirius of politics, the [greek] there is a principle which tocqueville never wearies of explaining, and which has been subsumed by mr. herbert spencer under that general law common to all organic bodies which we call the instability of the homogeneous. the various manifestations of this law, as shown in the normal, regular revolutions and evolutions of the different forms of government, { a} are expounded with great clearness by polybius, who claimed for his theory in the thucydidean spirit, that it is a [greek], not a mere [greek], and that a knowledge of it will enable the impartial observer { b} to discover at any time what period of its constitutional evolution any particular state has already reached and into what form it will be next differentiated, though possibly the exact time of the changes may be more or less uncertain. { c} now in this necessarily incomplete account of the laws of political revolutions as expounded by polybius enough perhaps has been said to show what is his true position in the rational development of the 'idea' which i have called the philosophy of history, because it is the unifying of history. seen darkly as it is through the glass of religion in the pages of herodotus, more metaphysical than scientific with thucydides, plato strove to seize it by the eagle-flight of speculation, to reach it with the eager grasp of a soul impatient of those slower and surer inductive methods which aristotle, in his trenchant criticism of his great master, showed were more brilliant than any vague theory, if the test of brilliancy is truth. what then is the position of polybius? does any new method remain for him? polybius was one of those many men who are born too late to be original. to thucydides belongs the honour of being the first in the history of greek thought to discern the supreme calm of law and order underlying the fitful storms of life, and plato and aristotle each represents a great new principle. to polybius belongs the office--how noble an office he made it his writings show--of making more explicit the ideas which were implicit in his predecessors, of showing that they were of wider applicability and perhaps of deeper meaning than they had seemed before, of examining with more minuteness the laws which they had discovered, and finally of pointing out more clearly than any one had done the range of science and the means it offered for analysing the present and predicting what was to come. his office thus was to gather up what they had left, to give their principles new life by a wider application. polybius ends this great diapason of greek thought. when the philosophy of history appears next, as in plutarch's tract on 'why god's anger is delayed,' the pendulum of thought had swung back to where it began. his theory was introduced to the romans under the cultured style of cicero, and was welcomed by them as the philosophical panegyric of their state. the last notice of it in latin literature is in the pages of tacitus, who alludes to the stable polity formed out of these elements as a constitution easier to commend than to produce and in no case lasting. yet polybius had seen the future with no uncertain eye, and had prophesied the rise of the empire from the unbalanced power of the ochlocracy fifty years and more before there was joy in the julian household over the birth of that boy who, borne to power as the champion of the people, died wearing the purple of a king. no attitude of historical criticism is more important than the means by which the ancients attained to the philosophy of history. the principle of heredity can be exemplified in literature as well as in organic life: aristotle, plato and polybius are the lineal ancestors of fichte and hegel, of vico and cousin, of montesquieu and tocqueville. as my aim is not to give an account of historians but to point out those great thinkers whose methods have furthered the advance of this spirit of historical criticism, i shall pass over those annalists and chroniclers who intervened between thucydides and polybius. yet perhaps it may serve to throw new light on the real nature of this spirit and its intimate connection with all other forms of advanced thought if i give some estimate of the character and rise of those many influences prejudicial to the scientific study of history which cause such a wide gap between these two historians. foremost among these is the growing influence of rhetoric and the isocratean school, which seems to have regarded history as an arena for the display of either pathos or paradoxes, not a scientific investigation into laws. the new age is the age of style. the same spirit of exclusive attention to form which made euripides often, like swinburne, prefer music to meaning and melody to morality, which gave to the later greek statues that refined effeminacy, that overstrained gracefulness of attitude, was felt in the sphere of history. the rules laid down for historical composition are those relating to the aesthetic value of digressions, the legality of employing more than one metaphor in the same sentence, and the like; and historians are ranked not by their power of estimating evidence but by the goodness of the greek they write. i must note also the important influence on literature exercised by alexander the great; for while his travels encouraged the more accurate research of geography, the very splendour of his achievements seems to have brought history again into the sphere of romance. the appearance of all great men in the world is followed invariably by the rise of that mythopoeic spirit and that tendency to look for the marvellous, which is so fatal to true historical criticism. an alexander, a napoleon, a francis of assisi and a mahomet are thought to be outside the limiting conditions of rational law, just as comets were supposed to be not very long ago. while the founding of that city of alexandria, in which western and eastern thought met with such strange result to both, diverted the critical tendencies of the greek spirit into questions of grammar, philology and the like, the narrow, artificial atmosphere of that university town (as we may call it) was fatal to the development of that independent and speculative spirit of research which strikes out new methods of inquiry, of which historical criticism is one. the alexandrines combined a great love of learning with an ignorance of the true principles of research, an enthusiastic spirit for accumulating materials with a wonderful incapacity to use them. not among the hot sands of egypt, or the sophists of athens, but from the very heart of greece rises the man of genius on whose influence in the evolution of the philosophy of history i have a short time ago dwelt. born in the serene and pure air of the clear uplands of arcadia, polybius may be said to reproduce in his work the character of the place which gave him birth. for, of all the historians--i do not say of antiquity but of all time--none is more rationalistic than he, none more free from any belief in the 'visions and omens, the monstrous legends, the grovelling superstitions and unmanly craving for the supernatural' ([greek] { a}) which he is compelled to notice himself as the characteristics of some of the historians who preceded him. fortunate in the land which bore him, he was no less blessed in the wondrous time of his birth. for, representing in himself the spiritual supremacy of the greek intellect and allied in bonds of chivalrous friendship to the world-conqueror of his day, he seems led as it were by the hand of fate 'to comprehend,' as has been said, 'more clearly than the romans themselves the historical position of rome,' and to discern with greater insight than all other men could those two great resultants of ancient civilisation, the material empire of the city of the seven hills, and the intellectual sovereignty of hellas. before his own day, he says, { b} the events of the world were unconnected and separate and the histories confined to particular countries. now, for the first time the universal empire of the romans rendered a universal history possible. { a} this, then, is the august motive of his work: to trace the gradual rise of this italian city from the day when the first legion crossed the narrow strait of messina and landed on the fertile fields of sicily to the time when corinth in the east and carthage in the west fell before the resistless wave of empire and the eagles of rome passed on the wings of universal victory from calpe and the pillars of hercules to syria and the nile. at the same time he recognised that the scheme of rome's empire was worked out under the aegis of god's will. { b} for, as one of the middle age scribes most truly says, the [greek] of polybius is that power which we christians call god; the second aim, as one may call it, of his history is to point out the rational and human and natural causes which brought this result, distinguishing, as we should say, between god's mediate and immediate government of the world. with any direct intervention of god in the normal development of man, he will have nothing to do: still less with any idea of chance as a factor in the phenomena of life. chance and miracles, he says, are mere expressions for our ignorance of rational causes. the spirit of rationalism which we recognised in herodotus as a vague uncertain attitude and which appears in thucydides as a consistent attitude of mind never argued about or even explained, is by polybius analysed and formulated as the great instrument of historical research. herodotus, while believing on principle in the supernatural, yet was sceptical at times. thucydides simply ignored the supernatural. he did not discuss it, but he annihilated it by explaining history without it. polybius enters at length into the whole question and explains its origin and the method of treating it. herodotus would have believed in scipio's dream. thucydides would have ignored it entirely. polybius explains it. he is the culmination of the rational progression of dialectic. 'nothing,' he says, 'shows a foolish mind more than the attempt to account for any phenomena on the principle of chance or supernatural intervention. history is a search for rational causes, and there is nothing in the world--even those phenomena which seem to us the most remote from law and improbable--which is not the logical and inevitable result of certain rational antecedents.' some things, of course, are to be rejected a priori without entering into the subject: 'as regards such miracles,' he says, { } 'as that on a certain statue of artemis rain or snow never falls though the statue stands in the open air, or that those who enter god's shrine in arcadia lose their natural shadows, i cannot really be expected to argue upon the subject. for these things are not only utterly improbable but absolutely impossible.' 'for us to argue reasonably on an acknowledged absurdity is as vain a task as trying to catch water in a sieve; it is really to admit the possibility of the supernatural, which is the very point at issue.' what polybius felt was that to admit the possibility of a miracle is to annihilate the possibility of history: for just as scientific and chemical experiments would be either impossible or useless if exposed to the chance of continued interference on the part of some foreign body, so the laws and principles which govern history, the causes of phenomena, the evolution of progress, the whole science, in a word, of man's dealings with his own race and with nature, will remain a sealed book to him who admits the possibility of extra-natural interference. the stories of miracles, then, are to be rejected on a priori rational grounds, but in the case of events which we know to have happened the scientific historian will not rest till he has discovered their natural causes which, for instance, in the case of the wonderful rise of the roman empire--the most marvellous thing, polybius says, which god ever brought about { a}--are to be found in the excellence of their constitution ([greek]), the wisdom of their advisers, their splendid military arrangements, and their superstition ([greek]). for while polybius regarded the revealed religion as, of course, objective reality of truth, { b} he laid great stress on its moral subjective influence, going, in one passage on the subject, even so far as almost to excuse the introduction of the supernatural in very small quantities into history on account of the extremely good effect it would have on pious people. but perhaps there is no passage in the whole of ancient and modern history which breathes such a manly and splendid spirit of rationalism as one preserved to us in the vatican--strange resting-place for it!--in which he treats of the terrible decay of population which had fallen on his native land in his own day, and which by the general orthodox public was regarded as a special judgment of god, sending childlessness on women as a punishment for the sins of the people. for it was a disaster quite without parallel in the history of the land, and entirely unforeseen by any of its political-economy writers who, on the contrary, were always anticipating that danger would arise from an excess of population overrunning its means of subsistence, and becoming unmanageable through its size. polybius, however, will have nothing to do with either priest or worker of miracles in this matter. he will not even seek that 'sacred heart of greece,' delphi, apollo's shrine, whose inspiration even thucydides admitted and before whose wisdom socrates bowed. how foolish, he says, were the man who on this matter would pray to god. we must search for the rational causes, and the causes are seen to be clear, and the method of prevention also. he then proceeds to notice how all this arose from the general reluctance to marriage and to bearing the expense of educating a large family which resulted from the carelessness and avarice of the men of his day, and he explains on entirely rational principles the whole of this apparently supernatural judgment. now, it is to be borne in mind that while his rejection of miracles as violation of inviolable laws is entirely a priori--for, discussion of such a matter is, of course, impossible for a rational thinker--yet his rejection of supernatural intervention rests entirely on the scientific grounds of the necessity of looking for natural causes. and he is quite logical in maintaining his position on these principles. for, where it is either difficult or impossible to assign any rational cause for phenomena, or to discover their laws, he acquiesces reluctantly in the alternative of admitting some extra-natural interference which his essentially scientific method of treating the matter has logically forced on him, approving, for instance, of prayers for rain, on the express ground that the laws of meteorology had not yet been ascertained. he would, of course, have been the first to welcome our modern discoveries in the matter. the passage in question is in every way one of the most interesting in his whole work, not, of course, as signifying any inclination on his part to acquiesce in the supernatural, but because it shows how essentially logical and rational his method of argument was, and how candid and fair his mind. having now examined polybius's attitude towards the supernatural and the general ideas which guided his research, i will proceed to examine the method he pursued in his scientific investigation of the complex phenomena of life. for, as i have said before in the course of this essay, what is important in all great writers is not so much the results they arrive at as the methods they pursue. the increased knowledge of facts may alter any conclusion in history as in physical science, and the canons of speculative historical credibility must be acknowledged to appeal rather to that subjective attitude of mind which we call the historic sense than to any formulated objective rules. but a scientific method is a gain for all time, and the true if not the only progress of historical criticism consists in the improvement of the instruments of research. now first, as regards his conception of history, i have already pointed out that it was to him essentially a search for causes, a problem to be solved, not a picture to be painted, a scientific investigation into laws and tendencies, not a mere romantic account of startling incident and wondrous adventure. thucydides, in the opening of his great work, had sounded the first note of the scientific conception of history. 'the absence of romance in my pages,' he says, 'will, i fear, detract somewhat from its value, but i have written my work not to be the exploit of a passing hour but as the possession of all time.' { } polybius follows with words almost entirely similar. if, he says, we banish from history the consideration of causes, methods and motives ([greek]), and refuse to consider how far the result of anything is its rational consequent, what is left is a mere [greek], not a [greek], an oratorical essay which may give pleasure for the moment, but which is entirely without any scientific value for the explanation of the future. elsewhere he says that 'history robbed of the exposition of its causes and laws is a profitless thing, though it may allure a fool.' and all through his history the same point is put forward and exemplified in every fashion. so far for the conception of history. now for the groundwork. as regards the character of the phenomena to be selected by the scientific investigator, aristotle had laid down the general formula that nature should be studied in her normal manifestations. polybius, true to his character of applying explicitly the principles implicit in the work of others, follows out the doctrine of aristotle, and lays particular stress on the rational and undisturbed character of the development of the roman constitution as affording special facilities for the discovery of the laws of its progress. political revolutions result from causes either external or internal. the former are mere disturbing forces which lie outside the sphere of scientific calculation. it is the latter which are important for the establishing of principles and the elucidation of the sequences of rational evolution. he thus may be said to have anticipated one of the most important truths of the modern methods of investigation: i mean that principle which lays down that just as the study of physiology should precede the study of pathology, just as the laws of disease are best discovered by the phenomena presented in health, so the method of arriving at all great social and political truths is by the investigation of those cases where development has been normal, rational and undisturbed. the critical canon that the more a people has been interfered with, the more difficult it becomes to generalise the laws of its progress and to analyse the separate forces of its civilisation, is one the validity of which is now generally recognised by those who pretend to a scientific treatment of all history: and while we have seen that aristotle anticipated it in a general formula, to polybius belongs the honour of being the first to apply it explicitly in the sphere of history. i have shown how to this great scientific historian the motive of his work was essentially the search for causes; and true to his analytical spirit he is careful to examine what a cause really is and in what part of the antecedents of any consequent it is to be looked for. to give an illustration: as regards the origin of the war with perseus, some assigned as causes the expulsion of abrupolis by perseus, the expedition of the latter to delphi, the plot against eumenes and the seizure of the ambassadors in boeotia; of these incidents the two former, polybius points out, were merely the pretexts, the two latter merely the occasions of the war. the war was really a legacy left to perseus by his father, who was determined to fight it out with rome. { } here as elsewhere he is not originating any new idea. thucydides had pointed out the difference between the real and the alleged cause, and the aristotelian dictum about revolutions, [greek], draws the distinction between cause and occasion with the brilliancy of an epigram. but the explicit and rational investigation of the difference between [greek] and [greek] was reserved for polybius. no canon of historical criticism can be said to be of more real value than that involved in this distinction, and the overlooking of it has filled our histories with the contemptible accounts of the intrigues of courtiers and of kings and the petty plottings of backstairs influence--particulars interesting, no doubt, to those who would ascribe the reformation to anne boleyn's pretty face, the persian war to the influence of a doctor or a curtain-lecture from atossa, or the french revolution to madame de maintenon, but without any value for those who aim at any scientific treatment of history. but the question of method, to which i am compelled always to return, is not yet exhausted. there is another aspect in which it may be regarded, and i shall now proceed to treat of it. one of the greatest difficulties with which the modern historian has to contend is the enormous complexity of the facts which come under his notice: d'alembert's suggestion that at the end of every century a selection of facts should be made and the rest burned (if it was really intended seriously) could not, of course, be entertained for a moment. a problem loses all its value when it becomes simplified, and the world would be all the poorer if the sybil of history burned her volumes. besides, as gibbon pointed out, 'a montesquieu will detect in the most insignificant fact relations which the vulgar overlook.' nor can the scientific investigator of history isolate the particular elements, which he desires to examine, from disturbing and extraneous causes, as the experimental chemist can do (though sometimes, as in the case of lunatic asylums and prisons, he is enabled to observe phenomena in a certain degree of isolation). so he is compelled either to use the deductive mode of arguing from general laws or to employ the method of abstraction which gives a fictitious isolation to phenomena never so isolated in actual existence. and this is exactly what polybius has done as well as thucydides. for, as has been well remarked, there is in the works of these two writers a certain plastic unity of type and motive; whatever they write is penetrated through and through with a specific quality, a singleness and concentration of purpose, which we may contrast with the more comprehensive width as manifested not merely in the modern mind, but also in herodotus. thucydides, regarding society as influenced entirely by political motives, took no account of forces of a different nature, and consequently his results, like those of most modern political economists, have to be modified largely { } before they come to correspond with what we know was the actual state of fact. similarly, polybius will deal only with those forces which tended to bring the civilised world under the dominion of rome (ix. ), and in the thucydidean spirit points out the want of picturesqueness and romance in his pages which is the result of the abstract method ([greek]), being careful also to tell us that his rejection of all other forces is essentially deliberate and the result of a preconceived theory and by no means due to carelessness of any kind. now, of the general value of the abstract method and the legality of its employment in the sphere of history, this is perhaps not the suitable occasion for any discussion. it is, however, in all ways worthy of note that polybius is not merely conscious of, but dwells with particular weight on, the fact which is usually urged as the strongest objection to the employment of the abstract method--i mean the conception of a society as a sort of human organism whose parts are indissolubly connected with one another and all affected when one member is in any way agitated. this conception of the organic nature of society appears first in plato and aristotle, who apply it to cities. polybius, as his wont is, expands it to be a general characteristic of all history. it is an idea of the very highest importance, especially to a man like polybius whose thoughts are continually turned towards the essential unity of history and the impossibility of isolation. farther, as regards the particular method of investigating that group of phenomena obtained for him by the abstract method, he will adopt, he tells us, neither the purely deductive nor the purely inductive mode but the union of both. in other words, he formally adopts that method of analysis upon the importance of which i have dwelt before. and lastly, while, without doubt, enormous simplicity in the elements under consideration is the result of the employment of the abstract method, even within the limit thus obtained a certain selection must be made, and a selection involves a theory. for the facts of life cannot be tabulated with as great an ease as the colours of birds and insects can be tabulated. now, polybius points out that those phenomena particularly are to be dwelt on which may serve as a [greek] or sample, and show the character of the tendencies of the age as clearly as 'a single drop from a full cask will be enough to disclose the nature of the whole contents.' this recognition of the importance of single facts, not in themselves but because of the spirit they represent, is extremely scientific; for we know that from the single bone, or tooth even, the anatomist can recreate entirely the skeleton of the primeval horse, and the botanist tell the character of the flora and fauna of a district from a single specimen. regarding truth as 'the most divine thing in nature,' the very 'eye and light of history without which it moves a blind thing,' polybius spared no pains in the acquisition of historical materials or in the study of the sciences of politics and war, which he considered were so essential to the training of the scientific historian, and the labour he took is mirrored in the many ways in which he criticises other authorities. there is something, as a rule, slightly contemptible about ancient criticism. the modern idea of the critic as the interpreter, the expounder of the beauty and excellence of the work he selects, seems quite unknown. nothing can be more captious or unfair, for instance, than the method by which aristotle criticised the ideal state of plato in his ethical works, and the passages quoted by polybius from timaeus show that the latter historian fully deserved the punning name given to him. but in polybius there is, i think, little of that bitterness and pettiness of spirit which characterises most other writers, and an incidental story he tells of his relations with one of the historians whom he criticised shows that he was a man of great courtesy and refinement of taste--as, indeed, befitted one who had lived always in the society of those who were of great and noble birth. now, as regards the character of the canons by which he criticises the works of other authors, in the majority of cases he employs simply his own geographical and military knowledge, showing, for instance, the impossibility in the accounts given of nabis's march from sparta simply by his acquaintance with the spots in question; or the inconsistency of those of the battle of issus; or of the accounts given by ephorus of the battles of leuctra and mantinea. in the latter case he says, if any one will take the trouble to measure out the ground of the site of the battle and then test the manoeuvres given, he will find how inaccurate the accounts are. in other cases he appeals to public documents, the importance of which he was always foremost in recognising; showing, for instance, by a document in the public archives of rhodes how inaccurate were the accounts given of the battle of lade by zeno and antisthenes. or he appeals to psychological probability, rejecting, for instance, the scandalous stories told of philip of macedon, simply from the king's general greatness of character, and arguing that a boy so well educated and so respectably connected as demochares (xii. ) could never have been guilty of that of which evil rumour accused him. but the chief object of his literary censure is timaeus, who had been so unsparing of his strictures on others. the general point which he makes against him, impugning his accuracy as a historian, is that he derived his knowledge of history not from the dangerous perils of a life of action but in the secure indolence of a narrow scholastic life. there is, indeed, no point on which he is so vehement as this. 'a history,' he says, 'written in a library gives as lifeless and as inaccurate a picture of history as a painting which is copied not from a living animal but from a stuffed one.' there is more difference, he says in another place, between the history of an eye-witness and that of one whose knowledge comes from books, than there is between the scenes of real life and the fictitious landscapes of theatrical scenery. besides this, he enters into somewhat elaborate detailed criticism of passages where he thought timaeus was following a wrong method and perverting truth, passages which it will be worth while to examine in detail. timaeus, from the fact of there being a roman custom to shoot a war-horse on a stated day, argued back to the trojan origin of that people. polybius, on the other hand, points out that the inference is quite unwarrantable, because horse-sacrifices are ordinary institutions common to all barbarous tribes. timaeus here, as was so common with greek writers, is arguing back from some custom of the present to an historical event in the past. polybius really is employing the comparative method, showing how the custom was an ordinary step in the civilisation of every early people. in another place, { } he shows how illogical is the scepticism of timaeus as regards the existence of the bull of phalaris simply by appealing to the statue of the bull, which was still to be seen in carthage; pointing out how impossible it was, on any other theory except that it belonged to phalaris, to account for the presence in carthage of a bull of this peculiar character with a door between his shoulders. but one of the great points which he uses against this sicilian historian is in reference to the question of the origin of the locrian colony. in accordance with the received tradition on the subject, aristotle had represented the locrian colony as founded by some parthenidae or slaves' children, as they were called, a statement which seems to have roused the indignation of timaeus, who went to a good deal of trouble to confute this theory. he does so on the following grounds:-- first of all, he points out that in the ancient days the greeks had no slaves at all, so the mention of them in the matter is an anachronism; and next he declares that he was shown in the greek city of locris certain ancient inscriptions in which their relation to the italian city was expressed in terms of the position between parent and child, which showed also that mutual rights of citizenship were accorded to each city. besides this, he appeals to various questions of improbability as regards their international relationship, on which polybius takes diametrically opposite grounds which hardly call for discussion. and in favour of his own view he urges two points more: first, that the lacedaemonians being allowed furlough for the purpose of seeing their wives at home, it was unlikely that the locrians should not have had the same privilege; and next, that the italian locrians knew nothing of the aristotelian version and had, on the contrary, very severe laws against adulterers, runaway slaves and the like. now, most of these questions rest on mere probability, which is always such a subjective canon that an appeal to it is rarely conclusive. i would note, however, as regards the inscriptions which, if genuine, would of course have settled the matter, that polybius looks on them as a mere invention on the part of timaeus, who, he remarks, gives no details about them, though, as a rule, he is so over- anxious to give chapter and verse for everything. a somewhat more interesting point is that where he attacks timaeus for the introduction of fictitious speeches into his narrative; for on this point polybius seems to be far in advance of the opinions held by literary men on the subject not merely in his own day, but for centuries after. herodotus had introduced speeches avowedly dramatic and fictitious. thucydides states clearly that, where he was unable to find out what people really said, he put down what they ought to have said. sallust alludes, it is true, to the fact of the speech he puts into the mouth of the tribune memmius being essentially genuine, but the speeches given in the senate on the occasion of the catilinarian conspiracy are very different from the same orations as they appear in cicero. livy makes his ancient romans wrangle and chop logic with all the subtlety of a hortensius or a scaevola. and even in later days, when shorthand reporters attended the debates of the senate and a daily news was published in rome, we find that one of the most celebrated speeches in tacitus (that in which the emperor claudius gives the gauls their freedom) is shown, by an inscription discovered recently at lugdunum, to be entirely fabulous. upon the other hand, it must be borne in mind that these speeches were not intended to deceive; they were regarded merely as a certain dramatic element which it was allowable to introduce into history for the purpose of giving more life and reality to the narration, and were to be criticised, not as we should, by arguing how in an age before shorthand was known such a report was possible or how, in the failure of written documents, tradition could bring down such an accurate verbal account, but by the higher test of their psychological probability as regards the persons in whose mouths they are placed. an ancient historian in answer to modern criticism would say, probably, that these fictitious speeches were in reality more truthful than the actual ones, just as aristotle claimed for poetry a higher degree of truth in comparison to history. the whole point is interesting as showing how far in advance of his age polybius may be said to have been. the last scientific historian, it is possible to gather from his writings what he considered were the characteristics of the ideal writer of history; and no small light will be thrown on the progress of historical criticism if we strive to collect and analyse what in polybius are more or less scattered expressions. the ideal historian must be contemporary with the events he describes, or removed from them by one generation only. where it is possible, he is to be an eye-witness of what he writes of; where that is out of his power he is to test all traditions and stories carefully and not to be ready to accept what is plausible in place of what is true. he is to be no bookworm living aloof from the experiences of the world in the artificial isolation of a university town, but a politician, a soldier, and a traveller, a man not merely of thought but of action, one who can do great things as well as write of them, who in the sphere of history could be what byron and aeschylus were in the sphere of poetry, at once le chantre et le heros. he is to keep before his eyes the fact that chance is merely a synonym for our ignorance; that the reign of law pervades the domain of history as much as it does that of political science. he is to accustom himself to look on all occasions for rational and natural causes. and while he is to recognise the practical utility of the supernatural, in an educational point of view, he is not himself to indulge in such intellectual beating of the air as to admit the possibility of the violation of inviolable laws, or to argue in a sphere wherein argument is a priori annihilated. he is to be free from all bias towards friend and country; he is to be courteous and gentle in criticism; he is not to regard history as a mere opportunity for splendid and tragic writing; nor is he to falsify truth for the sake of a paradox or an epigram. while acknowledging the importance of particular facts as samples of higher truths, he is to take a broad and general view of humanity. he is to deal with the whole race and with the world, not with particular tribes or separate countries. he is to bear in mind that the world is really an organism wherein no one part can be moved without the others being affected also. he is to distinguish between cause and occasion, between the influence of general laws and particular fancies, and he is to remember that the greatest lessons of the world are contained in history and that it is the historian's duty to manifest them so as to save nations from following those unwise policies which always lead to dishonour and ruin, and to teach individuals to apprehend by the intellectual culture of history those truths which else they would have to learn in the bitter school of experience. now, as regards his theory of the necessity of the historian's being contemporary with the events he describes, so far as the historian is a mere narrator the remark is undoubtedly true. but to appreciate the harmony and rational position of the facts of a great epoch, to discover its laws, the causes which produced it and the effects which it generates, the scene must be viewed from a certain height and distance to be completely apprehended. a thoroughly contemporary historian such as lord clarendon or thucydides is in reality part of the history he criticises; and, in the case of such contemporary historians as fabius and philistus, polybius is compelled to acknowledge that they are misled by patriotic and other considerations. against polybius himself no such accusation can be made. he indeed of all men is able, as from some lofty tower, to discern the whole tendency of the ancient world, the triumph of roman institutions and of greek thought which is the last message of the old world and, in a more spiritual sense, has become the gospel of the new. one thing indeed he did not see, or if he saw it, he thought but little of it--how from the east there was spreading over the world, as a wave spreads, a spiritual inroad of new religions from the time when the pessinuntine mother of the gods, a shapeless mass of stone, was brought to the eternal city by her holiest citizen, to the day when the ship castor and pollux stood in at puteoli, and st. paul turned his face towards martyrdom and victory at rome. polybius was able to predict, from his knowledge of the causes of revolutions and the tendencies of the various forms of governments, the uprising of that democratic tone of thought which, as soon as a seed is sown in the murder of the gracchi and the exile of marius, culminated as all democratic movements do culminate, in the supreme authority of one man, the lordship of the world under the world's rightful lord, caius julius caesar. this, indeed, he saw in no uncertain way. but the turning of all men's hearts to the east, the first glimmering of that splendid dawn which broke over the hills of galilee and flooded the earth like wine, was hidden from his eyes. there are many points in the description of the ideal historian which one may compare to the picture which plato has given us of the ideal philosopher. they are both 'spectators of all time and all existence.' nothing is contemptible in their eyes, for all things have a meaning, and they both walk in august reasonableness before all men, conscious of the workings of god yet free from all terror of mendicant priest or vagrant miracle-worker. but the parallel ends here. for the one stands aloof from the world-storm of sleet and hail, his eyes fixed on distant and sunlit heights, loving knowledge for the sake of knowledge and wisdom for the joy of wisdom, while the other is an eager actor in the world ever seeking to apply his knowledge to useful things. both equally desire truth, but the one because of its utility, the other for its beauty. the historian regards it as the rational principle of all true history, and no more. to the other it comes as an all-pervading and mystic enthusiasm, 'like the desire of strong wine, the craving of ambition, the passionate love of what is beautiful.' still, though we miss in the historian those higher and more spiritual qualities which the philosopher of the academe alone of all men possessed, we must not blind ourselves to the merits of that great rationalist who seems to have anticipated the very latest words of modern science. nor yet is he to be regarded merely in the narrow light in which he is estimated by most modern critics, as the explicit champion of rationalism and nothing more. for he is connected with another idea, the course of which is as the course of that great river of his native arcadia which, springing from some arid and sun-bleached rock, gathers strength and beauty as it flows till it reaches the asphodel meadows of olympia and the light and laughter of ionian waters. for in him we can discern the first notes of that great cult of the seven- hilled city which made virgil write his epic and livy his history, which found in dante its highest exponent, which dreamed of an empire where the emperor would care for the bodies and the pope for the souls of men, and so has passed into the conception of god's spiritual empire and the universal brotherhood of man and widened into the huge ocean of universal thought as the peneus loses itself in the sea. polybius is the last scientific historian of greece. the writer who seems fittingly to complete the progress of thought is a writer of biographies only. i will not here touch on plutarch's employment of the inductive method as shown in his constant use of inscription and statue, of public document and building and the like, because they involve no new method. it is his attitude towards miracles of which i desire to treat. plutarch is philosophic enough to see that in the sense of a violation of the laws of nature a miracle is impossible. it is absurd, he says, to imagine that the statue of a saint can speak, and that an inanimate object not possessing the vocal organs should be able to utter an articulate sound. upon the other hand, he protests against science imagining that, by explaining the natural causes of things, it has explained away their transcendental meaning. 'when the tears on the cheek of some holy statue have been analysed into the moisture which certain temperatures produce on wood and marble, it yet by no means follows that they were not a sign of grief and mourning set there by god himself.' when lampon saw in the prodigy of the one-horned ram the omen of the supreme rule of pericles, and when anaxagoras showed that the abnormal development was the rational resultant of the peculiar formation of the skull, the dreamer and the man of science were both right; it was the business of the latter to consider how the prodigy came about, of the former to show why it was so formed and what it so portended. the progression of thought is exemplified in all particulars. herodotus had a glimmering sense of the impossibility of a violation of nature. thucydides ignored the supernatural. polybius rationalised it. plutarch raises it to its mystical heights again, though he bases it on law. in a word, plutarch felt that while science brings the supernatural down to the natural, yet ultimately all that is natural is really supernatural. to him, as to many of our own day, religion was that transcendental attitude of the mind which, contemplating a world resting on inviolable law, is yet comforted and seeks to worship god not in the violation but in the fulfilment of nature. it may seem paradoxical to quote in connection with the priest of chaeronea such a pure rationalist as mr. herbert spencer; yet when we read as the last message of modern science that 'when the equation of life has been reduced to its lowest terms the symbols are symbols still,' mere signs, that is, of that unknown reality which underlies all matter and all spirit, we may feel how over the wide strait of centuries thought calls to thought and how plutarch has a higher position than is usually claimed for him in the progress of the greek intellect. and, indeed, it seems that not merely the importance of plutarch himself but also that of the land of his birth in the evolution of greek civilisation has been passed over by modern critics. to us, indeed, the bare rock to which the parthenon serves as a crown, and which lies between colonus and attica's violet hills, will always be the holiest spot in the land of greece: and delphi will come next, and then the meadows of eurotas where that noble people lived who represented in hellenic thought the reaction of the law of duty against the law of beauty, the opposition of conduct to culture. yet, as one stands on the [greek] of cithaeron and looks out on the great double plain of boeotia, the enormous importance of the division of hellas comes to one's mind with great force. to the north is orchomenus and the minyan treasure house, seat of those merchant princes of phoenicia who brought to greece the knowledge of letters and the art of working in gold. thebes is at our feet with the gloom of the terrible legends of greek tragedy still lingering about it, the birthplace of pindar, the nurse of epaminondas and the sacred band. and from out of the plain where 'mars loved to dance,' rises the muses' haunt, helicon, by whose silver streams corinna and hesiod sang. while far away under the white aegis of those snow-capped mountains lies chaeronea and the lion plain where with vain chivalry the greeks strove to check macedon first and afterwards rome; chaeronea, where in the martinmas summer of greek civilisation plutarch rose from the drear waste of a dying religion as the aftermath rises when the mowers think they have left the field bare. greek philosophy began and ended in scepticism: the first and the last word of greek history was faith. splendid thus in its death, like winter sunsets, the greek religion passed away into the horror of night. for the cimmerian darkness was at hand, and when the schools of athens were closed and the statue of athena broken, the greek spirit passed from the gods and the history of its own land to the subtleties of defining the doctrine of the trinity and the mystical attempts to bring plato into harmony with christ and to reconcile gethsemane and the sermon on the mount with the athenian prison and the discussion in the woods of colonus. the greek spirit slept for wellnigh a thousand years. when it woke again, like antaeus it had gathered strength from the earth where it lay, like apollo it had lost none of its divinity through its long servitude. in the history of roman thought we nowhere find any of those characteristics of the greek illumination which i have pointed out are the necessary concomitants of the rise of historical criticism. the conservative respect for tradition which made the roman people delight in the ritual and formulas of law, and is as apparent in their politics as in their religion, was fatal to any rise of that spirit of revolt against authority the importance of which, as a factor in intellectual progress, we have already seen. the whitened tables of the pontifices preserved carefully the records of the eclipses and other atmospherical phenomena, and what we call the art of verifying dates was known to them at an early time; but there was no spontaneous rise of physical science to suggest by its analogies of law and order a new method of research, nor any natural springing up of the questioning spirit of philosophy with its unification of all phenomena and all knowledge. at the very time when the whole tide of eastern superstition was sweeping into the heart of the capitol the senate banished the greek philosophers from rome. and of the three systems which did at length take some root in the city those of zeno and epicurus were merely used as the rule for the ordering of life, while the dogmatic scepticism of carneades, by its very principles, annihilated the possibility of argument and encouraged a perfect indifference to research. nor were the romans ever fortunate enough like the greeks to have to face the incubus of any dogmatic system of legends and myths, the immoralities and absurdities of which might excite a revolutionary outbreak of sceptical criticism. for the roman religion became as it were crystallised and isolated from progress at an early period of its evolution. their gods remained mere abstractions of commonplace virtues or uninteresting personifications of the useful things of life. the old primitive creed was indeed always upheld as a state institution on account of the enormous facilities it offered for cheating in politics, but as a spiritual system of belief it was unanimously rejected at a very early period both by the common people and the educated classes, for the sensible reason that it was so extremely dull. the former took refuge in the mystic sensualities of the worship of isis, the latter in the stoical rules of life. the romans classified their gods carefully in their order of precedence, analysed their genealogies in the laborious spirit of modern heraldry, fenced them round with a ritual as intricate as their law, but never quite cared enough about them to believe in them. so it was of no account with them when the philosophers announced that minerva was merely memory. she had never been much else. nor did they protest when lucretius dared to say of ceres and of liber that they were only the corn of the field and the fruit of the vine. for they had never mourned for the daughter of demeter in the asphodel meadows of sicily, nor traversed the glades of cithaeron with fawn-skin and with spear. this brief sketch of the condition of roman thought will serve to prepare us for the almost total want of scientific historical criticism which we shall discern in their literature, and has, besides, afforded fresh corroborations of the conditions essential to the rise of this spirit, and of the modes of thought which it reflects and in which it is always to be found. roman historical composition had its origin in the pontifical college of ecclesiastical lawyers, and preserved to its close the uncritical spirit which characterised its fountain-head. it possessed from the outset a most voluminous collection of the materials of history, which, however, produced merely antiquarians, not historians. it is so hard to use facts, so easy to accumulate them. wearied of the dull monotony of the pontifical annals, which dwelt on little else but the rise and fall in provisions and the eclipses of the sun, cato wrote out a history with his own hand for the instruction of his child, to which he gave the name of origines, and before his time some aristocratic families had written histories in greek much in the same spirit in which the germans of the eighteenth century used french as the literary language. but the first regular roman historian is sallust. between the extravagant eulogies passed on this author by the french (such as de closset), and dr. mommsen's view of him as merely a political pamphleteer, it is perhaps difficult to reach the via media of unbiassed appreciation. he has, at any rate, the credit of being a purely rationalistic historian, perhaps the only one in roman literature. cicero had a good many qualifications for a scientific historian, and (as he usually did) thought very highly of his own powers. on passages of ancient legend, however, he is rather unsatisfactory, for while he is too sensible to believe them he is too patriotic to reject them. and this is really the attitude of livy, who claims for early roman legend a certain uncritical homage from the rest of the subject world. his view in his history is that it is not worth while to examine the truth of these stories. in his hands the history of rome unrolls before our eyes like some gorgeous tapestry, where victory succeeds victory, where triumph treads on the heels of triumph, and the line of heroes seems never to end. it is not till we pass behind the canvas and see the slight means by which the effect is produced that we apprehend the fact that like most picturesque writers livy is an indifferent critic. as regards his attitude towards the credibility of early roman history he is quite as conscious as we are of its mythical and unsound nature. he will not, for instance, decide whether the horatii were albans or romans; who was the first dictator; how many tribunes there were, and the like. his method, as a rule, is merely to mention all the accounts and sometimes to decide in favour of the most probable, but usually not to decide at all. no canons of historical criticism will ever discover whether the roman women interviewed the mother of coriolanus of their own accord or at the suggestion of the senate; whether remus was killed for jumping over his brother's wall or because they quarrelled about birds; whether the ambassadors found cincinnatus ploughing or only mending a hedge. livy suspends his judgment over these important facts and history when questioned on their truth is dumb. if he does select between two historians he chooses the one who is nearer to the facts he describes. but he is no critic, only a conscientious writer. it is mere vain waste to dwell on his critical powers, for they do not exist. * * * * * in the case of tacitus imagination has taken the place of history. the past lives again in his pages, but through no laborious criticism; rather through a dramatic and psychological faculty which he specially possessed. in the philosophy of history he has no belief. he can never make up his mind what to believe as regards god's government of the world. there is no method in him and none elsewhere in roman literature. nations may not have missions but they certainly have functions. and the function of ancient italy was not merely to give us what is statical in our institutions and rational in our law, but to blend into one elemental creed the spiritual aspirations of aryan and of semite. italy was not a pioneer in intellectual progress, nor a motive power in the evolution of thought. the owl of the goddess of wisdom traversed over the whole land and found nowhere a resting-place. the dove, which is the bird of christ, flew straight to the city of rome and the new reign began. it was the fashion of early italian painters to represent in mediaeval costume the soldiers who watched over the tomb of christ, and this, which was the result of the frank anachronism of all true art, may serve to us as an allegory. for it was in vain that the middle ages strove to guard the buried spirit of progress. when the dawn of the greek spirit arose, the sepulchre was empty, the grave-clothes laid aside. humanity had risen from the dead. the study of greek, it has been well said, implies the birth of criticism, comparison and research. at the opening of that education of modern by ancient thought which we call the renaissance, it was the words of aristotle which sent columbus sailing to the new world, while a fragment of pythagorean astronomy set copernicus thinking on that train of reasoning which has revolutionised the whole position of our planet in the universe. then it was seen that the only meaning of progress is a return to greek modes of thought. the monkish hymns which obscured the pages of greek manuscripts were blotted out, the splendours of a new method were unfolded to the world, and out of the melancholy sea of mediaevalism rose the free spirit of man in all that splendour of glad adolescence, when the bodily powers seem quickened by a new vitality, when the eye sees more clearly than its wont and the mind apprehends what was beforetime hidden from it. to herald the opening of the sixteenth century, from the little venetian printing press came forth all the great authors of antiquity, each bearing on the title-page the words [greek] words which may serve to remind us with what wondrous prescience polybius saw the world's fate when he foretold the material sovereignty of roman institutions and exemplified in himself the intellectual empire of greece. the course of the study of the spirit of historical criticism has not been a profitless investigation into modes and forms of thought now antiquated and of no account. the only spirit which is entirely removed from us is the mediaeval; the greek spirit is essentially modern. the introduction of the comparative method of research which has forced history to disclose its secrets belongs in a measure to us. ours, too, is a more scientific knowledge of philology and the method of survival. nor did the ancients know anything of the doctrine of averages or of crucial instances, both of which methods have proved of such importance in modern criticism, the one adding a most important proof of the statical elements of history, and exemplifying the influences of all physical surroundings on the life of man; the other, as in the single instance of the moulin quignon skull, serving to create a whole new science of prehistoric archaeology and to bring us back to a time when man was coeval with the stone age, the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros. but, except these, we have added no new canon or method to the science of historical criticism. across the drear waste of a thousand years the greek and the modern spirit join hands. in the torch race which the greek boys ran from the cerameician field of death to the home of the goddess of wisdom, not merely he who first reached the goal but he also who first started with the torch aflame received a prize. in the lampadephoria of civilisation and free thought let us not forget to render due meed of honour to those who first lit that sacred flame, the increasing splendour of which lights our footsteps to the far-off divine event of the attainment of perfect truth. la sainte courtisane; or, the woman covered with jewels the scene represents a corner of a valley in the thebaid. on the right hand of the stage is a cavern. in front of the cavern stands a great crucifix. on the left [sand dunes]. the sky is blue like the inside of a cup of lapis lazuli. the hills are of red sand. here and there on the hills there are clumps of thorns. first man. who is she? she makes me afraid. she has a purple cloak and her hair is like threads of gold. i think she must be the daughter of the emperor. i have heard the boatmen say that the emperor has a daughter who wears a cloak of purple. second man. she has birds' wings upon her sandals, and her tunic is of the colour of green corn. it is like corn in spring when she stands still. it is like young corn troubled by the shadows of hawks when she moves. the pearls on her tunic are like many moons. first man. they are like the moons one sees in the water when the wind blows from the hills. second man. i think she is one of the gods. i think she comes from nubia. first man. i am sure she is the daughter of the emperor. her nails are stained with henna. they are like the petals of a rose. she has come here to weep for adonis. second man. she is one of the gods. i do not know why she has left her temple. the gods should not leave their temples. if she speaks to us let us not answer and she will pass by. first man. she will not speak to us. she is the daughter of the emperor. myrrhina. dwells he not here, the beautiful young hermit, he who will not look on the face of woman? first man. of a truth it is here the hermit dwells. myrrhina. why will he not look on the face of woman? second man. we do not know. myrrhina. why do ye yourselves not look at me? first man. you are covered with bright stones, and you dazzle our eyes. second man. he who looks at the sun becomes blind. you are too bright to look at. it is not wise to look at things that are very bright. many of the priests in the temples are blind, and have slaves to lead them. myrrhina. where does he dwell, the beautiful young hermit who will not look on the face of woman? has he a house of reeds or a house of burnt clay or does he lie on the hillside? or does he make his bed in the rushes? first man. he dwells in that cavern yonder. myrrhina. what a curious place to dwell in. first man. of old a centaur lived there. when the hermit came the centaur gave a shrill cry, wept and lamented, and galloped away. second man. no. it was a white unicorn who lived in the cave. when it saw the hermit coming the unicorn knelt down and worshipped him. many people saw it worshipping him. first man. i have talked with people who saw it. . . . . . second man. some say he was a hewer of wood and worked for hire. but that may not be true. . . . . . myrrhina. what gods then do ye worship? or do ye worship any gods? there are those who have no gods to worship. the philosophers who wear long beards and brown cloaks have no gods to worship. they wrangle with each other in the porticoes. the [ ] laugh at them. first man. we worship seven gods. we may not tell their names. it is a very dangerous thing to tell the names of the gods. no one should ever tell the name of his god. even the priests who praise the gods all day long, and eat of their food with them, do not call them by their right names. myrrhina. where are these gods ye worship? first man. we hide them in the folds of our tunics. we do not show them to any one. if we showed them to any one they might leave us. myrrhina. where did ye meet with them? first man. they were given to us by an embalmer of the dead who had found them in a tomb. we served him for seven years. myrrhina. the dead are terrible. i am afraid of death. first man. death is not a god. he is only the servant of the gods. myrrhina. he is the only god i am afraid of. ye have seen many of the gods? first man. we have seen many of them. one sees them chiefly at night time. they pass one by very swiftly. once we saw some of the gods at daybreak. they were walking across a plain. myrrhina. once as i was passing through the market place i heard a sophist from cilicia say that there is only one god. he said it before many people. first man. that cannot be true. we have ourselves seen many, though we are but common men and of no account. when i saw them i hid myself in a bush. they did me no harm. myrrhina. tell me more about the beautiful young hermit. talk to me about the beautiful young hermit who will not look on the face of woman. what is the story of his days? what mode of life has he? first man. we do not understand you. myrrhina. what does he do, the beautiful young hermit? does he sow or reap? does he plant a garden or catch fish in a net? does he weave linen on a loom? does he set his hand to the wooden plough and walk behind the oxen? second man. he being a very holy man does nothing. we are common men and of no account. we toil all day long in the sun. sometimes the ground is very hard. myrrhina. do the birds of the air feed him? do the jackals share their booty with him? first man. every evening we bring him food. we do not think that the birds of the air feed him. myrrhina. why do ye feed him? what profit have ye in so doing? second man. he is a very holy man. one of the gods whom he has offended has made him mad. we think he has offended the moon. myrrhina. go and tell him that one who has come from alexandria desires to speak with him. first man. we dare not tell him. this hour he is praying to his god. we pray thee to pardon us for not doing thy bidding. myrrhina. are ye afraid of him? first man. we are afraid of him. myrrhina. why are ye afraid of him? first man. we do not know. myrrhina. what is his name? first man. the voice that speaks to him at night time in the cavern calls to him by the name of honorius. it was also by the name of honorius that the three lepers who passed by once called to him. we think that his name is honorius. myrrhina. why did the three lepers call to him? first man. that he might heal them. myrrhina. did he heal them? second man. no. they had committed some sin: it was for that reason they were lepers. their hands and faces were like salt. one of them wore a mask of linen. he was a king's son. myrrhina. what is the voice that speaks to him at night time in his cave? first man. we do not know whose voice it is. we think it is the voice of his god. for we have seen no man enter his cavern nor any come forth from it. myrrhina. honorius. honorius (from within). who calls honorius? . . . . . myrrhina. come forth, honorius. . . . . . my chamber is ceiled with cedar and odorous with myrrh. the pillars of my bed are of cedar and the hangings are of purple. my bed is strewn with purple and the steps are of silver. the hangings are sewn with silver pomegranates and the steps that are of silver are strewn with saffron and with myrrh. my lovers hang garlands round the pillars of my house. at night time they come with the flute players and the players of the harp. they woo me with apples and on the pavement of my courtyard they write my name in wine. from the uttermost parts of the world my lovers come to me. the kings of the earth come to me and bring me presents. when the emperor of byzantium heard of me he left his porphyry chamber and set sail in his galleys. his slaves bare no torches that none might know of his coming. when the king of cyprus heard of me he sent me ambassadors. the two kings of libya who are brothers brought me gifts of amber. i took the minion of caesar from caesar and made him my playfellow. he came to me at night in a litter. he was pale as a narcissus, and his body was like honey. the son of the praefect slew himself in my honour, and the tetrarch of cilicia scourged himself for my pleasure before my slaves. the king of hierapolis who is a priest and a robber set carpets for me to walk on. sometimes i sit in the circus and the gladiators fight beneath me. once a thracian who was my lover was caught in the net. i gave the signal for him to die and the whole theatre applauded. sometimes i pass through the gymnasium and watch the young men wrestling or in the race. their bodies are bright with oil and their brows are wreathed with willow sprays and with myrtle. they stamp their feet on the sand when they wrestle and when they run the sand follows them like a little cloud. he at whom i smile leaves his companions and follows me to my home. at other times i go down to the harbour and watch the merchants unloading their vessels. those that come from tyre have cloaks of silk and earrings of emerald. those that come from massilia have cloaks of fine wool and earrings of brass. when they see me coming they stand on the prows of their ships and call to me, but i do not answer them. i go to the little taverns where the sailors lie all day long drinking black wine and playing with dice and i sit down with them. i made the prince my slave, and his slave who was a tyrian i made my lord for the space of a moon. i put a figured ring on his finger and brought him to my house. i have wonderful things in my house. the dust of the desert lies on your hair and your feet are scratched with thorns and your body is scorched by the sun. come with me, honorius, and i will clothe you in a tunic of silk. i will smear your body with myrrh and pour spikenard on your hair. i will clothe you in hyacinth and put honey in your mouth. love-- honorius. there is no love but the love of god. myrrhina. who is he whose love is greater than that of mortal men? honorius. it is he whom thou seest on the cross, myrrhina. he is the son of god and was born of a virgin. three wise men who were kings brought him offerings, and the shepherds who were lying on the hills were wakened by a great light. the sibyls knew of his coming. the groves and the oracles spake of him. david and the prophets announced him. there is no love like the love of god nor any love that can be compared to it. the body is vile, myrrhina. god will raise thee up with a new body which will not know corruption, and thou wilt dwell in the courts of the lord and see him whose hair is like fine wool and whose feet are of brass. myrrhina. the beauty . . . honorius. the beauty of the soul increases till it can see god. therefore, myrrhina, repent of thy sins. the robber who was crucified beside him he brought into paradise. [exit. myrrhina. how strangely he spake to me. and with what scorn did he regard me. i wonder why he spake to me so strangely. . . . . . honorius. myrrhina, the scales have fallen from my eyes and i see now clearly what i did not see before. take me to alexandria and let me taste of the seven sins. myrrhina. do not mock me, honorius, nor speak to me with such bitter words. for i have repented of my sins and i am seeking a cavern in this desert where i too may dwell so that my soul may become worthy to see god. honorius. the sun is setting, myrrhina. come with me to alexandria. myrrhina. i will not go to alexandria. honorius. farewell, myrrhina. myrrhina. honorius, farewell. no, no, do not go. . . . . . i have cursed my beauty for what it has done, and cursed the wonder of my body for the evil that it has brought upon you. lord, this man brought me to thy feet. he told me of thy coming upon earth, and of the wonder of thy birth, and the great wonder of thy death also. by him, o lord, thou wast revealed to me. honorius. you talk as a child, myrrhina, and without knowledge. loosen your hands. why didst thou come to this valley in thy beauty? myrrhina. the god whom thou worshippest led me here that i might repent of my iniquities and know him as the lord. honorius. why didst thou tempt me with words? myrrhina. that thou shouldst see sin in its painted mask and look on death in its robe of shame. the english renaissance of art 'the english renaissance of art' was delivered as a lecture for the first time in the chickering hall, new york, on january , . a portion of it was reported in the new york tribune on the following day and in other american papers subsequently. since then this portion has been reprinted, more or less accurately, from time to time, in unauthorised editions, but not more than one quarter of the lecture has ever been published. there are in existence no less than four copies of the lecture, the earliest of which is entirely in the author's handwriting. the others are type-written and contain many corrections and additions made by the author in manuscript. these have all been collated and the text here given contains, as nearly as possible, the lecture in its original form as delivered by the author during his tour in the united states. among the many debts which we owe to the supreme aesthetic faculty of goethe is that he was the first to teach us to define beauty in terms the most concrete possible, to realise it, i mean, always in its special manifestations. so, in the lecture which i have the honour to deliver before you, i will not try to give you any abstract definition of beauty--any such universal formula for it as was sought for by the philosophy of the eighteenth century--still less to communicate to you that which in its essence is incommunicable, the virtue by which a particular picture or poem affects us with a unique and special joy; but rather to point out to you the general ideas which characterise the great english renaissance of art in this century, to discover their source, as far as that is possible, and to estimate their future as far as that is possible. i call it our english renaissance because it is indeed a sort of new birth of the spirit of man, like the great italian renaissance of the fifteenth century, in its desire for a more gracious and comely way of life, its passion for physical beauty, its exclusive attention to form, its seeking for new subjects for poetry, new forms of art, new intellectual and imaginative enjoyments: and i call it our romantic movement because it is our most recent expression of beauty. it has been described as a mere revival of greek modes of thought, and again as a mere revival of mediaeval feeling. rather i would say that to these forms of the human spirit it has added whatever of artistic value the intricacy and complexity and experience of modern life can give: taking from the one its clearness of vision and its sustained calm, from the other its variety of expression and the mystery of its vision. for what, as goethe said, is the study of the ancients but a return to the real world (for that is what they did); and what, said mazzini, is mediaevalism but individuality? it is really from the union of hellenism, in its breadth, its sanity of purpose, its calm possession of beauty, with the adventive, the intensified individualism, the passionate colour of the romantic spirit, that springs the art of the nineteenth century in england, as from the marriage of faust and helen of troy sprang the beautiful boy euphorion. such expressions as 'classical' and 'romantic' are, it is true, often apt to become the mere catchwords of schools. we must always remember that art has only one sentence to utter: there is for her only one high law, the law of form or harmony--yet between the classical and romantic spirit we may say that there lies this difference at least, that the one deals with the type and the other with the exception. in the work produced under the modern romantic spirit it is no longer the permanent, the essential truths of life that are treated of; it is the momentary situation of the one, the momentary aspect of the other that art seeks to render. in sculpture, which is the type of one spirit, the subject predominates over the situation; in painting, which is the type of the other, the situation predominates over the subject. there are two spirits, then: the hellenic spirit and the spirit of romance may be taken as forming the essential elements of our conscious intellectual tradition, of our permanent standard of taste. as regards their origin, in art as in politics there is but one origin for all revolutions, a desire on the part of man for a nobler form of life, for a freer method and opportunity of expression. yet, i think that in estimating the sensuous and intellectual spirit which presides over our english renaissance, any attempt to isolate it in any way from the progress and movement and social life of the age that has produced it would be to rob it of its true vitality, possibly to mistake its true meaning. and in disengaging from the pursuits and passions of this crowded modern world those passions and pursuits which have to do with art and the love of art, we must take into account many great events of history which seem to be the most opposed to any such artistic feeling. alien then from any wild, political passion, or from the harsh voice of a rude people in revolt, as our english renaissance must seem, in its passionate cult of pure beauty, its flawless devotion to form, its exclusive and sensitive nature, it is to the french revolution that we must look for the most primary factor of its production, the first condition of its birth: that great revolution of which we are all the children, though the voices of some of us be often loud against it; that revolution to which at a time when even such spirits as coleridge and wordsworth lost heart in england, noble messages of love blown across seas came from your young republic. it is true that our modern sense of the continuity of history has shown us that neither in politics nor in nature are there revolutions ever but evolutions only, and that the prelude to that wild storm which swept over france in ' and made every king in europe tremble for his throne, was first sounded in literature years before the bastille fell and the palace was taken. the way for those red scenes by seine and loire was paved by that critical spirit of germany and england which accustomed men to bring all things to the test of reason or utility or both, while the discontent of the people in the streets of paris was the echo that followed the life of emile and of werther. for rousseau, by silent lake and mountain, had called humanity back to the golden age that still lies before us and preached a return to nature, in passionate eloquence whose music still lingers about our keen northern air. and goethe and scott had brought romance back again from the prison she had lain in for so many centuries--and what is romance but humanity? yet in the womb of the revolution itself, and in the storm and terror of that wild time, tendencies were hidden away that the artistic renaissance bent to her own service when the time came--a scientific tendency first, which has borne in our own day a brood of somewhat noisy titans, yet in the sphere of poetry has not been unproductive of good. i do not mean merely in its adding to enthusiasm that intellectual basis which is its strength, or that more obvious influence about which wordsworth was thinking when he said very nobly that poetry was merely the impassioned expression in the face of science, and that when science would put on a form of flesh and blood the poet would lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration. nor do i dwell much on the great cosmical emotion and deep pantheism of science to which shelley has given its first and swinburne its latest glory of song, but rather on its influence on the artistic spirit in preserving that close observation and the sense of limitation as well as of clearness of vision which are the characteristics of the real artist. the great and golden rule of art as well as of life, wrote william blake, is that the more distinct, sharp and defined the boundary line, the more perfect is the work of art; and the less keen and sharp the greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism and bungling. 'great inventors in all ages knew this--michael angelo and albert durer are known by this and by this alone'; and another time he wrote, with all the simple directness of nineteenth-century prose, 'to generalise is to be an idiot.' and this love of definite conception, this clearness of vision, this artistic sense of limit, is the characteristic of all great work and poetry; of the vision of homer as of the vision of dante, of keats and william morris as of chaucer and theocritus. it lies at the base of all noble, realistic and romantic work as opposed to colourless and empty abstractions of our own eighteenth-century poets and of the classical dramatists of france, or of the vague spiritualities of the german sentimental school: opposed, too, to that spirit of transcendentalism which also was root and flower itself of the great revolution, underlying the impassioned contemplation of wordsworth and giving wings and fire to the eagle-like flight of shelley, and which in the sphere of philosophy, though displaced by the materialism and positiveness of our day, bequeathed two great schools of thought, the school of newman to oxford, the school of emerson to america. yet is this spirit of transcendentalism alien to the spirit of art. for the artist can accept no sphere of life in exchange for life itself. for him there is no escape from the bondage of the earth: there is not even the desire of escape. he is indeed the only true realist: symbolism, which is the essence of the transcendental spirit, is alien to him. the metaphysical mind of asia will create for itself the monstrous, many-breasted idol of ephesus, but to the greek, pure artist, that work is most instinct with spiritual life which conforms most clearly to the perfect facts of physical life. 'the storm of revolution,' as andre chenier said, 'blows out the torch of poetry.' it is not for some little time that the real influence of such a wild cataclysm of things is felt: at first the desire for equality seems to have produced personalities of more giant and titan stature than the world had ever known before. men heard the lyre of byron and the legions of napoleon; it was a period of measureless passions and of measureless despair; ambition, discontent, were the chords of life and art; the age was an age of revolt: a phase through which the human spirit must pass but one in which it cannot rest. for the aim of culture is not rebellion but peace, the valley perilous where ignorant armies clash by night being no dwelling-place meet for her to whom the gods have assigned the fresh uplands and sunny heights and clear, untroubled air. and soon that desire for perfection, which lay at the base of the revolution, found in a young english poet its most complete and flawless realisation. phidias and the achievements of greek art are foreshadowed in homer: dante prefigures for us the passion and colour and intensity of italian painting: the modern love of landscape dates from rousseau, and it is in keats that one discerns the beginning of the artistic renaissance of england. byron was a rebel and shelley a dreamer; but in the calmness and clearness of his vision, his perfect self-control, his unerring sense of beauty and his recognition of a separate realm for the imagination, keats was the pure and serene artist, the forerunner of the pre-raphaelite school, and so of the great romantic movement of which i am to speak. blake had indeed, before him, claimed for art a lofty, spiritual mission, and had striven to raise design to the ideal level of poetry and music, but the remoteness of his vision both in painting and poetry and the incompleteness of his technical powers had been adverse to any real influence. it is in keats that the artistic spirit of this century first found its absolute incarnation. and these pre-raphaelites, what were they? if you ask nine-tenths of the british public what is the meaning of the word aesthetics, they will tell you it is the french for affectation or the german for a dado; and if you inquire about the pre-raphaelites you will hear something about an eccentric lot of young men to whom a sort of divine crookedness and holy awkwardness in drawing were the chief objects of art. to know nothing about their great men is one of the necessary elements of english education. as regards the pre-raphaelites the story is simple enough. in the year a number of young men in london, poets and painters, passionate admirers of keats all of them, formed the habit of meeting together for discussions on art, the result of such discussions being that the english philistine public was roused suddenly from its ordinary apathy by hearing that there was in its midst a body of young men who had determined to revolutionise english painting and poetry. they called themselves the pre-raphaelite brotherhood. in england, then as now, it was enough for a man to try and produce any serious beautiful work to lose all his rights as a citizen; and besides this, the pre-raphaelite brotherhood--among whom the names of dante rossetti, holman hunt and millais will be familiar to you--had on their side three things that the english public never forgives: youth, power and enthusiasm. satire, always as sterile as it is shameful and as impotent as it is insolent, paid them that usual homage which mediocrity pays to genius--doing, here as always, infinite harm to the public, blinding them to what is beautiful, teaching them that irreverence which is the source of all vileness and narrowness of life, but harming the artist not at all, rather confirming him in the perfect rightness of his work and ambition. for to disagree with three-fourths of the british public on all points is one of the first elements of sanity, one of the deepest consolations in all moments of spiritual doubt. as regards the ideas these young men brought to the regeneration of english art, we may see at the base of their artistic creations a desire for a deeper spiritual value to be given to art as well as a more decorative value. pre-raphaelites they called themselves; not that they imitated the early italian masters at all, but that in their work, as opposed to the facile abstractions of raphael, they found a stronger realism of imagination, a more careful realism of technique, a vision at once more fervent and more vivid, an individuality more intimate and more intense. for it is not enough that a work of art should conform to the aesthetic demands of its age: there must be also about it, if it is to affect us with any permanent delight, the impress of a distinct individuality, an individuality remote from that of ordinary men, and coming near to us only by virtue of a certain newness and wonder in the work, and through channels whose very strangeness makes us more ready to give them welcome. la personalite, said one of the greatest of modern french critics, voila ce qui nous sauvera. but above all things was it a return to nature--that formula which seems to suit so many and such diverse movements: they would draw and paint nothing but what they saw, they would try and imagine things as they really happened. later there came to the old house by blackfriars bridge, where this young brotherhood used to meet and work, two young men from oxford, edward burne-jones and william morris--the latter substituting for the simpler realism of the early days a more exquisite spirit of choice, a more faultless devotion to beauty, a more intense seeking for perfection: a master of all exquisite design and of all spiritual vision. it is of the school of florence rather than of that of venice that he is kinsman, feeling that the close imitation of nature is a disturbing element in imaginative art. the visible aspect of modern life disturbs him not; rather is it for him to render eternal all that is beautiful in greek, italian, and celtic legend. to morris we owe poetry whose perfect precision and clearness of word and vision has not been excelled in the literature of our country, and by the revival of the decorative arts he has given to our individualised romantic movement the social idea and the social factor also. but the revolution accomplished by this clique of young men, with ruskin's faultless and fervent eloquence to help them, was not one of ideas merely but of execution, not one of conceptions but of creations. for the great eras in the history of the development of all the arts have been eras not of increased feeling or enthusiasm in feeling for art, but of new technical improvements primarily and specially. the discovery of marble quarries in the purple ravines of pentelicus and on the little low- lying hills of the island of paros gave to the greeks the opportunity for that intensified vitality of action, that more sensuous and simple humanism, to which the egyptian sculptor working laboriously in the hard porphyry and rose-coloured granite of the desert could not attain. the splendour of the venetian school began with the introduction of the new oil medium for painting. the progress in modern music has been due to the invention of new instruments entirely, and in no way to an increased consciousness on the part of the musician of any wider social aim. the critic may try and trace the deferred resolutions of beethoven { } to some sense of the incompleteness of the modern intellectual spirit, but the artist would have answered, as one of them did afterwards, 'let them pick out the fifths and leave us at peace.' and so it is in poetry also: all this love of curious french metres like the ballade, the villanelle, the rondel; all this increased value laid on elaborate alliterations, and on curious words and refrains, such as you will find in dante rossetti and swinburne, is merely the attempt to perfect flute and viol and trumpet through which the spirit of the age and the lips of the poet may blow the music of their many messages. and so it has been with this romantic movement of ours: it is a reaction against the empty conventional workmanship, the lax execution of previous poetry and painting, showing itself in the work of such men as rossetti and burne-jones by a far greater splendour of colour, a far more intricate wonder of design than english imaginative art has shown before. in rossetti's poetry and the poetry of morris, swinburne and tennyson a perfect precision and choice of language, a style flawless and fearless, a seeking for all sweet and precious melodies and a sustaining consciousness of the musical value of each word are opposed to that value which is merely intellectual. in this respect they are one with the romantic movement of france of which not the least characteristic note was struck by theophile gautier's advice to the young poet to read his dictionary every day, as being the only book worth a poet's reading. while, then, the material of workmanship is being thus elaborated and discovered to have in itself incommunicable and eternal qualities of its own, qualities entirely satisfying to the poetic sense and not needing for their aesthetic effect any lofty intellectual vision, any deep criticism of life or even any passionate human emotion at all, the spirit and the method of the poet's working--what people call his inspiration--have not escaped the controlling influence of the artistic spirit. not that the imagination has lost its wings, but we have accustomed ourselves to count their innumerable pulsations, to estimate their limitless strength, to govern their ungovernable freedom. to the greeks this problem of the conditions of poetic production, and the places occupied by either spontaneity or self-consciousness in any artistic work, had a peculiar fascination. we find it in the mysticism of plato and in the rationalism of aristotle. we find it later in the italian renaissance agitating the minds of such men as leonardo da vinci. schiller tried to adjust the balance between form and feeling, and goethe to estimate the position of self-consciousness in art. wordsworth's definition of poetry as 'emotion remembered in tranquillity' may be taken as an analysis of one of the stages through which all imaginative work has to pass; and in keats's longing to be 'able to compose without this fever' (i quote from one of his letters), his desire to substitute for poetic ardour 'a more thoughtful and quiet power,' we may discern the most important moment in the evolution of that artistic life. the question made an early and strange appearance in your literature too; and i need not remind you how deeply the young poets of the french romantic movement were excited and stirred by edgar allan poe's analysis of the workings of his own imagination in the creating of that supreme imaginative work which we know by the name of the raven. in the last century, when the intellectual and didactic element had intruded to such an extent into the kingdom which belongs to poetry, it was against the claims of the understanding that an artist like goethe had to protest. 'the more incomprehensible to the understanding a poem is the better for it,' he said once, asserting the complete supremacy of the imagination in poetry as of reason in prose. but in this century it is rather against the claims of the emotional faculties, the claims of mere sentiment and feeling, that the artist must react. the simple utterance of joy is not poetry any more than a mere personal cry of pain, and the real experiences of the artist are always those which do not find their direct expression but are gathered up and absorbed into some artistic form which seems, from such real experiences, to be the farthest removed and the most alien. 'the heart contains passion but the imagination alone contains poetry,' says charles baudelaire. this too was the lesson that theophile gautier, most subtle of all modern critics, most fascinating of all modern poets, was never tired of teaching--'everybody is affected by a sunrise or a sunset.' the absolute distinction of the artist is not his capacity to feel nature so much as his power of rendering it. the entire subordination of all intellectual and emotional faculties to the vital and informing poetic principle is the surest sign of the strength of our renaissance. we have seen the artistic spirit working, first in the delightful and technical sphere of language, the sphere of expression as opposed to subject, then controlling the imagination of the poet in dealing with his subject. and now i would point out to you its operation in the choice of subject. the recognition of a separate realm for the artist, a consciousness of the absolute difference between the world of art and the world of real fact, between classic grace and absolute reality, forms not merely the essential element of any aesthetic charm but is the characteristic of all great imaginative work and of all great eras of artistic creation--of the age of phidias as of the age of michael angelo, of the age of sophocles as of the age of goethe. art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire. for to most of us the real life is the life we do not lead, and thus, remaining more true to the essence of its own perfection, more jealous of its own unattainable beauty, is less likely to forget form in feeling or to accept the passion of creation as any substitute for the beauty of the created thing. the artist is indeed the child of his own age, but the present will not be to him a whit more real than the past; for, like the philosopher of the platonic vision, the poet is the spectator of all time and of all existence. for him no form is obsolete, no subject out of date; rather, whatever of life and passion the world has known, in desert of judaea or in arcadian valley, by the rivers of troy or the rivers of damascus, in the crowded and hideous streets of a modern city or by the pleasant ways of camelot--all lies before him like an open scroll, all is still instinct with beautiful life. he will take of it what is salutary for his own spirit, no more; choosing some facts and rejecting others with the calm artistic control of one who is in possession of the secret of beauty. there is indeed a poetical attitude to be adopted towards all things, but all things are not fit subjects for poetry. into the secure and sacred house of beauty the true artist will admit nothing that is harsh or disturbing, nothing that gives pain, nothing that is debatable, nothing about which men argue. he can steep himself, if he wishes, in the discussion of all the social problems of his day, poor-laws and local taxation, free trade and bimetallic currency, and the like; but when he writes on these subjects it will be, as milton nobly expressed it, with his left hand, in prose and not in verse, in a pamphlet and not in a lyric. this exquisite spirit of artistic choice was not in byron: wordsworth had it not. in the work of both these men there is much that we have to reject, much that does not give us that sense of calm and perfect repose which should be the effect of all fine, imaginative work. but in keats it seemed to have been incarnate, and in his lovely ode on a grecian urn it found its most secure and faultless expression; in the pageant of the earthly paradise and the knights and ladies of burne-jones it is the one dominant note. it is to no avail that the muse of poetry be called, even by such a clarion note as whitman's, to migrate from greece and ionia and to placard removed and to let on the rocks of the snowy parnassus. calliope's call is not yet closed, nor are the epics of asia ended; the sphinx is not yet silent, nor the fountain of castaly dry. for art is very life itself and knows nothing of death; she is absolute truth and takes no care of fact; she sees (as i remember mr. swinburne insisting on at dinner) that achilles is even now more actual and real than wellington, not merely more noble and interesting as a type and figure but more positive and real. literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. for to the poet all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable. the steam whistle will not affright him nor the flutes of arcadia weary him: for him there is but one time, the artistic moment; but one law, the law of form; but one land, the land of beauty--a land removed indeed from the real world and yet more sensuous because more enduring; calm, yet with that calm which dwells in the faces of the greek statues, the calm which comes not from the rejection but from the absorption of passion, the calm which despair and sorrow cannot disturb but intensify only. and so it comes that he who seems to stand most remote from his age is he who mirrors it best, because he has stripped life of what is accidental and transitory, stripped it of that 'mist of familiarity which makes life obscure to us.' those strange, wild-eyed sibyls fixed eternally in the whirlwind of ecstasy, those mighty-limbed and titan prophets, labouring with the secret of the earth and the burden of mystery, that guard and glorify the chapel of pope sixtus at rome--do they not tell us more of the real spirit of the italian renaissance, of the dream of savonarola and of the sin of borgia, than all the brawling boors and cooking women of dutch art can teach us of the real spirit of the history of holland? and so in our own day, also, the two most vital tendencies of the nineteenth century--the democratic and pantheistic tendency and the tendency to value life for the sake of art--found their most complete and perfect utterance in the poetry of shelley and keats who, to the blind eyes of their own time, seemed to be as wanderers in the wilderness, preachers of vague or unreal things. and i remember once, in talking to mr. burne-jones about modern science, his saying to me, 'the more materialistic science becomes, the more angels shall i paint: their wings are my protest in favour of the immortality of the soul.' but these are the intellectual speculations that underlie art. where in the arts themselves are we to find that breadth of human sympathy which is the condition of all noble work; where in the arts are we to look for what mazzini would call the social ideas as opposed to the merely personal ideas? by virtue of what claim do i demand for the artist the love and loyalty of the men and women of the world? i think i can answer that. whatever spiritual message an artist brings to his aid is a matter for his own soul. he may bring judgment like michael angelo or peace like angelico; he may come with mourning like the great athenian or with mirth like the singer of sicily; nor is it for us to do aught but accept his teaching, knowing that we cannot smite the bitter lips of leopardi into laughter or burden with our discontent goethe's serene calm. but for warrant of its truth such message must have the flame of eloquence in the lips that speak it, splendour and glory in the vision that is its witness, being justified by one thing only--the flawless beauty and perfect form of its expression: this indeed being the social idea, being the meaning of joy in art. not laughter where none should laugh, nor the calling of peace where there is no peace; not in painting the subject ever, but the pictorial charm only, the wonder of its colour, the satisfying beauty of its design. you have most of you seen, probably, that great masterpiece of rubens which hangs in the gallery of brussels, that swift and wonderful pageant of horse and rider arrested in its most exquisite and fiery moment when the winds are caught in crimson banner and the air lit by the gleam of armour and the flash of plume. well, that is joy in art, though that golden hillside be trodden by the wounded feet of christ and it is for the death of the son of man that that gorgeous cavalcade is passing. but this restless modern intellectual spirit of ours is not receptive enough of the sensuous element of art; and so the real influence of the arts is hidden from many of us: only a few, escaping from the tyranny of the soul, have learned the secret of those high hours when thought is not. and this indeed is the reason of the influence which eastern art is having on us in europe, and of the fascination of all japanese work. while the western world has been laying on art the intolerable burden of its own intellectual doubts and the spiritual tragedy of its own sorrows, the east has always kept true to art's primary and pictorial conditions. in judging of a beautiful statue the aesthetic faculty is absolutely and completely gratified by the splendid curves of those marble lips that are dumb to our complaint, the noble modelling of those limbs that are powerless to help us. in its primary aspect a painting has no more spiritual message or meaning than an exquisite fragment of venetian glass or a blue tile from the wall of damascus: it is a beautifully coloured surface, nothing more. the channels by which all noble imaginative work in painting should touch, and do touch the soul, are not those of the truths of life, nor metaphysical truths. but that pictorial charm which does not depend on any literary reminiscence for its effect on the one hand, nor is yet a mere result of communicable technical skill on the other, comes of a certain inventive and creative handling of colour. nearly always in dutch painting and often in the works of giorgione or titian, it is entirely independent of anything definitely poetical in the subject, a kind of form and choice in workmanship which is itself entirely satisfying, and is (as the greeks would say) an end in itself. and so in poetry too, the real poetical quality, the joy of poetry, comes never from the subject but from an inventive handling of rhythmical language, from what keats called the 'sensuous life of verse.' the element of song in the singing accompanied by the profound joy of motion, is so sweet that, while the incomplete lives of ordinary men bring no healing power with them, the thorn-crown of the poet will blossom into roses for our pleasure; for our delight his despair will gild its own thorns, and his pain, like adonis, be beautiful in its agony; and when the poet's heart breaks it will break in music. and health in art--what is that? it has nothing to do with a sane criticism of life. there is more health in baudelaire than there is in [kingsley]. health is the artist's recognition of the limitations of the form in which he works. it is the honour and the homage which he gives to the material he uses--whether it be language with its glories, or marble or pigment with their glories--knowing that the true brotherhood of the arts consists not in their borrowing one another's method, but in their producing, each of them by its own individual means, each of them by keeping its objective limits, the same unique artistic delight. the delight is like that given to us by music--for music is the art in which form and matter are always one, the art whose subject cannot be separated from the method of its expression, the art which most completely realises the artistic ideal, and is the condition to which all the other arts are constantly aspiring. and criticism--what place is that to have in our culture? well, i think that the first duty of an art critic is to hold his tongue at all times, and upon all subjects: c'est une grande avantage de n'avoir rien fait, mais il ne faut pas en abuser. it is only through the mystery of creation that one can gain any knowledge of the quality of created things. you have listened to patience for a hundred nights and you have heard me only for one. it will make, no doubt, that satire more piquant by knowing something about the subject of it, but you must not judge of aestheticism by the satire of mr. gilbert. as little should you judge of the strength and splendour of sun or sea by the dust that dances in the beam, or the bubble that breaks on the wave, as take your critic for any sane test of art. for the artists, like the greek gods, are revealed only to one another, as emerson says somewhere; their real value and place time only can show. in this respect also omnipotence is with the ages. the true critic addresses not the artist ever but the public only. his work lies with them. art can never have any other claim but her own perfection: it is for the critic to create for art the social aim, too, by teaching the people the spirit in which they are to approach all artistic work, the love they are to give it, the lesson they are to draw from it. all these appeals to art to set herself more in harmony with modern progress and civilisation, and to make herself the mouthpiece for the voice of humanity, these appeals to art 'to have a mission,' are appeals which should be made to the public. the art which has fulfilled the conditions of beauty has fulfilled all conditions: it is for the critic to teach the people how to find in the calm of such art the highest expression of their own most stormy passions. 'i have no reverence,' said keats, 'for the public, nor for anything in existence but the eternal being, the memory of great men and the principle of beauty.' such then is the principle which i believe to be guiding and underlying our english renaissance, a renaissance many-sided and wonderful, productive of strong ambitions and lofty personalities, yet for all its splendid achievements in poetry and in the decorative arts and in painting, for all the increased comeliness and grace of dress, and the furniture of houses and the like, not complete. for there can be no great sculpture without a beautiful national life, and the commercial spirit of england has killed that; no great drama without a noble national life, and the commercial spirit of england has killed that too. it is not that the flawless serenity of marble cannot bear the burden of the modern intellectual spirit, or become instinct with the fire of romantic passion--the tomb of duke lorenzo and the chapel of the medici show us that--but it is that, as theophile gautier used to say, the visible world is dead, le monde visible a disparu. nor is it again that the novel has killed the play, as some critics would persuade us--the romantic movement of france shows us that. the work of balzac and of hugo grew up side by side together; nay, more, were complementary to each other, though neither of them saw it. while all other forms of poetry may flourish in an ignoble age, the splendid individualism of the lyrist, fed by its own passion, and lit by its own power, may pass as a pillar of fire as well across the desert as across places that are pleasant. it is none the less glorious though no man follow it--nay, by the greater sublimity of its loneliness it may be quickened into loftier utterance and intensified into clearer song. from the mean squalor of the sordid life that limits him, the dreamer or the idyllist may soar on poesy's viewless wings, may traverse with fawn-skin and spear the moonlit heights of cithaeron though faun and bassarid dance there no more. like keats he may wander through the old-world forests of latmos, or stand like morris on the galley's deck with the viking when king and galley have long since passed away. but the drama is the meeting-place of art and life; it deals, as mazzini said, not merely with man, but with social man, with man in his relation to god and to humanity. it is the product of a period of great national united energy; it is impossible without a noble public, and belongs to such ages as the age of elizabeth in london and of pericles at athens; it is part of such lofty moral and spiritual ardour as came to greek after the defeat of the persian fleet, and to englishman after the wreck of the armada of spain. shelley felt how incomplete our movement was in this respect, and has shown in one great tragedy by what terror and pity he would have purified our age; but in spite of the cenci the drama is one of the artistic forms through which the genius of the england of this century seeks in vain to find outlet and expression. he has had no worthy imitators. it is rather, perhaps, to you that we should turn to complete and perfect this great movement of ours, for there is something hellenic in your air and world, something that has a quicker breath of the joy and power of elizabeth's england about it than our ancient civilisation can give us. for you, at least, are young; 'no hungry generations tread you down,' and the past does not weary you with the intolerable burden of its memories nor mock you with the ruins of a beauty, the secret of whose creation you have lost. that very absence of tradition, which mr. ruskin thought would rob your rivers of their laughter and your flowers of their light, may be rather the source of your freedom and your strength. to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, has been defined by one of your poets as a flawless triumph of art. it is a triumph which you above all nations may be destined to achieve. for the voices that have their dwelling in sea and mountain are not the chosen music of liberty only; other messages are there in the wonder of wind-swept height and the majesty of silent deep--messages that, if you will but listen to them, may yield you the splendour of some new imagination, the marvel of some new beauty. 'i foresee,' said goethe, 'the dawn of a new literature which all people may claim as their own, for all have contributed to its foundation.' if, then, this is so, and if the materials for a civilisation as great as that of europe lie all around you, what profit, you will ask me, will all this study of our poets and painters be to you? i might answer that the intellect can be engaged without direct didactic object on an artistic and historical problem; that the demand of the intellect is merely to feel itself alive; that nothing which has ever interested men or women can cease to be a fit subject for culture. i might remind you of what all europe owes to the sorrow of a single florentine in exile at verona, or to the love of petrarch by that little well in southern france; nay, more, how even in this dull, materialistic age the simple expression of an old man's simple life, passed away from the clamour of great cities amid the lakes and misty hills of cumberland, has opened out for england treasures of new joy compared with which the treasures of her luxury are as barren as the sea which she has made her highway, and as bitter as the fire which she would make her slave. but i think it will bring you something besides this, something that is the knowledge of real strength in art: not that you should imitate the works of these men; but their artistic spirit, their artistic attitude, i think you should absorb that. for in nations, as in individuals, if the passion for creation be not accompanied by the critical, the aesthetic faculty also, it will be sure to waste its strength aimlessly, failing perhaps in the artistic spirit of choice, or in the mistaking of feeling for form, or in the following of false ideals. for the various spiritual forms of the imagination have a natural affinity with certain sensuous forms of art--and to discern the qualities of each art, to intensify as well its limitations as its powers of expression, is one of the aims that culture sets before us. it is not an increased moral sense, an increased moral supervision that your literature needs. indeed, one should never talk of a moral or an immoral poem--poems are either well written or badly written, that is all. and, indeed, any element of morals or implied reference to a standard of good or evil in art is often a sign of a certain incompleteness of vision, often a note of discord in the harmony of an imaginative creation; for all good work aims at a purely artistic effect. 'we must be careful,' said goethe, 'not to be always looking for culture merely in what is obviously moral. everything that is great promotes civilisation as soon as we are aware of it.' but, as in your cities so in your literature, it is a permanent canon and standard of taste, an increased sensibility to beauty (if i may say so) that is lacking. all noble work is not national merely, but universal. the political independence of a nation must not be confused with any intellectual isolation. the spiritual freedom, indeed, your own generous lives and liberal air will give you. from us you will learn the classical restraint of form. for all great art is delicate art, roughness having very little to do with strength, and harshness very little to do with power. 'the artist,' as mr. swinburne says, 'must be perfectly articulate.' this limitation is for the artist perfect freedom: it is at once the origin and the sign of his strength. so that all the supreme masters of style--dante, sophocles, shakespeare--are the supreme masters of spiritual and intellectual vision also. love art for its own sake, and then all things that you need will be added to you. this devotion to beauty and to the creation of beautiful things is the test of all great civilised nations. philosophy may teach us to bear with equanimity the misfortunes of our neighbours, and science resolve the moral sense into a secretion of sugar, but art is what makes the life of each citizen a sacrament and not a speculation, art is what makes the life of the whole race immortal. for beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. philosophies fall away like sand, and creeds follow one another like the withered leaves of autumn; but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons and a possession for all eternity. wars and the clash of armies and the meeting of men in battle by trampled field or leagured city, and the rising of nations there must always be. but i think that art, by creating a common intellectual atmosphere between all countries, might--if it could not overshadow the world with the silver wings of peace--at least make men such brothers that they would not go out to slay one another for the whim or folly of some king or minister, as they do in europe. fraternity would come no more with the hands of cain, nor liberty betray freedom with the kiss of anarchy; for national hatreds are always strongest where culture is lowest. 'how could i?' said goethe, when reproached for not writing like korner against the french. 'how could i, to whom barbarism and culture alone are of importance, hate a nation which is among the most cultivated of the earth, a nation to which i owe a great part of my own cultivation?' mighty empires, too, there must always be as long as personal ambition and the spirit of the age are one, but art at least is the only empire which a nation's enemies cannot take from her by conquest, but which is taken by submission only. the sovereignty of greece and rome is not yet passed away, though the gods of the one be dead and the eagles of the other tired. and we in our renaissance are seeking to create a sovereignty that will still be england's when her yellow leopards have grown weary of wars and the rose of her shield is crimsoned no more with the blood of battle; and you, too, absorbing into the generous heart of a great people this pervading artistic spirit, will create for yourselves such riches as you have never yet created, though your land be a network of railways and your cities the harbours for the galleys of the world. i know, indeed, that the divine natural prescience of beauty which is the inalienable inheritance of greek and italian is not our inheritance. for such an informing and presiding spirit of art to shield us from all harsh and alien influences, we of the northern races must turn rather to that strained self-consciousness of our age which, as it is the key-note of all our romantic art, must be the source of all or nearly all our culture. i mean that intellectual curiosity of the nineteenth century which is always looking for the secret of the life that still lingers round old and bygone forms of culture. it takes from each what is serviceable for the modern spirit--from athens its wonder without its worship, from venice its splendour without its sin. the same spirit is always analysing its own strength and its own weakness, counting what it owes to east and to west, to the olive-trees of colonus and to the palm- trees of lebanon, to gethsemane and to the garden of proserpine. and yet the truths of art cannot be taught: they are revealed only, revealed to natures which have made themselves receptive of all beautiful impressions by the study and worship of all beautiful things. and hence the enormous importance given to the decorative arts in our english renaissance; hence all that marvel of design that comes from the hand of edward burne-jones, all that weaving of tapestry and staining of glass, that beautiful working in clay and metal and wood which we owe to william morris, the greatest handicraftsman we have had in england since the fourteenth century. so, in years to come there will be nothing in any man's house which has not given delight to its maker and does not give delight to its user. the children, like the children of plato's perfect city, will grow up 'in a simple atmosphere of all fair things'--i quote from the passage in the republic--'a simple atmosphere of all fair things, where beauty, which is the spirit of art, will come on eye and ear like a fresh breath of wind that brings health from a clear upland, and insensibly and gradually draw the child's soul into harmony with all knowledge and all wisdom, so that he will love what is beautiful and good, and hate what is evil and ugly (for they always go together) long before he knows the reason why; and then when reason comes will kiss her on the cheek as a friend.' that is what plato thought decorative art could do for a nation, feeling that the secret not of philosophy merely but of all gracious existence might be externally hidden from any one whose youth had been passed in uncomely and vulgar surroundings, and that the beauty of form and colour even, as he says, in the meanest vessels of the house, will find its way into the inmost places of the soul and lead the boy naturally to look for that divine harmony of spiritual life of which art was to him the material symbol and warrant. prelude indeed to all knowledge and all wisdom will this love of beautiful things be for us; yet there are times when wisdom becomes a burden and knowledge is one with sorrow: for as every body has its shadow so every soul has its scepticism. in such dread moments of discord and despair where should we, of this torn and troubled age, turn our steps if not to that secure house of beauty where there is always a little forgetfulness, always a great joy; to that citta divina, as the old italian heresy called it, the divine city where one can stand, though only for a brief moment, apart from the division and terror of the world and the choice of the world too? this is that consolation des arts which is the keynote of gautier's poetry, the secret of modern life foreshadowed--as indeed what in our century is not?--by goethe. you remember what he said to the german people: 'only have the courage,' he said, 'to give yourselves up to your impressions, allow yourselves to be delighted, moved, elevated, nay instructed, inspired for something great.' the courage to give yourselves up to your impressions: yes, that is the secret of the artistic life--for while art has been defined as an escape from the tyranny of the senses, it is an escape rather from the tyranny of the soul. but only to those who worship her above all things does she ever reveal her true treasure: else will she be as powerless to aid you as the mutilated venus of the louvre was before the romantic but sceptical nature of heine. and indeed i think it would be impossible to overrate the gain that might follow if we had about us only what gave pleasure to the maker of it and gives pleasure to its user, that being the simplest of all rules about decoration. one thing, at least, i think it would do for us: there is no surer test of a great country than how near it stands to its own poets; but between the singers of our day and the workers to whom they would sing there seems to be an ever-widening and dividing chasm, a chasm which slander and mockery cannot traverse, but which is spanned by the luminous wings of love. and of such love i think that the abiding presence in our houses of noble imaginative work would be the surest seed and preparation. i do not mean merely as regards that direct literary expression of art by which, from the little red-and-black cruse of oil or wine, a greek boy could learn of the lionlike splendour of achilles, of the strength of hector and the beauty of paris and the wonder of helen, long before he stood and listened in crowded market-place or in theatre of marble; or by which an italian child of the fifteenth century could know of the chastity of lucrece and the death of camilla from carven doorway and from painted chest. for the good we get from art is not what we learn from it; it is what we become through it. its real influence will be in giving the mind that enthusiasm which is the secret of hellenism, accustoming it to demand from art all that art can do in rearranging the facts of common life for us--whether it be by giving the most spiritual interpretation of one's own moments of highest passion or the most sensuous expression of those thoughts that are the farthest removed from sense; in accustoming it to love the things of the imagination for their own sake, and to desire beauty and grace in all things. for he who does not love art in all things does not love it at all, and he who does not need art in all things does not need it at all. i will not dwell here on what i am sure has delighted you all in our great gothic cathedrals. i mean how the artist of that time, handicraftsman himself in stone or glass, found the best motives for his art, always ready for his hand and always beautiful, in the daily work of the artificers he saw around him--as in those lovely windows of chartres--where the dyer dips in the vat and the potter sits at the wheel, and the weaver stands at the loom: real manufacturers these, workers with the hand, and entirely delightful to look at, not like the smug and vapid shopman of our time, who knows nothing of the web or vase he sells, except that he is charging you double its value and thinking you a fool for buying it. nor can i but just note, in passing, the immense influence the decorative work of greece and italy had on its artists, the one teaching the sculptor that restraining influence of design which is the glory of the parthenon, the other keeping painting always true to its primary, pictorial condition of noble colour which is the secret of the school of venice; for i wish rather, in this lecture at least, to dwell on the effect that decorative art has on human life--on its social not its purely artistic effect. there are two kinds of men in the world, two great creeds, two different forms of natures: men to whom the end of life is action, and men to whom the end of life is thought. as regards the latter, who seek for experience itself and not for the fruits of experience, who must burn always with one of the passions of this fiery-coloured world, who find life interesting not for its secret but for its situations, for its pulsations and not for its purpose; the passion for beauty engendered by the decorative arts will be to them more satisfying than any political or religious enthusiasm, any enthusiasm for humanity, any ecstasy or sorrow for love. for art comes to one professing primarily to give nothing but the highest quality to one's moments, and for those moments' sake. so far for those to whom the end of life is thought. as regards the others, who hold that life is inseparable from labour, to them should this movement be specially dear: for, if our days are barren without industry, industry without art is barbarism. hewers of wood and drawers of water there must be always indeed among us. our modern machinery has not much lightened the labour of man after all: but at least let the pitcher that stands by the well be beautiful and surely the labour of the day will be lightened: let the wood be made receptive of some lovely form, some gracious design, and there will come no longer discontent but joy to the toiler. for what is decoration but the worker's expression of joy in his work? and not joy merely--that is a great thing yet not enough--but that opportunity of expressing his own individuality which, as it is the essence of all life, is the source of all art. 'i have tried,' i remember william morris saying to me once, 'i have tried to make each of my workers an artist, and when i say an artist i mean a man.' for the worker then, handicraftsman of whatever kind he is, art is no longer to be a purple robe woven by a slave and thrown over the whitened body of a leprous king to hide and to adorn the sin of his luxury, but rather the beautiful and noble expression of a life that has in it something beautiful and noble. and so you must seek out your workman and give him, as far as possible, the right surroundings, for remember that the real test and virtue of a workman is not his earnestness nor his industry even, but his power of design merely; and that 'design is not the offspring of idle fancy: it is the studied result of accumulative observation and delightful habit.' all the teaching in the world is of no avail if you do not surround your workman with happy influences and with beautiful things. it is impossible for him to have right ideas about colour unless he sees the lovely colours of nature unspoiled; impossible for him to supply beautiful incident and action unless he sees beautiful incident and action in the world about him. for to cultivate sympathy you must be among living things and thinking about them, and to cultivate admiration you must be among beautiful things and looking at them. 'the steel of toledo and the silk of genoa did but give strength to oppression and lustre to pride,' as mr. ruskin says; let it be for you to create an art that is made by the hands of the people for the joy of the people, to please the hearts of the people, too; an art that will be your expression of your delight in life. there is nothing 'in common life too mean, in common things too trivial to be ennobled by your touch'; nothing in life that art cannot sanctify. you have heard, i think, a few of you, of two flowers connected with the aesthetic movement in england, and said (i assure you, erroneously) to be the food of some aesthetic young men. well, let me tell you that the reason we love the lily and the sunflower, in spite of what mr. gilbert may tell you, is not for any vegetable fashion at all. it is because these two lovely flowers are in england the two most perfect models of design, the most naturally adapted for decorative art--the gaudy leonine beauty of the one and the precious loveliness of the other giving to the artist the most entire and perfect joy. and so with you: let there be no flower in your meadows that does not wreathe its tendrils around your pillows, no little leaf in your titan forests that does not lend its form to design, no curving spray of wild rose or brier that does not live for ever in carven arch or window or marble, no bird in your air that is not giving the iridescent wonder of its colour, the exquisite curves of its wings in flight, to make more precious the preciousness of simple adornment. for the voices that have their dwelling in sea and mountain are not the chosen music of liberty only. other messages are there in the wonder of wind-swept heights and the majesty of silent deep--messages that, if you will listen to them, will give you the wonder of all new imagination, the treasure of all new beauty. we spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life. well, the secret of life is in art. house decoration a lecture delivered in america during wilde's tour in . it was announced as a lecture on 'the practical application of the principles of the aesthetic theory to exterior and interior house decoration, with observations upon dress and personal ornaments.' the earliest date on which it is known to have been given is may , . in my last lecture i gave you something of the history of art in england. i sought to trace the influence of the french revolution upon its development. i said something of the song of keats and the school of the pre-raphaelites. but i do not want to shelter the movement, which i have called the english renaissance, under any palladium however noble, or any name however revered. the roots of it have, indeed, to be sought for in things that have long passed away, and not, as some suppose, in the fancy of a few young men--although i am not altogether sure that there is anything much better than the fancy of a few young men. when i appeared before you on a previous occasion, i had seen nothing of american art save the doric columns and corinthian chimney-pots visible on your broadway and fifth avenue. since then, i have been through your country to some fifty or sixty different cities, i think. i find that what your people need is not so much high imaginative art but that which hallows the vessels of everyday use. i suppose that the poet will sing and the artist will paint regardless whether the world praises or blames. he has his own world and is independent of his fellow-men. but the handicraftsman is dependent on your pleasure and opinion. he needs your encouragement and he must have beautiful surroundings. your people love art but do not sufficiently honour the handicraftsman. of course, those millionaires who can pillage europe for their pleasure need have no care to encourage such; but i speak for those whose desire for beautiful things is larger than their means. i find that one great trouble all over is that your workmen are not given to noble designs. you cannot be indifferent to this, because art is not something which you can take or leave. it is a necessity of human life. and what is the meaning of this beautiful decoration which we call art? in the first place, it means value to the workman and it means the pleasure which he must necessarily take in making a beautiful thing. the mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman's heart. i cannot impress the point too frequently that beautiful and rational designs are necessary in all work. i did not imagine, until i went into some of your simpler cities, that there was so much bad work done. i found, where i went, bad wall-papers horribly designed, and coloured carpets, and that old offender the horse-hair sofa, whose stolid look of indifference is always so depressing. i found meaningless chandeliers and machine-made furniture, generally of rosewood, which creaked dismally under the weight of the ubiquitous interviewer. i came across the small iron stove which they always persist in decorating with machine-made ornaments, and which is as great a bore as a wet day or any other particularly dreadful institution. when unusual extravagance was indulged in, it was garnished with two funeral urns. it must always be remembered that what is well and carefully made by an honest workman, after a rational design, increases in beauty and value as the years go on. the old furniture brought over by the pilgrims, two hundred years ago, which i saw in new england, is just as good and as beautiful today as it was when it first came here. now, what you must do is to bring artists and handicraftsmen together. handicraftsmen cannot live, certainly cannot thrive, without such companionship. separate these two and you rob art of all spiritual motive. having done this, you must place your workman in the midst of beautiful surroundings. the artist is not dependent on the visible and the tangible. he has his visions and his dreams to feed on. but the workman must see lovely forms as he goes to his work in the morning and returns at eventide. and, in connection with this, i want to assure you that noble and beautiful designs are never the result of idle fancy or purposeless day-dreaming. they come only as the accumulation of habits of long and delightful observation. and yet such things may not be taught. right ideas concerning them can certainly be obtained only by those who have been accustomed to rooms that are beautiful and colours that are satisfying. perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. there would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes. the dress of the future, i think, will use drapery to a great extent and will abound with joyous colour. at present we have lost all nobility of dress and, in doing so, have almost annihilated the modern sculptor. and, in looking around at the figures which adorn our parks, one could almost wish that we had completely killed the noble art. to see the frockcoat of the drawing-room done in bronze, or the double waistcoat perpetuated in marble, adds a new horror to death. but indeed, in looking through the history of costume, seeking an answer to the questions we have propounded, there is little that is either beautiful or appropriate. one of the earliest forms is the greek drapery which is so exquisite for young girls. and then, i think we may be pardoned a little enthusiasm over the dress of the time of charles i., so beautiful indeed, that in spite of its invention being with the cavaliers it was copied by the puritans. and the dress for the children of that time must not be passed over. it was a very golden age of the little ones. i do not think that they have ever looked so lovely as they do in the pictures of that time. the dress of the last century in england is also peculiarly gracious and graceful. there is nothing bizarre or strange about it, but it is full of harmony and beauty. in these days, when we have suffered so dreadfully from the incursions of the modern milliner, we hear ladies boast that they do not wear a dress more than once. in the old days, when the dresses were decorated with beautiful designs and worked with exquisite embroidery, ladies rather took a pride in bringing out the garment and wearing it many times and handing it down to their daughters--a process that would, i think, be quite appreciated by a modern husband when called upon to settle his wife's bills. and how shall men dress? men say that they do not particularly care how they dress, and that it is little matter. i am bound to reply that i do not think that you do. in all my journeys through the country, the only well-dressed men that i saw--and in saying this i earnestly deprecate the polished indignation of your fifth avenue dandies--were the western miners. their wide-brimmed hats, which shaded their faces from the sun and protected them from the rain, and the cloak, which is by far the most beautiful piece of drapery ever invented, may well be dwelt on with admiration. their high boots, too, were sensible and practical. they wore only what was comfortable, and therefore beautiful. as i looked at them i could not help thinking with regret of the time when these picturesque miners would have made their fortunes and would go east to assume again all the abominations of modern fashionable attire. indeed, so concerned was i that i made some of them promise that when they again appeared in the more crowded scenes of eastern civilisation they would still continue to wear their lovely costume. but i do not believe they will. now, what america wants today is a school of rational art. bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all. you must show your workmen specimens of good work so that they come to know what is simple and true and beautiful. to that end i would have you have a museum attached to these schools--not one of those dreadful modern institutions where there is a stuffed and very dusty giraffe, and a case or two of fossils, but a place where there are gathered examples of art decoration from various periods and countries. such a place is the south kensington museum in london whereon we build greater hopes for the future than on any other one thing. there i go every saturday night, when the museum is open later than usual, to see the handicraftsman, the wood-worker, the glass- blower and the worker in metals. and it is here that the man of refinement and culture comes face to face with the workman who ministers to his joy. he comes to know more of the nobility of the workman, and the workman, feeling the appreciation, comes to know more of the nobility of his work. you have too many white walls. more colour is wanted. you should have such men as whistler among you to teach you the beauty and joy of colour. take mr. whistler's 'symphony in white,' which you no doubt have imagined to be something quite bizarre. it is nothing of the sort. think of a cool grey sky flecked here and there with white clouds, a grey ocean and three wonderfully beautiful figures robed in white, leaning over the water and dropping white flowers from their fingers. here is no extensive intellectual scheme to trouble you, and no metaphysics of which we have had quite enough in art. but if the simple and unaided colour strike the right keynote, the whole conception is made clear. i regard mr. whistler's famous peacock room as the finest thing in colour and art decoration which the world has known since correggio painted that wonderful room in italy where the little children are dancing on the walls. mr. whistler finished another room just before i came away--a breakfast room in blue and yellow. the ceiling was a light blue, the cabinet-work and the furniture were of a yellow wood, the curtains at the windows were white and worked in yellow, and when the table was set for breakfast with dainty blue china nothing can be conceived at once so simple and so joyous. the fault which i have observed in most of your rooms is that there is apparent no definite scheme of colour. everything is not attuned to a key-note as it should be. the apartments are crowded with pretty things which have no relation to one another. again, your artists must decorate what is more simply useful. in your art schools i found no attempt to decorate such things as the vessels for water. i know of nothing uglier than the ordinary jug or pitcher. a museum could be filled with the different kinds of water vessels which are used in hot countries. yet we continue to submit to the depressing jug with the handle all on one side. i do not see the wisdom of decorating dinner-plates with sunsets and soup- plates with moonlight scenes. i do not think it adds anything to the pleasure of the canvas-back duck to take it out of such glories. besides, we do not want a soup-plate whose bottom seems to vanish in the distance. one feels neither safe nor comfortable under such conditions. in fact, i did not find in the art schools of the country that the difference was explained between decorative and imaginative art. the conditions of art should be simple. a great deal more depends upon the heart than upon the head. appreciation of art is not secured by any elaborate scheme of learning. art requires a good healthy atmosphere. the motives for art are still around about us as they were round about the ancients. and the subjects are also easily found by the earnest sculptor and the painter. nothing is more picturesque and graceful than a man at work. the artist who goes to the children's playground, watches them at their sport and sees the boy stop to tie his shoe, will find the same themes that engaged the attention of the ancient greeks, and such observation and the illustrations which follow will do much to correct that foolish impression that mental and physical beauty are always divorced. to you, more than perhaps to any other country, has nature been generous in furnishing material for art workers to work in. you have marble quarries where the stone is more beautiful in colour than any the greeks ever had for their beautiful work, and yet day after day i am confronted with the great building of some stupid man who has used the beautiful material as if it were not precious almost beyond speech. marble should not be used save by noble workmen. there is nothing which gave me a greater sense of barrenness in travelling through the country than the entire absence of wood carving on your houses. wood carving is the simplest of the decorative arts. in switzerland the little barefooted boy beautifies the porch of his father's house with examples of skill in this direction. why should not american boys do a great deal more and better than swiss boys? there is nothing to my mind more coarse in conception and more vulgar in execution than modern jewellery. this is something that can easily be corrected. something better should be made out of the beautiful gold which is stored up in your mountain hollows and strewn along your river beds. when i was at leadville and reflected that all the shining silver that i saw coming from the mines would be made into ugly dollars, it made me sad. it should be made into something more permanent. the golden gates at florence are as beautiful today as when michael angelo saw them. we should see more of the workman than we do. we should not be content to have the salesman stand between us--the salesman who knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it. and watching the workman will teach that most important lesson--the nobility of all rational workmanship. i said in my last lecture that art would create a new brotherhood among men by furnishing a universal language. i said that under its beneficent influences war might pass away. thinking this, what place can i ascribe to art in our education? if children grow up among all fair and lovely things, they will grow to love beauty and detest ugliness before they know the reason why. if you go into a house where everything is coarse, you find things chipped and broken and unsightly. nobody exercises any care. if everything is dainty and delicate, gentleness and refinement of manner are unconsciously acquired. when i was in san francisco i used to visit the chinese quarter frequently. there i used to watch a great hulking chinese workman at his task of digging, and used to see him every day drink his tea from a little cup as delicate in texture as the petal of a flower, whereas in all the grand hotels of the land, where thousands of dollars have been lavished on great gilt mirrors and gaudy columns, i have been given my coffee or my chocolate in cups an inch and a quarter thick. i think i have deserved something nicer. the art systems of the past have been devised by philosophers who looked upon human beings as obstructions. they have tried to educate boys' minds before they had any. how much better it would be in these early years to teach children to use their hands in the rational service of mankind. i would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. it would be a golden hour to the children. and you would soon raise up a race of handicraftsmen who would transform the face of your country. i have seen only one such school in the united states, and this was in philadelphia and was founded by my friend mr. leyland. i stopped there yesterday and have brought some of the work here this afternoon to show you. here are two discs of beaten brass: the designs on them are beautiful, the workmanship is simple, and the entire result is satisfactory. the work was done by a little boy twelve years old. this is a wooden bowl decorated by a little girl of thirteen. the design is lovely and the colouring delicate and pretty. here you see a piece of beautiful wood carving accomplished by a little boy of nine. in such work as this, children learn sincerity in art. they learn to abhor the liar in art--the man who paints wood to look like iron, or iron to look like stone. it is a practical school of morals. no better way is there to learn to love nature than to understand art. it dignifies every flower of the field. and, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone. what we want is something spiritual added to life. nothing is so ignoble that art cannot sanctify it. art and the handicraftsman the fragments of which this lecture is composed are taken entirely from the original manuscripts which have but recently been discovered. it is not certain that they all belong to the same lecture, nor that all were written at the same period. some portions were written in philadelphia in . people often talk as if there was an opposition between what is beautiful and what is useful. there is no opposition to beauty except ugliness: all things are either beautiful or ugly, and utility will be always on the side of the beautiful thing, because beautiful decoration is always on the side of the beautiful thing, because beautiful decoration is always an expression of the use you put a thing to and the value placed on it. no workman will beautifully decorate bad work, nor can you possibly get good handicraftsmen or workmen without having beautiful designs. you should be quite sure of that. if you have poor and worthless designs in any craft or trade you will get poor and worthless workmen only, but the minute you have noble and beautiful designs, then you get men of power and intellect and feeling to work for you. by having good designs you have workmen who work not merely with their hands but with their hearts and heads too; otherwise you will get merely the fool or the loafer to work for you. that the beauty of life is a thing of no moment, i suppose few people would venture to assert. and yet most civilised people act as if it were of none, and in so doing are wronging both themselves and those that are to come after them. for that beauty which is meant by art is no mere accident of human life which people can take or leave, but a positive necessity of life if we are to live as nature meant us to, that is to say unless we are content to be less than men. do not think that the commercial spirit which is the basis of your life and cities here is opposed to art. who built the beautiful cities of the world but commercial men and commercial men only? genoa built by its traders, florence by its bankers, and venice, most lovely of all, by its noble and honest merchants. i do not wish you, remember, 'to build a new pisa,' nor to bring 'the life or the decorations of the thirteenth century back again.' 'the circumstances with which you must surround your workmen are those' of modern american life, 'because the designs you have now to ask for from your workmen are such as will make modern' american 'life beautiful.' the art we want is the art based on all the inventions of modern civilisation, and to suit all the needs of nineteenth century life. do you think, for instance, that we object to machinery? i tell you we reverence it; we reverence it when it does its proper work, when it relieves man from ignoble and soulless labour, not when it seeks to do that which is valuable only when wrought by the hands and hearts of men. let us have no machine-made ornament at all; it is all bad and worthless and ugly. and let us not mistake the means of civilisation for the end of civilisation; steam-engine, telephone and the like, are all wonderful, but remember that their value depends entirely on the noble uses we make of them, on the noble spirit in which we employ them, not on the things themselves. it is, no doubt, a great advantage to talk to a man at the antipodes through a telephone; its advantage depends entirely on the value of what the two men have to say to one another. if one merely shrieks slander through a tube and the other whispers folly into a wire, do not think that anybody is very much benefited by the invention. the train that whirls an ordinary englishman through italy at the rate of forty miles an hour and finally sends him home without any memory of that lovely country but that he was cheated by a courier at rome, or that he got a bad dinner at verona, does not do him or civilisation much good. but that swift legion of fiery-footed engines that bore to the burning ruins of chicago the loving help and generous treasure of the world was as noble and as beautiful as any golden troop of angels that ever fed the hungry and clothed the naked in the antique times. as beautiful, yes; all machinery may be beautiful when it is undecorated even. do not seek to decorate it. we cannot but think all good machinery is graceful, also, the line of strength and the line of beauty being one. give then, as i said, to your workmen of today the bright and noble surroundings that you can yourself create. stately and simple architecture for your cities, bright and simple dress for your men and women; those are the conditions of a real artistic movement. for the artist is not concerned primarily with any theory of life but with life itself, with the joy and loveliness that should come daily on eye and ear for a beautiful external world. but the simplicity must not be barrenness nor the bright colour gaudy. for all beautiful colours are graduated colours, the colours that seem about to pass into one another's realm--colour without tone being like music without harmony, mere discord. barren architecture, the vulgar and glaring advertisements that desecrate not merely your cities but every rock and river that i have seen yet in america--all this is not enough. a school of design we must have too in each city. it should be a stately and noble building, full of the best examples of the best art of the world. furthermore, do not put your designers in a barren whitewashed room and bid them work in that depressing and colourless atmosphere as i have seen many of the american schools of design, but give them beautiful surroundings. because you want to produce a permanent canon and standard of taste in your workman, he must have always by him and before him specimens of the best decorative art of the world, so that you can say to him: 'this is good work. greek or italian or japanese wrought it so many years ago, but it is eternally young because eternally beautiful.' work in this spirit and you will be sure to be right. do not copy it, but work with the same love, the same reverence, the same freedom of imagination. you must teach him colour and design, how all beautiful colours are graduated colours and glaring colours the essence of vulgarity. show him the quality of any beautiful work of nature like the rose, or any beautiful work of art like an eastern carpet--being merely the exquisite graduation of colour, one tone answering another like the answering chords of a symphony. teach him how the true designer is not he who makes the design and then colours it, but he who designs in colour, creates in colour, thinks in colour too. show him how the most gorgeous stained glass windows of europe are filled with white glass, and the most gorgeous eastern tapestry with toned colours--the primary colours in both places being set in the white glass, and the tone colours like brilliant jewels set in dusky gold. and then as regards design, show him how the real designer will take first any given limited space, little disk of silver, it may be, like a greek coin, or wide expanse of fretted ceiling or lordly wall as tintoret chose at venice (it does not matter which), and to this limited space--the first condition of decoration being the limitation of the size of the material used--he will give the effect of its being filled with beautiful decoration, filled with it as a golden cup will be filled with wine, so complete that you should not be able to take away anything from it or add anything to it. for from a good piece of design you can take away nothing, nor can you add anything to it, each little bit of design being as absolutely necessary and as vitally important to the whole effect as a note or chord of music is for a sonata of beethoven. but i said the effect of its being so filled, because this, again, is of the essence of good design. with a simple spray of leaves and a bird in flight a japanese artist will give you the impression that he has completely covered with lovely design the reed fan or lacquer cabinet at which he is working, merely because he knows the exact spot in which to place them. all good design depends on the texture of the utensil used and the use you wish to put it to. one of the first things i saw in an american school of design was a young lady painting a romantic moonlight landscape on a large round dish, and another young lady covering a set of dinner plates with a series of sunsets of the most remarkable colours. let your ladies paint moonlight landscapes and sunsets, but do not let them paint them on dinner plates or dishes. let them take canvas or paper for such work, but not clay or china. they are merely painting the wrong subjects on the wrong material, that is all. they have not been taught that every material and texture has certain qualities of its own. the design suitable for one is quite wrong for the other, just as the design which you should work on a flat table-cover ought to be quite different from the design you would work on a curtain, for the one will always be straight, the other broken into folds; and the use too one puts the object to should guide one in the choice of design. one does not want to eat one's terrapins off a romantic moonlight nor one's clams off a harrowing sunset. glory of sun and moon, let them be wrought for us by our landscape artist and be on the walls of the rooms we sit in to remind us of the undying beauty of the sunsets that fade and die, but do not let us eat our soup off them and send them down to the kitchen twice a day to be washed and scrubbed by the handmaid. all these things are simple enough, yet nearly always forgotten. your school of design here will teach your girls and your boys, your handicraftsmen of the future (for all your schools of art should be local schools, the schools of particular cities). we talk of the italian school of painting, but there is no italian school; there were the schools of each city. every town in italy, from venice itself, queen of the sea, to the little hill fortress of perugia, each had its own school of art, each different and all beautiful. so do not mind what art philadelphia or new york is having, but make by the hands of your own citizens beautiful art for the joy of your own citizens, for you have here the primary elements of a great artistic movement. for, believe me, the conditions of art are much simpler than people imagine. for the noblest art one requires a clear healthy atmosphere, not polluted as the air of our english cities is by the smoke and grime and horridness which comes from open furnace and from factory chimney. you must have strong, sane, healthy physique among your men and women. sickly or idle or melancholy people do not do much in art. and lastly, you require a sense of individualism about each man and woman, for this is the essence of art--a desire on the part of man to express himself in the noblest way possible. and this is the reason that the grandest art of the world always came from a republic, athens, venice, and florence--there were no kings there and so their art was as noble and simple as sincere. but if you want to know what kind of art the folly of kings will impose on a country look at the decorative art of france under the grand monarch, under louis the fourteenth; the gaudy gilt furniture writhing under a sense of its own horror and ugliness, with a nymph smirking at every angle and a dragon mouthing on every claw. unreal and monstrous art this, and fit only for such periwigged pomposities as the nobility of france at that time, but not at all fit for you or me. we do not want the rich to possess more beautiful things but the poor to create more beautiful things; for every man is poor who cannot create. nor shall the art which you and i need be merely a purple robe woven by a slave and thrown over the whitened body of some leprous king to adorn or to conceal the sin of his luxury, but rather shall it be the noble and beautiful expression of a people's noble and beautiful life. art shall be again the most glorious of all the chords through which the spirit of a great nation finds its noblest utterance. all around you, i said, lie the conditions for a great artistic movement for every great art. let us think of one of them; a sculptor, for instance. if a modern sculptor were to come and say, 'very well, but where can one find subjects for sculpture out of men who wear frock-coats and chimney- pot hats?' i would tell him to go to the docks of a great city and watch the men loading or unloading the stately ships, working at wheel or windlass, hauling at rope or gangway. i have never watched a man do anything useful who has not been graceful at some moment of his labour; it is only the loafer and the idle saunterer who is as useless and uninteresting to the artist as he is to himself. i would ask the sculptor to go with me to any of your schools or universities, to the running ground and gymnasium, to watch the young men start for a race, hurling quoit or club, kneeling to tie their shoes before leaping, stepping from the boat or bending to the oar, and to carve them; and when he was weary of cities i would ask him to come to your fields and meadows to watch the reaper with his sickle and the cattle driver with lifted lasso. for if a man cannot find the noblest motives for his art in such simple daily things as a woman drawing water from the well or a man leaning with his scythe, he will not find them anywhere at all. gods and goddesses the greek carved because he loved them; saint and king the goth because he believed in them. but you, you do not care much for greek gods and goddesses, and you are perfectly and entirely right; and you do not think much of kings either, and you are quite right. but what you do love are your own men and women, your own flowers and fields, your own hills and mountains, and these are what your art should represent to you. ours has been the first movement which has brought the handicraftsman and the artist together, for remember that by separating the one from the other you do ruin to both; you rob the one of all spiritual motive and all imaginative joy, you isolate the other from all real technical perfection. the two greatest schools of art in the world, the sculptor at athens and the school of painting at venice, had their origin entirely in a long succession of simple and earnest handicraftsmen. it was the greek potter who taught the sculptor that restraining influence of design which was the glory of the parthenon; it was the italian decorator of chests and household goods who kept venetian painting always true to its primary pictorial condition of noble colour. for we should remember that all the arts are fine arts and all the arts decorative arts. the greatest triumph of italian painting was the decoration of a pope's chapel in rome and the wall of a room in venice. michael angelo wrought the one, and tintoret, the dyer's son, the other. and the little 'dutch landscape, which you put over your sideboard today, and between the windows tomorrow, is' no less a glorious 'piece of work than the extents of field and forest with which benozzo has made green and beautiful the once melancholy arcade of the campo santo at pisa,' as ruskin says. do not imitate the works of a nation, greek or japanese, italian or english; but their artistic spirit of design and their artistic attitude today, their own world, you should absorb but imitate never, copy never. unless you can make as beautiful a design in painted china or embroidered screen or beaten brass out of your american turkey as the japanese does out of his grey silver-winged stork, you will never do anything. let the greek carve his lions and the goth his dragons: buffalo and wild deer are the animals for you. golden rod and aster and rose and all the flowers that cover your valleys in the spring and your hills in the autumn: let them be the flowers for your art. not merely has nature given you the noblest motives for a new school of decoration, but to you above all other countries has she given the utensils to work in. you have quarries of marble richer than pantelicus, more varied than paros, but do not build a great white square house of marble and think that it is beautiful, or that you are using marble nobly. if you build in marble you must either carve it into joyous decoration, like the lives of dancing children that adorn the marble castles of the loire, or fill it with beautiful sculpture, frieze and pediment, as the greeks did, or inlay it with other coloured marbles as they did in venice. otherwise you had better build in simple red brick as your puritan fathers, with no pretence and with some beauty. do not treat your marble as if it was ordinary stone and build a house of mere blocks of it. for it is indeed a precious stone, this marble of yours, and only workmen of nobility of invention and delicacy of hand should be allowed to touch it at all, carving it into noble statues or into beautiful decoration, or inlaying it with other coloured marbles: for the true colours of architecture are those of natural stone, and i would fain see them taken advantage of to the full. every variety is here, from pale yellow to purple passing through orange, red and brown, entirely at your command; nearly every kind of green and grey also is attainable, and with these and with pure white what harmony might you not achieve. of stained and variegated stone the quantity is unlimited, the kinds innumerable. were brighter colours required, let glass, and gold protected by glass, be used in mosaic, a kind of work as durable as the solid stone and incapable of losing its lustre by time. and let the painter's work be reserved for the shadowed loggia and inner chamber. this is the true and faithful way of building. where this cannot be, the device of external colouring may indeed be employed without dishonour--but it must be with the warning reflection that a time will come when such aids will pass away and when the building will be judged in its lifelessness, dying the death of the dolphin. better the less bright, more enduring fabric. the transparent alabasters of san miniato and the mosaics of saint mark's are more warmly filled and more brightly touched by every return of morning and evening rays, while the hues of the gothic cathedrals have died like the iris out of the cloud, and the temples, whose azure and purple once flamed above the grecian promontory, stand in their faded whiteness like snows which the sunset has left cold. * * * * * i do not know anything so perfectly commonplace in design as most modern jewellery. how easy for you to change that and to produce goldsmiths' work that would be a joy to all of us. the gold is ready for you in unexhausted treasure, stored up in the mountain hollow or strewn on the river sand, and was not given to you merely for barren speculation. there should be some better record of it left in your history than the merchant's panic and the ruined home. we do not remember often enough how constantly the history of a great nation will live in and by its art. only a few thin wreaths of beaten gold remain to tell us of the stately empire of etruria; and, while from the streets of florence the noble knight and haughty duke have long since passed away, the gates which the simple goldsmith gheberti made for their pleasure still guard their lovely house of baptism, worthy still of the praise of michael angelo who called them worthy to be the gates of paradise. have then your school of design, search out your workmen and, when you find one who has delicacy of hand and that wonder of invention necessary for goldsmiths' work, do not leave him to toil in obscurity and dishonour and have a great glaring shop and two great glaring shop-boys in it (not to take your orders: they never do that; but to force you to buy something you do not want at all). when you want a thing wrought in gold, goblet or shield for the feast, necklace or wreath for the women, tell him what you like most in decoration, flower or wreath, bird in flight or hound in the chase, image of the woman you love or the friend you honour. watch him as he beats out the gold into those thin plates delicate as the petals of a yellow rose, or draws it into the long wires like tangled sunbeams at dawn. whoever that workman be help him, cherish him, and you will have such lovely work from his hand as will be a joy to you for all time. this is the spirit of our movement in england, and this is the spirit in which we would wish you to work, making eternal by your art all that is noble in your men and women, stately in your lakes and mountains, beautiful in your own flowers and natural life. we want to see that you have nothing in your houses that has not been a joy to the man who made it, and is not a joy to those that use it. we want to see you create an art made by the hands of the people to please the hearts of the people too. do you like this spirit or not? do you think it simple and strong, noble in its aim, and beautiful in its result? i know you do. folly and slander have their own way for a little time, but for a little time only. you now know what we mean: you will be able to estimate what is said of us--its value and its motive. there should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. the harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate--not to the artist but to the public, blinding them to all, but harming the artist not at all. without them we would judge a man simply by his work; but at present the newspapers are trying hard to induce the public to judge a sculptor, for instance, never by his statues but by the way he treats his wife; a painter by the amount of his income and a poet by the colour of his necktie. i said there should be a law, but there is really no necessity for a new law: nothing could be easier than to bring the ordinary critic under the head of the criminal classes. but let us leave such an inartistic subject and return to beautiful and comely things, remembering that the art which would represent the spirit of modern newspapers would be exactly the art which you and i want to avoid--grotesque art, malice mocking you from every gateway, slander sneering at you from every corner. perhaps you may be surprised at my talking of labour and the workman. you have heard of me, i fear, through the medium of your somewhat imaginative newspapers as, if not a 'japanese young man,' at least a young man to whom the rush and clamour and reality of the modern world were distasteful, and whose greatest difficulty in life was the difficulty of living up to the level of his blue china--a paradox from which england has not yet recovered. well, let me tell you how it first came to me at all to create an artistic movement in england, a movement to show the rich what beautiful things they might enjoy and the poor what beautiful things they might create. one summer afternoon in oxford--'that sweet city with her dreaming spires,' lovely as venice in its splendour, noble in its learning as rome, down the long high street that winds from tower to tower, past silent cloister and stately gateway, till it reaches that long, grey seven-arched bridge which saint mary used to guard (used to, i say, because they are now pulling it down to build a tramway and a light cast- iron bridge in its place, desecrating the loveliest city in england)--well, we were coming down the street--a troop of young men, some of them like myself only nineteen, going to river or tennis-court or cricket-field--when ruskin going up to lecture in cap and gown met us. he seemed troubled and prayed us to go back with him to his lecture, which a few of us did, and there he spoke to us not on art this time but on life, saying that it seemed to him to be wrong that all the best physique and strength of the young men in england should be spent aimlessly on cricket- ground or river, without any result at all except that if one rowed well one got a pewter-pot, and if one made a good score, a cane-handled bat. he thought, he said, that we should be working at something that would do good to other people, at something by which we might show that in all labour there was something noble. well, we were a good deal moved, and said we would do anything he wished. so he went out round oxford and found two villages, upper and lower hinksey, and between them there lay a great swamp, so that the villagers could not pass from one to the other without many miles of a round. and when we came back in winter he asked us to help him to make a road across this morass for these village people to use. so out we went, day after day, and learned how to lay levels and to break stones, and to wheel barrows along a plank--a very difficult thing to do. and ruskin worked with us in the mist and rain and mud of an oxford winter, and our friends and our enemies came out and mocked us from the bank. we did not mind it much then, and we did not mind it afterwards at all, but worked away for two months at our road. and what became of the road? well, like a bad lecture it ended abruptly--in the middle of the swamp. ruskin going away to venice, when we came back for the next term there was no leader, and the 'diggers,' as they called us, fell asunder. and i felt that if there was enough spirit amongst the young men to go out to such work as road-making for the sake of a noble ideal of life, i could from them create an artistic movement that might change, as it has changed, the face of england. so i sought them out--leader they would call me--but there was no leader: we were all searchers only and we were bound to each other by noble friendship and by noble art. there was none of us idle: poets most of us, so ambitious were we: painters some of us, or workers in metal or modellers, determined that we would try and create for ourselves beautiful work: for the handicraftsman beautiful work, for those who love us poems and pictures, for those who love us not epigrams and paradoxes and scorn. well, we have done something in england and we will do something more. now, i do not want you, believe me, to ask your brilliant young men, your beautiful young girls, to go out and make a road on a swamp for any village in america, but i think you might each of you have some art to practise. * * * * * we must have, as emerson said, a mechanical craft for our culture, a basis for our higher accomplishments in the work of our hands--the uselessness of most people's hands seems to me one of the most unpractical things. 'no separation from labour can be without some loss of power or truth to the seer,' says emerson again. the heroism which would make on us the impression of epaminondas must be that of a domestic conqueror. the hero of the future is he who shall bravely and gracefully subdue this gorgon of fashion and of convention. when you have chosen your own part, abide by it, and do not weakly try and reconcile yourself with the world. the heroic cannot be the common nor the common the heroic. congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age. and lastly, let us remember that art is the one thing which death cannot harm. the little house at concord may be desolate, but the wisdom of new england's plato is not silenced nor the brilliancy of that attic genius dimmed: the lips of longfellow are still musical for us though his dust be turning into the flowers which he loved: and as it is with the greater artists, poet and philosopher and songbird, so let it be with you. lecture to art students delivered to the art students of the royal academy at their club in golden square, westminster, on june , . the text is taken from the original manuscript. in the lecture which it is my privilege to deliver before you to-night i do not desire to give you any abstract definition of beauty at all. for, we who are working in art cannot accept any theory of beauty in exchange for beauty itself, and, so far from desiring to isolate it in a formula appealing to the intellect, we, on the contrary, seek to materialise it in a form that gives joy to the soul through the senses. we want to create it, not to define it. the definition should follow the work: the work should not adapt itself to the definition. nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all you must not strip it of vitality. you must find it in life and re-create it in art. while, then, on the one hand i do not desire to give you any philosophy of beauty--for, what i want to-night is to investigate how we can create art, not how we can talk of it--on the other hand, i do not wish to deal with anything like a history of english art. to begin with, such an expression as english art is a meaningless expression. one might just as well talk of english mathematics. art is the science of beauty, and mathematics the science of truth: there is no national school of either. indeed, a national school is a provincial school, merely. nor is there any such thing as a school of art even. there are merely artists, that is all. and as regards histories of art, they are quite valueless to you unless you are seeking the ostentatious oblivion of an art professorship. it is of no use to you to know the date of perugino or the birthplace of salvator rosa: all that you should learn about art is to know a good picture when you see it, and a bad picture when you see it. as regards the date of the artist, all good work looks perfectly modern: a piece of greek sculpture, a portrait of velasquez--they are always modern, always of our time. and as regards the nationality of the artist, art is not national but universal. as regards archaeology, then, avoid it altogether: archaeology is merely the science of making excuses for bad art; it is the rock on which many a young artist founders and shipwrecks; it is the abyss from which no artist, old or young, ever returns. or, if he does return, he is so covered with the dust of ages and the mildew of time, that he is quite unrecognisable as an artist, and has to conceal himself for the rest of his days under the cap of a professor, or as a mere illustrator of ancient history. how worthless archaeology is in art you can estimate by the fact of its being so popular. popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. whatever is popular is wrong. as i am not going to talk to you, then, about the philosophy of the beautiful, or the history of art, you will ask me what i am going to talk about. the subject of my lecture to-night is what makes an artist and what does the artist make; what are the relations of the artist to his surroundings, what is the education the artist should get, and what is the quality of a good work of art. now, as regards the relations of the artist to his surroundings, by which i mean the age and country in which he is born. all good art, as i said before, has nothing to do with any particular century; but this universality is the quality of the work of art; the conditions that produce that quality are different. and what, i think, you should do is to realise completely your age in order completely to abstract yourself from it; remembering that if you are an artist at all, you will be not the mouthpiece of a century, but the master of eternity; that all art rests on a principle, and that mere temporal considerations are no principle at all; and that those who advise you to make your art representative of the nineteenth century are advising you to produce an art which your children, when you have them, will think old-fashioned. but you will tell me this is an inartistic age, and we are an inartistic people, and the artist suffers much in this nineteenth century of ours. of course he does. i, of all men, am not going to deny that. but remember that there never has been an artistic age, or an artistic people, since the beginning of the world. the artist has always been, and will always be, an exquisite exception. there is no golden age of art; only artists who have produced what is more golden than gold. _what_, you will say to me, the greeks? were not they an artistic people? well, the greeks certainly not, but, perhaps, you mean the athenians, the citizens of one out of a thousand cities. do you think that they were an artistic people? take them even at the time of their highest artistic development, the latter part of the fifth century before christ, when they had the greatest poets and the greatest artists of the antique world, when the parthenon rose in loveliness at the bidding of a phidias, and the philosopher spake of wisdom in the shadow of the painted portico, and tragedy swept in the perfection of pageant and pathos across the marble of the stage. were they an artistic people then? not a bit of it. what is an artistic people but a people who love their artists and understand their art? the athenians could do neither. how did they treat phidias? to phidias we owe the great era, not merely in greek, but in all art--i mean of the introduction of the use of the living model. and what would you say if all the english bishops, backed by the english people, came down from exeter hall to the royal academy one day and took off sir frederick leighton in a prison van to newgate on the charge of having allowed you to make use of the living model in your designs for sacred pictures? would you not cry out against the barbarism and the puritanism of such an idea? would you not explain to them that the worst way to honour god is to dishonour man who is made in his image, and is the work of his hands; and, that if one wants to paint christ one must take the most christlike person one can find, and if one wants to paint the madonna, the purest girl one knows? would you not rush off and burn down newgate, if necessary, and say that such a thing was without parallel in history? without parallel? well, that is exactly what the athenians did. in the room of the parthenon marbles, in the british museum, you will see a marble shield on the wall. on it there are two figures; one of a man whose face is half hidden, the other of a man with the godlike lineaments of pericles. for having done this, for having introduced into a bas relief, taken from greek sacred history, the image of the great statesman who was ruling athens at the time, phidias was flung into prison and there, in the common gaol of athens, died, the supreme artist of the old world. and do you think that this was an exceptional case? the sign of a philistine age is the cry of immorality against art, and this cry was raised by the athenian people against every great poet and thinker of their day--aeschylus, euripides, socrates. it was the same with florence in the thirteenth century. good handicrafts are due to guilds not to the people. the moment the guilds lost their power and the people rushed in, beauty and honesty of work died. and so, never talk of an artistic people; there never has been such a thing. but, perhaps, you will tell me that the external beauty of the world has almost entirely passed away from us, that the artist dwells no longer in the midst of the lovely surroundings which, in ages past, were the natural inheritance of every one, and that art is very difficult in this unlovely town of ours, where, as you go to your work in the morning, or return from it at eventide, you have to pass through street after street of the most foolish and stupid architecture that the world has ever seen; architecture, where every lovely greek form is desecrated and defiled, and every lovely gothic form defiled and desecrated, reducing three-fourths of the london houses to being, merely, like square boxes of the vilest proportions, as gaunt as they are grimy, and as poor as they are pretentious--the hall door always of the wrong colour, and the windows of the wrong size, and where, even when wearied of the houses you turn to contemplate the street itself, you have nothing to look at but chimney-pot hats, men with sandwich boards, vermilion letterboxes, and do that even at the risk of being run over by an emerald-green omnibus. is not art difficult, you will say to me, in such surroundings as these? of course it is difficult, but then art was never easy; you yourselves would not wish it to be easy; and, besides, nothing is worth doing except what the world says is impossible. still, you do not care to be answered merely by a paradox. what are the relations of the artist to the external world, and what is the result of the loss of beautiful surroundings to you, is one of the most important questions of modern art; and there is no point on which mr. ruskin so insists as that the decadence of art has come from the decadence of beautiful things; and that when the artist can not feed his eye on beauty, beauty goes from his work. i remember in one of his lectures, after describing the sordid aspect of a great english city, he draws for us a picture of what were the artistic surroundings long ago. think, he says, in words of perfect and picturesque imagery, whose beauty i can but feebly echo, think of what was the scene which presented itself, in his afternoon walk, to a designer of the gothic school of pisa--nino pisano or any of his men { }: on each side of a bright river he saw rise a line of brighter palaces, arched and pillared, and inlaid with deep red porphyry, and with serpentine; along the quays before their gates were riding troops of knights, noble in face and form, dazzling in crest and shield; horse and man one labyrinth of quaint colour and gleaming light--the purple, and silver, and scarlet fringes flowing over the strong limbs and clashing mail, like sea-waves over rocks at sunset. opening on each side from the river were gardens, courts, and cloisters; long successions of white pillars among wreaths of vine; leaping of fountains through buds of pomegranate and orange: and still along the garden-paths, and under and through the crimson of the pomegranate shadows, moving slowly, groups of the fairest women that italy ever saw--fairest, because purest and thoughtfullest; trained in all high knowledge, as in all courteous art--in dance, in song, in sweet wit, in lofty learning, in loftier courage, in loftiest love--able alike to cheer, to enchant, or save, the souls of men. above all this scenery of perfect human life, rose dome and bell-tower, burning with white alabaster and gold: beyond dome and bell-tower the slopes of mighty hills, hoary with olive; far in the north, above a purple sea of peaks of solemn apennine, the clear, sharp-cloven carrara mountains sent up their steadfast flames of marble summit into amber sky; the great sea itself, scorching with expanse of light, stretching from their feet to the gorgonian isles; and over all these, ever present, near or far--seen through the leaves of vine, or imaged with all its march of clouds in the arno's stream, or set with its depth of blue close against the golden hair and burning cheek of lady and knight,--that untroubled and sacred sky, which was to all men, in those days of innocent faith, indeed the unquestioned abode of spirits, as the earth was of men; and which opened straight through its gates of cloud and veils of dew into the awfulness of the eternal world;--a heaven in which every cloud that passed was literally the chariot of an angel, and every ray of its evening and morning streamed from the throne of god. what think you of that for a school of design? and then look at the depressing, monotonous appearance of any modern city, the sombre dress of men and women, the meaningless and barren architecture, the colourless and dreadful surroundings. without a beautiful national life, not sculpture merely, but all the arts will die. well, as regards the religious feeling of the close of the passage, i do not think i need speak about that. religion springs from religious feeling, art from artistic feeling: you never get one from the other; unless you have the right root you will not get the right flower; and, if a man sees in a cloud the chariot of an angel, he will probably paint it very unlike a cloud. but, as regards the general idea of the early part of that lovely bit of prose, is it really true that beautiful surroundings are necessary for the artist? i think not; i am sure not. indeed, to me the most inartistic thing in this age of ours is not the indifference of the public to beautiful things, but the indifference of the artist to the things that are called ugly. for, to the real artist, nothing is beautiful or ugly in itself at all. with the facts of the object he has nothing to do, but with its appearance only, and appearance is a matter of light and shade, of masses, of position, and of value. appearance is, in fact, a matter of effect merely, and it is with the effects of nature that you have to deal, not with the real condition of the object. what you, as painters, have to paint is not things as they are but things as they seem to be, not things as they are but things as they are not. no object is so ugly that, under certain conditions of light and shade, or proximity to other things, it will not look beautiful; no object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly. i believe that in every twenty-four hours what is beautiful looks ugly, and what is ugly looks beautiful, once. and, the commonplace character of so much of our english painting seems to me due to the fact that so many of our young artists look merely at what we may call 'ready-made beauty,' whereas you exist as artists not to copy beauty but to create it in your art, to wait and watch for it in nature. what would you say of a dramatist who would take nobody but virtuous people as characters in his play? would you not say he was missing half of life? well, of the young artist who paints nothing but beautiful things, i say he misses one half of the world. do not wait for life to be picturesque, but try and see life under picturesque conditions. these conditions you can create for yourself in your studio, for they are merely conditions of light. in nature, you must wait for them, watch for them, choose them; and, if you wait and watch, come they will. in gower street at night you may see a letterbox that is picturesque; on the thames embankment you may see picturesque policemen. even venice is not always beautiful, nor france. to paint what you see is a good rule in art, but to see what is worth painting is better. see life under pictorial conditions. it is better to live in a city of changeable weather than in a city of lovely surroundings. now, having seen what makes the artist, and what the artist makes, who is the artist? there is a man living amongst us who unites in himself all the qualities of the noblest art, whose work is a joy for all time, who is, himself, a master of all time. that man is mr. whistler. but, you will say, modern dress, that is bad. if you cannot paint black cloth you could not have painted silken doublet. ugly dress is better for art--facts of vision, not of the object. what is a picture? primarily, a picture is a beautifully coloured surface, merely, with no more spiritual message or meaning for you than an exquisite fragment of venetian glass or a blue tile from the wall of damascus. it is, primarily, a purely decorative thing, a delight to look at. all archaeological pictures that make you say 'how curious!' all sentimental pictures that make you say 'how sad!' all historical pictures that make you say 'how interesting!' all pictures that do not immediately give you such artistic joy as to make you say 'how beautiful!' are bad pictures. * * * * * we never know what an artist is going to do. of course not. the artist is not a specialist. all such divisions as animal painters, landscape painters, painters of scotch cattle in an english mist, painters of english cattle in a scotch mist, racehorse painters, bull-terrier painters, all are shallow. if a man is an artist he can paint everything. the object of art is to stir the most divine and remote of the chords which make music in our soul; and colour is, indeed, of itself a mystical presence on things, and tone a kind of sentinel. am i pleading, then, for mere technique? no. as long as there are any signs of technique at all, the picture is unfinished. what is finish? a picture is finished when all traces of work, and of the means employed to bring about the result, have disappeared. in the case of handicraftsmen--the weaver, the potter, the smith--on their work are the traces of their hand. but it is not so with the painter; it is not so with the artist. art should have no sentiment about it but its beauty, no technique except what you cannot observe. one should be able to say of a picture not that it is 'well painted,' but that it is 'not painted.' what is the difference between absolutely decorative art and a painting? decorative art emphasises its material: imaginative art annihilates it. tapestry shows its threads as part of its beauty: a picture annihilates its canvas; it shows nothing of it. porcelain emphasises its glaze: water-colours reject the paper. a picture has no meaning but its beauty, no message but its joy. that is the first truth about art that you must never lose sight of. a picture is a purely decorative thing. bibliography by stuart mason note part i. includes all the authorised editions published in england, and the two french editions of salome published in paris. authorised editions of some of the works were issued in the united states of america simultaneously with the english publication. part ii. contains the only two 'privately printed' editions which are authorised. part iii. is a chronological list of all contributions (so far as at present known) to magazines, periodicals, etc., the date given being that of the first publication only. those marked with an asterisk (*) were published anonymously. many of the poems have been included in anthologies of modern verse, but no attempt has been made to give particulars of such reprints in this bibliography. i.--authorised english editions newdigate prize poem. ravenna. recited in the theatre, oxford, june , . by oscar wilde, magdalen college. oxford: thos. shrimpton and son, . poems. london: david bogue, (june ). second and third editions, . fourth and fifth editions [revised], . copies ( for sale) of the fifth edition, with a new title-page and cover designed by charles ricketts. london: elkin mathews and john lane, (may ). the happy prince and other tales. ('the happy prince,' 'the nightingale and the rose,' 'the selfish giant,' 'the devoted friend,' 'the remarkable rocket.') illustrated by walter crane and jacomb hood. london: david nutt, (may). also copies ( for sale) on large paper, with the plates in two states. second edition, january . third edition, february . fourth impression, september . fifth impression, february . intentions. ('the decay of lying,' 'pen, pencil, and poison,' 'the critic as artist,' 'the truth of masks.') london: james r. osgood, mcilvaine and co., (may). new edition, . edition for continental circulation only. the english library, no. . leipzig: heinemann and balestier, . frequently reprinted. the picture of dorian gray. london: ward, lock and co. [ (july ).] also copies on large paper. dated . [note.--july is the official date of publication, but presentation copies signed by the author and dated may are known.] new edition [ (october ).] london: ward, lock and bowden. reprinted. paris: charles carrington, , , (january). edition for continental circulation only. leipzig: bernhard tauchnitz, vol. . (july). lord arthur savile's crime and other stories. ('lord arthur savile's crime,' 'the sphinx without a secret,' 'the canterville ghost,' 'the model millionaire.') london: james r. osgood, mcilvaine and co., (july). a house of pomegranates. ('the young king,' 'the birthday of the infanta,' 'the fisherman and his soul,' 'the star child.') with designs and decorations by charles ricketts and c. h. shannon. london: james r. osgood, mcilvaine and co., (november). salome. drame en un acte. paris: librairie de l'art independant. londres: elkin mathews et john lane, (february ). copies ( for sale) and on large paper. new edition. with sixteen illustrations by aubrey beardsley. paris: edition a petit nombre imprimee pour les souscripteurs. . copies. [note.--several editions, containing only a portion of the text, have been issued for the performance of the opera by richard strauss. london: methuen and co.; berlin: adolph furstner. ] lady windermere's fan. a play about a good woman. london: elkin mathews and john lane, (november ). copies and on large paper. acting edition. london: samuel french. (text incomplete.) salome. a tragedy in one act. translated from the french [by lord alfred bruce douglas.] pictured by aubrey beardsley. london: elkin mathews and john lane, (february ). copies and on large paper. with the two suppressed plates and extra title-page. preface by robert ross. london: john lane, (september ). new edition (without illustrations). london: john lane, (june), . the sphinx. with decorations by charles ricketts. london: elkin mathews and john lane, (july). copies and on large paper. a woman of no importance. london: john lane, (october ). copies and on large paper. the soul of man. london: privately printed, . [reprinted from the fortnightly review (february ), by permission of the proprietors, and published by a. l. humphreys.] new edition. london: arthur l. humphreys, . reprinted in sebastian melmoth. london: arthur l. humphreys, , . the ballad of reading gaol. by c. . . london: leonard smithers, (february ). copies and on japanese vellum. second edition, march . third edition, . copies only, signed by the author. fourth, fifth and sixth editions, . seventh edition, . { a} [note.--the above are printed at the chiswick press on handmade paper. all reprints on ordinary paper are unauthorised.] the importance of being earnest. a trivial comedy for serious people. by the author of lady windermere's fan. london: leonard smithers and co., (february). copies. also copies on large paper, and on japanese vellum. acting edition. london: samuel french. (text incomplete.) an ideal husband. by the author of lady windermere's fan. london: leonard smithers and co., (july). copies. also copies on large paper, and on japanese vellum. de profundis. london: methuen and co., (february ). also copies on large paper, and on japanese vellum. second edition, march . third edition, march . fourth edition, april . fifth edition, september . sixth edition, march . seventh edition, january . eighth edition, april . ninth edition, july . tenth edition, october . eleventh edition, january . { b} the works of oscar wilde. london: methuen and co., (february ). in thirteen volumes. copies on handmade paper and on japanese vellum. the duchess of padua. a play. salome. a florentine tragedy. vera. lady windermere's fan. a play about a good woman. a woman of no importance. a play. an ideal husband. a play. the importance of being earnest. a trivial comedy for serious people. lord arthur savile's crime and other prose pieces. intentions and the soul of man. the poems. a house of pomegranates, the happy prince and other tales. de profundis. reviews. miscellanies. uniform with the above. paris: charles carrington, (april ). the picture of dorian gray. ii.--editions privately printed for the author vera; or, the nihilists. a drama in a prologue and four acts. [new york] . the duchess of padua: a tragedy of the xvi century written in paris in the xix century. privately printed as manuscript. [new york, (march ).] iii.--miscellaneous contributions to magazines, periodicals, etc. november. chorus of cloud maidens ([greek], - and - ). dublin university magazine, vol. lxxxvi. no. , page . january. from spring days to winter. (for music.) dublin university magazine, vol. lxxxvii. no. , page . march. graffiti d'italia. i. san miniato. (june .) dublin university magazine, vol. lxxxvii. no. , page . june. the dole of the king's daughter. dublin university magazine, vol. lxxxvii. no. , page . trinity term. [greek]. (the rose of love, and with a rose's thorns.) kottabos, vol. ii. no. , page . september. [greek]. dublin university magazine, vol. lxxxviii. no. , page . september. the true knowledge. irish monthly, vol. iv. no. , page . september. graffiti d'italia. (arona. lago maggiore.) month and catholic review, vol. xxviii. no. , page . michaelmas term. [greek]. kottabos, vol. ii. no. , page . february. lotus leaves. irish monthly, vol. v. no. , page . hilary term. a fragment from the agamemnon of aeschylos. kottabos, vol. ii. no. , page . hilary term. a night vision. kottabos, vol. ii. no. , page . june. salve saturnia tellus. irish monthly, vol. v. no. , page . june. urbs sacra aeterna. illustrated monitor, vol. iv. no. , page . july. the tomb of keats. irish monthly, vol. v. no. , page . july. sonnet written during holy week. illustrated monitor, vol. iv. no. , page . july. the grosvenor gallery. dublin university magazine, vol. xc. no. , page . michaelmas term. wasted days. (from a picture painted by miss v. t.) kottabos, vol. iii. no. , page . december. [greek]. irish monthly, vol. v. no. , page . april. magdalen walks. irish monthly, vol. vi. no. , page . hilary term. 'la belle marguerite.' ballade du moyen age. kottabos, vol. iii. no. , page . april. the conqueror of time. time, vol. i. no. , page . may . grosvenor gallery (first notice.) saunders' irish daily news, vol. cxc. no. , , page . june. easter day. waifs and strays, vol. i. no. , page . june . to sarah bernhardt. world, no. , page . july. the new helen. time, vol. i. no. , page . july . queen henrietta maria. (charles i,, act iii.) world, no. , page . michaelmas term. ave! maria. kottabos, vol. iii. no. , page . january . portia. world, no. , page . march. impression de voyage. waifs and strays, vol. i. no. , page . august . ave imperatrix! a poem on england. world, no. , page . november . libertatis sacra fames. world, no. , page . december. sen artysty; or, the artist's dream. translated from the polish of madame helena modjeska. routledge's christmas annual: the green room, page . january. the grave of keats. burlington, vol. i. no. , page . march . impression de matin. world, no. , page . february . impressions: i. le jardin. ii. la mer. our continent (philadelphia), vol. i. no. , page . november . mrs. langtry as hester grazebrook. new york world, page . l'envoi, an introduction to rose leaf and apple leaf, by rennell rodd, page . philadelphia: j. m. stoddart and co. [besides the ordinary edition a limited number of an edition de luxe was issued printed in brown ink on one side only of a thin transparent handmade parchment paper, the whole book being interleaved with green tissue.] november . telegram to whistler. world, no. , page . may . under the balcony. shaksperean show-book, page . (set to music by lawrence kellie as oh! beautiful star. serenade. london: robert cocks and co., .) october . mr. oscar wilde on woman's dress. pall mall gazette, vol. xl. no. , page . november . more radical ideas upon dress reform. (with two illustrations.) pall mall gazette, vol. xl. no. , page . february . mr. whistler's ten o'clock. pall mall gazette, vol. xli. no. , page . february . tenderness in tite street. world, no. , page . february . the relation of dress to art. a note in black and white on mr. whistler's lecture. pall mall gazette, vol. xli. no. , page . march . *dinners and dishes. pall mall gazette, vol. xli. no. , page . march . *a modern epic. pall mall gazette, vol. xli. no. , page . march . shakespeare on scenery. dramatic review, vol. i. no. , page . march . *a bevy of poets. pall mall gazette, vol. xli. no. , page . april . *parnassus versus philology. pall mall gazette, vol. xli. no. , page . april . the harlot's house. dramatic review, vol. i. no. , page . may. shakespeare and stage costume. nineteenth century, vol. xvii. no. , page . may . hamlet at the lyceum. dramatic review, vol. i. no. , page . may . *two new novels. pall mall gazette, vol. xli. no. , page . may . henry the fourth at oxford. dramatic review, vol. i. no. , page . may . *modern greek poetry. pall mall gazette, vol. xli. no. , page . may . olivia at the lyceum. dramatic review, vol. i. no. , page . june. le jardin des tuileries. (with an illustration by l. troubridge.) in a good cause, page . london: wells gardner, darton and co. june . as you like it at coombe house. dramatic review, vol. i. no. , page . july. roses and rue. midsummer dreams, summer number of society. (no copy of this is known to exist.) november . *a handbook to marriage. pall mall gazette, vol. xlii. no. , page . january . *half-hours with the worst authors. pall mall gazette, vol. xliii. no. , page . january . sonnet. on the recent sale by auction of keats' love letters. dramatic review, vol. ii. no. , page . february . *one of mr. conway's remainders. pall mall gazette, vol. xliii. no. , page . february . to read or not to read. pall mall gazette, vol. xliii. no. , page . february . twelfth night at oxford. dramatic review, vol. iii. no. , page . march . *the letters of a great woman. pall mall gazette, vol. xliii. no. , page . april . *news from parnassus. pall mall gazette, vol. xliii. no. , page . april . *some novels. pall mall gazette, vol. xliii. no. , page . april . *a literary pilgrim. pall mall gazette, vol. xliii. no. , page . april . *beranger in england. pall mall gazette, vol. xliii. no. , page . may . *the poetry of the people. pall mall gazette, vol. xliii. no. , page . may . the cenci. dramatic review, vol. iii. no. , page . may . helena in troas. dramatic review, vol. iii. no. , page . july. keats' sonnet on blue. (with facsimile of original manuscript.) century guild hobby horse, vol. i. no. , page . august . *pleasing and prattling. pall mall gazette, vol. xliv. no. , page . september . *balzac in english. pall mall gazette, vol. xliv. no. , page . september . *two new novels. pall mall gazette, vol. xliv. no. , page . september . *ben jonson. pall mall gazette, vol. xliv. no. , page . september . *the poets' corner. pall mall gazette, vol. xliv. no. , page . october . *a ride through morocco. pall mall gazette, vol. xliv. no. , page . october . *the children of the poets. pall mall gazette, vol. xliv. no. , page . october . *new novels. pall mall gazette, vol. xliv. no. , page . november . *a politician's poetry. pall mall gazette, vol. xliv. no. , page . november . *mr. symonds' history of the renaissance. pall mall gazette, vol. xliv. no. , page . november . *a 'jolly' art critic. pall mall gazette, vol. xliv. no. , page . november . note on whistler. world, no. , page . december . *a 'sentimental journey' through literature. pall mall gazette, vol. xliv. no. , page . december . *two biographies of sir philip sidney. pall mall gazette, vol. xliv. no. , page . january . *common sense in art. pall mall gazette, vol. xlv. no. , page . february . *miner and minor poets. pall mall gazette, vol. xlv. no. , page . february . *a new calendar. pall mall gazette, vol. xlv. no. , page . february . the canterville ghost--i. illustrated by f. h. townsend. court and society review, vol. iv. no. , page . march . the canterville ghost--ii. illustrated by f. h. townsend. court and society review, vol. iv. no. , page . march . *the poets' corner. pall mall gazette, vol. xlv. no. , page . march . *the american invasion. court and society review, vol. iv. no. , page . march . *great writers by little men. pall mall gazette, vol. xlv. no. , page . march . *a new book on dickens. pall mall gazette, vol. xlv. no. , page . april . *our book shelf. pall mall gazette, vol. xlv. no. , page . april . *a cheap edition of a great man. pall mall gazette, vol. xlv. no. , page . april . *mr. morris's odyssey. pall mall gazette, vol. xlv. no. , page . may . *a batch of novels. pall mall gazette, vol. xlv. no. , page . may . *some novels. saturday review, vol. lxiii. no. , page . may . lord arthur savile's crime. a story of cheiromancy.--i. ii. illustrated by f. h. townsend. court and society review, vol. iv. no. , page . may . lord arthur savile's crime. a story of cheiromancy.--iii. iv. court and society review, vol. iv. no. , page . may . lord arthur savile's crime. a story of cheiromancy.--v. vi. illustrated by f. h. townsend. court and society review, vol. iv. no. , page . may . lady alroy. world, no. , page . may . *the poets' corner. pall mall gazette, vol. xlv. no. , page . june . *mr. pater's imaginary portraits. pall mall gazette, vol. xlv. no. , page . june . the model millionaire. world, no. , page . august . *a good historical novel. pall mall gazette, vol. xlvi. no. , page . august . *new novels. saturday review, vol. lxiv. no. , page . september . *two biographies of keats. pall mall gazette, vol. xlvi. no. , page . october . *sermons in stones at bloomsbury. pall mall gazette, vol. xlvi. no. , page . october . *a scotchman on scottish poetry. pall mall gazette, vol. xlvi. no. , page . november. literary and other notes. woman's world, vol. i. no. , page . november . *mr. mahaffy's new book. pall mall gazette, vol. xlvi. no. , page . november . *mr. morris's completion of the odyssey. pall mall gazette, vol. xlvi. no. , page . november . *sir charles bowen's virgil. pall mall gazette, vol. xlvi. no. , page . december. literary and other notes. woman's world, vol. i. no. , page . december . *the unity of the arts. pall mall gazette, vol. xlvi. no. , page . december . un amant de nos jours. court and society review, vol. iv. no. , page . december . *aristotle at afternoon tea. pall mall gazette, vol. xlvi. no. , page . december . *early christian art in ireland. pall mall gazette, vol. xlvi. no. , page . december . *art at willis's rooms. sunday times, no. , page . december . fantaisies decoratives. i. le panneau. ii. les ballons. illustrated by bernard partridge. lady's pictorial christmas number, pages , . january. literary and other notes. woman's world, vol. i. no. , page . january . *the poets' corner. pall mall gazette, vol. xlvii. no. , page . february. literary and other notes. woman's world, vol. i. no. , page . february . the poets' corner. pall mall gazette, vol. xlvii. no. , page . february . *venus or victory. pall mall gazette, vol. xlvii. no. , page . march. literary and other notes. woman's world, vol. i. no. , page . april. canzonet. art and letters, vol. ii. no. , page . april . *the poets' corner. pall mall gazette, vol. xlvii. no. , page . april . *m. caro on george sand. pall mall gazette, vol. xlvii. no. , page . october . *the poets' corner. pall mall gazette, vol. xlviii. no. , page . november. a fascinating book. a note by the editor. woman's world, vol. ii. no. , page . november . *mr. morris on tapestry. pall mall gazette, vol. xlviii. no. , page . november . *sculpture at the 'arts and crafts.' pall mall gazette, vol. xlviii. no. , page . november . *the poets' corner. pall mall gazette, vol. xlviii. no. , page . november . *printing and printers. pall mall gazette, vol. xlviii. no. , page . november . *the beauties of bookbinding. pall mall gazette, vol. xlviii. no. , page . november . *the close of the 'arts and crafts.' pall mall gazette, vol. xlviii. no. , page . december. a note on some modern poets. woman's world, vol. ii. no. , page . december . english poetesses. queen, vol. lxxxiv. no. , page . december . *sir edwin arnold's last volume. pall mall gazette, vol. xlviii. no. , page . december . *australian poets. pall mall gazette, vol. xlviii. no. , page . december. the young king. illustrated by bernard partridge. lady's pictorial christmas number, page . january. the decay of lying: a dialogue. nineteenth century, vol. xxv. no. , page . january. pen, pencil, and poison: a study. fortnightly review, vol. xlv. no. , page . january. london models. illustrated by harper pennington. english illustrated magazine, vol. vi. no. , page . january. some literary notes. woman's world, vol. ii. no. , page . january . *poetry and prison. pall mall gazette, vol. xlix. no. , page . january . *the gospel according to walt whitman. pall mall gazette, vol. xlix. no. , page . january . *the new president. pall mall gazette, vol. xlix. no. , page . february. some literary notes. woman's world, vol. ii. no. , page . february. symphony in yellow. centennial magazine (sydney), vol. ii. no. , page . february . *one of the bibles of the world. pall mall gazette, vol. xlix. no. , page . february . *poetical socialists. pall mall gazette, vol. xlix. no. , page . february . *mr. brander matthews' essays. pall mall gazette, vol. xlix. no. , page . march. some literary notes. woman's world, vol. iii. no. , page . march . *mr. william morris's last book. pall mall gazette, vol. xlix. no. , page . march . *adam lindsay gordon. pall mall gazette, vol. xlix. no. , page . march . *the poets' corner. pall mall gazette, vol. xlix. no. , page . april. some literary notes. woman's world, vol. ii. no. , page . april . mr. froude's blue-book. pall mall gazette, vol. xlix. no. , page . may. some literary notes. woman's world, vol. ii. no. , page . may . *ouida's new novel. pall mall gazette, vol. xlix. no. , page . june. some literary notes. woman's world, vol. ii. no. , page . june . *a thought-reader's novel. pall mall gazette, vol. xlix. no. , page . june . *the poets' corner. pall mall gazette, vol. xlix. no. , page . june . *mr. swinburne's last volume. pall mall gazette, vol. xlix. no. , page . july. the portrait of mr. w. h. blackwood's edinburgh magazine, vol. cxlvi. no. , page . july . *three new poets. pall mall gazette, vol. i. no. , page . december. in the forest. illustrated by bernard partridge. lady's pictorial christmas number, page . (set to music by edwin tilden and published by miles and thompson, boston, u.s.a., .) january . reply to mr. whistler. truth, vol. xxvii. no. , page . february . a chinese sage. speaker, vol. i. no. , page . march . mr. pater's last volume. speaker, vol. i. no. , page . may . *primavera. pall mall gazette, vol. li. no. , page . june . the picture of dorian gray. lippincott's monthly magazine (july), vol. xlvi. no. , page . (containing thirteen chapters only.) june . mr. wilde's bad case. st. james's gazette, vol. xx. no. , page . june . mr. oscar wilde again. st. james's gazette, vol. xx. no. , page . june . mr. oscar wilde's defence. st. james's gazette, vol. xx. no. , page . june . mr. oscar wilde's defence. st. james's gazette, vol. xx. no. , page . july. the true function and value of criticism; with some remarks on the importance of doing nothing: a dialogue. nineteenth century, vol. xxviii. no. , page . july . 'dorian gray.' daily chronicle and clerkenwell news, no. , page . july . mr. wilde's rejoinder. scots observer, vol. iv. no. , page . august . art and morality. scots observer, vol. iv. no. , page . august . art and morality. scots observer, vol. iv. no. , page . september. the true function and value of criticism; with some remarks on the importance of doing nothing: a dialogue (concluded). nineteenth century, vol. xxviii. no. , page . february. the soul of man under socialism. fortnightly review, vol. xlix. no. , page . march. a preface to 'dorian gray.' fortnightly review, vol. xlix. no. , page . september . an anglo-indian's complaint. times, no. , , page . december . 'a house of pomegranates.' speaker, vol. iv. no. , page . december . mr. oscar wilde's 'house of pomegranates.' pall mall gazette, vol. liii. no. , page . february . puppets and actors. daily telegraph, no. , , page . february . mr. oscar wilde explains. st. james's gazette, vol. xxiv. no. , page . december . the new remorse. spirit lamp, vol. ii. no. , page . february . the house of judgment. spirit lamp, vol. iii. no. , page . march . mr. oscar wilde on 'salome.' times, no. , , page . june . the disciple. spirit lamp, vol. iv. no. , page . to my wife: with a copy of my poems; and with a copy of 'the house of pomegranates.' book-song, an anthology of poems of books and bookmen from modern authors. edited by gleeson white, pages , . london: elliot stock. [this was the first publication of these two poems. anthologies containing reprints are not included in this list.] january . letter to the president of the thirteen club. times, no. , , page . july. poems in prose. ('the artist,' 'the doer of good,' 'the disciple,' 'the master,' 'the house of judgment.') fortnightly review, vol. liv. no. , page . september . the ethics of journalism. pall mall gazette, vol. lix. no. , page . september . the ethics of journalism. pall mall gazette, vol. lix. no. , page . october . 'the green carnation.' pall mall gazette, vol. lix. no. , page . december. phrases and philosophies for the use of the young. chameleon, vol. i. no. , page . april . letter on the queensberry case. evening news, no. , page . may . the case of warder martin. some cruelties of prison life. daily chronicle, no. , , page . march . letter on prison reform. daily chronicle, no. , , page . footnotes. { a} see lord arthur savile's crime and other prose pieces in this edition, page . { } reverently some well-meaning persons have placed a marble slab on the wall of the cemetery with a medallion-profile of keats on it and some mediocre lines of poetry. the face is ugly, and rather hatchet-shaped, with thick sensual lips, and is utterly unlike the poet himself, who was very beautiful to look upon. 'his countenance,' says a lady who saw him at one of hazlitt's lectures, 'lives in my mind as one of singular beauty and brightness; it had the expression as if he had been looking on some glorious sight.' and this is the idea which severn's picture of him gives. even haydon's rough pen-and-ink sketch of him is better than this 'marble libel,' which i hope will soon be taken down. i think the best representation of the poet would be a coloured bust, like that of the young rajah of koolapoor at florence, which is a lovely and lifelike work of art. { } it is perhaps not generally known that there is another and older peacock ceiling in the world besides the one mr. whistler has done at kensington. i was surprised lately at ravenna to come across a mosaic ceiling done in the keynote of a peacock's tail--blue, green, purple, and gold--and with four peacocks in the four spandrils. mr. whistler was unaware of the existence of this ceiling at the time he did his own. { } an unequal match, by tom taylor, at wallack's theatre, new york, november , . { } 'make' is of course a mere printer's error for 'mock,' and was subsequently corrected by lord houghton. the sonnet as given in the garden of florence reads 'orbs' for 'those.' { } september . see intentions, page . { } november , . { } february , . { } february , . { } the verses called 'the shamrock' were printed in the sunday sun, august , , and the charge of plagiarism was made in the issue dated september , . { } cousin errs a good deal in this respect. to say, as he did, 'give me the latitude and the longitude of a country, its rivers and its mountains, and i will deduce the race,' is surely a glaring exaggeration. { } the monarchical, aristocratical, and democratic elements of the roman constitution are referred to. { a} polybius, vi. . [greek]. { b} [greek]. { c} the various stages are [greek]. { a} polybius, xii. . { b} polybius, i. , viii. , specially; and really passim. { a} he makes one exception. { b} polybius, viii. . { } polybius, xvi. . { a} polybius, viii. : [greek]. { b} polybius resembled gibbon in many respects. like him he held that all religions were to the philosopher equally false, to the vulgar equally true, to the statesman equally useful. { } cf. polybius, xii. , [greek]. { } polybius, xxii. . { } i mean particularly as regards his sweeping denunciation of the complete moral decadence of greek society during the peloponnesian war which, from what remains to us of athenian literature, we know must have been completely exaggerated. or, rather, he is looking at men merely in their political dealings: and in politics the man who is personally honourable and refined will not scruple to do anything for his party. { } polybius, xii. . { } as an instance of the inaccuracy of published reports of this lecture, it may be mentioned that all previous versions give this passage as the artist may trace the depressed revolution of bunthorne simply to the lack of technical means! { } the two paths, lect. iii. p. ( ed.). { a} edition for continental circulation only. leipzig: bernhard tauchnitz, vol. . (august). { b} edition for continental circulation only. leipzig: bernhard tauchnitz, vol. . (august). february _) i have endeavoured to indicate, i trust more or less successfully, the manner in which an enthusiastic public received the first of oscar wilde's comedies. let us now glance at the attitude affected by the critics. it is not too much to say that it was of undoubted hostility. their verdict was decidedly an inimical one. they had received an unexpected shock, and were staggering under it in an angry, helpless way. the new dramatist was a surprise, and an unpleasing one. he had in one evening destroyed the comfortable conventions of the stage, hitherto so dear to the critic's heart. he had dared to break down the barriers of ancient prejudice, and attempt something new, something original. in a word, he had dared to be himself, the most heinous offence of all! they could not entirely ignore his undeniable talent. public opinion was on his side. so they dragged in side issues to point _their_ little moral, and adorn _their_ little tale. this is how mr clement scott writes after the first performance of "lady windermere's fan": "supposing, after all, mr oscar wilde is a cynic of deeper significance than we take him to be. supposing he intends to reform and revolutionise society at large by sublime self-sacrifice. there are two sides to every question, and mr oscar wilde's piety in social reform has not as yet been urged by anybody. his attitude has been so extraordinary that i am inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. it is possible he may have said to himself, 'i will show you, and prove to you, to what an extent bad manners are not only recognised, but endorsed in this wholly free and unrestricted age. i will do on the stage of a public theatre what i should not dare to do at a mass meeting in the park. i will uncover my head in the presence of refined women, but i refuse to put down my cigarette. the working man may put out his pipe when he spouts, but my cigarette is too 'precious' for destruction. i will show no humility, and i will stand unrebuked. i will take greater liberties with the public than any author who has ever preceded me in history. and i will retire scatheless. the society that allows boys to puff cigarette smoke in the faces of ladies in the theatre corridors will condone the originality of a smoking author on the stage.' this may be the form of mr oscar wilde's curious cynicism. he may say, 'i will test this question of manners, and show that they are not nowadays recognised.'" so far mr clement scott, then the leader of the critic band who took his tone and cheerfully followed where he led--the old story of "les brebis de pannege." and to show how universal was this inordinate enmity, i will quote a paragraph from, at that time, the leading journal of historical criticism, written on the withdrawal of the play after a successful "run" of nine months. after endorsing the general opinion of the play as "a comedy of society manners pure and simple which may fairly claim its place among the recognised names in that almost extinct class of drama," the writer goes on to say in the conclusion of his article--"not the least amusing reminiscence will be the ferocious wrath which, on its first appearance, the play provoked among the regular stage-critics, almost to a man. except that mr wilde smoked a cigarette when called on, it is difficult to see why--unless it was because the comedy ran off the beaten track which is just what they are always deprecating." in this last sentence lies the _clou_ of the whole situation. the entire band had been clamouring for years for something fresh, "off the beaten track," and this is how they received it when they got it! verily, the ways of criticism are indeed marvellous, and difficult of comprehension. but the author triumphed over them all and won his laurels despite the forces arrayed against him. his first comedy was a splendid success. it must be conceded that there is nothing new in the plot of "lady windermere's fan." it is an old tale of intrigue which has done duty on the stage over and over again. it has inspired many a play. but as i before observed, it is in its treatment by the accomplished hand that the novelty of drama lies. and here we have an interesting example of how old lamps may be made to look new at the touch of the magician's wand. lord and lady windermere have been married for a couple of years when the action of the play commences. it was a love-match, and the sky of happiness has hitherto been without a cloud. but the cloud at last appears in the guise of a certain mrs erlynne, a somewhat notorious _divorcée_, who has managed to gain admission into society, in a half-acknowledged way, by means of her charms and her cash. the cash is supplied by lord windermere, and is in the nature of hush-money. for mrs erlynne turns out to be no other than lady windermere's mother, supposed to be long dead, and the "cloud" might prove an uncommonly inconvenient one if allowed suddenly to burst upon the unsuspicious _ménage_. so she is kept quiet by the cheques of her son-in-law. but her friends are not backward in enlightening lady windermere as to her husband's frequent visits to mrs erlynne, and one of them, the duchess of berwick, is more outspoken than the others, and succeeds in persuading poor innocent-minded lady windermere that the worst constructions should be placed upon his lordship's conduct. mrs erlynne has managed to induce lord windermere to send her a card for his wife's birthday ball, whereat, lady windermere, when she hears of this from her husband's lips, declares she will insult the guest openly if she arrives. but she does arrive and she is not insulted, although the celebrated fan is grasped ready to strike the blow! the ball passes off quietly enough, without any open scandal. but lady windermere, surprising, as she imagines, her husband in a compromising _tête-à-tête_ with the fascinating intruder, determines in a moment of nervous tension to leave the house, and betake herself to the rooms of lord darlington, who earlier in the evening has offered her his sympathy, and his heart. before she departs, however, she writes her husband a letter informing him of her intentions. this letter she leaves on a bureau where he is sure to find it. it is not he who finds it, however, but mrs erlynne. with the instinct born of a past and vast experience she scents danger, and opens and reads it. then her better feelings and worse heart are suddenly awakened, and she determines, at all risks, to save her daughter. whereupon she follows her to lord darlington's rooms, and, after a long scene between the two women, induces lady windermere to return to her husband before her flight is discovered. but it is too late. lord darlington, with a party of friends including lord windermere, is returning. their voices are heard outside the door. lady windermere hides behind a curtain ready to escape on the first opportunity, while mrs erlynne--when lord windermere's suspicions are aroused at the sight of his wife's fan, and he insists on searching the room--comes forth from the place where she had concealed herself, and boldly takes upon herself the ownership of the fatal _pièce á conviction_. lady windermere is saved, and at the end of the play is reconciled to her husband without uncomfortable explanations, while mrs erlynne marries an elderly adorer, who is brother to the duchess of berwick. such, in brief, is the plot of "lady windermere's fan." every playgoer will at once recognise its situations, and hail its intrigue as an old and well-tried friend; the loving husband and wife, the fascinating adventuress who comes between them and cannot be explained; the tempter who offers substantial consolation to the outraged wife; the compromising fan, or scarf, or glove (_selon les gôuts_) found by the husband in the room of the other man; the convenient curtain closely drawn as if to invite concealment; the hairbreadth escape of the wife leaving the _onus_ of the scandal to fall upon the shoulders of some self-sacrificing friend; the final reconciliation of husband and wife without any infelicitous catechism; are not these things written in the pages of all the plays that--as george meredith so happily puts it--"deal with human nature in the drawing-rooms of civilised men and women." with certain variations they are the mainstay--the french word is _l'armature_--of every comedy of genteel passions and misunderstandings that ever existed. now, how does oscar wilde contrive to clothe this dramatic skeleton with the flesh and blood of real life? how invest the familiar figures with the plausible presentment of new-born interest? simply by the wonderful power of his personality, which dominates all he touches, and rejuvenates the venerable bones of his _dramatis personæ_, compelling them, after the fashion of the "pied piper," to dance to any tune he chooses to call. or, perhaps, "sing" would be a better expression than "dance." for it is in what they say, rather than what they do, that our chief interest in them lies. we do not ask: "what are they going to do next?" that is more or less a forgone conclusion. but what we wait for with alert attention is what they are going to say next. and so we come back to that brilliant dialogue which is, as it should be, the chief feature of the play albeit that play is as well constructed as any could desire, straightforward and convincing. as a critic once wrote of it from the craftsman's point of view: "'lady windermere's fan' as a specimen of true comedy is a head and shoulders above any of its contemporaries. it has nothing in common with farcical comedy, with didactic comedy, or the 'literary' comedy of which we have heard so much of late from disappointed authors, whose principal claim to literature appears to consist in being undramatic. it is a distinguishing note of mr wilde that he has condescended to learn his business, and has written a workmanlike play as well as a good comedy. without that it would be worthless." in corroboration of this statement it is only necessary to note how skilfully, when it comes to the necessity of dramatic action, these scenes are handled. take the one in the second act, where mrs erlynne, more or less, forces her way into lady windermere's ballroom. it is an episode of extreme importance, and how well led up to! lord and lady windermere are on the stage together. _lord windermere._ margaret, i _must_ speak to you. _lady windermere._ will you hold my fan for me, lord darlington? thanks. (_comes down to him._) _lord windermere._ (_crossing to her._) margaret, what you said before dinner was, of course, impossible? _lady windermere._ that woman is not coming here to-night! _lord windermere._ (_r.c._) mrs erlynne is coming here, and if you in any way annoy or wound her, you will bring shame and sorrow on us both. remember that! ah, margaret! only trust me! a wife should trust her husband. _lady windermere._ london is full of women who trust their husbands. one can always recognise them. they look so thoroughly unhappy. i am not going to be one of them. (_moves up._) lord darlington, will you give me back my fan, please? thanks.... a useful thing a fan, isn't it?... i want a friend to-night, lord darlington. i didn't know i would want one soon. _lord darlington._ lady windermere! i knew the time would come some day: but why to-night? _lord windermere._ i _will_ tell her. i must. it would be terrible if there were any scene. margaret.... _parker_ (_announcing_). mrs erlynne. (_lord windermere starts. mrs erlynne enters, very beautifully dressed and very dignified. lady windermere clutches at her fan, then lets it drop on the floor. she bows coldly to mrs erlynne, who bows to her sweetly in turn, and sails into the room._) if this is not effective stagecraft, i do not know what is. and the dramatist strikes a deeper, and more tragic, note in the scene later on (in the same act) where mrs erlynne discovers the letter of farewell that lady windermere had written to her husband. (_parker enters, and crosses towards the ballroom, r. enter mrs erlynne._) _mrs erlynne._ is lady windermere in the ballroom? _parker._ her ladyship has just gone out. _mrs erlynne._ gone out? she's not on the terrace? _parker._ no, madam. her ladyship has just gone out of the house. _mrs erlynne_ (_starts and looks at the servant with a puzzled expression on her face_). out of the house? _parker._ yes, madam--her ladyship told me she had left a letter for his lordship on the table. _mrs erlynne._ a letter for lord windermere? _parker._ yes, madam. _mrs erlynne._ thank you. (_exit parker. the music in the ballroom stops._) gone out of her house! a letter addressed to her husband! (_goes over to bureau and looks at letter. takes it up and lays it down again with a shudder of fear._) no, no! it would be impossible! life doesn't repeat its tragedies like that! oh, why does this horrible fancy come across me? why do i remember now the one moment of my life i most wish to forget? does life repeat its tragedies? (_tears letter open and reads it, then sinks down into a chair with a gesture of anguish._) oh, how terrible! the same words that twenty years ago i wrote to her father! and how bitterly i have been punished for it! no; my punishment, my real punishment is to-night, is now! i have quoted these two episodes from the second act to demonstrate how equal was the playwright to the exigencies of his art. but it is in the third act, laid in lord darlington's rooms, that he reaches the level of high dramatic skill. first, in the scene between the mother and daughter, written with extraordinary power and pathos, and later on, when each of the women are hidden, the "man's scene" which ranks with the famous club scene in lord lytton's "money." the _blasé_ and genial tone of these men of the world is admirably caught. their conversation sparkles with wit and wisdom--of the world _bien entendu_. but it is in mrs erlynne's appeal to her daughter, with all its tragic intent that the author surpasses himself. just read it over. it is a masterpiece of restrained emotion. _mrs erlynne._ (_starts with a gesture of pain. then restrains herself, and comes over to where lady windermere is sitting. as she speaks, she stretches out her hands towards her, but does not dare to touch her._) believe what you choose about me. i am not without a moment's sorrow. but don't spoil your beautiful young life on my account. you don't know what may be in store for you, unless you leave this house at once. you don't know what it is to fall into the pit, to be despised, mocked, abandoned, sneered at--to be an outcast! to find the door shut against one, to have to creep in by hideous byways, afraid every moment lest the mask should be stripped from one's face, and all the while to hear the laughter of the world, a thing more tragic than all the tears the world has ever shed. you don't know what it is. one pays for one's sin, and then one pays again, and all one's life one pays. you must never know that. as for me, if suffering be an expiation, then at this moment i have expiated all my faults, whatever they have been; for to-night you have made a heart in one who had it not, made it and broken it. but let that pass. i may have wrecked my own life, but i will not let you wreck yours. you--why you are a mere girl, you would be lost. you haven't got the kind of brains that enables a woman to get back. you have neither the wit nor the courage. you couldn't stand dishonour. no! go back, lady windermere, to the husband who loves you, whom you love. you have a child, lady windermere. go back to that child who even now, in pain or in joy, may be calling to you. (_lady windermere rises._) god gave you that child. he will require from you that you make his life fine, that you watch over him. what answer will you make to god, if his life is ruined through you? back to your house, lady windermere--your husband loves you. he has never swerved for a moment from the love he bears you. but even if he had a thousand loves, you must stay with your child. if he was harsh to you, you must stay with your child. if he ill-treated you, you must stay with your child. if he abandoned you your place is with your child. (_lady windermere bursts into tears and buries her face in her hands._) (_rushing to her_). lady windermere! _lady windermere_ (_holding out her hands to her, helplessly, as a child might do_). take me home. take me home. few people who witnessed that situation could have done so without being deeply moved. it is oscar wilde the poet who speaks, not to the brain but to the heart. then turn from the shadow of that scene to the shimmer of the one that follows immediately, full of smartness and _jeu d'esprit_. the sprightly and irresponsible chatter of men of the world. _dumby._ awfully commercial, women nowadays. our grandmothers threw their caps over the mill, of course, but, by jove, their granddaughters only throw their caps over mills that can raise the wind for them. _lord augustus._ you want to make her out a wicked woman. she is not! _cecil graham._ oh! wicked women bother one. good women bore one. that is the only difference between them. * * * * * _dumby._ in this world there are only two tragedies. one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. the last is much the worst, the last is a real tragedy. * * * * * _cecil graham._ what is a cynic? _lord darlington._ a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. _cecil graham._ and a sentimentalist, my dear darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the market price of any single thing. * * * * * _dumby._ experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. * * * * * _lord windermere._ what is the difference between scandal and gossip? _cecil graham._ oh! gossip is charming! history is merely gossip. but scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. now i never moralise. a man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain. there is nothing in the whole world so unbecoming to a woman as a nonconformist conscience. and most women know it, i'm glad to say. and so we take our leave of "lady windermere's fan." "a woman of no importance" (_first produced at the haymarket theatre by mr beerbohm tree on th april _) perhaps of all oscar wilde's plays "the woman of no importance" provoked the most discussion at the time of its production. it was his second venture in the histrionic field, and people expected much. they felt that he should now be finding his feet, that whatever shortcomings, from the point of view of stagecraft, there may have been in "lady windermere's fan," should now be made good. his first comedy was a well-constructed play of plot and incidents. but now, expectation rose high, and required of the author something better, something greater, something more considerable than what he had achieved before. how far were these expectations realised? how did the first-night audience of public, and critics, receive the new play? it must be confessed it was with a feeling akin to disappointment. people at first were undeniably disconcerted. they had come prepared to witness drama, possibly of stirring interest, and what they heard was dialogue of brilliant quality, indeed, but which, up to a certain point, had little to do in forwarding the action of the piece. it was a surprise, and, to most of them, a not altogether grateful one. and it came in the first act. here the author had actually been bold enough to defy popular traditions, and to place his characters seated in a semicircle uttering epigram after epigram, and paradox upon paradox, without any regard to whatever plot there might be; for it is not until the curtain is about to fall that we get an indication, for the first time, that something is going to happen in the next act. here was an upset indeed! a subversion of all preconceived ideas as to how a play should begin! "words! words!" they muttered captiously, although the words were as the pearls and diamonds that fell from the mouth of the maiden in the fairy tale. and so on, through scene after scene, until we come to the unexpected meeting of lord illingworth with the woman he had, long ago, betrayed and abandoned. then quickly follows the pathetic interview between mother and son, culminating in mrs arbuthnot's confession that the man who would befriend her son is no other than his own father, to whom he should owe nothing, save the disgrace of his birth, leading up to the _scene-à-faire_ in the final act, where lord illingworth's offer to make reparation to the woman he has wronged is acknowledged by a blow across the face. here at last was drama, treated in the right spirit, and of an emotional value that cannot be too highly recognised. but the shock of the earlier acts had been a severe one, and it took all the intense human interest of the last two acts to atone for the outraged conventions of the two first. it speaks volumes of praise for the playwright's powers that he was enabled to carry his work to a successful issue, and secure for it a long run. and not only that, but to stand the critical test of revival. for, at the moment of writing these words, mr tree has reproduced "the woman of no importance" at his majesty's theatre, which is crowded, night after night, with audiences eager to bring a posthumous tribute to the genius of the author. _apropos_ of the first act where all the _dramatis personæ_ are seated in a semicircle engaged only in conversation, and which was likened, on the occasion of the first production of the play, by an eminent critic to "christy minstrelism crystallised," it may not be uninteresting to note, _en passant_, a similar arrangement of characters in a play of mr bernard shaw's recently performed at the court theatre. this is called "don juan in hell"--the dream from "man and superman"--mercifully omitted when that play was produced. it had nothing whatever to do with the comedy in which it was included, but is a niagara of ideas, clumsily put together, and is more or less an exposition of the shawian philosophy. "hear the result"--i quote from the critique in one of our leading journals--"the curtain rose at half-past two on a darkened stage draped in black. enter, in turn, don juan, dona ana de ulloa, the statue of her father, and the devil. they sat down, and for an hour and a half delivered those opinions of mr shaw with which we are all so terribly familiar. every now and then there was a laugh, as, for example, when don juan said: 'wherever ladies are is hell,' or, again, when he said: 'have you ever had servants who were not devils?' it was all supposed to be very funny and very naughty, of course, especially when the statue said to don juan: 'if you dwelt in heaven, as i do, you would realise your advantages.' and so on, and so on, _ad nauseum_." see now, how the parallel scene of "only talk" as written by oscar wilde was noticed upon its revival the other day. i quote from another journal. "let all that can be urged against this play be granted. none the less is it worth watching the _dramatis personæ_ do nothing, so long as the mind may be tickled by this unscrupulous, fastidious wit. and, even if all the characters speak in the same accents of paradox, their moods, the essentials of them, are differentiated with a brilliancy of expression which condones the lack of dramatic movement. these things, alone, evoke my gratitude to mr tree for reviving so interesting and individual a comedy.... for even those utterances which seem to be mere phraseological inversions are fraught with much wisdom, and the major part of the dialogue reflects the mind of a subtle and daring social observer." and it was this "mind," keen of observation, and equipped with no ordinary wit, that dominates an audience and compels them to sit, as it were, spellbound before the demonstration of the power of its unique personality. i am informed that, to-day, in germany, the only two modern english dramatists who are listened to are oscar wilde and bernard shaw--the poet and the proser. truly may it be remarked: "_les extrêmes se touchent_." the story of "the woman of no importance" is quickly told. lord illingworth, a cynical _roué_, has, in his youth, betrayed a too trusting young lady, who, in consequence, gave birth to a son, by her named gerald. when the play begins this young fellow is nineteen years old, and has, most hopelessly it would seem, fallen in love with an american heiress whose name is hester worsley. he is living with his mother, called mrs arbuthnot, at a quiet country village, where also resides lady hunstanton, who acts as hostess to all the smart society folk who appear upon the scene, and among whom lord illingworth is the most prominent. his lordship, ignorant of their real relationship, has taken a fancy to gerald, and offers him a private secretaryship. whereupon his future prospects brighten up considerably. but when mrs arbuthnot discovers that lord illingworth is no other than the man who had wronged her, she does all in her power to persuade her (and his) son to refuse the offer, and, driven to extremity in her distress, tells gerald her own history, as that of another woman. her efforts are futile. the boy only says that the woman must have been as bad as the man, and that, as far as he can see, lord illingworth is now a very good fellow, and so he means to stick to him. consequently, when his lordship insists upon gerald keeping to the bargain, and reminds his mother that the boy will be her "judge as well as her son," should the truth of her past be brought to light, mrs arbuthnot is induced to hold it still secret. unfortunately for this secret, mrs allonby, one of lady hunstanton's guests, has goaded lord illingworth into promising to kiss miss hester worsley. this he does, much to the disgust of the fair puritan, who loudly announces that she has been insulted. gerald's eyes are suddenly opened to lord illingworth's turpitude, and with the unbridled passion of the headstrong lover cries out that he will kill him! which, apparently, he would have done, had not mrs arbuthnot stepped forward, and to everybody's surprise intervened with the dramatic: "no--he is your father!" _tableau._ in the final act hester worsley, now that she knows mrs arbuthnot, and is determined in spite of all to marry gerald, solves every difficulty by carrying off the mother and son to her home in the new world, where we may presume the young couple marry, and live happily ever afterwards. before her departure from england, however, mrs arbuthnot, maddened by the cynical offer of tardy reparation by marriage on the part of lord illingworth, strikes him across the face with a glove, and at the end of the play alludes to him as "a man of no importance"; which balances his earlier description of her as "a woman of no importance." as i have pointed out elsewhere, many of the epigrams in this play were lifted bodily from "the picture of dorian gray," but after these are eliminated there remain enough to establish the reputation of any dramatist as a wit and epigrammatist of the very first rank. much would be forgiven for one definition alone, that of the foxhunter--"the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable." and sheridan himself might envy the pronouncement that "the youth of america is its oldest tradition." but apart from brilliant repartee and amusing paradox, the piece is full of passages of rare beauty and moments of touching pathos. hester worsley's speech anent society, which she describes as being "like a leper in purple," "a dead thing smeared with gold," is as finely written a piece of declamation as any actress could desire, apart from its high literary qualities; and mrs arbuthnot's confession to her boy and her appeal to him for mercy are conceived in a spirit of delicacy and reticence that only the highest art can attain. her pathetic peroration: "child of my shame, be still the child of my shame," touches the deepest chords of human sorrow and anguish. with a masterly knowledge of what the theatre requires, he gives us hester at the beginning of the play inveighing against any departure from the moral code and quoting the old testament anent the sins of the father being visited on the children. "it is god's law," she ends up--"it is god's terrible law." later, when she begs mrs arbuthnot to come away to other climes, "where there are green valleys and fresh waters" and the poor woman for whom the world is shrivelled to a palm's breadth confronts her with her own pronouncement, how beautifully introduced is her recantation: "don't say that, god's law is only love." it has been objected to hester that she is a prig, but no girl could be a prig who could utter a sentiment like that. she is a fine specimen of the girlhood of the late nineteenth century, travelled, cultured, frank, and fearless, and above all pure. in the artificial atmosphere of hunstanton, where the guests are all mere worldlings, her purity and goodness stand out in high relief. if there is a prig it is gerald who, whether he be listening to lord illingworth's worldly teaching as to "a well-tied tie being the first serious step in life," or hearing the story of his mother's sin, is a singularly uninteresting and commonplace young man. as to the other characters they are all admirable sketches of society folk. lady caroline pontefract tyrannising over her husband and making that gay old gentleman put on his goloshes and muffler is a delightful type of those old-fashioned _grandes dames_ who have the peerage at their fingers' ends. nothing could be more delightfully characteristic than her opining, when hester tells her that some of the states of america are as big as france and england put together, that they must find it very draughty. lady hunstanton too, who prattles away about everybody and everything and gets mixed up in all her statements, as for instance, when referring to somebody as a clergyman who wanted to be a lunatic, she is uncertain if it was not a lunatic who wanted to be a clergyman, but who at anyrate wore straws in his hair or something equally odd, is drawn with a fidelity to nature that shows what a really great student of character oscar wilde was. no less admirable a portrayal is that of the worldly archdeacon whose wife is almost blind, quite deaf and a confirmed invalid, yet, nevertheless, is quite happy, for though she can no longer hear his sermons she reads them at home. he it is whom lord illingworth shocks so profoundly, first by his assertion that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future, and finally by the flippant remark that the secret of life is to be always on the lookout for temptations, which are becoming so exceedingly scarce that he sometimes passes a whole day without coming across one. as literature alone, the play deserves to live, and will live, as a _piece de théâtre_. it has met with more success than any play of the first class within the last twenty years. the reason for that is not far to seek--it is essentially human, and the woman's interest--the keynote of the story--appeals to man and woman equally. i have seen rough lancashire audiences, bucolic boors in small country towns, and dour hard-headed scotsmen, sit spellbound as the story of the woman's sin and her repentance was unfolded before them. a play that can do that is imperishable, and it is no disparagement to the other brilliant dramatic works of the author that, as a popular play which will ever find favour with audiences of every class and kind, on account of its human interest and its pathos, "a woman of no importance" is certain of immortality. "the ideal husband" (_first produced at the haymarket theatre, under the management of mr lewis waller and mr h. h. morell on rd january _) this, the third of oscar wilde's plays in their order of production, is undoubtedly the most dramatic. the action is rapid, the interest of the story sustained to the very end, and the dialogue always to the point. each of the principal characters concerned in the carrying out of the plot is a distinct individualised type. what each one says or does is entirely in keeping with his, or her, personality. and that personality is in each case a well-marked and skilfully drawn one. the four _personæ_ who are engaged in conducting the intrigue of this comedy are sir robert chiltern, lady chiltern (his wife), lord goring, and mrs cheveley. a charming _ingénue_ in the person of miss mabel chiltern (sir robert's sister) is also instrumental in bringing the love-interest to a happy hymeneal issue. the author of their being has handed down to us, in his own inimitable way, his conception of them. here it is: "_sir robert chiltern._ a man of forty, but looking somewhat younger. clean-shaven, with finely-cut features, dark-haired and dark-eyed. a personality of mark. not popular--few personalities are. but intensely admired by the few, and deeply respected of the many. the note of his manner is that of perfect distinction, with a slight touch of pride. one feels that he is conscious of the success he has made in life. a nervous temperament, with a tired look. the firmly-chiselled mouth and chin contrast strikingly with the romantic expression in the deep-set eyes. the variance is suggestive of an almost complete separation of passion and intellect, as though thought and emotion were each isolated in its own sphere through some violence of will-power. there is no nervousness in the nostrils, and in the pale, thin, pointed hands. it would be inaccurate to call him picturesque. picturesqueness cannot survive the house of commons. but vandyck would have liked to paint his head." of _lady chiltern_ we do not get more than that she is "a woman of grave greek beauty about twenty-seven years of age." this is _lord goring_: "thirty-four, but always says he is younger. a well-bred expressionless face. he is clever, but would not like to be thought so. a flawless dandy, he would be annoyed if he were considered romantic. he plays with life, and is on perfectly good terms with the world. he is fond of being misunderstood. it gives him a post of vantage." _mrs cheveley_, the _âme damée_ of the plot, is thus portrayed: "tall, and rather slight. lips very thin and highly coloured, a line of scarlet on a pallid face. venetian red hair, aquiline nose, a long throat. rouge accentuates the natural paleness of her complexion. grey-green eyes that move restlessly. she is in heliotrope, with diamonds. she looks rather like an orchid, and makes great demands on one's curiosity. in all her movements she is extremely graceful. a work of art on the whole, but showing the influence of too many schools." in these delicious word-pictures we gain for once an idea as to how the author considered his characters, both physically and psychically. it is interesting to note that of the four published plays this is the only one in which such intimate directions are to be found. was the author, for once in a way, allowing himself a measure of poetic licence, and giving free but eminently unpractical play to his imagination? who may tell? at anyrate, however high he may have soared in his requirements of the performers, he comes down steadily to earth in his management of the plot, which is acted out on these lines. in the first act we find lady chiltern, whose husband is under-secretary for foreign affairs, giving a party at her house in grosvenor square. here, among other fashionable folk who flit across the scene, we are introduced to lord goring, between whom and mabel chiltern there is evidently a more or less serious flirtation going on, especially on the young lady's side. shortly after his first entrance lord goring "saunters over to mabel chiltern." _mabel chiltern._ you are very late! _lord goring._ have you missed me? _mabel chiltern._ awfully! _lord goring._ then i am sorry i did not stay away longer. i like being missed. _mabel chiltern._ how very selfish of you. _lord goring._ i am very selfish. _mabel chiltern._ you are always telling me of your bad qualities, lord goring. _lord goring._ i have only told you half of them as yet, miss mabel.... _mabel chiltern._ well, i delight in your bad qualities. i wouldn't have you part with one of them. _lord goring._ how very nice of you! but then you are always nice. by the way, i want to ask you a question, miss mabel. who brought mrs cheveley here? that woman in heliotrope who has just gone out of the room with your brother? _mabel chiltern._ oh, i think lady markby brought her. why do you ask? _lord goring._ i hadn't seen her for years, that is all. but lord goring did not say, of course, all he knew about the brilliant mrs cheveley, who is very _répondue_ in the diplomatic world at vienna, and has, in her day, been the heroine of much pretty gossip. the object of her present visit to london is to obtain an introduction to sir robert chiltern, and it is when they first meet that the dramatic interest of the story commences. the lady, it appears, has invested largely, too largely, in a great political and financial scheme called the argentine canal company, acting on the advice of a certain baron arnheim, now dead, who was also a friend of sir robert chiltern's. when mrs cheveley informs sir robert what her position is, he denounces the scheme as "a commonplace stock exchange swindle." _sir robert chiltern._ believe me, mrs cheveley, it is a swindle.... i sent out a special commission to inquire into the matter privately and they report that the works are hardly begun, and as for the money already subscribed, no one seems to know what has become of it. a little later on he says "the success of the canal depends of course on the attitude of england, and i am going to lay the report of the commissioners before the house of commons." _mrs cheveley._ that you must not do. in your own interests, sir robert, to say nothing of mine, you must not do that. _sir robert chiltern._ (_looking at her in wonder._) in my own interests? my dear mrs cheveley, what do you mean? (_sits down beside her._) _mrs cheveley._ sir robert, i will be quite frank with you. i want you to withdraw the report that you had intended to lay before the house, on the ground that you have reason to believe that the commissioners had been prejudiced or misinformed or something.... will you do that for me? (_naturally sir robert is indignant at the proposition, and proposes to call the lady's carriage for her._) _sir robert chiltern._ you have lived so long abroad, mrs cheveley, that you seem to be unable to realise that you are talking to an english gentleman. _mrs cheveley._ (_detains him by touching his arm with her fan, and keeping it there while she is talking._) i realise that i am talking to a man who laid the foundation of his fortune by selling to a stock exchange speculator a cabinet secret. this is unfortunately only too true. for, years ago, when secretary to lord radley, "a great important minister," sir robert has written to baron arnheim a letter telling the baron to buy suez canal shares--a letter written three days before the government announced its own purchase, and which letter also is in mrs cheveley's possession! here is a fine situation with a vengeance! by threatening to publish the scandal and the proofs of it in some leading newspaper, mrs cheveley induces the unfortunate sir robert to consent to withdraw the report, and state in the house that he believes there are possibilities in the scheme. in return for which she will give him back the compromising letter. so far, so good. she has won her cause. but, true woman as she is, she cannot conceal her triumph from lady chiltern as she is leaving the party. _lady chiltern._ why did you wish to meet my husband, mrs cheveley? _mrs cheveley._ oh, i will tell you. i wanted to interest him in this argentine canal scheme, of which i daresay you have heard. and i found him most susceptible--susceptible to reason,--i mean. a rare thing in a man. i converted him in ten minutes. he is going to make a speech in the house to-morrow night, in favour of the idea. we must go to the ladies' gallery and hear him. it will be a great occasion. and so she goes gaily away, leaving her hostess perplexed and troubled. but in weaving her web round the hapless husband, she had not reckoned on the influence of the wife to disentangle it, and set the victim free. yet, in a finely-conceived, and equally well-written, scene this is what actually happened. the company have all departed and they are alone together. _lady chiltern._ robert, it is not true, is it? you are not going to lend your support to this argentine speculation? you couldn't. _sir robert chiltern._ (_starting._) who told you i intended to do so? _lady chiltern._ that woman who has just gone out.... robert, i know this woman. you don't. we were at school together.... she was sent away for being a thief. why do you let her influence you? then after much painful probing as to why he has so suddenly changed his attitude towards the scheme, she elicits the reason. _sir robert chiltern._ but if i told you---- _lady chiltern._ what? _sir robert chiltern._ that it was necessary, vitally necessary. _lady chiltern._ it can never be necessary to do what is not honourable.... robert, tell me why you are going to do this dishonourable thing? _sir robert chiltern._ gertrude, you have no right to use that word. i told you it was a question of rational compromise. it is no more than that. but lady chiltern is not to be so easily put off as that. her suspicions are aroused. she says she knows that there are "men with horrible secrets in their lives--men who had done some shameful thing, and who, in some critical moment, have to pay for it, by doing some other act of shame." she asks him boldly, is he one of these? then, driven to bay, he tells her the one lie of his life. _sir robert chiltern._ gertrude, there is nothing in my past life that you might not know. she is satisfied. but he must write a letter to mrs cheveley, taking back any promise he may have given her, and that letter must be written at once. he tries to gain time, offers to go and see mrs cheveley to-morrow; it is too late to-night. but lady chiltern is inexorable, and so sir robert yields, and the missive is despatched to claridge's hotel. then, seized with a sudden terror of what the consequences may be, he turns, with nerves all a-quiver, to his wife, pleadingly-- _sir robert chiltern._ o, love me always, gertrude, love me always. _lady chiltern._ i will love you always, because you will always be worthy of love. we needs must love the highest when we see it! (_kisses him, rises and goes out._) and the curtain falls upon this intensely emotional situation. if i may seem to have quoted too freely from the dialogue, it is in part to refute the charge, so often urged by the critics, that oscar wilde's "talk is often an end in itself, it has no vital connection with the particular play of which it forms a part, it might as well be put into the mouth of one character as another...." now in the first act of "the ideal husband," when the action of the piece is being carried on at high pressure, there is not a word of the dialogue that is not pertinent, no sentence that is not significant. whatever of wit the author may have allowed himself to indulge in springs spontaneously from the woof of the story, it is not, as was suggested in his earlier plays, "a mere parasitic growth attached to it," in which this particular comedy under consideration marks an immense advance on the methods of "the woman of no importance." here is strenuous drama, treated strenuously, and dealing with the whole gamut of human emotions. the playwright, as he progresses in his art, does not here permit himself to endanger the interest of the plot by any adventitious pleasantries on the part of the characters. in the second act we are again in grosvenor square, this time in a morning-room, where sir robert chiltern and lord goring are discussing the awkward state of affairs. to lord goring the action of sir robert appears inexcusable. _lord goring._ robert, how could you have sold yourself for money? _sir robert chiltern._ (_excitedly._) i did not sell myself for money. i bought success at a great price. that is all. such was his point of view. lord goring's now is that he should have told his wife. but sir robert assures him that such a confession to such a woman would mean a lifelong separation. she must remain in ignorance. but now the vital question is--how is he to defend himself against mrs cheveley? lord goring answers that he must fight her. _sir robert chiltern._ but how? _lord goring._ i can't tell you how at present. i have not the smallest idea. but everyone has some weak point. there is some flaw in each one of us. the conversation is interrupted by the entrance of lady chiltern. sir robert goes out and leaves lord goring and his wife together. and there follows a scene, brief, but as fine as any in the play, in which lord goring endeavours to prepare lady chiltern very skilfully for the blow that may possibly fall upon her. he deals in generalities: "i think that in practical life there is something about success that is a little unscrupulous, something about ambition that is unscrupulous always." and again: "in every nature there are elements of weakness, or worse than weakness. supposing, for instance, that--that any public man, my father or lord merton, or robert, say, had, years ago, written some foolish letter to someone...." _lady chiltern._ what do you mean by a foolish letter? _lord goring._ a letter gravely compromising one's position. i am only putting an imaginary case. _lady chiltern._ robert is as incapable of doing a foolish thing, as he is of doing a wrong thing. she is still unshaken in the belief of her husband's rectitude. and lord goring departs sorrowing, but not before he has assured her of his friendship that would serve her in any crisis. _lord goring._ ... and if you are ever in trouble, lady chiltern, trust me absolutely, and i will help you in every way i can. if you ever want me ... come at once to me. then on the scene arrives mrs cheveley, accompanied by lady markby (for whose amusing _bavardage_ i wish i could find space) evidently to revenge herself somehow for her rebuff, ostensibly to inquire after a "diamond snake-brooch with a ruby," which she has lost, probably at lady chiltern's. now the audience knows all about this "brooch-bracelet," for has not lord goring found it on the sofa last night, when flirting with mabel chiltern, and recognising it as an old and somewhat ominous friend, quietly put it in his pocket, at the same time enjoining mabel to say nothing about the incident. so, of course, the jewel has not been found in grosvenor square. but when the two women are left alone, mrs cheveley discovers that it was lady chiltern who dictated sir robert's letter to her. a bitter passage of arms occurs between them, when lady chiltern discusses her adversary, who boasts herself the ally of her husband. _lady chiltern._ how dare you class my husband with yourself?... leave my house. you are unfit to enter it. (_sir robert enters from behind. he hears his wife's last words, and sees to whom they are addressed. he grows deadly pale._) _mrs cheveley._ your house! a house bought with the price of dishonour. a house everything in which has been paid for by fraud. (_turns round and sees sir robert chiltern._) ask him what the origin of his fortune is! get him to tell you how he sold to a stockbroker a cabinet secret. learn from him to what you owe your position. _lady chiltern._ it is not true! robert! it is not true! but sir robert cannot deny the accusation, and mrs cheveley departs, the winner of the contest. the act concludes with a terrible denunciation on the part of sir robert of his wife, whom he blindly accuses of having wrecked his life, by not allowing him to accept the comfortable offer made by mrs cheveley of absolute security from all future knowledge of the sin he had committed in his youth. _sir robert chiltern._ i could have killed it for ever, sent it back into its tomb, destroyed its record, burned the one witness against me. you prevented me.... let women make no more ideals of men! let them not put them on altars and bow before them, or they may ruin other lives as completely as you--you whom i have so wildly loved--have ruined mine! here is the sincere note of tragedy! surely, oscar wilde is among the dramatists! the action of the third act takes place in the library of lord goring's house. it is inspired in the very best spirit of intrigue. lady chiltern, mindful of lord goring's friendship, has, in the first bewilderment of her discovery, written a note to him,--"i want you. i trust you. i am coming to you. gertrude." lord goring is about to make preparations to receive her, when his father, lord caversham, most inconveniently looks in to pay him a visit, the object of which is to discuss his son's matrimonial prospects. the visit, therefore, promises to be a lengthy one, and lord goring proposes they should adjourn to the smoking-room, advising his servant, phipps, at the same time that he is expecting a lady to see him on particular business, and who is to be shown, on her arrival, into the drawing-room. a lady does arrive, only she is not lady chiltern, but mrs cheveley, who has not announced her advent in any way. surprised to hear that lord goring is expecting a lady, and while phipps is lighting the candles in the drawing-room, she occupies her spare moments in running through the letters on the writing-table, and comes across lady chiltern's note. here, indeed, is her opportunity. she is just about to purloin it, when phipps returns, and she slips it under a silver-cased blotting-book that is lying on the table. she is, perforce, obliged to go into the drawing-room, from which presently she emerges, and creeps stealthily towards the writing-table. but suddenly voices are heard from the smoking-room, and she is constrained to return to her hiding-place. lord caversham and his son re-enter and lord goring puts his father's cloak on for him, and with much relief sees him depart. but a shock is in store for him, for no sooner has lord caversham vanished, than no less a personage than sir robert chiltern appears. in vain does lord goring try to get rid of his most unwelcome visitor. sir robert has come to talk over his trouble, and means to stay. lady chiltern must on no account be admitted. so he says to phipps: _lord goring._ when that lady calls, tell her that i am not expected home this evening. tell her that i have been suddenly called out of town. you understand? _phipps._ the lady is in that room, my lord. you told me to show her into that room, my lord. lord goring realises that things are getting a little uncomfortable, and again tries to send sir robert away. but sir robert pleads for five minutes more. he is on his way to the house of commons. "the debate on the argentine canal is to begin at eleven." as he makes this announcement a chair is heard to fall in the drawing-room. he suspects a listener, and, despite lord goring's word of honour to the contrary, determines to see for himself, and goes into the room, leaving lord goring in a fearful state of mind. he soon returns, however, "with a look of scorn on his face." _sir robert chiltern._ what explanation have you to give me for the presence of that woman here? _lord goring._ robert, i swear to you on my honour that that lady is stainless and guiltless of all offence towards you. _sir robert chiltern._ she is a vile, an infamous thing! after a few more speeches, in which the _malentendu_ is well kept up, sir robert goes out, and lord goring rushes to the drawing-room to meet--mrs cheveley. and now this woman is going to have another duel, but this time with an enemy who is proof against her attacks. the whole of this scene is imagined and written in a masterly manner. after a little airy sparring, lord goring opens the match. _lord goring._ you have come here to sell me robert chiltern's letter, haven't you? _mrs cheveley._ to offer it you on conditions. how did you guess that? _lord goring._ because you haven't mentioned the subject. have you got it with you? _mrs cheveley._ (_sitting down._) oh, no! a well-made dress has no pockets. _lord goring._ what is your price for it? then, mrs cheveley tells him that the price is--herself. she is tired of living abroad, and wants to come to london and have a salon. she vows to him that he is the only person she has ever cared for, and that on the morning of the day he marries her she will give him sir robert's letter. naturally he refuses her offer. naturally she is furious. but she still possesses the incriminating document and hurls her venomous words at his head. _mrs chiltern._ for the privilege of being your wife i was ready to surrender a great prize, the climax of my diplomatic career. you decline. very well. if sir robert doesn't uphold my argentine scheme, i expose him. _voilà tout!_ but he cares not for her threats. he hasn't done with her yet, for he has got in his possession the diamond snake-brooch with a ruby! this scene is most skilfully managed. quite innocently he offers to return it to her--he had found it accidentally last night. and then in a moment he clasps it on her arm. _mrs cheveley._ i never knew it could be worn as a bracelet ... it looks very well on me as a bracelet, doesn't it? _lord goring._ yes, much better than when i saw it last. _mrs cheveley._ when did you see it last? _lord goring._ (_calmly._) oh! ten years ago, on lady berkshire, from whom you stole it. now, he has her in his power. the bracelet cannot be unclasped unless she knows the secret of the spring, and she is at his mercy, a convicted thief. he moves towards the bell to summon his servant to fetch the police. "to-morrow the berkshires will prosecute you." what is she to do? she will do anything in the world he wants. _lord goring._ give me robert chiltern's letter. _mrs cheveley._ i have not got it with me. i will give it you to-morrow. _lord goring._ you know you are lying. give it me at once. (_mrs cheveley pulls the letter out and hands it to him. she is horribly pale._) this is it? _mrs cheveley._ (_in a hoarse voice._) yes. whereupon he burns it over the lamp. so letter number one is got out of the way. but there is letter number two: lady chiltern's to lord goring. the accomplished thief sees it just showing from under the blotting-book; asks lord goring for a glass of water, and while his back is turned steals it. so, though she has lost the day on one count she has gained it on another. with a bitter note of triumph in her voice she tells lord goring that she is going to send lady chiltern's "love-letter" to him to sir robert. he tries to wrest it from her, but she is too quick for him, and rings the electric bell. phipps appears, and she is safe. _mrs cheveley._ (_after a pause._) lord goring merely rang that you should show me out. good-night, lord goring. and on this fine situation the curtain falls. space does not permit me more than to indicate how, in the fourth and last act, sir robert chiltern has roundly denounced the argentine canal scheme in the house of commons, and with it the whole system of modern political finance. how lady chiltern's letter to lord goring does reach her husband, and is by him supposed to be addressed to him. how lady chiltern undeceives him, and confesses the truth. how lord goring becomes engaged to mabel, and sir robert chiltern accepts, after some hesitation, a vacant seat in the cabinet, and peace is restored all round. these episodes, cleverly and naturally handled, bring "the ideal husband" to a satisfactory conclusion. it is certainly the most dramatic of all oscar wilde's comedies, and could well bear revival. "the importance of being earnest" a deliciously airily irresponsible comedy. such is the "the importance of being earnest," the most personally characteristic expression of wilde's art, and the last of the dramatic productions written under his own name. the play bubbles over with mirth and fun. it is one unbroken series of laughable situations and amusing surprises. the dialogue has all the sparkle of bubbles from a gushing spring, and is brimful of quaint conceits and diverting paradoxes. even the genius of w. s. gilbert in the fantastic line pales before the irresponsible frolicsomeness of the irishman's wit. his fancy disports itself in an atmosphere of epigrams like a young colt in a meadow. never since the days of sheridan has anything been written to equal the brilliancy of this trifle for serious people. no one could fail to be amused by its delicate persiflage, its youthfulness and its utter irresponsibility. were one to take the works of gyp, gilbert, henri lavedan and sheridan and roll them into one, one would not even then obtain the essence of sparkling comedy that animates the play. it is a trifle, but how clever, how artistically perfect a trifle. when it was produced at the st james's, in february , one continuous ripple of laughter shook the audience, even as a field of standing corn is swayed by a passing breeze. the reading of the play alone makes one feel frivolous, and when the characters stood before one, suiting the action to the word and the word to the action, the effect was absolutely irresistible and even the gravest and most slow-witted were moved to rollicking hilarity. one critic summed it up by saying that "its title was a pun, its story a conundrum, its characters lunatics, its dialogue a 'galimatias,' and its termination a 'sell.' questioned as to its merits, wilde was credited with saying that "the first act was ingenious, the second beautiful, the third abominably clever." it was most beautifully staged by mr george alexander, and i can see still the charming picture presented by miss millard in the delightful garden scene as she watered her rose bushes with a water-can filled with silver sand. the acting, too, left nothing to be desired and altogether it was a performance to linger in one's memory in the years to come. the ernest of the punning title is an imaginary brother, very wicked and gay, invented by john worthing, j.p., to account to his ward (cecily cardew) for his frequent visits to london. john worthing, it may be mentioned, is a foundling who was discovered when a baby in the cloak-room at a railway station inside a black bag stamped with the initials of the absent-minded governess who had inadvertently placed him in it instead of the manuscript of a three-volume novel. now, worthing has a friend, a gay young dog, named alexander moncrieffe who likewise has invented a fictitious personage, a sick friend, visits to whom he makes serve as the reason of his absences from home. he has given this imaginary friend the name of bunbury, and designates his little expeditions as "bunburying." moncrieffe lives in town, and is more or less the model worthing has chosen when describing his imaginary brother. worthing's ward is a romantic girl who has fallen in love with her guardian's brother from his descriptions of him. she is especially enamoured of his name, ernest, for like old mr shandy she has quite pronounced views and opinions about names. now, the reason of worthing's constant visits to town is to see a young lady yclept gwendolen fairfax, a cousin of moncrieffe's, to whom he proposes and is accepted, but, for some unexplained reason, for his periodical visits to town he adopts the name of ernest, so that gwendolen, who, like cecily, has distinctive ideas about names, only knows him by that name. so it will be seen that we have already two ernests in the field--the imaginary brother whose moral delinquencies are such a cause of worry to cecily's guardian, and the guardian himself masquerading as ernest worthing. a pretty combination for complications to start with, but the author strews ernest about with a prodigality that excites our admiration, and he gives us a third ernest in the person of alexander moncrieffe, who, learning that his friend is left alone at home, and that she is extremely beautiful, determines to go down and make love to her. in order to gain admittance to the house, he passes himself off as ernest worthing, the imaginary naughty brother, and is warmly welcomed by cecily. in ten minutes he has wooed and won her, and the happy pair disappear into the house just before john worthing arrives on the scene. now that he has proposed and been accepted there is no longer any necessity for inventing an excuse for his absences from home, and in order to be rid of what might prove to be an embarrassing, although a purely fictitious, person, he has invented a story of his putative brother's death in paris. he enters dressed in complete black, black frock-coat, black tie, black hatband, and black-bordered handkerchief. there follows a delightful comedy scene between him and algernon, whose imposture he cannot expose without betraying himself. meanwhile, gwendolen has followed her sweetheart to make the acquaintance of cecily, and now arrives _en scene_. the two girls become bosom friends at once, and all goes happily until the name of ernest worthing is mentioned, and although no such person exists yet each of them imagines herself to be engaged to him. the situation is, to use a theatrical slang term, "worked up," and the young ladies pass from terms of endearment to mutual recriminations. a pitched battle is on the tapis, but with the appearance of their lovers, and their enforced explanation, peace is restored between the two, and they join forces in annihilating with scathing word and withering look the wretches who have so basely deceived them. never, never could either of them love a man whose name was not ernest. each of them was engaged to ernest worthing, but, in the words of the immortal betsy prig when referring to mrs 'arris, "there ain't no sich person." the situation is embarrassing and complicated. the two delinquents offer to have themselves rechristened, but the suggestion is received with withering scorn; the situation cannot be saved by any such ridiculous subterfuge; the disconsolate wretches seek consolation in an orgy of crumpets and tea cakes. another difficulty there is also, lady bracknell--gwendolen's mother--refuses to accept as her son-in-law a nameless foundling found in a railway station. however, the production of the bag leads to the discovery of his parentage, and it turns out that his father was the husband of lady bracknell's sister. the question of his father's christian name is raised, as it is thought probable that he was christened after him, and although lady bracknell cannot remember the name of the brother-in-law a reference to the army list results in the discovery that it was ernest, so that both the difficulties of birth and nomenclature are now overcome. as to algernon, he is forgiven because he explains that his imposture was undertaken solely to see cecily, and so the comedy ends happily as all good comedies should. the piece is one mass of smart sayings, brilliant epigrams, and mirth-provoking lines, as when miss prism, cecily's governess, tells her pupil to study political economy for an hour, but to omit, as too exciting, the depreciation of the rupee. some of the most delightful sayings are put into the mouth of lady bracknell, the aristocratic dowager who is responsible for the dictum that what the age suffers from is want of principle and want of profile. miss prism too enunciates the aphorism that "memory is the diary we all carry about with us," and cecily naïvely informs us that "i keep a diary to enter the wonderful secrets of my life. if i didn't write them down i would probably forget all about them." there is also a delicious touching of feminine amenities when, during the quarrel scene, gwendolen says to cecily, "i speak quite candidly--i wish that you were thirty-five and more than usually plain for your age." no woman could have written better. even the love passages are replete with humorous lines. cecily passing her hand through moncrieffe's hair remarks, "i hope your hair curls naturally," and with amusing candour comes his reply, "yes, darling, with a little help from others." the servants themselves are infected with the prevailing atmosphere of frivolity. moncrieffe apostrophising his valet exclaims, "lane, you're a perfect pessimist," and that imperturbable individual replies, "i do my best to give satisfaction." again, when he remarks on the fact that though he had only two friends to dinner on the previous day and yet eight bottles of champagne appear to have been drunk, the impeccable servant corrects him with, "eight and a pint, sir," and in reply to his question, how is it that servants drink more in bachelors' chambers than in private houses, the discreet valet explains that it is because the wines are better, adding that you do get some very poor wine nowadays in private houses. "what is the use of the lower classes unless they set us a good example?" "divorces are made in heaven," "to have lost one parent is a misfortune, to have lost both looks like carelessness," and "i am only serious about my amusements," are samples taken haphazard of the good things in the play. it has been objected that the piece is improbable, but it was described by the author merely as "a trivial comedy for serious people." as a contributor to _the sketch_ so aptly put it at the time, "why carp at improbability in what is confessedly the merest bubble of fancy? why not acknowledge honestly a debt of gratitude to one who adds so unmistakably to the gaiety of the nation?" the press were almost unanimous in their appreciation of the comedy. _the athenæum's_ critic wrote, "the mantle of mr gilbert has fallen on the shoulders of mr oscar wilde, who wears it in jauntiest fashion." and _the times_ is responsible for the statement that "almost every sentence of the dialogue bristles with epigram of the now accepted pattern, the manufacture of this being apparently conducted by its patentee with the same facility as 'the butter-woman's rank to market.'" but more flattering still was the appreciation of the _truth_ critic whose previous attitude to wilde's work had been a hostile one. "i have not the slightest intention of seriously criticising mr o. wilde's piece at the st james's," he writes, under the heading of "the importance of being oscar," "as well might one sit down after dinner and attempt gravely to discuss the true inwardness of a _soufflé_. nor, unfortunately, is it necessary to enter into details as to its wildly farcical plot. as well might one, after a successful display of fireworks in the back garden, set to work laboriously to analyse the composition of a catherine wheel. at the same time i wish to admit, fairly and frankly, that 'the importance of being earnest' amused me very much." it is, however, since the author's death that the great body of critics have emitted the opinion that the play is really an extremely clever piece of work and a valuable contribution to the english drama. so many pieces are apt to get _démodés_ in a few years, but now, twelve years after its production, "the importance of being earnest" is as fresh as ever, and does not date, as ladies say of their headgear. to compare the blatant nonsense that mr bernard shaw foists on a credulous public as wit with the coruscating _bon mots_ of his dead compatriot, as seems to be the fashion nowadays, is to show a pitiful lack of intelligence and discernment; as well compare gooseberry wine to champagne, the fountains in trafalgar square to niagara. part iii the romantic dramas "salomÉ" of all wilde's plays the one that has provoked the greatest discussion and most excited the curiosity of the public is undoubtedly "salomé," which, written originally in french and then translated into english, has finally been performed in two continents. never perhaps has a play, at its inception, had less of a chance than this biblical tragedy written for a french jewess (madame sarah bernhardt) banned by the english censor and only produced after the disgrace and consequent downfall of its author. from salomé's first speech to the end of the play we realise how the little part was absolutely identified in the author's mind with the actress he had written it for. to anyone who has studied, however superficially, madame bernhardt's peculiar methods of diction and acting, the words in the first speech--"i will not stay, i cannot stay. why does the tetrarch look at me all the while with his mole's eyes under his shaking eyelids?" convey at once a picture of the actress in the part. if there is a fault to be found with the character it is that bernhardt not salomé is depicted, and yet who shall say that there is much difference between the temperaments or the physique of the two women. it is true that, in a letter to _the times_, the author strenuously denied that he had written the play for sarah, but one is inclined to take the denial with a very big grain of salt. that while in detention wilde made most strenuous efforts to get her to produce it is a well-known fact. the play, as even macaulay's schoolboy knows, is based on the story of herodias' daughter dancing before herod for the head of john the baptist. an account of the episode is to be found in the th chapter of the gospel of st mark, and it is interesting to contrast the strong and simple scriptural description with the highly decorative and glowing language of the play. here is st mark's account of the incident: v. . and when a convenient day was come, that herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords, high captains and chief _estates_ of galilee; v. . and when the daughter of the said herodias came in, and danced, and pleased herod and them that sat with him, the king said unto the damsel, ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and i will give _it_ thee. v. . and he sware unto her, whatsoever thou shalt ask of me, i will give _it_ thee, unto the half of my kingdom. v. . and she went forth, and said unto her mother, what shall i ask? and she said, the head of john the baptist. v. . and she came in straightway with haste unto the king, and asked, saying, i will that thou give me by and by in a charger the head of john the baptist. v. . and the king was exceeding sorry; _yet_ for his oath's sake, and for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her. v. . and immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison, v. . and brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel: and the damsel gave it to her mother. v. . and when his disciples heard _of it_, they came and took up his corpse, and laid it in a tomb. the account given by st matthew (xiv. ) is equally terse, but the fuller description of the scene as reconstructed by dean farrar in his "life of christ" is worth quoting. "but herodias had craftily provided the king with an unexpected and exciting pleasure, the spectacle of which would be sure to enrapture such guests as his. dancers and dancing-women were at that time in great request. the passion for witnessing these too often degrading representations had naturally made its way into the sadducean and semi-pagan court of these usurping edomites, and herod the great had built in his palace, a theatre for the thymelici. a luxurious feast of the period was not regarded as complete unless it closed with some gross pantomimic representation; and doubtless herod had adopted the evil fashion of his day. but he had not anticipated for his guests the rare luxury of seeing a princess--his own great-niece, a granddaughter of herod the great and of mariamne, a descendant, therefore, of simon the high priest and the line of maccabæan princes--a princess who afterwards became the wife of a tetrarch and the mother of a king--honouring them by degrading herself into a scenic dancer. yet when the banquet was over, when the guests were full of meat and flushed with wine, salomé herself, the daughter of herodias, then in the prime of her young and lustrous beauty, executed, as it would now be expressed, a _pas seul_ 'in the midst of' those dissolute and half-intoxicated revellers. 'she came in and danced, and pleased herod, and them that sat at meat with him.' and he, like another xerxes, in the delirium of his drunken approval, swore to this degraded girl, in the presence of his guests, that he would give her anything for which she asked, even to the half of his kingdom. "the girl flew to her mother, and said, 'what shall i ask?' it was exactly what herodias expected, and she might have asked for robes, or jewels, or palaces, or whatever such a woman loves. but to a mind like hers revenge was sweeter than wealth or pride. we may imagine with what fierce malice she hissed out the answer, 'the head of john the baptiser.' and coming in before the king _immediately with haste_--(what a touch is that! and how apt a pupil did the wicked mother find in her wicked daughter!)--salomé exclaimed, 'my wish is that you give _me here, immediately_, on a dish, the head of john the baptist.' her indecent haste, her hideous petition, show that she shared the furies of her race. did she think that in that infamous period, and among those infamous guests, her petition would be received with a burst of laughter? did she hope to kindle their merriment to a still higher pitch by the sense of the delightful wickedness involved in a young and beautiful girl asking--nay, imperiously demanding--that then and there, on one of the golden dishes which graced the board, should be given into her own hands the gory head of the prophet whose words had made a thousand bold hearts quail? "if so, she was disappointed. the tetrarch, at anyrate, was plunged into grief by her request; it more than did away with the pleasure of her disgraceful dance; it was a bitter termination of his birthday feast. fear, policy, remorse, superstition, even whatever poor spark of better feeling remained unquenched under the white ashes of a heart consumed by evil passions, made him shrink in disgust from this sudden execution. he must have felt that he had been duped out of his own will by the cunning stratagem of his unrelenting paramour. if a single touch of manliness had been left in him he would have repudiated the request as one which did not fall either under the letter or the spirit of his oaths, since the life of one cannot be made the gift to another; or he would have boldly declared that if such was her choice, his oath was more honoured by being kept. but a despicable pride and fear of man prevailed over his better impulses. more afraid of the criticisms of his guests than of the future torment of such conscience as was left him, he sent an executioner to the prison, which in all probability was not far from the banqueting hall--and so, at the bidding of a dissolute coward and to please the loathly fancies of a shameless girl, the axe fell, and the head of the noblest of the prophets was shorn away. in darkness and in secrecy the scene was enacted, and if any saw it their lips were sealed; but the executioner emerged into the light carrying by the hair that noble head, and then and there, in all the pallor of the recent death, it was placed upon a dish from the royal table. the girl received it, and, now frightful as a megæra, carried the hideous burden to her mother. let us hope that those grim features haunted the souls of both thenceforth till death. "what became of that ghastly relic we do not know. tradition tells us that herodias ordered the headless trunk to be flung out over the battlements for dogs and vultures to devour. on her, at anyrate, swift vengeance fell." in a footnote the dean mentions that salomé subsequently married her uncle philip, tetrarch of ituræa, and then her cousin aristobulus, king of chalcis, by whom she became the mother of three sons. the traditional death of the "dancing daughter of herodias" is thus given by nicephorus. "passing over a frozen lake, the ice broke and she fell up to the neck in water, and her head was parted from her body by the violence of the fragments shaken by the water and her own fall, and so she perished." thus the historical accounts, now for the play itself. to begin with, let us note the stage directions. "a great terrace in the palace of herod set above the banqueting hall. to the right there is a gigantic staircase, to the left, at the back, an old cistern surrounded by a wall of green bronze. moonlight." these directions for the setting of the stage are for all practical purposes useless--they would drive the most experienced stage-manager crazy, but then wilde, more particularly in the romantic dramas, was sublimely indifferent to the mere mechanical side of stagecraft. he issued his commands and it was for the _gens du métier_ to give practical effect to them. he had the picture in his mind; what matter if there were practical difficulties in the way of producing it! that was no fault of his. it is curious to contrast his stage directions with those of a practical playwright like shakespeare. shakespeare, for instance, would have simply written "soldiers leaning over a balcony." there is a whole chapter of difference in the introduction of the word "some." the time is night, that wonderful judæan night, when the air is charged with electricity and the mysterious heart of the east throbs with the varied emotions of the centuries. "moonlight," says the directions, and here we recall the author's almost passionate worship of moonlight. over and over again in play, prose, essay, and verse, he writes about the moon. she possessed an almost uncanny attraction for him, and one almost wonders whether the superstition connecting certain phases of the planet with the madness of human beings may not account for a good deal that remains unexplained in the erratic career of this unfortunate genius! a young syrian, the "captain of the guard," is talking with the page of herodias. from a subsequent description we learn that he was handsome with the dark languorous eyes of his nation, and that his voice was soft and musical. he is in love with the princess salomé, the daughter of herodias, wife of the tetrarch of judæa, herod antipas, and his talk is all of her and her beauty. the page, who seems to stand in great fear of his mistress and to be likewise oppressed with a foreboding of coming evil, tries to divert his attention to the moon, but in the moon the enamoured syrian sees only an image of his beloved. then the page strikes the first deep note of tragedy. to him she is like a dead woman. a noise is heard, and the soldiers comment on it and its cause--namely, the religious dissensions of the jews. at this the young syrian, heedless of all else, breaks in once more like a greek chorus in praise of the princess's beauty. (one can almost hear an imaginary polonius exclaiming: "still harping on my daughter.") again the page utters a warning against the captain's infatuation. he is certain that something terrible may happen. as if to confirm his fears the two soldiers begin discussing the tetrarch's sombre looks. plain, uncultured fellows these roman soldiers, and yet, like most of the legionaries, they have travelled far afield as may be gathered from their talk of herod's various wives. a cappadocian joins in their conversation. he is completely _terre à terre_ and cannot understand anything but the obvious. the talk drifts on to religion, and then suddenly the voice of john the baptist (the jokanaan of the play) is heard from the cistern in which he is confined. there is a certain _naïveté_ in the introduction of this cistern which may well provoke a smile, especially when later we meet with the stage direction "he goes down into the cistern." historically its introduction may be correct, but one wishes that the author had chosen any other place of confinement for the prophet, at anyrate called it by any other name. in the utilitarian days of water companies and water rates the image that the word cistern evokes is painfully reminiscent of a metal tank in the lumber-room of a suburban residence. even longfellow, in one of his most beautiful poems, failed to rob the word of its associations. the voice strikes a perfectly new note in the play, and announces in scriptural language the advent of the messiah. then the soldiers, taking the place of the _raissonneur_ in french plays, proceed to discuss and describe the prophet. from them we learn that he is gentle and holy, grateful for the smallest attentions of his guards, that when he came from the desert he was clothed in camel's hair. we incidentally learn that he is constantly uttering warnings and prophecies, and that by the tetrarch's orders no one is allowed to see him, much less communicate with him. then the cappadocian comments on the strange nature of the prison, and is informed that herodias' first husband, the brother of herod, was imprisoned in it for twelve years, and was finally strangled. the question by whom, so naturally put, introduces, with a master's certainty of touch, another grim note, as naaman, the executioner, a gigantic negro, is pointed out as the perpetrator of the deed. mention is also made of the mandate he received to carry it out in the shape of the tetrarch's death ring. thus the soldiers gossip among themselves and salomé's entrance, which takes place almost immediately, is in stage parlance "worked up" by the rapturous description of her movements and her person, delivered by the syrian, and the awestruck pleading of the page that he should not look at her. the princess is trembling with emotion, and in her first speech gives us the keynote to the action of the play by referring to the glances of desire that herod casts on her. to a timid question of the syrian's she vouchsafes no answer, but proceeds to comment on the sweetness of the night air and the heterogenous collection of guests whom herod is entertaining. the proffer of a seat by the lovesick captain remains likewise unnoticed, and like a chorus the page beseeches him once more not to look at her, and presages coming evil. and again, the moon is invoked as this daughter of kings soliloquises on the coldness and chastity of the orb of heaven. her meditations are interrupted by the prophet's voice ringing out mysteriously on the night air, and then a long dialogue in short, pregnant sentences takes place between salomé and two soldiers as to the hidden speaker. we learn that herod is afraid of him and that the man of god is constantly inveighing against herodias. from time to time the princess is interrupted by a messenger from the tetrarch requesting her to return, but she has no thought for anyone but the prisoner in the cistern. she wishes to see him, but is informed that this is against the tetrarch's orders. then she deliberately sets herself to make the syrian captain disobey his orders. she pleads with him, she plays on his manhood by taunting him with being afraid of his charge, she promises him a flower, "a little green flower." he remains unmoved. the princess uses all her blandishments to obtain her end; and we can realise what a clever actress would make of the scene as she murmurs, "i will look at you through the muslin veils, i will look at you, narraboth, it may be i will smile at you. look at me, narraboth, look at me." and with more honeyed words and sentences, left unfinished, she induces the young officer to break his trust. the speech consists only of a few lines, and yet gives opportunity for as fine a piece of acting as any player could desire. the soldier yields, and the page suddenly draws attention to the moon, in which he discovers the hand of a dead woman drawing a shroud over herself, though the syrian can only discover in her a likeness to the object of his infatuation. jokanaan is brought forth, and inquires for herod, for whom he prophesies an early death, and then for herodias, the list of whose iniquities he enumerates. his fierce denunciations terrify salomé, and in a wonderful piece of word-painting she describes the cavernous depths of his eyes and the terrors lying behind them. the syrian begs her not to stay, but she is fascinated by the ivory whiteness of the prophet's body and desire enters her soul. her fiery glances trouble the prophet, he inquires who she is. he refuses to be gazed at by her "golden eyes under her gilded eyelids." she reveals herself, and he bids her begone, referring to her mother's iniquities. his voice moves her and she begs him to speak again. the young syrian's piteous remonstrance, "princess! princess!" is unheeded, and she addresses the prophet once more. here follows one of the finest and most dangerous scenes of the play, and yet one which, properly treated, is neither irreverent nor, as has been stupidly asserted, immoral. maddened by desire, this high-born princess makes violent love in language of supreme beauty to the ascetic dweller in the desert. his body, his hair, his mouth, are in turn the object of her praise only to be vilified one by one as he drives her back with scathing words. she insists that she shall kiss his mouth, and the jealous syrian begs her who is like "a garden of myrrh" not to "speak these things." she insists, she will kiss his mouth. the syrian kills himself, falling on his own sword. this tragic event, to which a horror-struck soldier draws her attention, does not for one second divert her attention from the pursuit of her passion. again and again, in spite of jokanaan's warnings and exhortations (for even in this supreme hour of horror and temptation he preaches the gospel of his master), she pleads for a kiss of his mouth. this reiteration of the request, even after the saint has returned to his prison, is a triumph of dramatic craftsmanship. the page laments over his dead friend to whom he had given "a little bag full of perfumes and a ring of agate that he wore always on his hand." the soldiers debate about hiding the body and then, contrary to his custom, herod appears on the terrace accompanied by herodias and all the court. his first inquiry is for salomé, and herodias, whose suspicions are evidently aroused, tells him in identically the same words used by the page to the dead syrian that he "must not look at her," that he is "always looking at her." again the regnant moon becomes a menace and a symbol. this time it is herod who finds a strange look in her, and whose morbid wine-heated imagination compares her to a naked woman looking for lovers and reeling like one drunk. he determines to stay on the terrace, and slips in the blood of the suicide. terror-struck, he inquires whence it comes, and then espies the corpse. on learning whose it is, he mourns the loss of his dead favourite and discusses the question of suicide with tigellinus, who is described in the _dramatis personæ_ as "a young roman." herod is shaken by fears, he feels a cold wind when there is no wind, and hears "in the air something that is like the beating of wings." he devotes his attention to salomé, who slights all his advances. once the voice of jokanaan is heard prophesying that the hour is at hand, and herodias angrily orders that he should be silenced. herod feebly upholds the prophet and strenuously maintains that he is not afraid of him as herodias declares he is. she then inquires why, that being the case, he does not deliver him into the hands of the jews, a suggestion that is at once taken up by one of the jews present; and then follows a discussion between pharisees and sadducees and nazarenes respecting the new messiah. this is followed by a dialogue between herodias and the tetrarch, interrupted ever and again by the hollow-sounding denunciations and prophecies of jokanaan. herod's mind is still filled with the thoughts of his stepdaughter and he beseeches salomé to dance for him, but supported by her mother she keeps on refusing. the chorus, in the person of soldiers, once again draws attention to the sombre aspect of the tetrarch. more prophecies from jokanaan follow, with comments from herod and his wife. once more the watching soldiers remark on the gloom and menace of the despot's countenance and he himself confesses that he is sad, beseeching his wife's child to dance for him, in return for which favour he will give her all she may ask of him, even unto the half of his kingdom. salomé snatches greedily at the bait and, in spite of her mother's reiterated protests, obtains from herod an oath that he will grant her whatsoever she wishes if she but dance for him. even in the midst of the joy with which her acceptance fills him, the shadow of approaching death is over him, he feels an icy wind, hears the rustle of passing wings, and feels a hot breath and the sensation of choking. the red petals of his rose garland seem to him drops of blood, and yet he tries to delude himself that he is perfectly happy. in accordance with salomé's instructions, slaves bring her perfumes and the seven veils and remove her sandals. even as herod gloats over the prospect of seeing her moving, naked feet, he recalls the fact that she will be dancing in blood and notes that the moon has turned red even as the prophet foretold. herodias mocks at him and taunts him with cowardice, endeavouring, at the same time, to persuade him to retire, but her appeals are interrupted by the voice of jokanaan. the sound of his voice irritates her and she insists on going within, but herod is obstinate, he will not go till salomé has danced. she appeals once more to her daughter not to dance, but with an "i am ready, tetrarch," salomé dances "the dance of the seven veils." there are no stage directions given as to how the dance is to be performed, but whoever has seen the slow, rhythmic, and lascivious movements of an eastern dance can well imagine it and all the passionate subtlety and exquisite grace with which this languorous daughter of judæan kings would endow it. the ballet master who could not seize this opportunity of devising a _pas de fascination_ worthy of the occasion does not know the rudiments of his art. herod is filled with delight and admiration. he is anxious to fulfil his pledge and bids salomé draw near and name her reward. she does so. her guerdon shall be the head of jokanaan on a silver charger. at this, herodias is filled with satisfaction, but the tetrarch protests. again herodias expresses approval and herod begs salomé not to heed her. proudly the dancer answers that she does not heed her mother, that it is for her own pleasure she demands the grisly reward, and reminds her stepfather of his oath. he does not repudiate it but begs of her to choose something else, even the half of his kingdom rather than what she asks. salomé insists, and herodias chimes in with a recital of the insults she had suffered at the hands of jokanaan and is peremptorily bidden to be silent by her husband, who argues with salomé as to the terrible and improper nature of her request, offering her his great round emerald in place of the head. but salomé is obdurate. "i demand the head of jokanaan," she insists. herod wishes to speak, but she interrupts him with "the head of jokanaan." again herod pleads with her and offers her fifty of his peacocks whose backs are stained with gold and their feet stained with purple, but she sullenly reiterates--"give me the head of jokanaan." herodias once more expresses approval, and her husband turns savagely on her with "be silent! you cry out always; you cry out like a beast of prey." then, his conscience stinging him, he pleads for jokanaan's life, and gives vent to pious sentiments: he talks of the omnipresence of god, and then is uncertain of it. his mind is torn with doubts, and fears. he has slipped in blood and heard a beating of wings which are evil omens. yet another appeal to salomé is met with the uncompromising "give me the head of jokanaan." he makes one last appeal, he enumerates his treasures, jewels hidden away that herodias even has never seen; he describes the precious stones in his treasury. all these he offers her. he will add cups of gold that if any enemy pour poison into them will turn to silver, sandals encrusted with glass, mantles from the land of the seres, bracelets from the city of euphrates; nay even the mantle of the high priest shall she have, the very veil of the temple. above the angry protests of the jews rises salomé's "give me the head of jokanaan," and sinking back into his seat the weak man gives way and hands the ring of death to a soldier, who straightway bears it to the executioner. as soon as his scared official has disappeared into the cistern salomé leans over it and listens. she is quivering with excitement and is indignant that there is no sound of a struggle. she calls to naaman to strike. there is no answer--she can hear nothing. then there is the sound ... something has fallen on the ground. she fancies it is the executioner's sword and that he is afraid to carry out his task. she bids the page order the soldiers to bring her the head. he recoils from her and she turns to the men themselves bidding them carry out the sentence. they likewise recoil, and just as she turns to herod himself with a demand for the head, a huge black arm is extended from the cistern presenting the head of jokanaan on a silver shield. she seizes it eagerly. meanwhile the cowering tetrarch covers his face with his cloak and a smile of triumph illumines the face of herodias. all the tigress in salomé is awakened; she apostrophises the head. he would not let her kiss his mouth. well, she will kiss it now, she will fasten her teeth in it. she twits the eyes and the tongue with their present impotence, she will throw the head to the dogs and the birds of the air. but anon her mood changes, she recalls all that in him had appealed to her, and laments over the fact that, though she loves him still, her desire for him can now never be appeased. all herod's superstitious fears are awakened, he upbraids herodias for her daughter's crime, and mounts the staircase to enter the palace. the stage darkens and salomé, a moonbeam falling on her, is heard apostrophising the head, the lips of which she has just kissed. herod turns, and, seeing her, orders her to be killed, and the soldiers, rushing forward, crush her with their shields. it will be seen that the dramatist has awarded the fate meted out in scripture to herodias to the daughter and not the mother, a poetic licence for which no one will blame him. in reading the play carefully and critically one cannot but be struck with the influence of maeterlinck in the atmosphere and construction, and of flaubert in the gorgeous imagery of the dialogue, the _décor des phrases_, so to speak. an artist in words wilde also proves himself in stagecraft in this play. not the mere mechanical setting, of which i shall speak later, but the ability to lead up to a situation, the power to convey a whole volume in a few words to fill the audience with a sense of impending tragedy, and to utilise outside influences to enhance the value of the scenes. thus, the references to the moon by the various characters are so many stage settings for the emotion of the moment, verbal pictures illustrating the state of mind of the speaker, or the trend of the action. it has been objected that the constant reiteration of a given phrase is a mere trick and max nordau has set it down as a mark of insanity, but in the hands of an artist the use of that "trick" incalculably enhances the value of the dialogue, although when employed by a bungler the repetition would be as senseless and irritating as the conversational remarks of a parrot. the young syrian's admiration for salomé, the page's fears and warnings, salomé's insistence that she will kiss jokanaan's mouth, later on her insistence on having his head, the very comments of the soldiers on herod's sombre look are all brought in with a thoroughly definite purpose, and it would be difficult to find an equally simple and effective way of achieving that purpose. a favourite device of the author was to introduce, apparently casually, a sentence or word at the beginning of the play to be repeated or used with telling effect at the end. for instance, in "a woman of no importance" lord illingworth's casual remark--"oh, no one--a woman of no importance," which brings down the curtain on the first act, is used with a slight alteration at the end of the play in mrs arbuthnot's reply to gerald's inquiry as to who her visitor has been, "ah, no one--a man of no importance." in the same way salomé's reiterated cry, "i will kiss the mouth of jokanaan," in her scene with the prophet gives added strength to her bitterly triumphant cry as, holding the severed head in her hands, she repeats at three different intervals, "i have kissed thy mouth, jokanaan." apart from all questions of stage technique, wilde had the incomparable gift of finding _le mot juste_, of conveying a portrait in half-a-dozen words. could anything give one a more distinct portrait of herod than salomé's description of his "mole's eyes under his shaking eyelids," or would it be possible to explain herod's passion for his stepdaughter in fewer words than her soliloquy: "it is strange that the husband of my mother looks at me like that. i know not what it means. in truth, yes, i know it." there is not a word wasted or misplaced, there is not a superfluous syllable. i have spoken of the influence of flaubert or his language, but there was in wilde a thoroughly eastern love of colour which found its expression in sensuous richness of sound, jewelled words, wonderfully employed to effect a contrast with the horror in which he seemed to take a strange delight. the rich, decorative phrases only enhance the constant presence of the weird and _macabre_, while in its turn the horror gives an almost painful lustre to the words. the play has been assailed as immoral, but this certainly is not so. the setting of an eastern drama is not that of a western, and the morals and customs of the east are no more to be judged by a western standard than the court of herod to be compared with that of edward the seventh. the play deals frankly with a sensuous episode, and if the author has introduced the proper atmosphere he is only doing in words what every artist does in painting. compare "salomé" with shakespeare's one eastern play, "cleopatra," and though the treatment may be a little more modern, a trifle more decadent, the same non-morality rather than immorality is to be found in the principal characters. i fancy that a great deal of the prejudice still existing in england against the play is due to the illustrations of the late aubrey beardsley. beardsley was a personal friend of mine, and it, therefore, pains me to have to frankly confess that, clever and decorative as his drawings undoubtedly are, they are unhealthy in this instance, unhealthy and evil in suggestion. i can imagine no more pruriently horrible nightmare than these pictures of foul-faced, satyrlike men, feminine youths and leering women. the worst of beardsley's women is that, in spite of their lubricity, they grow on one, and now and then one suddenly traces in their features a likeness to really good women one has known. it is as though something satanic had been worked into the ripe-lipped face of a girl. such as these might have been the emissaries of satan who tempted anchorites of old to commit unpardonable sins. moreover, many of the illustrations have nothing whatever to do with the text. i may be wrong, but i cannot for the life of me see what connection there is between "salomé," the play, and "the peacock skirt" or "the black cape." nor can i see the object of modernising the "stomach dance," save to impart an extra dose of lubricity into the subject. the _leit motif_ of all beardsley's art was to _epater les bourgeois_, to horrify the ordinary stolid philistine, and he would hesitate at nothing, however _outré_, to attain this end. in these drawings he surpassed himself in that respect, and one can only wonder that a publisher was found daring enough to publish them. the subject is a painful one to me, but i should not have been doing my duty as a critic of the play had i not remarked upon it. an edition from which the drawings are omitted can, however, be bought to-day. i have already commented on the vagueness of the directions as to the setting of the scene, and it may not be out of place to quote here a letter i have received from a well-known stage-manager on the subject. "you ask me how i would set the scene in question in accordance with the printed directions, and i reply frankly that i should be puzzled to do so even were the scene to consist of the banqueting hall with the balustraded terrace built up above it. the whole action of the piece takes place on the terrace, from which the actors are supposed to overlook the banqueting hall, so that the latter apartment need not be in view of the audience, but the gigantic staircase on the _r._ i confess fogs me. where does it lead to, and, save for herod's exit at the end of the play, of what use is it? it only lumbers up the stage, and looks out of place (to my mind, at anyrate) on a terrace. "by the cistern i presume the author means a well, though how on earth the actor who plays jokanaan is going to manage to scramble in and out of it with dignity so as not to provoke the hilarity of the audience is beyond my ken. i note that in the production of the opera at dresden the printed directions were utterly ignored." as has already been stated, "salomé" was first written in french and subsequently translated into english by a friend of oscar wilde. reading it in the language in which it was originally written, one fact stands out pre-eminent--the work is that of a foreigner. the french, though correct and polished, is not virile, living french. it is too correct, too laboured; the writer does not take any liberties with his medium. the words have all the delicacy of marble statuary but lack the breath of life. i think it was max beerbohm who once said of walter pater (heaven forbid that i should agree with him) that he wrote english as though it were a dead language, and that is precisely what is the matter with wilde's french. one longs for a _tournure de phrase_, a _maniement de mots_ that would give it a semblance of native authorship. it is like a russian talking french, and altogether too precise, too pedantically grammatical. i believe the play was revised by marcel schwab, but although he may have corrected an error here and there he would hardly have liked to tamper with the text itself. the play was written in , and was accepted by madame sarah bernhardt, who was to have produced it during her season at the palace theatre. it was already in full rehearsal when it was prohibited by the censor. a great deal of abuse and ridicule has been heaped on that official for this, but in all fairness to him it must be admitted that he had no choice in the matter. rightly or wrongly plays dealing with biblical subjects are not allowed to be performed on the english stage, and the censor's business is to see that the rules and regulations governing stage productions are duly observed. the author was greatly incensed at the refusal of the lord chamberlain's officer to license the piece, and talked (whether seriously or not is a moot point) of leaving england for ever and taking out naturalisation papers as a french citizen. this threat he never carried out. meanwhile madame sarah bernhardt had taken the play back to paris with her, promising to produce it at her own theatre of the porte st martin at the very first opportunity, a promise that was never fulfilled. moreover, when a couple of years later wilde, then a prisoner awaiting his trial, finding himself penniless, sent a friend to her to explain how he was circumstanced, and offering to sell her the play outright for a comparatively small sum of money in order that he might be able to pay for his defence, this incomparable _poseuse_ was profuse in her expressions of sympathy and admiration for _ce grand artiste_ and promised to assist him to the best of her ability. she had the cruelty to delude with false hopes a man suffering a mental martyrdom, and after buoying him up from day to day with promises of financial assistance, the jewess not considering the investment a remunerative one, shut the door to his emissary, and failed to keep her word. now that the foreign royalties on play and opera amount to a considerable sum annually her hebrew heart must be consumed with rage at having missed such "a good thing." the piece was first produced at the théâtre libre in paris in by monsieur luigne poë with lina muntz as salomé. the news of the production reached wilde in his prison cell at reading, and in a letter to a friend the following reference to it occurs:-- "please say how gratified i was at the performance of my play, and have my thanks conveyed to luigne poë. it is something that at a time of disgrace and shame i should still be regarded as an artist. i wish i could feel more pleasure, but i seem dead to all emotions except those of anguish and despair. however, please let luigne poë know i am sensible of the honour he has done me. he is a poet himself. write to me in answer to this, and try and see what lemaitre, bauer, and sarcey said of 'salomé.'" there is something intensely pathetic in the picture of convict writing to know what the foremost critics of the most artistic city in europe have to say concerning the child of his brain. the play was eventually privately produced in english by the new stage club in may at the bijou theatre, archer street. the following is the programme on that occasion:-- the new stage club "salomÉ" by oscar wilde at the bijou theatre, archer street, w. may th and may th characters of the drama in the order of their speaking: a young syrian captain mr herbert alexander page of herodias mrs gwendolen bishop st soldier mr charles gee nd soldier mr ralph de rohan cappadocian mr charles dalmon jokanaan mr vincent nello naaman the executioner mr w. evelyn osborn salomé miss millicent murby slave miss carrie keith herod mr robert farquharson herodias miss louise salom tigellinus mr c. l. delph slaves, jews, nazarenes, and soldiers by miss stansfelds, messrs bernhard smith, fredk. stanley smith, john bate, stephen bagehot and frederick lawrence. scene--the great terrace outside the palace of herod. stage management under the direction of miss florence farr. the following paragraphs are taken from a criticism on the performance which appeared in _the daily chronicle_ of th may : "if only the dazzling and unfortunate genius who wrote 'salomé' could have seen it acted as it was acted yesterday at the little bijou theatre! one fears, if he had, he would have found that little phrase of his--'the importance of being earnest'--a more delicately true satire than ever upon our sometimes appalling seriousness. "quite a brilliant and crowded audience had responded to what seemed an undoubtedly daring and interesting venture. many seemed to have come out of mere curiosity to see a play the censor had forbidden; some through knowing what a beautiful, passionate, and in its real altitude wholly inoffensive play 'salomé' is. "as those who had read the play were aware, this was in no way the fault of the author of 'salomé.' its offence in the censor's eyes--and, considering the average audience, he was doubtless wise--was that it represents salomé making love to john the baptist, failing to win him to her desires, and asking for his death from herod, as revenge. this, of course, is not biblical, but is a fairly widespread tradition. "in the play, as it is written, this love scene is just a very beautiful piece of sheer passionate speech, full of luxurious, oriental imagery, much of which is taken straight from the 'song of solomon.' it is done very cleverly, very gracefully. it is not religious, but it is, in itself, neither blasphemous nor obscene, whatever it may be in the ears of those who hear it. it might possibly, perhaps, be acted grossly; acted naturally and beautifully it would show itself at least art. "in the hands, however, of the new stage club it was treated after neither of these methods. it was treated solemnly, dreamily, phlegmatically, as a sort of cross between maeterlinck and a 'mystery play.' "the whole of the play was done in this manner, all save two parts--one, that of herodias (miss salom), which was excellently and vigorously played: the other, that of herod, which was completely spoiled by an actor who gave what appeared to be a sort of semi-grotesque portrait of one of the late roman emperors. even the play itself represents the usurping idumean as a terrific figure of ignorant strength and lustfulness and power 'walking mightily in his greatness.' some of the most luxurious speeches in the whole play--above all the wonderful description of his jewels--are put into herod's mouth. yet he is represented at the bijou theatre as a doddering weakling! and even so is desperately serious. "altogether, beneath this pall of solemnity on the one hand and lack of real exaltation on the other, the play's beauties of speech and thought had practically no chance whatever. set as it is too, in one long act of an hour and a half, the lack of natural life and vigour made it more tiresome still. and the shade of oscar wilde will doubtless be blamed for it all!" it was unavoidable that a play necessitating the highest histrionic ability on the part of the actors, together with the greatest delicacy of touch and artistic sense of proportion, should suffer in its interpretation by a set of amateurs, however enthusiastic. a second performance, given in june by the literary stage society, was far more successful from an artistic point of view. this was in a great measure due to the admirable stage setting designed by one who is an artist to his finger tips, mr c. s. ricketts, and who, having been a personal friend of the author's, could enter thoroughly into the spirit of the play. the scene was laid in herod's tent, the long blue folds of which, with a background curtain spangled with silver stars, set off to perfection the exquisite eastern costumes designed by the same authority. mr robert farquharson was the herod and miss darragh the salomé. but even this performance was far from being up to the standard the play demands, and dr max meyerfeld, who has done so much to make wilde's work known in germany, wrote of it: "the most notable feature of the production of 'salomé' was the costumes, designed by mr c. s. ricketts--a marvellous harmony of blue and green and silver. here praise must end. the stage was left ridiculously bare, and never for a moment produced the illusion of the terrace outside herod's banqueting hall. not even the cistern out of which the prophet rises was discoverable--hamlet without the prince of denmark. and the actors! without being too exigeant, i cannot but suggest that before attempting such a play they ought to have been sent by a special train to berlin. even then miss darragh would have been an impossible salomé. she lacked nearly everything required by this complex character. the dance of the seven veils was executed with all the propriety of a british governess. mr robert farquharson, whose herod delighted us last year, has now elaborated it to the verge of caricature. he emphasises far too much the neuropathic element, and revels in the repulsive symptoms of incipient softening of the brain. "i cannot think that either of these works has yet been given a fair chance in england. they are, however, things which will endure, being independent of place and time, of dominant prejudice and caprices of taste." on the continent "salomé" has become almost a stock piece and has been performed in france, sweden, holland, italy, and russia, and has been translated into every european tongue. it was not, however, till the production in february, , of the opera of richard strauss at the royal opera house, dresden, that "salomé" occupied its true and proper place in the art world. admirably rendered into german by madame hedwig lachmann, the libretto is a faithful translation of the original text. the success of the opera was not for a minute in doubt, and with operatic stars of the first order to interpret the characters and an orchestra of performers to do full justice to the instrumental music, nothing was left undone to make the production a memorable one. a distinguished foreign critic writing from dresden says: "death in love, and love in death, that is the whole piece. death of narraboth, the young captain who cannot bear the burning words that salomé addresses to iokanaan; death of iokanaan. death of salomé, impending death of herod antipas," and analysing the character of salomé he continues: "it is not the jewess 'so charming and full of touching humility' that salomé represents, she is the syrian who inspired the song of songs, for whom incest is almost a law and semiramius, lath, and myrrha divinities. she is the syrian a prey to the seven devils, who combines in her amorous cult beauty, death, and resurrection." when the opera was performed at berlin it is interesting to remember that the kaiser, whose views on morality are strict enough to satisfy the most exacting puritan, far from seeing anything to object to in the story, not only was present on the opening night, but took an active interest in the rehearsals, going so far even as to suggest certain mechanical effects. in new york a perfect storm of execration from the "ultra guid" greeted the production of strauss's work, which was almost immediately withdrawn. it is only justice to say that the rendering of the dance of the seven veils was in a great measure responsible for this. it was also freely rumoured that the puritanical daughter of one of the millionaire directors of the opera house had used her influence for the suppression of the new production. it is interesting to hear what the objectors to the story have to say, and with this view i quote two extracts, one from a letter written by mr e. a. baughan to _the musical standard_ and the other from a well-known critic writing in a leading provincial paper. mr baughan writes: "oscar wilde took nothing but the characters and the incident of john the baptist's head being brought in a charger. all else is changed and bears no relation to the bible story. that would not matter had worthy use been made of the story. "in 'salomé' everything is twisted to create an atmosphere of eroticism and sensuality. that is the aim of the play and nothing else. there is none of the 'wide bearing on life' which you vaguely suggest. herod is a sensuous beast who takes delight in the beautiful postures of his stepdaughter. he speaks line after line of highly coloured imagery and his mental condition is that of a man on the verge of delirium tremens, brought on by drink and satyriasis. oscar wilde does not make him 'sorry' but only slightly superstitious, thus losing whatever of drama there is in the bible narrative. "so far, and in the drawing of herodias, the dramatist may be allowed the licence he has taken, however. even a puritan must admit that art must show the evil as well as the good of life to present a perfect whole. "but it is in the character of salomé herself that oscar wilde has succeeded in his aim of shocking any man or woman of decent mind. he makes salomé in love with john the baptist. it is a horrible, decadent, lascivious love. she prates of his beautiful smooth limbs and the cold, passionless lips which he will not yield to her insensate desire. it is a picture of unnatural passion, all the more terrible that salomé is a young girl. john the baptist's death is brought about as much by salomé as her mother. the prophet will not yield himself alive to salomé's desires, but she can, and does, feed her passion at his dead, cold lips. and that is what has disgusted new york. "you speak of fighting for liberty in art. if such exhibitions of degraded passion are included in what you call 'liberty,' then you will be fighting for the representation on the stage of satyriasis and nymphomania, set forth with every imaginable circumstance of literary and musical skill. i can conceive of no greater degradation of richard strauss's genius than the illustration of this play by music." and here is what the critic of the provincial journals has to say: "salomé marks the depths of all that was spurious, all that was artificial, all that was perverse. startling to english ears, the play was not at all original. it drew its inspiration from the decadent school of france, but in that world it would rank as one of the commonplace. "the shocking, startling idea, that so outraged the respectable yankees, is the twisting of a story of the new testament to the needs of a literature of the most degenerate kind. but in paris, and particularly amongst wilde's friends, all such ideas had lost the thrill of novelty. pierre louys, to whom he dedicates the book, had couched his own 'aphrodite' on similar perversions of history and mythology, and to treat the story of the new testament in similar fashion was hardly likely to give pause to men who laughed at the basis of the christian religion. "even academicians like anatole france dealt with the gospels as the mere framework of ironical stories, and writers of the stamp of jean loverain out-heroded wilde's herod both in audacity and point. catulle mendes recently produced at the opera house in paris an opera founded on the supposed love of mary magdalen for christ. catulle mendes has very real talent, the opera was a great success." whatever the judgment of posterity may be, and there can be little doubt that it can be favourable, the play must ever appeal to the actor, the artist, and the student of literature, on account of its dramatic possibilities, its wonderful colouring, the perfection of its construction, and the mastery of its style. it stands alone in the literature of all countries. "the duchess of padua" the first of all wilde's plays was "the duchess of padua." it was written at the time when he was living at the hotel voltaire in paris and taking balzac as his model. the title of the play was doubtless inspired by webster's gloomy tragedy of another italian duchess; and the play itself is in five acts. although many students of his works consider that it is worthy to rank with the masterpieces of the elizabethan drama, it must be confessed that the work, though full of promise, is immature and too obviously indebted in certain scenes to some of shakespeare's most obvious stage tricks. he had written the play with a view to its being played by miss mary anderson, but to his great disappointment she declined his offer of it. his biographer's description of his reception of her refusal is worth quoting: "i was with him at the hotel voltaire on the day when he heard from mary anderson, to whom he had sent a copy of the drama which was written for her. he telegraphed in the morning for her decision, and whilst we were talking together after lunch her answer came. it was unfavourable; yet, though he had founded great hopes on the production of this play, he gave no sign of his disappointment. i can remember his tearing a little piece off the blue telegraph-form and rolling it up into a pellet and putting it into his mouth, as, by a curious habit, he did with every paper or book that came into his hands. and all he said, as he passed the telegram over to me, was, 'this, robert, is rather tedious.'" the scene of the play is laid in padua, the period being the sixteenth century, and the characters are as follows:-- dramatis personÆ simone gesso duke of padua. beatrice his wife. andrea pollaiuolo cardinal of padua. maffio petrucci } jeppo vitelozzo }of the ducal household. taddeo bardi } guido ferranti ascanio cristofano his friend. count moranzone bernardo cavalcanti chief justiciar of padua. hugo the public executioner. lucia a tirewoman. serving-men, burghers, soldiers, falconers, monks, etc. the scene opens in the market, where ascanio and guido are awaiting the arrival of the writer of a letter who has promised to enlighten the latter as to his birth, and who will wear a violet cloak with a silver falcon embroidered on the shoulder. the stranger arrives and proves to be count moranzone, who, ascanio having been dismissed, informs the lad that he is the son of lorenzo, the late duke of padua, betrayed to an ignominious death by the reigning duke, simone gesso. he works on the youth's feelings and induces him to swear to avenge his father's death by slaying his betrayer, but not until moranzone sends him his parent's dagger. guido left alone, in a fine speech renews his oath, and as he is vowing on his drawn dagger to "forswear the love of women and that hollow bauble men call female loveliness," beatrice descends the steps of the church, their eyes meet for a second and as she leaves the stage she turns to look at him again. "say, who is yonder lady?" inquires the young man, and a burgher answers, "the duchess of padua." in the second act the duchess is seen pleading with her husband that he should feed and assist his starving people. on his exit she is joined by guido, who, for the first time, declares his love, while she avows hers in turn. a pretty love scene full of tenderness and poetry is interrupted by the appearance of count moranzone, whom beatrice alone catches sight of, and presently a messenger enters and hands guido a parcel containing the fatal dagger. he will have no more to do with love--for will not his soul be stained with murder?--and steeling his heart against beatrice he bids her farewell, telling her that there is a barrier between them. the duke makes a brief entrance. the duchess will not go hunting with him. he suspects, and inquires for guido, and with a veiled threat leaves her. she will end her life that very night, she soliloquises, and yet, why should she die, why not the duke? she is interrupted by moranzone, whom she taxes with taking guido from her. he answers that the young man does not love her nor will she ever see him more, and leaves her. she determines that that very night she will lie in death's arms. the third act takes place at night within the palace. guido enters the apartment from without by means of a rope ladder, and is met by moranzone, to whom he declares that he will not stoop to murder, but will place the dagger, with a paper stating who he is, upon the duke's bed and then take horse to venice and enlist against the infidels. nothing moranzone urges can move him and the latter at last leaves him. as guido lifts the curtain to enter the duke's chamber he is met by beatrice, who, after a while, confesses that she has stabbed her husband. guido, horrified, refuses to have aught to do with her, and despite all her blandishments and entreaties remains adamant. she then begs him to draw his sword on her "and quick make reckoning with death, who yet licks his lips after this feast." he wrests the dripping knife from her hand, and although she explains that 'twas for love of him she did the deed he bids her begone to her chamberwomen. finally she turns on him with the threat "who of us calls down the lightning on his head let him beware the hurt that lurks within the forked levin's flame," she leaves him. left alone, his heart goes forth to her and he calls her back, but soon her voice is heard without, saying, "this way fled my husband's murderer." soldiers enter, and guido is arrested, the bloodstained knife being taken from him. the fourth act is laid in the hall of justice. the duchess has accused guido of the murder. he will not defend himself though moranzone, who has recognised the dagger as the duchess's, urges him to do so. guido tells his evil genius that he himself did the deed. he then begs leave of the justiciar to let him name the guilty one who slew the duke, but beatrice, who is fearful he will accuse her, urges that he shall not be allowed speech. a lengthy wrangle takes place between her, the judges, and moranzone, and the court retires to consider the point. during the interval, the accused holds conference with the cardinal, who will only hear him in the confessional. beatrice tells him, "an thou dost meet my husband in purgatory with a blood-red star over his heart, tell him i send you to bear him company." when at last the judges return they decide that guido may have speech. beatrice, who has arranged for a horse to be in waiting that it may convey her to venice, endeavours to leave the court, but is prevented. at last guido speaks and confesses to the murder. he is condemned to death, and is led forth as beatrice, calling out his name, "throws wide her arms and rushes across the stage towards him." the last act takes place in the prison. guido is asleep, and beatrice, wearing a cloak and mask, enters to him. by wearing these and using her ring of state she hopes he will be enabled to escape. presently she drinks the poison which, as he is of noble birth, has been placed near him and when he awakes a reconciliation takes place between them. it is too late, the poison has begun to work. "oh, beatrice, thy mouth wears roses that do defy death," exclaims guido, and later on--"who sins for love, sins not," to which beatrice replies, "i have sinned, and yet mayhap shall i be forgiven. i have loved much." they kiss each other for the first time in this act, and in a final spasm she expires, and he, snatching the dagger from her belt, stabs himself as the executioner enters. the play was read for copyright purposes in march, , by an amateur dramatic society connected with st james's church, hampstead road, mr george alexander, lending his theatre for the purpose. it has been produced, but without much success, in america by miss gale and the late lawrence barrett, and in at one of the leading theatres in hamburg. the german production was, however, marred by a series of unfortunate incidents, so that it can hardly be held to have been a fair test of the merits of the play. the guido had a severe cold, and during beatrice's long speech in the last act, when he is supposed to be asleep, kept on spoiling the situation by repeated sneezes, while the duchess herself was uncertain of her words. on the third night the cardinal went mad on the stage and had to be taken off to an asylum. "the duchess of padua" is much more a play for the study than the stage, although replete with dramatic possibilities, for its gloomy character would always militate against its success in this country. the plot is finely elaborated, and yet perfectly clear. the characterisation is keenly aware of the value of contrast in art and packed with a psychology which, buried as it is, nevertheless is just and accurate. no one can read the truly poetical dialogue with its stately cadence and rich volume of sound without being moved by the dignity of tragedy, and what blemishes there may be are more due to inexperience than to any departure from the ideals in art that the author had set up for himself. "vera, or the nihilists" and now in the survey of the romantic dramas we come to a play totally different from any other work of the author's--"vera, or the nihilists." this is a melodrama pure and simple, the action taking place in russia in . it is described as "a drama in a prologue and four acts," and was written in . badly produced and acted in america it was printed for private circulation. the dramatis personæ are: persons in the prologue peter sabouroff (an innkeeper). vera sabouroff (his daughter). michael (a peasant). colonel kotemkin. persons in the play ivan the czar. prince paul maraloffski (prime minister of russia). prince petrovitch. count rouvaloff. marquis de poivrard. baron raff. general kotemkin. a page. _nihilists_ peter tchernavitch, president of the nihilists. michael. alexis ivanacievitch, known as a student of medicine. professor marfa. vera sabouroff. soldiers, conspirators, etc. scene, moscow. time, . the plot is briefly as follows:-- dmitri sabouroff, the son of an innkeeper, is, with other prisoners, on his way to an exile in siberia to which he has been sentenced for participation in nihilist conspiracies. the band of prisoners in its melancholy progress halts at the paternal inn. dmitri is recognised by his sister vera, and manages to pass her a piece of paper on which is written the address of the nihilist centre, together with the form of oath used on joining. then the old innkeeper recognises his son and tries to get to him as the prisoners are being marched off. the colonel in charge of the detachment (kotemkin), closes the door on him and the old man falls senseless to the ground. a peasant admirer of vera's (michael) kneels down and tends the stricken father while vera recites the oath: "to strangle whatever nature is in me; neither to love nor to be loved; neither to pity nor to be pitied; neither to marry nor to be given in marriage, till the end is come." this tableau ends the prologue. in the first act the nihilists are assembled at their secret meeting place and are anxiously waiting the return of vera, who has gone to a ball at the grand duke's to "see the czar and all his cursed brood face to face." amongst the conspirators is a young student of medicine, alexis, who has incurred the suspicions of vera's admirer, michael, the most uncompromising of the revolutionists. vera returns with the news that martial law is to be proclaimed. she is in love with alexis and reproves him for running the risk of being present. meanwhile, michael and the president confer together. michael proposes to don the uniform of the imperial guard, make his way into the courtyard of the palace, and shoot the czar as he attends a council to be held in a room, the exact location of which he has learnt from alexis. he has followed alexis and seen him enter the palace, but has not seen the young man come out again though he had waited all night upon the watch. vera defends alexis whom the conspirators wish to kill. suddenly soldiers are heard outside, the conspirators resume their masks as kotemkin and his men enter. in reply to his inquiries vera informs him that they are a company of strolling players. he orders her to unmask. alexis steps forward, removes his mask, and proclaims himself to be the czarevitch! the conspirators fear he will betray them, but he backs up vera's tale as to their being strolling players, gives the officer to understand that he has an affair of gallantry on hand with vera, and with a caution to the general dismisses him and his men. the curtain comes down, as, turning to the nihilists, he exclaims, "brothers, you trust me now!" the second act is laid in the council chamber, where the various councillors are assembled, including the cynical prime minister, prince paul maraloffski. presently the czarevitch enters, followed later by the czar, whose fears prince paul has worked on to induce him to proclaim martial law. he is about to sign the document when the czarevitch intervenes with a passionate appeal for the people and their rights, and finally proclaims himself a nihilist. his father orders his arrest, and his orders are about to be carried out when a shot is heard from without and the czar, who has thrown open the window, falls mortally wounded, and dies, denouncing his son as his murderer. the third act takes place in the nihilists' meeting place. alexis has been proclaimed czar, and has dismissed his father's evil genius, prince paul. the passwords are given and it is discovered that there is a stranger present. he unmasks, and proves to be no other than prince paul, who desires to become a nihilist and revenge himself for his dismissal. alexis has not obeyed the summons to the meeting, and in spite of vera's protests is sentenced to death. the implacable michael reminds her of her brother's fate and of her oath. she steels her heart and demands to draw with the others for the honour of carrying out the sentence on alexis. it falls to her, and it is arranged that she shall make her way to the czar's bedchamber that night, paul having provided the key and the password, and stab him in his sleep. once she has carried out her mission she is to throw out the bloodstained dagger to her fellow-conspirators, who will be waiting outside, as a signal that the czar has been assassinated. the fourth act is set in the antechamber of the czar's private room, where the various ministers are assembled discussing the czar and his plans of reform (he has already dismissed his guards and ordered the release of all political prisoners). alexis enters and listens to their conversation. stepping forward he dismisses them all, depriving them of their fortunes and estates. left alone he falls asleep and vera, entering, raises her hand to stab him, when he awakes and seizes her arm. he tells her he has only accepted the crown that she should share it with him. vera realises that she loves him and that she has broken her oath. a love scene follows. midnight strikes, the conspirators are heard clamouring in the streets. vera stabs herself, throws the dagger out of the window, and in answer to alexis's agonised, "what have you done?" replies with her dying breath, "i have saved russia." the play, as i have already said, is quite different from any other of wilde's, and in reading it one cannot help regretting that he did not turn some of his attention and devote a portion of his great talents to the reform of english melodrama. he might have founded a strong, virile, and healthy dramatic school, and by so doing raised the standard of the popular everyday play in this country. nevertheless, that "vera" was not a success when produced is not to be wondered at, apart from the fact of its having been vilely acted. pure melodrama, especially, despite a very general idea to the contrary, requires an acquaintance with technique and stage mechanism that is only obtainable after many years of practice. at this period the author had not enjoyed this practice in technique. nevertheless, the play is essentially dramatic and had mr wilde at this early time in his dramatic career called in the assistance of some experienced actor or stage-manager, with a very little alteration a perfectly workmanlike drama could have been made out of it. the prologue and the first act could have been run into one act divided into two separate scenes. more incident and action could have been introduced into act two and some of the dialogue curtailed. acts three and four want very little revision, and it would have been easy to introduce one or two female characters and perhaps a second love interest. some light-comedy love scenes would have helped to redeem the gloom of the play and afforded a valuable contrast to the intensity of the hero and heroine in their amorous converse. the dialogue is crisp and vigorous and the language at times of rare beauty. it is a pity that such a work should be wasted, and it is to be hoped that some manager will have the astuteness and ability to produce it in a good acting form. the experiment would certainly be worth trying. the play as a whole is certainly not one of its author's finest productions. as has been said, it was written before he had mastered stage technique and learned those secrets of dramaturgy which in later years raised him to such a pinnacle of fame as a dramatic author. yet it can be said of it with perfect confidence that it is far and away superior to nine-tenths of modern, and successful, melodramatic plays. indeed, whenever we discuss or criticise even the less important works of oscar wilde we are amazed at their craftsmanship and delighted with their achievement. the most unconsidered trifles from his pen stand out among similar productions as the moon among stars, and his genius is so great that work for which other writers would expect and receive the highest praise in comparison with _his_ greatest triumphs almost fails to excite more than a fugitive and passing admiration. "the florentine tragedy" an interesting story attaches to "the florentine tragedy," a short play by wilde which was produced on th june , by the literary theatre club. the history of the play was related by mr robert ross to a representative of _the tribune_ newspaper. "the play was written," he said, "for mr george alexander, but for certain reasons was not produced by him. in april , mr wilde requested me to go to his house and take possession of all his unpublished manuscripts. he had been declared a bankrupt, and i reached the house just before the bailiffs entered. of course, the author's letters and manuscripts of two other unpublished plays and the enlarged version of 'the portrait of mr w. h.' upon which i knew he was engaged--had mysteriously disappeared. someone had been there before me. "the thief was never discovered, nor have we ever seen 'the florentine tragedy,' the 'mr w. h.' story, or one of the other plays, 'the duchess of padua'--since that time. curiously enough, the manuscript of the third play, a tragedy somewhat on the lines of 'salomé,' was discovered by a friend of mr wilde's in a secondhand bookshop in london, in . it was sent to the author in paris, and was not heard of again. after his death in it could not be found. with regard to 'the duchess of padua,' the loss was not absolute, for this play, a five-act tragedy, had previously been performed in america, and i possessed the 'prompt' copy. "to return to 'the florentine tragedy.' i had heard portions of it read, and was acquainted with the incidents and language, but for a long time i gave it up as lost. then, after mr wilde's death, i had occasion to sort a mass of letters and papers which were handed to me by his solicitors. among them i found loose sheets containing the draft of a play which i recognised as 'the florentine tragedy.' by piecing these together i was able to reconstruct a considerable portion of the play. the first five pages had gone, and there was another page missing, but some lines of blank verse remained. now the introductory scene of the single act of which the play consists has been rewritten by mr sturge moore, and the 'tragedy' will be presented to an english audience for the first time at the king's hall, covent garden, next sunday. "on the same occasion the literary theatre club will give a performance of mr wilde's 'salomé,' which, as you know, cannot be given publicly in this country, owing to the biblical derivation of the subject. but 'salomé' has been popular for years in germany, and it has also been played in sweden, russia, italy, and holland." it seems that "the florentine tragedy" has also been played with great success in germany. it was translated by dr max meyerfeld, and was produced first at leipsic, and afterwards at hamburg and berlin. according to mr ross, "the florentine tragedy" promises to become almost as popular with german playgoers as "salomé" is now. "the florentine tragedy," as already indicated, is a brief one-act drama. there are only three characters: an old florentine merchant, his beautiful wife, and her lover. the simple plot may be briefly indicated. the merchant, arriving suddenly at his home after a short absence, finds his wife and his rival in her affections together at supper. he makes a pretence at first of being profoundly courteous, and the ensuing conversation (as need hardly be said) is pointed, epigrammatic, and witty. then the old man gradually leads up to what, it becomes obvious, had been his fixed purpose from the beginning. he draws the lover into a duel. this takes place in the presence of the wife, who, indeed, holds aloft a torch in order that the two swordsmen may fight the more easily. the contest waxes fiercer, and the swords are exchanged for daggers. the wife casts the torch to the ground as the two men close with each other, and the younger one falls mortally wounded. the ending is dramatic. the infuriated husband turns to his shrinking wife and exclaims, "now for the other!" the woman, in mingled remorse and fear, says, "why did you not tell me you were so strong?" and the husband rejoins, "why did you not tell me you were so beautiful?" as the curtain descends, the couple, thus strangely reconciled, fall into each other's arms. the character of outstanding importance, of course, is that of the old merchant. according to those who have studied the play, he is a strikingly effective figure, most cleverly and delightfully drawn. in the opinion of mr moore the part is one that would have fitted sir henry irving excellently well. the action of the drama occupies less than half-an-hour. in this connection it may be well to recall the testimony of an irish publisher quoted by mr sherard in his "life of oscar wilde." this gentleman attended the sale of the author's effects in tite street, and in a room upstairs found the floor thickly strewn with letters addressed to the quondam owner of the house and a great quantity of his manuscripts. he concluded that as the various pieces of furniture had been carried downstairs to be sold their contents had been emptied out on to the floor of this room. presently a broker's man came up to him and inquired what he was doing in the room, and on his replying that finding the door open he had walked in, the man said, "then somebody has broken open the lock, because i locked the door myself." this gentleman surmises that it was from this room that various manuscripts that have never been recovered were stolen! when the piece was produced by the literary theatre club it suffered from inadequate acting. mr george ingleton was quite overweighted by the part of simone, the florentine merchant. it is a part that requires an irving to carry it through, or, at anyrate, an actor of great experience, and for anyone else to attempt it is a piece of daring which can only result in failure. it is curious that the denouement, which was so severely handled by the critics when the play was produced in berlin, was the part of the piece that seemed most to impress an english audience. the epigram and the praises of strength and beauty provoked no protest or dissatisfaction, as those who had seen the german production expected they would, nor was the audience in the least shocked when the wife holds the torch for her husband and lover to fight, nor when, at the close of the encounter, she purposely throws it down. this, of course, is the unlooked-for climax of the piece, and the dramatic character of the situation completely saved it. "the woman covered with jewels" finally we have arrived at what must always be the most tantalising of all wilde's plays because the ms. has been lost and very little is known about it. it had for title "the woman covered with jewels." the only copy of it known to exist, a small quarto book of ruled paper in the author's own handwriting, was presumably stolen with the copies of "the incomparable and ingenious history of mr w. h. being the true secret of shakespeare's sonnets, now for the first time here fully set forth," and "the florentine tragedy," at the time of the tite street sale. but little is known about the play--a very few privileged persons having been favoured with a perusal of it, and the only information the public have been able to gather about it is from an article by a well-known book-lover that appeared in a weekly paper. i myself have not been able to discover any further information. the play was in prose and, like "salomé," was a tragedy in one act. it was written about . according to the writer of the article referred to, it was "presented by its author to a charming and cultured mayfair lady, well known in london society." he goes on to say that she allowed a few well-known _littérateurs_ to peruse it, but that the manuscript is now lost and that he has not succeeded in tracing a second copy anywhere. there seems to be some confusion here, for if this were the only copy it could not have been stolen from the tite street sale, as, according to the biography, was the case. one thing, at anyrate, appears certain, and that is that there is no copy in existence, or rather--for if it was stolen it must be in someone's possession--available at the present moment. it would be interesting to know how the lady to whom the book was presented came to lose it. perhaps she herself destroyed it at the period when so many of his friends were so anxious to conceal all traces of their friendship with its author. again, the ms. may only have been lent her, and may have been returned by her to wilde before the crash. at anyrate, it seems incredible that he should have parted with the manuscript without keeping even a rough copy. the point needs elucidation. according to the writer of the article--"there is little doubt that the lost tragedy by wilde was intended originally--like 'salomé'--for sarah bernhardt. it contains a part somewhat like her _izéil_. the period of the play is that of the second century after christ, a century of heresy and manifold gospels that had made the church of the day a thing divided by sects and scarred with schisms. fairly vigorous christian churches existed at athens and corinth. from one of these there seceded a most holy man. he withdrew into the desert, and at the time the play begins was dwelling in a cave 'whose mouth opened upon the tawny sand of the desert like that of a huge lion.' his reputation for holiness had gone forth to many cities. one day there came to his cave a beautiful courtesan, covered with jewels. she had broken her journey in order to see and hear the wonderful priest who had striven against the devil in the desert. he sees the strange, beautiful intruder, and, speaking of the faith that was within him, tries to win one more convert to its kingdom, glory, and power. she listens as thais listened to paphnutius. the hermit's eloquence sways her reason, while her exquisite beauty of face and form troubles his constancy. she speaks in turn and presses him to leave his hermit home and come with her to the city. there he may preach to better effect the gospel of the kingdom of god. 'the city is more wicked than the desert,' she says, in effect. "while they are talking two men drew near and gazed upon the unusual scene. 'surely it must be a king's daughter,' said one. 'she has beautiful hair like a king's daughter, and, behold, she is covered with jewels.' "at last she mounts her litter and departs, and the men follow her. the priest has been troubled, tortured by her beauty. he recalls the melting glory of her eyes, the softly curving cheeks, the red humid mouth. recalls, too, the wooing voice that was like rippling wind-swept water. her hair fell like a golden garment; she was, indeed, covered with jewels. "evening draws near and there comes to the mouth of the cave a man who says that robbers have attacked and murdered a great lady who was travelling near that day. they show the horror-struck priest a great coil of golden hair besmeared with blood. here the tragedy ends. "one sees that 'the woman covered with jewels' is an outcome, and one more expression, of that literary movement that gave us 'salambo,' 'thais,' 'aphrodite,' 'imperial purple,' and many more remarkable works of a school, or group of writers, who, wearied of the _jejune_, the effete, and much else, have sought solace for their literary conscience in a penman's reconquest of antiquity. probably the old-world story of paphnutius and thais inspired the tragedy and maeterlinck's plays suggested its technique. who can know? assuredly its tragic picture of devotion, passion, cupidity, and murder would thrill and enthrall those who could know it better than in this imperfect portrayal. 'the woman covered with jewels' is worthy of the pen that wrote 'salomé,' and 'the sphinx.' "yet it is lost!" part iv the writer of fairy stories the fairy stories a little girl who had kept her fifth birthday joyously in the garden of her father's home went on the morrow to the great and grimy city which was nearest to it. we were to visit the bazaars and buy books and toys. as we went through the great square in which the town hall stands the small hand in mine told me that here was something which we must stay to consider. we stood at the base of the statue which the citizens had raised in memory of a statesman's endeavour and success. she looked steadily and long at the figure of which the noble head redeemed the vulgar insignificance of costume and posture. "what did this man do, uncle?" she asked, "that he has been turned into stone?" i was dreadfully startled, for the horrid suspicion darted through my mind that my little niece had remembered my talk with her father about modern sculpture, and at five years old had already begun to pose. "of course, it had to be stone not salt in england," she went on to say, and i was reassured; she at least was remembering lot's wife. it was in the later spring of , and when the evening post brought me fresh from the press "the happy prince and other tales," the first story told me that oscar wilde, of whom men, even then, had many things sinister and strange to say, had yet within him the heart of a little child. "high above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the happy prince." "when i was alive and had a human heart i did not know what tears were, for i lived in the palace of sans souci, where sorrow is not allowed to enter. in the daytime i played with my companions in the garden, and in the evening i led the dance in the great hall. round the garden ran a very lofty wall, but i never cared to ask what lay beyond it, everything about me was so beautiful. my courtiers called me the happy prince, and happy indeed i was, if pleasure be happiness, so i lived and so i died. and now that i am dead they have set me up here so high that i can see all the ugliness and all the misery of my city, and though my heart is made of lead yet i cannot choose but weep." here, strange to say, is the note of pathos which we hear again and again in the volume of fairy stories which many men look upon as oscar wilde's best and most characteristic prose work. time after time they make me murmur vergil's untranslatable line _sunt lachrymæ rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt_. the felicity of expression is exquisite, and an opulent imagination lavishes its treasures in every story. our author has come into full possession of his sovereignty of words and every sentence has its carefully considered, yet spontaneous charm. nevertheless, oscar wilde makes the linnet his mouthpiece in the fourth story "the devoted friend." "'the fact is, that i told him a story with a moral.' 'ah, that is always a very dangerous thing to do,' said the duck--and i quite agreed with her." dangerous though it is, oscar wilde essayed the endeavour. i do not think that children would easily detect that _amari aliquid_ which makes the fairy stories fascinating to minds that are mature, and i am sure that many little ones have revelled in the swallow's stories of what he had seen in strange lands when he told "the happy prince of the red ibises, who stand in long rows on the banks of the nile and catch gold fish in their beaks; of the sphinx, who is as old as the world itself, and lives in the desert, and knows everything; of the merchants who walk slowly by the side of their camels, and carry amber beads in their hands; of the king of the mountains of the moon, who is as black as ebony, and worships a large crystal; of the great green snake that sleeps in a palm-tree, and has twenty priests to feed it with honey cakes; and of the pygmies who sail over a big lake on large flat leaves, and are always at war with the butterflies." i suppose it would shock the authorities of the education department at whitehall if it were suggested that the children in the elementary day schools should have for their reading lesson, sometimes, the volume of "the happy prince and other tales, by oscar wilde, illustrated by walter crane and jacomb hood"--but i think the starved and stunted imaginations of the children in the great, cruel cities would revive and grow if this could be done. but perhaps it would have to be an expurgated edition. the sad consciousness of, and stern satire on, our social system might remain, the children would take no hurt, and the weary school teachers would be glad to hear and to read a children's fairy tale, which sets the student thinking and makes the more worldly man consider his ways. but if i had the editing of the book i would leave out here and there a sentence. "'bring me the two most precious things in the city,' said god to one of his angels; and the angel brought him the leaden heart and the dead bird. "'you have rightly chosen,' said god, 'for in my garden of paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold the happy prince shall praise me.'" the children would not like this, for in their ears sound often the severe words of sinai, "the lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain," and i, who delight in the beautiful prose poems, feel that here the dead artist was not at his best. some have said that there are no fairy stories like oscar wilde's, but hans andersen had written before him, and charles kingsley's "water babies" was published long before "the happy prince." the dane managed to touch on things divine without a discord, and charles kingsley's satire was not less keen than oscar's, but he could point his moral without intruding very sacred things into his playful pages, and i wish that the two last sentences of "the happy prince" could be erased. it is the gorgeous colour and the vivid sonorous words that charm us most. it is easy to analyse these sentences and to note how pearls and pomegranates, and the hyacinth blossom, and the pale ivory, and the crimson of the ruby, again and again glow on the pages like the illuminations of the mediæval missal; but each story has its own peculiar charm. "the nightingale and the rose" is a tale full of passion and tenderness, and sad in the sorrow of wasted sympathy and unrequited love. "surely love is a wonderful thing. it is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the market-place. it may not be purchased of the merchants, nor can it be weighed out in the balance of gold." i can fancy oscar wilde writing thus in the happy days of his early married life in chelsea, in the little study where his best work was done, whilst memories of the chapel of magdalen murmured in his brain, and he heard again the surpliced scholar reading from the lectern the praise of wisdom which he transmuted into the praise of love which was not wise. "it cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. it cannot be valued with the gold of ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. the gold and the crystal cannot equal it: and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels or fine gold. no mention shall be made of coral or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies. the topaz of ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with pure gold." throughout "the song of the nightingale" there is a reminiscence of that song of solomon which wilde told a fellow-prisoner he had always loved. "many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly contemned." in "the selfish giant" another note is sounded. as we read it we pass into the mediæval age, and we think of the story of christopher. the giant keeps the garden to himself and the children that played in it are banished, and thenceforward its glories are gone. in the garden of the selfish giant it was still winter. the birds did not care to sing in it as there were no children, and the trees forgot to blossom. the snow covered up the grass with his great white cloak, and the frost painted all the trees silver, but anon there came a child who wept as he wandered in the desolated garden, and the selfish giant's heart melted; once again the children's voices are heard and the garden flourishes as it did before, and the giant grows old and watches from his chair the children at their play. "i have many beautiful flowers," he said, "but the children are the most beautiful flowers of it all," till at last the grey old giant finds again in his garden the child who had first touched his hard heart--"but when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, 'who hath dared to wound thee?' for on the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on the little feet. 'who hath dared to wound thee?' cried the giant, 'tell me, that i may take my big sword and slay him.' 'nay,' answered the child, 'but these are the wounds of love.'" "the devoted friend" is altogether in another vein. as the first story is fragrant of the east and the second mediæval in its memories, so the third is teutonic, and "hans and the miller's friendship" reminds us of the brothers grimm. now that every child has the chance of reading the german fairy stories, oscar wilde's tale will be compared with theirs, but i think the children will like this one best for the simple reason that, being written in exquisite english, nothing that has passed through the perils of translation can have its charm. children are wonderful, because perfectly unconscious, critics of style. it is doubtful if readers will enjoy "the remarkable rocket" as they will the other stories. the modern _milieu_ intrudes here and there. the satire is keen and there are some clever epigrams. the russian princess "had driven all the way from finland in a sledge drawn by six reindeer which was shaped like a great golden swan, and between the swan's wings lay the little princess herself"--and we think that we are going to enjoy again the atmosphere of watteau, and are a little disappointed when we find our author saying, "he was something of a politician, and had always taken a prominent part in the local elections, or he knew the proper parliamentary expressions to use." and the story, alas! will suggest over and over again painful thoughts which i would keep at a distance when i read these other lovely tales. was not this sentence of evil omen? "'however, i don't care a bit,' said the rocket. 'genius like mine is sure to be appreciated some day,' and he sank down a little deeper into the mud." and the last sentence of all is terribly sinister. "'i knew i should create a sensation,' gasped the rocket, and he went out." "the house of pomegranates" was published in , and is dedicated to constance mary wilde. here, in a volume which the author frankly calls a volume of "beautiful tales," is a very stern indictment of the social system which, in his essay "the soul of man," oscar wilde had so powerfully denounced. we know how profoundly that essay has influenced the minds of men in every country in europe. translated into every tongue it has taught the oppressed to resent the callous cruelty of capital, but i doubt if its author was altogether as earnest as he seems. here, in the story of the young king, we have a lighter touch. it is as though the writer hesitated between two paths. in the year the wrong path had been taken if we may trust the record of a conversation which took place in that year. "to be a supreme artist," said he, "one must first be a supreme individualist." "you talk of art," said i, "as though there were nothing else in the world worth living for." "for me," said he sadly, "there is nothing else." but when oscar wilde dedicated "the house of pomegranates" to his wife the love of beauty and the love of humankind still seemed to go together. the young king is possessed with a passion for beauty. the son of the old king's daughter, by a secret marriage, his childhood and early youth have been obscure, and he comes into his kingdom suddenly. we see him in the palace where are gathered rich stores of all rare and beautiful things and his love for them is an instinct. the author in some exquisite pages tells us of the glories of the king's house. here, as in the other book of which i have written, the mind of the reader is helped to realise how beautiful luxury may be. i must quote the description of the young king's sleeping-chamber--"the walls were hung with rich tapestries representing the triumph of beauty. a large press, inlaid with agate and lapis lazuli, fitted one corner, and facing the window stood a curiously wrought cabinet with lacquer panels of powdered and mosaiced gold, on which were placed some delicate goblets of venetian glass and a cup of dark veined onyx. pale poppies were broidered on the silk coverlet of the bed, as though they had fallen from the tired hands of sleep, and tall reeds of fluted ivory bare up the velvet canopy, from which great tufts of ostrich plumes sprang like white foam, to the pallid silver of the fretted ceiling. a laughing narcissus in green bronze held a polished mirror above its head. on the table stood a flat bowl of amethyst." but on the eve of the coronation, the king dreams a dream. he is borne to the weavers' quarter and marks their weary toil, and the weaver of his own coronation robe has terrible things to tell him. "in war," answered the weaver, "the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. we must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. we toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time, and the faces of those we love become hard and evil. we tread out the grapes, and another drinks the wine. we sow the corn, and our own board is empty. we have chains though no eye beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free." "sic vos non nobis!" the artist in words is still haunted by his master vergil's verses, and he had not listened to ruskin all in vain. the pagan point of view is not that which prevailed in those happy months when "the house of pomegranates" was written. perhaps ruskin's socialism made no very deep impression, but christian art had its message once for oscar wilde. the young king sees in his dreams the toil of the weaver, and the diver, and of those who dig for the red rubies, and when he wakes he puts his pomp aside. in vain do his courtiers chide him, in vain do those whom he pities tell him that his way of redress is wrong and that "out of the luxury of the rich cometh the life of the poor." the king asks, "are not the rich and the poor brothers?" "ay," answered the man in the crowd, "and the name of the rich brother is cain." so the young king comes to the cathedral for his coronation clad in his leathern tunic and the rough sheepskin cloak of other days, and when the wise and worldly bishop has told him in decorous words even the same as his own courtiers said. "sayest thou that in this house?" said the young king, and he strode past the bishop, and climbed up the steps of the altar, and stood before the image of the christ. but i must not be tempted to continue the quotation of this lovely story, and will only give its closing words-- "and the young king came down from the high altar, and passed home through the midst of the people. but no man dared look upon his face, for it was like the face of an angel." here once more is the music of the lectern which an oxford man of years ago cannot forget, and i wonder if this story of the young king was not written some time before those others which complete the book. "the birthday of the infanta" does not give me the same delight. it is, of course, clever, as all was that oscar wilde ever touched, but it is cruel whilst it accuses cruelty. and now and then we have a sentence or a phrase which seems to have escaped revision. the story of the little dwarf who made sport for the princess and whose heart was broken when he found that she was pleased, not by his dances, but by his deformity, is not like its predecessor in the volume, and the picture of "the little dwarf lying on the ground and beating the floor with his clenched hands" did not need the awkward addition "in the most fantastic and exaggerated manner." but every poet, of course, _aliquando dormitat_, and i would rather appreciate than criticise. two more stories complete this beautiful book and i think i have not said yet how beautiful the type and binding and engravings are of this edition of in which i am reading. if ever it is reprinted it should have still the same sumptuous setting forth. wilde himself described the _format_ of the book in the following passage:--"mr shannon is the drawer of the dreams, and mr ricketts is the subtle and fantastic decorator. indeed, it is to mr ricketts that the entire decorative design of the book is due, from the selection of the type and the placing of the ornamentation, to the completely beautiful cover that encloses the whole. "the artistic beauty of the cover resides in the delicate tracing, arabesques, and massing of many coral-red lines on a ground of white ivory, the colour effect culminating in certain high gilt notes, and being made still pleasurable by the overlapping band of moss-green cloth that holds the book together." "the fisherman and his soul," recalls many stories and is very weird in its conception. we think of undine and of peter schmeidel and his shadow; and again there is a reminiscence of "the arabian nights." yet once more it is the old burden of the song "love is better than wisdom, and more precious than riches, and fairer than the feet of the daughters of men. the fires cannot destroy it, nor can the waters quench it." but in the story there is seen distinctly the strong attraction which the ritual of the catholic church had for oscar wilde. those who have read that fine poem, "rome unvisited," which even the saintly recluse of the oratory at edgbaston could praise, will understand how in the story of the "fisherman and his soul" it is written. "the priest went up to the chapel, that he might show to the people the wounds of the lord, and speak to them about the wrath of god. and when he had robed himself with his robes, and entered in and bowed himself upon the altar, he saw that the altar was covered with strange flowers that never had been seen before, and after that he had opened the tabernacle, and incensed the monstrance that was in it, and shown the fair wafer to the people, and hid it again behind the veils, he began to speak to the people." and now i come to "the star-child--inscribed to miss margot tennant." "he was white and delicate like swan ivory, and his curls were like the rings of the daffodil. his lips, also, were like the petals of a red flower, and his eyes were like violets by a river of pure water, and his body like the narcissus of a field where the mower comes not." but his heart was hard and his soul was selfish, and his evil ways wrought mischief all around; so bitter sorrow fell upon him and his comeliness departed, and in pain and grief he was purged from his sin. this last is indeed a beautiful story, and not once is there sounded the mocking note of cynical disdain of men. if one had taken up this tale and known not whose pen had traced it, he would not hesitate to place it in his children's hands. is it not good to think that tenderness and humility and patience are seen herein to be more beautiful than all the precious things which are loved so ardently by the artistic mind? i have shown, i hope, that in both of these exquisite volumes, it may be seen that oscar wilde had visions sometimes of the celestial city where the angels of the little children do always behold the face of the father. and if, as other chapters of this volume may seem to show, the vision splendid died away and faded all too soon, purgatorial pain came to the author, as to the star-child in his story, and he who could build for his soul a lordly pleasure house, and was driven forth from it, may enter it again when he has purged his sin. part v the poet poems if a keynote were wanted to oscar wilde's verse it might be found in a couple of stanzas by the poet whose work perhaps had the greatest share in moulding his ideas and fashioning his style. charles baudelaire, with all his love of the terrible and the morbid, was an incomparable stylist, and in these lines has almost formulated a creed of art. "la nature est un temple où de vivants piliers laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles; l'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles qui l'observent avec des regards familiers. comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité, vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté, les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent." we can picture to ourselves the young oxford student studying these lines over and over again till they had become part and parcel of himself. wilde himself has left it on record that he "cannot imagine anyone with the smallest pretensions to culture preferring a dexterously turned triolet to a fine imaginative ballad." in the majority of his poems, the beauties of nature, flowers, the song of birds and the music of running water are introduced either incidentally or as the _leit motif_. in fact, he was responsible for the dictum that what english poetry has to fear is not the fascination of dainty metre or delicate form, but the predominance of the intellectual spirit over the spirit of beauty. that the expression of the beautiful need not necessarily be simple was one of his earliest contentions. "are simplicity and directness of utterance," he asks, "absolute essentials for poetry?" and proceeds to answer his own question. "i think not. they may be admirable for the drama, admirable for all those imitative forms of literature that claim to mirror life in its externals and its accidents, admirable for quiet narrative, admirable in their place; but their place is not everywhere. poetry has many modes of music; she does not blow through one pipe alone. directness of utterance is good, but so is the subtle recasting of thought into a new and delightful form. simplicity is good, but complexity, mystery, strangeness, symbolism, obscurity even, these have their value. indeed, properly speaking, there is no such thing as style; there are merely styles, that is all." there we have a clear, concise and catholic statement of his literary creed, and none other was to be expected from one to whom baudelaire, poe, keats, and rossetti were so many masters whose influence was to be carefully cultivated and whose methods were worthy of imitation and study. his views on the subject of simplicity in verse should be read by all who desire to understand his method and do justice to his work. "we are always apt to think," he wrote, "that the voices which sang at the dawn of poetry were simpler, fresher, and more natural than ours, and that the world which the early poets looked at, and through which they walked, had a kind of poetical quality of its own, and could pass, almost without changing, into song. the snow lies thick now upon olympus, and its scarped sides are bleak and barren, but once, we fancy, the white feet of the muses brushed the dew from the anemones in the morning, and at evening came apollo to sing to the shepherds in the vale. but in this we are merely lending to other ages what we desire, or think we desire, for our own. our historical sense is at fault. every century that produces poetry is, so far, an artificial century, and the work that seems to us the most natural and simple product of its time is probably the result of the most deliberate and self-conscious effort. for nature is always behind the age. it takes a great artist to be thoroughly modern." "ravenna," the poem with which oscar wilde won the newdigate prize, we find to be far above the average of such effusions, though possessing most of the faults inherent in compositions of this kind. grace and even force of expression are not wanting, with here and there a pure strain of sentiment and thought, and a keen appreciation of the beauties of nature. ever and anon we come across some sentence, some _tournure de phrase_ which might belong to his later work, as for instance-- "the crocus bed (that seems a moon of fire round-girdled with a purple marriage-ring)." but for the most part the poem is rather reminiscent of "childe harold's pilgrimage," and is chiefly interesting by reason of the promise it holds forth. the poems published in are preceded by some dedicatory verses addressed to his wife which are characterised by great daintiness and simplicity, instinct with tender affection and chivalrous homage. "helas," which forms a sort of preface to the collection, is chiefly interesting on account of the prophetic pathos of the lines: "surely there was a time i might have trod the sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance struck one clear chord to reach the ears of god." "ave imperatrix" will come as a surprise to those unacquainted with wilde's works. most people would have thought the author of "dorian gray" the last man in the world to write a stirring patriotic poem which would not be out of place in a collection of mr kipling's works. a copy of _the world_ containing this poem found its way to an officer in lord robert's force marching on candahar, and evoked the enthusiasm and admiration of the whole mess. as a proof of the author's originality and care in the choice of similes he purposely discards the modern heraldic device of the british lion for the more correct and ancient leopards, as: "the yellow leopards, strained and lean, the treacherous russian knows so well with gaping blackened jaws are seen leap through the hail of screaming shell." there is a fine swing about the metre of this verse, and the description of the leopards as "strained and lean" is a piece of word painting, a felicity of expression that it would be difficult to improve on. the whole poem is tense with patriotic fervour, nor is it wanting in exquisitely pathetic touches, as for instance-- "pale women who have lost their lord will kiss the relics of the slain-- some tarnished epaulette--some sword-- poor toys to soothe such anguished pain." or "in vain the laughing girl will yearn to greet her love with love-lit eyes: down in some treacherous ravine, clutching the flag, the dead boy lies." that he should have written such a poem is proof conclusive of the author's extraordinary versatility, and though a comparatively early production is worthy to rank with the finest war poems in the language. current events at that time attracted his pen for we find a set of verses on the death of the ill-fated prince imperial, a sonnet on the bulgarian christians, and others of a more or less patriotic character. few of these productions, however, invite a very serious criticism. they were of the moment and for the moment, and have lost the appeal of freshness and actuality. in "the garden of eros" we get a good insight into wilde's passionate fondness for flowers, to whom they were human things with souls. probably no other verses of the poet so well define and express this master passion of his life. "... mark how the yellow iris wearily leans back its throat, as though it would be kissed by its false chamberer, the dragon-fly." or "and i will tell thee why the jacynth wears such dread embroidery of dolorous moan." or again "close to a shadowy nook where half afraid of their own loneliness some violets lie that will not look the gold sun in the face." i remember a lady telling me once that she was in a london shop one day when wilde came in and asked as a favour that a lily be taken out of the window because it looked so tired. this looking on flowers as real live sentient things was no mere pose with him. he was thoroughly imbued with the conviction that they were possessed of feeling, and throughout his poetical work we shall find endless applications of this idea. of particular interest in this poem are the verses descriptive of the various poets, his contemporaries. swinburne he alludes to most happily, as far as the neatness of phrase is concerned nothing could be better in this regard than "and he hath kissed the lips of proserpine and sung the galilean's requiem." william morris, "our sweet and simple chaucer's child," appeals to him strangely. many a summer's day he informs us he has "lain poring on the dreamy tales his fancy weaves." his appreciation of morris's verse is keen and enthusiastic. "the little laugh of water falling down is not so musical, the clammy gold close hoarded in the tiny waxen town has less of sweetness in it." what a delicate metaphor that is, what an exquisite poet's fancy. not keats himself could have surpassed the "clammy gold close hoarded in the tiny waxen town"--it is worthy to rank with some of the daintiest flights in the "queen mab speech," that modern mercutios murder so abominably. like every verse writer of his time oscar wilde had felt the wondrous influence of rossetti, and no finer tribute to the painter could be written than the lines-- "all the world for him a gorgeous coloured vestiture must wear, and sorrow take a purple diadem, or else be no more sorrow, and despair gild its own thorns, and pain, like adon, be even in anguish beautiful; such is the empery which painters held." there is a stately splendour about the flow of "a gorgeous coloured vestiture," and one pauses to admire the choice of the last word, and can picture the poet's delight when, like an artist in mosaic who has hit upon the stone to fill up the remaining interstice, he lighted on the word. it is essentially _le mot juste_, no other could have filled its place. so also is there a peculiar happiness in the use of "empery." there is a volume of sound and meaning in the word that could with difficulty be surpassed. in fact, in his choice of words wilde always and for ever deserves the glowing words of praise that baudelaire addressed to theodore de bonville-- "vous avez prélassé votre orgueil d'architecte dans des constructions dont l'audace correcte fait voir quelle sera votre maturité." and when we come to a line like-- "against the pallid shield of the wan sky the almond blossoms gleam" we realise how thoroughly the praise would be deserved, and linger lovingly on the lilting music of the words and the curious japanese setting of the picture evolved. the poem ends on a note like the drawing in of a deep breath of country air after a prolonged sojourn in towns. "why soon the woodman will be here; how we have lived this night of june." in "requiescat" quite a different note is reached. the poem was written after the death of a beloved sister; the sentiment rings true and the very simplicity of the language conveys an atmosphere of real grief that would have been entirely marred by the intrusion of any decorative or highly-coloured phrase. the choice of saxon words alone could produce the desired effect, and the author has realised this and made use almost exclusively of that material. nor was he ill-advised to let himself be influenced so far as the metre is concerned by hood's incomparable "bridge of sighs," and it was not in the metre alone that he availed himself of that priceless gem of english verse-- "all her bright golden hair tarnished with rust, she that was young and fair fallen to dust." is obviously inspired by "take her up tenderly, lift her with care; fashioned so slenderly, young, and so fair!" but, on the other hand, hood himself might well have envied the exquisite sentiment contained in-- "speak gently, she can hear the daisies grow." the lines were written at avignon, surely the place of all others, with its memories and its mediæval atmosphere, to inspire a poem, the dignity and beauty of which are largely due to the simplicity of its wording. during this period of travel we are struck by two things. firstly, how deeply impressed the young poet was by the mysteries of the catholic faith and how his indignation flamed up at the new italian _régime_; secondly, how apparent the influence of rossetti is in the sonnets he then wrote. his sympathies were all with the occupant of st peter's chair. "but when i knew that far away at rome in evil bonds a second peter lay, i wept to see the land so very fair." and again "look southward where rome's desecrated town lies mourning for her god-anointed king! look heavenward! shall god allow this thing not but some flame-girt raphael shall come down, and smite the spoiler with the sword of pain." in "san miniato" the influence of rome upon the young man's mind finds expression in words which might have been written by a son of the latin church. "o crowned by god with thorns and pain! mother of christ! o mystic wife! my heart is weary of this life and over sad to sing again," he writes, and ends with the invocation-- "o crowned by god with love and flame! o crowned by christ the holy one! o listen ere the scorching sun show to the world my sin and shame." nor can it be wondered at that the devotion to the madonna which forms so essential a feature of the catholic faith should impress his young and ardent spirit as it does nearly every artist to whom the poetic beauty of this side of it naturally appeals. the pope's captivity moved him again and again to express his indignation in verse, and from his poem, "easter day" we can gather how deeply he was impressed both by the stately ceremonial at st peter's and by the sight of the despoiled pontiff. at this time also he seems to have been more or less yearning after a more spiritual mode of life than he has been leading, at least so one gathers from poems like "e tenebris" in which he tells us that-- "the wine of life is spilt upon the sand, my heart is as some famine-murdered land whence all good things have perished utterly and well i know my soul in hell must be, if i this night before god's throne should stand." that he had visions of a possible time when a complete change should be worked in his spiritual condition seems clear from the concluding lines of "rome unvisited." "before yon field of trembling gold is garnered into dusty sheaves or ere the autumn's scarlet leaves flutter as birds adown the wold, i may have run the glorious race, and caught the torch while yet aflame, and called upon the holy name of him who now doth hide his face." apart from the light these poems throw upon his mental and spiritual attitude at that period, they are extremely interesting as revealing the literary influences governing him at the time. i have already referred to the resemblance between his sonnets and the more finished ones of dante gabriel rossetti, and this point cannot better be illustrated than by placing the work of the two men in juxtaposition. if we take, for instance, rossetti's "lady of the rocks." "mother, is this the darkness of the end, the shadow of death? and is that outer sea infinite imminent eternity? and does the death-pang by man's seed sustained in time's each instant cause thy face to bend its silent prayer upon the son, while he blesses the dead with his hand silently to his long day which hours no more offend? mother of grace, the pass is difficult, keen as these rocks, and the bewildered souls throng it like echoes, blindly shuddering through. thy name, o lord, each spirit's voice extols, whose peace abides in the dark avenue amid the bitterness of things occult." and compare it with "e tenebris." we are at once struck with the same mode of expression, the same train of thought and the same deep note of pain in the two poems. and again take wilde's "madonna mia"-- "i stood by the unvintageable sea till the wet waves drenched face and hair with spray, the long red fires of the dying day burned in the west; the wind piped drearily; and to the land the clamorous gulls did flee: 'alas!' i cried, 'my life is full of pain, and who can garner fruit or golden grain, from these waste fields which travail ceaselessly!' my nets gaped wide with many a break and flaw nathless i threw them as my final cast into the sea, and waited for the end. when lo! a sudden glory! and i saw from the black waters of my tortured past the argent splendour of white limbs ascend!" and compare it with rossetti's "venetian pastoral" and "mary's girlhood," and we can almost imagine that the painter was holding up pictures to inspire the young poet. "red underlip drawn in for fear of love and white throat, whiter than the silvered dove," might almost have been written by rossetti himself. more characteristically original are the lines-- "i saw from the black waters of my tortured past the argent splendour of white limbs ascend," from the "vita nuova," though one cannot fail to perceive a faint baudelairian note. "where behind lattice window scarlet wrought and gilt some brown-limbed girl did weave thee tapestry," at once reminds us of the rossetti influence. the poem itself shows considerable skill in construction and deftness in the moulding of the sentences, moreover, there is a freshness in the treatment of the theme that a less original writer would have found great difficulty in imparting. here again we see the catholic note as when he writes-- "never mightest thou see the face of her, before whose mouldering shrine to-day at rome the silent nations kneel; who got from love no joyous gladdening, but only love's intolerable pain, only a sword to pierce her heart in twain, only the bitterness of child-bearing." there is one especially fine bit of imagery-- "the lotus-leaves which heal the wounds of death lie in thy hand--" which bears the very truest imprint of poetry. with the poet's return to england, a reaction took place, and the sight of english woodlands and english lanes caused a strong revulsion of feeling. "this english thames is holier far than rome those harebells like a sudden flush of sea breaking across the woodland, with the foam of meadow-sweet and white anemone, to fleck their blue waves,--god is likelier there than hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale monks bear." the green fields and the smell of the good brown earth come as a refreshing contrast to the incense laden atmosphere of foreign cathedrals. and yet his fancy delights in commingling the two. in the "violet-gleaming" butterflies he finds roman monsignore (he anglicises the word by the way and gives it a plural "s,"), a lazy pike is "some mitred old bishop _in partibis_," and "the wind, the restless prisoner of the trees, does well for palestrina." he revels in the contrast that the refreshing simplicity of rural england presents to the pomp and splendour of rome. the "lingering orange afterglow" is "more fair than all rome's lordliest pageants." the "blue-green beanfields" "tremulous with the last shower" bring sweeter perfume at eventide than "the odorous flame-jewelled censers the young deacons swing." bird life suggests the conceit that-- "poor fra giovanni bawling at the mass, were out of tune now for a small brown bird sings overhead." his love of nature, his passion for flowers and the music of nature find continued and ecstatic expression. "sweet is the swallow twittering on the eaves." everything appeals to him, "the heavy lowing cattle stretching their huge and dripping mouths across the farmyard gate," the mower whetting his scythe, the milkmaid carolling blithely as she trips along. "sweet are the hips upon the kentish leas, and sweet the wind that lifts the new-mown hay, and sweet the fretful swarms of grumbling bees that round and round the linden blossoms play; and sweet the heifer breathing on the stall and the green bursting figs that hang upon the red-brick wall." no matter that he mixes up the seasons somewhat and that having sung of bursting figs he refers, in the next line, to the cuckoo mocking the spring--"when the last violet loiters by the well"--the poem is still a pastoral breathing its fresh flower-filled atmosphere of the english countryside. wilde is, however, saturated with classical lore and (though on some minds the fantasy may jar) he introduces daphnus and linus, syrinx and cytheræa. but he is faithful to his english land, he talks of roses which "all day long in vales Æolian a lad might seek for" and which "overgrows our hedges like a wanton courtesan, unthrifty of its beauty," a real shakespearean touch. "many an unsung elegy," he tells us, "sleeps in the reeds that fringe our winding thames." he peoples the whole countryside with faun and nymph-- "some mænad girl with vine leaves on her breast will filch their beech-nuts from the sleeping pans, so softly that the little nested thrush will never wake, and then will shrilly laugh and leap will rush down the green valley where the fallen dew lies thick beneath the elm and count her store, till the brown satyrs in a jolly crew trample the loosetrife down along the shore, and where their horned master sits in state bring strawberries and bloomy plums upon a wicker crate." and yet the religious influence still makes itself felt. "why must i behold [he exclaims] the wan white face of that deserted christ whose bleeding hands my hands did once enfold?" but it is only momentary, and once more he sports with the sylvan gods and goddesses till "the heron passes homeward from the mere, the blue mist creeps among the shivering trees, gold world by world the silent stars appear and like a blossom blows--before the breeze a white moon drifts across the shimmering sky." and he hears "the curfew booming from the bell at christ church gate." wilde never wrote anything better in verse than this with the single exception of "the ballad of reading gaol." the poem deserves to rank among the finest pastorals in the language. it is essentially musical, written with artistic restraint and with a discrimination of the use of words and their combination that marks the great artist. it is a true nature poem and it will appeal to all those who prefer musical verse to the artificial manufacture of rhymes, and simple sentences to the torturing of words into unheard-of combinations. as a contrast to it comes the "magdalen walks" which, in construction and rhythm, is somewhat lacking in ease and freedom. it is a curious thing that wilde's affections seemed to alternate between the unordered simplicity of english woods and meadows and the trim artificial parterres and bouquets of versailles or sans souci. there is a constraint about the metre of this poem which does rather suggest a man walking along a trim avenue from which he can perceive flowers, meadows and riotous hedges--in the distance. there is also a suggestion of tennyson's "maud" about-- "and the plane to the pine tree is whispering some tale of love till it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green and the gloom of the wych elm's hollow is lit with the iris sheen of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove." "impression du matin" might be said to be a successful attempt to render a whistler pastel into verse, but there is a human note about the last verse that elevates the poem far above such a mere _tour de force_, and there is a fine sense of effect in the picture of the "pale woman all alone" standing in the glimmering light of the gas lamp as the rays of the sun just touch her hair. "a serenade" and "endymion" possess all the qualities that a musical setting demands, but do not call for especial comment. it is, however, in "la bella donna della mia mante" that the expression of the poet's genius finds vent. "as a pomegranate, cut in twain, white-seeded, is her crimson mouth" is as perfect a metaphor as one could well wish to find. "charmides" is a more ambitious effort than anything he had yet attempted. the word-painting is obviously inspired by keats, for whose work he had an intense admiration. such lines as "came a great owl with yellow sulphurous eyes," and "vermilion-finned with eyes of bossy gold" might have been taken straight out of "lamia," so truly has he caught the spirit of his master. but if enamoured of keats's gorgeous colouring wilde revelled in the construction of jewelled phrase and crimson line, there is another source of inspiration noticeable in the poem. had shakespeare never written "venus and adonis," wilde might have written "charmides" but it would not have been the same poem. the difference between the true poet who has studied the great verse of bygone ages and the mere imitator is that one will produce a work of art enhanced by the suggestions derived from the contemplation of the highest conception of genius, whereas the other will outrun the constable and merely accentuate and burlesque the distinguishing characteristics of the work of others. in the case in point, whilst we note with pleasure and interest the points of resemblance between the poem and the models that its author has followed, we are conscious that what we are reading is a work of art in itself and that its intrinsic merits are enhanced by the points of resemblance and do not depend on them for their existence. there is another poem--"ballade de marguerite"--which recalls memories of keats, closely resembling as it does "la belle dame sans merci." rarely has the old ballad form been more successfully treated. we catch the very spirit of mediævalism in the lines-- "perchance she is kneeling in st. denys (on her soul may our lady have grammercy!) ah, if she is praying in lone chapelle i might swing the censer and ring the bell." it is so easy to overdo the thing, to produce a bad counterfeit made up of wardour street english, that to retain the simplicity of language and the slight _soupçon_ of chaucerian english requires all the skill of a master craftsman, and the intimate knowledge of the value and date of words that can only result from a close acquaintance with the works of the ballad writers. in "the dole of the king's daughter" wilde again essays the ballad form, but this time the treatment shows more traces of the rossetti influence. the ballad spirit is maintained with unerring skill and the form perfectly adhered to throughout. to quote good old izaak walton--"old-fashioned poetry but choicely good." as conveying the idea of impending tragedy nothing could be more effective than the simplicity of the lines "there are two that ride from the south and east and two from the north and west, for the black raven a goodly feast for the king's daughter rest." in this ballad as in the "chanson" he uses the old device, so common in ancient ballads, of making the alternate lines parenthetical, as, for instance-- "there is one man who loves her true, (red, o red, is the stain of gore!) he hath duggen a grave by the darksome yew, (one grave will do for four)." a rather clever parody of this mode of construction is worth quoting here-- "sage green" (_by a fading-out Æsthete_) "my love is as fair as a lily flower. (_the peacock blue has a sacred sheen!_) oh, bright are the blooms in her maiden bower. (_sing hey! sing ho! for the sweet sage green!_) her face is as wan as the water white. (_the peacock blue has a sacred sheen!_) alack! she heedeth it never at all. (_sing hey! sing ho! for the sweet sage green!_) the china plate it is pure on the wall. (_the peacock blue has a sacred sheen!_) with languorous loving and purple pain. (_sing hey! sing ho! for the sweet sage green!_) and woe is me that i never may win; (_the peacock blue has a sacred sheen!_) for the bard's hard up, and she's got no tin. (_sing hey! sing ho! for the sweet sage green!_)" among the sonnets written at this period the one on keats's grave in which he does homage to him whom he reverenced as a master is especially felicitous in its ending-- "thy name was writ in water--it shall stand and tears like mine will keep thy memory green as isabella did her basil-tree." than the graceful introducing of keats's poem no more delicate epitaph could be well imagined. shelley's last resting-place likewise inspired his pen and there is an "impression de voyage" written at katakolo at the period of his visit to greece in company with professor mahaffy, the concluding line of which, "i stood upon the soil of greece at last," conveys more by its reticence than could be expressed in volumes. of his five theatrical sonnets headed "impressions de theatre," one is addressed to the late sir henry irving and the three others to miss ellen terry. it is curious that of the three shakespearean characters he mentioned as worthier of the actor's great talents than fabiendei franchi--viz. lear, romeo, and richard iii.,--the only one that irving ever played was romeo, and in that part he was a decided failure, which, considering his peculiar mannerisms and method, as well as his age at the time, was not to be wondered at. the fifth was probably intended for madame sarah bernhardt, whose wonderful rendering of phèdre could not fail to deeply impress so cultured a critic as the author of these poems. in "panthea" oscar wilde gives rein to his amorous fancy, and, inspired by the poets of greece and rome, peoples the world with gods and goddesses who mourn the old glad pagan days-- "back to their lotus-haunts they turn again kissing each other's mouths, and mix more deep the poppy-seeded draught which brings soft purple-lidded sleep." how rich is the language here employed, how exquisite the lilt of "soft purple-lidded sleep." not even tennyson in "the lotus eaters" has done anything better than this. and how delicately expressed is the idea embodied in the lines-- "there in the green heart of some garden close queen venus with the shepherd at her side, her warm soft body like the briar rose which should be white yet blushes at its pride--" or, how tender the fancy that inspired "so when men bury us beneath the yew thy crimson-stained mouth a rose will be, and thy soft eyes lush bluebells dimmed with dew." none but a poet could have written those lines; the stately wording of the second line is purposely chosen to enhance the perfect simplicity of the third. the poems comprised within "the fourth movement" include the "impression," "le reveillon," the first verse of which runs-- "the sky is laced with fitful red, the circling mists and shadows flee, the dawn is rising from the sea, like a white lady from her bed--" which inspired the parodist with-- "more impressions" (_by oscuro wildgoose_) des sponettes "my little fancy's clogged with gush, my little lyre is false in tone, and when i lyrically moan, i hear the impatient critic's 'tush!' but i've 'impressions.' these are grand! mere dabs of words, mere blobs of tint, displayed on canvas or in print, men laud, and think they understand. a smudge of brown, a smear of yellow, no tale, no subject,--there you are! impressions!--and the strangest far is--that the bard's a clever fellow." i quote the two parodies to show how little oscar wilde's verse was appreciated by his contemporaries. there is an unfairness and misrepresentation about them which is significant of how the poet's poses and extravagancies had prejudiced the public mind. in the two love poems "apologia" and "quia multi amori" a deeper key is struck, and a note of pain predominates. there is a restraint about the versification and the colour of the words that strikes the right chord and tunes the lyre to a subdued note. the underlying passion and regret find their supreme expression in the lines-- "ah! hadst thou liked me less and loved me more, through all those summer days of joy and rain, i had not now been sorrow's heritor or stood a lackey in the house of pain." the "hadst thou liked me less and loved me more" deserves to pass into the language with richard lovelace's "i could not love thee, dear, so much, loved i not honour more." in "humanitad" we get a view of the country in winter time, and "the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds and flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck, and hoots to see the moon; across the meads limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck; and a stray seamew with its fretful cry flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky." the picture is complete, we see the bare countryside, the sky grey with impending snow, and the animal life introduced uttering nature's cry of desolation. but hope is not dead in the poet's breast; he sees where, when springtime comes, "nodding cowslips" will bloom again and the hedge on which the wild rose--"that sweet repentance of the thorny briar"--will blossom out. he runs through the whole flower calendar, using the old english names "boy's-love," "sops in wine," and "daffodillies." "soon will the glade be bright with bellamour the flower which wantons love and those sweet nuns vale-lilies in their snowy vestiture, will tell their beaded pearls, and carnations with mitred dusky leaves will scent the wind and straggling traveller's joy each hedge with yellow stars will bind." once more we note how the flowers are personalities for him, a view which could not long escape the humorists of _punch_, and which was amply taken advantage of by the writer of some burlesque verses, two of which are sufficiently amusing to quote-- "my long lithe lily, my languid lily, my lank limp lily-love, how shall i win-- woo thee to wink at me? silver lily, how shall i sing to thee, softly, or shrilly? what shall i weave for thee--which shall i spin-- rondel, or rondeau, or virelay? shall i buzz like a bee, with my face thrust in thy choice, chaste chalice, or choose me a tin trumpet, or touchingly, tenderly play on the weird bird-whistle, _sweeter than sin_, that i bought for a halfpenny, yesterday? my languid lily, my lank limp lily, my long, lithe lily-love, men may grin-- say that i'm soft and supremely silly-- what care i, while you whisper stilly; what care i, while you smile? not a pin! while you smile, while you whisper--'tis sweet to decay! i have watered with chlorodine, tears of chagrin, the churchyard mould i have planted thee in, upside down, in an intense way, in a rough red flower-pot, _sweeter than sin_, that i bought for a halfpenny, yesterday!" nature appeals to oscar wilde in all her moods, and though he might at times assume the pose of preferring art to nature, he gives expression to his real feelings when he exclaims: "ah! somehow life is bigger after all than any painted angel could we see the god that is within us!" the lines speak for themselves and are strongly indicative of his attitude towards nature and art at that period. the true spirit of catholicism had gripped him; the influence of rome was at work, though enfeebled, and remained latent within him till in his hour of passing he found peace in the bosom of the great mother, who throughout the ages has always held out her arms to the sinner and the outcast. there has always been a certain amount of mystery attached to another poem of wilde's called "the harlot's house," written at the same period as "the duchess of padua" and "the sphinx"--that is, when he was living in the hotel voltaire. it was originally published in a magazine not later than june . it is a curious thing that all researches up to the present as to the name of the publication have proved fruitless, and that the approximate date of the appearance of the verses has been arrived at by reference to a parody entitled "the public house," which appeared in _the sporting times_, of all papers in the world, on th june . first, an edition of the poem was brought out privately by the methuen press in with five illustrations by althea gyles, in which the bizarre note is markedly, though artistically, dominant. another edition was privately printed in london in in paper wrappers. the idea of this short lyrical poem is that the poet stands outside a house and watches the shadows of the puppet dancers "race across the blind." "the dancers swing in a waltz of strauss"--the "treues liebes herz"--"like strange mechanical grotesques" or "black leaves wheeling in the wind." the marionettes whirl in the ghostly dance, and---- "sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed a phantom lover to her breast, sometimes they seemed to try and sing." the man turns to his companion and remarks that "the dead are dancing with the dead," but drawn by the music she enters the house. as love enters the house of lust the gay seductive music changes to a discord, and the horrible shadows disappear. then the dawn breaks, creeping down the silent street "like a frightened girl." that is all, but as a high specimen of imagina-verse it stands alone. that the author was inspired by memories of baudelaire and poe is beyond dispute. nevertheless, the poem, in conception as well as execution, is essentially original. the puppet dancers' _motif_ was afterwards introduced by him with telling effect as we shall see later in "the ballad of reading gaol." hardly ever have the bizarre and the _macabre_ been used with such artistic effect as in this short poem, nor have the imaginative gifts of its author ever found a finer scope. if he had written nothing else than these lines they would confer immortality on him. like all truly great work they are imperishable and will form part of english literature when far more widely read effusions are set aside and forgotten. i have remarked on the original character of the poem in spite of its obvious sources of inspiration, and there can be no better way of verifying this than by giving an example of baudelaire's own incursion into puppet land-- "danse macabre" "_fière, autant qu'un vivant, de sa noble stature, avec son gros bouquet son mouchoir et ses gants, elle a la nonchalance et la désinvolture d'un coquette maigre aux airs extravagants._ _vit-on jamais au bal une taille plus mince? sa robe exagérée, en sa royale ampleur, s'ecroule abondamment sur un pied sec que pince un soulier pomponné, joli comme une fleur._ _la ruche qui se joue au bord des clavicules, comme un ruisseau lascif qui se frotte au rocher, défend pudiquement des lazzi ridicules les funèbres appas qu'elle tient à cacher._ _ses yeux profonds sont faits de vide et de ténèbres, et son crâne, de fleurs artistement coiffé, oscille mollement sur ses frêles vertèbres, --o charme d'un néant follement attifé!_ _aucuns t'appelleront une caricature, qui ne comprennent pas, amants ivres de chair, l'élégance sans nom de l'humaine armature, tu réponds, grand squelette, à mon gout le plus cher!_ _viens-tu troubler, avec ta puissante grimace, la fête de la vie? ou quelque vieux désir, eperonnant encor ta vivant carcasse, te pousse-t-il, crédule, au sabbat du plaisir?_ _au chant des violons, aux flammes des bougies, espères-tu chasser ton cauchemar moqueur, et viens-tu demander au torrent des orgies de rafraîchir l'enfer allumé dans ton coeur?_ _inépuisable quits de sottise et de fautes! de l'antique douleur éternel alambic! a travers le treillis recourbé de tes côtes je vois, errant encor, l'insatiable aspic._ _pour dire vrai, je crains que ta coquetterie ne trouve pas un prix digne de ses efforts; qui, de ces soeurs mortels, entend la raillerie? les charmes de l'horreur n'enivrent que les forts!_ _le gouffre de tes yeux, plein d'horrible pensées, exhale le vertige, et les danseurs prudents ne contempleront pas sans d'amères nausées le sourire éternel de tes trente-deux dents._ _pourtant, qui n'a serré dans ses bras un squelette, et qui ne s'est nourri des choses du tombeau? qu'importe le parfum, l'habit ou la toilette? qui fait le dégoûté montre qu'il se croit beau._ _bayadère sans nez, irrésistible gouge, dis donc à ces danseurs qui font les offusqués: 'fiers mignons, malgré l'art des poudres et du rouge, vous sentez tous la mort!' o squelettes musques._ _antinous flétris, dandys à face glabre, cadavres vernisses, lovelaces chenus, le branle universel de la danse macabre vous entraine en des lieux qui ne sont pas connus!_ _des quais froids de la seine aux bords brûlants du gange, le troupeau mortel saute et se pâme, sans voir, dans un trou du plafond la trompette de l'ange sinistrement béante ainsi qu'un tromblon noir._ _en tout climat, sous ton soleil, la mort t'admire en tes contorsions, risible humanité, et souvent, comme toi, se parfumant de myrrhe, mêle son ironie à ton insanité!_" the french poem lacks the simplicity and the directness of its english fellow. it appears overloaded and artificial in comparison, and above all it lacks the music which results from the juxtaposition of the anglo-saxon a, e, i, and u sounds, and the latin ahs and ohs. but, on the other hand, as an example of the precious and artificial in literature, a further poem of wilde's written at this period, "the sphinx," reveals another phase of his extraordinarily versatile genius. the metre of the poem is the same as that of "in memoriam," though, owing to the stanzas being arranged in two long lines instead of the fairly short ones in tennyson's poem, this might at first escape attention. the poet at the time of writing we learn had "hardly seen some twenty summers cast their green for autumn's gaudy liveries." (which would seem to indicate that this part, at any rate, was written at an earlier period than the rest of the poem), and in the very first lines he tells us that-- "in a dim corner of my rooms far longer than my fancy thinks a beautiful and silent sphinx has watched me through the silent gloom." day and night-- "this curious cat lies crouching on the chinese mat with eyes of satin rimmed with gold." here we have in a very few words an exact picture of this "exquisite grotesque half-woman and half-animal," whom, after the manner of edgar allan poe with his raven, he proceeds to apostrophise-- "oh tell me" [he begins] "were you standing by when isis to osiris knelt? and did you watch the egyptian melt her union for antony?" and plies her with many questions of similar nature. presently he adjures her-- "lift up your large black satin eyes which are like cushions where one sinks! fawn at my feet, sphinx! and sing me all your memories." this idea of comparing the velvet depths of the eyes to "cushions where one sinks" is quaint and original, though distinctly decadent, nor is the note of the _macabre_ wanting, as-- "when through the purple corridors the screaming scarlet ibis flew in terror, and a horrid dew dripped from the moaning mandragores." there is a wonderful use of contrast in the introduction of sweating mandragores in connection with the purple of the corridors and the scarlet plumage of the ibis. how daring, likewise, the grotesque note introduced as he recites the catalogue of her possible lovers and asks-- "did giant lizards come and couch before you on the reedy banks? did gryphons with great metal flanks leap on you in your trampled couch? did monstrous hippopotami come sidling towards you in the mist? did gilt-scaled dragons writhe and twist with passion as you passed them by?" the speaker will find out the secret of her amours. there is nothing too bizarre, too monstrous to include in the list. "had you shameful secret quests" [he asks] "and did you hurry to your home some nereid coiled in amber foam with curious rock crystal breasted?" not baudelaire himself could have invented anything more precious than the description of this sea-nymph, but the gruesome must be introduced. "did you," he inquires, "steal to the border of the bar and swim across the silent lake? and slink into the vault and make the pyramid your lupanar, till from each black sarcophagus rose up the painted swathèd dead?" wilde catalogues through the whole egyptian mythology; he is inclined to give first place to "ammon." "you kissed his mouth with mouths of flame: you made the hornèd god your own: you stood behind him on his throne: you called him by his secret name. you whispered monstrous oracles into the caverns of his ears: with blood of goats and blood of steers you taught him monstrous miracles." decadent the idea may be, but how cleverly, how subtly the effects are produced and how well sustained is the atmosphere of chimerical, nightmare horrors. wilde makes use of the impression derived from the contemplation of colossal figures--the egyptian galleries of the louvre were, one may be certain, a daily haunt of his at the time--and he describes--"nine cubits span" and his limbs are "widespread as a tent at noon," but he was of flesh and blood for all that. "his thick soft throat was white as milk and threaded with thin veils of blue," and he was royally clad, for-- "curious pearls like frozen dew were embroidered on his flaming silk." his love of rare and beautiful things finds an outlet in the description of the jewels and retinue of the god. "before his gilded galliot ran naked vine-wreathed corybantes, and lines of swaying elephants knelt down to draw his chariot." barbaric splendour and eastern gorgeousness we have here and in one line the sense of immense wealth is conveyed-- "the meanest cup that touched his lips was fashioned from a chrysolite." but now-- "the god is scattered here and there: deep hidden in the windy sand i saw his giant granite hand still clenchèd in impotent despair." and he bids her-- "go seek the fragments on the moor and wash them in the evening dew, and from their pieces make anew thy mutilated paramour." with mocking irony he tells her to "wake mad passions in the senseless stone." he counsels her to return to egypt, her lovers are not dead-- "they will rise up and hear your voice and clash their cymbals and rejoice and run to kiss your mouth!..." he advises to-- "follow some raving lion's spoor across the copper-coloured plain," and take him as a lover or to mate with a tiger-- "and toy with him in amorous jests, and when he turns and snarls and gnaws o smite him with your jasper claws! and bruise him with your agate breasts!" but "her sullen ways" pall on him, her presence fills him with horror, "poisonous and heavy breath makes the light flicker in the lamp." the poet wonders what "songless tongueless ghost of sin crept through the curtains of the night." he drives the cat away with every opprobrious epithet for she wakes in him "each bestial sense" and makes him what he "would not be." she makes his "creed a barren shame," and wakes "foul dreams of sensual life," and with a return to sanity he chases her away. "go thou before," he cries, "and leave me to my crucifix whose pallid burden sick with pain watches the world with wearied eyes and weeps for every soul that dies, and weeps for every soul in pain." on this note of pessimism and refusal the poem ends. in the realm of the fantastic it has no equal and though the objection may be raised that the whole thing is unhealthy, the truth is that it is merely an experimental excursion in the abnormal. it has all the fantastic unreality of chinese dragons, and, therefore, can in no way be harmful. the nightmare effect has no lasting influence. we read it as we would any other imaginative grotesque. but whilst we are alternately fascinated and repulsed by the subject, we are lost in admiration of the decorative treatment of the theme. the whole performance is artificial, but so is all oriental art. it is true that baudelaire's poems, with their morbid, highly polished neurotic qualities, had fascinated the young artist and exercised a powerful influence over him, but "the sphinx" was an achievement apart and totally different from any other of his poems. it is more in the nature of an extravaganza, an opium dream described in finely chiselled, richly tinted phrases. every young poet goes through various phases and this was only a phase in the author's literary career. nothing could be better than the workmanship, and that the poem should so rivet the attention and attract where it most repels is the greatest tribute to the genius of its creator. it is essentially a weird conception expressed in haunting cadences, an esoteric gem for all those who have brains to think and the necessary artistic sense to appreciate really good work. that persons of inferior mental calibre and narrow views should be shocked by it is only to be expected, and the author himself excused the delay in publishing it by explaining that "it would destroy domesticity in england!" the original edition, it may be mentioned, was published in september by messrs elkin mathews and john lane, and was limited to two hundred copies issued at s. with twenty-five on larger paper at s. it was magnificently illustrated by mr c. r. ricketts, the delicacy and distinction of whose work is too well known to need comment. in striking contrast to the artificiality and decadent character of "the sphinx" stands the author's imperishable "ballad of reading gaol." what the circumstances were that led to the writing of this great masterpiece have been already sufficiently dealt with in the earlier portion of this work. it has been aptly said that all great art has an underlying note of pain and sorrow, beautiful work may be produced without it, but not the work that is worthy to rank among the great creative masterpieces of the world. "quand un homme et une poésie," writes barbey d'aubrevilly, "ont dévalé si bas dans la conscience de l'incurable malheur qui est fond de toutes les voluptés de l'existence poésie et homme ne peuvent plus que remonter." there can be no doubt that this poem could never have been written but for the terrible ordeal the poet had been through. it is incomparably wilde's finest poetic work--great, not only by reason of its beauty, but great on account of the feeling for suffering humanity, his power to enter into the sorrows of others and to forget his own trials in the sympathetic contemplation of the agony of his fellow-sufferers which it reveals. the words of another distinguished french critic might almost have been written about him: "désormais divorcée d'avec l'enseignement historique, philosophique et scientifique, la poésie se trouve ramenée à so fonction naturelle et directe, qui est de réaliser pour nous la vie, complémentaire du rêve, du souvenir, de l'espérance, du désir; de donner un corps à ce qu'il y a d'insaisissable dans nos pensées et de secret dans le mouvement de nos âmes; de nous consoler ou de nous châtier par l'expression de l'ideal ou par le spectacle de nos vices. elle devient non pas _individuelle_, suivant la prédiction un peu hasardeuse de l'auteur de _jocelyn_, mais _personnelle_, si nous sous-entendons que l'ame du poëte est nécessairement une âme collective, une corde sensible et toujours tendue que font vibrer les passions et les douleurs de ses semblables." with coleridge's "ancient mariner," "reading gaol," holds first place amongst the ballads of the world, and by many critics it is held, by reason of its deep feeling and anguished intensity, to be a finer piece of work than the older poet's _chef d'oeuvre_. although the author's identity was concealed under the cypher "c ," there was never a moment's doubt as to who the writer was. it came as a shock to the british public that the man who, but a couple of years before, had stood in the public pillory, the man whose work the great majority, who had never even read it, believed to be artificial, meretricious, and superficial, should be the author of a deeply moving poem that could be read by the most prudish and strait-laced. _the times_, that great organ of english respectability, devoted a leading article to it of a highly eulogistic character. the edition was sold out at once, and the book was on all men's tongues. wherever one went one heard it discussed, priest and philistine were as loud in their praises of it as the most decadent of minor poets. no poem had for a generation met with such a friendly reception or caused such a sensation. a critical notice of the poem from the pen of lady currie appeared in _the fortnightly review_ for july . in it the author writes of the "terrible 'ballad of reading gaol' with its splendours and inequalities, its mixture of poetic farce, crude realism, and undeniable pathos." as to the crudeness of the realism, that is a mere matter of opinion: it is easy to supply an adjective--it is more difficult to justify the use of it, and give satisfactory reasons for its application. realistic the poem doubtless is--crude, never, but the writer shows a far keener appreciation when she says--"all is grim, concentrated tragedy from cover to cover. a friend of mine," lady currie says, "who looked upon himself as a judge in such matters, told me that he would have placed certain passages in this poem, by reason of their terrible, tragic intensity, upon a level with some of the descriptions in dante's 'inferno,' were it not that 'the ballad of reading gaol' was so much more infinitely human." among the many laudatory notices that appeared at the time, there is an extract from a review of the work taken from a great london paper and quoted by a french writer which is worth reprinting as showing the attitude of the press towards the poem. "the whole is awful as the pages of sophocles. that he has rendered with his fine art so much of the essence of his life and the life of others in that inferno to the sensitive is a memorable thing for the social scientist, but a much more memorable thing for literature. this is a simple, a poignant, a great ballad, one of the greatest in the english language." never, perhaps, since gray's "elegy" had a poem been so revised, pruned and polished over and over again as this cry from a prison cell. the publisher was driven to the verge of distraction by the constant alterations and emendations, the placing of a comma had become a matter of moment to the fastidious author, but the work was published in its entirety save for two or three stanzas concerning one of the prison officials that it was deemed wise to suppress. the poem bears the dedication-- in memoriam c. t. w. sometime trooper of the royal horse guards obiit, h.m. prison, reading, berkshire july th, . the case of the trooper to whose memory the work is dedicated excited a good deal of interest at the time. he had a fit of jealousy, murdered his sweetheart, and though public opinion was inclined to take a merciful view of the crime, and a petition was presented to the home secretary for the withdrawal of the capital sentence, it was without effect, and the extreme penalty of the law was carried out in the gaol at reading. the first line-- "he did not wear his scarlet coat"-- rivets the attention at once, and as surely as do the opening lines of "the ancient mariner." the reason for this is given at once-- "for wine and blood are red and blood and wine were on his hands when they found him with the dead." that the whole incident that led to the man's being there should be communicated in the very first stanza, to make that stanza complete, is an artistic necessity, and in the next two lines we are told who the victim is-- "the poor dead woman whom he loved, and murdered in her bed." the tragedy is complete. we have the picture of the soldier deprived of his uniform and the whole story is revealed to us. a more concise or supremely reticent description of the pathetic drama there could not be. but the picture must be filled in even to the most trivial detail, and we see the poor wretch taking his daily exercise among the prisoners awaiting their trial, attired in "a suit of shabby grey," trying to demean himself like a man and, trivial, but, from the artist's point of view, important detail, with a cricket cap on his head. there is a world of pathos and lines of unspoken tragedy in that cricket cap worn by a man whose days are numbered, who never will play a game again and whose mind must be occupied with thoughts far removed from sport and amusement save perhaps when they may revert to happy days spent with bat and ball, and which will never recur again. but though his step be jaunty, the oppression of his impending doom is on him, "i never saw a man who looked so wistfully at the day." we can see that prison yard, the circle of convicts pacing the melancholy round at ordered intervals and with measured tread, and the strong man, full of life and vigour looking up at god's blue sky and drinking in the air with greedy lungs. we can see the author of the poem, the erstwhile social favourite, in his convict garb walking "with other souls in pain within another ring." and his horror as he receives the information muttered by some fellow-prisoner through closed lips that "that fellow's got to swing." in words, the simplicity and intensity of which are sublime, he tells us of how the news affected him-- "dear christ! the very prison walls suddenly seemed to reel." that apostrophe to the redeemer is a revelation in itself coming from a man who is enduring his own mortal agony, but his particular sorrows fade into insignificance and are forgotten in the presence of a fellow-creature's crucifixion-- "and, though i was a soul in pain, my pain i could not feel." already he is purified by his months of trial and tribulation, and he can enter sympathetically into the sorrows of others and share their burden. he now understands the reason of the jaunty step and the defiant manner, he himself has tried to flee from his thoughts. "i only knew what hunted thought quickened his step." he realises the meaning of that "wistful look" towards the vaulted canopy of heaven. the man had killed the thing he loved. "yet each man kills the thing he loves by each let this be heard, some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word; the coward does it with a kiss the brave man with a sword." it has been objected that making sword rhyme with word is a makeshift, but surely it is patent to anyone with any artistic sense whatever that this forced rhyme avoids the danger of making the verse too facile, and, far from being a piece of slovenly writing, is the well-thought-out scheme of a perfect master of his craft. it is one of those stupid objections that superficial critics are so apt to raise when utterly devoid themselves of any sense of proportion or fitness. the idea that all men, young or old, kill the thing they love is not only original but it is a very fine flight of metaphor--there is a whole sermon in the conception, and wilde elaborates the theme-- "the kindest use a knife because the dead so soon grow old." it is as we read these lines that our thoughts are immediately directed to "the dream of eugene aram," that incomparable masterpiece of another poet, who likewise was looked upon as a mere jester whose work should not be treated seriously, but who has left us three of the finest and most deeply moving poems in the english language. there is a striking resemblance in the wording between the two poems, but without disparaging hood's work there can be no possible doubt as to which is the greater and more noble achievement. another stanza elaborates the theme still further and the fact is recorded that though every man kills the thing he loves, yet death is not always meted out to him. "he does not die a death of shame on a day of dark disgrace, nor have a noose about his neck, nor a cloth upon his face nor drop feet foremost through the floor into an empty space." within these grim prison walls all the horrible details of execution obtrude themselves upon the wretched captive. he has tasted the horrors of solitary confinement, of being spied on night and day by grim, taciturn warders who, at frequent intervals, slide back the panel in the door to observe through the grated opening that the prisoner is all right. so he can feel all the torture that a man under sentence of death must go through at having to "sit with silent men who watch him night and day, who watch him when he tries to weep and when he tries to pray." the ceaseless watch that is kept on the poor wretch lest he should be tempted, given the opportunity, to "rob the prison of its prey" by doing violence on himself, the whole grim ceremonial of the carrying out of the law's decree are conjured up by him. he pictures the doomed man awakened from sleep by the entrance of the sheriff, and the governor of the gaol accompanied by the "shivering chaplain robed in white." he dwells on the hurried toilet, the putting on of the convict dress for the last time whilst the doctor takes professional stock of every nervous symptom. it is to be hoped that the lines descriptive of the doctor are purely imaginative--one must hope, for the credit of the medical profession, that it has no foundation in personal experience. then there is the awful thirst that tortures the victim and another introduction of an apparently trivial detail, "the gardener's gloves" worn by the hangman. but the detail is not trivial, its introduction adds to the ghastliness of the scene. the reading of the burial service over a man yet living is another realistic touch that serves its purpose. with him we can enter into the agony of the condemned wretch as he prays "with lips of clay for his agony to pass." wilde proceeds with the strict narrative. he tells us how for six weeks that guardsman walked the prison yard still wearing the same suit and his head covered with the same incongruous headgear. still does he cast yearning glances at the sky, "and at every wandering cloud that trailed its ravelled fleeces by." but the man is no coward, he does not wring his hands and bemoan his fate, he merely kept his eyes on the sun "and drank the morning air." the other convicts, forgetful of themselves and their crimes, watch with silent amazement "the man who had to swing." he still carries himself bravely and they can hardly realise that he will so soon be swept into eternity; and then a perfectly mediæval note is struck-- "for oak and elm have pleasant leaves that in the springtime shoot: but grim to see is the gallows-tree with its adder-bitten root and green or dry a man must die before it bears its fruit." there we have the true spirit of the old ballads. the comparison between the oak and elm in the spring putting forth their leaves, and the gaunt, bare timber of the gibbet with its burden of dead human fruit is a highly imaginative and artistic piece of fantasy, though possibly a poem of villon's was in wilde's mind at the time of writing. he gives us in the next stanza a picture of the murderer with noose adjusted to his neck, taking his last look upon the world, and the drop suggests another finely imaged comparison to him-- "'tis sweet to dance to violins when love and life are fair," and goes on so for another two lines before he brings in the antithesis-- "but it is not sweet with nimble feet to dance upon the air." the almost morbid fascination the sight of this man with his foot in the grave exercises over him is undiminished, till one day he misses him and knows that he is standing "in black dock's dreadful pen." he himself had been through that dread ordeal and his spirit goes out to him whom he had seen daily for a brief space without ever holding commune with him. "like two doomed ships that pass in storm we had crossed each other's way," he writes, and proceeds to explain that it was impossible for them to exchange word or sign, as they never saw each other in the "holy" night but in the "shameful" day. in a passage of rare beauty, one of the finest in the poem, he explains-- "a prison wall was round us both two outcast men we were the world had thrust us from his heart, and god from out his care: and the iron gin that waits for sin had caught us in its snare." the lines in their supreme reticence indicate precisely the agony and despair that filled the heart of c , and once again a comparison with "eugene aram" is forced upon us. the third period starts with a picture of the doomed man and a scathing bit of satire directed against the prison officials. the wretch is shown to us watched day and night by keen, sleepless eyes, debarred even for a brief second of the privilege of being alone with his thoughts and his misery. then a small detail is introduced to heighten the effect of the grim picture-- "and thrice a day he smoked his pipe and drank his quart of beer." there is quite a shakespearean note in this introduction of these commonplace details, which proves how thoroughly oscar wilde had studied the methods of the great dramatist. but he leaves the condemned cell to paint the effect the whole ghastly tragedy being enacted within those grey walls had upon the other prisoners. to a highly strung and supersensitive nature like the writer's the strain must have been terrible. the captives went through the allotted tasks of picking oakum till the fingers bled, scrubbing the floors, polishing the rails, sewing sacks, and all the other daily routine of prison life. "but in the heart of every man terror was lying still--" until one day, returning from their labours, they "passed an open grave," and they knew that the execution would take place on the morrow. they saw the hangman with his black bag shuffling through the gloom, and like cowed hounds they crept silently back to their cells. then night comes and fear stalks through the prison, but the man himself is wrapt in peaceful slumbers. the watching warders cannot make out "how one could sleep so sweet a sleep with a hangman close at hand." not so with the other prisoners--"the fool, the fraud, the knave"--sleep is banished from their cells, they are feeling another's guilt, and the hardened hearts melt at the thought of another's agony. the warders, making their noiseless round, are surprised as they look through the wickets to see "gray figures on the floor." they are puzzled and wonder-- "why men knelt to pray who never prayed before." all through the long night they keep their sacred vigil. "the grey cock crew, the red cock crew but never came the day," and their imaginations people the corners and shadows with shapes of terror. the marionette dance of death of these ghostly visitants is as fine a bit of word-painting as can be found any where. the idea is an amplification of the _motif_ of "the harlot's house," but how immeasurably superior, how much more artistically effective the most cursory comparison of the two poems will make apparent. at last the first faint streaks of day steal through the prison bars and the daily task of cleaning the cells is performed as usual, but the angel of death passes through the prison, and with parched throats the prisoners, who were kept in their cells while the grim tragedy was being enacted, wait for the stroke of eight, the hour fixed for the carrying out of the sentence. as the first chimes of the prison clock are heard a moan arises from those imprisoned wretches. at noon they are marched out into the yard, and each man's eye is turned wistfully to the sky, just as the condemned man's had been. they notice that the warders are wearing their best uniforms, but the task they have just been engaged upon is revealed "by the quicklime on their boots." the murderer has expiated his crime, "and the crimson stain that was of cain became christ's snow-white seal." in his dishonoured grave he lies in a winding-sheet of quicklime; no rose or flower shall bloom above it, no tear shall water it, no prayer or benison be uttered over it. "in reading gaol by reading town," with a repetition of the stanza embodying the theme that "all men kill the thing they love," the poem ends. truly a wonderful poem this. we close the covers of the book slowly, almost reverently, our minds all saddened and attuned to a low note by this gloomy picture of agony, torture and horror. we feel as if we had been assisting at a funeral, and with hushed voices slowly make our way back to the world of life and bustle. wilde's place in poetry has yet to be settled, we have not yet had time to focus his work into perspective. that he will rank amongst the very greatest creative geniuses of the world, the men whose songs sway nations, is doubtful, though time alone can tell us. the least that can be said is that there is a distinction about wilde's poetry that will always stamp it as the work of a great artist, and as such it commands a high place amongst the best literary work that this country has produced. part vi the fiction writer fiction that the gift of composing beautiful verse and the ability to write gracefully and wittily in prose does not of necessity enable an author to produce good fiction, is a truism that requires no elaboration. that the novelist should possess style is a _sine quâ non_--that is, if his novels are to take their place as works of art and not merely achieve an ephemeral success amongst the patrons of circulating libraries--but to achieve distinction in the field of romance many other qualities are requisite. to begin with, the story must be of sufficient interest to hold the attention of the reader, the dialogue must be brisk and to the point, and the delineation of character--a gift in itself--lifelike and convincing. whether oscar wilde would, had his life been prolonged, have ever achieved success in this branch of literature is one of those vexed questions which may well be left to those speculative persons who love to discuss "the mystery of edwin drood" and other unfinished works of fiction. that he was endowed with an extraordinarily vivid imagination and that his versatility was marvellous are factors that no one should neglect to take into account when considering the matter. his own contributions to fiction are so few that they afford very little data to go upon. they consist of "the picture of dorian gray," published in ; "lord arthur savile's crime"; "the incomparable and ingenious history of mr w. h., being the true secret of shakespeare's sonnets, now for the first time here fully set forth," the manuscript of which, after passing through the hands of messrs elkin mathews and john lane, publishers, who had announced the work as being in preparation, has been unaccountably lost, although it is known that it was returned to the author's house on the very day of his arrest. an article in _blackwood's magazine_ alone enables us to gather some idea of the last work. then we have three short stories--"the sphinx without a secret," "the canterville ghost," "the model millionaire," which complete the list of wilde's fiction in the limited sense of the word. a careful study of these remains must lead to the inevitable conclusion that, so far as we can judge by these more or less fragmentary specimens, wilde's _forte_ was not fiction. he can in no sense be regarded as a novelist, certainly not as an exponent of modern fiction. the pieces are brilliantly clever, gemmed with paradoxes and quaint turns of thought, but they are not fiction in the accepted sense of the word. works of imagination, yes, but "fiction," no. that he was a graceful allegorist nobody can deny, but that his work in this other field of letters was great is never for a moment to be even suggested. he used fiction as a means of introducing his curiously topsy-turvy views of life, but his characters are mere puppets, strange creatures with unreal names, without any particular personality or especially characteristic features, who enunciate the author's views and opinions. in a preface to "dorian gray," when it was published in book form, oscar wilde himself confirms this view--"the highest and the lowest form of criticism," he tells us, "is a mode of autobiography." that he himself believed in the artistic value of his story is evident from the series of brilliant aphorisms which constitute the preface. when in july, , there appeared in an american magazine the fantastic story of "dorian gray" an astonished public rubbed its eyes and wondered whether all its previous theories as to this class of work had been absolutely false and should henceforth be discarded like a garment that has gone out of fashion. the story provoked a storm of criticism which, for the most part, only served to increase the sale of the magazine in which it appeared. in answer to his critics the author contented himself with the dictum that "diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital." whether "the picture of dorian gray" possessed these three essential qualities is a question which may best be answered by giving a short _resume_ of the story itself. basil hallward, a young artist who, some years previously, had caused a great sensation by his disappearance, has painted a full-length portrait of a young man of "extraordinary personal beauty." in conversation with lord henry wotton, who is visiting the studio, he inadvertently reveals that it is the portrait of dorian gray, and alleges as his reason for not exhibiting the picture that he has put too much of himself into it; and, pressed for an explanation, he tells the story of his meeting the original of the painting at a society function, and how deeply he had been impressed by his extraordinary personality. he experiences a "curious artistic idolatry" for the young man, and as they are discussing him the servant announces "mr dorian gray." we then get a word-picture of this interesting young man, we are told that there was something in his face which made you trust him, that it was full of the candour of youth and passionate purity. during the sitting that follows, lord henry enunciates his views of life, and his words leave a deep impression on his youthful auditor. dorian's acquaintance with lord henry soon ripens into friendship, and he confides to his friend that he has fallen deeply in love with sybil vane, a young actress he has accidentally discovered in an east end playhouse. late upon the same night on which the confidence was made lord henry finds, on his return home, a telegram from dorian gray announcing his engagement to the object of his affections. we are next introduced to sybil's shabby home in the euston road; to her mother, a faded, tired-looking woman with bismuth-whitened hands, and to her brother, a young lad with a thick-set figure, rough brown hair and large hands and feet "somewhat clumsy in movement." the faded beauty of the elder woman and her theatrical gestures and manners are deftly touched upon. the son, whom we learn is about to seek his fortune in australia, goes with his sister for a walk in the park, and their talk is all of her love for dorian, of which he does not approve. sybil catches sight of her lover, but before she can point him out to her brother he is lost to sight. they return home; the lad's heart is filled with jealousy, and a fierce murderous hatred of the stranger who, as it seemed to him, had come between him and his sister. downstairs he startles his mother with a sudden question--"were you married to my father?" the woman had been dreading the question for years, but she answers it in the negative, and tells him that his parent was a gentleman and highly connected, but not free to marry her. in the meanwhile, lord henry and basil are discussing the proposed marriage in the private room of a fashionable restaurant, and presently they are joined by dorian himself, who takes part in the discussion, till it is time for them to go to the theatre. his two friends are delighted with the beauty of his _fiancée_, but her acting is below mediocrity, and the boy, who has seen her act really well on previous occasions, is terrible disconcerted. later, in the green-room, sybil explains the reason of this falling off. she is quite candid about it: she tells him she will never act well again, because he has transfigured her life, and that acting, which had before been a matter of reality to her, had become a hollow sham, and that she can no longer mimic a passion that burns her like fire. flinging himself down on a seat, dorian exclaims, "you have killed my love," and after an impassioned tirade answers his own question of "what are you now?" with "a third-rate actress with a pretty face." in vain she pleads for his love; he leaves her telling her that he can never see her again, for she has disappointed him. when, after wandering aimlessly about all night, he returns home, he is suddenly conscious of a change in the portrait basil had painted of him. the expression is different, and there are lines of cruelty round the mouth, though he can trace no such lines in his own face. "suddenly, there flashed across his mind what he had said in basil hallward's studio the day the picture had been finished.... he had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young and the portrait grow old, that his own beauty might be untarnished and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins." he is struck with remorse for his cruelty to sybil, and by the time lord henry comes to see him has determined to atone for it by marrying her, but it is too late. he learns from his friend's lips that sybil has committed suicide in the theatre shortly after he had left her. he spends the evening at the opera with lord henry wotton, and his sister, lady gwendolen. when, next day, he mentions this to basil the latter is horrified, but dorian is perfectly callous and is inclined to be flattered by the fact that the girl should have committed suicide for love of him. basil wishes to look at the picture, which he intends to exhibit in paris, and before which dorian has placed a screen, but the latter will not let him see it, and the former presently goes away greatly puzzled by the refusal. when he is gone dorian sends for a framemaker, and gets him and his assistant to remove the draped picture to a disused room in his house, having previously sent his man out with a note to lord henry in order to get him out of the way. having dismissed the framemaker and his assistant, he carefully locks the door of the room and retains the key. when he comes down, he finds that lord henry has sent him a paper containing an account of the inquest on sybil, and an unhealthy french book which fascinates whilst it repels him, and the influence of which he cannot shake off for years after. time passes, but the hero of the story shows no signs of growing older, nor does he lose his good looks. meanwhile, the most evil rumours as to his mode of life are in circulation. we learn that he is in the habit of frequenting, disguised and under an assumed name, a little ill-famed tavern near the docks, and we are given a long analysis of his mental and spiritual condition, whilst his various idiosyncrasies are carefully recorded, and we are insensibly reminded of the surroundings invented for himself by the hero of huysman's "a rebours." all the while, the picture remains hidden away, a very skeleton in the cupboard. dorian gray is nearly blackballed for a west end club, society looks askance at him, and there are all sorts of ugly rumours current as to his doings and movements. one night he meets hallward, who wants to talk to him about his mode of life. the painter enumerates all the scandalous stories he has heard about him; he ends up by expressing a doubt whether he really knows his friend. to do so, he says, he should have to see his soul. "you shall see it yourself to-night," dorian exclaims, "it is your handiwork," and, holding a lamp, he takes him up to the locked room, and removes the drapery from the picture. an exclamation of horror breaks from the painter as he perceives the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him. it fills him with loathing and disgust, and he has difficulty in believing it to be his own work. dorian is seized with an uncontrollable feeling of hatred for his friend, and, seizing a knife lying on a chest, stabs him in the neck and kills him. after the murder he locks the door, and goes quietly downstairs. he slips out into the street closing the front door very gently, and rings the bell. when his valet opens it he explains that he had left his latchkey indoors, and casually inquires the time, which the man informs him is ten minutes past two. the next day dorian sends for a former friend of his, alan campbell, whose hobby is chemistry, and after telling him of the murder, begs him by some chemical process to destroy the body. alan refuses to help him. dorian then writes something upon a piece of paper and gives it to the other to read. alan is terror-struck and consents to do what is required of him, though reluctantly. when later, provided with the necessary chemicals, they enter the locked room, dorian perceives that the hands of the picture are stained with blood. he dines out that night, and when he returns home he provides himself with some opium paste he keeps locked up in a secret drawer, and having dressed himself in rough garments makes his way to the docks. he enters an opium den, but the presence of a man who owes his downfall to him irritates him, and he decides to go to another. a woman greets him with the title "prince charming" (the name sybil had given him), and on hearing it a sailor gets up from his seat and follows him. in a dim archway he feels himself seized by the throat and sees a revolver pointed at his head. briefly, his assailant tells him that he is sybil's brother, and that he means to avenge his sister's death. a sudden inspiration comes to dorian and he inquires of the man how long it is since his sister died. "eighteen years," is the answer, and gray triumphantly exclaims "look at my face." he is dragged under a lamp, and at sight of the youthful face sybil's brother is convinced that he has made a mistake. hardly has dorian gone, when the woman who had called him prince charming comes up, and from her the sailor learns that in eighteen years dorian has not altered. dorian goes down to his country house, where he entertains a large party of guests, though all the while he lives in deadly terror lest sybil's brother should trace him. during a _battue_ a man is accidentally shot by one of dorian's guests. it is at first thought that the victim of the accident is one of the beaters but it turns out to be a stranger, a seafaring man presumably. dorian goes to look at the body, and to his intense relief finds that the dead man is his assailant of some nights back. back in london one night dorian gray determines that he will reform, and, curious to see whether his good resolutions have had any effect on the portrait, he goes up to look at it. no, it still bears the same repulsive look, and in a rage he stabs at it with the knife with which he had murdered basil. a loud agonised cry rings through the house, and when the servants at last make their way into the room they find hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, while lying on the floor with a knife through his heart was a dead man "withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage," whom they could only identify by the rings on his fingers. such, shorn of all its brilliant dialogue and exquisite descriptive passages, is the story of "the portrait of dorian gray," in its bald outlines. as an imaginative work it must rank high, and in spite of the fantastic character of the plot and its inherent improbability, it exercises a weird fascination over us as we read. that its author (more even in the treatment than in the plot) was inspired by balzac's incomparable "peau de chagrin" is beyond question. in the one story we have a man purchasing a piece of shagreen skin inscribed with sanskrit characters which, as each of its possessor's desires are gratified, by its shrinkage marks a diminution in the span of his life. in the other, whilst the original man remains outwardly unchanged, his portrait ages with the years and reveals in its features all the passions and sins that gradually transform his nature. in both cases the story ends in tragedy. the colouring of the tale is one of its most remarkable features. in passages of rare beauty oscar wilde gives us descriptions of jewels and perfumes, rare tapestries and quaint musical instruments. the catalogue of the jewels as set out by him deserves to be quoted for the marvellous knowledge of precious stones it reveals as well as for the exquisite description of them. "he would often spend a whole day settling and resettling in the cases the various stones that he had collected, such as the olive-green chrysoberyl that turns red by lamplight, the cymophane with its wirelike line of silver, the pistachio-coloured peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow topazes, carbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous four-rayed stars, flame-red cinnamon stones, orange and violet spinels, and amethysts with the alternate layers of ruby and sapphire. he loved the red-gold of the sunstone, and the moonstone's pearly whiteness, and the broken rainbow of the milky opal. he procured from amsterdam three emeralds of extraordinary size and richness of colour, and had a turquoise _de la vicille roche_ that was the envy of all connoisseurs." it may here be pointed out, though the fact is not generally known, that wilde's knowledge of tapestry which, at first sight, seems so profound, was obtained from lefebure's "history of embroidery and lace," a book which he had reviewed in an article having for title "a fascinating book." it is interesting to compare an extract from that article with a passage from the review under discussion: "where was the great crocus-coloured robe, on which the gods fought against the giants, that had been worked for athena? where the huge velarium that nero had stretched across the colosseum at rome, on which were represented the starry sky, and apollo driving a chariot drawn by white gilt-reined steeds? he longed to see the curious table-napkins wrought for elagabalus, on which were displayed all the dainties and viands that could be wanted for a feast; the mortuary cloth of king chilperic, with its three hundred golden bees; the fantastic robes that excited the indignation of the bishop of pontus, and were figured with 'lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests, rocks, hunters,--all, in fact, that a painter can copy from nature'; and the coat that charles of orleans once wore, on the sleeves of which were embroidered the verses of a song beginning '_madame je suis tout joyeux_,' the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in gold thread, and each note, of square shape in those days, formed with four pearls. he read of the room that was prepared at the palace at rheims for the use of queen joan of burgundy, and was decorated with 'thirteen hundred and twenty-one parrots, made in broidery, and blazoned with the king's arms and five hundred and sixty-one butterflies, whose wings were similarly ornamented with the arms of the queen, the whole worked in gold.' catherine de medicis had a mourning-bed made for her of black velvet powdered with crescents and suns. its curtains were of damask, with leafy wreaths and garlands, figured upon a gold and silver ground, and fringed along the edges with broideries of pearls, and it stood in a room hung with rows of the queen's devices in cut black velvet upon cloth of silver. louis xiv. had gold-embroidered caryatides fifteen feet high in his apartment. the state bed of sobieski, king of poland, was made of smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises with verses from the koran. its supports were of silver gilt, beautifully chased, and profusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions. it had been taken from the turkish camp before vienna, and the standard of mohammed had stood under it." "where is the great crocus-coloured robe that was wrought for athena, and on which the gods fought against the giants? where is the huge velarium that nero stretched across the colosseum at rome, on which was represented the starry sky, and apollo driving a chariot drawn by steeds? how one would like to see the curious table-napkins wrought for heliogabalus, on which were displayed all the dainties and viands that could be wanted for a feast; or the mortuary cloth of king chilperic, with its three hundred golden bees; or the fantastic robes that excited the indignation of the bishop of pontus, and were embroidered with 'lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests, rocks, hunters--all, in fact, that painters can copy from nature.' charles of orleans had a coat, on the sleeves of which were embroidered the verses of a song, beginning 'madame, je suis tout joyeux,' the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in gold thread, and each note (of square shape in those days) formed with four pearls. the room prepared in the palace at rheims for the use of queen joan of burgundy was decorated with 'thirteen hundred and twenty-one _papegauts_ (parrots) made in broidery and blazoned with the king's arms, and five hundred and sixty-one butterflies, whose wings were similarly ornamented with the queen's arms--the whole worked in fine gold.' catherine de medicis had a mourning-bed made for her 'of black velvet embroidered with pearls and powdered with crescents and suns.' its curtains were of damask, 'with leafy wreaths and garlands figured upon a gold and silver ground, and fringed along the edges with broideries of pearls,' and it stood in a room hung with rows of the queen's devices in cut black velvet on cloth of silver. louis xiv. had gold-embroidered caryatides fifteen feet high in his apartments. the state bed of sobieski, king of poland, was made of smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises and pearls, with verses from the koran; its supports were of silver-gilt, beautifully chased and profusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions. he had taken it from the turkish camp before vienna, and the standard of mahomet had stood under it." wilde, who at times was extremely indolent, had an amiable weakness for using the material at hand, and throughout his writings we find whole lines of verse and prose sentences reappearing in work produced at another period. it is the same with the epigrams in "dorian gray," most of which were subsequently transferred, bodily, to his plays. during his travels in italy, as i have already pointed out, he had been enormously impressed by the stately ceremonials of the catholic church, and in this book he uses his opportunity of introducing the ornate and sumptuous vestments worn at her services. dorian gray, he tells us, "had a special passion also for ecclesiastical vestments, as indeed he had for everything connected with the service of the church. in the long cedar chests that lined the west gallery of his house he had stored away many rare and beautiful specimens of what is really the raiment of the bride of christ, who must wear purples and jewels and fine linen that she may hide the pallid macerated body that is worn by the suffering that she seeks for, and wounded by self-inflicted pain. he had a gorgeous cope of crimson silk and gold-thread damask, figured with a repeating pattern of golden pomegranates set in six-petalled formal blossoms, beyond which on either side was the pineapple device wrought in seed-pearls. the orphreys were divided into panels representing scenes from the life of the virgin, and the coronation of the virgin was figured in coloured silks upon the hood. this was italian work of the fifteenth century. another cope was of green velvet, embroidered with heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves, from which spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details of which were picked out with silver thread and coloured crystals. the morse bore a seraph's head in gold-thread raised work. the orphreys were woven in a diaper of red and gold silk, and were starred with medallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom was st sebastian. he had chasubles, also, of amber-coloured silk, and blue silk and gold brocades, and yellow silk damask and cloth of gold, figured with representation of the passion and crucifixion of christ, and embroidered with lions and peacocks and other emblems; dalmatics of white satin and pink silk damask, decorated with tulips and dolphins and _fleurs de lys_; altar frontals of crimson velvet and blue linen; and many corporals, chalice-veils, and sudaria." it may also be noted here that a couple of chapters, those dealing with sybil's home and the death of her brother, were not written till the story appeared in book form, and a certain extra number of words were required to make the volume of the requisite bulk; so must writers submit to the inexorable demands of publishers who measure work not by its merit but by a footrule. the dialogue throughout the tale sparkles with brilliant epigrams, and this is all the more notable when we remember that the story was written in a hurry, when the author was hard pressed for money, is more or less a piece of hack work, and that whole pages were written in at the behest of the publisher, who, like a customer at the baker's demanding the make-weight which the law allows him, was clamouring for more "copy." nothing could be more felicitous than "young people imagine that money is everything ... and when they grow older they know it"; and, "to be good is to be in harmony with oneself." and characteristic of that epicurean pose that the author delighted in is the paradoxical dictum that "a cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. it is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied." likewise essentially characteristic of the man and his extraordinary, topsy-turvy views of life is, "there is a fatality about good resolutions--that they are always made too late," or "good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. they are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account." some of the epigrams are as biting as a _saturday review_ article, in the old days, as for instance, this description of a certain frail dame--"she is still _decolletée_, and when she is in a very smart gown she looks like an _edition de luxe_ of a bad french novel." could anything be more pithy or more brilliantly sarcastic? it is of this same lady that the remark is made, "when her third husband died, her hair turned quite golden from grief." but one could go on for ever, and i have quoted enough to illustrate the wittiness of the dialogue, and, as the author himself lays down, "enough is as good as a meal." and there, by the way, we have an illustration of how cleverly wilde could transform the commonest saws by the alteration or the transposition of a word, even sometimes by the inversion of a sentence into what, at the first flush, appeared to be highly original and brilliant sayings. by the substitution of the word "meal" for "feast" we fail to recognise the old homely saying, and are ready, until we consider it more closely, to receive it as a new and witty idea neatly embodied. it is a _truc de métier_, but one that requires a clever workman to use properly, as anyone can make sure of by glancing through the bungling work of the majority of his imitators. in "dorian gray," wilde gives free play to his ever-present longing to utter the _dernier cri_, to avoid all that was _vieux jeu_, and to fill with horror and amazement the souls of the stodgy _bourgeoisie_. that he succeeded in doing so merely proves that the _bourgeoisie_ are stodgy, not that the author has erred from the canons of art and good taste. his short stories are all written in a lighter vein--we peruse them as we eat a plover's egg, and with the same relish and appreciation. they are things of gossamer, but gossamer will oft survive more solid material, and has the supreme quality of delicacy. "lord arthur savile's crime" deals with that nobleman's anxiety to commit the murder a cheiromantist has predicted he will perpetrate, and to get the matter over before he marries the girl to whom he is engaged. his two successive failures and his final drowning of the hand-reading fortune-teller is conceived in the best spirit of comedy, and provokes a gentle continuous ripple of amusement as we read it. the same may be said of "the sphinx without a secret," and "the canterville ghost," whereas the "model millionaire" is simply a pretty story wittily told. the whole plot is summed up in its concluding lines "millionaire models are rare enough ... but model millionaires are rarer still." but, incomparably, wilde's best work in fiction is the "portrait of mr w. h." as the _blackwood_ article is headed. after reading it our regret becomes all the more poignant that the complete ms. of the book should have so unaccountably disappeared. correctly speaking, the story is hardly a work of fiction, or, at anyrate, the fiction is so slight as to be hardly deserving of criticism, and is a mere medium for the exposition of a theory. the teller of the story is in a friend's rooms, and the talk drifts on to literary forgeries. the friend (erskine) shows him a portrait-panel of a young man in late sixteenth-century costume, and proceeds to tell him his story. a young friend of his had discovered what he considered a clue to the identity of the mr w. h. of shakespeare's sonnets, the only hitch being the difficulty of proving that the young actor to whom he asserted his poems were written, ever existed. he shortly afterwards produced a panel-portrait of the young man which he had, as he alleged, discovered clamped to the inside of an old chest picked up by him at a warwickshire farmhouse. this final proof quite convinced erskine of the genuineness of the discovery, and it was not till an accidental visit to a friend's studio that the fact of the panel being a forgery was revealed to him. he taxes the discoverer of the clue with it and the latter commits suicide. the writer of the story is so impressed with the various proofs that erskine has laid before him that, in spite of that latter's utter scepticism as to the existence of any such person as the dead man evolved from the sonnets themselves, he completes the researches on his own account. but the moment he has sent off a detailed account of the result of his investigations to erskine, he himself is filled with an utter disbelief in the accuracy of the conclusions derived from them. erskine, on the other hand, is once more converted by his letter to his dead friend's theory. two years later the writer receives a letter from erskine written from cannes stating that, like the discoverer of the clue, he has committed suicide for the sake of a theory which he leaves to his friend as a sacred legacy stained with the blood of two lives. the writer rushes off to the riviera only to find his friend dead, and to receive from his mother the ill-starred panel. the story ends with a true wilde touch, for in a conversation with the doctor who had attended him, he learns that erskine had died of consumption and had never committed suicide at all. so much for the setting, which is quite unimportant. the real matter of moment is, that the _blackwood_ article is a really very valuable contribution to the controversy as to the identity of the mysterious mr w. h. it will be remembered that the sonnets were first issued in book form in , by a sort of piratical bookseller of those days, called thames thorpe who, on his own responsibility, prefixed the edition with a dedication--"to the only-begotten of these insuing sonnets, mr w. h., all happinesse and that eternite promised by our ever living poet wisheth the well wishing adventurer in setting forth. t. t." round the identity of this w. h. there has long raged an ardent controversy. most of the commentators have rushed to the conclusion that he must be the person to whom the sonnets are addressed. some have attempted to identify him as henry wriothesley, earl of southampton (the initials being reversed), who is known to have been an early patron of the poet, others without much apparent reason have assumed that the w. h. in question was none other than william herbert, earl of pembroke. the most probable theory is undoubtedly that of mr henry lee, that the dedication is entirely thorpe's own, that it has nothing whatever to do with shakespeare or the inspirer of the poet, and that it was meant for william hall, a sort of literary intermediary. in confirmation of this he adduces the undoubted fact that thorpe had, at anyrate, once previously dedicated a work to its "begotten." one point is established almost beyond dispute--viz. that the first sonnets are addressed to a young man and the remainder refer to a "dark woman" who, after having bewitched the author, casts her spell over his young friend and estranges the two. a counter-theory is that shakespeare's selection of the sonnet, "that puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic composition," as byron calls it, as a medium for his muse, is that he was experimenting in the style of writing which had become the fashion in england between the years and . wilde's history is a totally new one, and deserves close examination. given that it could be proved that the young actor to whom he maintains the sonnets were addressed ever had a real existence, and the matter would be as good as proved, but that is the weak point in his armour. mayhap some enthusiast may, by digging amongst old deeds and papers, light upon some reference to him, but until then his hypothesis can be only regarded as an ingenious, though highly interesting speculation. parenthetically it may be mentioned, although the fact is only known to very few, that an artist friend of oscar wilde, whose work is the admiration of all connoisseurs, had, under his direction, painted exactly such a panel-portrait as described, employing all the arts of the forger of antiquities in its production, and that a young poet whose recently published volume of verse had caused considerable sensation in literary circles had sat for the likeness. the points wilde advances in confirmation of his theory are as follows:-- . that the young man to whom shakespeare addresses sonnets must have been someone who was really a vital factor in the development of his dramatic art, and that this could not be said of either lord pembroke or lord southampton. . that the sonnets, as we learn from meres, were written before and that his friendship with w. h. had already lasted three years when sonnet civ. was written, which would fix the date of its commencement as , or at latest , that lord pembroke was born in and did not come to london till he was eighteen (_i.e._ ) so that shakespeare could not have met him till after the sonnet had been written; and that pembroke's father did not die till , whereas w. h.'s father was dead in , as is proved by the line-- "you had a father, let your son say so." . that lord southampton had early in life become the lover of elizabeth vernon, so required no urging to enter the state of matrimony, that he was not dowered with good looks, and that he did not remember his mother as w. h. did. (thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee calls back the lovely april of her prime), and moreover that his christian name being henry he could not be the will to whom the punning sonnets (cxxxv. and cxliii.) are addressed. . that w. h. is none other than the boy actor for whom shakespeare created the parts of viola, imogen, juliet, rosalind, portia, desdemona and cleopatra. . that the boy's name was hughes. these points he proves from the sonnets themselves. as regards no. he writes: "to look upon him as simply the object of certain love poems is to miss the whole meaning of the poems; for the art of which shakespeare talks in the sonnets is not the art of the sonnets themselves, which indeed were to him but slight and secret things, it is the art of the dramatist to which he is always alluding. he proceeds to quote the lines: "thou art all my art and dost advance as high as learning my rude ignorance." and effectually dispose of the pretensions of pembroke and surrey. . the theory of the very actor he praises by the fine sonnet:-- "'how can my muse want subject to invent, while thou dost breathe, thou pour'st into my verse thine own sweet argument, too excellent for every vulgar paper to rehearse? o, give thyself the thanks, if aught in me worthy perusal stand against thy sight: for who's so dumb that cannot write to thee, when thou thyself dost give invention light? be thou the tenth muse, ten times more in worth than those old nine, which rhymers invocate; and he that calls on thee, let him bring forth eternal numbers to outlive long date.'" the name of the boy he discovers in the eighth line of the th sonnet, where w. h. is punningly described as-- "_a man in hew, all hews in his contrawling_," and draws attention to the fact that "in the original edition of the sonnets 'hews' is printed with a capital h and in italics," and draws corroboration from "these sonnets in which curious puns are made on the words 'use' and 'usury.'" another point he touches on is that will hughes abandoned shakespeare's company to enter the service of chapman, or more probably of marlowe. he proves this from the lines-- "but when your countenance filled up his line then lack i matter; that enfeebled mine"-- as also "whilst i alone did call upon thy aid my verse alone had all thy gentle grace, but now my gracious numbers are decayed, and my sick nurse does give another place"; and further by "every alien pen has got my use and under thee their poesy disperse," and draws attention to the "obvious" play upon words (use = hughes). such in brief are the salient points of his argument, the limitations of space precluding me from amplifying the subject, but i strongly advise all those interested in the subject to read the whole article for themselves. it is undoubtedly one of the cleverest things wilde ever did, and as a contribution to controversial english literature no student of letters can afford to overlook it. some day perhaps the manuscript of the book will be discovered--in the library of a transatlantic millionaire maybe--and the author's more matured and expansive investigations be given to the world. may that day come soon! part vii the philosophy of beauty the philosophy of beauty the greatest claim that wilde made for himself was that he was a high priest of æsthetics, that he had a new message concerning the relations of beauty and the worship of beauty to life and art, to life and to morals to give to the world. this claim was one in which to the last he pathetically believed. he was absolutely certain in his own mind that this was his vocation. he elaborated a sort of philosophy of beauty which not only pleased and satisfied himself, but found very many adherents, and became the dogma of a school. even in this last work, "de profundis," written in the middle of his degradation and misery, he still believes that it is by art that he will be able to regenerate his spirit. he said that he would do such work in the future, would build beautiful things out of his sufferings, that he might cry in triumph--"yes! this is just where the artistic life leads a man." we all know where the artistic life did lead oscar wilde upon his release from prison. it led him to an obscure quarter of paris where he dragged out the short remainder of an unhappy life, having written nothing save "the ballad of reading gaol," and becoming more and more lost to finer aspirations. yet, nevertheless, this æsthetic philosophy of wilde's forms one of the most important parts of his writings, and of his attitude towards life. it must, therefore, be carefully considered in any study of the man and his work. first of all, let us inquire, what are æsthetics? do not let anyone who has not given his attention to the subject imagine that the "æstheticism," which became known as the hallmark of a band of people led by oscar wilde who committed many whimsical extravagances, and who were caricatured in mr gilbert's "patience," has any relation whatever to the science of æsthetics. even to oscar wilde æstheticism, as it has been popularly called, was only the beginning of an æsthetic philosophy which he summed up finally much later in "intentions," the "poems in prose," and "the soul of man under socialism." by æsthetics is meant a theory of the beautiful as exhibited in works of art. that is to say, æsthetics considered on its objective side has to investigate, first, a function of art in general as expressing the beautiful, and then the nature of the beauty thus expressed. secondly, the special functions of the several arts are investigated by æsthetics and the special aspects of the beautiful with which they are severally concerned. it, therefore, follows that æsthetics has to discuss such topics as the relation of art to nature and life, the distinction of art from nature, the relation of natural to artistic beauty, the conditions and nature of beauty in a work of art, and especially the distinction of beauty from truth, from utility, and from moral goodness. Æsthetics is, therefore, not art criticism. art criticism deals with this or that particular work or type of art, while the æsthetic theory seeks to formulate the mere abstract and fundamental conceptions, distinctions, and principles which underlie artistic criticism, and alone make it possible. art criticism is the link between æsthetic science and the ordinary intelligent appreciation of a work of art by an ordinary intelligence. much more may be said in defining the functions of æsthetics, but this is sufficient before we begin to examine wilde's own æsthetic theories. his ideas were promulgated in the three works mentioned above, and also given to the world in lectures which he delivered at various times. it is true, as mr arthur symons very clearly pointed out some years ago, that oscar wilde wrote much that was true, new, and valuable about art and the artist. but in everything that he wrote he wrote from the outside. he said nothing which had not been said before him, or which was not the mere wilful contrary of what had been said before him. indeed, it is not too much to say that oscar wilde never saw the full face of beauty. he saw it always in profile, always in a limited way. the pretence of strict logic in wilde's writing on "artistic philosophy" is only a pretence, and severe and steady thinkers recognise the fallacy. let us examine oscar wilde's æsthetic teaching. in one of his lectures given in america he said-- "and now i would point out to you the operation of the artistic spirit in the choice of subject. like the philosopher of the platonic vision, the poet is the spectator of all time and all existence. for him no form is obsolete, no subject out of date; rather, whatever of life and passion the world has known in the desert of judea or in arcadian valley, by the ruins of troy or damascus, in the crowded and hideous streets of the modern city, or by the pleasant ways of camelot, all lies before him like an open scroll, all is still instinct with beautiful life. he will take of it what is salutary for his own spirit, choosing some facts and rejecting others, with the calm artistic control of one who is in possession of the secret of beauty. it is to no avail that the muse of poetry be called even by such a clarion note as whitman's to migrate from greece and ionia and to placard 'removed' and 'to let' on the rocks of the snowy parnassus. for art, to quote a noble passage of mr swinburne's, is very life itself and knows nothing of death. and so it comes that he who seems to stand most remote from his age is he who mirrors it best, because he has stripped life of that mist of familiarity, which, as shelley used to say, makes life obscure to us. "whatever spiritual message an artist brings to his age, it is for us to do naught but accept his teaching. you have most of you seen probably that great masterpiece of rubens which hangs in the gallery of brussels, that swift and wonderful pageant of horse and rider, arrested in its most exquisite and fiery moment, when the winds are caught in crimson banner and the air is lit by the gleam of armour and the flash of plume. well, that is joy in art, though that golden hillside be trodden by the wounded feet of christ; and it is for the death of the son of man that that gorgeous cavalcade is passing. "in the primary aspect a painting has no more spiritual message than an exquisite fragment of venetian glass. the channels by which all noble and imaginative work in painting should touch the soul are not those of the truths of lives. this should be done by a certain inventive and creative handling entirely independent of anything definitely poetical in the subject, something entirely satisfying in itself, which is, as the greeks would say, in itself an end. so the joy of poetry comes never from the subject, but from an inventive handling of rhythmical language." and further he said that "in nations as in individuals, if the passion for creation be not accompanied by the critical, the æsthetic faculty also, it will be sure to waste its strength. it is not an increased moral sense or moral supervision that your literature needs. indeed one should never talk of a moral or immoral poem. poems are either well written or badly written; that is all. any element of morals or implied reference to a standard of good and evil in art is often a sign of a certain incompleteness of vision. all good work aims at a purely artistic effect." in "intentions" he enunciated serious problems which seemed constantly to contradict themselves, and he causes ourselves to ask questions which only bewilder and astonish. to sum up all the æsthetic teaching of the author it amounts simply and solely to the aphorism that there must be a permanent divorce between art and morals. "all art," he says, "is immoral." some people have taken the view that oscar wilde in his philosophy of beauty was never quite sincere. he did not write for philistines with his heart in his mouth, but merely with his tongue in his cheek. i remember mr richard le gallienne once said that in "intentions" wilde's worship of beauty, which had made a latter-day myth of him before his time, was overlaid by his gift of comic perception, and, rightly viewed, all his flute-tone periods were written in the service of the comic muse. when he was not of malice aforethought humorous in those parts of the work where he seems to be arguing with a serious face enough, it is implied that he did so simply that he might smile behind his mask at the astonishment of a public he had from the first so delighted in shocking--that he had a passion for being called "dangerous," just as one type of man likes to be called "fast" and a "rake." this is, of course, one point of view, but it is not one with which i am in agreement. wilde laid such enormous stress upon the sensuous side of art, and never realised that this is but an exterior aspect which is impossible and could not exist without a spiritual interior, an informing soul. with all his brilliancy the author of "intentions" only saw a mere fragment of his subject. it may be that he wilfully shut his eyes to the truth. it is more likely that he was incapable of realising the truth as a whole, and that what he wrote he wrote with absolute sincerity. it has been said that the artist sees farther than morality. this is a dangerous doctrine for the artist himself to believe, but it has some truth in it. in oscar wilde's case, in pursuing the ideal of beauty he may have seen "farther than morality," but blind of one eye he missed morality upon the way and did not realise that she was ever there. it is the fashion nowadays among a certain set of writers, who form the remainder of the band of "Æsthetes" who followed wilde in his teachings, to decry ruskin, though, in the beginning of wilde's "Æsthetic" movement, wilde was an ardent pupil of this great master of english prose. we do not now accept ruskin's artistic criticisms as adequate to our modern needs. much water has flowed under the bridge since the days when ruskin wrote, and his peculiar temperament, while appreciating much that was beautiful and worthy to be appreciated, was at the same time blind to much that is beautiful and worthy to be appreciated. ruskin's criticism on the painting of whistler would not be substantiated by a single writer of to-day. at the same time, all ruskin's philosophy of art--that is to say, æsthetics--is as true now as it ever was. ruskin showed, as the experience of life and art has shown and always will show--show more poignantly and particularly in the case of oscar wilde than in any other--that art and morality cannot be divorced, and that if all art is immoral, then art ceases to exist. "i press to the conclusion," he said, at the end of his famous lecture on the relation of art to morals, "which i wish to leave with you, that all you can rightly do, or honourably become, depends on the government of these two instincts of order and kindness, by this great imaginative faculty, which give you inheritance of the past, grasp of the present, authority over the future. map out the spaces of your possible lives by its help; measure the range of their possible agency! on the walls and towers of this your fair city, there is not an ornament of which the first origin may not be traced back to the thoughts of men who died two thousand years ago. whom will _you_ be governing by your thoughts, two thousand years hence? think of it, and you will find that so far from art being immoral, little else except art is moral; that life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality: and for the words 'good' and 'wicked,' used of men, you may almost substitute the words 'makers' and 'destroyers.' far the greater part of the seeming prosperity of the world is, so far as our present knowledge extends, vain: wholly useless for any kind of good, but having assigned to it a certain inevitable sequence of destruction and of sorrow. its stress is only the stress of wandering storm; its beauty the hectic of plague: and what is called the history of mankind is too often the record of the whirlwind, and the map of the spreading of the leprosy. but underneath all that, or in narrow spaces of dominion in the midst of it, the work of every man, _qui non accepit in vanitatem animan suam_, endures and prospers; a small remnant or green bud of it prevailing at last over evil. and though faint with sickness, and encumbered in ruin, the true workers redeem inch by inch the wilderness into garden ground; by the help of their joined hands the order of all things is surely sustained and vitally expanded, and although with strange vacillation, in the eyes of the watcher, the morning cometh, and also the night, there is no hour of human existence that does not draw on towards the perfect day." for our own part let us examine a little into the relation between art and morality for ourselves. when we hear it asserted that morality has nothing to do with art and that moral considerations are quite beside the mark in æsthetic criticism and judgment, such a statement is simply equivalent to saying that actual life has nothing to do with art. the main demand that we can make from art of all kinds is the demand of truth. truth is beauty, and beauty is truth. by truth in this connection we mean that higher and more ideal truth which is inherent in the realities of things and contained by them, but which is brought out, explained, made credible, and visible by the artist in this or that sphere of art, and through the process of his art purified from the accidental obscurities which cloud it and hide it in the realm of actual life. if we are to demand truth from the artist, and let us always remember, as keats realised so strongly, that in demanding truth we demand beauty also, we must insist that the artist must give us nothing in which a false psychology obtains, must, for example, paint no passions that do not occur in actual life. it is, therefore, equally necessary, on a logical conclusion, that when the subject of a work of art requires it, the moral should be represented as it really is--that is, according to its truth--and that the moral law should not be misrepresented. if we require of the artist that he should give a vivid representation of the illusions of human life, of the struggles and rivalries of men for objects and ends of imaginary value, we must equally demand of the artist that he should know and be capable of describing that which alone has true and absolute value in human life. surely it is a truism that every drama from beginning to end contains a moral. it is a lie that art is immoral or can by its very nature ever be so. to say so, to pretend that art has a separate existence, is to say something which even the most brilliant paradox cannot prove and which immediately suggests to the mind of the thinking man an apologia or reason for licence of personal conduct. as a great german writer on æsthetics and the relation to the ethics has said, all human actions do of necessity presuppose a norm, a rule to which they conform, or from which they depart; and there is nothing which can be represented, whether as criminal or as ridiculous, or as an object of irony, otherwise than under this assumption. hence every artist enforces some kind of morality, and morality accordingly becomes of chief moment for æsthetic judgment. aristotle himself, from whom oscar wilde frequently quotes, and incidentally from whose poetics he attempts, by means of brilliant paradox, to infer an attitude which is not really there, has pointed out that art is a means of purification. if the morality of a work of art is false and wrong, if the artist is either ignorant of the subject with which he deals or deliberately misrepresents the morality of it, then his work is viewed merely as a work of art--and therefore as a thing whole and complete in itself--is a failure in art. in many respects it may have æsthetic excellence, but as a complete thing, as a work of art, it must inevitably fail. sibbern in his "Æsthetik" tells us very sanely and wisely that art need not be limited by choice of subject, but depends for its artistic qualities upon the attitude of the artist in dealing with it. that art must not be limited by choice of subject is a great point of oscar wilde's own philosophy, and here he is perfectly sound. but he goes further in his paradoxical view, and shows that the artist must hold no brief for either good or evil, and that the excellence of a work of art depends entirely upon the skill of presentation. the german student, on the contrary, writes: "there are dramas in which the moral element is not brought into special prominence, but just hovers above the surface, and which yet have their poetic value. what must, however, be absolutely insisted on is, that the artistic treatment should never insult morality. we do not mean that art must not represent the immoral as well as the moral, for this is, on the contrary, indispensable, if art is truly to reflect life as it is. but immorality must not infect and be inherent in that view of life and those opinions which the poet desires by his work to promulgate; for then he would injure morality, and violate that moral ideal to which all human life, and therefore art itself, must be subordinated. plays and novels which depict virtue as that mere conventionality and philistinism which is but an object of ridicule, or which hold up to our admiration false and antinomian ideals of virtue, representing _e.g._, the sentimentality of a so-called good heart as sufficient to justify the most scandalous moral delinquencies or 'free genius' as privileged to sin, which paint vice in attractive and seductive colours, portraying adultery and other transgressions as very pardonable, and, under certain circumstances, amiable weaknesses, and which by means of such delineations bestow absolution on the public for sins daily occurring in actual life--such plays and novels are unworthy of art, and are as poison to the whole community. "equally with all untruth must all impurity be excluded from art. purity and chastity are requirements resulting from the very nature of art. but it is just because art is so closely connected with sensuousness, that there is such obvious temptation to present the sensuous in false independence, to call forth the mere gratification of the senses. the sensuous must, however, be always subordinated to the intellectual, for this is involved in the demand for _ideality_, in other words, for that impress of perfection given by the idea and the mind in every artistic representation. and even if æsthetic ideality is present in a work of art, it must be subordinated to ethic ideality, to the moral purity in the artist's mind, a purity diffused throughout the whole." enough has been said and quoted to prove to all those who believe that art, while it is the chief regenerative force in life, cannot possibly be dissociated from morals, that wilde's view of art in its relation to morals is entirely unsound and dangerous to the half-educated and those who do not know how the greatest brains of the world have regarded this question. it is not necessary to continue or to pile proof upon proof, easy though this would be. from the people who have a little culture, imagine they have much more, and are dazzled by the splendour and beauty of wilde's execution, it will be idle to expect an assent. those who believe in art for art's sake as an infallible doctrine, may be divided into three classes. first of all there are the very young, whose experience of life has not taught them the truth. they have not seen or known life as a whole, and, therefore, no sound ethical view can possibly disabuse them of the heresy. there are those again, older and more mature, who have not made experience of life in its harsher and sadder aspects sufficient to wean them from wilde's theory, in which they are interested from a purely academic point of view. and there is another class who are convinced secretly in their own hearts that art for art's sake is an untenable doctrine, but know that if they accepted it they would have to give up much which they are unable to do without and which makes life pleasant and dulls the conscience. it is more satisfactory to turn to the consideration of "intentions," and pay an enthusiastic and reverential meed of praise to this perfection of art. marred here and there perhaps by over-elaboration and ornament, the book nevertheless remains a masterpiece. in its highest expression, where paradox and point of view were not insisted on, where pure lyric narrative fills the page, i know of nothing more lovely. "lovely" may be an exaggerated word, yet i think that it is almost the only word which can be applied in this connection. let me give, as an example, a few lines from the marvellous and inspired pages which treat of the divine comedy of dante. would that i could quote the whole of the supreme and splendid passages! that is impossible. but listen at least to these few lines. the poet is describing his spiritual experiences while reading the mighty harmonies of the florentine: "on and on we go climbing the marvellous stair, and the stars become larger than their wont, and the song of the kings grows faint, and at length we reach the seven trees of gold and the garden of the earthly paradise. in a griffin-drawn chariot appears one whose brows are bound with olive, who is veiled in white, and mantled in green, and robed in a vesture that is coloured like live fire. the ancient flame wakes within us. our blood quickens through terrible pulses. we recognise her. it is beatrice, the woman we have worshipped. the ice congealed about our heart melts. wild tears of anguish break from us, and we bow our forehead to the ground, for we know that we have sinned. when we have done penance, and are purified, and have drunk of the fountain of lethe and bathed in the fountain of eunoe, the mistress of our soul raises us to the paradise of heaven. out of that eternal pearl, the moon, the face of piccarda donati leans to us. her beauty troubles us for a moment, and when, like a thing that falls through water, she passes away, we gaze after her with wistful eyes." do not these words strike almost the highest, purest, and most beautiful note that any writer of prose has struck throughout the centuries. in english, at least, i know of nothing more rapt and ecstatic. it is above criticism and the man who wrote it must for ever wear in our minds one of the supreme laurels that artistic achievement can bestow. one more paragraph will show the author of "intentions" in a different mood, but yet one in which the supreme sense of beauty and of form throbs out upon the page and fills our pulses with that divine and awestruck excitement that great art can give. "... wake from his forgotten tomb the sweet syrian, meleager, and bid the lover of heliodore make you music, for he too has flowers in his song, red pomegranate-blossoms, and irises that smell of myrrh, ringed daffodils and dark blue hyacinths, and marjoram and crinkled ox-eyes. dear to him was the perfume of the beanfield at evening, and dear to him the odorous eared-spikenard that grew on the syrian hills, and the fresh green thyme, the winecup's charm. the feet of his love as she walked in the garden were like lilies set upon lilies. softer than sleep-laden poppy petals were her lips, softer than violets and as scented. the flame-light crocus sprang from the grass to look at her. for her the slim narcissus stored the cool rain; and for her the anemones forgot the sicilian winds that wooed them. and neither crocus, nor anemone, nor narcissus was as fair as she was." if the song of meleager was sweet and if the suns of summer greet the mountain grave of helikê, and the shepherds still repeat their legends where breaks the blue sicilian sea by which theocritus tuned his lyre; if the voice of dante yet rings and sounds in the world-weary ears of mortals of to-day; if "as you like it" has still its appeal to our modern ears as from a woodland full of flutes, then, indeed, this prose of oscar wilde's, so beautiful and so august, will remain with us always as an imperishable treasure of literature and as a lyric in our hearts. "poems in prose" that oscar wilde wrote were published first in _the fortnightly review_, during july, , when mr frank harris was the editor. we must remember the date because it was only a few months before the absolute downfall of the author. in criticising this work of wilde's, we cannot help the reflection that it was written at a time when enormous, sudden, and overwhelming success had thrown him entirely from his mental balance, and had filled him with an even greater egoism than he ordinarily had, at the time these fables, or allegories, let us call them, were produced, oscar wilde was at the very height of his success, and of his almost insane irresponsibility also. that they are beautiful it would be idle to deny. still we have the sure and dexterous pen employed upon them. there is no faltering in phrase, no hesitation of artistry. it is said by many people who heard the poet recite these stories upon social occasions, tell them to please, amuse, or bewilder one of those gatherings in which he was the centre in a constellation, that, spoken, they were far more beautiful than when at length he wrote them down and published them in the review. i can well believe it. on the two occasions when i myself heard oscar wilde talking, i realised how unprecedented his talent for conversation was, and wished that i also could hear him at times when he attempted his highest flights. yet, even as pieces of prose, the title the author chose for them is perfectly justified. they are indeed "poems" in prose and triumphant examples of technical accomplishment and mastery. yet, the condemnation of their teaching can hardly be too severe. with every wish in the world to realise that a paradox is only a truth standing on its head to attract attention, with every desire to give the author his due, no honest man, no christian, no catholic, no protestant, but must turn from these few paragraphs of allegory with sorrow and a sense of something very like shame. and it is for this reason. the poet has dared an attempt of invasion into places where neither he nor any artist has right. with an insane pride he dares to patronise, to limit and to explain the almighty. nowhere in this appreciation have i made a whole-hearted condemnation of anything wilde has written. even at times when i most disagreed with his attitude i have attempted, i hope with humility and sincerity, to present the other side of the shield. here i do not see there is anything to be said in favour of at least two or three of the prose poems--those two or three which give colour to the whole. there is one of them called "the doer of good." it begins in this wise: "it was night time and he was alone, and he saw afar off the walls of a round city and went towards the city." our lord is meant. the allegory goes on to say that when christ came near to the city he heard music and the sounds of happiness and joy. he knocked at the gate and "certain of the gatekeepers opened to him." our lord passes through the beautiful halls of a palace and sees upon a "couch of sea purple" a man bearing all the signs of an ancient greek stupefied by pleasure and by wine. the protagonist asks the man he sees--"why do you live like this?" then wilde's prose goes on to tell how the young man turns and recognises his interlocutor and answers that he was a leper once, that christ had healed him. how else should he live? our lord leaves the palace and walks through the city, and he sees another young man pursuing a harlot, while his eyes are bright with lust. he speaks to the young man and asks him the reason of his way of life, and the young man turns and tells the saviour of mankind that he was once blind and that he had given him sight, and, therefore, at what else could he look? the allegory goes on, but it is not necessary to continue an account of it. all it is necessary and right to say is, that the allegory is blasphemous and horrible--horrible with the insane pride of one who has not realised his imminent fall, who has realised the horror of his mental attitude no less than the life he was proved to have been leading at the time. i have purposely refrained from quotation here. but let it again be said that the artistic presentment of these parables is without flaw. i do not think it would be a kindness to the memory of oscar wilde, nor be doing a service to anyone at all, to continue this ethical criticism of the "poems in prose." let me say only that wilde, in another story, takes a sinner to the judgment seat and introduces god the father into a dialogue in which the sinner silences the almighty by his repartee. all these "poems in prose" are written beautifully, as i have said, but also with an extraordinarily adroit use of actual phrases from the new testament. i will permit myself one quotation before i conclude, which is surely saddening in its significance in the view of after events. and god said to the man: "thy life hath been evil, and the beauty i have shown thou hast sought for, and the good i have hidden thou did'st pass by." it remains to say something about wilde's final essay, entitled "the soul of man," which also appeared in _the fortnightly review_. upon its appearance it was called "the soul of man under socialism," but it has since been republished under the title of "the soul of man." this essay, brilliant in conception, brilliant in execution, has none of the old lyric beauty of phrase. it can in no sense be considered a masterpiece of prose, but only a piece of fine and cultured writing. in it paradox obscures the underlying truth. the very first words strike the old weary note. "the chief advantage that would result from the establishment of socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others, which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon himself and everybody." as far as the prose artist is concerned, the essay has little to recommend it. he was tired, tired out, and had no longer the wish or the stimulus to produce the marvellous and glowing prose to which we have been accustomed in these other statements of the writer's attitude towards art, towards morals and towards beauty. yet, at the same time, the man's love of individualism drove him to write this essay, and at certain points it comes strangely into impact with catholic truth. the more catholic the conception of religion and of art becomes, the more surely the socialistic idea obtains. certainly our lord taught that individual character can only be developed through community. the great socialistic organ of england attempted the value and weight of oscar wilde's defence of socialism in the following words:-- "christ taught that individual character could only be developed through community. some say he opposed socialism because, when two young capitalists came to him wrangling about their private property, he ignored them, saying, 'who made me a divider among you?' i suppose these objectors still think that socialism means dividing up. when his enemies were closing in upon him, and his life hung in the balance, a woman came and anointed his feet, and wiped them with her hair, and the good people were shocked, and complained of the waste. might not the ointment have been sold, and the money doled out to the poor? christ defended her generous impulse, and remarked: 'the poor you have always with you. you have plenty of opportunities of helping them. me you have not always.' this is erected into a great pronouncement that we must not attempt to abolish poverty! to such amusing shifts are christian individualists driven! "but our contention is that although christ was not a state socialist, his spirit, embodied in the christian church, inevitably urges men to socialism; that the political development of the catholic faith is along the lines of socialism; and that, as the state captured the church in the past, so now it is the business of the church to recapture the state, and through it to establish god's kingdom on earth." i quote them here in order to show what sympathy the essay awakened, even though that sympathy is utterly alien to the belief of the chronicler. and now let us finally bid farewell to oscar wilde as Æsthete, or, rather, as prophet and expounder of the æsthetic. i have placed on record not only my own small opinion of his teachings, but a very solid and weighty consensus of condemnation of his attitude. and i hope, from the purely literary point of view, i have made obeisance and given every credit to one of the greatest literary artists of our time. part viii "de profundis" "de profundis" "i have entered on a performance which is without example, whose accomplishments will have no imitator. i mean to present my fellow-mortals with a man in all the integrity of nature; and this man shall be myself. "i know my heart, and have studied mankind; i am not made like anyone i have been acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence; if not better, i at least claim originality, and whether nature did wisely in breaking the mould with which she formed me, can only be determined after having read this work. "whenever the last trumpet shall sound, i will present myself before the sovereign judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, thus have i acted; these were my thoughts; such was i. with equal freedom and veracity have i related what was laudable or wicked, i have concealed no crimes, added no virtues; and if i have sometimes introduced superfluous ornament, it was merely to occupy a void occasioned by defect of memory. i may have supposed that certain, which i only knew to be probable, but have never asserted as truth a conscious falsehood. such as i was, i have declared myself; sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous, generous, and sublime. even as thou hast read my inmost soul, power eternal! assemble round thy throne an innumerable throng of my fellow-mortals, let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my depravity, let them tremble at my sufferings; let each in his turn expose with equal sincerity the failings, the wanderings of his heart, and, if he dare, aver, _i was better than that man_." these are the first words in that book which it was supposed would always stand as a type of real self-revelation and confession and which now is thought of by all the world as merely a brilliant piece of literature and an amazing tissue of misrepresentations. jean jacques rousseau never gave his real self to the world despite the loud gallic boast of the paragraphs above. did de quincey? did st augustine? did anyone ever tell the truth about himself from the very beginnings of literature? newman's "apologia"; bunyan's "grace abounding"; the journals of wesley; the memoirs of madame de stael de launay; the diary of madame d'arblay; the "ausmeinem leben" of goethe, the "lavengro" of borrow--how much in all these and in the hundred other works of like nature which crowd to the mind, how much is self-deception, how much picturesque fiction? who can say? there is only one way of determining the value of an autobiographical statement--by a comparison of internal evidence with external historic fact. in the case of people whose generation has passed away this task is beset with difficulties, though not impossible. in the case of one who has but recently died, whose friends and contemporaries are living still, about whom documentary and oral evidence abounds, the task is more easy, though still a hard and, possibly, a thankless one. in a consideration and criticism, however, of oscar wilde's greatest work, "de profundis," such an attempt must undoubtedly be made. yet, this question of sincerity or reality is not the only one to be determined, and it will be well, therefore, to treat of "de profundis" with the assistance of a definite plan of criticism. let us then divide this part of the book into several sections. there are, undoubtedly, a great many people who have heard the name of the book and read the extraordinarily copious reviews of it in the public press, but have no further acquaintance with it than just that. it will be necessary, therefore, in the first instance, to give an account of the actual subject-matter in order to make the following criticism intelligible and, it is to be hoped, to induce them to purchase and read this marvellous monograph, which is one of the world's minor masterpieces, for themselves. secondly, a purely literary criticism will not be out of place, a criticism which treats of the book as a consummate work of art and a piece of prose almost unparalleled for its splendour and beauty in modern literature. thirdly, the vexed question of its conscious or unconscious sincerity must be dealt with, while the fourth consideration should surely be devoted to the philosophy and teaching, especially in its regard to the christian faith, which is definitely promulgated within the book. lastly, a few words about its actual legacy to the europe of to-day should conclude this part of the appreciation. * * * * * "de profundis" was published by messrs methuen & company on rd february . it was written by oscar wilde when in prison, by special permission of the home secretary. a fuller account of these details will be found in part i. of this book. directly "de profundis" made its appearance the whole press of england, almost without exception, devoted a large space to its consideration. the sensation the book occasioned was extraordinary and almost without parallel in modern times. an enormous controversy arose about it immediately. every possible aspect of the book was canvassed and discussed, and, strange as it may seem, a vast amount of venom and bitterness was mingled with the bulk of eulogy. the student of contemporary literature, or perhaps, in view of what i am going to say, it would be better to call it contemporary book publishing, can find no parallel to the interest and excitement this book occasioned, save only in the case of a very different production called "when it was dark," an over-rated sensational novel by a mr "guy thorne," whose views excited the various religious parties in the church of england to a sort of frenzy for and against them. in pure literature i know of nothing which, upon its appearance, made such an immediate stir as "de profundis." with the various views of various sections of the community, i propose to deal later. with the doubts that were thrown on its authenticity as a genuine prison manuscript i have already dealt. i may here, however, quote a few words of a statement made by the editor of "de profundis," mr robert ross, to a representative of an evening paper. they will explain for the reader all that he will further find necessary to introduce him to the circumstances under which "de profundis" appeared. "my object," he said, "in publishing this book, as i have indicated in the preface and in my letter to _the st james's gazette_, was that mr oscar wilde might come to be regarded as a factor in english literature along with his distinguished contemporaries. the success of 'de profundis' and the reviews lead me to believe that my object has been achieved. "i cannot expect the world to share my admiration of mr oscar wilde as a man of letters, at present, although that admiration is already shared by many distinguished men of letters in england, by the whole of germany, and by a considerable portion of the literary class in france. "with regard to the authenticity of the manuscript, i may say that it was well known that during his incarceration at reading gaol he was granted the privileges of pen and paper, only permitted in exceptional cases, at the instance of influential people not his personal friends. the manuscript of 'de profundis,' about which he wrote to me very often during the last months of his imprisonment, was handed to me on the day of his release. the letters he had written to me in reference to it are published in the german edition of the work, and later on, perhaps, they may appear in england, if i think it desirable to publish them here. "contrary to general belief the manuscript contains nothing of a scandalous nature, and if there was another object in publishing the work it was to remove that false impression which had gained ground. the portions which i have omitted in the english publication, apart from the letters to which i have already referred as appearing in the german edition, are all of a private character. there are one or two unimportant passages which the english publisher--very wisely, i think--deemed unsuitable for immediate reproduction in england. "in germany mr oscar wilde's place in english literature had already been accepted. 'salomé,' for instance, is now part of the repertoire, and strauss, the great musician, is engaged on an opera based on mr wilde's work, which he selected out of many others because of its popularity in germany, and also, no doubt, on account of the dramatic intensity of mr wilde's interpretation of the biblical story. "it is not for me to criticise or to appreciate 'de profundis' on which many competent writers have given their opinions, but i should have imagined that it was sufficiently clear that mr oscar wilde had not attempted to throw any blame for his misfortune on anyone but himself. "the manuscript is written on blue prison foolscap. there are a few corrections. although mr wilde gave me very full instructions with regard to those portions which he wished published he allowed me absolute discretion in the matter, which he did about all his other manuscript and letters." the subject-matter of "de profundis" i have said that for those who have not read the book, a short synopsis of its contents is necessary here. but i am immediately confronted with a difficulty because, probably, no book is more difficult to sum up, to make a _précis_ from, than this. however, i do all that is possible, and only ask my readers to remember that this bald catalogue will be elucidated further on in the article. in the preface to the book a letter of oscar wilde to the editor is quoted in which he says: "i don't defend my conduct. i explain it. also there is in my letter certain passages which deal with my mental development in prison, and the inevitable evolution of my character and intellectual attitude towards life that has taken place; and i want you and others who still stand by me and have affection for me to know exactly in what mood and manner i hope to face the world. of course, from one point of view, i know that on the day of my release i shall be merely passing from one prison into another.... prison life makes one see people and things as they really are. that is why it turns one to stone.... i have 'cleansed my bosom of much perilous stuff.' i need not remind you that mere expression is to an artist the supreme and only mode of life.... for nearly two years i have had within a growing burden of bitterness, of much of which i have now got rid." this, in some sort of way, will give the reader an idea of what the book consists or, at anyrate, of its other view about it. he begins the work by a statement of the terrible suffering he is undergoing in prison. the iron discipline, the paralysing immobility of a life which is as monotonous and regular as the movement of a great machine, are set forth subjectively by a presentment of the effects they are having upon the prisoner's brain. "it is always twilight in one's cell, as it is always twilight in one's heart." ... he is transferred to a new prison. three months elapse, and he is told of his mother's death. he speaks of his deep love and veneration for her and says that he who was once a "lord of language" has now no words left in which to tell of the appalling shame which has seized upon his heart and mind. he realises the infamy with which he has covered that honoured name. an anecdote comes into these sorrowful pages. it is an anecdote of his sad and guarded appearance among the world of men when he was brought to appear before the court of bankruptcy. as he walked manacled in the corridor towards the court room, a friend of his, who was waiting, lifted his hat and bowed. waited, "that, before the whole crowd, whom such an action so sweet and simple hushed into silence, he might raise his hat to me, as, handcuffed and with bowed head, i passed him by." a page or two is occupied with the poor convict's gratitude for this simple, sweet and dignified action. a marvellous eulogy is pronounced upon it. what prison means to a man in the upper ranks of life is set forth in words of anguish, and then, following these paragraphs, is a frank admission that wilde had ruined himself. "i am quite ready to say so. i am trying to say so, though they may not think it at the present moment. this pitiless indictment i bring without pity against myself." he describes the great and brilliant position he had held in the world. he tells of all the splendid things with which fortune had endowed him. he admits that he allowed pleasure to dominate him and that his end came with irremediable disgrace. he has lain in prison for nearly two years, and now he begins to describe his mental development during the long torture. humility, he says, is what he has found, like a treasure in a field. from this newly discovered treasure he builds up a method of conduct which he will pursue when he is released from durance. he knows, indeed, that kind friends will await him on the other side of the prison door. he will not have to beg his bread, but, nevertheless, humility shall bloom like a flower in his heart. he begins to speak of religion, and avows his atheism. "the faith that others give to what is unseen, i give to what one can touch, and look at." there is no help for him in religion. he goes on to speak of reason. there is no help for him in reason. reason tells him that the laws under which he was convicted were wrong and unjust laws, the system under which he suffered a wrong and unjust system. yet, in pursuance of his determination of humility, he resolves to make all that has happened to him into a spiritualising medium. he is going to weave his pain and agony into the warp and woof of his life with the same readiness with which he wove the time of pleasure and success into the completion of his temperament. then there comes a long discussion of his own position at the moment, a common prisoner in a common gaol, and of what his position will be afterwards. he tells of occasions on which he was allowed to see his friends in prison, and afterwards describes a moment of his deepest degradation, when he was jeered at in convict dress as he stood, one of a chained gang, on clapham junction platform. the story is utterly terrible. on the occasion of his removal from london to reading, he says, "i had to stand on the centre platform of clapham junction in convict dress and handcuffed, for all the world to look at.... when people saw me they laughed. each train as it came up swelled the audience. nothing could exceed their amusement. that was, of course, before they knew who i was. as soon as they had been informed they laughed still more. for half-an-hour i stood there, in the grey november rain, surrounded by a jeering mob." we find now, in our short survey of the book, the widely discussed passages about the personality and message of christ. these form the greater part of this strange and moving masterpiece. they will be treated of hereafter. finally, come anticipations of release and plans for the future, and "de profundis" concludes with an especially poignant and almost painfully beautiful passage which anticipates the kindliness of nature to heal a bruised soul to which man has given no solace: "but nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where i may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence i may weep undisturbed. she will hang the night with stars so that i may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt; she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole." "de profundis" as a piece of prose there is very little of the wise and sensuous geniality of horace in oscar wilde's outlook upon life. but some lines of the poet, never a great favourite with wilde by the way, certainly have a direct application upon the style of the author of "de profundis"-- "saepe stilum vertas, iterum quæ digna legi sint scripturus; neque te ut miretur turba labores, contentus paucis lectoribus."--s. i. , . a piece of prose to oscar wilde was always, in a sense, like a definite musical composition in which words took the place of notes, and he carried out the poet's injunction to polish and rewrite with meticulous care. wilde had, in a marvellously developed degree, the sense that a piece of prose was a built-up thing proceeding piece by piece, movement by movement, sentence by sentence, and word by word towards a definite and well-understood effect. "it was the architectural conception of work which foresees the end in the beginning and never loses sight of it, and in every part is conscious of all the rest, till the last sentence does but, with undiminished vigour, unfold and justify the first." these lines were written by oscar wilde's master in english prose, walter pater, and we shall see how entirely wilde has adhered to such an artistic attitude. like the greeks, he believed in an elaborate criticism of language, and the metrical movements of prose were scientifically and artistically interesting to him, as any student of harmony takes pleasure in a contrapuntal exercise. the analogy is perfectly correct, and wilde himself has drawn attention to it more than once in his prose writings. counterpoint consisted, in the old days of music, when a system of sounds called points were used for notation, in two or more lines of these points; each line represented a melody which, when set against each other and sounded simultaneously, produced correct harmony. wilde's prose was moulded entirely upon an appreciation of these facts, and the ear must always be the critic of the excellence of his prose rather than the intelligence, in the first instance, as reached by the eye. if we read aloud passages of "de profundis" the full splendour of them strikes us far more poignantly than in any other way. it is true that wilde's prose makes an appeal _ad clerum_, and it is not necessary for the connoisseur, the initiate, to apply the test of the spoken word. but those who are not actually conversant with the more technical niceties of style will do well to read wilde's prose aloud. they will discover in it new and unsuspected beauties. wilde, at one period of his career, published a series of short paragraph stories which he called "poems in prose." with him there were many points of contact between prose and poetry. the two things could overlap and intermingle, though in his hands neither lost its own individuality in the process. there has been too much said in the past about the old principle of sharp division between poetry and prose. this was a classical tradition and was one which well applied to the greek and latin languages. it was maintained, until a late era in our own english literature, by the gibbons and macaulays who moulded themselves upon cicero and livy. but during the last century the force of the old tradition weakened very much. a newer and more flexible style of writing became permissible. coleridge, de quincey, swift, lamb, to mention a few names at random, showed that, at anyrate, prose need no longer be written as a stately cataract of ordered words with due balance and antithesis, and with certain rigid movements which were thought indispensable to correct writing. dr boswell said, apropos of style--"some think swift's the best; others prefer a fuller and grander way of writing." to whom dr johnson replied--"sir, you must first define what you mean by style, before you can judge who has good taste in style and who has bad. the two classes of persons whom you have mentioned don't differ as to good and bad. they both agree that swift has a good neat style, but one loves a neat style, another a style of more splendour. in the like manner one loves a plain coat, another loves a laced coat; but neither will deny that each is good in its kind." although johnson and his contemporaries certainly had a great sense of rhythm and harmony in prose they were the last defenders of the old axiom that poetry and prose were two entirely separate things. it was walter pater who, in our own times, finally demolished the old tradition, and opened the way for a writer, such as oscar wilde, to bring the new discovery to its fullest perfection. walter pater showed that it was not true that poetry differs only from prose by the presence of metrical restraint. wilde, understanding this, most thoroughly, resolved early in his literary career that his prose should be beautifully coloured, jewelled, ornate, and yet capable of every delicate nuance, every almost lyric echo that could be caught from the realms of poesy and welded into the many-coloured fabric. in wilde's "intentions" we have an example of his most ornamented and decorated prose, so marvellously musical that it reminds us of a fugue played on a mighty organ with innumerable stops. yet, at the same time, in this book of essays, oscar wilde frequently laid himself open to the charge of precocity and over-elaboration. it is possible to obscure the grand and massive lines of a building by an over-elaboration of detail. beautiful as decorated gothic is, i have in mind the cathedral of cologne, there is a more massive grandeur in the early mediæval work than anything the later style can give. "de profundis" is purged of all the faults--one might almost say the faults of excellence--that the hypercritical student may sometimes find in the earlier prose of its author. just as the man himself was purged and purified in mind by the terrible experiences of prison, so his style also became stronger and more beautiful, and what was once reminiscent of a marvellous nocturne or ballade of chopin, or "some mad scarlet thing by dvorak" inherent with all the beauty of just this, now acquires the harmony and strength of a great wind blowing through a forest. the prose is still full of the old symbolism and imagery, but these two means of producing an effect are used with much more restraint of language and simplicity of words. note, for example, how the following paragraph, especially when read aloud, proceeds from symbol to symbol with a marvellously adroit use of the dactyl and the spondæ, or rather their equivalents in english prosody, until the final thought is enunciated, the voice drops, the sentence is complete. "when one has weighed the sun in the balance and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens, star by star, there still remains oneself." here we notice in addition, the extraordinary influence that the words of the bible always had upon the prose of oscar wilde. in his lonely prison cell, where nearly the whole of his reading must have consisted of holy scripture, the influence was naturally greater than ever before. no one can read "de profundis" with its rhythmic repetitions of phrase without realising this in an extraordinary degree. take the passage i have just quoted and the following paragraph, which, let me assure my readers, i have taken quite at random, opening a bible and turning over but a very few leaves of the old testament without any regular search,--"so that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down out of the forest; for they shall burn the weapons with fire: and they shall spoil those that spoiled them, and rob those that robbed them, saith the lord god." yes! there can be no possible doubt that much of the inspiration of "de profundis"--that is, the purely literary inspiration--came from the solemn harmonies and balanced phrases of the old hebrew singers and poets. with job, oscar wilde might well have said, and his own lamentations are strangely reminiscent of the phrase, "my harp is turned to mourning and my organ into the voice of them that weep." in "de profundis" the special passages of rare and melodious beauty which star the printed page at no long intervals, have been very widely commented upon and quoted. by this time they are quite familiar to all who take an interest in modern literature, and this masterpiece of it in particular. yet, in considering the prose of "de profundis" we must not forget to pay a due meed of praise to the great substance of the book in which an extraordinary ease and dignity of style, an absolute simplicity of effect, which conceals the most elaborate art and the most profound knowledge of the science of words, links together those more memorable, because more striking, passages which leap out from the page and plant themselves in the mind of the appreciative reader like arrows. "there is hardly a word in 'de profundis' misplaced, misused, or used at all unless the fullest possible value is got from its presence in the sentence. even now and then, when, in the midst of the grave rhetoric of his psychology, the author descends into colloquialism, the ear is not offended in the least. he knows the precise moment when the little homely word will bring back to the reader the fact that he is reading a human document written by a human sufferer in a prison cell. "if, after i am free, a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, i should not mind a bit, i can be perfectly happy by myself." here in the midst of passages of calculated and cadenced beauty we have a little carefully devised sentence to which, though the ordinary reader will not realise the art and cunning of its employment, it will have precisely the effect upon the brain of the ordinary reader that oscar wilde designed when he wrote it. the literary man himself, accustomed to deal with words, can, and will, appreciate the art of the artist in this regard. it is with the profoundest appreciation and admiration for the marvellous skill of presentation, the perfect power and flexibility of the prose that i leave the consideration of the purely artistic merits of the book and turn to its real value as a human document. as oscar wilde said of himself, he was indeed a "lord of language." "de profundis" as a revelation of self we now come to a consideration of "de profundis" as a revelation, or not, of the real sentiments and thoughts of the man who wrote it. to the british temperament it is always far more important, in the judgment of a book, that the writer should be sincere in the writing than that what he wrote should be perfectly artistic. the british public, indeed, the whole anglo-saxon world, has never been able to adapt itself to the french attitude that, provided a thing is a flawless work of art, the sincerity of the writer has nothing whatever to do with its worth. this attitude wilde himself consistently preached in season and out of season. for example, he wrote a study of wainwright, the poisoner, which, read from the ordinary english ethical point of view, would seem to show him a most sympathetic advocate of crime, provided only the criminal committed his crimes in an artistic manner and had also a sense of art in life. when a friend reproached the monster wainwright with the murder of an innocent girl, helen abercrombie, to whom he owed every duty of kindness and protection, he shrugged his shoulders and said--"yes, it was a dreadful thing to do, but she had very thick ankles." if we are to take oscar wilde's essay, "pen, pencil and poison," quite seriously we must believe him to be utterly indifferent to the monstrous moral character of the hero of his memoir. he speaks of him as being not merely a poet and a painter, an art critic and antiquarian, a writer of prose and a dilettante of things delightful, but also a forger of no mean nor ordinary capacities, and as a subtle and secret poisoner almost without rival in this or any age. when "de profundis" first made its appearance and the flood of criticism began, dozens of critics pounced upon the book, admitted its marvellous literary charm and achievement, and said that its author was absolutely and utterly insincere in all he wrote about himself. _the times_ for example, which still holds a certain pre-eminence of place, although it is the fashion of a younger generation to decry it and to pretend that it has lost all its influence, owing both to the change of public taste in journalistic requirements and certain business enterprises which have been associated with its name, spoke out to this effect with careful and calculated sincerity. in an article which was extremely well written and had indubitably a certain psychological insight, the leading journal condemned "de profundis" from an ethical point of view with no uncertain voice. it said that, while it was possessed by every wish to understand the author and to sympathise with him in the hideous ruin of his brilliant career, it was impossible, except in a very few instances, to regard his posthumous book as anything but a mere literary feat. the excellence of that was granted, but it was not allowed to be anything more than that. it was not in this way, so said the writer in _the times_, that souls were laid bare, this was not sorrow, but the most dextrous counterfeit of sorrow. wilde, so the review stated, was "probably unable to cry from the depths at all." his book simply showed that there was an armour of egotism which no arrow of fate was able to pierce. even in "de profundis" the poseur supplemented the artist, and the truth was not in him. if the heart of a broken man showed at all in the book it must, said _the times_, "be looked for between the lines. it was rarely in them." in short, so the review, when summed up and crystallised, implied, wilde was incapable of telling the truth about himself, or about anything at all. sometimes in his writings he fell upon the truth by accident, and then his works contained a modicum of truth. consciously, he was never able to discover it, consciously, he was never able to enunciate it. now, that is a point of view which is natural enough, but which, after careful study, i cannot substantiate in any way. over and over again the same thing was said. everybody was prepared, at last, to admit that wilde was a great artist--in direct contradiction to that condemnation of even his literary power which was poured upon his works at the time of his downfall--but the general opinion of the leading critics seemed to point to the fact of "de profundis" being a pose and insincere. now, if the book was merely an excursion in attitude, a considered work of art without any very profound relation to the truth of its personal psychology, then i think the book would be a less saddening thing than it undoubtedly is. surely, the author had a perfect right, if he so wished, to produce a psychological romance. this i know is not a generally held opinion, but i do not see how anybody who knows anything about the brain of the artist and the ethics of creation can really deny it. if the work is absolutely sincere, as i believe it to be, then, from the moral point of view, it is indeed a terrible document. it shows us how little the extraordinary, complex temperament of oscar wilde was really chastened and purified. it provides us with a moral picture of monstrous egotism set in a frame of jewels. as has been said so often before in this book, the worse and insane side of oscar wilde must always obscure and conquer the better and beautiful side of him. oscar wilde describes himself as a "lord of language." this is perfectly true. he goes on to say that he "stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of his time." this is only half true. he continues that "i felt it myself and made others feel it." the first half of this sentence is too true, the second half is untrue, inasmuch as it implies that he made everyone feel it, whereas he mistook the flattery and adulation of a tiny coterie for the applause and sanction of a nation. oscar wilde always lived within four very narrow walls. at one time they were the swaying misty walls conjured up by a few and not very important voices, at another they were the walls of concrete and corrugated iron, the whitewashed walls of his prison cell. he says that his relations to his time were more noble, more permanent, of more vital issue, of larger scope than byron's relation to his time. then, almost in the same breath, he begins to tell us that there is only one thing for him now, "absolute humility." that something hidden away in his nature like a treasure in a field is "humility." comment is almost cruel here. in another part of "de profundis" the author airily and lightly touches upon those horrors which had ruined him and made him what he was, and which kept him where he was. "people thought it dreadful of me to have entertained at dinner the evil things of life, and to have found pleasure in their company. but then, from the point of view through which i, as an artist in life, approached them, they were delightfully suggestive and stimulating. the danger was half the excitement...." is this humility and is this repentance? to me it seems as terrible a conviction of madness and inability to understand the depth to which he had sunk as one could find in the whole realm of literature. "people thought it dreadful of me to have entertained," etc. etc. does not the very phrase suggest that wilde still thinks in his new-found "humility" that it was not dreadful of him at all and that he had a perfect right to do so? there is no doubt of his absolute sincerity. he is absolutely incapable of understanding. he still thinks, lying in torture, that he has done nothing wrong. he has made an error of judgment, he has misapprehended his attitude towards society. he has not sinned. once only does he admit, in a single sentence, that any real culpability attached to him. "i grew careless of the lives of others." this shows that a momentary glimpse of the truth had entered that unhappy brain, but it is carelessly uttered, and carelessly dismissed. all he cared for, if we believe this book to be sincere, as i think nobody who really understands the man and his mental condition at the time that it was written, can fail to believe, is, that every fresh sensation at any cost to himself and others, was his only duty towards himself and his art. doubtless when he wrote "de profundis" oscar wilde believed absolutely in his own attitude. he was no lucifer in his own account, no fallen angel. he was only a spirit of light which had made a mistake and found itself in fetters. that is the tragedy of the book, that its author could never see himself as others saw him or realise that he had sinned. when satan fell from heaven, in milton's mighty work, he made no attempt to persuade himself that he had found something hidden away within him like a treasure in a field--"humility." there was in the imaginary portrait of the author of evil still an awful and impious defiance of the forces that controlled all nature and him as a part of nature. oscar wilde could look back upon all he did to himself and all the incalculable evil he wrought upon others and say quite calmly that he did not regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. he tells us that he threw the "pearl of his soul into a cup of wine," that he "went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes." and then, after living on honeycomb he realises that to have continued living on honeycomb would have been wrong, because it would have arrested the continuance of his development. "i had to pass on." let us pass on also to a consideration of wilde's teaching on christianity in "de profundis." the author's view of the christian faith it is necessary to deal with this part of "de profundis" which treats of the unhappy author's "discoveries" in christianity, because his views were put so perfectly, with such a wealth of phrase, with such apparent certainty of conviction, that they may well have an influence upon young and impressionable minds which will be, and possibly has been, dangerous and unsettling. there is no doubt but that the teaching of "de profundis," or rather the point of view enunciated in it, which deals with christianity, shows that oscar wilde had failed to gain any real insight into the faith. it is quite true that various of the sects within the english church, especially those which dissent from the establishment, might find themselves in accordance with much that wilde said. a catholic, however, cannot for a moment admit that the poet's teachings are anything but paradoxical, dangerous, and untrue. a minister of the protestant church, canon beeching, preaching at westminster abbey on "the sinlessness of christ," referred to the portions of "de profundis," with which i am dealing now, in no uncertain way. there are here and there things that a catholic would not entirely endorse in canon beeching's sermon, yet, on the whole, it is a very sane and fair presentation of what a christian must think in reading "de profundis." it is as well to say frankly, that i write as a catholic, and, in this section of my criticism, for those who are also of the faith. i print some extracts from canon beeching's sermon: "one wonders sometimes," said he, "if englishmen have given up reading their gospels. a book has lately appeared which presents a caricature of the portrait of christ, and especially a travesty of his doctrine about sin, that is quite astonishing; and with one or two honourable exceptions the daily and weekly press have praised the book enthusiastically, and especially the study it gives of the character of christ; whereas, if that picture were true, the pharisees were right when they said to him that he cast out devils through beelzebub, and the priests were right in sending him to death as a perverter of the people. the writer of the book, who is dead, was a man of exceptional literary talent, who fell into disgrace; and whether it is pity for his sad fate or admiration of his style in writing that has cast a spell upon the reviewers and blinded them to his meaning, i cannot say; but i do say they have not done their duty to english society by lauding the book as they have done, without giving parents and guardians some hint that it preaches a doctrine of sin, which, if taken into romantic and impressionable hearts, will send them quickly down the road of shame. the chief point on which the writer fixes is christ's behaviour to the sinners; and his theory is that christ consorted with them because he found them more interesting than the good people, who were stupid. 'the world,' he says, 'had always loved the saint as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of god; christ, through some divine instinct in him, seems to have always loved the sinner as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of man. to turn an interesting thief into a tedious honest man was not his aim.... but in a manner not yet understood of the world he regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful and holy things, and modes of perfection.' it seems to have struck the writer at this point that our lord had himself explained that he consorted with sinners, as a physician with the sick, to call them to repentance. for he goes on:--'of course the sinner must repent; but why?--simply because otherwise he would be unable to realise what he had done.' in other words, a man is the better for any sort of emotional experience, when it is past, because he is fertilised by it as by a crop of wild oats; a form of philosophy which tennyson in 'in memoriam' well characterised as 'procuress to the lords of hell.' but even this writer, absolutely shameless and unabashed as he is, does not hint that christ himself gained his moral beauty by sinning. the lowest depth of woe is theirs who call evil good and good evil, for that is a poisoning of the well of life. what is the use of calling jesus "good" if we destroy the very meaning of goodness? may god have pardoned the sin of the man who put this stumbling-block in the way of the simple, and may he shield our boys and young men from that doctrine of devils that the way of perfection lies through sin." these words, although they are obviously said without any sympathy whatever for oscar wilde, have the germ of truth within them. strong as they are, and no one who had really studied the whole work and life of oscar wilde would perhaps care to make so fierce a statement, they are, nevertheless, words of weight and value. i have no record among my documents of any catholic priest who dealt with the christian aspect of "de profundis" upon its publication. nevertheless, i have conversed with christians of all denominations on the subject of wilde's "discovery" of christ, and i am certain that i am only representing the christian point of view when i state that a wholesale condemnation of the doctrines wilde enunciated is the only thing possible for us. of the way in which his doctrines were enunciated no one with a literary sense and who takes a joy in fine, artistic achievement, can fail to give a tribute of whole-hearted praise and admiration. let us consider. morality, philosophy, religion, wilde has already confessed have no controlling force or power for him. yet, he takes up the position of those dim and early seekers after the presence of divinity. he would see "jesus." accordingly, wilde writes of our lord very beautifully indeed. he tells us that the basis of "his nature was an intense and flame-like imagination.... there is almost something incredible in the idea of the young galilean peasant imagining that he could bear on his own shoulders the burden of the entire world--all that has been done and suffered, and all that was to be done and suffered--and not merely imagining it, but achieving it." as another anglican minister, canon gorton, appointed out at the time, wilde states that christ ranks next to the poets. there is nothing in the highest drama which can approach the last act of christ's passion. our lord becomes, in wilde's eyes, the source of all art. he is a requisite for the beautiful. he is in "romeo and juliet," in "the winter's tale" in provencal poetry, and in "the ancient mariner." "hence christ becomes the palpitating centre of romance, he has all the colour elements of life, mystery, strangeness, pathos, suggestion, ecstasy, love." and then wilde finally says "that is why he is so fascinating to artists." this summing up of the personality and mission of the saviour of the world as a mere element in the life of mental or spiritual pleasure enjoyed by those who are cultivated to such a life at all, strikes the christian man or woman with dismay. it is horrible, this patronising analysis of the redeemer as another and great dante, merely a supreme artist to whom artists should bow because of that, and no more. wilde, in fact, definitely states that the artistic life means for him the tasting in turn of good and evil, the entertainment of saints and devils, for the sake of extending the circle of his friends. he approaches the personality of christ _sub specie artis_, and only in this way, and his words are the more terrible to the devout christian because they are so beautiful. do we not remember, indeed, that once when a young man knelt to our lord and called him "good," the saviour put him aside? does it not strike one that there is something very nearly blasphemous in the man who had lived the consciously antinomian life that oscar wilde lived daring to call the saviour idyllic, poetic, dramatic, charming, fascinating? does not the poet use the personality of our lord as a mere peg on which to hang his own gorgeous and jewelled imagery, a reed through which he should make his own artistic music? our lord did not come into the world to win admiration but to win the soul from sin. his appeal was not to our imagination, but to our dormant souls to rouse and strengthen them. oscar wilde writes of jesus, but there is no cross. there is a saviour, but no repentance, no renewal, of life, no effort after holiness. it is terrible, indeed, to think of the poor unhappy author striving to appreciate jesus, though surely even his blind semi-appreciation of the personality of our lord was better than none at all, and then to know that even the little germ of truth which seemed to have come into his life was forgotten and pushed away when once more the "appreciator" of jesus of nazareth returned to the world. as an english minister pointed out, the moral of wilde's attitude towards the christian faith is as old as scripture itself, and as modern as browning also, who, in the painter's question--"gave art, and what more wish you?" replied-- "to become now self-acquainters, and paint man, man, whatever the issue, make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray, new fears aggrandise the rags and tatters, to bring the invisible full into play, let the visible go to the dogs--what matters?" * * * * * finally we have to ask ourselves what is the precise value of this last legacy oscar wilde has left to us? i think it is just this. we have upon our shelves a piece of incomparable prose. i know of nothing written in recent years that comes anywhere near it as an almost flawless work of art. nobody who cares for english literature or who understands in the least degree, what fine writing is and means, will ever neglect this minor classic. from another point of view also, it has its value. we who appreciate the immense genius of oscar wilde and mourn for a wrecked life and the extinction of a bright intellect, will care for and treasure this volume for its personal pathos, its high and serene beauty of expression, and also because, as a psychological document, it throws a greater light upon the extraordinary brain and personality of its author than anything he had written in the past. index Æsthetic movement, - , , , , Æsthetics-- art and morality, - art criticism distinguished from, meaning and scope of, ruskin's teaching regarding, - wilde's belief in his vocation as to, ; his writings, ; his lectures, - america, wilde's tour in, , ; quotation from his lectures, - anderson, miss mary, - _apologia_, aristotle cited, art-- art's sake, for, morality and, - wilde's writings on, _ave imperatrix_, - _ballad of reading gaol_-- criticisms of, - dedication of, estimate of, , - , quotations from, - revision of, otherwise mentioned, , ballad parody, _ballade de marguérite_, - baudelaire, charles, influence of, on wilde, - , , , , ; quoted, , ; _danse macabre_ quoted, - baugham, e. a., quoted--on _salomé_, - beardsley, aubrey, - beeching, canon, quoted--on _de profundis_, - berneval, wilde's life at, bernhardt, mme. sarah, , - ; wilde's sonnet to, _birthday of the infanta, the_, boswell quoted, - _chanson_, _charmides_, - currie, lady, quoted, - _daily chronicle_-- "salomé" _critique_ in, quoted, - wilde's letters to, cited, - _daily mirror_ cited, _daily telegraph_, extract from, - d'aubrevilly, barbey, quoted, _de profundis_-- authenticity of, as prison-written, - , - biblical influence, - christ as depicted in, - estimate of, , extracts from, - , , , - , - preface to, - press criticisms on, publication and reception of, - ross, r., on publication of, - self-revelation in, , - sincerity of, , - style of, - , - ; subject matter of, - _des sponettes_, _devoted friend, the_, , - _dole of the king's daughter, the_, dress, _rationale_ of, - _duchess of padua, the_-- anderson, miss mary, refusal by, - estimate of, , - influences in, plot of, - production of, in berlin, _e tenebris_, , _endymion_, fairy stories, the-- _format_ of edition of, - pathos of, sacred matters, allusions to, - style of, _fisherman and his soul, the_, - _florentine tragedy, the_-- plot of, - production of, , , theft of, flowers-- decorative effect of, - wilde's love of, - , , _fortnightly review_-- _ballad of reading gaol_ criticised in, - _poems in prose_ in, _soul of man, the_, in, _fourth movement, the_, fyfe, hamilton, cited, _garden of eros, the_, - gide, andré, gorton, canon, cited, grolleau, charles, estimate of wilde by, - _happy prince and other tales, the_, - . (_see also titles of the stories._) _harlot's house, the_, - _helas_, holloway prison, journalistic account of wilde in, - house decoration, - _house of pomegranates, the_, - _humanitad_, _ideal husband, the_-- characters of, - estimate of, , plot of, - _importance of being earnest, the_-- estimate of, plot of, - quotations from, - reception of, , otherwise mentioned, _impression de voyage_, _impression du matin_, _impressions de théâtre_, _incomparable and ingenious history of mr w. h., the_-- story of, - theft of, , , theory of, - value of, _intentions_, , , , - , irving, sir henry, wilde's sonnet to, japanese artistic sense, johnson, dr, quoted, keats, influence of, on wilde, , , ; wilde's epitaph on, - _la bella donna della mia mante_, labouchere, h., estimate of wilde by, - _lady windermere's fan_-- extracts from, - plot of, - reception of, by the public, , ; by critics, - le gallienne, richard, cited, - _le reveillon_, _lord arthur savile's crime_, _madonna mia_, _magdalen walks_, - meyerfeld, dr max, - moonlight, wilde's sentiment for, moore, sturge, morris, wm., wilde's estimate of, nature, wilde's love of, , - nicholson, dr, cited, _nightingale and the rose, the_, - nordau, dr max, - ; criticism of wilde by, - oxford union debate on the Æsthetic movement, - _panthea_, - pater, walter, quoted, - ; cited, _pen, pencil and poison_, cited, - pennington, harper, portrait of wilde by, _picture of dorian gray, the_-- epigrams from, in wilde's plays, estimate of, extracts from, - , - huysmans' influence in, preface to, story of, - poe, e. a., influence of, on wilde, , _poems in prose_, - , poems, pastoral, - . (_see also titles of poems._) poetry, wilde's views as to simplicity in, - precious stones, wilde's knowledge of, proverbs, wilde's transmutations of, _punch_, - , ; bibliography of references to wilde in, - ; quotations, - , queensberry case, _quia multi amori_, _ravenna_, - reading gaol-- _ballad of reading gaol_, see that title cruelties perpetrated in, - wilde's removal to, ; his life in, - , rebell, hugues, estimate of wilde by, - _remarkable rocket, the_, - _requiescat_, - ricketts, c. s., , , - , roman catholic church, influence of, on wilde, , - , , , _rome unvisited_, , ross, robert, quoted--on theft of wilde's mss., ; on publication of _de profundis_, - ; cited, ; mentioned, rossetti, d. g., influence of, on wilde, , , , - , ruskin, john, quoted, - _sage green_, _st james's gazelle_, extract from, - _salomé_-- beardsley's illustrations to, - bernhardt, written for, ; her dealings regarding, - censor's prohibition of, criticisms on, quoted, - german popularity of, language of, production of--in paris, ; in london, - ; in various continental countries, - ; in berlin, ; in new york, stage directions of, , - stagecraft of, - story of, - tone of, _san miniato_, scott, clement, criticism by, of _lady windermere's fan_, quoted, , _selfish giant, the_, - _serenade, a_, shakespeare's influence on wilde, shannon, mr, shaw, g. b., _don juan in hell_, cited, - , sherard, r. h., cited, , , sibbern, cited, simon, j. a., quoted, - socialism, wilde's views on, _soul of man, the_, , - _sphinx, the_, , - _star-child, the_, - _story of an unhappy friendship, the_, cited, style, , - swinburne, a. c., wilde's estimate of, symons, arthur, cited, tapestry, wilde's knowledge of, terry, miss ellen, wilde's sonnets to, _times, the_-- _ballad of reading gaol_ praised by, _de profundis_ criticised by, - _tribune_, extract from, - _truth_, extract from, - _vera, or the nihilists_-- dramatis personæ of, - estimate of, - plot of, - production of, in america, wainwright the poisoner, wilde, constance mary, , ; quoted, - wilde, oscar fingal o'flahertie wills-- ancestry of, appreciation of, growth of, - career of-- first period, , - ; second, - , third, - ; fourth, - ; tour in america, , ; bankruptcy, , , ; refusal to forfeit his bail, - ; the queensberry case, ; trial and sentence, ; clapham junction episode, ; life in reading gaol, - , ; release, ; last years, - ; death, characteristics of-- charm of manner, complexity, - , conversational brilliancy, , , , eccentricity, egoism, - , , flowers, love of, - , generosity, , humour, imaginative faculty, kindliness and gentleness, , , language, felicity of, , loyalty to friends, , moonlight, sentiment for, narrowness of view, nature, love of, , - perversity and whimsicality, profusion and splendour, taste for, self-plagiarism, versatility, , wit, , , dramatic powers of-- brilliancy of dialogue, - , plot interest, - reality of characters and scenes, , , estimates of, by-- grolleau, m. charles, - labouchere, h., - nordau, dr max, - rebell, hugues, - fiction of, characteristics of, - home of, at chelsea, - insanity of, - , , , interview with, quoted, - _life of_, by sherard, cited, literary style of, - portrait of, by penninton, work of, absolutely distinct from private life, , wilde, william, cited, _woman covered with jewels, the_-- bernhardt, written for, loss of ms. of, - plot of, - _woman of no importance, a_-- characters of, - dialogue of, - plot of, - popularity of, - , reception of, _woman's world, the_, wilde's editorship of, words, wilde's felicitous choice of, a catalogue of the publications of t. werner laurie. abbeys of great britain, the (h. clairborne dixon and e. ramsden). s. net. 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their return. with us time itself does not progress. it revolves. it seems to circle round one centre of pain. the paralysing immobility of a life every circumstance of which is regulated after an unchangeable pattern, so that we eat and drink and lie down and pray, or kneel at least for prayer, according to the inflexible laws of an iron formula: this immobile quality, that makes each dreadful day in the very minutest detail like its brother, seems to communicate itself to those external forces the very essence of whose existence is ceaseless change. of seed-time or harvest, of the reapers bending over the corn, or the grape gatherers threading through the vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken blossoms or strewn with fallen fruit: of these we know nothing and can know nothing. for us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. the very sun and moon seem taken from us. outside, the day may be blue and gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey and niggard. it is always twilight in one's cell, as it is always twilight in one's heart. and in the sphere of thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more. the thing that you personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is happening to me now, and will happen to me again to- morrow. remember this, and you will be able to understand a little of why i am writing, and in this manner writing. . . . a week later, i am transferred here. three more months go over and my mother dies. no one knew how deeply i loved and honoured her. her death was terrible to me; but i, once a lord of language, have no words in which to express my anguish and my shame. she and my father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured, not merely in literature, art, archaeology, and science, but in the public history of my own country, in its evolution as a nation. i had disgraced that name eternally. i had made it a low by-word among low people. i had dragged it through the very mire. i had given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools that they might turn it into a synonym for folly. what i suffered then, and still suffer, is not for pen to write or paper to record. my wife, always kind and gentle to me, rather than that i should hear the news from indifferent lips, travelled, ill as she was, all the way from genoa to england to break to me herself the tidings of so irreparable, so irremediable, a loss. messages of sympathy reached me from all who had still affection for me. even people who had not known me personally, hearing that a new sorrow had broken into my life, wrote to ask that some expression of their condolence should be conveyed to me. . . . three months go over. the calendar of my daily conduct and labour that hangs on the outside of my cell door, with my name and sentence written upon it, tells me that it is may. . . . prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. there is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation. the thin beaten-out leaf of tremulous gold that chronicles the direction of forces the eye cannot see is in comparison coarse. it is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain. where there is sorrow there is holy ground. some day people will realise what that means. they will know nothing of life till they do,--and natures like his can realise it. when i was brought down from my prison to the court of bankruptcy, between two policemen,--waited in the long dreary corridor that, before the whole crowd, whom an action so sweet and simple hushed into silence, he might gravely raise his hat to me, as, handcuffed and with bowed head, i passed him by. men have gone to heaven for smaller things than that. it was in this spirit, and with this mode of love, that the saints knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or stooped to kiss the leper on the cheek. i have never said one single word to him about what he did. i do not know to the present moment whether he is aware that i was even conscious of his action. it is not a thing for which one can render formal thanks in formal words. i store it in the treasure-house of my heart. i keep it there as a secret debt that i am glad to think i can never possibly repay. it is embalmed and kept sweet by the myrrh and cassia of many tears. when wisdom has been profitless to me, philosophy barren, and the proverbs and phrases of those who have sought to give me consolation as dust and ashes in my mouth, the memory of that little, lovely, silent act of love has unsealed for me all the wells of pity: made the desert blossom like a rose, and brought me out of the bitterness of lonely exile into harmony with the wounded, broken, and great heart of the world. when people are able to understand, not merely how beautiful ---'s action was, but why it meant so much to me, and always will mean so much, then, perhaps, they will realise how and in what spirit they should approach me. . . . the poor are wise, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive than we are. in their eyes prison is a tragedy in a man's life, a misfortune, a casuality, something that calls for sympathy in others. they speak of one who is in prison as of one who is 'in trouble' simply. it is the phrase they always use, and the expression has the perfect wisdom of love in it. with people of our own rank it is different. with us, prison makes a man a pariah. i, and such as i am, have hardly any right to air and sun. our presence taints the pleasures of others. we are unwelcome when we reappear. to revisit the glimpses of the moon is not for us. our very children are taken away. those lovely links with humanity are broken. we are doomed to be solitary, while our sons still live. we are denied the one thing that might heal us and keep us, that might bring balm to the bruised heart, and peace to the soul in pain. . . . i must say to myself that i ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. i am quite ready to say so. i am trying to say so, though they may not think it at the present moment. this pitiless indictment i bring without pity against myself. terrible as was what the world did to me, what i did to myself was far more terrible still. i was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age. i had realised this for myself at the very dawn of my manhood, and had forced my age to realise it afterwards. few men hold such a position in their own lifetime, and have it so acknowledged. it is usually discerned, if discerned at all, by the historian, or the critic, long after both the man and his age have passed away. with me it was different. i felt it myself, and made others feel it. byron was a symbolic figure, but his relations were to the passion of his age and its weariness of passion. mine were to something more noble, more permanent, of more vital issue, of larger scope. the gods had given me almost everything. but i let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. i amused myself with being a _flaneur_, a dandy, a man of fashion. i surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. i became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. tired of being on the heights, i deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. what the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. i grew careless of the lives of others. i took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. i forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop. i ceased to be lord over myself. i was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. i allowed pleasure to dominate me. i ended in horrible disgrace. there is only one thing for me now, absolute humility. i have lain in prison for nearly two years. out of my nature has come wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at; terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish that wept aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was dumb. i have passed through every possible mood of suffering. better than wordsworth himself i know what wordsworth meant when he said-- 'suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark and has the nature of infinity.' but while there were times when i rejoiced in the idea that my sufferings were to be endless, i could not bear them to be without meaning. now i find hidden somewhere away in my nature something that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all. that something hidden away in my nature, like a treasure in a field, is humility. it is the last thing left in me, and the best: the ultimate discovery at which i have arrived, the starting-point for a fresh development. it has come to me right out of myself, so i know that it has come at the proper time. it could not have come before, nor later. had any one told me of it, i would have rejected it. had it been brought to me, i would have refused it. as i found it, i want to keep it. i must do so. it is the one thing that has in it the elements of life, of a new life, _vita nuova_ for me. of all things it is the strangest. one cannot acquire it, except by surrendering everything that one has. it is only when one has lost all things, that one knows that one possesses it. now i have realised that it is in me, i see quite clearly what i ought to do; in fact, must do. and when i use such a phrase as that, i need not say that i am not alluding to any external sanction or command. i admit none. i am far more of an individualist than i ever was. nothing seems to me of the smallest value except what one gets out of oneself. my nature is seeking a fresh mode of self-realisation. that is all i am concerned with. and the first thing that i have got to do is to free myself from any possible bitterness of feeling against the world. i am completely penniless, and absolutely homeless. yet there are worse things in the world than that. i am quite candid when i say that rather than go out from this prison with bitterness in my heart against the world, i would gladly and readily beg my bread from door to door. if i got nothing from the house of the rich i would get something at the house of the poor. those who have much are often greedy; those who have little always share. i would not a bit mind sleeping in the cool grass in summer, and when winter came on sheltering myself by the warm close-thatched rick, or under the penthouse of a great barn, provided i had love in my heart. the external things of life seem to me now of no importance at all. you can see to what intensity of individualism i have arrived--or am arriving rather, for the journey is long, and 'where i walk there are thorns.' of course i know that to ask alms on the highway is not to be my lot, and that if ever i lie in the cool grass at night-time it will be to write sonnets to the moon. when i go out of prison, r--- will be waiting for me on the other side of the big iron-studded gate, and he is the symbol, not merely of his own affection, but of the affection of many others besides. i believe i am to have enough to live on for about eighteen months at any rate, so that if i may not write beautiful books, i may at least read beautiful books; and what joy can be greater? after that, i hope to be able to recreate my creative faculty. but were things different: had i not a friend left in the world; were there not a single house open to me in pity; had i to accept the wallet and ragged cloak of sheer penury: as long as i am free from all resentment, hardness and scorn, i would be able to face the life with much more calm and confidence than i would were my body in purple and fine linen, and the soul within me sick with hate. and i really shall have no difficulty. when you really want love you will find it waiting for you. i need not say that my task does not end there. it would be comparatively easy if it did. there is much more before me. i have hills far steeper to climb, valleys much darker to pass through. and i have to get it all out of myself. neither religion, morality, nor reason can help me at all. morality does not help me. i am a born antinomian. i am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. but while i see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, i see that there is something wrong in what one becomes. it is well to have learned that. religion does not help me. the faith that others give to what is unseen, i give to what one can touch, and look at. my gods dwell in temples made with hands; and within the circle of actual experience is my creed made perfect and complete: too complete, it may be, for like many or all of those who have placed their heaven in this earth, i have found in it not merely the beauty of heaven, but the horror of hell also. when i think about religion at all, i feel as if i would like to found an order for those who _cannot_ believe: the confraternity of the faithless, one might call it, where on an altar, on which no taper burned, a priest, in whose heart peace had no dwelling, might celebrate with unblessed bread and a chalice empty of wine. every thing to be true must become a religion. and agnosticism should have its ritual no less than faith. it has sown its martyrs, it should reap its saints, and praise god daily for having hidden himself from man. but whether it be faith or agnosticism, it must be nothing external to me. its symbols must be of my own creating. only that is spiritual which makes its own form. if i may not find its secret within myself, i shall never find it: if i have not got it already, it will never come to me. reason does not help me. it tells me that the laws under which i am convicted are wrong and unjust laws, and the system under which i have suffered a wrong and unjust system. but, somehow, i have got to make both of these things just and right to me. and exactly as in art one is only concerned with what a particular thing is at a particular moment to oneself, so it is also in the ethical evolution of one's character. i have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me. the plank bed, the loathsome food, the hard ropes shredded into oakum till one's finger-tips grow dull with pain, the menial offices with which each day begins and finishes, the harsh orders that routine seems to necessitate, the dreadful dress that makes sorrow grotesque to look at, the silence, the solitude, the shame--each and all of these things i have to transform into a spiritual experience. there is not a single degradation of the body which i must not try and make into a spiritualising of the soul. i want to get to the point when i shall be able to say quite simply, and without affectation that the two great turning-points in my life were when my father sent me to oxford, and when society sent me to prison. i will not say that prison is the best thing that could have happened to me: for that phrase would savour of too great bitterness towards myself. i would sooner say, or hear it said of me, that i was so typical a child of my age, that in my perversity, and for that perversity's sake, i turned the good things of my life to evil, and the evil things of my life to good. what is said, however, by myself or by others, matters little. the important thing, the thing that lies before me, the thing that i have to do, if the brief remainder of my days is not to be maimed, marred, and incomplete, is to absorb into my nature all that has been done to me, to make it part of me, to accept it without complaint, fear, or reluctance. the supreme vice is shallowness. whatever is realised is right. when first i was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget who i was. it was ruinous advice. it is only by realising what i am that i have found comfort of any kind. now i am advised by others to try on my release to forget that i have ever been in a prison at all. i know that would be equally fatal. it would mean that i would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace, and that those things that are meant for me as much as for anybody else--the beauty of the sun and moon, the pageant of the seasons, the music of daybreak and the silence of great nights, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and making it silver--would all be tainted for me, and lose their healing power, and their power of communicating joy. to regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. to deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. it is no less than a denial of the soul. for just as the body absorbs things of all kinds, things common and unclean no less than those that the priest or a vision has cleansed, and converts them into swiftness or strength, into the play of beautiful muscles and the moulding of fair flesh, into the curves and colours of the hair, the lips, the eye; so the soul in its turn has its nutritive functions also, and can transform into noble moods of thought and passions of high import what in itself is base, cruel and degrading; nay, more, may find in these its most august modes of assertion, and can often reveal itself most perfectly through what was intended to desecrate or destroy. the fact of my having been the common prisoner of a common gaol i must frankly accept, and, curious as it may seem, one of the things i shall have to teach myself is not to be ashamed of it. i must accept it as a punishment, and if one is ashamed of having been punished, one might just as well never have been punished at all. of course there are many things of which i was convicted that i had not done, but then there are many things of which i was convicted that i had done, and a still greater number of things in my life for which i was never indicted at all. and as the gods are strange, and punish us for what is good and humane in us as much as for what is evil and perverse, i must accept the fact that one is punished for the good as well as for the evil that one does. i have no doubt that it is quite right one should be. it helps one, or should help one, to realise both, and not to be too conceited about either. and if i then am not ashamed of my punishment, as i hope not to be, i shall be able to think, and walk, and live with freedom. many men on their release carry their prison about with them into the air, and hide it as a secret disgrace in their hearts, and at length, like poor poisoned things, creep into some hole and die. it is wretched that they should have to do so, and it is wrong, terribly wrong, of society that it should force them to do so. society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realise what it has done. when the man's punishment is over, it leaves him to himself; that is to say, it abandons him at the very moment when its highest duty towards him begins. it is really ashamed of its own actions, and shuns those whom it has punished, as people shun a creditor whose debt they cannot pay, or one on whom they have inflicted an irreparable, an irremediable wrong. i can claim on my side that if i realise what i have suffered, society should realise what it has inflicted on me; and that there should be no bitterness or hate on either side. of course i know that from one point of view things will be made different for me than for others; must indeed, by the very nature of the case, be made so. the poor thieves and outcasts who are imprisoned here with me are in many respects more fortunate than i am. the little way in grey city or green field that saw their sin is small; to find those who know nothing of what they have done they need go no further than a bird might fly between the twilight and the dawn; but for me the world is shrivelled to a handsbreadth, and everywhere i turn my name is written on the rocks in lead. for i have come, not from obscurity into the momentary notoriety of crime, but from a sort of eternity of fame to a sort of eternity of infamy, and sometimes seem to myself to have shown, if indeed it required showing, that between the famous and the infamous there is but one step, if as much as one. still, in the very fact that people will recognise me wherever i go, and know all about my life, as far as its follies go, i can discern something good for me. it will force on me the necessity of again asserting myself as an artist, and as soon as i possibly can. if i can produce only one beautiful work of art i shall be able to rob malice of its venom, and cowardice of its sneer, and to pluck out the tongue of scorn by the roots. and if life be, as it surely is, a problem to me, i am no less a problem to life. people must adopt some attitude towards me, and so pass judgment, both on themselves and me. i need not say i am not talking of particular individuals. the only people i would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me. nor am i making any demands on life. in all that i have said i am simply concerned with my own mental attitude towards life as a whole; and i feel that not to be ashamed of having been punished is one of the first points i must attain to, for the sake of my own perfection, and because i am so imperfect. then i must learn how to be happy. once i knew it, or thought i knew it, by instinct. it was always springtime once in my heart. my temperament was akin to joy. i filled my life to the very brim with pleasure, as one might fill a cup to the very brim with wine. now i am approaching life from a completely new standpoint, and even to conceive happiness is often extremely difficult for me. i remember during my first term at oxford reading in pater's _renaissance_--that book which has had such strange influence over my life--how dante places low in the inferno those who wilfully live in sadness; and going to the college library and turning to the passage in the _divine comedy_ where beneath the dreary marsh lie those who were 'sullen in the sweet air,' saying for ever and ever through their sighs-- 'tristi fummo nell aer dolce che dal sol s'allegra.' i knew the church condemned _accidia_, but the whole idea seemed to me quite fantastic, just the sort of sin, i fancied, a priest who knew nothing about real life would invent. nor could i understand how dante, who says that 'sorrow remarries us to god,' could have been so harsh to those who were enamoured of melancholy, if any such there really were. i had no idea that some day this would become to me one of the greatest temptations of my life. while i was in wandsworth prison i longed to die. it was my one desire. when after two months in the infirmary i was transferred here, and found myself growing gradually better in physical health, i was filled with rage. i determined to commit suicide on the very day on which i left prison. after a time that evil mood passed away, and i made up my mind to live, but to wear gloom as a king wears purple: never to smile again: to turn whatever house i entered into a house of mourning: to make my friends walk slowly in sadness with me: to teach them that melancholy is the true secret of life: to maim them with an alien sorrow: to mar them with my own pain. now i feel quite differently. i see it would be both ungrateful and unkind of me to pull so long a face that when my friends came to see me they would have to make their faces still longer in order to show their sympathy; or, if i desired to entertain them, to invite them to sit down silently to bitter herbs and funeral baked meats. i must learn how to be cheerful and happy. the last two occasions on which i was allowed to see my friends here, i tried to be as cheerful as possible, and to show my cheerfulness, in order to make them some slight return for their trouble in coming all the way from town to see me. it is only a slight return, i know, but it is the one, i feel certain, that pleases them most. i saw r--- for an hour on saturday week, and i tried to give the fullest possible expression of the delight i really felt at our meeting. and that, in the views and ideas i am here shaping for myself, i am quite right is shown to me by the fact that now for the first time since my imprisonment i have a real desire for life. there is before me so much to do, that i would regard it as a terrible tragedy if i died before i was allowed to complete at any rate a little of it. i see new developments in art and life, each one of which is a fresh mode of perfection. i long to live so that i can explore what is no less than a new world to me. do you want to know what this new world is? i think you can guess what it is. it is the world in which i have been living. sorrow, then, and all that it teaches one, is my new world. i used to live entirely for pleasure. i shunned suffering and sorrow of every kind. i hated both. i resolved to ignore them as far as possible: to treat them, that is to say, as modes of imperfection. they were not part of my scheme of life. they had no place in my philosophy. my mother, who knew life as a whole, used often to quote to me goethe's lines--written by carlyle in a book he had given her years ago, and translated by him, i fancy, also:-- 'who never ate his bread in sorrow, who never spent the midnight hours weeping and waiting for the morrow,-- he knows you not, ye heavenly powers.' they were the lines which that noble queen of prussia, whom napoleon treated with such coarse brutality, used to quote in her humiliation and exile; they were the lines my mother often quoted in the troubles of her later life. i absolutely declined to accept or admit the enormous truth hidden in them. i could not understand it. i remember quite well how i used to tell her that i did not want to eat my bread in sorrow, or to pass any night weeping and watching for a more bitter dawn. i had no idea that it was one of the special things that the fates had in store for me: that for a whole year of my life, indeed, i was to do little else. but so has my portion been meted out to me; and during the last few months i have, after terrible difficulties and struggles, been able to comprehend some of the lessons hidden in the heart of pain. clergymen and people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. it is really a revelation. one discerns things one never discerned before. one approaches the whole of history from a different standpoint. what one had felt dimly, through instinct, about art, is intellectually and emotionally realised with perfect clearness of vision and absolute intensity of apprehension. i now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great art. what the artist is always looking for is the mode of existence in which soul and body are one and indivisible: in which the outward is expressive of the inward: in which form reveals. of such modes of existence there are not a few: youth and the arts preoccupied with youth may serve as a model for us at one moment: at another we may like to think that, in its subtlety and sensitiveness of impression, its suggestion of a spirit dwelling in external things and making its raiment of earth and air, of mist and city alike, and in its morbid sympathy of its moods, and tones, and colours, modern landscape art is realising for us pictorially what was realised in such plastic perfection by the greeks. music, in which all subject is absorbed in expression and cannot be separated from it, is a complex example, and a flower or a child a simple example, of what i mean; but sorrow is the ultimate type both in life and art. behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. but behind sorrow there is always sorrow. pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask. truth in art is not any correspondence between the essential idea and the accidental existence; it is not the resemblance of shape to shadow, or of the form mirrored in the crystal to the form itself; it is no echo coming from a hollow hill, any more than it is a silver well of water in the valley that shows the moon to the moon and narcissus to narcissus. truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself: the outward rendered expressive of the inward: the soul made incarnate: the body instinct with spirit. for this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow. there are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain. more than this, there is about sorrow an intense, an extraordinary reality. i have said of myself that i was one who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age. there is not a single wretched man in this wretched place along with me who does not stand in symbolic relation to the very secret of life. for the secret of life is suffering. it is what is hidden behind everything. when we begin to live, what is sweet is so sweet to us, and what is bitter so bitter, that we inevitably direct all our desires towards pleasures, and seek not merely for a 'month or twain to feed on honeycomb,' but for all our years to taste no other food, ignorant all the while that we may really be starving the soul. i remember talking once on this subject to one of the most beautiful personalities i have ever known: a woman, whose sympathy and noble kindness to me, both before and since the tragedy of my imprisonment, have been beyond power and description; one who has really assisted me, though she does not know it, to bear the burden of my troubles more than any one else in the whole world has, and all through the mere fact of her existence, through her being what she is--partly an ideal and partly an influence: a suggestion of what one might become as well as a real help towards becoming it; a soul that renders the common air sweet, and makes what is spiritual seem as simple and natural as sunlight or the sea: one for whom beauty and sorrow walk hand in hand, and have the same message. on the occasion of which i am thinking i recall distinctly how i said to her that there was enough suffering in one narrow london lane to show that god did not love man, and that wherever there was any sorrow, though but that of a child, in some little garden weeping over a fault that it had or had not committed, the whole face of creation was completely marred. i was entirely wrong. she told me so, but i could not believe her. i was not in the sphere in which such belief was to be attained to. now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world. i cannot conceive of any other explanation. i am convinced that there is no other, and that if the world has indeed, as i have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul. when i say that i am convinced of these things i speak with too much pride. far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of god. it is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it in a summer's day. and so a child could. but with me and such as me it is different. one can realise a thing in a single moment, but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet. it is so difficult to keep 'heights that the soul is competent to gain.' we think in eternity, but we move slowly through time; and how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison i need not tell again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into one's cell, and into the cell of one's heart, with such strange insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one's house for their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter master, or a slave whose slave it is one's chance or choice to be. and, though at present my friends may find it a hard thing to believe, it is true none the less, that for them living in freedom and idleness and comfort it is more easy to learn the lessons of humility than it is for me, who begin the day by going down on my knees and washing the floor of my cell. for prison life with its endless privations and restrictions makes one rebellious. the most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one's heart--hearts are made to be broken--but that it turns one's heart to stone. one sometimes feels that it is only with a front of brass and a lip of scorn that one can get through the day at all. and he who is in a state of rebellion cannot receive grace, to use the phrase of which the church is so fond--so rightly fond, i dare say--for in life as in art the mood of rebellion closes up the channels of the soul, and shuts out the airs of heaven. yet i must learn these lessons here, if i am to learn them anywhere, and must be filled with joy if my feet are on the right road and my face set towards 'the gate which is called beautiful,' though i may fall many times in the mire and often in the mist go astray. this new life, as through my love of dante i like sometimes to call it, is of course no new life at all, but simply the continuance, by means of development, and evolution, of my former life. i remember when i was at oxford saying to one of my friends as we were strolling round magdalen's narrow bird-haunted walks one morning in the year before i took my degree, that i wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world, and that i was going out into the world with that passion in my soul. and so, indeed, i went out, and so i lived. my only mistake was that i confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom. failure, disgrace, poverty, sorrow, despair, suffering, tears even, the broken words that come from lips in pain, remorse that makes one walk on thorns, conscience that condemns, self- abasement that punishes, the misery that puts ashes on its head, the anguish that chooses sack-cloth for its raiment and into its own drink puts gall:--all these were things of which i was afraid. and as i had determined to know nothing of them, i was forced to taste each of them in turn, to feed on them, to have for a season, indeed, no other food at all. i don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. i did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. there was no pleasure i did not experience. i threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine. i went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes. i lived on honeycomb. but to have continued the same life would have been wrong because it would have been limiting. i had to pass on. the other half of the garden had its secrets for me also. of course all this is foreshadowed and prefigured in my books. some of it is in _the happy prince_, some of it in _the young king_, notably in the passage where the bishop says to the kneeling boy, 'is not he who made misery wiser than thou art'? a phrase which when i wrote it seemed to me little more than a phrase; a great deal of it is hidden away in the note of doom that like a purple thread runs through the texture of _dorian gray_; in _the critic as artist_ it is set forth in many colours; in _the soul of man_ it is written down, and in letters too easy to read; it is one of the refrains whose recurring _motifs_ make _salome_ so like a piece of music and bind it together as a ballad; in the prose poem of the man who from the bronze of the image of the 'pleasure that liveth for a moment' has to make the image of the 'sorrow that abideth for ever' it is incarnate. it could not have been otherwise. at every single moment of one's life one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been. art is a symbol, because man is a symbol. it is, if i can fully attain to it, the ultimate realisation of the artistic life. for the artistic life is simply self-development. humility in the artist is his frank acceptance of all experiences, just as love in the artist is simply the sense of beauty that reveals to the world its body and its soul. in _marius the epicurean_ pater seeks to reconcile the artistic life with the life of religion, in the deep, sweet, and austere sense of the word. but marius is little more than a spectator: an ideal spectator indeed, and one to whom it is given 'to contemplate the spectacle of life with appropriate emotions,' which wordsworth defines as the poet's true aim; yet a spectator merely, and perhaps a little too much occupied with the comeliness of the benches of the sanctuary to notice that it is the sanctuary of sorrow that he is gazing at. i see a far more intimate and immediate connection between the true life of christ and the true life of the artist; and i take a keen pleasure in the reflection that long before sorrow had made my days her own and bound me to her wheel i had written in _the soul of man_ that he who would lead a christ-like life must be entirely and absolutely himself, and had taken as my types not merely the shepherd on the hillside and the prisoner in his cell, but also the painter to whom the world is a pageant and the poet for whom the world is a song. i remember saying once to andre gide, as we sat together in some paris _cafe_, that while meta-physics had but little real interest for me, and morality absolutely none, there was nothing that either plato or christ had said that could not be transferred immediately into the sphere of art and there find its complete fulfilment. nor is it merely that we can discern in christ that close union of personality with perfection which forms the real distinction between the classical and romantic movement in life, but the very basis of his nature was the same as that of the nature of the artist--an intense and flamelike imagination. he realised in the entire sphere of human relations that imaginative sympathy which in the sphere of art is the sole secret of creation. he understood the leprosy of the leper, the darkness of the blind, the fierce misery of those who live for pleasure, the strange poverty of the rich. some one wrote to me in trouble, 'when you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting.' how remote was the writer from what matthew arnold calls 'the secret of jesus.' either would have taught him that whatever happens to another happens to oneself, and if you want an inscription to read at dawn and at night-time, and for pleasure or for pain, write up on the walls of your house in letters for the sun to gild and the moon to silver, 'whatever happens to oneself happens to another.' christ's place indeed is with the poets. his whole conception of humanity sprang right out of the imagination and can only be realised by it. what god was to the pantheist, man was to him. he was the first to conceive the divided races as a unity. before his time there had been gods and men, and, feeling through the mysticism of sympathy that in himself each had been made incarnate, he calls himself the son of the one or the son of the other, according to his mood. more than any one else in history he wakes in us that temper of wonder to which romance always appeals. there is still something to me almost incredible in the idea of a young galilean peasant imagining that he could bear on his own shoulders the burden of the entire world; all that had already been done and suffered, and all that was yet to be done and suffered: the sins of nero, of caesar borgia, of alexander vi., and of him who was emperor of rome and priest of the sun: the sufferings of those whose names are legion and whose dwelling is among the tombs: oppressed nationalities, factory children, thieves, people in prison, outcasts, those who are dumb under oppression and whose silence is heard only of god; and not merely imagining this but actually achieving it, so that at the present moment all who come in contact with his personality, even though they may neither bow to his altar nor kneel before his priest, in some way find that the ugliness of their sin is taken away and the beauty of their sorrow revealed to them. i had said of christ that he ranks with the poets. that is true. shelley and sophocles are of his company. but his entire life also is the most wonderful of poems. for 'pity and terror' there is nothing in the entire cycle of greek tragedy to touch it. the absolute purity of the protagonist raises the entire scheme to a height of romantic art from which the sufferings of thebes and pelops' line are by their very horror excluded, and shows how wrong aristotle was when he said in his treatise on the drama that it would be impossible to bear the spectacle of one blameless in pain. nor in aeschylus nor dante, those stern masters of tenderness, in shakespeare, the most purely human of all the great artists, in the whole of celtic myth and legend, where the loveliness of the world is shown through a mist of tears, and the life of a man is no more than the life of a flower, is there anything that, for sheer simplicity of pathos wedded and made one with sublimity of tragic effect, can be said to equal or even approach the last act of christ's passion. the little supper with his companions, one of whom has already sold him for a price; the anguish in the quiet moon-lit garden; the false friend coming close to him so as to betray him with a kiss; the friend who still believed in him, and on whom as on a rock he had hoped to build a house of refuge for man, denying him as the bird cried to the dawn; his own utter loneliness, his submission, his acceptance of everything; and along with it all such scenes as the high priest of orthodoxy rending his raiment in wrath, and the magistrate of civil justice calling for water in the vain hope of cleansing himself of that stain of innocent blood that makes him the scarlet figure of history; the coronation ceremony of sorrow, one of the most wonderful things in the whole of recorded time; the crucifixion of the innocent one before the eyes of his mother and of the disciple whom he loved; the soldiers gambling and throwing dice for his clothes; the terrible death by which he gave the world its most eternal symbol; and his final burial in the tomb of the rich man, his body swathed in egyptian linen with costly spices and perfumes as though he had been a king's son. when one contemplates all this from the point of view of art alone one cannot but be grateful that the supreme office of the church should be the playing of the tragedy without the shedding of blood: the mystical presentation, by means of dialogue and costume and gesture even, of the passion of her lord; and it is always a source of pleasure and awe to me to remember that the ultimate survival of the greek chorus, lost elsewhere to art, is to be found in the servitor answering the priest at mass. yet the whole life of christ--so entirely may sorrow and beauty be made one in their meaning and manifestation--is really an idyll, though it ends with the veil of the temple being rent, and the darkness coming over the face of the earth, and the stone rolled to the door of the sepulchre. one always thinks of him as a young bridegroom with his companions, as indeed he somewhere describes himself; as a shepherd straying through a valley with his sheep in search of green meadow or cool stream; as a singer trying to build out of the music the walls of the city of god; or as a lover for whose love the whole world was too small. his miracles seem to me to be as exquisite as the coming of spring, and quite as natural. i see no difficulty at all in believing that such was the charm of his personality that his mere presence could bring peace to souls in anguish, and that those who touched his garments or his hands forgot their pain; or that as he passed by on the highway of life people who had seen nothing of life's mystery, saw it clearly, and others who had been deaf to every voice but that of pleasure heard for the first time the voice of love and found it as 'musical as apollo's lute'; or that evil passions fled at his approach, and men whose dull unimaginative lives had been but a mode of death rose as it were from the grave when he called them; or that when he taught on the hillside the multitude forgot their hunger and thirst and the cares of this world, and that to his friends who listened to him as he sat at meat the coarse food seemed delicate, and the water had the taste of good wine, and the whole house became full of the odour and sweetness of nard. renan in his _vie de jesus_--that gracious fifth gospel, the gospel according to st. thomas, one might call it--says somewhere that christ's great achievement was that he made himself as much loved after his death as he had been during his lifetime. and certainly, if his place is among the poets, he is the leader of all the lovers. he saw that love was the first secret of the world for which the wise men had been looking, and that it was only through love that one could approach either the heart of the leper or the feet of god. and above all, christ is the most supreme of individualists. humility, like the artistic, acceptance of all experiences, is merely a mode of manifestation. it is man's soul that christ is always looking for. he calls it 'god's kingdom,' and finds it in every one. he compares it to little things, to a tiny seed, to a handful of leaven, to a pearl. that is because one realises one's soul only by getting rid of all alien passions, all acquired culture, and all external possessions, be they good or evil. i bore up against everything with some stubbornness of will and much rebellion of nature, till i had absolutely nothing left in the world but one thing. i had lost my name, my position, my happiness, my freedom, my wealth. i was a prisoner and a pauper. but i still had my children left. suddenly they were taken away from me by the law. it was a blow so appalling that i did not know what to do, so i flung myself on my knees, and bowed my head, and wept, and said, 'the body of a child is as the body of the lord: i am not worthy of either.' that moment seemed to save me. i saw then that the only thing for me was to accept everything. since then--curious as it will no doubt sound--i have been happier. it was of course my soul in its ultimate essence that i had reached. in many ways i had been its enemy, but i found it waiting for me as a friend. when one comes in contact with the soul it makes one simple as a child, as christ said one should be. it is tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'nothing is more rare in any man,' says emerson, 'than an act of his own.' it is quite true. most people are other people. their thoughts are some one else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. christ was not merely the supreme individualist, but he was the first individualist in history. people have tried to make him out an ordinary philanthropist, or ranked him as an altruist with the scientific and sentimental. but he was really neither one nor the other. pity he has, of course, for the poor, for those who are shut up in prisons, for the lowly, for the wretched; but he has far more pity for the rich, for the hard hedonists, for those who waste their freedom in becoming slaves to things, for those who wear soft raiment and live in kings' houses. riches and pleasure seemed to him to be really greater tragedies than poverty or sorrow. and as for altruism, who knew better than he that it is vocation not volition that determines us, and that one cannot gather grapes of thorns or figs from thistles? to live for others as a definite self-conscious aim was not his creed. it was not the basis of his creed. when he says, 'forgive your enemies,' it is not for the sake of the enemy, but for one's own sake that he says so, and because love is more beautiful than hate. in his own entreaty to the young man, 'sell all that thou hast and give to the poor,' it is not of the state of the poor that he is thinking but of the soul of the young man, the soul that wealth was marring. in his view of life he is one with the artist who knows that by the inevitable law of self-perfection, the poet must sing, and the sculptor think in bronze, and the painter make the world a mirror for his moods, as surely and as certainly as the hawthorn must blossom in spring, and the corn turn to gold at harvest- time, and the moon in her ordered wanderings change from shield to sickle, and from sickle to shield. but while christ did not say to men, 'live for others,' he pointed out that there was no difference at all between the lives of others and one's own life. by this means he gave to man an extended, a titan personality. since his coming the history of each separate individual is, or can be made, the history of the world. of course, culture has intensified the personality of man. art has made us myriad-minded. those who have the artistic temperament go into exile with dante and learn how salt is the bread of others, and how steep their stairs; they catch for a moment the serenity and calm of goethe, and yet know but too well that baudelaire cried to god-- 'o seigneur, donnez moi la force et le courage de contempler mon corps et mon coeur sans degout.' out of shakespeare's sonnets they draw, to their own hurt it may be, the secret of his love and make it their own; they look with new eyes on modern life, because they have listened to one of chopin's nocturnes, or handled greek things, or read the story of the passion of some dead man for some dead woman whose hair was like threads of fine gold, and whose mouth was as a pomegranate. but the sympathy of the artistic temperament is necessarily with what has found expression. in words or in colours, in music or in marble, behind the painted masks of an aeschylean play, or through some sicilian shepherds' pierced and jointed reeds, the man and his message must have been revealed. to the artist, expression is the only mode under which he can conceive life at all. to him what is dumb is dead. but to christ it was not so. with a width and wonder of imagination that fills one almost with awe, he took the entire world of the inarticulate, the voiceless world of pain, as his kingdom, and made of himself its eternal mouthpiece. those of whom i have spoken, who are dumb under oppression, and 'whose silence is heard only of god,' he chose as his brothers. he sought to become eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, and a cry in the lips of those whose tongues had been tied. his desire was to be to the myriads who had found no utterance a very trumpet through which they might call to heaven. and feeling, with the artistic nature of one to whom suffering and sorrow were modes through which he could realise his conception of the beautiful, that an idea is of no value till it becomes incarnate and is made an image, he made of himself the image of the man of sorrows, and as such has fascinated and dominated art as no greek god ever succeeded in doing. for the greek gods, in spite of the white and red of their fair fleet limbs, were not really what they appeared to be. the curved brow of apollo was like the sun's disc crescent over a hill at dawn, and his feet were as the wings of the morning, but he himself had been cruel to marsyas and had made niobe childless. in the steel shields of athena's eyes there had been no pity for arachne; the pomp and peacocks of hera were all that was really noble about her; and the father of the gods himself had been too fond of the daughters of men. the two most deeply suggestive figures of greek mythology were, for religion, demeter, an earth goddess, not one of the olympians, and for art, dionysus, the son of a mortal woman to whom the moment of his birth had proved also the moment of her death. but life itself from its lowliest and most humble sphere produced one far more marvellous than the mother of proserpina or the son of semele. out of the carpenter's shop at nazareth had come a personality infinitely greater than any made by myth and legend, and one, strangely enough, destined to reveal to the world the mystical meaning of wine and the real beauties of the lilies of the field as none, either on cithaeron or at enna, had ever done. the song of isaiah, 'he is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him,' had seemed to him to prefigure himself, and in him the prophecy was fulfilled. we must not be afraid of such a phrase. every single work of art is the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every work of art is the conversion of an idea into an image. every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every human being should be the realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of god or in the mind of man. christ found the type and fixed it, and the dream of a virgilian poet, either at jerusalem or at babylon, became in the long progress of the centuries incarnate in him for whom the world was waiting. to me one of the things in history the most to be regretted is that the christ's own renaissance, which has produced the cathedral at chartres, the arthurian cycle of legends, the life of st. francis of assisi, the art of giotto, and dante's _divine comedy_, was not allowed to develop on its own lines, but was interrupted and spoiled by the dreary classical renaissance that gave us petrarch, and raphael's frescoes, and palladian architecture, and formal french tragedy, and st. paul's cathedral, and pope's poetry, and everything that is made from without and by dead rules, and does not spring from within through some spirit informing it. but wherever there is a romantic movement in art there somehow, and under some form, is christ, or the soul of christ. he is in _romeo and juliet_, in the _winter's tale_, in provencal poetry, in the _ancient mariner_, in _la belle dame sans merci_, and in chatterton's _ballad of charity_. we owe to him the most diverse things and people. hugo's _les miserables_, baudelaire's _fleurs du mal_, the note of pity in russian novels, verlaine and verlaine's poems, the stained glass and tapestries and the quattro-cento work of burne-jones and morris, belong to him no less than the tower of giotto, lancelot and guinevere, tannhauser, the troubled romantic marbles of michael angelo, pointed architecture, and the love of children and flowers--for both of which, indeed, in classical art there was but little place, hardly enough for them to grow or play in, but which, from the twelfth century down to our own day, have been continually making their appearances in art, under various modes and at various times, coming fitfully and wilfully, as children, as flowers, are apt to do: spring always seeming to one as if the flowers had been in hiding, and only came out into the sun because they were afraid that grown up people would grow tired of looking for them and give up the search; and the life of a child being no more than an april day on which there is both rain and sun for the narcissus. it is the imaginative quality of christ's own nature that makes him this palpitating centre of romance. the strange figures of poetic drama and ballad are made by the imagination of others, but out of his own imagination entirely did jesus of nazareth create himself. the cry of isaiah had really no more to do with his coming than the song of the nightingale has to do with the rising of the moon--no more, though perhaps no less. he was the denial as well as the affirmation of prophecy. for every expectation that he fulfilled there was another that he destroyed. 'in all beauty,' says bacon, 'there is some strangeness of proportion,' and of those who are born of the spirit--of those, that is to say, who like himself are dynamic forces--christ says that they are like the wind that 'bloweth where it listeth, and no man can tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.' that is why he is so fascinating to artists. he has all the colour elements of life: mystery, strangeness, pathos, suggestion, ecstasy, love. he appeals to the temper of wonder, and creates that mood in which alone he can be understood. and to me it is a joy to remember that if he is 'of imagination all compact,' the world itself is of the same substance. i said in _dorian gray_ that the great sins of the world take place in the brain: but it is in the brain that everything takes place. we know now that we do not see with the eyes or hear with the ears. they are really channels for the transmission, adequate or inadequate, of sense impressions. it is in the brain that the poppy is red, that the apple is odorous, that the skylark sings. of late i have been studying with diligence the four prose poems about christ. at christmas i managed to get hold of a greek testament, and every morning, after i had cleaned my cell and polished my tins, i read a little of the gospels, a dozen verses taken by chance anywhere. it is a delightful way of opening the day. every one, even in a turbulent, ill- disciplined life, should do the same. endless repetition, in and out of season, has spoiled for us the freshness, the naivete, the simple romantic charm of the gospels. we hear them read far too often and far too badly, and all repetition is anti-spiritual. when one returns to the greek; it is like going into a garden of lilies out of some, narrow and dark house. and to me, the pleasure is doubled by the reflection that it is extremely probable that we have the actual terms, the _ipsissima verba_, used by christ. it was always supposed that christ talked in aramaic. even renan thought so. but now we know that the galilean peasants, like the irish peasants of our own day, were bilingual, and that greek was the ordinary language of intercourse all over palestine, as indeed all over the eastern world. i never liked the idea that we knew of christ's own words only through a translation of a translation. it is a delight to me to think that as far as his conversation was concerned, charmides might have listened to him, and socrates reasoned with him, and plato understood him: that he really said [greek text], that when he thought of the lilies of the field and how they neither toil nor spin, his absolute expression was [greek text], and that his last word when he cried out 'my life has been completed, has reached its fulfilment, has been perfected,' was exactly as st. john tells us it was: [greek text]--no more. while in reading the gospels--particularly that of st. john himself, or whatever early gnostic took his name and mantle--i see the continual assertion of the imagination as the basis of all spiritual and material life, i see also that to christ imagination was simply a form of love, and that to him love was lord in the fullest meaning of the phrase. some six weeks ago i was allowed by the doctor to have white bread to eat instead of the coarse black or brown bread of ordinary prison fare. it is a great delicacy. it will sound strange that dry bread could possibly be a delicacy to any one. to me it is so much so that at the close of each meal i carefully eat whatever crumbs may be left on my tin plate, or have fallen on the rough towel that one uses as a cloth so as not to soil one's table; and i do so not from hunger--i get now quite sufficient food--but simply in order that nothing should be wasted of what is given to me. so one should look on love. christ, like all fascinating personalities, had the power of not merely saying beautiful things himself, but of making other people say beautiful things to him; and i love the story st. mark tells us about the greek woman, who, when as a trial of her faith he said to her that he could not give her the bread of the children of israel, answered him that the little dogs--([greek text], 'little dogs' it should be rendered)--who are under the table eat of the crumbs that the children let fall. most people live for love and admiration. but it is by love and admiration that we should live. if any love is shown us we should recognise that we are quite unworthy of it. nobody is worthy to be loved. the fact that god loves man shows us that in the divine order of ideal things it is written that eternal love is to be given to what is eternally unworthy. or if that phrase seems to be a bitter one to bear, let us say that every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling, and _domine, non sum dignus_ should be on the lips and in the hearts of those who receive it. if ever i write again, in the sense of producing artistic work, there are just two subjects on which and through which i desire to express myself: one is 'christ as the precursor of the romantic movement in life': the other is 'the artistic life considered in its relation to conduct.' the first is, of course, intensely fascinating, for i see in christ not merely the essentials of the supreme romantic type, but all the accidents, the wilfulnesses even, of the romantic temperament also. he was the first person who ever said to people that they should live 'flower-like lives.' he fixed the phrase. he took children as the type of what people should try to become. he held them up as examples to their elders, which i myself have always thought the chief use of children, if what is perfect should have a use. dante describes the soul of a man as coming from the hand of god 'weeping and laughing like a little child,' and christ also saw that the soul of each one should be _a guisa di fanciulla che piangendo e ridendo pargoleggia_. he felt that life was changeful, fluid, active, and that to allow it to be stereotyped into any form was death. he saw that people should not be too serious over material, common interests: that to be unpractical was to be a great thing: that one should not bother too much over affairs. the birds didn't, why should man? he is charming when he says, 'take no thought for the morrow; is not the soul more than meat? is not the body more than raiment?' a greek might have used the latter phrase. it is full of greek feeling. but only christ could have said both, and so summed up life perfectly for us. his morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be. if the only thing that he ever said had been, 'her sins are forgiven her because she loved much,' it would have been worth while dying to have said it. his justice is all poetical justice, exactly what justice should be. the beggar goes to heaven because he has been unhappy. i cannot conceive a better reason for his being sent there. the people who work for an hour in the vineyard in the cool of the evening receive just as much reward as those who have toiled there all day long in the hot sun. why shouldn't they? probably no one deserved anything. or perhaps they were a different kind of people. christ had no patience with the dull lifeless mechanical systems that treat people as if they were things, and so treat everybody alike: for him there were no laws: there were exceptions merely, as if anybody, or anything, for that matter, was like aught else in the world! that which is the very keynote of romantic art was to him the proper basis of natural life. he saw no other basis. and when they brought him one, taken in the very act of sin and showed him her sentence written in the law, and asked him what was to be done, he wrote with his finger on the ground as though he did not hear them, and finally, when they pressed him again, looked up and said, 'let him of you who has never sinned be the first to throw the stone at her.' it was worth while living to have said that. like all poetical natures he loved ignorant people. he knew that in the soul of one who is ignorant there is always room for a great idea. but he could not stand stupid people, especially those who are made stupid by education: people who are full of opinions not one of which they even understand, a peculiarly modern type, summed up by christ when he describes it as the type of one who has the key of knowledge, cannot use it himself, and does not allow other people to use it, though it may be made to open the gate of god's kingdom. his chief war was against the philistines. that is the war every child of light has to wage. philistinism was the note of the age and community in which he lived. in their heavy inaccessibility to ideas, their dull respectability, their tedious orthodoxy, their worship of vulgar success, their entire preoccupation with the gross materialistic side of life, and their ridiculous estimate of themselves and their importance, the jews of jerusalem in christ's day were the exact counterpart of the british philistine of our own. christ mocked at the 'whited sepulchre' of respectability, and fixed that phrase for ever. he treated worldly success as a thing absolutely to be despised. he saw nothing in it at all. he looked on wealth as an encumbrance to a man. he would not hear of life being sacrificed to any system of thought or morals. he pointed out that forms and ceremonies were made for man, not man for forms and ceremonies. he took sabbatarianism as a type of the things that should be set at nought. the cold philanthropies, the ostentatious public charities, the tedious formalisms so dear to the middle-class mind, he exposed with utter and relentless scorn. to us, what is termed orthodoxy is merely a facile unintelligent acquiescence; but to them, and in their hands, it was a terrible and paralysing tyranny. christ swept it aside. he showed that the spirit alone was of value. he took a keen pleasure in pointing out to them that though they were always reading the law and the prophets, they had not really the smallest idea of what either of them meant. in opposition to their tithing of each separate day into the fixed routine of prescribed duties, as they tithe mint and rue, he preached the enormous importance of living completely for the moment. those whom he saved from their sins are saved simply for beautiful moments in their lives. mary magdalen, when she sees christ, breaks the rich vase of alabaster that one of her seven lovers had given her, and spills the odorous spices over his tired dusty feet, and for that one moment's sake sits for ever with ruth and beatrice in the tresses of the snow-white rose of paradise. all that christ says to us by the way of a little warning is that every moment should be beautiful, that the soul should always be ready for the coming of the bridegroom, always waiting for the voice of the lover, philistinism being simply that side of man's nature that is not illumined by the imagination. he sees all the lovely influences of life as modes of light: the imagination itself is the world of light. the world is made by it, and yet the world cannot understand it: that is because the imagination is simply a manifestation of love, and it is love and the capacity for it that distinguishes one human being from another. but it is when he deals with a sinner that christ is most romantic, in the sense of most real. the world had always loved the saint as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of god. christ, through some divine instinct in him, seems to have always loved the sinner as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of man. his primary desire was not to reform people, any more than his primary desire was to a relieve suffering. to turn an interesting thief into a tedious honest man was not his aim. he would have thought little of the prisoners' aid society and other modern movements of the kind. the conversion of a publican into a pharisee would not have seemed to him a great achievement. but in a manner not yet understood of the world he regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful holy things and modes of perfection. it seems a very dangerous idea. it is--all great ideas are dangerous. that it was christ's creed admits of no doubt. that it is the true creed i don't doubt myself. of course the sinner must repent. but why? simply because otherwise he would be unable to realise what he had done. the moment of repentance is the moment of initiation. more than that: it is the means by which one alters one's past. the greeks thought that impossible. they often say in their gnomic aphorisms, 'even the gods cannot alter the past.' christ showed that the commonest sinner could do it, that it was the one thing he could do. christ, had he been asked, would have said--i feel quite certain about it--that the moment the prodigal son fell on his knees and wept, he made his having wasted his substance with harlots, his swine- herding and hungering for the husks they ate, beautiful and holy moments in his life. it is difficult for most people to grasp the idea. i dare say one has to go to prison to understand it. if so, it may be worth while going to prison. there is something so unique about christ. of course just as there are false dawns before the dawn itself, and winter days so full of sudden sunlight that they will cheat the wise crocus into squandering its gold before its time, and make some foolish bird call to its mate to build on barren boughs, so there were christians before christ. for that we should be grateful. the unfortunate thing is that there have been none since. i make one exception, st. francis of assisi. but then god had given him at his birth the soul of a poet, as he himself when quite young had in mystical marriage taken poverty as his bride: and with the soul of a poet and the body of a beggar he found the way to perfection not difficult. he understood christ, and so he became like him. we do not require the liber conformitatum to teach us that the life of st. francis was the true _imitatio christi_, a poem compared to which the book of that name is merely prose. indeed, that is the charm about christ, when all is said: he is just like a work of art. he does not really teach one anything, but by being brought into his presence one becomes something. and everybody is predestined to his presence. once at least in his life each man walks with christ to emmaus. as regards the other subject, the relation of the artistic life to conduct, it will no doubt seem strange to you that i should select it. people point to reading gaol and say, 'that is where the artistic life leads a man.' well, it might lead to worse places. the more mechanical people to whom life is a shrewd speculation depending on a careful calculation of ways and means, always know where they are going, and go there. they start with the ideal desire of being the parish beadle, and in whatever sphere they are placed they succeed in being the parish beadle and no more. a man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. that is his punishment. those who want a mask have to wear it. but with the dynamic forces of life, and those in whom those dynamic forces become incarnate, it is different. people whose desire is solely for self-realisation never know where they are going. they can't know. in one sense of the word it is of course necessary, as the greek oracle said, to know oneself: that is the first achievement of knowledge. but to recognise that the soul of a man is unknowable, is the ultimate achievement of wisdom. the final mystery is oneself. when one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. who can calculate the orbit of his own soul? when the son went out to look for his father's asses, he did not know that a man of god was waiting for him with the very chrism of coronation, and that his own soul was already the soul of a king. i hope to live long enough and to produce work of such a character that i shall be able at the end of my days to say, 'yes! this is just where the artistic life leads a man!' two of the most perfect lives i have come across in my own experience are the lives of verlaine and of prince kropotkin: both of them men who have passed years in prison: the first, the one christian poet since dante; the other, a man with a soul of that beautiful white christ which seems coming out of russia. and for the last seven or eight months, in spite of a succession of great troubles reaching me from the outside world almost without intermission, i have been placed in direct contact with a new spirit working in this prison through man and things, that has helped me beyond any possibility of expression in words: so that while for the first year of my imprisonment i did nothing else, and can remember doing nothing else, but wring my hands in impotent despair, and say, 'what an ending, what an appalling ending!' now i try to say to myself, and sometimes when i am not torturing myself do really and sincerely say, 'what a beginning, what a wonderful beginning!' it may really be so. it may become so. if it does i shall owe much to this new personality that has altered every man's life in this place. you may realise it when i say that had i been released last may, as i tried to be, i would have left this place loathing it and every official in it with a bitterness of hatred that would have poisoned my life. i have had a year longer of imprisonment, but humanity has been in the prison along with us all, and now when i go out i shall always remember great kindnesses that i have received here from almost everybody, and on the day of my release i shall give many thanks to many people, and ask to be remembered by them in turn. the prison style is absolutely and entirely wrong. i would give anything to be able to alter it when i go out. i intend to try. but there is nothing in the world so wrong but that the spirit of humanity, which is the spirit of love, the spirit of the christ who is not in churches, may make it, if not right, at least possible to be borne without too much bitterness of heart. i know also that much is waiting for me outside that is very delightful, from what st. francis of assisi calls 'my brother the wind, and my sister the rain,' lovely things both of them, down to the shop-windows and sunsets of great cities. if i made a list of all that still remains to me, i don't know where i should stop: for, indeed, god made the world just as much for me as for any one else. perhaps i may go out with something that i had not got before. i need not tell you that to me reformations in morals are as meaningless and vulgar as reformations in theology. but while to propose to be a better man is a piece of unscientific cant, to have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered. and such i think i have become. if after i am free a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, i should not mind a bit. i can be perfectly happy by myself. with freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy? besides, feasts are not for me any more. i have given too many to care about them. that side of life is over for me, very fortunately, i dare say. but if after i am free a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, i should feel it most bitterly. if he shut the doors of the house of mourning against me, i would come back again and again and beg to be admitted, so that i might share in what i was entitled to share in. if he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, i should feel it as the most poignant humiliation, as the most terrible mode in which disgrace could be inflicted on me. but that could not be. i have a right to share in sorrow, and he who can look at the loveliness of the world and share its sorrow, and realise something of the wonder of both, is in immediate contact with divine things, and has got as near to god's secret as any one can get. perhaps there may come into my art also, no less than into my life, a still deeper note, one of greater unity of passion, and directness of impulse. not width but intensity is the true aim of modern art. we are no longer in art concerned with the type. it is with the exception that we have to do. i cannot put my sufferings into any form they took, i need hardly say. art only begins where imitation ends, but something must come into my work, of fuller memory of words perhaps, of richer cadences, of more curious effects, of simpler architectural order, of some aesthetic quality at any rate. when marsyas was 'torn from the scabbard of his limbs'--_della vagina della membre sue_, to use one of dante's most terrible tacitean phrases--he had no more song, the greek said. apollo had been victor. the lyre had vanquished the reed. but perhaps the greeks were mistaken. i hear in much modern art the cry of marsyas. it is bitter in baudelaire, sweet and plaintive in lamartine, mystic in verlaine. it is in the deferred resolutions of chopin's music. it is in the discontent that haunts burne-jones's women. even matthew arnold, whose song of callicles tells of 'the triumph of the sweet persuasive lyre,' and the 'famous final victory,' in such a clear note of lyrical beauty, has not a little of it; in the troubled undertone of doubt and distress that haunts his verses, neither goethe nor wordsworth could help him, though he followed each in turn, and when he seeks to mourn for _thyrsis_ or to sing of the _scholar gipsy_, it is the reed that he has to take for the rendering of his strain. but whether or not the phrygian faun was silent, i cannot be. expression is as necessary to me as leaf and blossoms are to the black branches of the trees that show themselves above the prison walls and are so restless in the wind. between my art and the world there is now a wide gulf, but between art and myself there is none. i hope at least that there is none. to each of us different fates are meted out. my lot has been one of public infamy, of long imprisonment, of misery, of ruin, of disgrace, but i am not worthy of it--not yet, at any rate. i remember that i used to say that i thought i could bear a real tragedy if it came to me with purple pall and a mask of noble sorrow, but that the dreadful thing about modernity was that it put tragedy into the raiment of comedy, so that the great realities seemed commonplace or grotesque or lacking in style. it is quite true about modernity. it has probably always been true about actual life. it is said that all martyrdoms seemed mean to the looker on. the nineteenth century is no exception to the rule. everything about my tragedy has been hideous, mean, repellent, lacking in style; our very dress makes us grotesque. we are the zanies of sorrow. we are clowns whose hearts are broken. we are specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour. on november th, , i was brought down here from london. from two o'clock till half-past two on that day i had to stand on the centre platform of clapham junction in convict dress, and handcuffed, for the world to look at. i had been taken out of the hospital ward without a moment's notice being given to me. of all possible objects i was the most grotesque. when people saw me they laughed. each train as it came up swelled the audience. nothing could exceed their amusement. that was, of course, before they knew who i was. as soon as they had been informed they laughed still more. for half an hour i stood there in the grey november rain surrounded by a jeering mob. for a year after that was done to me i wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time. that is not such a tragic thing as possibly it sounds to you. to those who are in prison tears are a part of every day's experience. a day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not a day on which one's heart is happy. well, now i am really beginning to feel more regret for the people who laughed than for myself. of course when they saw me i was not on my pedestal, i was in the pillory. but it is a very unimaginative nature that only cares for people on their pedestals. a pedestal may be a very unreal thing. a pillory is a terrific reality. they should have known also how to interpret sorrow better. i have said that behind sorrow there is always sorrow. it were wiser still to say that behind sorrow there is always a soul. and to mock at a soul in pain is a dreadful thing. in the strangely simple economy of the world people only get what they give, and to those who have not enough imagination to penetrate the mere outward of things, and feel pity, what pity can be given save that of scorn? i write this account of the mode of my being transferred here simply that it should be realised how hard it has been for me to get anything out of my punishment but bitterness and despair. i have, however, to do it, and now and then i have moments of submission and acceptance. all the spring may be hidden in the single bud, and the low ground nest of the lark may hold the joy that is to herald the feet of many rose-red dawns. so perhaps whatever beauty of life still remains to me is contained in some moment of surrender, abasement, and humiliation. i can, at any rate, merely proceed on the lines of my own development, and, accepting all that has happened to me, make myself worthy of it. people used to say of me that i was too individualistic. i must be far more of an individualist than ever i was. i must get far more out of myself than ever i got, and ask far less of the world than ever i asked. indeed, my ruin came not from too great individualism of life, but from too little. the one disgraceful, unpardonable, and to all time contemptible action of my life was to allow myself to appeal to society for help and protection. to have made such an appeal would have been from the individualist point of view bad enough, but what excuse can there ever be put forward for having made it? of course once i had put into motion the forces of society, society turned on me and said, 'have you been living all this time in defiance of my laws, and do you now appeal to those laws for protection? you shall have those laws exercised to the full. you shall abide by what you have appealed to.' the result is i am in gaol. certainly no man ever fell so ignobly, and by such ignoble instruments, as i did. the philistine element in life is not the failure to understand art. charming people, such as fishermen, shepherds, ploughboys, peasants and the like, know nothing about art, and are the very salt of the earth. he is the philistine who upholds and aids the heavy, cumbrous, blind, mechanical forces of society, and who does not recognise dynamic force when he meets it either in a man or a movement. people thought it dreadful of me to have entertained at dinner the evil things of life, and to have found pleasure in their company. but then, from the point of view through which i, as an artist in life, approach them they were delightfully suggestive and stimulating. the danger was half the excitement. . . . my business as an artist was with ariel. i set myself to wrestle with caliban. . . . a great friend of mine--a friend of ten years' standing--came to see me some time ago, and told me that he did not believe a single word of what was said against me, and wished me to know that he considered me quite innocent, and the victim of a hideous plot. i burst into tears at what he said, and told him that while there was much amongst the definite charges that was quite untrue and transferred to me by revolting malice, still that my life had been full of perverse pleasures, and that unless he accepted that as a fact about me and realised it to the full i could not possibly be friends with him any more, or ever be in his company. it was a terrible shock to him, but we are friends, and i have not got his friendship on false pretences. emotional forces, as i say somewhere in _intentions_, are as limited in extent and duration as the forces of physical energy. the little cup that is made to hold so much can hold so much and no more, though all the purple vats of burgundy be filled with wine to the brim, and the treaders stand knee-deep in the gathered grapes of the stony vineyards of spain. there is no error more common than that of thinking that those who are the causes or occasions of great tragedies share in the feelings suitable to the tragic mood: no error more fatal than expecting it of them. the martyr in his 'shirt of flame' may be looking on the face of god, but to him who is piling the faggots or loosening the logs for the blast the whole scene is no more than the slaying of an ox is to the butcher, or the felling of a tree to the charcoal burner in the forest, or the fall of a flower to one who is mowing down the grass with a scythe. great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by those who are on a level with them. * * * * * i know of nothing in all drama more incomparable from the point of view of art, nothing more suggestive in its subtlety of observation, than shakespeare's drawing of rosencrantz and guildenstern. they are hamlet's college friends. they have been his companions. they bring with them memories of pleasant days together. at the moment when they come across him in the play he is staggering under the weight of a burden intolerable to one of his temperament. the dead have come armed out of the grave to impose on him a mission at once too great and too mean for him. he is a dreamer, and he is called upon to act. he has the nature of the poet, and he is asked to grapple with the common complexity of cause and effect, with life in its practical realisation, of which he knows nothing, not with life in its ideal essence, of which he knows so much. he has no conception of what to do, and his folly is to feign folly. brutus used madness as a cloak to conceal the sword of his purpose, the dagger of his will, but the hamlet madness is a mere mask for the hiding of weakness. in the making of fancies and jests he sees a chance of delay. he keeps playing with action as an artist plays with a theory. he makes himself the spy of his proper actions, and listening to his own words knows them to be but 'words, words, words.' instead of trying to be the hero of his own history, he seeks to be the spectator of his own tragedy. he disbelieves in everything, including himself, and yet his doubt helps him not, as it comes not from scepticism but from a divided will. of all this guildenstern and rosencrantz realise nothing. they bow and smirk and smile, and what the one says the other echoes with sickliest intonation. when, at last, by means of the play within the play, and the puppets in their dalliance, hamlet 'catches the conscience' of the king, and drives the wretched man in terror from his throne, guildenstern and rosencrantz see no more in his conduct than a rather painful breach of court etiquette. that is as far as they can attain to in 'the contemplation of the spectacle of life with appropriate emotions.' they are close to his very secret and know nothing of it. nor would there be any use in telling them. they are the little cups that can hold so much and no more. towards the close it is suggested that, caught in a cunning spring set for another, they have met, or may meet, with a violent and sudden death. but a tragic ending of this kind, though touched by hamlet's humour with something of the surprise and justice of comedy, is really not for such as they. they never die. horatio, who in order to 'report hamlet and his cause aright to the unsatisfied,' 'absents him from felicity a while, and in this harsh world draws his breath in pain,' dies, but guildenstern and rosencrantz are as immortal as angelo and tartuffe, and should rank with them. they are what modern life has contributed to the antique ideal of friendship. he who writes a new _de amicitia_ must find a niche for them, and praise them in tusculan prose. they are types fixed for all time. to censure them would show 'a lack of appreciation.' they are merely out of their sphere: that is all. in sublimity of soul there is no contagion. high thoughts and high emotions are by their very existence isolated. * * * * * i am to be released, if all goes well with me, towards the end of may, and hope to go at once to some little sea-side village abroad with r--- and m---. the sea, as euripides says in one of his plays about iphigeneia, washes away the stains and wounds of the world. i hope to be at least a month with my friends, and to gain peace and balance, and a less troubled heart, and a sweeter mood. i have a strange longing for the great simple primeval things, such as the sea, to me no less of a mother than the earth. it seems to me that we all look at nature too much, and live with her too little. i discern great sanity in the greek attitude. they never chattered about sunsets, or discussed whether the shadows on the grass were really mauve or not. but they saw that the sea was for the swimmer, and the sand for the feet of the runner. they loved the trees for the shadow that they cast, and the forest for its silence at noon. the vineyard-dresser wreathed his hair with ivy that he might keep off the rays of the sun as he stooped over the young shoots, and for the artist and the athlete, the two types that greece gave us, they plaited with garlands the leaves of the bitter laurel and of the wild parsley, which else had been of no service to men. we call ours a utilitarian age, and we do not know the uses of any single thing. we have forgotten that water can cleanse, and fire purify, and that the earth is mother to us all. as a consequence our art is of the moon and plays with shadows, while greek art is of the sun and deals directly with things. i feel sure that in elemental forces there is purification, and i want to go back to them and live in their presence. of course to one so modern as i am, 'enfant de mon siecle,' merely to look at the world will be always lovely. i tremble with pleasure when i think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that i shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the other toss the pale purple of its plumes, so that all the air shall be arabia for me. linnaeus fell on his knees and wept for joy when he saw for the first time the long heath of some english upland made yellow with the tawny aromatic brooms of the common furze; and i know that for me, to whom flowers are part of desire, there are tears waiting in the petals of some rose. it has always been so with me from my boyhood. there is not a single colour hidden away in the chalice of a flower, or the curve of a shell, to which, by some subtle sympathy with the very soul of things, my nature does not answer. like gautier, i have always been one of those 'pour qui le monde visible existe.' still, i am conscious now that behind all this beauty, satisfying though it may be, there is some spirit hidden of which the painted forms and shapes are but modes of manifestation, and it is with this spirit that i desire to become in harmony. i have grown tired of the articulate utterances of men and things. the mystical in art, the mystical in life, the mystical in nature this is what i am looking for. it is absolutely necessary for me to find it somewhere. all trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences of death; and three times have i been tried. the first time i left the box to be arrested, the second time to be led back to the house of detention, the third time to pass into a prison for two years. society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where i may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence i may weep undisturbed. she will hang the night with stars so that i may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole. oscar wilde _an idler's impression_ by edgar saltus [illustration: logo] chicago brothers of the book copyright by edgar saltus * * * * * of this first edition of _oscar wilde: an idler's impression, by edgar saltus_, there have been printed four hundred and seventy-four copies, and the type distributed. no second edition will be made. the autographed copies were all subscribed for before publication. the edition consists of copies on inomachi vellum, in full binding, each copy autographed by the author. numbered from to inclusive. copies on inomachi vellum, in three-quarters binding. numbered from to inclusive. copies on fabriano hand-made paper, in boards. numbered from to inclusive. this copy is number * * * * * _oscar wilde: an idler's impression_ oscar wilde years ago, in a paris club, one man said to another: "well, what's up?" the other shook a paper: "there is only one genius in england and they have put him in jail." one may wonder though whether it were their doing, or even wilde's, that put him there. one may wonder whether it were not the high fates who so gratified him in order that, from his purgatory, he might rise to a life more evolved. but that view is perhaps obvious. wilde himself, who was the least mystic of men, accepted it. in the "de profundis," after weighing his disasters, he said: "of these things i am not yet worthy." the genuflexion has been called a pose. it may have been. even so, it is perhaps better to kneel, though it be in the gallery, than to stoop at nothing, and wilde, who had stood very high, bent very low. he saw that there is one thing greater than greatness and that is humility. yet though he saw it, it is presumable that he forgot it. it is presumable that the grace which was his in prison departed in paris. on the other hand it may not have. there are no human scales for any soul. it was at delmonico's, shortly after he told our local customs that he had nothing to declare but genius, that i first met him. he was dressed like a mountebank. without, at the entrance, a crowd had collected. in the restaurant people stood up and stared. wilde was beautifully unmoved. he was talking, at first about nothing whatever, which is always an interesting topic, then about "vera," a play of his for which a local manager had offered him an advance, five thousand dollars i think, "mere starvation wages," as he put it, and he went on to say that the manager wanted him to make certain changes in it. he paused and added: "but who am i to tamper with a masterpiece?"--a jest which afterward he was too generous to hoard. later, in london, i saw him again. in appearance and mode of life he had become entirely conventional. the long hair, the knee-breeches, the lilies, the velvet, all the mountebank trappings had gone. he was married, he was a father, and in his house in tite street he seemed a bit bourgeois. of that he may have been conscious. i remember one of his children running and calling at him: "my good papa!" and i remember wilde patting the boy and saying: "don't call me that, it sounds so respectable." in tite street i had the privilege of meeting mrs. oscar, who asked me to write something in an album. i have always hated albumenous poetry and, as i turned the pages in search of possible inspiration, i happened on this: _from a poet to a poem. robert browning._ poets exaggerate and why should they not? they have been found, too, with their hands in other people's paragraphs. wilde helped himself to that line which he put in a sonnet to this lady, who had blue eyes, fair hair, chapped lips, and a look of constant bewilderment. as for that, oscar was sufficiently bewildering. he talked infinitely better than he wrote, and on no topic, no matter what, could he talk as other mortals must. once only i heard of him uttering a platitude and from any one else that platitude would have been a paradox. he exuded wit and waded in it with a serenity that was disconcerting. it was on this abnormal serenity and on his equally abnormal brilliance that he relied to defeat the prosecution. "i have all the criminal classes with me," he announced, and that was his one platitude, a banality that contrived to be tragic. then headlong down the stair of life he fell. hell he had long since summarised as the union of souls without bodies to bodies without souls. there are worse definitions than this which years later i recalled when, through a curious forethought of fate, he was taken, en route to the cemetery, through the porte de l'enfer. but in tite street, at this time, and in regent street where he occasionally dined, he was gentle, wholesome, and joyous; a man who paid compliments because, as he put it, he could pay nothing else. he had been caricatured: the caricatures had ceased. people had turned to look: they looked no longer. he was forgiven and, what is worse, forgotten. yet that tiger, his destiny, was but sharpening its claws. at an inn where gautier dined, the epigrams were so demoralising that a waiter became insane. similarly in the regent street restaurant it was reported, perhaps falsely, that a waiter had also lost his reason. but wilde, though a three decanter man, always preserved his own. he preserved, too, his courtesy which was invariable. the most venomous thing that he ever said of anyone was that he was a tedious person, and the only time he ever rebuked anybody was at the conclusion of one of those after-dinner stories which some host or other interrupted by rising and saying: "shall we continue the conversation in the drawing-room?" but i am in error. that was not his only rebuke. on one occasion i drove with him to tite street. an hour previous he had executed a variation on the "si j'étais roi." "if i were king," he had sung, "i would sit in a great hall and paint on green ivory and when my ministers came and told me that the people were starving, i would continue to paint on green ivory and say: 'let them starve.'" the aria was rendered in the rooms of francis hope, a young man who later married and divorced may yohe, but who at the time showed an absurd interest in stocks. someone else entered and hope asked what was new in the city. "money is very tight," came the reply. "ah, yes," wilde cut in. "and of a tightness that has been felt even in tite street. believe me, i passed the forenoon at the british museum looking at a gold-piece in a case." afterward we drove to chelsea. it was a vile night, bleak and bitter. on alighting, a man came up to me. he wore a short jacket which he opened. from neck to waist he was bare. i gave him a shilling. then came the rebuke. with entire simplicity wilde took off his overcoat and put it about the man. but the simplicity seemed to me too hugoesque and i said: "why didn't you ask him in to dinner?" wilde gestured. "dinner is not a feast, it is a ceremony." subsequently that ceremony must have been contemplated, for mrs. wilde was kind enough to invite me. the invitation reached me sometime in advance and i took it of course that there would be other guests. but on the appointed evening, or what i thought was the appointed evening, when i reached this house--on which oscar objected to paying taxes because, as he told the astonished assessors, he was so seldom at home--when i reached it, it seemed to me that i must be the only guest. then, presently, in the dreary drawing-room, oscar appeared. "this is delightful of you," he told me. "i have been late for dinner a half hour, again a whole hour; you are late an entire week. that is what i call originality." i put a bold face on it. "come to my shop," i said, "and have dinner with me. though," i added, "i don't know what i can give you." "oh, anything," wilde replied. "anything, no matter what. i have the simplest tastes. i am always satisfied with the best." he was not boasting. one evening he dined on his "sphinx." subsequently i supped with him on "salome." that was in the regent street restaurant where, apropos of nothing, or rather with what to me at the time was curious irrelevance, oscar, while tossing off glass after glass of liquor, spoke of phémé, a goddess rare even in mythology, who, after appearing twice in homer, flashed through a verse of hesiod and vanished behind a page of herodotos. in telling of her, suddenly his eyes lifted, his mouth contracted, a spasm of pain--or was it dread?--had gripped him. a moment only. his face relaxed. it had gone. i have since wondered, could he have evoked the goddess then? for phémé typified what modern occultism terms the impact--the premonition that surges and warns. it was wilde's fate to die three times--to die in the dock, to die in prison, to die all along the boulevards of paris. often since i have wondered could the goddess then have been lifting, however slightly, some fringe of the crimson curtain, behind which, in all its horror, his destiny crouched. if so, he braved it. i had looked away. i looked again. before me was a fat pauper, florid and over-dressed, who, in the voice of an immortal, was reading the fantasies of the damned. in his hand was a manuscript, and we were supping on "salome." as the banquet proceeded, i experienced that sense of sacred terror which his friends, the greeks, knew so well. for this thing could have been conceived only by genius wedded to insanity and, at the end, when the tetrarch, rising and bundling his robes about him, cries: "kill that woman!" the mysterious divinity whom the poet may have evoked, deigned perhaps to visit me. for, as i applauded, i shuddered, and told him that i had. indifferently he nodded and, assimilating hugo with superb unconcern, threw out: "it is only the shudder that counts." that was long before the crash. after it, mrs. wilde said that he was mad and had been for three years, "quite mad" as the poor woman expressed it. it may be that she was right. st. george, i believe, fought a dragon with a spear. whether or not he killed the brute i have forgotten. but wilde fought poverty, which is perhaps more brutal, with a pen. the fight, if indolent, was protracted. then, abruptly, his inkstand became a vesuvius of gold. london that had laughed at him, laughed with him and laughed colossally. a penny-a-liner was famous. the international hurdle-race of the stage had been won in a canter and won by a hack. a sub-editor was top of the heap. the ascent was perhaps too rapid. the spiderous fates that sit and spin are jealous of sudden success. it may be that mrs. wilde was right. in any event, for some time before the crash he saw few of his former friends. after his release few of his former friends saw him. but personally, if i may refer to myself, i am not near sighted. i saw him in paris, saw too, and to my regret, that he looked like a drunken coachman, and told him how greatly i admired the "ballad,"--that poem which tells of his life, or rather of his death, in jail. half covering his mouth with his hand, he laughed and said: "it does not seem to me sufficiently vécu." before the enormity of that i fell back. but at once he became more human. he complained that even the opiate of work was denied him, since no one would handle his wares. the athenians, who lived surrounded by statues, learned from them the value of silence, the mystery that it lends to beauty, in particular the dignity that it gives to grief. in their tragedies any victim of destiny is as though stricken dumb. wilde knew that, he knew everything, in addition to being a thorough hellenist. none the less he told of his fate. it was human, therefore terrible, but it was not the tragic muse. it was merely a tragedy of letters. letters, yes, but lower case. wilde was a third rate poet who occasionally rose to the second class but not once to the first. prose is more difficult than verse and in it he is rather sloppy. in spite of which, or perhaps precisely on that account, he called himself lord of language. well, why not, if he wanted to? besides, in his talk he was lord and more--sultan, pontifex maximus. hook, jerrold, smith, sheridan, rolled into one, could not have been as brilliant. in talk he blinded and it is the subsiding wonder of it that his plays contain. in the old maps, on the vague places, early geographers used to put: hic sunt leones--here are lions. on any catalogue of wilde's plays there should be written: here lions might have been. for assuming his madness, one must also admit his genius and the uninterrupted conjunction of the two might have produced brilliancies such as few bookshelves display. therein is the tragedy of letters. renan said that morality is the supreme illusion. the diagnosis may or may not be exact. yet it is on illusions that we all subsist. we live on lies by day and dreams at night. from the standpoint of the higher mathematics, morality may be an illusion. but it is very sustaining. formerly it was also oscar wilde inspirational. in post-pagan days it created a new conception of beauty. apart from that, it has nothing whatever to do with the arts, except the art of never displeasing, which, in itself, is the whole secret of mediocrity. oscar wilde lacked that art, and i can think of no better epitaph for him. here ends this book written by edgar saltus, arranged in this form by laurence c. woodworth, scrivener, and printed for the brothers of the book at the press of the faithorn company, chicago, . [illustration: logo] _incipit vita nova_ * * * * * generously made available by the internet archive.) the trial of oscar wilde issued for private circulation only and limited to copies on japanese vellum and five hundred copies on handmade paper numbered from one to five hundred and fifty. no the trial of oscar wilde from the shorthand reports then gently scan your brither man, still gentler, sister woman, though they may gang a' kennin' wrang, to step aside is human. robt. burns. paris privately printed preface "_it is wrong for us during the greater part of the time to handle these questions with timidity and false shame, and to surround them with reticence and mystery. matters relating to sexual life ought to be studied without the introduction of moral prepossessions or of preconceived ideas. false shame is as hateful as frivolity. it is a matter of pressing concern to rid ourself of the old prejudice that we "sully our pens" by touching upon facts of this class. it is necessary at all costs to put aside our moral, esthetic, or religious personality, to regard facts of this nature merely as natural phenomena, with impartiality and a certain elevation of mind._" preface _i blame equally as much those who take it upon themselves to praise man, as those who make it their business to blame him, together with others who think that he should be perpetually amused; and only those can i approve who seek for truth with tear-filled eyes._ pascal. in "_de profundis_," that harmonious and last expression of the perfect artist, wilde seems, in a single page to have concentrated in guise of supreme confession, all the pain and passion that stirred and sobbed in his soul. "_this new life, as through my love of dante i like sometimes to call it, is of course no new life at all, but simply the continuance, by means of development, and evolution, of my former life. i remember when i was at oxford saying to one of my friends as we were strolling round magdalen's narrow bird-haunted walks one morning in the year before i took my degree, that i wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world, and that i was going out into the world with that passion in my soul. and so, indeed, i went out, and so i lived. my only mistake was that i confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom. failure, disgrace, poverty, sorrow, despair, suffering, tears even, the broken words that come from lips in pain, remorse that makes one walk on thorns, conscience that condemns, self-abasement that punishes, the misery that puts ashes on its head, the anguish that chooses sack-cloth for its raiment and into its own drink puts gall:--all these were things of which i was afraid. and as i had determined to know nothing of them, i was forced to taste each of them in turn, to feed on them, to have for a season, indeed no other food at all._" further on, he tells us that his dominant desire was to seek refuge in the deepest shade of the garden, for his mouth was full of the bitterness of the dead-sea fruit that he had tasted, adding that this tomb-like aroma was the befitting and necessary outcome of his preceding life of error. we are inclined to think he deceived himself. the day wherein he was at last compelled to face the horror of his tragical destiny his soul was tried beyond endurance. he strode deliberately, as he himself assures us, towards the gloomiest nook of the garden, inwardly trembling perhaps, but proud notwithstanding ... hoping against hope that the sun's rays would seek him out even there ... or in other words, that he would not cease to live that _bios theoretikos_, which he held to be the greatest ideal. "_from the high tower of thought we can look out at the world. calm, and self-centred, and complete, the æsthetic critic contemplates life, and no arrow drawn at a venture can pierce between the joints of his harness._" we all know what arrows struck him, arrows that he himself had sharpened, and that society had not forgotten to tip with poison. "neither his own heedlessness nor the envious and hypocritical anger of his enemies, nor the snobbish cruelty of social reprobation were the true cause of his misfortunes. it was he himself who, after a time of horrible anguish, consented to his punishment, with a sort of supercilious disdain for the weakness of human will, and out of a certain regard and unhealthy curiosity for the sportfulness of fate. here was a voluptuary seeking for torture and desiring pain after having wallowed in every sensual pleasure.... could such conduct have been due to aught else but sheer madness?" the true debauchee has no such object. he seeks only for pleasure and discounts beforehand the conditions that life dictates for the same; the conditions laid down containing no guarantee that the pleasure will be actually grasped except only in promise and anticipation. later, too proud to acknowledge his cruel disappointment, he will gravely assure us that the bitterness left in the bottom of the goblet whose wine he has quaffed, has indeed the sweet taste that he sought after. certain minds are satisfied with the fantasmagoria of their intelligence, whereas the voluptuary finds happiness only in the pleasure of realisation. in his heart he concocts for himself a prodigious mixture of sorrow and of joy, of suffering and of ecstacy, but the great world, wotting naught of this secret alchemy and judging only according to the facts which lie upon the surface, slices down to the same level, with the same stupid knife, the strange, beautiful flower, as well as the evil weed that grew apace. remy de gourmont said of the famous author, paul adam, that he was "a magnificent spectacle." wilde may be pronounced a painful problem. he seems to escape literary criticism in order to fall under the keen scalping knife of the analytical moralist, by the paradoxical fact of his apparently imperious purpose to hew out and fashion forth his life as a work of art. "save here and there, in _intentions_ and in his poems, the _poem of reading gaol_, nothing of his soul has he thrown into his books; he seemed to desire, one can almost postulate as a certainty, the stupendous tragedy that blasted his life. from the abyss where his flesh groaned in misery, his conscience hovered above him contemplating his woeful state whilst he thus became the spectator of his own death-throes."[ ] that is the reason why he stirs us so deeply. those who might be tempted to search in his work for an echo however feeble, of a new message to mankind, will be grievously disappointed. the technical cleverness of wilde is undeniable, but the magnificent dress in which he has clothed it appears to us to have been borrowed. he has brought us neither remedy nor poison; he leads us nowhere, but at the same time we are conscious that he has been everywhere. no companion of ours is he, but all the companions we hold dear he has known. true he sat at the feet of the wise men of greece in the gardens of academus, but the eurythmy of their gests fascinated him more than the soberness of their doctrines. dante he followed in all his subterranean travels and peregrinations, but all that he has to relate to us after his frightful journeyings is merely an ecstatic description of the highly-wrought scenery that he had witnessed. "i packed all my genius, said he, into my life, i have put only my talent into my works." unfaithful to the principle which he learnedly deduced in _intentions_, viz: that the undivided soul of a writer should incorporate itself in his work, even as shakespeare pushing aside the "_impulses that stirred so strongly within him that he had, as it were perforce, to suffer them to realize their energy, not on the lower plane of actual life, where they would have been trammelled and constrained and so made imperfect, but on that of the imaginative plane of art_," ... he came to confound the intensity of feeling with the calmness of beauty. possessed of a mind of rare culture, he nevertheless only evoked, when he touched art, harmonious vibrations perhaps, but vibrations which others, after all said and done, had already created before him. he succeeded in producing nothing more than a splendid and incomparable echo. the most that can be said is that the music he had in his soul he kept there, living all the time a crowded, ostentatious life, and distinguishing himself as a superlative conversationalist. be this as it may, posterity cannot judge us according to those possibilities of our nature which were never developed. however numerous may be the testimonies in our favour, she cannot pronounce excepting on the works, or at least, the materials left by the workman. it is this which renders so precarious the actor's fleeting glory, as it likewise dissipates the golden halo that hovers over the brilliant society _causeur_. nothing remains of mallarmé excepting a few cunningly wrought verses, inferior to the clearer and more profound poems of his great master, baudelaire. of wilde nothing will remain beyond his written works which are vastly inferior to his brilliant epigrammatic conversation. in our days, the master of repartee and the after-dinner speaker is fore-doomed to forgetfulness, for he always stands alone, and to gain applause has to talk down to and flatter lower-class audiences. no writer of blood-curdling melodramas, no weaver of newspaper novels is obliged to lower his talent so much as the professional wit. if the genius of mallarmé was obscured by the flatterers that surrounded him, how much more was wilde's talent overclouded by the would-be witty, shoddy-elegant, and cheaply-poetical society hangers-on, who covered him with incense? one of his devoted literary courtezans, who has written a life of wilde, which is nothing more than a rhapsodidal panegyric of his intimacy with the poet, tells us that the first attempts of the sparkling conversationalist were not at all successful in paris drawing-rooms. in the house of victor hugo seeing he had to let the veteran sleep out his nap whilst others among the guests slumbered also, he made up his mind to astonish them. he succeeded, but at what a cost! although he was a verse writer, most sincerely devoted to poetry and art, and one of the most emotional and sensitive and tender-hearted amongst modern wielders of the pen he succeeded only in gaining a reputation for artificiality. we all know his studied paradoxes, his five or six continually repeated tales, but we are tempted to forget the charming dreamer who was full of tenderness for everything in nature. "it is true that mallarmé has not written much, but all he has done is valuable. some of his verses are most beautiful whilst wilde seemed never to finish anything. the works of the english aesthete are very interesting, because they characterize his epoch; his pages are useful from a documentary point of view, but are not extraordinary from a literary standpoint. in the _duchess of padua_, he imitates hugo and sardou; the _picture of dorian grey_ was inspired by huysmans; _intentions_ is a _vade-mecum_ of symbolism, and all the ideas contained therein are to be found in mallarmé and villiers de l'isle-adam. as for wilde's poetry, it closely follows the lines laid down by swinburne. his most original composition is _poems in prose_. they give a correct idea of his home-chat, but not when he was at his best; that no doubt, is because the art of talking must always be inferior to any form of literary composition. thoughts properly set forth in print after due correction must always be more charming than a finely sketched idea hurriedly enunciated when conversing with a few disciples. in ordinary table-talk we meet nothing more than ghosts of new-born ideas fore-doomed to perish. the jokes of a wit seldom survive the speaker. when we quote the epigrams of wilde, it is as if we were exhibiting in a glass case, a collection of beautiful butterflies, whose wings have lost the brilliancy of their once gaudy colours. lively talk pleases, because of the man who utters it, and we are impressed also by the gestures which accompany his frothy discourse. what remains of the sprightly quips and anecdotes of such celebrated _hommes d'esprit_, as scholl, becque, barbey d'aurevilly! some stories of the xviiith. century have been transmitted to us by chamfort, but only because he carefully remodelled them by the aid of his clever pen."[ ] these opinions of rebell questionable though they may be, show us plainly something of the charm and the weakness of wilde. a perfect artist desiring to leave his mark on the temple-columns of fame must not live among his fellow men ambitious to taste the bitterness and the sweetness alike of every caress of existence, but submit himself pitilessly to the thraldom of the writing desk. some authors may produce masterpieces amidst the busy throng; but there are others who lose all power of creation unless they shut themselves up for a time and live severely by rote. when wilde was dragging out a wretched life in the sordid room of a cheap, furnished hotel, where he eventually died, did he ever remember while reading balzac by the flickering light of his one candle that the great master of french literature often sought solitude and wrestled for eighteen hours at a stretch with the demon of severe toil? did he ever repeat the doleful wail of the author of _la comédie humaine_ who was sometimes heard to exclaim in sad tones: "_i ought not to have done that.... i ought to have put black on white, black on white...._" few experiments are really necessary for the literary creator who seeks to analyse the stuff of which life is composed in order to dissolve for us all its elements and demonstrate its ever-present underlying essence. the romance writer must stand away from the crowd, if only for a time, and reflect deeply upon what he has seen and heard. the power of thought, to be free and fruitful, cannot flourish without the strength of ascetism. we must yield to that law which decrees that action may not be the twin-sister of dreams. those who live a life of pleasure can only give us colourless falsehoods when they try to depict sincerity of feeling. the confessions of sensualists resemble volcanic ashes. wilde himself gives us the key to his errors and his weakness: "_human life is the one thing worth investigating. compared to it there is nothing else of any value. it is true that as one watches life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one cannot wear over one's face a mask of glass nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshappen dreams. there are poisons so subtle that to know their properties one has to sicken of them. there are maladies so strange that one has to pass through them if one seeks to understand their nature. and yet what a great reward one receives! how wonderful the whole world becomes to one! to note the curious, hard logic of passion and the emotional, coloured life of the intellect--to observe where they meet, and where they separate, at what point they are in unison and at what point they are in discord--there is a delight in that! what matter what the cost is? one can never pay too high a price for any sensation._"[ ] the brain becomes dulled at this sport, which it would be illusory to call a study. he who uses his intellect to serve only his sensuality can produce nothing elaborate but what is artificial. such is the dilemma of wilde, whose collections of writings is like a painted stage-scene, mere garish canvas, behind which there is never anything substantial. "when i first saw wilde, he had not yet been seared by the brand of general reprobation. often i changed my opinion of him, but at first i felt the enthusiasm which young literary aspirants always feel for those who have made their mark; then the law-suit took place, followed by the dramatic thunderclap of a criminal prosecution; and my soul revolted as if some great iniquity had been consummated. later on, it seemed to me that the man of fashion had swallowed up the literary god, his baggage seemed light, and his brilliant butterfly-life had perhaps been of more importance to him than the small pile of volumes bearing his name. "to-day, i seem clearly to understand what sort of a man he was--extraordinary beyond a doubt; but never has artificial sentiment been so cunningly mingled with seemingly natural simplicity and pulsating pleasure in one and the same man."[ ] "_i must say to myself that i ruined myself and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. i am quite ready to say so. i am trying to say so, though they may not think it at the present moment. this pitiless indictment i bring without pity against myself. terrible as was what the world did to me, what i did to myself was far more terrible still._ _i was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age. i had realised this for myself at the very dawn of my manhood, and had forced my age to realise it afterwards. few men hold such a position in their own lifetime, and have it so acknowledged. it is usually discerned, if discerned at all, by the historian, or the critic, long after both the man and his age have passed away. with me it was different. i felt it myself, and made others feel it. byron was a symbolic figure, but his relations were the passion of his age and its weariness of passion. mine were to something more noble, more permanent, of more vital issue, of larger scope._ _the gods had given me almost everything. but i let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. i amused myself with being a_ flâneur, _a dandy, a man of fashion. i surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. i became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. tired of being on the heights, i deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. what the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. i grew careless of the lives of others. i took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. i forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop. i ceased to be lord over myself. i was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. i allowed pleasure to dominate me. i ended in horrible disgrace. there is only one thing for me now, absolute humility._"[ ] this confession of irreparable defeat while being exceedingly dolorous, is unfortunately, rendered still further painful by other pages which contradict it, and almost tempt us to doubt its sincerity, in spite of the fact that wilde was always sincere for those who knew how to read between the lines and enter into his spirit. "there is no doubt that he was truly a most extraordinary man, endowed with striking originality, but a man who at the same time took more than uncommon care to hide his gifts under a cloak bought in some conventional bazaar which made a point of keeping abreast with the fashions of the day."[ ] what brought about his downfall was the mad idea that possessed him of the possibility of employing in the service of noble aspirations all, without exception, all the passions that moved and agitated his human soul. everyone of us is, no doubt, peopled at times with mysterious spirits, ephemeral apparitions, which like the wild beasts that christ long ago cast out of the gadarene swine, tear themselves to pieces in internecine warfare. it is with such soldiers as these, who very seldom obey the superior orders of the higher intellect, or desert and rebel against us at the opportune moment, that we are called upon to withstand the onslaught of a thousand enemies. wilde made the grand mistake of trying to understand them all. he believed that they were capable of adapting themselves to that powerful instinct which animated him, and which directed him, wherever he wandered or wherever he went, towards the spirit of beauty. this error lasted long enough perhaps to convince him of the power that was born in him, but unfortunately, the revelation of his error came too late. my object in this preface is not to write the life of wilde. i have only to do with the writer, for the man is yet too much alive and his wounds have scarcely ceased bleeding! in the presence of still living sorrow, crimson-tinged, respect commands us to stand bareheaded; before the scarred face of woe the voice is dumb; we should, above all, endeavour rather to ignore the accidents that thrust themselves into a life and try to discover the great, calm soul, beautiful in its melancholy, which though pained and suffering, has never ceased to be nobly inspired. to prove that this was true in the case of wilde, we may have recourse to some of those who knew him well and who form a great "cloud of witnesses," testifying to the veracity of the things we have laid down. mr. arthur symons, a keen and large-minded critic, a friend of wilde's, and an elegant and forcible writer to boot, in his recent volume: "_studies in prose and verse_," characterizes wilde as a "poet of attitudes," and we cannot do better than quote a few lines from the fine article which he consecrated to our author: "_when the "ballad of reading gaol" was published, he said, it seemed to some people that such a return to, or so startling a first acquaintance with, real things, was precisely what was most required to bring into relation, both with life and art an extraordinary talent so little in relation with matters of common experience, so fantastically alone in a region of intellectual abstractions. in this poem, where a style formed on other lines seems startled at finding itself used for such new purposes, we see a great spectacular intellect, to which, at last, pity and terror have come in their own person, and no longer as puppets in a play. in its sight, human life has always been something acted on the stage; a comedy in which it is the wise man's part to sit aside and laugh, but in which he may also disdainfully take part, as in a carnival, under any mask. the unbiassed, scornful intellect, to which humanity has never been a burden, comes now to be unable to sit aside and laugh, and it has worn and looked behind so many masks that there is nothing left desirable in illusion. having seen, as the artist sees, further than morality, but with so partial an eyesight as to have overlooked it on the way, it has come at length to discover morality in the only way left possible, for itself. and, like most of those who, having "thought themselves weary," have made the adventure of putting thought into action, it has had to discover it sorrowfully, at its own incalculable expense. and now, having become so newly acquainted with what is pitiful, and what seems most unjust, in the arrangement of human affairs, it has gone, not unnaturally, to an extreme, and taken, on the one hand, humanitarianism, on the other realism, at more than their just valuation, in matters of art. it is that odd instinct of the intellect, the necessity of carrying things to their furthest point of development, to be more logical than either life or art, two very wayward and illogical things, in which conclusions do not always follow from premises._ _his intellect was dramatic, and the whole man was not so much a personality as an attitude...._ _and it was precisely in his attitudes that he was most sincere. they represented his intentions; they stood for the better, unrealised part of himself. thus his attitude, towards life and towards art, was untouched by his conduct; his perfectly just and essentially dignified assertion of the artist's place in the world of thought and the place of beauty in the material world being in nowise invalidated by his own failure to create pure beauty or to become a quite honest artist. a talent so vividly at work as to be almost genius was incessantly urging him into action, mental action._ _realising as he did, that it is possible to be very watchfully cognisant of that "quality of our moments as they pass," and so shape them after one's own ideal much more continuously and consciously than most people have ever thought of trying to do, he made for himself many souls, souls of intricate pattern and elaborate colour, webbed into infinite tiny cells, each the home of a strange perfume, perhaps a poison. "every soul had its own secret, and was secluded from the soul which had gone before it or was to come after it. and this showman of souls was not always aware that he was juggling with real things, for to him they were no more than the coloured glass balls which the juggler keeps in the air, catching them one after another. for the most part the souls were content to be playthings; now and again they took a malicious revenge, and became so real that even the juggler was aware of it. but when they became too real he had to go on throwing them into the air and catching them, even though the skill of the game had lost its interest for him. but as he never lost his self-possession, his audience, the world, did not see the difference._"[ ] thus not wishing to live for himself, wilde was surprised into living mainly for others, and his ever-present desire to astonish was one of the prime causes that led to his overthrow. yet, in spite of this, what riches of the mind, one easily divines him to possess, if for a moment we peer beyond the mobile curtain of his paradoxes. those who listened to him, this modern st. chrysostom, on whose lips there was ever an ambiguous smile, could not fail to see that he spoke to himself, was occupied in translating that which was passing in his mind, trying in a sense, to ravish his auditors and plunge them even into greater, though only ephemeral, ravishment, whilst ushering them into an absolutely unreal and immaterial kingdom of capricious fantasy, and they will remember that he was sometimes astonishingly profound and grave, and always charming, paradoxical, and eloquent. his mind constantly dwelt upon the questions of art and aesthetics. in _intentions_ he laid down serious problems, which in themselves bore every appearance of contradiction, and which any attempt to resolve would, at the outset, appear puerile and ambitious. for instance:--is lying a fundamental principle of art, that is to say, of every art? is it possible for there to be perfect concordance between a finely ordered and pure life, and the worship of beauty; or, are we to consider such a consummation as utterly impossible and chimerical? must there be a permanent and necessary divorce between ethics and aesthetics? ought we, beneath the flowery mask of a borrowed smile, allow ourselves to be carried away by all the waves of instinct? the art of criticism, is it superior to art? the interpreter can he be superior to the creator? must we modify the profound axiom, "to understand is to equal," not by reducing it to that other axiom, more profound perhaps, "to understand is to achieve," but by modifying it with that, which, at the first glance looks at least passingly strange "to understand is to surpass?" such are the questions which wilde postulated in _intentions_ and worked out with great audacity, but with no higher object than to win admiration, and all this with the indifferent suppleness of a conjuror of words. _intentions_ is a study of artificial genius, culture, and instinct, and, for this reason, it forms a most curious production. in itself it can hardly be termed a magistral work, inasmuch as all the theories enunciated in it are, at least, twenty years old, and appear to us to-day quite worn out and decrepit. as much may be said, also, for the theories put forward by our young, contemporaneous artists who undertake to discuss all things in heaven and earth, and whose vapourings on life, nature, social art and other things--especially other things--are no more guaranteed against mortality than the doctrines above specified. let them remember, in reading wilde's work, that their aesthetical doctrines will soon become as antiquated, and that it is no bid for lasting fame to write flashy novels, pretty verses, high-flown or realistic dramas, pessimistic or optimistic plays, imbued with schopenhaurian and nitzschien principles, since the crying need of the time is for sincere work. all the doctrines ever invented are mere tittle-tattle, only fit to amuse brainless ladies wanting in beauty, or minds stricken with positive sterility. it is not inexact that in _intentions_ one meets with a profound truth now and again, but the dressing of it is so paradoxical that we run a risk of misinterpreting all that may animate it of genuine fitness and sincerity. wilde may truly be denominated the last representative of that english art of the xixth. century, which beginning with shelley, continuing with the pre-raphaelites and culminating with the american painter, whistler, endeavours purposely to set forth an ideal and elegant expression of the world. the mistake of these men lies in the belief that art was made for life; whereas it is, as a matter of fact, quite the contrary. life has no other value, except as subject-matter, for poet and painter. these are excentric theories, certainly, but then, what on earth, does it matter about theories? do not they serve the great artist to make his genius more puissant, and enable him to concentrate all his forces in the same direction by uniting instead of scattering them? with, or in spite of his theories, shelley wrote his poems and whistler painted his pictures; if their æsthetic basis was bad, one, at least, cannot pretend that it was dangerous, since it enabled them to accomplish their masterpieces. wilde, unfortunately, was an æsthete before he was a poet, and produced his works somewhat in the spirit of bravado. he had been told that he could not create aught of good: the reply, triumphant and crushing was, the _picture of dorian grey_. he is a literary problem; and in considering him, we are struck with the unwarranted corruption, by his acquaintances, of a fine artistic sensibility. the fashionable drawing-rooms of the west-end brought about his downfall, or rather, and it amounts to the same thing: his frank and undisguised desire to please and to dazzle them proved his undoing. possibly the same misfortune would have overtaken merimée, had it not been for his lofty and vigorous intelligence; as it was, he lost more than once, most precious time in composing "_chambres bleues_," when he was undoubtedly capable of producing another "_colomba_," and other variations of "_vases étrusques_." with all this, let us be thoroughly just; _intentions_ is far from containing anything but mere paradoxes. those that we find there are at any rate of very diverse kinds. some are pure verbal amusements, and may be thrust aside after the moment's attention that they snatched from our surprise. others belong to a nobler family of ideas and awaken in us the lasting and fecund astonishment of the paradox which is born sound and healthy, because it concerns a new truth. into the mental landscape, these paradoxes introduce that sudden change of perspective, which forces the mind to rise or to descend, and thus causes us to discover other horizons. what a grievous error would it be on our part not to feel something of that immense and exhaustive love of beauty which haunted the soul of wilde until the bitter end? however artificial his work may appear at the first glance, there is still sufficient left of the man which was incomparable. we instinctively feel that he belonged to the chosen race of those upon whom the "spirit of the hour" had laid his magic wand, and who give forth at the cunning touch of the magician some of the finest notes of which our stunted human nature is capable. men thus endowed, enjoy the rare privilege of being unable to proffer a single word, without our perceiving however confusedly, the splendid harmony of an almost universal accompaniment of ideas. the choir, their eyes fixed upon the eyes of the master-musician, follows his inspired gestures with jealous care, and seeks to interpret his every nod and movement. none but an artist could have written the admirable pages on shakespeare, greek art, and other elevated themes that are to be found in the works of oscar wilde. more than an artist was he, who noted down the suggestive thought: that the humility of the matter of a work of art is an element of culture. if therefore, we hear him exclaim that "thought is a sickness," we must bear in mind that this is simply an analysis of the phrase: "_we live in a period whose reading is too vast to allow it to become wise, and which thinks too much to be beautiful._" our eyes can no longer penetrate the esoteric meaning of the statues of the olden times, beautiful with glorified animality, and which have alas, become for us little more than the tongue-tied offspring of the inspiring god pan, dead beyond all hope of rebirth. our brains have become stupified through the heaviness of the flesh, and this, perhaps, because we have treated the flesh as a slave. "_the worship of the senses, wrote wilde, has often, and with much justice, been decried; men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and sensations that seem stronger than themselves, and that they are conscious of sharing with the less highly-organised forms of existence. but it is probable the true nature of the senses has never been understood, and that they have remained savage and animal merely because the world has sought to starve them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty will be the dominant characteristic._"[ ] in these lines, we may perhaps find the key of a certain metamorphosis in the poet's life, before circe, that terrible sorceress, had passed his way. "_who knows not circe, the daughter of the sun, whose charmed cup whoever tasted lost his upright shape, and downward fell into a grovelling swine?_" (_milton: comus, - ._) the infant king of rome, we are told, looking out from a window of the louvre one day, at the muddy street where young children were playing,--sad in the midst of a perfumed and divinely flattering court,--cried out: "i too, would like to roll myself in that beautiful mud." we are inclined to think from a sentimental outlook, that wilde also had the same morbid desire; but, he was worth better things; and there were times in his life when serene aspirations moved his heart before he sat down to the festive board of sin. he had a pronounced tendency towards the _discipulat_; used to question youths about their studies and their mind, showing as much interest in them as a spiritual confessor, inebriating himself with their enthusiasm, and surrounding himself more and more with a medley of different friends. a vigorous pagan, ardent, intoxicated with souvenirs of antiquity, heart-sick of his worldly successes, he dreamed perhaps of living over again: _ces héröiques jours où les jeunes pensées allaient chercher leur miel aux lèvres d'un platon._ but this _artificiel de l'art_ was, although he wotted it not, a man who rioted in the good things of life. he sought to inculcate in himself a quiet spirit which believes itself invulnerable. "_and when we reach the true culture that is our aim, we attain to that perfection of which the saints have dreamed, the perfection of those to whom sin is impossible, not because they make the renunciations of the ascetic, but because they can do everything they wish without hurt to the soul, and can wish for nothing that can do the soul harm, the soul being an entity so divine that it is able to transform into elements of a richer experience, or a finer susceptibility, or a newer mode of thoughts, acts or passions that with the common would be commonplace, or with the uneducated ignoble, or with the shameful vile._"[ ] this passage shows us a state of things very far removed from the old dream of antiquity. he forgot, alas! the puritanism and sublime discourses of diotime, which have been so finely pictured for us by plato, to wallow in the orgies of the island of capria. before that criminal court, where he vainly struggled so as "not to appear naked before men," we hear him proclaim what he had himself desired and perhaps attained. what interpretation, asked the judge, can you give us of the verse: _i am the love which dares not tell its name_ "the love referred to," replied wilde, "is that which exists between a man of mature years and a young man; the love of david and of jonathan. it is the same love that plato made the basis of his philosophy; it is that love which is sung in the sonnets of shakespeare and of michael-angelo; it is a profound spiritual affection, as pure as it is perfect. it is beautiful, pure and noble; it is intellectual, the love of a man possessing full experience of life, and of a young man full of all the joy and all the hope of the future." there in that struggle in the midst of thick darkness, this must have been the cry of his tormented soul, a breath of pure air as he passed, a perfumed memory ... then there came a few arrow flights badly winged which only wounded his own heart. he defended himself in an indifferent way according to some people, although it must be admitted that he gave the answers that were necessary and becoming, and, in some cases, compelled his judges, who were no better than the mouth-pieces of the crowd, to confess the hatred that the worship of beauty had inspired. "however strange may have been his attitude, that attitude could not have been indifferent to anyone. those who have been fortunate enough to laugh at the portrait that rené boylesve has drawn of the æsthete in his fine novel "le parfum des iles borromées," would find it difficult to make a mock of the man who accepted with superb disinterestedness, the torture that he knew beforehand the judges would inevitably inflict upon him. although he may not have been a great poet, although the pretext of his equivocal mode of living was taken to condemn him, we cannot lose sight of the art and of the literary craftsman that were condemned at the same time with him."[ ] _we know no spectacle so ridiculous as the british public in one of its periodical fits of morality. in general, elopements, divorces, and family quarrels, pass with little notice. we read the scandal, talk about it for a day, and forget it. but once in six or seven years our virtue becomes outrageous. we cannot suffer the laws of religion and decency to be violated. we must make a stand against vice. we must teach libertines that the english people appreciate the importance of domestic ties. accordingly some unfortunate man, in no respect more depraved than hundreds whose offences have been treated with lenity, is singled out as an expiatory sacrifice. if he has children, they are to be taken from him. if he has a profession, he is to be driven from it. he is cut by the higher orders, and hissed by the lower. he is, in truth, a sort of whipping-boy, by whose vicarious agonies all the other transgressors of the same class are, it is supposed, sufficiently chastised._[ ] this bitter denunciation of english mock-modesty by the brilliant essayist rests upon thoroughly justifiable grounds. once again in the dolorous history of humanity, the grotesque farce was enacted of chasing forth the scapegoat into the wilderness to bear away the sins of the people. but, in this instance, the unhappy creature was not only laden with the sins of the tribe; a heavier burden still had been added to all the others: the fearful burden of the mad, unreasoned hatred of the sinners. indeed he, whose share in the general load of sin was the greatest, sought to add more hatred than all the others to the great fardel under which the victim staggered, and believing himself so much the more innocent that the abjection of the unfortunate wretch was complete, would have been glad had it been in his power to help even the public hangman in the execution of his nefarious task. we have observed that through some diabolical strain in human nature, the evil joy which creates scandal and gives rise to a man's downfall, increases in intensity if the victim happens to be a man of superior rank and talent. _on voit briller au fond des prunelles haineuses, l'orgueil mystérieux de souiller la beauté._ how great must have been the delighted intoxication of numberless weak minds when they were impelled, in the midst of a silence that braver and clearer spirits dared not break, to screech out vociferations against art and thought, denouncing these as the accomplices of the momentary aberrations of him who erstwhile worshipped at their shrine. here in france at least, men knew better how to restrain themselves, and there were even a few courageous wielders of talented pens who did not hesitate to use their abilities in favour of their anglo-saxon colleague. hugues rebell published in the _mercure de france_ that _défense d'oscar wilde_, the calm and tempered logic of which is still fresh to many minds. a number of writers and artists even held a meeting of protestation; but, of course, all this had not the slightest effect on the judicial position of wilde. it was generally felt that the ferocious outcry raised against the unhappy man "who had been found out" was because that man was a poet, and not so much because he had gone counter to the manners of his time. amongst all the mingled shouting and laughter, the arguments for and the arguments against, the voice of one man was heard stentorian and clear above all the rest, that voice belonged to octave mirbeau, a puissant master of the french tongue, and a brilliant writer and dramatist. the following lines of suppressed anger and large-minded charity emanated from his pen: "_a great deal has been heard about the paradoxes of oscar wilde upon art, beauty, conscience and life! paradoxes they were, it is true, and we know that some laid themselves open to the charge of exaggeration, and vaulted over the threshold of the forbidden. but after all, what is a paradox if not, for the most part of the time, the exaltation of an idea in a striking and superior form? as soon as an idea overleaps the low-level of ordinary popular understanding, having ceased to drag behind it the ignoble stumps gathered in the swamps of middle-class morality, and seeks with strong, steadfast wing, to attain the lofty heights of philosophy, literature or art, we at once stigmatize it as a paradox, because, unable ourselves to follow it into those regions which are inaccessible to us, through the weakness of our organs, and we make haste to scotch it and put it under ban by flinging after it curse-laden cries of blame and contempt._ _and yet, strange as it may seem, progress cannot be made save by way of paradox, whilst much vaunted common sense--the prized virtue of the imbecile--perpetuates the humdrum routine of daily life. the truth is, we refuse to allow anyone to come and outrage our intellectual sluggishness, or our morality, ready-made like second-hand clothes in a dealer's shop, or the stupid security of our sheepish preconceptions._ _looked at squarely, that was the veritable crime in the minds of those who sat in judgment on oscar wilde._ _they could not forgive him for being a thinker, and a man of superior intellect--and for that self-same reason eminently dangerous to other men. wilde is young and has a future before him, and he has proved by the strong and charming works which he has already given us that he can still do much more in the cause of beauty and art. must we not then admit that it is an abominable thing to risk the killing of something far above all laws, and all morality: the spirit of beauty, for the sake of repressing acts which are not really punishable_ per se. _for laws change and morality becomes transformed with the transformations of time, with the changeing of latitude and longitude, but beauty remains immaculate, and sheds her light far over the centuries that she alone can rescue from obscurity._" with these magnificent words of one of the great masters of french prose, we would gladly terminate the present study; but it remains for us to cite the following from the pen of our lately deceased friend, hugues rebell, who possessed not only acumen and erudition, but employed a brilliant style and ready wit in the expression of his thoughts: "will a day ever come, wrote he, when the deeds of men will be no more judged in the name of religion and morality, but from the point of view of their social importance? when the misdemeanours of a man of wit and of genius, or a clever, elegant man of fashion, shall no longer be judged by the same law as that which condemns a stolid navvy or a dockyard hand? far from believing in our much belauded progress, i am inclined alas, to think that we are really far behind our forefathers in tolerance, and above all in the ideas that govern our idea of social equality. the downfall of the sentiment of hierarchy seriously compromises the existence of some of the best men amongst us. it is not crime merely which is tracked and hounded down, but all that strays aside for a moment from every-day habits and customs. so-and-so, because he is not like other people inspires aversion, even horror on the part of those who take off their hats most respectfully to the successful swindler; and whilst the police complacently allow the perpetration in our great cities of robberies and murders, they make a raid on the unfortunate bookseller who happens to have stowed away carefully in his back-shop, a few illustrations where the high deeds and gestures of venus are too faithfully reproduced. these paltry persecutions would only serve to bring a smile to our lips were it not that everyone is more or less exposed to their arbitrary measures. men are far less free to-day than they formerly were, because they are too much dominated by a large number of ignorant and groundless prejudices. ferocious gaolers fetter and imprison their minds for their greater overthrow; no longer do they believe in god, whilst giving implicit faith to vain science which, making small account of the great diversity of character and temperament amongst human beings, holds up for unique example, a healthy and virtuous individual who never had any real existence except in the imagination of fools; and whilst no longer following any of the old religions, they submit themselves with equanimity to the condemnation of so-called human justice, which more often than not is radically venal, and impresses them far more than did in olden times, the ex-communicating _bulls_ of popes who had usurped the authority of god." as for the sentence of hard labour passed upon wilde, a description would fail to convey to the inexperienced reader a full idea of its barbarous severity. sir edward clarke, the counsel for the defense, gave substantially the following reply to the representative of a paris newspaper: "my opinion is that oscar wilde will work out his sentence. he has received the heaviest punishment that it was possible to inflict upon him. you cannot possibly form any notion of the extreme severity of "hard labour" which is implacable in its _régime_ of absorbing and exigent regularity. "oscar wilde, who wore his hair long like the esthete he was, was obliged to undergo the indignity of having it cut close, and wearing the sack-cloth suit bearing the broad-arrow mark of the convict. thrust into a small narrow cell with only a bed, or rather a wooden plank in guise of a bed, for all his furniture,--a bed without a matress, and with a bolster made of wood, this talented man was made to pass the long weary months of his martyrdom. "the "labour" given him to do was absolutely ridiculous for a man of his bent; first of all for a certain number of hours, he had to sit on a stool in his cell and disentangle and reduce to small quantities ship-rope of enormous size used for docking ocean liners, the only instruments allowed him to effect the work being a nail and his own fingers. the result of this painful and atrocious penitence was to tear and disfigure his hands beyond all hope. "after that he was conducted into a court where he had to displace a certain number of cannon-balls, carrying them from one place to another and arranging them in symmetrical piles. no sooner was this edifying labour terminated, than he had himself to undo it all and carry back the cannon-balls one by one to the place from whence he had first taken them. "then finally, he was made to work the tread-mill which is a harder task than those even that we have endeavoured faintly to describe. imagine if you can, an enormous wheel in the interior of which exist cunningly arranged winding steps. wilde, mounting on one of the steps, would immediately set the wheel in motion by the movement of his feet; then the steps follow each other under the feet in rapid and regular evolution, thus forcing the legs to a precipitous action which becomes laborious, enervating, and even maddening after a few minutes. but this enervating fatigue and suffering the convict is obliged to overcome, whilst continuing to move his legs for all they are worth, if he would escape being knocked down, caught up and thrown over, by the revolving movement of the wheel. this fantastical exercise lasts a quarter of an hour, and the wretch obliged to indulge in it, is allowed five minutes rest before the silly game recommences. "the convict is always kept apart and not allowed to speak even to his gaoler except at certain moments. all correspondence and reading is forbidden, save for the bible and prayer book placed at the head of the wooden plank, which serves him for a bed; and relatives are not admitted to see him excepting at the end of the year. "his food consists of meat and black bread, and of course only water is allowed. the meal-times take place at fixed hours, for naturally he has to follow a regular _régime_, in order to accomplish the hard labours that are incumbent upon him. "many of the convicts have been known to say, on coming out of prison, that they would have far more preferred to pass ten years in penal servitude than work out two years of hard labour. the moral suffering men like oscar wilde are forced to undergo is probably superior even to their physical distress, and i can only repeat that this labour is the severest which the laws of england impose." * * * * * wilde endured this martyrdom to the bitter end, the only favour allowed him being permission, towards the end of the time, to read a few books and to write. he read dante in his entirety, dwelling longer over the poet's description of hell than anything else, because here he recognized himself "at home." before the doors of the gaol had been bolted on him, he wrote with a pen that had been dipped in colourless ink, letters of tears, sobs and pains, which were issued to the world only after the unhappy man had winged his flight for another planet. those letters bear every mark of the deepest sincerity. they are not so much literature as the wail of a broken heart, which had attached itself to the only human affection he believed was still faithful to him. it is impossible to treat lightly the passionate anguish which refrains from expressing itself with the same intensity as the sorrows it had suffered, stricken with infinite sadness at the utter shipwreck of all hope and the cowardice of the human nature that had brought him to such low estate. that he should have conjured up the happy times he had seen decked out in all the charming graces of youth, and which smiled back his visage from the limpid mirror of his marvellously artistic intelligence, is only perfectly natural; and this evocation of happier times took on a new and horribly strange beauty, just as the feeblest ray of light stealing through prison walls gains in puissance from the sheer opacity of enveloping darkness. i will not stop here to enquire whether he found later the consolation he so much desired, a haven of peace in the friendship of the aristocratic adolescent, who had unwittingly caused him to become cast-a-way. it is highly probable that the bitter words which andré gide heard him utter, referred to that unfortunate intimacy: "no, he does not understand me; he can no longer understand me. i repeat to him in each letter; we can no more follow together the same path; you have yours, and it is certainly beautiful; and i have mine. his path is the path of alcibiade, whilst mine henceforth must be that of st. francis of assisi." his last most important work in prose: _de profundis_, which reveals him to us under an entirely different aspect, although, practically always the same man, shows that he is still engrossed with the perpetual love of attitudinizing, dreaming perhaps, that in spite of his sorrow and repentance, he will be able to take up again and sing, although in an humbler tone, the pagan hymn that had been strangled in his throat. in this connection, we cannot help thinking of the gesture of the great talma, who whilst he lay a-dying, although he knew it not, took the pendant skin of his thin neck, between his fingers, and said to those who stood around: "here is something which would suit finely to make up a visage for an old tiberius." it seems to us that the chief characteristic of wilde's book is not so much its admirable accent as its subtle irony, through which there seems to thrill the reply of destiny to the haughty resolutions that he had undertaken. it is as though death itself rose up from each page to sneer and chuckle at the master-singer; and few things are more bitter on the part of this poet--who had with his own hands ensepulchred himself as a willing holocaust to the deceitful gods of factitious art,--than the constant appeals that he makes to nature. the song no longer rings with the old regal note; there is none of the trepidating joy of a whitman, or the yielding sweetness of an emerson; our ear detects only the melopoeia of a heart which had been wounded in its innermost recess. "_i tremble with pleasure when i think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that i shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the other toss the pale purple of its plumes so that all the air shall be arabia for me._"[ ] these are the words of a convalescent; of a man newly risen from a bed of sickness anticipating a richer and fuller life, unknowing that the uplifted hand of death suspended just above him, was destined to strike him down at brief delay. in the darkness of his prison cell, he dreams of the mysterious herbs that he will find in the realms of nature; of the balms that he shall ferret out amongst the plants of the earth, and which will bring peace for his anguish, and deep-seated joy for the suffering that racked his brain. "_but nature, whose sweet rains fall on the unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where i may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence i may weep undisturbed. she will hang the night with stars so that i may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole._"[ ] in presence of this beautiful passage, it is painful to remember how his hopes were fated to be shattered by the cruellest of disappointments, and how he was doomed to die in the grey desolation of a poverty-haunted room. before drawing this notice to a close, it were not unfitting to recall another name, borne by a poet of wayward genius, who likewise wandered astray in a forest of more than dantean darkness, because the right way he had for ever lost from view. that poet was a poet of france, and the voice of his glory and the echo of the songs he chanted resounded with that proud and melodious note of genius which can never weary human ears. although this poet led a life which can be compared only to the life of oscar wilde, he belonged to an order of mentality which differs too greatly in its essential features to allow the accidents of the career of the two men being used as a basis for comparing them closely together on the intellectual plane. verlaine belonged to that race of poets who distinguish themselves by their perfect spontaneity; he was a veritable poet of instinct, and had heard voices which no other mortal had heard before him on earth. in place of the metallic verses of his predecessors, the verses that for the most part are spoken by linguistic artists, he created a sort of ethereal music, a song so sweet and so penetrating that it haunts us eternally like the low, passionate, whisperings of a lover's voice. he gave us more than royal largesse of a wonderful and delicious soul, that had no part or lot in time, a music that was created for his soul alone; and we have willingly forgotten many a haughtier voice for the bewitching strains that this baptised faun played for us with such artless joy on his forest-grown reed. the english poet was more complex and perhaps less sheerly human; and even his errors have no other origin than the perpetual effort to astonish us; whilst above all, that which staggers us most and stirs us so profoundly is that these self-same errors, which had come into life under such innocent conditions, became terribly real in virtue of that imperious law which compels certain minds to render their dreams incarnate. as for his work, however finely polished, however exquisite it may be and undoubtedly is, we have to confess that it has no power to move our souls into high passion and lofty endeavour; although it might easily have sufficed to conquer celebrity for more than one ambitious literary craftsman. but we feel, with regard to wilde, that we had a legitimate right to insist on the accomplishment of far greater things, a more sincere and genuine output, and are so much more dissatisfied because we clearly see the great discord between the man who palpitated with intense life, and the esthetic dandy whose cleverness overreached itself when he tried to work out that life on admittedly artificial lines. this extraordinary divorce between intelligence and will-power was that which gave rise to the striking drama of wilde's career; albeit the word drama looks strange and out of place, if applied only to the sorrow-filled period that crowned with thorns the latter end of his brilliant existence, if it be used for no other reason than to particularize the great catastrophe that took place in the sight of all the world. the fact is, the man's entire life was one perpetual drama. throughout the whole course of his existence, he persistently sought after and that with impunity, all sorts of excitants that could at last no longer be disguised under the name of experiences--and no doubt, others more terrible still that fall under no human laws, would have come finally to swell the ranks of their forerunners--and then, had the hand of destiny not arrested him in his course, he would have wound up by descending so low that the artistic life of his soul would have been forever extinguished. that, when all is said and done, would have been the veritable, the irremediable tragedy. fortunately, royal intellects such as these, can never utterly die, and therein consists their greatest chastisement. spasmodic movements agitate them, revealing beneath their mendacious laughter the secret agony of their souls; and we are suddenly called upon to witness the heart-rending spectacle of the slow death-agony of a haughty, talented poet, a petronius self-poisoned through fear of cæsar or a wilde whom a vicious and over-wrought public had only half assassinated, raising his poor, glazed eyes towards the marvellous light of truth, whose glorious vision, we know by the sure voice that comes "from the depths," he had caught at last.... * * * * * oscar wilde had desired to live a pagan's free and untramelled life in twentieth-century england, forgetful of the enormous fact that no longer may we live pagan-wise, for the shadow of the cross has shed a steadily increasing gloom over the conditions that enlivened the joyous existence of olden times. c. g. the trial of oscar wilde. "in all men's hearts a slumbering swine lies low", says the french poet; so come ye, whose porcine instincts have never been awakened, or if rampant successfully hidden, and hurl the biggest, sharpest stones you can lay your hands on at your wretched, degraded, humiliated brother, _who has been found out_. the trial of oscar wilde the life and death of oscar wilde, poet, playwright, _poseur_ and convict, can only fittingly be summarised as a tragedy. every misspent life is a tragedy more or less; but how much more tragic appear the elements of despair and disaster when the victim to his own vices is a man of genius exercising a considerable influence upon the thought and culture of his day, and possessing every advantage which birth, education, talent and station can bestow? oscar wilde was more than a clever and original thinker. he was the inventor of a certain literary style, and, though his methods, showy and eccentric as they were, lent themselves readily to imitation, none of his followers could approach their "master" in the particular mode which he had made his own. there can be two opinions as to the merits of his plays. there can be only one judgment as to their daring and audacious originality. of the ordinary and the commonplace wilde had a horror, which with him was almost a religion. he was unmercifully chaffed throughout america when he appeared in public in a light green suit adorned with a large sunflower; but he did not don this outrageous costume because he preferred such startling clothing. he adopted the dress in order to be original and assumed it because no other living man was likely to be so garbed. he was consumed, in fact, with overpowering vanity. he was possessed of a veritable demon of self-esteem. he ate strange foods, and drank unusual liquors in order to be unlike any of his contemporaries. his eccentricities of dress continued to the end. on the first night of one of his plays--it was a brilliant triumph--he was called upon by an enthusiastic audience for the customary speech. he was much exercised in his mind as to what he could say that would be unconventional and sensational. no mere platitudes or banalities for the author of "lady windermere's fan," who made a god of the spirit of epigram and almost canonized the art of repartee. he said, "ladies and gentlemen: i am glad you like my play. i like it very much myself too," which, if candid, was hardly the remark of a modest and retiring author. the leopard cannot change his spots and neither can the lion his skin. even in his beautiful book, "de profundis"--surely the most extraordinary volume of recent years--the man's character is writ so plainly that he who runs may read. man of letters, man of fashion, man of hideous vices, oscar wilde remained to the last moment of his murdered life, a self-conscious egotist. "gentlemen," he gasped on his death-bed, hearing the doctors express misgivings as to their fees, "it would appear that i am dying beyond my means!" it was a brilliant sally and one can picture the startled faces of the medical attendants. a genius lay a-dying and a genius he remained till the breath of life departed. genius we know to be closely allied to insanity and it were charitable to describe this man as mad, besides approaching very nearly to the truth. something was out of gear in that finely attuned mind. some thorn there was among the intellectual roses which made him what he was. he pined for strange passions, new sensations. his was the temperament of the roman sybarite. he often sighed for a return of the days when vice was deified. he spoke of the glories of the devastation, the awful woman and the alexandrian school at which little girls and young boys were instructed in all the most secret and unthinkable forms of vice. modern women satisfied him not. perverted passions consumed the fire of his being. he had had children of his wife, but sexual intercourse between him and that most unfortunate lady was more honoured in the breach than in the observance. they had their several rooms. on many occasions wilde actually brought the companions of his abominable rites and sinful joys to his own home, and indulged in his frightful propensities beneath the roof of the house which sheltered his own sons and their most unhappy mother. could the man capable of this atrocity possess a normal mind? can oscar wilde, who committed moral suicide and made of himself a social pariah, be regarded as a sane man? london society is not so strict nor straight-laced that it will not forgive much laxity in its devoted votaries. rumour had been busy with the name of oscar wilde for a long time before the whole awful truth became known. he was seen, constantly, at theatres and restaurants with persons in no way fit to be his associates and these persons were not girls or women. he paraded his shameful friendships and flaunted his villainous companions in society's face. people began to look askance at the famous wit. doors began to be closed to him. he was ostracised by all but the most bohemian coteries. but even those who were still proud to rank him among their friends did not know how far he had wilfully drawn himself into the web of disgrace. much that seemed strange and unaccountable was attributed to his well-known love of pose. men shrugged their shoulders and declared that "wilde meant no harm. it was his vainglorious way of showing his contempt for the opinion of the world. men of such parts could not be judged by ordinary standards. intellectually wilde was fit to mix with the immortals. if he preferred the society of miserable, beardless, stunted youths destitute alike of decency or honour--it was no affair of theirs," and so on _ad nauseam_. meanwhile, heedless of the warnings of friends and the sneers of foes, wilde went his own way--to destruction. he was addicted to the vice and crime of sodomy long before he formed a "friendship" which was destined to involve him in irretrievable ruin. in london, he met a younger son of the eccentric marquis of queensbury, lord alfred douglas by name. this youth was being educated at cambridge. he was of peculiar temperament and talented in a strong, frothy style. he was good-looking in an effeminate, lady-like way. he wrote verse. his poems not being of a manner which could be acceptable to a self-respecting publication, his efforts appeared in an eccentric and erratic magazine which was called "the chameleon." in this precious serial appeared a "poem" from the pen of lord alfred dedicated to his father in these filial words: "to the man i hate." oscar wilde at once developed an extraordinary and dangerous interest in this immature literary egg. a being of his own stamp, after his own heart, was lord alfred douglas. the love of women delighted him not. the possession of a young girl's person had no charm for him. he yearned for higher flights in the realms of love! he sought unnatural affection. wilde, experienced in all the symptoms of a disordered sexual fancy, contrived to exercise a remarkable and sinister influence over this youth. again and again and again did his father implore lord alfred douglas to separate himself from the tempter. lord queensberry threatened, persuaded, bribed, urged, cajoled: all to no purpose. wilde and his son were constantly together. the nature of their friendship became the talk of the town. it was proclaimed from the housetops. the marquis, determined to rescue him if it were humanly possible, horsewhipped his son in a public thoroughfare and was threatened with a summons for assault. on one occasion--it was the opening night of one of the wilde plays--he sent the author a bouquet of choice--vegetables! three or four times he wrote to him begging him to cancel his friendship with lord alfred. once he called at the house in tite street and there was a terrible scene. the marquis fumed; wilde laughed. he assured his lordship that only at his son's own request would he break off the association which existed between them. the marquis, driven to desperation, called wilde a disgusting name. the latter, with a show of wrath, ordered the peer from his door and he was obliged to leave. at all costs and hazards, at the risk of any pain and grief to himself, lord queensberry was determined to break off the disgraceful _liaison_. he stopped his son's allowance, but wilde had, at that time, plenty of money and his purse was his friend's. at last the father went to the length of leaving an insulting message for oscar wilde at that gentleman's club. he called there and asked for wilde. the clerk at the enquiry office stated that mr. wilde was not on the premises. the marquis then produced a card and wrote upon it in pencil these words, "oscar wilde is a bugger." this elegant missive he directed to be handed to the author when he should next appear at the club. from this card--lord queensberry's last resource--grew the whole great case, which amazed and horrified the world in . oscar wilde was compelled, however reluctantly, to take the matter up. had he remained quiescent under such a public affront, his career in england would have been at an end. he bowed to the inevitable and a libel action was prepared. one is often compelled to wonder if he foresaw the outcome. one asks oneself if he realized what defeat in this case would portend. the stakes were desperately high. he risked, in a court of law, his reputation, his position, his career and even his freedom. did he know what the end to it all would be? whatever wilde's fears and expectations were, his opponent did not under-estimate the importance of the issue. if he could not induce a jury of twelve of his fellow-countrymen to believe that the plaintiff was what he had termed him, he, the marquis of queensberry, would be himself disgraced. furthermore, there would, in the event of failure, be heavy damages to pay and the poor man was not over rich. wilde had many and powerful friends. for reasons which it is not necessary to enlarge upon, lord queensberry was not liked or respected by his own order. the ultimate knowledge that he was a father striving to save a loved son from infamy changed all that, and his lordship met with nothing but sympathy from the general public in the latter stages of the great case. sir edward clarke was retained for the plaintiff. it is needless to refer to the high estimation in which this legal and political luminary is held by all classes of society. from first to last he devoted himself to the lost cause of oscar wilde with a whole-hearted devotion which was beyond praise. the upshot of the libel action must have pained and disgusted him; yet he refused to abandon his client, and, in the two criminal trials, defended him with a splendid loyalty and with the marked ability that might be expected from such a counsel. the acute, energetic, silver-spoken mr. carson led on the other side. it is not necessary to make more than passing mention of the conspicuous skill with which the able lawyer conducted the case for the defendant. even the gifted plaintiff himself cut a sorry figure when opposed to mr. carson. extraordinary interest was displayed in the action; and the courts were besieged on each day that the trial lasted. remarkable revelations were expected and they were indeed forthcoming. enormous pains had been taken to provide a strong defence and it was quite clear almost after the first day that wilde's case would infallibly break down. he made some astonishing admissions in the witness-box and even disgusted many of his friends by the flippancy and affected unconcern of his replies to questions of the most damaging nature. he, apparently, saw nothing indecorous in facts which must shock any other than the most depraved. he saw nothing disgusting in friendships of a kind to which only one construction could be put. he gave expensive dinners to ex-barmen and the like: ignorant, brutish young fools--because they amused him! he presented youths of questionable moral character with silver cigarette-cases because their society was pleasant! he took young men to share his bedroom at hotels and saw nothing remarkable in such proceedings. he gave sums of thirty pounds to ill-bred youths--accomplished blackmailers--because they were hard-up and he felt they did not deserve poverty! he assisted other young men of a character equally undesirable, to go to america and received letters from them in which they addressed him as "dear oscar," and sent him their love. in short, his own statements damned him. out of his own mouth--and he posing all the time--was he convicted. the case could have but one ending. sir edward clarke--pained, surprised, shocked--consented to a verdict for the marquis of queensberry and the great libel case was at an end. the defendant left the court proudly erect, conscious that he had been the means of saving his son and of eradicating from society a canker which had been rotting it unnoticed, except by a few, for a very long time. oscar wilde left the court a ruined and despised man. people--there were one or two left who were loyal to him--turned aside from him with loathing. he had nodded to six or seven friends in court on the last day of the trial and turned ashen pale when he observed their averted looks. all was over for him. the little supper-parties with a few choice wits; the glorious intoxication of first-night applause; the orgies in the infamous dens of his boon companions--all these were no more for him. oscar wilde, _bon vivant_, man of letters, arbiter of literary fashion, stood at the bar of public opinion, a wretch guilty of crimes against which the body recoils and the mind revolts. oh! what a falling-off was there! * * * * * if any reader would care to know the impression made upon the opinion of the london world by the revelations of this lawsuit, let him turn to the "daily telegraph" of the morning following the dramatic result of the trial. in that great newspaper appeared a leading article in reference to oscar wilde, the terms of which, though deserved, were most scathing, denunciatory, and bitter. yet a general feeling of relief permeated the regret which was universally expressed at so terrible a termination of a distinguished career. society was at no pains to hide its relief that the augean stable has been cleansed and that a terrible scandal had been exorcised from its midst. it now becomes a necessary, albeit painful task, to describe the happenings incidental or subsequent to the wilde & queensberry proceedings. it was certain that matters could not be allowed to rest as they were. a jury in a public court had convinced themselves that lord queensberry's allegations were strictly true and the duty of the public prosecutor was truly clear. the law is not, or should not be, a respector of persons, and oscar wilde, genius though he were, was not less amenable to the law than would be any ignorant boor suspected of similar crimes. the machinery of legal process was set in action and the arrest of wilde followed as a matter of course. a prominent name in the libel action against lord queensberry had been that of one alfred taylor. this individual, besides being himself guilty of the most infamous practices, had, it would appear, for long acted as a sort of precursor for the apostle of culture and his capture took place at nearly the same time as that of his principal. the latter was arrested at a certain quiet and fashionable hotel whither he had gone with one or two yet loyal friends after the trial for libel. his arrest was not unexpected, of course; but it created a tremendous sensation and vast crowds collected at bow street police station and in the vicinity during the preliminary examinations before the magistrate. the prisoner wilde bore himself with some show of fortitude, but it was clear that the iron had already entered into his soul and his old air of jaunty indifference to the opinion of the world had plainly given way to a mental anxiety which could not altogether be hidden, though it could be controlled. on one occasion as, fur-coated, silk-hatted, he entered the dock, he nodded familiarly to the late sir augustus harris, but that magnate of the theatrical world deliberately turned his back upon the playwriting celebrity. the evidence from first to last was followed with the most intense interest and the end of it was that oscar wilde was fully committed for trial. the case came on at the old bailey during the month of april, , and it was seen that the interest had in no wise abated. mr. justice charles presided and he was accompanied by the customary retinue of corporation dignitaries. the court was crowded in every part and hundreds of people were unsuccessful in efforts to obtain admission. a reporter for a sunday newspaper wrote: "wilde's personal appearance has changed little since his committal from bow street. he wears the same clothes and continues to carry the same hat. he looks haggard and worn, and his long hair that was so carefully arranged when last he was in the court, though not then in the dock, is now dishevelled. taylor, on the other hand, still neatly dressed, appears not to have suffered from his enforced confinement. but he no longer attempts to regard the proceedings with that indifference which he affected when first before the magistrate." as soon as wilde and his confederate took their places in the dock, each held a whispered consultation with his counsel and the clerk of arraigns then read over the indictments. both prisoners pleaded "not guilty," taylor speaking in a loud and confident tone. wilde spoke quietly, looked very grave and gave attentive heed to the formal opening proceedings. mr. c. f. gill led for the prosecution and he rose amidst a breathless silence, to outline the main facts of the case. after begging the jury to dismiss from their minds anything that they might have heard or read in regard to the affair, and to abandon all prejudice on either side, he described at some length the circumstances which led up to the present prosecution. he spoke of the arrest and committal of the marquis of queensberry on a charge of criminal libel and of the collapse of the case for the prosecution when the case was heard at the old bailey. he alluded to the subsequent inevitable arrest of wilde and taylor and of the committal of both prisoners to take their trial at the present sessions. wilde, he said, was well-known as a dramatic author and generally, as a literary man of unusual attainments. he had resided, until his arrest, at a house in tite street, chelsea, where his wife lived with the children of the marriage. taylor had had numerous addresses, but for the time covered by these charges, had dwelt in little college street, and afterwards in chapel street. although wilde had a house in tite street, he had at different times occupied rooms in st. james's place, the savoy hotel and the albermarle hotel. it would be shown that wilde and taylor were in league for certain purposes and mr. gill then explained the specific allegations against the prisoners. wilde, he asserted, had not hesitated, soon after his first introduction to taylor, to explain to him to what purpose he wished to put their acquaintance. taylor was familiar with a number of young men who were in the habit of giving their bodies, or selling them, to other men for the purpose of sodomy. it appeared that there was a number of youths engaged in this abominable traffic and that one and all of them were known to taylor, who went about and sought out for them men of means who were willing to pay heavily for the indulgence of their favorite vice. mr. gill endeavoured to show that taylor himself was given to sodomy and that he had himself indulged in these filthy practices with the same youths as he agreed to procure for wilde. the visits of the latter to taylor's rooms were touched upon and the circumstances attending these visits were laid bare. on nearly every occasion when wilde called, a young man was present with whom he committed the act of sodomy. the names of various young men connected with these facts were mentioned in turn and the case of the two parkers was given as a sample of many others on which the learned counsel preferred to dwell with less minuteness. when taylor gave up his rooms in little college street and took up his abode in chapel street, he left behind him a number of compromising papers, which would be produced in evidence against the prisoners; and he should submit in due course that there was abundant corroboration of the statements of the youths involved. mr. gill pointed out the peculiarities in the case of frederick atkins. this youth had accompanied the prisoner wilde to paris, and there could be no doubt whatever that the latter had in the most systematic way endeavoured to influence this young man's mind towards vicious courses and had endeavoured to mould him to his own depraved will. the relations which had existed between the prisoner and another lad, one alfred wood, were also fully described and the learned counsel made special allusion to the remarkable manner in which wilde had lavished money upon wood prior to the departure of that youth for america. mr. gill referred to yet another of wilde's youthful familiars--namely: sidney mavor--in regard to whom, he said, the jury must form their own conclusions after they had heard the evidence. among other things to which he would ask them to direct careful attention was a letter written in pencil by taylor, the prisoner, to this youth. the communication ran: "dear sid, i cannot wait any longer. come at once and see oscar at tite street. i am, yours ever, alfred taylor." the use of the christian name of wilde in so familiar a way suggested the nature of the acquaintance which existed between mavor and wilde, who was old enough to be his father. in conclusion, mr. gill asked the jury to give the case, painful as it must necessarily be, their most earnest and careful consideration. both wilde and taylor paid keen attention to the opening statement. they exchanged no word together and it was observed that wilde kept as far apart from his companion in the dock, as he possibly could. the first witness called was charles parker. he proved to be a rather smartly-attired youth, fresh-coloured, and of course, clean-shaven. he was very pale and appeared uneasy. he stated that he had first met taylor at the st. james' restaurant. the latter had got into conversation with him and the young fellows with him, and had insisted on "standing" drinks. conversation of a certain nature passed between them. taylor called attention to the prostitutes who frequent piccadilly circus and remarked: "i can't understand sensible men wasting their money on painted trash like that. many do, though. but there are a few who know better. now, you could get money in a certain way easily enough, if you cared to." the witness had formerly been a valet and he was at this time out of employment. he understood to what taylor alluded and made a coarse reply. mr. gill.--"i am obliged to ask you what it was you actually said." witness.--"i do not like to say." mr. gill.--"you were less squeamish at the time, i daresay. i ask you for the words." witness.--"i said that if any old gentleman with money took a fancy to me, i was agreeable. i was terribly hard up." mr. gill.--"what did taylor say?" witness.--"he laughed and said that men far cleverer, richer and better than i preferred things of that kind." mr. gill.--"did taylor mention the prisoner wilde?" witness.--"not at that time. he arranged to meet me again and i consented." mr. gill.--"where did you first meet wilde?" witness.--"at the solferino restaurant." mr. gill.--"tell me what transpired." witness.--"taylor said he could introduce me to a man who was good for plenty of money. wilde came in later and i was formally introduced. dinner was served for four in a private room." mr. gill.--"who made the fourth?" witness.--"my brother, william parker. i had promised taylor that he should accompany me." mr. gill.--"what happened during dinner?" witness.--"there was plenty of champagne and brandy and coffee. we all partook of it." mr. gill.--"of what nature was the conversation?" witness.--"general, at first. nothing was then said as to the purposes for which we had come together." mr. gill.--"and then?" witness.--"wilde invited me to go to his rooms at the savoy hotel. only he and i went, leaving my brother and taylor behind. wilde and i went in a cab. at the savoy we went to his--wilde's--sitting-room." mr. gill.--"more drink was offered you there?" witness.--"yes; we had liqueurs." mr. gill.--"let us know what occurred." witness.--"he committed the act of sodomy upon me." mr. gill.--"with your consent?" the witness did not reply. further examined, he said that wilde on that occasion had given him two pounds and asked him to call upon him again a week later. he did so, the same thing occurred and wilde then gave him three pounds. the witness next described a visit to little college street, to taylor's rooms. wilde used to call there and the same thing occurred as at the savoy. for a fortnight or three weeks the witness lodged in park-walk, close to taylor's house. there too he was visited by wilde. the witness gave a detailed account of the disgusting proceedings there. he said, "i was asked by wilde to imagine that i was a woman and that he was my lover. i had to keep up this illusion. i used to sit on his knees and he used to play with my privates as a man might amuse himself with a girl." wilde insisted in this filthy make-believe being kept up. wilde gave him a silver cigarette case and a gold ring, both of which articles he pawned. the prisoner said, "i don't suppose boys are different to girls in acquiring presents from them who are fond of them." he remembered wilde having rooms at st. james's place and the witness visited him there. mr. gill.--"where else have you been with wilde?" witness.--"to kettner's restaurant." mr. gill.--"what happened there?" witness.--"we dined there. we always had a lot of wine. wilde would talk of poetry and art during dinner, and of the old roman days." mr. gill.--"on one occasion you proceeded from kettner's to wilde's house?" witness.--"yes. we went to tite street. it was very late at night. wilde let himself and me in with a latchkey. i remained the night, sleeping with the prisoner, and he himself let me out in the early morning before anyone was about." mr. gill.--"where else have you visited this man?" witness.--"at the albemarle hotel. the same thing happened then." mr. gill.--"where did your last interview take place?" witness.--"i last saw wilde in trafalgar square about nine months ago. he was in a hansom and saw me. he alighted from the hansom." mr. gill.--"what did he say?" witness.--"he said, 'well, you are looking as pretty as ever.' he did not ask me to go anywhere with him then." the witness went on to say that during the period of his acquaintance with wilde, he frequently saw taylor, and the latter quite understood and was aware of the motive of the acquaintance. at the little college street rooms he had frequently seen wood, atkins and scaife, and he knew that these youths were "in the same line, at the same game," as himself. in the august previous to this trial he was at a certain house in fitzroy square. orgies of the most disgraceful kind used to happen there. the police made a raid upon the premises and he and the taylors were arrested. from that time he had ceased all relationship with the latter. since that event he had enlisted, and while away in the country he was seen by someone representing lord queensberry and made a statement. the evidence of this witness created a great sensation in court, and it was increased when sir edward clarke rose to cross-examine. this began after the adjournment. sir edward clarke.--"when were you seen in the country in reference to this case?" witness.--"towards the end of march." sir edward.--"who saw you?" witness.--"mr. russell." sir edward.--"was there no examination before that?" witness.--"no." sir edward.--"did you state at bow street that you received £ not to say anything about a certain case?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"now, i do not ask you to give me the name of the gentleman from whom this money was extorted, but i ask you to give me the name of the agents." witness.--"wood & allen." sir edward.--"where were you living then?" witness.--"in cranford street." sir edward.--"when did the incident occur in consequence of which you received that £ ?" witness.--"about two weeks before." sir edward.--"where?" witness.--"at camera square." sir edward.--"i'll leave that question. you say positively that mr. wilde committed sodomy with you at the savoy?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"but you have been in the habit of accusing other gentlemen of the same offence?" witness.--"never, unless it has been done." sir edward.--"i submit that you blackmail gentlemen?" witness.--"no, sir, i have accepted money, but it has been offered to me to pay me for the offence. i have been solicited. i have never suggested this offence to gentlemen." sir edward.--"was the door locked during the time you describe?" witness.--"i do not think so. it was late and the prisoner told the waiter not to come up again." the next witness was william parker. this youth corroborated his brother's evidence. he said he was present at the dinner with taylor and wilde described by the last witness. wilde paid all his attention to his--witness's--brother. he, wilde, often fed his brother off his own fork or out of his own spoon. his brother accepted a preserved cherry from wilde's own mouth--he took it into his and this trick was repeated three or four times. his brother went off with the prisoner to his rooms at the savoy and the witness remained behind with taylor, who said, "your brother is lucky. oscar does not care what he pays if he fancies a chap." ellen grant was the landlady of the house in little college street at which taylor lodged. she gave evidence as to the visits of various lords and stated that wilde was a fairly frequent caller. he would remain for hours and one of the lads was generally closeted with him. once she tried the door and found it locked. she heard whispering and laughing and her suspicions were aroused though she did not like to take steps in the matter. lucy rumsby, who let a room to charles parker at chelsea, gave rather similar evidence, but wilde does not appear to have called there more than once and that occasion it was to take out parker, who went away with him. sophia gray, taylor's landlady in chapel street, also gave evidence. she amused the court by the emphatic and outspoken way in which she explained that she had no idea of the nature of what was going on. several young men were constantly calling upon taylor and were alone with him for a long time, but he used to say that they were clerks for whom he hoped to find employment. the prisoner wilde was a frequent visitor. but all this latter evidence paled as regards sinister significance beside that furnished by a young man named alfred wood. this young wretch admitted to acts of the grossest indecency with oscar wilde. he said, "wilde saw his influence to induce me to consent. he made me nearly drunk. he used to put his hand inside my trousers beneath the table at dinner and compel me to do the same to him. afterwards, i used to lie on a sofa with him. it was a long time, however, before i would allow him to actually do the act of sodomy. he gave me money to go to america." sir edward clarke submitted this self-disgraced witness to a very vigorous cross-examination. sir edward.--"what have you been doing since your return from america?" witness.--"well, i have not done much." sir edward.--"have you done anything?" witness.--"i have had no regular employment." sir edward.--"i thought not." witness.--"i could not get anything to do." sir edward.--"as a matter of fact, you have had no respectable work for over three years?" witness.--"well, no." sir edward.--"did not you, in conjunction with allen, succeed in getting £ from a gentleman?" witness.--"yes; but he was guilty with allen." sir edward.--"how much did you receive?" witness.--"i advised allen how to proceed. he gave me £ ." sir edward.--"who else got any of this money?" witness.--"parker. charles parker got some and also wood." thos. price was the next witness. this man was a waiter at a private hotel in st. james's and he testified to wilde's visits there and to the number of young men, "of quite inferior station," who called to see him. then came frank atkins, whose evidence is given in full. mr. avory.--"how old are you?" witness.--"i am years old." mr. avory.--"what is your business?" witness.--"i have been a billiard-marker." mr. avory.--"you are doing nothing now?" witness.--"no." mr. avory.--"who introduced you to wilde?" witness.--"i was introduced to him by schwabe in november, ." mr. avory.--"have you met lord alfred douglas?" witness.--"i have. i dined with him and wilde on several occasions. they pressed me to go to paris." mr. avory.--"you went with them?" witness.--"yes." mr. avory.--"you told wilde on one occasion while in paris that you had spent the previous night with a woman?" witness.--"no. i had arranged to meet a girl at the moulin rouge, and wilde told me not to go. however, i did go, but the woman was not there." mr. avory.--"you returned to london with wilde?" witness.--"yes." mr. avory.--"did he give you money?" witness.--"he gave me a cigarette-case." mr. avory.--"you were then the best of friends?" witness.--"he called me fred and i addressed him as oscar. we liked each other, but there was no harm in it." mr. avory.--"did you visit wilde on your return?" witness.--"yes, at tite street. wilde also called upon me at osnaburgh street. on the latter occasion one of the parkers was present." mr. avory.--"you know most of these youths. do you know sidney mavor?" witness.--"only by sight." sir edward clarke.--"were you ill at osnaburgh street?" witness.--"yes, i had small-pox and was removed to the hospital ship. before i went i wrote to parker asking him to write to wilde and request him to come and see me, and he did so." sir edward.--"you are sure you returned from paris with mr. wilde?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"did any impropriety ever take place between you and wilde?" witness.--"never." sir edward.--"have you ever lived with a man named burton?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"what was he?" witness.--"a bookmaker." sir edward.--"have you and this burton been engaged in the business of blackmailing?" witness.--"i have a professional name. i have sometimes called myself denny." sir edward.--"has this man burton, to your knowledge, obtained money from gentlemen by accusing them or threatening to accuse them of certain offences?" witness.--"not to my knowledge." sir edward.--"not in respect to a certain birmingham gentleman?" witness.--"no." sir edward.--"that being your answer, i must particularize. on june th, , did you and burton obtain a large sum of money from a birmingham gentleman?" witness.--"certainly not." sir edward.--"then i ask you if in june, ' , burton did not take rooms for you in tatchbrook street?" witness.--"yes; and he lived with me there." sir edward.--"you were in the habit of taking men home with you then?" witness.--"not for the purposes of blackmail." sir edward.--"well, for indecent purposes." witness.--"no." sir edward.--"give me the names of two or three of the people whom you have taken home to that address?" witness.--"i cannot. i forget them." sir edward.--"now i am going to ask you a direct question, and i ask you to be careful in your reply. were you and burton ever taken to rochester road police station?" witness.--"no." sir edward.--"well, was burton?" witness.--"i think not--at least, he was not, to my knowledge." sir edward.--"did the birmingham gentleman give to burton a cheque for £ drawn in the name of s. denis or denny, your own name?" witness.--"not to my knowledge." sir edward.--"about two years ago, did you and someone else go to the victoria hotel with two american gentlemen?" witness.--"no, i did not. never." sir edward.--"i think you did. be careful in your replies. did burton extort money from these gentlemen?" witness.--"i have never been there at all." sir edward.--"have you ever been to anderton's hotel and stayed a night with a gentleman, whom you threatened the next morning with exposure?" witness.--"i have not." sir edward.--"when did you go abroad with burton?" witness.--"i think in february, ." sir edward.--"when did you last go with him abroad?" witness.--"last spring." sir edward.--"how long were you away?" witness.--"oh! about a month." sir edward.--"where did you stay?" witness.--"we went to nice and stayed at gaze's hotel." sir edward.--"you were having a holiday?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"which you continued with business in your usual way?" the witness did not reply. sir edward.--"what were you and burton doing at nice?" witness.--"simply enjoying ourselves." sir edward.--"during this visit of enjoyment you and burton fell out, i think." witness.--"oh, dear, no!" sir edward.--"yet you separated from this burton after that visit?" witness.--"i gave up being a bookmaker's clerk." sir edward.--"what name did burton use in the ring?" witness.--"watson was his betting name." sir edward.--"did you blackmail a gentleman at nice?" witness.--"no." sir edward.--"are you sure there was no quarrel between you and burton at nice?" witness.--"there may have been a little one, but i don't remember anything of the kind." mr. grain then put some questions to the witness. mr. grain.--"did you go to scarbro' about a year ago?" witness.--"yes." mr. grain.--"did burton go with you?" witness.--"yes." mr. grain.--"what was your business there?" witness.--"i was engaged professionally. i sang at the aquarium there." mr. grain.--"did you get acquainted while there with a foreign gentleman, a count?" witness.--"not acquainted." at this moment mr. grain wrote a name on a piece of paper and handed it up to the witness, who read it. mr. grain.--"do you know that gentleman?" witness.--"no, i heard his name mentioned at scarborough." mr. grain.--"then you never spoke to him?" witness.--"no." mr. grain.--"was not a large sum--about £ --paid to you or burton by that gentleman about this time last year?" witness.--"no." mr. grain.--"had you any engagement at the scarborough aquarium?" witness.--"yes." mr. grain.--"how much did you receive a week?" witness.--"i was paid four pounds ten shillings." mr. grain.--"how long were you there?" witness.--"three weeks." mr. grain.--"have you ever lived in buckingham palace road?" witness.--"i have." mr. grain wrote at this stage on another slip of paper and it was handed up to the witness-box. mr. grain.--"look at that piece of paper. do you know the name written there?" witness.--"i never saw it before." mr. grain.--"when were you living in buckingham palace road?" witness.--"in ." mr. grain.--"do you remember being introduced to an elderly man in the city?" witness.--"no." mr. grain.--"did you take him to your room, permit him to commit sodomy with and upon you, rob him of his pocket-book and threaten him with exposure if he complained?" witness.--"no." mr. grain.--"did you threaten to extort money from him because he had agreed to accompany you home for a foul purpose?" witness.--"no." mr. grain.--"did you ever stay at a place in the suburbs on the south western railway with burton?" witness.--"no." mr. grain.--"what other addresses have you had in london during the last three years?" witness.--"none but those i have told you." this concluded the evidence of this witness for the time being. mary applegate, employed as a housekeeper at osnaburgh street, said atkins used to lodge there and left about a month ago. wilde visited him at this house on two occasions that she was cognisant of. she stated that one of the housemaids came to her and complained of the state of the sheets of the bed in which atkins slept after wilde's first visit. the sheets were stained in a peculiar way. it may be explained here, in order to make the witness's evidence understood, that the sodomistic act has much the same effect as an enema inserted up the rectum. there is an almost immediate discharge, though not, of course, to the extent produced by the enema operation. the next witness called was sidney mavor, a smooth-faced young fellow with dark hair and eyes. he stated that he was now in partnership with a friend in the city. he first made the acquaintance of the prisoner taylor at the gaiety theatre in . he afterwards visited him at little college street. taylor was very civil and friendly and introduced him to different people. the witness did not think at that time that taylor had any ulterior designs. one day, however, taylor said to him, "i know a man, in an influential position, who could be of great use to you, mavor. he likes young men when they're modest and nice in manners and appearance. i'll introduce you." it was arranged that they should dine at kettner's restaurant the next evening. he called for taylor, who said, "i am glad you've made yourself pretty. mr. wilde likes nice, clean boys." that was the first time wilde's name was mentioned. arrived at the restaurant, they were shown into a private room. a man named schwabe and wilde and another gentleman came in later. he believed the other gentleman to be lord alfred douglas. the conversation at dinner was, the witness thought, peculiar, but he knew wilde was a bohemian and he did not think the talk strange. he was placed next to wilde, who used occasionally to pull his ear or chuck him under the chin, but he did nothing that was actually objectionable. he, wilde, said to taylor, "our little lad has pleasing manners; we must see more of him." wilde took his address and the witness soon after received a silver cigarette-case inscribed "sidney, from o. w. october ." "it was," said the innocent-looking witness, "quite a surprise to me!" in the same month he received a letter making an appointment at the albemarle hotel and he went there and saw wilde. the witness explained that after he saw mr. russell, the solicitor, on march th, he did not visit taylor, nor did he receive a letter from taylor. sir edward clarke.--"with regard to a certain dinner at which you were present. was the gentleman who gave the dinner of some social position?" witness.--"yes." mr. grain.--"taylor sent or gave you some cheques, i believe?" witness.--"he did." mr. grain.--"were they in payment of money you had advanced to him, merely?" witness.--"yes." mr. c. f. gill.--"the gentleman--'of position'--who gave the dinner was quite a young man, was he not?" witness.--"yes." mr. gill.--"was taylor, and wilde also, present?" witness.--"yes." mr. gill.--"in fact, it was their first meeting, was it not?" witness.--"so i understand." mavor being dismissed from the box, edward shelley was the next witness. he gave his age as twenty-one and said that in he was employed by a firm of publishers in vigo street. at that time wilde's books were being published by that firm. wilde was in the habit of coming to the firm's place of business and he seemed to take note of the witness and generally stopped and spoke to him for a few moments. as wilde was leaving vigo street one day he invited him to dine with him at the albemarle hotel. the witness kept the appointment--he was proud of the invitation--and they dined together in a public room. wilde was very kind and attentive, pressed witness to drink, said he could get him on and finally invited him to go with him to brighton, cromer, and paris. the witness did not go. wilde made him a present of a set of his writings, including the notorious and objectionable "dorian gray." wilde wrote something in the books. "to one i like well," or something to that effect, but the witness removed the pages bearing the inscription. he only did that after the decision in the queenberry case. he was ashamed of the inscriptions and felt that they were open to misconception. his father objected to his friendship with wilde. at first the witness thought that the latter was a kind of philanthropist, fond of youth and eager to be of assistance to young men of any promise. certain speeches and actions on the part of wilde caused him to alter this opinion. pressed as to the nature of the actions he complained of, he said that wilde once kissed him and put his arms round him. the witness objected vigorously, according to his own statement, and wilde later said he was sorry and that he had drank too much wine. about two years ago--in --he wrote a certain letter to wilde. sir edward clarke.--"on what subject?" witness.--"it was to break off the acquaintance." sir edward.--"how did the letter begin?" witness.--"it began 'sir'." sir edward.--"give me the gist of it." witness.--"i believe i said i have suffered more from my acquaintance with you than you are ever likely to know of. i further said that he was an immoral man, and that i would never, if i could help it, see him again." sir edward.--"did you ever see him again after that?" witness.--"i did." sir edward.--"why did you go and dine with mr. wilde a second time?" witness.--"i suppose i was a young fool. i tried to think the best of him." sir edward.--"you seem to have put the worst possible construction on his liking for you. did your friendly relations with mr. wilde remain unbroken until the time you wrote that letter in march, ?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"have you seen mr. wilde since then?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"after that letter?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"where did you see him?" witness.--"i went to see him in tite street." sir edward clarke then proceeded to question the witness with regard to letters which he had written to wilde both before and after the visits to the albemarle hotel, and in the course of his replies the witness said that he formed the opinion that "wilde was really sorry for what he had done." sir edward clarke.--"what do you mean by 'what he had done'?" witness.--"his improper behaviour with young men." sir edward.--"yet you say he never practised any actual improprieties upon you?" witness.--"because he saw that i would never allow anything of the kind. he did not disguise from me what he wanted, or what his usual customs with young men were." sir edward.--"yet you wrote him grateful letters breathing apparent friendship?" witness.--"for the reason i have given." sir edward.--"well, we'll leave that question. now, tell me, why did you leave the vigo street firm of publishers?" witness.--"because it got to be known that i was friendly with oscar wilde." sir edward.--"did you leave the firm of your own accord?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"why?" witness.--"people employed there--my fellow-clerks--chaffed me about my acquaintance with wilde." sir edward.--"in what way?" witness.--"they implied scandalous things. they called me 'mrs. wilde' and 'miss oscar.'" sir edward.--"so you left?" witness.--"i resolved to put an end to an intolerable position." sir edward.--"you were in bad odour at home too, i think?" witness.--"yes, a little." sir edward.--"i put it to you that your father requested you to leave his house?" witness.--"yes. he strongly objected to my friendship with wilde." sir edward.--"you were uneasy in your mind as to wilde's object?" witness.--"that is so." sir edward.--"when did your mental balance, if i can put it so, recover itself?" witness.--"about october or november last." sir edward.--"and have you remained well ever since?" witness.--"i think so." sir edward.--"yet i find that in january of this year you were in serious trouble?" witness.--"in what way?" sir edward.--"you were arrested for an assault upon your father?" witness.--"yes, i was." sir edward.--"where were you taken?" witness.--"to the fulham police station." sir edward.--"you were offered bail?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"did you send to wilde and ask him to bail you out?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"what happened?" witness.--"in an hour my father went to the station and i was liberated." this witness now being released, the previous witness, atkins, was recalled and a very sensational incident arose. during the luncheon interval, mr. robert humphreys, wilde's solicitor, had been busy. not satisfied with atkins's replies to the questions put to him in cross-examination, he had searched the records at scotland yard and rochester road and made some startling discoveries. a folded document was handed up to the judge. mr. justice charles, who read it at once, assumed a severe expression. the document was understood to be a copy of a record from rochester road. atkins, looking very sheepish and uncomfortable, re-entered the witness-box and the court prepared itself for some startling disclosures. sir edward clarke.--"now, i warn you to attend and to be very careful. i am going to ask you a question; think before you reply." the judge.--"just be careful now, atkins." sir edward.--"on june th, , you were living at tatchbrook street?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"in pimlico?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"james burton was living there with you?" witness.--"he was." sir edward.--"were you both taken by two constables, a & a--you may have forgotten the officer's numbers--to rochester road police station and charged with demanding money from a gentleman with menaces. you had threatened to accuse him of a disgusting offence?" witness.--(huskily)--"i was not charged with that." sir edward.--"were you taken to the police station?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"you, and burton?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"what were you charged with?" witness.--"with striking a gentleman." sir edward.--"in what place was it alleged this happened?" witness.--"at the card-table." sir edward.--"in your own room at tatchbrook street?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"what was the name of the gentleman?" witness.--"i don't know." sir edward.--"how long had you known him?" witness.--"only that night." sir edward.--"where had you met him?" witness.--"at the alhambra." sir edward.--"had you seen him before that time?" witness.--"not to speak to." sir edward.--"meeting him at the alhambra, did he accompany you to tatchbrook street?" witness.--"yes, to play cards." sir edward.--"not to accuse him, when there, of attempting to indecently handle you?" witness.--"no." sir edward.--"was burton there?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"anyone else?" witness.--"i don't think so." sir edward.--"was the gentleman sober?" witness.--"oh, yes." sir edward.--"what room did you go into?" witness.--"the sitting-room." sir edward.--"who called the police?" witness.--"i don't know." sir edward.--"the landlady, perhaps?" witness.--"i believe she did." sir edward.--"did the landlady give you and burton into custody?" witness.--"no; nobody did." sir edward.--"some person must have done. who did?" witness.--"all i can say is, i did not hear anybody." sir edward.--"at any rate you were taken to rochester road, and the gentleman went with you?" witness.--"yes." police constable a was here called into court and took up a position close to the witness-box. he gazed curiously at atkins, who wriggled about and eyed him uneasily. sir edward.--"now i ask you in the presence of this officer, was the statement made at the police-station that you and the gentleman had been in bed together?" witness.--"i don't think so." sir edward.--"think before you speak; it will be better for you. did not the landlady actually come into the room and see you and the gentleman naked on or in the bed together?" witness.--"i don't remember that she did." sir edward.--"you may as well tell me about it. you know. was that statement made?" witness.--"well, yes it was." sir edward.--"you had endeavoured to force money out of this gentleman?" witness.--"i asked him for some money." sir edward.--"at the police-station the gentleman refused to prosecute?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"so you and burton were liberated?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"about two hours ago, atkins, i asked you these very questions and you swore upon your oath that you had not been in custody at all, and had never been taken to rochester road police station. how came you to tell me those lies?" witness.--"i did not remember it." atkins looked somewhat crestfallen and abashed. yet some of his former brazen impudence still gleamed upon his now scarlet face. he heaved a deep sigh of relief when told to leave the court by the judge, who pointed sternly to the doorway. of all the creatures associated with wilde in these affairs, this atkins was the lowest and most contemptible. for some years he had been in the habit of blackmailing men whom he knew to be inclined to perverted sexual vices, and his was a well-known figure up west. he constantly frequented the promenades of the music-halls. he "made up" his eyes and lips, wore corsets and affected an effeminate air. he was an infallible judge of the class of man he wished to meet and rarely made a mistake. he would follow a likely subject about, stumble against him as though by accident and make an elaborate apology in mincing, female tones. once in conversation with his "mark," he speedily contrived to make the latter aware that he did not object to certain proposals. he invariably permitted the beastly act before attempting blackmail, partly because it afforded him a stronger hold over his "victim" and partly because he rejoiced in the disgusting thing for its own sake. he was the butt of the ladies of the pavement round piccadilly circus, who used to shout after him, enquire sarcastically "if he had got off last night," and if his "toff hadn't bilked him." he would affect to laugh and pass the thing off with a joke; but, to his intimates, he assumed a great loathing for women of this class, whom he appeared to regard as dangerous obstacles to the exercise of his own foul trade. on several occasions he was assaulted by these women. to return to the trial of wilde and taylor. as soon as the enquiry was resumed, mr. charles mathews went down into the cells and had an interview with the prisoner wilde, and on his return entered into serious consultation with his leader, sir edward clarke. in the meanwhile, taylor conversed with his counsel, mr. grain, across the rail of the dock. it was felt that an important announcement bearing on the conduct of the case was likely to be made. it came from mr. gill, representing the prosecution. as soon as mr. justice charles had taken his seat, the prosecuting counsel rose and said that having considered the indictment, he had decided not to ask for a verdict in the two counts charging the prisoners with conspiracy. subdued expressions of surprise were audible from the public gallery when mr. gill delivered himself of this dramatic announcement, and the sensation was strengthened a little later when sir edward clarke informed the jury that both the prisoners desired to give evidence and would be called as witnesses. these matters having been determined upon, sir edward clarke rose and proceeded to make some severe criticisms upon the conduct of the prosecution in what he referred to as the literary part of the case. hidden meanings, he said, had been most unjustly "read" into the poetical and prose works of his client and it seemed that an endeavour, though a futile one, was to be made to convict mr. wilde because of a prurient construction which had been placed by his enemies upon certain of his works. he alluded particularly to "dorian gray," which was an allegory, pure and simple. according to the rather musty and far-fetched notions of the prosecution, it was an impure and simple allegory, but wilde could not fairly be judged, he said, by the standards of other men, for he was a literary eccentric, though intellectually a giant, and he did not profess to be guided by the same sentiments as animated other and less highly-endowed men. he then called mr. wilde. the prisoner rose with seeming alacrity from his place in the dock, walked with a firm tread and dignified demeanour to the witness-box, and leaning across the rail in the same easy and not ungraceful attitude that he assumed when examined by mr. carson in the libel action, prepared to answer the questions addressed to him by his counsel. wilde was first interrogated as to his previous career. in the year , he had married a miss lloyd, and from that time to the present he had continued to live with his wife at , tite street, chelsea. he also occupied rooms in st. james's place, which were rented for the purposes of his literary labours, as it was quite impossible to secure quiet and mental repose at his own house, when his two young sons were at home. he had heard the evidence in this case against himself, and asserted that there was no shadow of a foundation for the charges of indecent behaviour alleged against himself. mr. gill then rose to cross-examine and the court at once became on the _qui vive_. wilde seemed perfectly calm and did not change his attitude, or tone of polite deprecation. mr. gill.--"you are acquainted with a publication entitled 'the chameleon'?" witness.--"very well indeed." mr. gill.--"contributors to that journal are friends of yours?" witness.--"that is so." mr. gill.--"i believe that lord alfred douglas was a frequent contributor?" witness.--"hardly that, i think. he wrote some verses occasionally for the 'chameleon,' and, indeed, for other papers." mr. gill.--"the poems in question were somewhat peculiar?" witness.--"they certainly were not mere commonplaces like so much that is labelled poetry." mr. gill.--"the tone of them met with your critical approval?" witness.--"it was not for me to approve or disapprove. i leave that to the reviews." mr. gill.--"at the trial queensberry and wilde you described them as 'beautiful poems'?" witness.--"i said something tantamount to that. the verses were original in theme and construction, and i admired them." mr. gill.--"in one of the sonnets by lord a. douglas a peculiar use is made of the word 'shame'?" witness.--"i have noticed the line you refer to." mr. gill.--"what significance would you attach to the use of that word in connection with the idea of the poem?" witness.--"i can hardly take it upon myself to explain the thoughts of another man." mr. gill.--"you were remarkably friendly with the author? perhaps he vouchsafed you an explanation?" witness.--"on one occasion he did." mr. gill.--"i should like to hear it." witness.--"lord alfred explained that the word 'shame' was used in the sense of modesty, _i. e._ to feel shame or not to feel shame." mr. gill.--"you can, perhaps, understand that such verses as these would not be acceptable to the reader with an ordinarily balanced mind?" witness.--"i am not prepared to say. it appears to me to be a question of taste, temperament and individuality. i should say that one man's poetry is another man's poison!" (loud laughter.) mr. gill.--"i daresay! there is another sonnet. what construction can be put on the line, 'i am the love that dare not speak its name'?" witness.--"i think the writer's meaning is quite unambiguous. the love he alluded to was that between an elder and younger man, as between david and jonathan; such love as plato made the basis of his philosophy; such as was sung in the sonnets of shakespeare and michael angelo; that deep spiritual affection that was as pure as it was perfect. it pervaded great works of art like those of michael angelo and shakespeare. such as 'passeth the love of woman.' it was beautiful, it was pure, it was noble, it was intellectual--this love of an elder man with his experience of life, and the younger with all the joy and hope of life before him." the witness made this speech with great emphasis and some signs of emotion, and there came from the gallery, at its conclusion, a medley of applause and hisses which his lordship at once ordered to be suppressed. mr. gill.--"i wish to call your attention to the style of your correspondence with lord a. douglas." witness.--"i am ready. i am never ashamed of the style of any of my writings." mr. gill.--"you are fortunate--or shall i say shameless? i refer to passages in two letters in particular." witness.--"kindly quote them." mr. gill.--"in letter number one. you use this expression: 'your slim gilt soul,' and you refer to lord alfred's "rose-leaf lips." witness.--"the letter is really a sort of prose sonnet in answer to an acknowledgement of one i had received from lord alfred." mr. gill.--"do you think that an ordinarily-constituted being would address such expressions to a younger man?" witness.--"i am not, happily, i think, an ordinarily constituted being." mr. gill.--"it is agreeable to be able to agree with you, mr. wilde." (laughter). witness.--"there is, i assure you, nothing in either letter of which i need be ashamed." mr. gill.--"you have heard the evidence of the lad charles parker?" witness.--"yes." mr. gill.--"of atkins?" witness.--"yes." mr. gill.--"of shelley?" witness.--"yes." mr. gill.--"and these witnesses have, you say, lied throughout?" witness.--"their evidence as to my association with them, as to the dinners taking place and the small presents i gave them, is mostly true. but there is not a particle of truth in that part of the evidence which alleged improper behaviour." mr. gill.--"why did you take up with these youths?" witness.--"i am a lover of youth." (laughter). mr. gill.--"you exalt youth as a sort of god?" witness.--"i like to study the young in everything. there is something fascinating in youthfulness." mr. gill.--"so you would prefer puppies to dogs, and kittens to cats?" (laughter). witness.--"i think so. i should enjoy, for instance, the society of a beardless, briefless, barrister quite as much as that of the most accomplished q. c." (loud laughter). mr. gill.--"i hope the former, whom i represent in large numbers, will appreciate the compliment." (more laughter). "these youths were much inferior to you in station?" witness.--"i never enquired, nor did i care, what station they occupied. i found them, for the most part, bright and entertaining. i found their conversation a change. it acted as a kind of mental tonic." mr. gill.--"you saw nothing peculiar or suggestive in the arrangement of taylor's rooms?" witness.--"i cannot say that i did. they were bohemian. that is all. i have seen stranger rooms." mr. gill.--"you never suspected the relations that might exist between taylor and his young friends?" witness.--"i had no need to suspect anything. taylor's relations with his friends appeared to me to be quite normal." mr. gill.--"you have attended to the evidence of the witness mavor?" witness.--"i have." mr. gill.--"is it true or false?" witness.--"it is mainly true, but false inferences have been drawn from it as from most of the evidence. truth may be found, i believe, at the bottom of a well. it is, apparently difficult to find it in a court of law." (laughter.) mr. gill.--"nevertheless we endeavour to extract it. did the witness mavor write you expressing a wish to break off the acquaintance?" witness.--"i received a rather unaccountable and impertinent letter from him for which he afterwards expressed great regret." mr. gill.--"why should he have written it if your conduct had altogether been blameless?" witness.--"i do not profess to be able to explain the motives of most of the witnesses. mavor may have been told some falsehood about me. his father was greatly incensed at his conduct at this time, and, i believe, attributed his son's erratic courses to his friendship with me. i do not think mavor altogether to blame. pressure was brought to bear upon him and he was not then quite right in his mind." mr. gill.--"you made handsome presents to these young fellows?" witness.--"pardon me, i differ. i gave two or three of them a cigarette-case. boys of that class smoke a good deal of cigarettes. i have a weakness for presenting my acquitances with cigarette-cases." mr. gill.--"rather an expensive habit if indulged in indiscriminately." witness.--"less extravagant than giving jewelled-garters to ladies." (laughter). when a few more unimportant questions had been asked, wilde left the witness-box, returning to the dock with the same air of what may be described as serious easiness. the impression created by his replies was not, upon the whole, favorable to his cause. his place was taken by the prisoner taylor. he said that he was thirty-three years of age and was educated at marlborough. when he was twenty-one he came into £ , . in a few years he ran through this fortune, and at about the time he went to chapel street, he was made a bankrupt. the charges made against him of misconduct were entirely unfounded. he was asked point-blank if he had not been given to sodomy from his early youth, and if he had not been expelled from a public-school for being caught in a compromising situation with a small boy in the lavatory. taylor was also asked if he had not actually obtained a living since his bankruptcy by procuring lads and young men for rich gentlemen whom he knew to be given to this vice. he was also asked if he had not extracted large sums of money from wealthy men by threatening to accuse them of immoralities. to all these plain questions he returned in direct answer, "no." after the luncheon interval, sir edward clark rose to address the jury in defence of oscar wilde. he began by carefully analysing the evidence. he declared that the wretches who had come forward to admit their own disgrace were shameless creatures incapable of one manly thought or one manly action. they were, without exception, blackmailers. they lived by luring men to their rooms, generally, on the pretence that a beautiful girl would be provided for them on their arrival. once in their clutches, these victims could only get away by paying a large sum of money unless they were prepared to face and deny the most disgraceful charges. innocent men constantly paid rather than face the odium attached to the breath even of such scandals. they had, moreover, wives and children, daughters, maybe or a sister whose honour or name they were obliged to consider. therefore they usually submitted to be fleeced and in this way, this wretched wood and the abject atkins had been able to go about the west-end well-fed and well-dressed. these youths had been introduced to wilde. they were pleasant-spoken enough and outwardly decent in their language and conduct. wilde was taken in by them and permitted himself to enjoy their society. he did not defend wilde for this; he had unquestionably shown imprudence, but a man of his temperament could not be judged by the standards of the average individual. these youths had come forward to make these charges in a conspiracy to ruin his client. was it likely, he asked, that a man of wilde's cleverness would put himself so completely in the power of these harpies as he would be if guilty of only a tenth of the enormities they alleged against him? if wilde practised these acts so openly and so flagrantly--if he allowed the facts to come to the knowledge of so many--then he was a fool who was not fit to be at large. if the evidence was to be credited, these acts of gross indecency which culminated in actual crime were done in so open a manner as to compel the attention of landladies and housemaids. he was not himself--and he thanked heaven for it--versed in the acts of those who committed these crimes against nature. he did not know under what circumstances they could be practised. but he believed that this was a vice which, because of the horror and repulsion it excited, because of the fury it provoked against those guilty of it, was conducted with the utmost possible secrecy. he respectfully submitted that no jury could find a man guilty on the evidence of these tainted witnesses. take the testimony, he said, of atkins. this young man had denied that he had ever been charged at a police station with alleging blackmail. yet he was able to prove that he had grossly perjured himself in this and other directions. that was a sample of the evidence and atkins was a type of the witnesses. the only one of these youths who had ever attempted to get a decent living or who was not an experienced blackmailer was mavor, and he had denied that wilde had ever been guilty of any impropriety with him. the prosecution had sought to make capital out of two letters written by wilde to lord alfred douglas. he pointed out a fact which was of considerable importance, namely, that wilde had produced one of these letters himself. was that the act of a man who had reason to fear the contents of a letter being known? wilde never made any secret of visiting taylor's rooms. he found there society which afforded him variety and change. wilde made no secret of giving dinners to some of the witnesses. he thought that they were poorly off and that a good dinner at a restaurant did not often come their way. on only one occasion did he hire a private room. the dinners were perfectly open and above-board. wilde was an extraordinary man and he had written letters which might seem high-flown, extravagant, exaggerated, absurd if they liked; but he was not afraid or ashamed to produce these letters. the witnesses charles parker, alfred wood and atkins had been proved to have previously been guilty of blackmailing of this kind and upon their uncorroborated evidence surely the jury would not convict the prisoner on such terrible charges. "fix your minds," concluded sir edward earnestly, "firmly on the tests that ought to be applied to the evidence as a whole before you can condemn a fellow-man to a charge like this. remember all that this charge implied, of implacable ruin and inevitable disgrace. then i trust that the result of your deliberations will be to gratify those thousand hopes that are waiting upon your verdict. i trust that verdict will clear from this fearful imputation one of the most accomplished and renowned men-of-letters of to-day." at the end of this peroration, there was some slight applause at the back of the court, but it was hushed almost at once. wilde had paid great attention to the speech on his behalf and on one or two occasions had pressed his hands to his eyes as if expressing some not unnatural emotion. the speech concluded, however, he resumed his customary attitude and awaited with apparent firmness all that might befall. mr. grain then rose to address the jury on behalf of taylor. he submitted that there was really no case against his client. an endeavour had been made to prove that taylor was in the habit of introducing to wilde youths whom he knew to be amenable to the practices of the latter and that he got paid for this degrading work. the attempt to establish this disgusting association between taylor and wilde had completely broken down. he was, it is true, acquainted with parker, wood and atkins. he had seen them constantly in restaurants and music-halls, and they had at first forced themselves upon his notice and thus got acquainted with a man whom they designed for blackmail. all the resources of the crown had been unable to produce any corroboration of the charges made by these witnesses. how had taylor got his livelihood, it might be asked? he was perfectly prepared to answer the question. he had been living on an allowance made him by members of his late father's firm, a firm with which all there present were familiar. was it in the least degree likely that such scenes as the witnesses described, with such apparent candour and such wealth of filthy detail, could have taken place in taylor's own apartments? it was incredible that a man could thus risk almost certain discovery. in conclusion, he confidently looked for the acquittal of his client, who was guilty of nothing more than having made imprudent acquaintances and having trusted too much to the descriptions of themselves given by others. mr. gill then replied for the prosecution in a closely-reasoned and most able speech, which occupied two hours in delivery and which created an enormous impression in the crowded court. he commented at great length upon the evidence. he contended that in a case of this description corroboration was of comparatively minor importance, for it was not in the least likely that acts of the kind alleged would be practised before a third party who might afterwards swear to the fact. therefore, when the witnesses described what had transpired when they and the prisoners were alone, he did not think that corroboration could possibly be given. there was not likely to be an eye-witness of the facts. but in respect to many things he declared the evidence was corroborated. whatever the character of these youths might be, they had given evidence as to certain facts and no cross-examination, however adroit, however vigorous, had shaken their testimony, or caused them to waver about that which was evidently firmly implanted in their memories. a man might conceivably come forward and commit perjury. but these youths were accusing themselves, in accusing another, of shameful and infamous acts, and this they would hardly do if it were not the truth. wilde had made presents to these youths and it was noticeable that the gifts were invariably made after he had been alone, at some rooms or other, with one or another of the lads. in the circumstances, even a silver cigarette-case was corroboration. his learned friend had protested against any evil construction being placed upon these gifts and these dinners; but, in the name of common-sense, what other construction was possible? when they heard of a man like wilde, presumably of refined and cultured tastes, who might if he wished, enjoy the society of the best and most cultivated men and women in london, accompanying to nice and other places on the continent, uninformed, unintellectual and vulgar, ill-bred youths of the type of charles parker, then, in heaven's name what were they to think? all those visits, all those dinners, all those gifts, were corroboration. they served to confirm the truth of the statements made by the youths who confessed to the commission of acts for which the things he had quoted were positive and actual payment. in the case of the witness sidney mavor, it was clear that wilde had, in some way, continued to disgust this youth. some acts of wilde, either towards himself, or towards others, had offended him. was not the letter which mavor had addressed to the prisoner, desiring the cessation of their friendship, corrobation? (at this moment his lordship interposed, and said that although the evidence of this witness was clearly of importance, he had denied that he had been guilty of impropriety, and he did not think the count in reference to mavor could stand. after some discussion this count was struck out of the indictment). before concluding mr. gill stated that he had withdrawn the conspiracy count to prevent any embarrassment to sir edward clarke, who had complained that he was affected in his defence by the counts being joined. mr. gill said, in conclusion, that it was the duty of the jury to express their verdict without fear or favour. they owed a duty to society, however sorry they might feel themselves at the moral downfall of an eminent man, to protect society from such scandals by removing from its heart a sore which could not fail in time to corrupt and taint it all. mr. justice charles then commenced his summing-up. his lordship at the outset said he thought mr. gill had taken a wise course in withdrawing the conspiracy counts and thus relieving them all of an embarrassing position. he did not see why the conspiracy counts need have been inserted at all, and he should direct the jury to return a verdict of acquittal on those charges as well as upon one other count against taylor, to which he would further allude, and upon which no sufficient evidence had been given. he, the learned judge, asked the jury to apply their minds solely to the evidence which had been given. any pre-conceived notion which they might have formed from reading about the case he urged them to dismiss from their minds, and to deal with the case as it had been presented to them by the witnesses. his lordship went on to ask the jury not to attach too much importance to the uncorroborated evidence of accomplices in such cases as these. had there been no corroboration in this case it would have been his duty to instruct the jury accordingly; but he was clearly of opinion that there was corroboration to all the witnesses; not, it is true, the conspiracy testimony of eye-witnesses, but corroboration of the narrative generally. three of the witnesses, chas. parker, wood and atkins, were not only accomplices, but they had been properly described by sir edward clarke as persons of bad character. atkins, out of his own mouth, was convicted of having told the most gross and deliberate falsehoods. the jury knew how this matter came before them as the outcome of the trial of lord queensberry for alleged libel. the learned judge proceeded to outline the features of the queensberry trial, commenting most upon what was called the literary part of wilde's examination in that case. the judge said that he had not read "dorian gray", but extracts were read at the former trial and the present jury had a general idea of the story. he did not think they ought to base any unfavourable inference upon the fact that wilde was the author of that work. it would not be fair to do so, for while it was true that there were many great writers, such for instance as sir walter scott and charles dickens, who never penned an offensive line, there were other great authors whose pens dealt with subjects not so innocent. as for wilde's aphorisms in the "chameleon", some were amusing, some were cynical, and some were, if he might be allowed to say so, simple, but there was nothing _in per se_, to convict wilde of indecent practices. however, the same paper contained a very indecent contribution; "the priest and the acolyte." mr. wilde had nothing to do with that. in the "chameleon" also appeared two poems by lord alfred douglas, one called "in praise of shame", and the other called "two loves." it was said that these sonnets had an immoral tendency and that wilde approved them. he was examined at great length about these sonnets, and was also asked about the two letters written by him to lord alfred douglas--letters that had been written before the publication of the above mentioned poems. in the previous case mr. carson had insisted that these letters were indecent. on the other hand, wilde had told them that he was not ashamed of them, as they were intended in the nature of prose poems and breathed the pure love of one man for another, such a love as david had for jonathan, and such as plato described as the beginning of wisdom. he would next deal with the actual charges, and would first call their attention to the offence alleged to have been committed with edward shelley at the beginning of . shelley was undoubtedly in the position of an accomplice, but his evidence was corroborated. he was not, however, tainted with the offences with which parker, wood and atkins were connected. he seemed to be a person of some education and a fondness for literature. as to shelley's visit to the albemarle hotel, the jury were the best judges of the demeanour of the witness. wilde denied all the allegations of indecency though he admitted the other parts of the young man's story. his lordship called attention to the letters written by shelley to wilde in , and . it was, he said, a very anxious part of the jury's task to account for the tone of these letters, and for shelley's conduct generally. it became a question as to whether or no his mind was disordered. he felt bound to say that though there was evidence of great excitability, to talk of either shelley or mavor as an insane youth was an exaggeration, but it would be for the jury to draw their own conclusions. passing to the case of atkins, the judge drew attention to his meeting with taylor in november , to the dinner at the café florence, at which wilde, taylor, atkins and lord a. douglas were present, and to the visit of atkins to paris in company with wilde. after dwelling on the circumstances of that visit, his lordship referred to wilde's two visits to atkins in osnaburgh street in december . wilde explained the paris visit by saying that schwabe had arranged to take atkins to paris, but being unable to leave at the time appointed he asked wilde to take charge of the youth, and he did so out of friendship for schwabe. wilde further denied that he was much in atkins' company when in paris. atkins certainly was an unreliable witness and had obviously given an incorrect version of his relations with burton. he told the grossest falsehoods with regard to their arrest, and was convicted out of his own mouth when recalled by sir e. clarke. it was for the jury to decide how much of atkins's evidence they might safely believe. then there were the events described as having occured at the savoy hotel in march . he would ask the jury to be careful in the evidence of the chamber-maid, jane cotter, and the interpretation they put upon it. if her evidence and that of the masseur mijji, were true, then wilde's evidence on that part of the case was untrue, and the jury must use their own discretion. he did not wish to enlarge upon this most unpleasant part of the whole unpleasant case, but it was necessary to remind the jury as discreetly as he could that the chamber-maid had objected to making the bed on several occasions after wilde and atkins had been in the bed-room alone together. there were, she had affirmed, indications on the sheets that conduct of the grossest kind had been indulged in. he thought it his duty to remind the jury that there might be an innocent explanation of these stains, though the evidence of jane cotter certainly afforded a kind of corroboration of these charges and of atkins's own story. in reference to the case of wood, he contrasted wood's account with that of wilde. it seemed that lord alfred douglas had met wood at taylor's rooms. in response to a telegram from the former, wood went to the café royal and there met wilde for the first time, wilde speaking first. on the other hand, wilde represented that wood spoke first. the jury might think that, in any case, the circumstances of that meeting were remarkable, especially when taken in conjunction with what followed. there was no doubt that wood had fallen into evil courses and he and allen had extracted the sum of £ in blackmail. the interview between wilde and wood prior to the latter's departure for america was remarkable. a sum of money, said to be £ , was given by wilde to wood, and wood returned some of wilde's letters that had somehow come into his possession. wood, however, kept back one letter which got into allen's possession. wood got £ more on the following day, went to america, and while there wrote to taylor a letter in which occured the passage. "tell oscar if he likes he can send me a draft for an easter egg." it would be for the jury to consider what would have been the inner meaning of these and other transactions. as to the prisoner taylor, he had, on his own admission, led a life of idleness, and got through a fortune of £ , . it was alleged that the prisoner had virtually turned his apartments into a bagnio or brothel, in which young men took the place of prostitutes, and that his character in this regard was well known to those who were secretly given to this particular vice. one of the offences imputed to taylor had reference to charles parker, who had spoken of the peculiar arrangement of the rooms. there were two bedrooms in the inner room with folding doors between and the windows were heavily draped, so that no one from the opposite houses could possibly see what was going on inside. heavy curtains, it was said, hung before all the doors, so that it could not be possible for an eave's-dropper to hear what was proceeding inside. there was a curiously shaped sofa in the sitting-room and the whole aspect of the room resembled, it was asserted, a fashionable resort for vice. wilde was undoubtedly present at some of the tea parties given there, and did not profess to be surprised at what he saw there. it had been shown that both the parkers went to these rooms, and further, that charles parker had received £ of the blackmail extorted by wood and allen. charles parker's evidence was therefore doubly-tainted like that of wood and atkins, but his evidence was to some extent confirmed by that of his brother william. some parts of charles parker's evidence were also corroborated by other witnesses, as for instance, by marjorie bancroft, who swore that she saw wilde visit charles parker's rooms in park walk. it was admitted that this parker visited wilde at st. james' place. charles parker had been arrested with taylor in the fitzroy square raid and this went to show that they were in the habit of associating with those suspected of offences of the kind alleged. both, however, were on that occasion discharged and parker enlisted in the army. it was quite manifest that charles parker was of a low class of morality. that concluded the various charges made in this case and he had very little to add. mavor's evidence had little or no value with reference to the issues now before the jury, except as showing how he became acquainted with wilde and taylor. so far as it went, mavor's evidence was rather in favour of wilde than otherwise and nothing indecent had been proved against that witness. in conclusion, his lordship submitted the case to the jury in the confident hope that they would do justice to themselves on the one hand, and to the two defendants on the other. the learned judge concluded by further directing the jury as to the issues, and asked them to form their opinions on the evidence, and to give the case their careful consideration. the judge left the following questions to the jury:-- first, whether wilde committed certain offences with shelley, wood, with a person or persons unknown at the savoy hotel, or with charles parker? secondly, whether taylor procured the commission of those acts or any of them? thirdly, did wilde or taylor, or either of them attempt to get atkins to commit certain offences with wilde, and fourthly, did taylor commit certain acts with either charles parker or wood? the jury retired at . , the summing-up of the judge having taken exactly three hours. at three o'clock a communication was brought from the jury, and conveyed by the clerk of arraigns to the judge, and shortly afterwards the jury had luncheon taken in to them. at . the judge sent for the clerk of arraigns, mr. avory, who proceeded to his lordship's private room. subsequently, mr. avory went to the jury, apparently with a communication from the judge and returned in a few minutes to the judge's private room. shortly before five o'clock the usher brought a telegram from one of the jurors, and after it had been shown to the clerk of arraigns it was allowed to be despatched. eventually the jury returned into court at a quarter past five o'clock. the verdict the judge.--"i have received a communication from you to the effect that you are unable to arrive at an agreement. now, is there anything you desire to ask me in reference to the case?" the foreman.--"i have put that question to my fellow-jurymen, my lord, and i do not think there is any doubt that we cannot agree upon three of the questions." the judge.--"i find from the entry which you have written against the various subdivisions of no. that you cannot agree as to any of those subdivisions?" the foreman.--"that is so, my lord." the judge.--"is there no prospect of an agreement if you retire to your room?" the foreman.--"i fear not." the judge.--"you have not been inconvenienced; i ordered what you required, and there is no prospect that, with a little more deliberation, you may come to an agreement as to some of them?" the foreman.--"my fellow-jurymen say there is no possibility." the judge.--"i am very unwilling to prejudice your deliberations, and i have no doubt that you have done your best to arrive at an agreement. on the other hand i would point out to you that the inconveniences of a new trial are very great. if you thought that by deliberating a reasonable time you could arrive at a conclusion upon any of the questions i have asked you, i would ask you to do so." the foreman.--"we considered the matter before coming into court and i do not think there is any chance of agreement. we have considered it again and again." the judge.--"if you tell me that, i do not think i am justified in detaining you any longer." sir edward clarke.--"i wish to ask, my lord, that a verdict may be given in the conspiracy counts." mr. gill.--"i wish to oppose that." the judge.--"i directed the acquittal of the prisoners on the conspiracy counts this morning. i thought that was the right course to adopt, and the same remark might be made with regard to the two counts in which taylor was charged with improper conduct towards wood and parker. it was unfortunate that the real and material questions which had occupied the jury's attention for such a length of time were matters upon which the jury were unable to agree. upon these matters and upon the counts which were concerned with them, i must discharge the jury." sir edward clarke.--"i wish to apply for bail, then for m. wilde." mr. hall.--"and i make the same application on behalf of taylor." the judge.--"i don't feel able to accede to the applications." sir edward.--"i shall probably renew the application, my lord." the judge.--"that would be to a judge in chambers." mr. gill.--"the case will assuredly be tried again and probably it will go to the next sessions." the two prisoners, who had listened to all this very attentively, were then conducted from the dock. wilde had listened to the foreman of the jury's statement without any show of feeling. it was stated that the failure of the jury to agree upon a verdict was owing to three out of the twelve being unable upon the evidence placed before them to arrive at any other conclusion than that of "not guilty." the following day mr. baron pollock decided that oscar wilde should be allowed out on bail in his own recognisances of £ , and two sureties of £ , each. wilde was brought up at bow street next day and the sureties attended. after a further application, bail in his case was granted and he went out of prison, for the present a free man, but with nemesis, in the shape of the second trial, awaiting him! * * * * * the second trial of oscar wilde, with its dramatic finale, for no one thought much of its consequences to alfred taylor, came on in the third week of may at the old bailey. it was agreed to take the cases of the prisoners separately, taylor's first. sir edward clarke, who still represented wilde, stated that he should make an application at the end of taylor's trial that wilde's case should stand over till the next sessions. his lordship said that application had better be postponed till the end of the first trial, significantly adding, "if there should be an acquittal, so much the better for the other prisoner." meanwhile wilde was to be released on bail. sir francis lockwood, who now represented the prosecution, then went over all the details of the intimacy of the parkers and wood with taylor and wilde and called charles parker, who repeated his former evidence, including a very serious allegation against the prisoner. he stated in so many words that taylor had kept him at his rooms for a whole week during which time they rarely went out, and had repeatedly committed sodomy with him. the witness unblushingly asserted that they slept together and that taylor called him "darling" and referred to him as "my little wife." when he left taylor's rooms the latter paid him some money, said he should never want for cash and that he would introduce him to men "prepared to pay for that kind of thing." cross-examined; charles parker admitted that he had previously been guilty of this offence, but had determined never to submit to such treatment again. taylor over-persuaded him. he was nearly drunk and incapable, the first time, of making a moral resistance. alfred wood also described his acquaintance with taylor and his visits to what he termed the "snuggery" at little college street, but which quite as appropriately could have been designed by a name which would have the additional merit of strictly describing it and of rhyming with it at the same time! it was not at all clear, however, that taylor was responsible, at least directly, for the introduction of alfred wood to wilde as the indictment suggested. this was effected by a third person, whose name had not as yet been introduced into the case. mrs. grant, the landlady at little college street, described taylor's rooms. she was not aware, she said, that they were put to an improper use, but she had remarked to her husband the care taken that whatever went on there should be hidden from the eyes and ears of others. young men used to come there and remain some time with taylor, and wilde was a frequent visitor. taylor provided much of his own bed-linen and she noticed that the pillows had lace and were generally elaborate and costly. the prosecution next called a new witness, emily becca, chambermaid at the savoy hotel, who stated that she had complained to the management of the state in which she found the bed-linen and the utensils of the room. when pressed for particulars the witness hesitated, and after stating that she refused to make the bed or empty the "chamber," she said she handed in her notice but was prevailed upon to withdraw it. then by a series of adroit questions counsel obtained the particulars. the bed-linen was stained. the colour was brown. the towels were similarly discoloured. one of the pillows was marked with face-powder. there was excrement in one of the utensils in the bedroom. wilde had handed her half a sovereign but when she saw the state of the room after he had gone she gave the coin to the management. evidence with regard to wilde's rooms at st. james' place was given by thomas price, who was able to identify taylor as one of the callers. mrs. gray--no relation, haply, to the notorious "dorian"--of chapel street, chelsea, deposed that taylor stayed at her house from august to the end of that year. formal and minor items of evidence concluded the case for the prosecution of taylor, and mr. grain proceeded to open his defence by calling the prisoner into the witness-box. mr. grain examined him. mr. grain.--"what is your age?" witness.--"i am thirty-three." mr. grain.--"you are the son of the late henry taylor, who was a manufacturer of an article of food in large demand?" witness.--"i am." mr. grain.--"you were at marlborough school?" witness.--"till i was seventeen." mr. grain.--"you inherited £ , i believe?" witness.--"yes." mr. grain.--"and spent it?" witness.--"it went." mr. grain.--"since then you have had no occupation?" witness.--"i have lived upon an allowance made me." mr. grain.--"is there any truth in the evidence of charles parker that you misconducted yourself with him." witness.--"not the slightest." mr. grain.--"what rooms had you at little college street?" witness.--"one bedroom, but it was sub-divided and i believe there was generally a bed in each division." mr. grain.--"you had a good many visitors?" witness.--"oh, yes." sir frank lockwood.--"did charles mavor stay with you then?" witness.--"yes, about a week." sir frank.--"when?" witness.--"when i first went there, in ." sir frank.--"what is his age?" witness.--"he is now or ." sir frank.--"do you remember going through a form of marriage with mavor?" witness.--"no, never." sir frank.--"did you tell parker you did?" witness.--"nothing of the kind." sir frank.--"did you not place a wedding-ring on his finger and go to bed with him that night as though he were your lawful wife?" witness.--"it is all false. i deny it all." sir frank.--"did you ever sleep with mavor?" witness.--"i think i did the first night--after, he had a separate bed." sir frank.--"did you induce mavor to attire himself as a woman?" witness.--"certainly i did not." sir frank.--"but there were articles of women's dress at your rooms?" witness.--"no. there was a fancy dress for a female, a theatrical costume." sir frank.--"was it made for a woman?" witness.--"i think so." sir frank.--"perhaps you wore it?" witness.--"i put it on once by way of a lark." sir frank.--"on no other occasion?" witness.--"i wore it once, too, at a fancy dress ball." sir frank.--"i suggest that you often dressed as a woman?" witness.--"no." sir frank.--"you wore, and caused mavor afterwards, to wear lace drawers--a woman's garment--with the dress?" witness.--"i wore knicker-bockers and stockings when i wore it at the fancy dress ball." sir frank.--"and a woman's wig, which afterwards did for mavor?" witness.--"no, the wig was made for me. i was going to a fancy-ball as 'dick whittington'." sir frank.--"who introduced you to the parkers?" witness.--"a friend named harrington at the st. james's restaurant." sir frank.--"you invited them to your rooms?" witness.--"i did." sir frank.--"why?" witness.--"i found them very nice." sir frank.--"you were acquainted with a young fellow named mason?" witness.--"yes." sir frank.--"he visited you?" witness.--"two or three times only, i think." sir frank.--"did you induce him to commit a filthy act with you?" witness.--"never." sir frank.--"he has written you letters?" witness.--"that's very likely." sir frank.--"the solicitor general proposes to read one." the letter was as follows:-- "dear alf, let me have some money as soon as you can. i would not ask you for it if i could get any myself. you know the business is not so easy. there is a lot of trouble attached to it. come home soon, dear, and let us go out together sometimes. have very little news. going to a dinner on monday and a theatre to-night. with much love, yours always, charles." the solicitor general.--(severely) "i ask you, taylor, for an explanation, for it requires one, of the use of the words "come home soon, dear", as between two men." taylor.--(laughing nervously) "i do not see anything in it." the solicitor general.--"nothing in it?" witness.--"well, i am not responsible for the expressions of another." the solicitor general.--"you allowed yourself to be addressed in this strain?" witness.--"it's the way you read it." the summing-up followed and after a consultation of three-quarters of an hour, the jury returned a verdict against taylor on the indecency counts, not agreeing, however, as to the charges of procuration. sentence was postponed, pending the result of the trial of oscar wilde, which began next day. * * * * * wilde had meanwhile been at large on bail. the one charge of "conspiring with alfred taylor to procure" had been dropped, and the indictment of misdemeanour alleged that the prisoner unlawfully committed various acts with charles parker, alfred wood, edward shelley, and certain persons unknown. the plea of "not guilty" was recorded. the case for the prosecution was opened by calling edward shelley, the young man who had been employed by the vigo street publishers. shelley repeated the story of the beginning and the progress of his intimacy with wilde. it began, he said, in ; in march , they quarrelled. the witness had been subjected by the prisoner to attempts at improper conduct. oscar had, to be plain, on several occasions, placed his hand on the private parts of the witness and sought to put his, witness's, hand in the same indelicate position as regards wilde's own person. witness resented these acts at the time; had told wilde not to be 'a beast', and the latter expressed his sorrow. "but i am so fond of you, edward," he had said. the witness wrote wilde that he would not see him again. he spoke in the letter of these and other acts of impropriety and made use of the expression, "i was entrapped." witness explained to the court, "he knew i admired him very much and he took advantage of me--of my admiration and--well, i won't say innocence. i don't know what to call it." these are some of the letters which shelley wrote to wilde: october , . oscar: will you be at home on sunday evening next? i am most anxious to see you. i would have called this evening, but i am suffering from nervousness, the result of insomnia and am obliged to remain at home. i have longed to see you all through the week. i have much to tell you. do not think me forgetful in not coming before, because i shall never forget your kindness, and am conscious that i can never sufficiently express my thankfulness. another letter ran: october , . oscar: i want to go away and rest somewhere--i think in cornwall for two weeks. i am determined to live a truly christian life, and i accept poverty as part of my religion, but i must have health. i have so much to do for my mother. sir edward clarke.--"now, mr. shelley, do you mean to tell the jury that having in your mind, that this man had behaved disgracefully towards you, you wrote that letter of october , ?" witness.--"yes. because after those few occurrences he treated me very well. he seemed really sorry for what he had done." sir edward.--"he introduced you to his home?" witness.--"yes, to his wife. i dined with them and he seemed to take a real interest in me." sir edward.--"you have met lord alfred douglas?" witness.--"yes, at his rooms at the 'varsity'." sir edward.--"he was kind to you?" witness.--"yes. he gave me a suit of clothes while i was there." sir edward.--"and you found two letters in one of the pockets?" witness.--"yes." sir edward.--"who from?" witness.--"from mr. wilde to lord alfred." sir edward.--"how did they begin?" witness.--"one was addressed, "dear alfred", and the other to "dear bogie." solicitor-general.--"when did you first meet lord alfred?" witness.--"at taylor's rooms in little college street." solicitor-general.--"then you visited him at the university?" witness.--"yes." the solicitor-general then proceeded to ask the witness as to the terms upon which wilde and lord alfred appeared to be; but this has been a prohibited topic from first to last and was now successfully objected to. charles parker was called and he repeated his evidence at great length, relating the most disgusting facts in a perfectly serene manner. he said that wilde invariably began his "campaign"--before arriving at the final nameless act--with indecencies. he used to require the witness to do what is vulgarly known as "tossing him off", explained parker quite unabashed, "and he would often do the same to me. he suggested two or three times that i should permit him to insert "it" in my mouth, but i never allowed that." he gave other details equally shocking. a few other witnesses were examined, and the rest of the day having been spent in the reading over of the evidence, sir edward clarke submitted that in respect of certain counts of the indictment there was no evidence to go to the jury. the solicitor-general submitted that there was ample evidence to go to the jury, who alone could decide as to whether or not it was worthy of belief. the judge said he thought the point in respect to the savoy hotel incident was just on the line, but he thought that the wiser and safer course was to allow the count in respect of this matter to go to the jury. at the same time, he felt justified, if the occasion should arise, in reserving the point for the court of appeal. he was inclined to think it was a matter, the responsibility of deciding which, rested with the jury. sir edward clarke submitted next that there was no corroboration of the evidence of this witness. the letters of shelley pointed to the inference that the latter might have been the victim of delusions, and, judging from his conduct in the witness-box, he appeared to have a peculiar sort of exaltation in and for himself. the solicitor-general maintained that shelley's evidence was corroborated as far as it could possibly be. of course, in a case of this kind there was an enormous difficulty in producing corroboration of eye-witnesses to the actual commission of the alleged act. the judge held that shelley must be treated on the footing of an accomplice. he adhered, after a most careful consideration of the point, to his former view, that there was no corroboration of the nature required by the act to warrant conviction, and therefore he felt justified in withdrawing that count from the jury. sir edward clarke made the same submission in the case of wood. the solicitor general protested against any decision being given on these questions other than by a verdict of the jury. in his opinion the case of the man wood could not be withheld from the jury. he submitted that there was every element of strong corroboration of wood's story, having regard especially to the strange and suspicious circumstances under which wilde and wood became acquainted. sir edward clarke quoted from the summing-up of mr. justice charles on the last trial relative to the directions which he gave the jury in the law respecting the corroboration of the evidence of an accomplice. the judge was of opinion that the count affecting wood ought to go to the jury, and he gave reasons why it ought not to be withheld. sir edward clarke after a private passage of arms with the solicitor-general in respect to the need for corroborative evidence, then began a brief, but able appeal to the jury on behalf of his client, after which wilde entered the witness-box. he formally denied the allegations against him. sir frank lockwood, in cross-examination: "now, mr. wilde, i should like you to tell me where lord a. douglas is now?" witness.--"he is in paris, at the hotel des deux mondes." sir frank.--"how long has he been there?" witness.--"three weeks." sir frank.--"have you been in communication with him?" witness.--"certainly. these charges are founded on sand. our friendship is founded on a rock. there has been no need to cancel our acquaintance." sir frank.--"was lord alfred in london at the time of the trial of the marquis of queensberry?" witness.--"yes, for about three weeks. he went abroad at my request before the first trial on these counts came on." sir frank.--"may we take it that the two letters from you to him were samples of the kind you wrote him?" witness.--"no. they were exceptional letters born of the two exceptional letters he sent to me. it is possible, i assure you, to express poetry in prose." sir frank.--"i will read one of these prose-poem letters. do you think this line is decent, addressed to a young man? "your rose-red lips which are made for the music of song and the madness of kissing." witness.--"it was like a sonnet of shakespeare. it was a fantastic, extravagant way of writing to a young man. it does not seem to be a question of whether it is proper or not." sir frank.--"i used the word decent." witness.--"decent, oh yes." sir frank.--"do you think you understand the word, sir?" witness.--"i do not see anything indecent in it, it was an attempt to address in beautiful phraseology a young man who had much culture and charm." sir frank.--"how many times have you been in the college street 'snuggery' of the man taylor?" witness.--"i do not think more than five or six times." sir frank.--"who did you meet there?" witness.--"sidney mavor and schwabe--i cannot remember any others. i have not been there since i met wood there." sir frank.--"with regard to the savoy hotel witnesses?" witness.--"their evidence is quite untrue." sir frank.--"you deny that the bed-linen was marked in the way described?" witness.--"i do not examine bed-linen when i arise. i am not a housemaid." sir frank.--"were the stains there, sir?" witness.--"if they were there, they were not caused in the way the prosecution most filthily suggests." sir edward clarke, after a slight "breeze" with the solicitor-general as to the right to the last word to the jury, then addressed that devoted band of men for the third time, and asked for the acquittal of his client on all the counts. sir frank lockwood also addressed the jury and the court then adjoined. next day the solicitor-general, resuming his speech on behalf of the crown dealt in details with the arguments of sir e. clarke in defence of wilde, and commented in strong terms on observations that he made respecting the lofty situation of wilde, with his literary accomplishments, for the purpose of influencing the judgment of the young. he said that the jury ought to discard absolutely any such appeal, to apply simply their common-sense to the testimony; and to form a conclusion on the evidence, which he submitted fully established the charges. he was commenting on another branch of the case, when sir e. clarke interposed on the ground that the learned solicitor-general was alluding to incidents connected with another trial. the solicitor-general maintained that he was strictly within his rights, and the judge held that the latter was entitled to make the comments objected to. "my learned friend does not appear to have gained a great deal by his superfluity of interruption", remarked the solicitor-general suavely, and the court laughed loudly. the judge said that this sort of thing was most offensive to him. it was painful enough to have to try such a case and keep the scales of justice evenly balanced without the court being pestered with meaningless laughter and applause. if such conduct were repeated he would have the court cleared. the solicitor-general then criticised the answers given by wilde to the charges, which explanations he submitted, were not worthy of belief. the jury could not fail to put the interpretation on the conduct of the accused that he was a guilty man and they ought to say so by their verdict. the judge, in summing-up, referred to the difficulties of the case in some of its features. he regretted, that if the conspiracy counts were unnecessary, or could not be established, they should have been placed in the indictment. the jury must not surrender their own independent judgment in dealing with the facts and ought to discard everything which was not relevant to the issue before them, or did not assist their judgment. he did not desire to comment more than he could help about lord alfred douglas or the marquis of queensberry, but the whole of this lamentable enquiry arose through the defendant's association with lord a. douglas. he did not think that the action of the marquis of queensberry in leaving the card at the defendant's club, whatever motives he had, was that of a gentleman. the jury were entitled to consider that these alleged acts happened some years ago. they ought to be the best judges as to the testimony of the witnesses and whether it was worthy of belief. the letters written by the accused to lord a. douglas were undoubtedly open to suspicion, and they had an important bearing on wood's evidence. there was no corroboration of wood as to the visit to tite street, and if his story had been true, he thought that some corroboration might have been obtained. wood belonged to the vilest class of person which society was pestered with, and the jury ought not to believe his story unless satisfactorily corroborated. their decision must turn on the character of the first introduction of wilde to wood. did they believe that wilde was actuated by charitable motives or by improper motives? the foreman of the jury, interposing at this stage, asked whether a warrant had been issued for the arrest of lord alfred douglas and if not, whether it was intended to issue one. the judge said he could not tell, but he thought not. it was a matter they could not now discuss. the granting of a warrant depended not upon the inferences to be drawn from the letters referred to in the case, but on the production of evidence of specific acts. there was a disadvantage in speculating on this question. they must deal with the evidence before them and with that alone. the foreman said, "if we are to deduce from the letters it applies to lord alfred douglas equally as to the defendant." the judge.--"in regard to the question as to the absence of lord a. douglas, i warn you not to be influenced by any consideration of the kind. all that they knew was that lord a. douglas went to paris shortly after the last trial and had remained there since. he felt sure that if the circumstances justified it, the necessary proceedings could be taken." his lordship dealt with each of the charges, and the evidence in support of them, and he then, after thanking the jury for the patient manner in which they had attended to the case, left the issues in their hands. the jury retired to consider their verdict at half past three o'clock and at half past five they returned into court. _the verdict_ amidst breathless excitement, the foreman, in answer to the usual formal questions, announced the verdict, "guilty." sir edward clarke.--"i apply, my lord, for a postponement of sentence." the judge.--"i must certainly refuse that request. i can only characterise the offences as the worst that have ever come under my notice. i have, however, no wish to add to the pain that must be felt by the defendants. i sentence both wilde and taylor to two years imprisonment with hard labour." the sentence was met with some cries of "shame", "a scandalous verdict", "unjust," by certain persons in court. the two prisoners appeared dazed and wilde especially seemed ready to faint as he was hurried out of sight to the cells. * * * * * thus perished by his own act a man who might have made a lasting mark in british literature and secured for himself no mean place in the annals of his time. he forfeited, in the pursuit of forbidden pleasures, if pleasures they can be called, all and everything that made life dear. he entered upon his incarceration bankrupt in reputation, in friends, in pocket, and had not even left to him the poor shreds of his own self-esteem. he went into gaol, knowing that if he emerged alive, the darkness would swallow him up and that his world--the spheres which had delighted to honour him--would know him no more. he had covered his name with infamy and sank his own celebrity in a slough of slime and filth. he would die to leave behind him what?--the name of a man who was absolutely governed by his own vices and to whom no act of immorality was too foul or horrible. oscar wilde emerged from prison in every way a broken man. the wonderful descriptive force of the _ballad of reading gaol_; the perfect, torturing self-analysis of _de profundis_ speak eloquently of powers unimpaired; but they were the swan-songs of a once great mind. all his abilities had fled. he seemed unable to concentrate his mind upon anything. he took up certain subjects, played with them, and wearied of them in a day. french authors did not ostracise the erratic english genius when he hid himself amongst them and they honestly endeavoured to find him employment. but his faculties had been blunted by the horrors of prison life. his epigrams had lost their edge. his aphorisms were trite and aimless. he abandoned every subject he took up, in despair. his mind died before his body. he suffered from a complete mental atrophy. a nightingale cannot sing in a cage. a genius cannot flourish in a prison. he died in two years and is now--the merest memory! let us remember this of him: if he sinned much, he suffered much. peace to his ashes! his last book and his last years in paris _by_ "_a_" (lord alfred douglas?) the following three articles, two of them from the "st. james's gazette" and one from the "motorist", are marked with so much good sense and dissipate so many errors touching oscar wilde's last years in paris that the publisher deemed it a duty to reproduce them here as a permanent answer to the wild legends circulated about the subject of this book. oscar wilde his last book and his last years _the publication of oscar wilde's last book, "de profundis," has revived interest in the closing scenes of his life, and we to-day print the first of two articles dealing with his last years in paris from a source which puts their authenticity beyond question._ _the one question which inevitably suggested itself to the reader of "de profundis," was, "what was the effect of his prison reflections on his subsequent life?" the book is full not only of frank admissions of the error of his ways, but of projects for his future activity. "i hope," he wrote, in reply to some criticisms on the relations of art and morals, "to live long enough to produce work of such a character that i shall be able at the end of my days to say, "yes, that is just where the artistic life leads a man!" he mentions in particular two subjects on which he proposed to write, "christ as the precursor of the romantic movement in life" and "the artistic life considered in its relation to conduct." these resolutions were never carried out, for reasons some of which the writer of the following article indicates._ _oscar wilde was released from prison in may, . he records in his letters the joy of the thought that at that time "both the lilac and the laburnum will be blooming in the gardens." the closing sentences of the book may be recalled: "society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where i may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence i may weep undisturbed. she will hang the night with stars so that i may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole."_ _he died in november, , three years and a half after his release from reading gaol._ * * * * * monsieur joseph renaud, whose translation of oscar wilde's "intentions" has just appeared in paris, has given a good example of how history is made in his preface to that work. he recounts an obviously imaginary meeting between himself and oscar wilde in a bar on the boulevard des italiens. he concludes the episode, such as it is, with these words: "nothing remained of him but his musical voice and his large blue childlike eyes." oscar wilde's eyes were curious--long, narrow, and green. anything less childlike it would be hard to imagine. to the physiognomist they were his most remarkable feature, and redeemed his face from the heaviness that in other respects characterised it. so much for m. joseph renaud's powers of observation. the complacent unanimity with which the chroniclers of oscar wilde's last years in paris have accepted and spread the "legend" of his life in that city is remarkable, and would be exasperating considering its utter falsity to anyone who was not aware of their incompetence to deal with the subject. scarcely one of his self-constituted biographers had more than the very slightest acquaintance with him, and their records and impressions of him are chiefly made up of stale gossip and secondhand anecdotes. the stories of his supposed privations, his frequent inability to obtain a square meal, his lonely and tragic death in a sordid lodging, and his cheap funeral are all grotesquely false. true, oscar wilde, who for several years before his conviction had been making at least £ , a year, found it very hard to live on his rather precarious income after he came out of prison; he was often very "hard up," and often did not know where to turn for a coin, but i will undertake to prove to anyone whom it may concern that from the day he left prison till the day of his death his income averaged at least £ a year. he had, moreover, far too many devoted friends in paris ever to be in need of a meal provided he would take the trouble to walk a few hundred yards or take a cab to one of half a dozen houses. his death certainly was tragic--deaths are apt to be tragic--but he was surrounded by friends when he died, and his funeral was not cheap; i happen to have paid for it in conjunction with another friend of his, so i ought to know. he did not become a roman catholic before he died. he was, at the instance of a great friend of his, himself a devout catholic, "received into the church" a few hours before he died; but he had then been unconscious for many hours, and he died without ever having any idea of the liberty that had been taken with his unconscious body. whether he would have approved or not of the step taken by his friend is a matter on which i should not like to express a too positive opinion, but it is certain that it would not do him any harm, and, apart from all questions of religion and sentiment, it facilitated the arrangements which had to be made for his interment in a catholic country, in view of the fact that no member of his family took any steps to claim his body or arrange for his funeral. having disposed of certain false impressions in regard to various facts of his life and death in paris, i may turn to what are less easily controlled and examined theories as to that life. without wishing to be paradoxical, or harshly destructive of the carefully cherished sentiment of poetic justice so dear to the british mind (and the french mind, too, for that matter), i give it as my firm opinion that oscar wilde was, on the whole, fairly happy during the last years of his life. he had an extraordinarily buoyant and happy temperament, a splendid sense of humour, and an unrivalled faculty for enjoyment of the present. of course, he had his bad moments, moments of depression and sense of loss and defeat, but they were not of long duration. it was part of his pose to luxuriate a little in the details of his tragic circumstances. he harrowed the feelings of many of those whom he came across; words of woe poured from his lips; he painted an image of himself, destitute, abandoned, starving even (i have heard him use the word after a very good dinner at paillard's); as he proceeded he was caught by the pathos of his own words, his beautiful voice trembled with emotion, his eyes swam with tears; and then, suddenly, by a swift, indescribably brilliant, whimsical touch, a swallow-wing flash on the waters of eloquence, the tone changed and rippled with laughter, bringing with it his audience, relieved, delighted, and bubbling into uncontrollable merriment. he never lost his marvellous gift of talking; after he came out of prison he talked better than before. everyone who knew him really before and after his imprisonment is agreed about that. his conversation was richer, more human, and generally on a higher intellectual level. in french he talked as well as in english; to my own english ear his french used to seem rather laboured and his accent too marked, but i am assured by frenchmen who heard him talk that such was not the effect produced on them. he explained to me his inability to write, by saying that when he sat down to write he always inevitably began to think of his past life, and that this made him miserable and upset his spirits. as long as he talked and sat in cafés and "watched life," as his phrase was, he was happy, and he had the luck to be a good sleeper, so that only the silence and self-communing necessary to literary work brought him visions of his terrible sufferings in the past and made his old wounds bleed again. my own theory as to his literary sterility at this period is that he was essentially an interpreter of life, and that his existence in paris was too narrow and too limited to stir him to creation. at his best he reflected life in a magic mirror, but the little corner of life he saw in paris was not worth reflecting. if he could have been provided with a brilliant "entourage" of sympathetic listeners as of old and taken through a gay season in london, he would have begun to write again. curiously enough, society was the breath of life to him, and what he felt more than anything else in his "st. helena" in paris, as he often told me, was the absence of the smart and pretty women who in the old days sat at his feet! a. oscar wilde's last years in paris.--ii the french possess the faculty, very rare in england, of differentiating between a man and his work. they are utterly incapable of judging literary work by the moral character of its author. i have never yet met a frenchman who was able to comprehend the attitude of the english public towards oscar wilde after his release from prison. they were completely mystified by it. an eminent french man-of-letters said to me one day: "you have a man of genius, he commits crimes, you put him in prison, you destroy his whole life, you take away his fortune, you ruin his health, you kill his mother, his wife, and his brother (_sic_), you refuse to speak to him, you exile him from your country. that is very severe. in france we should never so treat a man of genius, but _enfin ça peut se comprendre_. but not content with that, you taboo his books and his plays, which before you enjoyed and admired, and _pour comble de tout_ you are very angry if he goes into a restaurant and orders himself some dinner. _il faut pourtant qu'il mange ce pauvre homme!_" if i had been representing the british public in an official capacity i should have probably given expression to its views and furnished a sufficient repartee to my voluble french friend by replying: "_je n'en vois pas la nécessité_." fortunately for oscar wilde, the french took another view of the attitude to adopt towards a man who has offended against society, and who has been punished for it. never by a word or a hint did they show that they remembered that offence, which, in their view, had been atoned for and wiped out. oscar wilde remained for them always _un grand homme, un maître_, a distinguished man, to be treated with deference and respect and, because he had suffered much, with sympathy. it says a great deal for the innate courtesy and chivalry of the french character that a man in oscar wilde's position, as well known by sight, as he once remarked to me, as the eiffel tower, should have been able to go freely about in theatres, restaurants, and cafés without encountering any kind of hostility or even impertinent curiosity. it was this benevolent attitude of paris towards him that enabled him to live and, in a fashion, to enjoy life. his audience was sadly reduced and precarious, and except on some few occasions it was of inferior intellectual calibre; but still he had an audience, and an audience to him was everything. nor was he altogether deprived of the society of men of his own class and value. many of the most brilliant young writers in france were proud to sit at his feet and enjoy his brilliant conversation, chief among whom i may mention that accomplished critic and essayist, monsieur ernest lajeunesse, who is the author of what is perhaps the best posthumous notice of him that has been published in france in that excellent magazine, the "revue blanche"; among older men who kept up their friendship with him, octave mirbeau, moréas, paul fort, henri bauer, and jean lorrain may be mentioned. in contrast to this attitude taken up towards him by so many distinguished and eminent men, i cannot refrain from recalling the attitude adopted by the general run of english-speaking residents in paris. for the credit of my country i am glad to be able to put them down mostly as americans, or at any rate so americanised by the constant absorption of "american drinks" as to be indistinguishable from the genuine article. these gentlemen "guessed they didn't want oscar wilde to be sitting around" in the bars where they were in the habit of shedding the light of their presence, and from one of these establishments oscar wilde was requested by the proprietor to withdraw at the instance of one of our "american cousins" who is now serving a term of two years penal servitude for holding up and robbing a bank! oscar wilde, to do him justice, bore this sort of rebuff with astonishing good temper and sweetness. his sense of humour and his invincible self-esteem kept him from brooding over what to another man might have appeared intolerable, and he certainly possessed the philosophical temperament to a greater extent than any other man i have ever come across. every now and then one or other of the very few faithful english friends left to him would turn up in paris and take him to dinner at one of the best restaurants, and anyone who met him on one of these occasions would have found it difficult to believe that he had ever passed through such awful experiences. whether he was expounding some theory, grave or fantastic, embroidering it the while with flashes of impromptu wit or deepening it with extraordinary and intimate learning (for, as ernest lajeunesse says, _he knew everything_), or whether he was "keeping the table in a roar" with his delightfully whimsical humour, summer-lightning that flashed and hurt no one, he was equally admirable. to have lived in his lifetime and not to have heard him talk is as though one had lived for years at athens without going to look at the parthenon. i wish i could remember one-hundredth part of the good things he said. he was extraordinarily quick in answer and repartee, and anyone who says that his wit was the result of preparation and midnight oil can never have heard him speak. i remember once at dinner a friend of his who had formerly been in the "blues," pointing out that in the opening stanza of "the ballad of reading jail" he had made a mistake in speaking of the "scarlet coat" of the man who was hanged; he was, as the dedication of the poem says, a private in the "blues," and his coat would therefore naturally not be scarlet. the lines go-- he did not wear his scarlet coat, for blood and wine are red. "well, what could i do," said oscar wilde plaintively, "i couldn't very well say he did not wear his azure coat, for blood and wine are blue-- could i?" the last time i saw him was about three months before he died. i took him to dinner at the grand café. he was then perfectly well and in the highest spirits. all through dinner he kept me delighted and amused. only afterwards, just before i left him, he became rather depressed. he actually told me that he didn't think he was going to live long; he had a presentiment, he said. i tried to turn it off into a joke, but he was quite serious. "somehow," he said, "i don't think i shall live to see the new century." then a long pause. "if another century began, and i was still alive, it would be really more than the english could stand." and so i left him, never to see him alive again. just before he died he came to, after a long period of unconsciousness and said to a faithful friend who sat by his bedside, "i have had a dreadful dream; i dreamt that i dined with the dead." "my dear oscar," replied his friend, "i am sure you were the life and soul of the party." "really, you are sometimes very witty," replied oscar wilde, and i believe those are his last recorded words. the jest was admirable and in his own _genre_; it was prompted by ready wit and kindness, and because of it oscar wilde went off into his last unconscious phase, which lasted for twelve hours, with a smile on his lips. i cherish a hope that it is also prophetic, death would have no terrors for me if only i were sure of "dining with the dead."[ ] "de profundis" _a criticism by_ "_a_" (lord alfred douglas?) "the english are very fond of a man who admits he has been wrong." (_the ideal husband_). "de profundis" _a criticism by_ lord alfred douglas in a painful passage in this interesting posthumous book (it takes the form of a letter to an unnamed friend), oscar wilde relates how, on november the th, , he stood for half an hour on the platform of clapham junction, handcuffed and in convict dress, surrounded by an amused and jeering mob. "for a year after that was done to me," he writes, "i wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time." that was before he had discovered or thought he had discovered that his terrible experiences in prison, his degradation and shame were a part, and a necessary part, of his artistic life, a completion of his incomplete soul. after he had learnt humility in the bitterest school that "man's inhumanity to man" provides for unwilling scholars, after he had drained the cup of sorrow to the dregs, after his spirit was broken--he wrote this book in which he tried to persuade himself and others that he had learnt by suffering and despair what life and pleasure had never taught him. if oscar wilde's spirit, returning to this world in a malicious mood, had wished to devise a pleasant and insinuating trap for some of his old enemies of the press, he could scarcely have hit on a better one than this book. i am convinced it was written in passionate sincerity at the time, and yet it represents a mere mood and an unimportant one of the man who wrote it, a mood too which does not even last through the pages of the book. "the english are very fond of a man who admits he has been wrong," he makes one of his characters in "the ideal husband" say, and elsewhere in this book he compares the advantages of pedestals and pillories in their relation to the public's attitude towards himself. well here he is in the pillory, and here also is mr. courtney in the "daily telegraph" getting quite fond of him for the very first time. here is oscar wilde, "a genius," "incontestably one of the greatest dramatists of modern times" as he is now graciously allowed to be, turning up unexpectedly with an admission that he was in the wrong, and telling us that his life and his art would have been incomplete without his imprisonment, that he has learnt humility and found a new mode of expression in suffering. he is "purged by grief," "chastened by suffering," and everything, in short, that he should be, and mr. courtney is touched and pleased. what mr. courtney and others have failed to realise, and what wilde himself did realise very soon after he wrote this interesting but rather pathetically ineffective book, is that the mood which produced it was no other than the first symptom of that mental and physical disease generated by suffering and confinement which culminated in the death of its gifted and unfortunate author a few years later. as long as the spirit of revolt was left in oscar wilde, so long was left the fire of creative genius. when the spirit of revolt died, the flame began to subside, and continued to subside gradually with spasmodic flickers till its ultimate extinction. "i have got to make everything that has happened good for me." he writes, "the plank bed, the loathsome food, the hard rope shredded into oakum till one's finger tips grow dull with pain, the menial offices with which each day begins, the harsh orders that routine seems to necessitate, the dreadful dress that makes sorrow grotesque to look at, the silence, the solitude, the shame--each and all these things i have to transform into a spiritual experience. there is not a single degradation of the body which i must not try and make into a spiritualising of the soul." but, alas! plank beds, loathsome food, menial offices, and oakum picking do not spiritualise the soul; at any rate, they did not spiritualise oscar wilde's soul. the only effect they had was to destroy his magnificent intellect, and even, as some passages in this book show to temporarily cloud his superb sense of humour. the return of freedom gave him back the sense of humour, and the wreck of his magnificent intellect served him so well to the end of his life that, although he had hopelessly lost the power of concentration necessary to the production of literary work, he remained to the day of his death the most brilliant and the most intellectual talker in europe. it must not be supposed, however, that this book is not a remarkable book and one which is not worth careful reading. there are fine prose passages in it, and occasional felicities of phrase which recall the oscar wilde of "the house of pomegranates" and the "prose-poems," and here and there rather unexpectedly comes an epigram like this for example: "there were christians before christ. for that we should be grateful. the unfortunate thing is that there have been none since." true, he spoils the epigram by adding, "i make one exception, st. francis of assisi." a concession to the tyranny of facts and the relative importance of sincerity to style, which is most uncharacteristic of the "old oscar." nevertheless, the trace of the master hand is still visible, and the book contains much that is profound and subtle on the philosophy of christ as conceived by this modern evangelist of the gospel of life and literature. one does not travel further than the rd page of the book before finding glaring and startling inconsistencies in the mental attitude of the writer towards his fate, for whereas on page in a rather rhetorical passage he speaks of the "eternal disgrace" he had brought on the "noble and honoured name" bequeathed him by his father and mother, on page "reason" tells him "that the laws under which he was convicted are wrong and unjust laws, and the system under which he has suffered a wrong and unjust system." but this is the spirit of revolt not quite crushed. he says that if he had been released a year sooner, as in fact he very nearly was, he would have left his prison full of rage and bitterness, and without the treasure of his new-found "humility." i am unregenerate enough to wish that he had brought his rage and bitterness with him out of prison. true, he would never have written this book if he had come out of prison a year sooner, but he would almost certainly have written several more incomparable comedies, and we who reverenced him as a great artist in words, and mourned his downfall as an irreparable blow to english literature would have been spared the rather painful experience of reading the posthumous praise now at last so lavishly given to what certainly cannot rank within measurable distance of his best work. a. from "_the motorist and traveller_" (march , ). list of privately issued historical, artistic, and classical works in english thaïs _romance of the byzantine empire (fourth century)_ from the french of anatole france with twenty copper-plate etchings by martin van maele price _s._ "thaÏs" is a work of religious mysticism. the story of the priest-hero who sought to stamp out the flames of nature is told with a delicacy and realism that will at once charm and command the reader's attention. anatole france is one of the most brilliant literary men in the world, and stands foremost amongst giants like daudet, zola, and maupassant. the book before us is a historical novel based on the legend of the conversion of the courtesan thaïs of alexandria by a monk of the thebaïd. thaïs may be described as first cousin to the pelagia of charles kingsley "hypatia;" indeed, the two books, dealing as they do with the same place and period, alexandria in the fourth century, offer points of resemblance, as well as of difference, many and various, and sufficiently interesting to be commended to the notice of students of comparative criticism. there is, however, a subtle and profound moral lesson about the work of mr. anatole france which is wanting in kingsley's shallower and more commonplace conception of human motive and passion. the keynote is struck in the warning which an old schoolfellow of the monk paphnutius addresses to him when he learns of his intention to snatch thaïs as a brand from the burning: "beware of offending venus. she is a powerful goddess; she will be angry with you if you take away her chief minister." the monk disregards the warning of the man of the world, and perseveres with his self-imposed task, and that so successfully that thaïs forsakes her life of pleasure, and ultimately expires in the odour of sanctity. _custodes, sed quis custodiet ipsos?_ paphnutius has deceived himself, and has failed to perceive that what he took for zeal for a lost soul was in reality but human desire for a fair face. the monk, who has won heaven for the beautiful sinner, loses it himself for love of her, and is left at the end, baffled and blaspheming, before the dead body of the woman he has loved all the time without knowing that he loved her. it is impossible for the reviewer to convey any adequate notion of the subtle skill with which the author deals with a delicate but intensely human theme. alike as a piece of psychical analysis and as a picture of the age, this book stands head and shoulders above any that we have ever read about the period with which it deals. it is a work of rare beauty, and, we may add, of profound moral truth, albeit not written precisely _virginibus puerisque_. it is emphatically the work of a great artist.--(from a notice in "_the pall mall gazette_"). the well of santa clara this work is, from the deep interest of its contents, the beauty of its typography and paper, and the elegance and daring of the illustrations, one of the finest works in _édition de luxe_ yet offered to the collectors of rare books. apart from the other stories, all of them written with that exquisite grace and ironical humour for which anatole france is unmatched, "the human tragedy," forming half of the book, is alone worthy to rank amongst the master-efforts of literature. the dominant idea of "the human tragedy" is foreshadowed by the quotation from euripedes: _all the life of man is full of pain, and there is no surcease of sorrow. if there be aught better elsewhere than this present life, it is hid, shrouded in the clouds of darkness._ the english rendering of this work is, from its purity and strength of style, a veritable _tour de force_. the book will be prized and appreciated by scholars and lovers of the beautiful in art. new grasset characters have been used for this work, limited to numbered copies on handmade paper; each page of text is contained in an artistic green border, and the work in its entirety constitutes a volume of rare excellence. twenty-one clever copper-plate engravings (in the most finished style) by martin van maele. the well of santa clara _contents_ pages prologue.--the reverend father adone doni i. san satiro ii. messer guido cavalcanti iii. lucifer iv. the loaves of black bread v. the merry-hearted buffalmacco i. the cockroaches ii. the ascending up of andria tafin iii. the master iv. the painter vi. the lady of verona vii. the human tragedy i. fra giovanni ii. the lamp iii. the seraphic doctor iv. the loaf on the flat stone v. the table under the fig-tree vi. the temptation vii. the subtle doctor viii. the burning coal ix. the house of innocence x. the friends of order xi. the revolt of gentleness xii. words of love xiii. the truth xiv. giovanni's dream xv. the judgment xvi. the prince of this world viii. the mystic blood ix. a sound security x. history of doña maria d'avalos and the duke d'andria xi. bonaparte at san miniato price: one guinea. oscar wilde's works. poems in prose: the artist the doer of good the disciple the master the house of judgment, etc. limited edition of five hundred copies on superior english vellum paper, and printed in grasset characters in red and black. price s. fifty copies on japanese paper. price s. oscar wilde: what never dies (ce qui ne meurt pas) one volume small crown vo., bound in white parchment. nearly pages. price s. d. translated into english by 'sebastian melmoth' (oscar wilde), from the french of barbey d'aurevilly. a strange and powerful romance of love and passion in a country house, similar to the plot unfolded in guy de maupassant's "lady's man," but told in even more lordly and brilliant language; the wonderful french of "barbey" being rendered into yet more wonderful english by oscar wilde. the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde sole authorized version _limited edition of one hundred copies on real hand-made english paper, price s._ translated from the latin by oscar wilde the satyricon of petronius a literal and complete translation with notes and introduction. circular free for - / d. _price_, £ . _s._ _d._ _fifteen copies on papier de chine, price_ £ . s. this edition is not only the ... most complete and brilliant ever done into english, but it constitutes also a typographical _bijou_, being printed in a limited number on handmade paper in red and black throughout. unknown poems by lord byron don leon a poem by the late lord byron author of childe harold, don juan, etc. and forming part of the private journal of his lordship, supposed to have been entirely destroyed by thos. moore. "_pardon, dear tom, these thoughts on days gone by; me men revile and thou must justify. yet in my bosom apprehensions rise (for brother poets have their jealousies), lest under false pretences thou shoudst turn a faithless friend, and these confessions burn._" "don juan" is generally spoken of as a composition remarkable for its daring gallantry; but here is a long connected poetical work by the same author which far outdistances "don juan" both in audacity of conception and licence of language. these poems were issued _sub rosâ_ in , and owing to the fact that interested persons bought up immediately on its appearance and burnt the entire output, any stray copies that chanced to escape the general destruction, when they turn up nowadays, fetch from five to ten guineas each. _the size of the book is small crown octavo, pp., in artistic paper wrappers._ this issue has been limited to two hundred and fifty copies as follows: price: on ordinary vellum paper s. d. on french hand-made paper £ . s. detailed circular on demand for d. curious by-paths of history studies of louis xiv; richelieu; mdlle de la vallière; madame de pompadour; sophie arnould's sickness; the true charlotte corday; a savage "hound;" in the hands of the "charcutiers;" napoleon's superstitions; the affair of madame récamier and queen elizabeth of england, etc. followed by a fascinating study of flagellation in france from a medical and historical standpoint with special foreword by the editor, dealing with the reviewers of a previous work, and sundry other cognate matters good to be known; particularly concerning the high-handed proceedings of british philistinism, which here receives "a rap on the knuckles." a fine realistic frontispiece after a design by daniel vierge, etched by f. massÉ. the whole (in two volumes), price s. with this book is given away (undercover) a fine plate entitled _conjugal correction_, reproduced in aquatint by the maison goupil, of paris, after the famous oil painting of correggio. fascinating historical studies by a french physician. the secret cabinet of history peeped into by a doctor (dr. cabanès) translated by w. c. costello, and preceded by a letter from the pen of m. victorien sardou (de l'académie française). one stout volume of pages. edition limited to copies, on fine quality dutch (van gelder) azure paper, with wide margins and untrimmed edges, specially manufactured for this edition; cloth bound. price s. d. _the "get up" of the book will please all who like beautiful printing and choice paper._ although the bizarre character of some of the subjects may tempt us to imagine that it is all a fiction, torn from the "arabian nights," and placed in an eighteenth century setting, the references and authorities marshalled by dr. cabanès will quickly convince the sceptically inclined that the whole is based on unimpeachable documents. "les cent nouvelles nouvelles" (louis xi.) done now for the first time into english. one hundred merrie and delightsome stories right pleasaunte to relate in all goodly compagnie by way of joyaunce and jollity two volumes demy vo., over pages on fine english antique deckle-edged paper, with fifty coloured illustrations by lÉon lebÈque, the whole strongly bound in english water-coloured silk cloth. price £ . s. numbered copies printed for england and america also large numbered copies printed on japanese vellum price: £ . s. net although this work has been published many times in french during the last four-and-a half centuries, it has never hitherto been done into english, and in fact is little known in england at all on account of its archaic form, which renders the reading of the original impossible to any but a student of old french. very little inferior to boccaccio and far superior to the heptameron, the stories possess a brightness and gaiety entirely their own; moreover they are of high literary merit. illustrated circular free by post for d. the ... evolution and dissolution of the sexual instinct ... by ... doctor charles fÉrÉ of the bicêtre hospital, (paris) price: s. "truth and science are never immoral; but it cannot be denied that the narration of facts relating to sexual physiology and pathology, if their real significance is not pointed out, may be the cause of perversion in the case of predisposed subjects. the danger appears more serious to those who think that normal individuals may be perverted under the influence of environment, and yet more serious when the sexual instinct is represented as an uncontrollable instinct, which nobody can resist, however abnormal the form in which the instinct may reveal itself." the only worthy translation into french oscar wilde intentions traduction française de hugues rebell préface de charles grolleau _orné d'un portrait_ un volume in- o carré. impression de luxe sur _antique vellum_. prix: francs. il a été tiré _trente_ exemplaires sur japon impérial. prix: francs. paris charles carrington, libraire-editeur , faubourg montmartre, notice "intentions" est un des ouvrages les plus curieux qui se puisse lire. on y trouve tout l'esprit, si paradoxal, toute l'étonnante culture du brillant écrivain que fut oscar wilde. des cinq _essais_ que contient ce livre, trois sont sous forme de dialogue et donnent l'impression parfaite de ce qui fut le plus grand prestige de wilde: la causerie. la traduction que nous publions aujourd'hui, outre sa fidélité scrupuleuse et son incontestable élégance, offre cet attrait particulier d'être le dernier travail d'un des jeunes maîtres de la prose française, hugues rebell, qui l'acheva peu de jours avant sa mort. la préface de m. charles grolleau, écrite avec une délicatesse remarquable et une émotion pénétrante, constitue la plus subtile étude psychologique que l'on ait jamais publiée sur oscar wilde. sous presse: _du même auteur_: poèmes en prose. la duchesse de padoue. la maison des grenades. l'oeuvre d'oscar wilde demande à être traduite à la fois avec précision et avec art. les phrases ont des significations si ténues et le choix des mots est si habile qu'une traduction défectueuse, abondante en contre-sens ou en coquilles, risquerait de décevoir grandement le lecteur. car il faut bien compter que ceux qui se soucient de connaître oscar wilde ne peuvent être ni des concierges ni des cochers de fiacre; ils n'appartiennent certainement pas à ce «grand public» qui se délecte aux émouvants feuilletons de nos quotidiens populaires ou qui savoure avidement les élucubrations égrillardes de certains fabricants de prétendue littérature. c'est ce qu'avait compris l'éditeur carrington quand il chargea hugues rebell de lui traduire _intentions_. ces essais d'oscar wilde représentent plus particulièrement le côté paradoxal et frondeur de sa personalité. il y exprime ses idées ou plutôt ses subtilités esthétiques; il y «cause» plus qu'ailleurs, à tel point que trois de ces essais sur cinq sont dialogués; l'auteur s'entretient avec des personnages qu'il suppose aussi cultivés, aussi beaux esprits que lui-même: «s'entretient» est beaucoup dire, car ce sont plutôt des contradicteurs auxquels il suggère les objections dont il a besoin pour poursuivre le développement et le triomphe de ses arguments. la conversation vagabonde à plaisir et le causeur y fait étalage de toutes les richesses de son esprit, de son imagination, de sa mémoire. au milieu de ces citations, de ces allusions, de ces exemples innombrables empruntés à tous les temps et à tous les pays, le traducteur a chance de s'égarer s'il n'est lui-même homme d'une culture très sûre et très variée. hugues rebell pouvait, sans danger de paraître ignorant ou ridicule, entreprendre de donner une version d'_intentions_. il n'avait certes pas fait de la littérature anglaise contemporaine, non plus que d'aucune époque, l'objet d'études spéciales. mais il connaissait cette littérature dans son ensemble beaucoup mieux que certains qui s'autorisent de quelques excursions à londres pour clamer à tout venant leur compétence douteuse. j'ai souvenir de maintes occasions où rebell, avec cet air mystérieux qu'il ne pouvait s'empêcher de prendre pour les choses les plus simples, m'attirait à l'écart de tel groupe d'amis, où la conversation était générale, pour me parler de tel jeune auteur sur qui l'une de mes chroniques avait attiré son attention. et, chaque fois, il faisait preuve, en ces matières, d'un savoir très étendu. hugues rebell fit donc cette nécessaire traduction, et, dit l'éditeur dans une note préliminaire, «c'est le dernier travail auquel il put se livrer. il nous en remit les derniers feuillets peu de jours avant sa mort». rebell devait préfacer ce travail d'une étude sur la vie et les oeuvres du poète anglais, étude qu'il ne put qu'ébaucher, malheureusement, car, avec gide,--mais celui-ci d'un point de vue différent et peut-être opposé,--il était exclusivement qualifié pour saisir, démêler et interpréter l'étrange personnalité de wilde. quelques fragments de cette étude nous sont donnés cependant et ils nous font très vivement regretter que le vigoureux et paradoxal auteur de l'_union des trois aristocraties_ n'ait pu achever son travail. mais ce regret bien légitime se mitige grandement à mesure qu'on lit la belle préface de m. charles grolleau. prenant pour épigraphe cette pensée de pascal: «je blâme également et ceux qui prennent le parti de louer l'homme, et ceux qui le prennent de le blâmer, et ceux qui le prennent de se divertir; et je ne puis approuver que ceux qui cherchent en gémissant», m. grolleau s'efforce de comprendre et de résoudre ce «douloureux problème» que fut wilde. et il le fait avec cette réserve et ce parfait bon goût que doivent s'imposer les véritables amis et les sincères admirateurs d'oscar wilde. il y a plus, dans ces cinquante pages: il y a l'une des meilleures études qui aient jamais été faites du brillant dramaturge. bien qu'il s'en défende, m. grolleau, dans cette langue élégante et harmonieuse que lui connaissent ceux qui ont lu ses beaux vers, réussit a discerner mieux et à mieux révéler que certaines diatribes «l'âme et la passion» de l'auteur de _de profundis_. je me suis interdit d'écrire une biographie. je ne connais que l'écrivain, et l'homme est trop vivant encore et si blessé! j'ai la dévotion des plaies, et le plus beau rite de cette dévotion est le geste qui voile. toute «cette meditation sur une âme très belle» est écrite avec ce tact délicat et cette tendre sympathie. ainsi, après avoir admiré ces émouvantes pages, le lecteur peut aborder dans un état d'esprit convenable les essais parfois déconcertants qui sont réunis sous le titre significatif d'_intentions_. c'est dans cette belle édition qu'il faut les lire. on sait avec quel souci d'artiste m. carrington établit ses volumes; il n'y laisse pas de ces incroyables coquilles, de ces épais mastics qui ressemblent si fort à des contre-sens, et, sachant quel public intelligent et éclairé voudrait ce livre, il n'a pas eu l'idée saugrenue d'abîmer ses pages par d'inutiles notes assurant le lecteur par exemple que dante a écrit la divine comédie, que shelley fut un grand poète, que keats mourut poitrinaire, que george eliot était femme de lettres et lancret peintre. un portrait de l'auteur est reproduit en tête de cette excellente édition. henry-d. davray. _(extrait du "mercure de france," septembre )._ footnotes: [ ] hugues rebell. [ ] hugues rebell. [ ] sebastian melmoth (oscar wilde). [ ] hugues rebell. [ ] _de profundis._ [ ] hugues rebell. [ ] _studies in prose & verse_, by arthur symons. (lond. ). [ ] sebastian melmoth. [ ] _intentions._ [ ] hugues rebell. [ ] _macaulay._ [ ] de profundis, . [ ] de profundis, . [ ] both of the articles given above appeared for the first time in the st. james's gazette. none oscar wilde his life and confessions by frank harris volume ii [illustration: oscar wilde and lord alfred douglas about ] printed and published by the author waverley place new york city mcmxviii imprime en allemagne printed in germany for he who sins a second time wakes a dead soul to pain, and draws it from its spotted shroud, and makes it bleed again, and makes it bleed great gouts of blood, and makes it bleed in vain. --_the ballad of reading gaol._ copyright, , by frank harris book ii chapter xvii prison for oscar wilde, an english prison with its insufficient bad food[ ] and soul-degrading routine for that amiable, joyous, eloquent, pampered sybarite. here was a test indeed; an ordeal as by fire. what would he make of two years' hard labour in a lonely cell? there are two ways of taking prison, as of taking most things, and all the myriad ways between these two extremes; would oscar be conquered by it and allow remorse and hatred to corrupt his very heart, or would he conquer the prison and possess and use it? hammer or anvil--which? victory has its virtue and is justified of itself like sunshine; defeat carries its own condemnation. yet we have all tasted its bitter waters: only "infinite virtue" can pass through life victorious, shakespeare tells us, and we mortals are not of infinite virtue. the myriad vicissitudes of the struggle search out all our weaknesses; test all our powers. every victory shows a more difficult height to scale, a steeper pinnacle of god-like hardship--that's the reward of victory: it provides the hero with ever-new battle-fields: no rest for him this side the grave. but what of defeat? what sweet is there in its bitter? this may be said for it; it is our great school: punishment teaches pity, just as suffering teaches sympathy. in defeat the brave soul learns kinship with other men, takes the rub to heart; seeks out the reason for the fall in his own weakness, and ever afterwards finds it impossible to judge, much less condemn his fellow. but after all no one can hurt us but ourselves; prison, hard labour, and the hate of men; what are these if they make you truer, wiser, kinder? have you come to grief through self-indulgence and good-living? here are months in which men will take care that you shall eat badly and lie hard. did you lack respect for others? here are men who will show you no consideration. were you careless of others' sufferings? here now you shall agonize unheeded: gaolers and governors as well as black cells just to teach you. thank your stars then for every day's experience, for, when you have learned the lesson of it and turned its discipline into service, the prison shall transform itself into a hermitage, the dungeon into a home; the burnt skilly shall be sweet in your mouth; and your rest on the plank-bed the dreamless slumber of a little child. and if you are an artist, prison will be more to you than this; an astonishing vital and novel experience, accorded only to the chosen. what will you make of it? that's the question for you. it is a wonderful opportunity. seen truly, a prison's more spacious than a palace; nay, richer, and for a loving soul, a far rarer experience. thank then the spirit which steers men for the divine chance which has come to you; henceforth the prison shall be your domain; in future men will not think of it without thinking of you. others may show them what the good things of life do for one; you will show them what suffering can do, cold and regretful sleepless hours and solitude, misery and distress. others will teach the lessons of joy. the whole vast underworld of pity and pain, fear and horror and injustice is your kingdom. men have drawn darkness about you as a curtain, shrouded you in blackest night; the light in you will shine the brighter. always provided of course that the light is not put out altogether. hammer or anvil? how would oscar wilde take punishment? * * * * * we could not know for months. yet he was an artist by nature--that gave one a glimmer of hope. we needed it. for outside at first there was an icy atmosphere of hatred and contempt. the mere mention of his name was met with expressions of disgust, or frozen silence. one bare incident will paint the general feeling more clearly than pages of invective or description. the day after oscar's sentence mr. charles brookfield, who, it will be remembered, had raked together the witnesses that enabled lord queensberry to "justify" his accusation; assisted by mr. charles hawtrey, the actor, gave a dinner to lord queensberry to celebrate their triumph. some forty englishmen of good position were present at the banquet--a feast to celebrate the ruin and degradation of a man of genius. yet there are true souls in england, noble, generous hearts. i remember a lunch at mrs. jeune's, where one declared that wilde was at length enjoying his deserts; another regretted that his punishment was so slight, a third with precise knowledge intimated delicately and with quiet complacence that two years' imprisonment with hard labour usually resulted in idiocy or death: fifty per cent., it appeared, failed to win through. it was more to be dreaded on all accounts than five years' penal servitude. "you see it begins with starvation and solitary confinement, and that breaks up the strongest. i think it will be enough for our vainglorious talker." miss madeleine stanley (now lady middleton) was sitting beside me, her fine, sensitive face clouded: i could not contain myself, i was being whipped on a sore. "this must have been the way they talked in jerusalem," i remarked, "after the world-tragedy." "you were an intimate friend of his, were you not?" insinuated the delicate one gently. "a friend and admirer," i replied, "and always shall be." a glacial silence spread round the table, while the delicate one smiled with deprecating contempt, and offered some grapes to his neighbour; but help came. lady dorothy nevill was a little further down the table: she had not heard all that was said, but had caught the tone of the conversation and divined the rest. "are you talking of oscar wilde?" she exclaimed. "i'm glad to hear you say you are a friend. i am, too, and shall always be proud of having known him, a most brilliant, charming man." "i think of giving a dinner to him when he comes out, lady dorothy," i said. "i hope you'll ask me," she answered bravely. "i should be glad to come. i always admired and liked him; i feel dreadfully sorry for him." the delicate one adroitly changed the conversation and coffee came in, but miss stanley said to me: "i wish i had known him, there must have been great good in him to win such friendship." "great charm in any case," i replied, "and that's rarer among men than even goodness." the first news that came to us from prison was not altogether bad. he had broken down and was in the infirmary, but was getting better. the brave stewart headlam, who had gone bail for him, had visited him, the stewart headlam who was an english clergyman, and yet, wonder of wonders, a christian. a little later one heard that sherard had seen him, and brought about a reconciliation with his wife. mrs. wilde had been very good and had gone to the prison and had no doubt comforted him. much to be hoped from all this.... for months and months the situation in south africa took all my heart and mind. in the first days of january, , came the jameson raid, and i sailed for south africa. i had work to do for _the saturday review_, absorbing work by day and night. in the summer i was back in england, but the task of defending the boer farmers grew more and more arduous, and i only heard that oscar was going on as well as could be expected. some time later, after he had been transferred to reading gaol, bad news leaked out, news that he was breaking up, was being punished, persecuted. his friends came to me, asking: could anything be done? as usual my only hope was in the supreme authority. sir evelyn ruggles brise was the head of the prison commission; after the home secretary, the most powerful person, the permanent official behind the parliamentary figure-head; the man who knew and acted behind the man who talked. i sat down and wrote to him for an interview: by return came a courteous note giving me an appointment. i told him what i had heard about oscar, that his health was breaking down and his reason going, pointed out how monstrous it was to turn prison into a torture-chamber. to my utter astonishment he agreed with me, admitted, even, that an exceptional man ought to have exceptional treatment; showed not a trace of pedantry; good brains, good heart. he went so far as to say that oscar wilde should be treated with all possible consideration, that certain prison rules which pressed very hardly upon him should be interpreted as mildly as possible. he admitted that the punishment was much more severe to him than it would be to an ordinary criminal, and had nothing but admiration for his brilliant gifts. "it was a great pity," he said, "that wilde ever got into prison, a great pity." i was pushing at an open door; besides the year or so which had elapsed since the condemnation had given time for reflection. still, sir ruggles brise's attitude was extraordinary, sympathetic at once and high-minded: another true englishman at the head of affairs: infinite hope in that fact, and solace. i had stuck to my text that something should be done at once to give oscar courage and hope; he must not be murdered or left to despair. sir ruggles brise asked me finally if i would go to reading and report on oscar wilde's condition and make any suggestion that might occur to me. he did not know if this could be arranged; but he would see the home secretary and would recommend it, if i were willing. of course i was willing, more than willing. two or three days later, i got another letter from him with another appointment, and again i went to see him. he received me with charming kindness. the home secretary would be glad if i would go down to reading and report on oscar wilde's state. "everyone," said sir ruggles brise, "speaks with admiration and delight of his wonderful talents. the home secretary thinks it would be a great loss to english literature if he were really injured by the prison discipline. here is your order to see him alone, and a word of introduction to the governor, and a request to give you all information." i could not speak. i could only shake hands with him in silence. what a country of anomalies england is! a judge of the high court a hard self-satisfied pernicious bigot, while the official in charge of the prisons is a man of wide culture and humane views, who has the courage of a noble humanity. i went to reading gaol and sent in my letter. i was met by the governor, who gave orders that oscar wilde should be conducted to a room where we could talk alone. i cannot give an account of my interviews with the governor or the doctor; it would smack of a breach of confidence; besides all such conversations are peculiarly personal: some people call forth the best in us, others the worst. without wishing to, i may have stirred up the lees. i can only say here that i then learned for the first time the full, incredible meaning of "man's inhumanity to man." in a quarter of an hour i was led into a bare room where oscar wilde was already standing by a plain deal table. the warder who had come with him then left us. we shook hands and sat down opposite to each other. he had changed greatly. he appeared much older; his dark brown hair was streaked with grey, particularly in front and over the ears. he was much thinner, had lost at least thirty-five pounds, probably forty or more. on the whole, however, he looked better physically than he had looked for years before his imprisonment: his eyes were clear and bright; the outlines of the face were no longer swamped in fat; the voice even was ringing and musical; he had improved bodily, i thought; though in repose his face wore a nervous, depressed and harassed air. "you know how glad i am to see you, heart-glad to find you looking so well," i began, "but tell me quickly, for i may be able to help you, what have you to complain of; what do you want?" for a long time he was too hopeless, too frightened to talk. "the list of my grievances," he said, "would be without end. the worst of it is i am perpetually being punished for nothing; this governor loves to punish, and he punishes by taking my books from me. it is perfectly awful to let the mind grind itself away between the upper and nether millstones of regret and remorse without respite; with books my life would be livable--any life," he added sadly. "the life, then, is hard. tell me about it." "i don't like to," he said, "it is all so dreadful--and ugly and painful, i would rather not think of it," and he turned away despairingly. "you must tell me, or i shall not be able to help you." bit by bit i won the confession from him. "at first it was a fiendish nightmare; more horrible than anything i had ever dreamt of; from the first evening when they made me undress before them and get into some filthy water they called a bath and dry myself with a damp, brown rag and put on this livery of shame. the cell was appalling: i could hardly breathe in it, and the food turned my stomach; the smell and sight of it were enough: i did not eat anything for days and days, i could not even swallow the bread; and the rest of the food was uneatable; i lay on the so-called bed and shivered all night long.... don't ask me to speak of it, please. words cannot convey the cumulative effect of a myriad discomforts, brutal handling and slow starvation. surely like dante i have written on my face the fact that i have been in hell. only dante never imagined any hell like an english prison; in his lowest circle people could move about; could see each other, and hear each other groan: there was some change, some human companionship in misery...." "when did you begin to eat the food?" i asked. "i can't tell, frank," he replied. "after some days i got so hungry i had to eat a little, nibble at the outside of the bread, and drink some of the liquid; whether it was tea, coffee or gruel, i could not tell. as soon as i really ate anything it produced violent diarrhoea and i was ill all day and all night. from the beginning i could not sleep. i grew weak and had wild delusions.... you must not ask me to describe it. it is like asking a man who has gone through fever to describe one of the terrifying dreams. at wandsworth i thought i should go mad; wandsworth is the worst: no dungeon in hell can be worse; why is the food so bad? it even smelt bad. it was not fit for dogs." "was the food the worst of it?" i asked. "the hunger made you weak, frank; but the inhumanity was the worst of it; what devilish creatures men are. i had never known anything about them. i had never dreamt of such cruelties. a man spoke to me at exercise. you know you are not allowed to speak. he was in front of me, and he whispered, so that he could not be seen, how sorry he was for me, and how he hoped i would bear up. i stretched out my hands to him and cried, 'oh, thank you, thank you.' the kindness of his voice brought tears into my eyes. of course i was punished at once for speaking; a dreadful punishment. i won't think of it: i dare not. they are infinitely cunning in malice here, frank; infinitely cunning in punishment.... don't let us talk of it, it is too painful, too horrible that men should be so brutal." "give me an instance," i said, "of something less painful; something which may be bettered." he smiled wanly. "all of it, frank, all of it should be altered. there is no spirit in a prison but hate, hate masked in degrading formalism. they first break the will and rob you of hope, and then rule by fear. one day a warder came into my cell. "'take off your boots,' he said. "of course i began to obey him; then i asked: "'what is it? why must i take off my boots?' "he would not answer me. as soon as he had my boots, he said: "'come out of your cell.' "'why?' i asked again. i was frightened, frank. what had i done? i could not guess; but then i was often punished for nothing: what was it? no answer. as soon as we were in the corridor he ordered me to stand with my face to the wall, and went away. there i stood in my stocking feet waiting. the cold chilled me through; i began standing first on one foot and then on the other, racking my brains as to what they were going to do to me, wondering why i was being punished like this, and how long it would last; you know the thoughts fear-born that plague the mind.... after what seemed an eternity i heard him coming back. i did not dare to move or even look. he came up to me; stopped by me for a moment; my heart stopped; he threw down a pair of boots beside me, and said: "'go to your cell and put those on,' and i went into my cell shaking. that's the way they give you a new pair of boots in prison, frank; that's the way they are kind to you." "the first period was the worst?" i asked. "oh, yes, infinitely the worst! one gets accustomed to everything in time, to the food and the bed and the silence: one learns the rules, and knows what to expect and what to fear...." "how did you win through the first period?" i asked. "i died," he said quietly, "and came to life again, as a patient." i stared at him. "quite true, frank. what with the purgings and the semi-starvation and sleeplessness and, worst of all, the regret gnawing at my soul and the incessant torturing self-reproaches, i got weaker and weaker; my clothes hung on me; i could scarcely move. one sunday morning after a very bad night i could not get out of bed. the warder came in and i told him i was ill." "'you had better get up,' he said; but i couldn't take the good advice. "'i can't,' i replied, 'you must do what you like with me.' "half an hour later the doctor came and looked in at the door. he never came near me; he simply called out: "'get up; no malingering; you're all right. you'll be punished if you don't get up,' and he went away. "i had to get up. i was very weak; i fell off my bed while dressing, and bruised myself; but i got dressed somehow or other, and then i had to go with the rest to chapel, where they sing hymns, dreadful hymns all out of tune in praise of their pitiless god. "i could hardly stand up; everything kept disappearing and coming back faintly: and suddenly i must have fallen...." he put his hand to his head. "i woke up feeling a pain in this ear. i was in the infirmary with a warder by me. my hand rested on a clean white sheet; it was like heaven. i could not help pushing my toes against the sheet to feel it, it was so smooth and cool and clean. the nurse with kind eyes said to me: "'do eat something,' and gave me some thin white bread and butter. frank, i shall never forget it. the water came into my mouth in streams; i was so desperately hungry, and it was so delicious; i was so weak i cried," and he put his hands before his eyes and gulped down his tears. "i shall never forget it: the warder was so kind. i did not like to tell him i was famished; but when he went away i picked the crumbs off the sheet and ate them, and when i could find no more i pulled myself to the edge of the bed, and picked up the crumbs from the floor and ate those as well; the white bread was so good and i was so hungry." "and now?" i asked, not able to stand more. "oh, now," he said, with an attempt to be cheerful, "of course it would be all right if they did not take my books away from me. if they would let me write. if only they would let me write as i wish, i should be quite content, but they punish me on every pretext. why do they do it, frank? why do they want to make my life here one long misery?" "aren't you a little deaf still?" i asked, to ease the passion i felt of intolerable pity. "yes," he replied, "on this side, where i fell in the chapel. i fell on my ear, you know, and i must have burst the drum of it, or injured it in some way, for all through the winter it has ached and it often bleeds a little." "but they could give you some cotton wool or something to put in it?" i said. he smiled a poor wan smile: "if you think one dare disturb a doctor or a warder for an earache, you don't know much about a prison; you would pay for it. why, frank, however ill i was now," and he lowered his voice to a whisper and glanced about him as if fearing to be overheard, "however ill i was i would not think of sending for the doctor. not think of it," he said in an awestruck voice. "i have learned prison ways." "i should rebel," i cried; "why do you let it break the spirit?" "you would soon be broken, if you rebelled, here. besides it is all incidental to the _system_. the _system_! no one outside knows what that means. it is an old story, i'm afraid, the story of man's cruelty to man." "i think i can promise you," i said, "that the _system_ will be altered a little. you shall have books and things to write with, and you shall not be harassed every moment by punishment." "take care," he cried in a spasm of dread, putting his hand on mine, "take care, they may punish me much worse. you don't know what they can do." i grew hot with indignation. "don't say anything, please, of what i have said to you. promise me, you won't say anything. promise me. i never complained, i didn't." his excitement was a revelation. "all right," i replied, to soothe him. "no, but promise me, seriously," he repeated. "you must promise me. think, you have my confidence, it is private what i have said." he was evidently frightened out of self-control. "all right," i said, "i will not tell; but i'll get the facts from the others and not from you." "oh, frank," he said, "you don't know what they do. there is a punishment here more terrible than the rack." and he whispered to me with white sidelong eyes: "they can drive you mad in a week, frank."[ ] "mad!" i exclaimed, thinking i must have misunderstood him; though he was white and trembling. "what about the warders?" i asked again, to change the subject, for i began to feel that i had supped full on horrors. "some of them are kind," he sighed. "the one that brought me in here is so kind to me. i should like to do something for him, when i get out. he's quite human. he does not mind talking to me and explaining things; but some of them at wandsworth were brutes.... i will not think of them again. i have sewn those pages up and you must never ask me to open them again: i dare not open them," he cried pitifully. "but you ought to tell it all," i said, "that's perhaps the purpose you are here for: the ultimate reason." "oh, no, frank, never. it would need a man of infinite strength to come here and give a truthful record of all that happened to him. i don't believe you could do it; i don't believe anybody would be strong enough. starvation and purging alone would break down anyone's strength. everybody knows that you are purged and starved to the edge of death. that's what two years' hard labour means. it's not the labour that's hard. it's the conditions of life that make it impossibly hard: they break you down body and soul. and if you resist, they drive you crazy.... but, please! don't say i said anything; you've promised, you know you have: you'll remember: won't you!" i felt guilty: his insistence, his gasping fear showed me how terribly he must have suffered. he was beside himself with dread. i ought to have visited him sooner. i changed the subject. "you shall have writing materials and your books, oscar. force yourself to write. you are looking better than you used to look; your eyes are brighter, your face clearer." the old smile came back into his eyes, the deathless humour. "i've had a rest cure, frank," he said, and smiled feebly. "you should give record of this life as far as you can, and of all its influences on you. you have conquered, you know. write the names of the inhuman brutes on their foreheads in vitriol, as dante did for all time." "no, no, i cannot: i will not: i want to live and forget. i could not, i dare not, i have not dante's strength, nor his bitterness; i am a greek born out of due time." he had said the true word at last. "i will come again and see you," i replied. "is there nothing else i can do? i hear your wife has seen you. i hope you have made it up with her?" "she tried to be kind to me, frank," he said in a dull voice, "she was kind, i suppose. she must have suffered; i'm sorry...." one felt he had no sorrow to spare for others. "is there nothing i can do?" i asked. "nothing, frank, only if you could get me books and writing materials, if i could be allowed to use them really! but you won't say anything i have said to you, you promise me you won't?" "i promise," i replied, "and i shall come back in a short time to see you again. i think you will be better then.... "don't dread the coming out; you have friends who will work for you, great allies--" and i told him about lady dorothy nevill at mrs. jeune's lunch. "isn't she a dear old lady?" he cried, "charming, brilliant, human creature! she might have stepped out of a page of thackeray, only thackeray never wrote a page quite dainty and charming enough. he came near it in his 'esmond.' oh, i remember you don't like the book, but it is beautifully written, frank, in beautiful simple rhythmic english. it sings itself to the ear. lady dorothy" (how he loved the title!) "was always kind to me, but london is horrible. i could not live in london again. i must go away out of england. do you remember talking to me, frank, of france?" and he put both his hands on my shoulders, while tears ran down his face, and sighs broke from him. "beautiful france, the one country in the world where they care for humane ideals and the humane life. ah! if only i had gone with you to france," and the tears poured down his cheeks and our hands met convulsively. "i'm glad to see you looking so well," i began again. "books you shall have; for god's sake keep your heart up, and i will come back and see you, and don't forget you have good friends outside; lots of us!" "thank you, frank; but take care, won't you, and remember your promise not to tell." i nodded in assent and went to the door. the warder came in. "the interview is over," i said; "will you take me downstairs?" "if you will not mind sitting here, sir," he said, "for a minute. i must take him back first." "i have been telling my friend," said oscar to the warder, "how good you have been to me," and he turned and went, leaving with me the memory of his eyes and unforgettable smile; but i noticed as he disappeared that he was thin, and looked hunched up and bowed, in the ugly ill-fitting prison livery. i took out a bank note and put it under the blotting paper that had been placed on the table for me. in two or three minutes the warder came back, and as i left the room i thanked him for being kind to my friend, and told him how kindly oscar had spoken of him. "he has no business here, sir," the warder said. "he's no more like one of our reg'lars than a canary is like one of them cocky little spadgers. prison ain't meant for such as him, and he ain't meant for prison. he's that soft, sir, you see, and affeckshunate. he's more like a woman, he is; you hurt 'em without meaning to. i don't care what they say, i likes him; and he do talk beautiful, sir, don't he?" "indeed he does," i said, "the best talker in the world. i want you to look in the pad on the table. i have left a note there for you." "not for me, sir, i could not take it; no, sir, please not," he cried in a hurried, fear-struck voice. "you've forgotten something, sir, come back and get it, sir, do, please. i daren't." in spite of my remonstrance he took me back and i had to put the note in my pocket. "i could not, you know, sir, i was not kind to him for that." his manner changed; he seemed hurt. i told him i was sure of it, sure, and begged him to believe, that if i were able to do anything for him, at any time, i'd be glad, and gave him my address. he was not even listening--an honest, good man, full of the milk of human kindness. how kind deeds shine starlike in this prison of a world. that warder and sir ruggles brise each in his own place: such men are the salt of the english world; better are not to be found on earth. footnotes: [ ] some years ago _the daily chronicle_ proved that though the general standard of living is lower in germany and in france than in england; yet the prison food in france and especially in germany is far better than in england and the treatment of the prisoners far more humane. [ ] he was referring, i suppose, to the solitary confinement in a dark cell, which english ingenuity has invented and according to all accounts is as terrible as any of the tortures of the past. for those tortures were all physical, whereas the modern englishman addresses himself to the brain and nerves, and finds the fear of madness more terrifying than the fear of pain. what a pity it is that mr. justice wills did not know twenty-four hours of it, just twenty-four hours to teach him what "adequate punishment" for sensual self-indulgence means, and adequate punishment, too, for inhuman cruelty. chapter xviii on my return to london i saw sir ruggles brise. no one could have shown me warmer sympathy, or more discriminating comprehension. i made my report to him and left the matter in his hands with perfect confidence. i took care to describe oscar's condition to his friends while assuring them that his circumstances would soon be bettered. a little later i heard that the governor of the prison had been changed, that oscar had got books and writing materials, and was allowed to have the gas burning in his cell to a late hour when it was turned down but not out. in fact, from that time on he was treated with all the kindness possible, and soon we heard that he was bearing the confinement and discipline better than could have been expected. sir evelyn ruggles brise had evidently settled the difficulty in the most humane spirit. later still i was told that oscar had begun to write "de profundis" in prison, and i was very hopeful about that too: no news could have given me greater pleasure. it seemed to me certain that he would justify himself to men by turning the punishment into a stepping-stone. and in this belief when the time came i ventured to call on sir ruggles brise with another petition. "surely," i said, "oscar will not be imprisoned for the full term; surely four or five months for good conduct will be remitted?" sir ruggles brise listened sympathetically, but warned me at once that any remission was exceptional; however, he would let me know what could be done, if i would call again in a week. much to my surprise, he did not seem certain even about the good conduct. i returned at the end of the week, and had another long talk with him. he told me that good conduct meant, in prison parlance, absence of punishment, and oscar had been punished pretty often. of course his offenses were minor offenses; nothing serious; childish faults indeed for the most part: he was often talking, and he was often late in the morning; his cell was not kept so well as it might be, and so forth; peccadilloes, all; yet a certificate of "good conduct" depended on such trifling observances. in face of oscar's record sir ruggles brise did not think that the sentence would be easily lessened. i was thunder-struck. but then no rules to me are sacrosanct; indeed, they are only tolerable because of the exceptions. i had such a high opinion of ruggles brise--his kindness and sense of fair play--that i ventured to show him my whole mind on the matter. "oscar wilde," i said to him, "is just about to face life again: he is more than half reconciled to his wife; he has begun a book, is shouldering the burden. a little encouragement now and i believe he will do better things than he has ever done. i am convinced that he has far bigger things in him than we have seen yet. but he is extraordinarily sensitive and extraordinarily vain. the danger is that he may be frightened and blighted by the harshness and hatred of the world. he may shrink into himself and do nothing if the wind be not tempered a little for him. a hint of encouragement now, the feeling that men like yourself think him worthful and deserving of special kindly treatment, and i feel certain he will do great things. i really believe it is in your hands to save a man of extraordinary talent, and get the best out of him, if you care to do it." "of course i care to do it," he cried. "you cannot doubt that, and i see exactly what you mean; but it will not be easy." "won't you see what can be done?" i persisted. "put your mind to discover how it should be done, how the home secretary may be induced to remit the last few months of wilde's sentence." after a little while he replied: "you must believe that the authorities are quite willing to help in any good work, more than willing, and i am sure i speak for the home secretary as well as for myself; but it is for you to give us some reason for acting--a reason that could be avowed and defended." i did not at first catch his drift; so i persevered: "you admit that the reason exists, that it would be a good thing to favour wilde, then why not do it?" "we live," he said, "under parliamentary rule. suppose the question were asked in the house, and i think it very likely in the present state of public opinion that the question would be asked: what should we answer? it would not be an avowable reason that we hoped wilde would write new plays and books, would it? that reason ought to be sufficient, i grant you; but, you see yourself, it would not be so regarded." "you are right, i suppose," i had to admit. "but if i got you a petition from men of letters, asking you to release wilde for his health's sake: would that do?" sir ruggles brise jumped at the suggestion. "certainly," he exclaimed, "if some men of letters, men of position, wrote asking that wilde's sentence should be diminished by three or four months on account of his health, i think it would have the best effect." "i will see meredith at once," i said, "and some others. how many names should i get?" "if you have meredith," he replied, "you don't need many others. a dozen would do, or fewer if you find a dozen too many." "i don't think i shall meet with any difficulty," i replied, "but i will let you know." "you will find it harder than you think," he concluded, "but if you get one or two great names the rest may follow. in any case one or two good names will make it easier for you." naturally i thanked him for his kindness and went away absolutely content. i had never set myself a task which seemed simpler. meredith could not be more merciless than a royal commission. i returned to my office in _the saturday review_ and got the royal commission report on this sentence of two years' imprisonment with hard labour. the commission recommended that it should be wiped off the statute book as too severe. i drafted a little petition as colourless as possible: "in view of the fact that the punishment of two years' imprisonment with hard labour has been condemned by a royal commission as too severe, and inasmuch as mr. wilde has been distinguished by his work in letters and is now, we hear, suffering in health, we, your petitioners, pray--and so forth and so on." i got this printed, and then sat down to write to meredith asking when i could see him on the matter. i wanted his signature first to be printed underneath the petition, and then issue it. to my astonishment meredith did not answer at once, and when i pressed him and set forth the facts he wrote to me that he could not do what i wished. i wrote again, begging him to let me see him on the matter. for the first time in my life he refused to see me: he wrote to me to say that nothing i could urge would move him, and it would therefore only be painful to both of us to find ourselves in conflict. nothing ever surprised me more than this attitude of meredith's. i knew his poetry pretty well, and knew how severe he was on every sensual weakness perhaps because it was his own pitfall. i knew too what a fighter he was at heart and how he loved the virile virtues; but i thought i knew the man, knew his tender kindliness of heart, the founts of pity in him, and i felt certain i could count on him for any office of human charity or generosity. but no, he was impenetrable, hard. he told me long afterwards that he had rather a low opinion of wilde's capacities, instinctive, deep-rooted contempt, too, for the showman in him, and an absolute abhorrence of his vice. "that vile, sensual self-indulgence puts back the hands of the clock," he said, "and should not be forgiven." for the life of me i could never forgive meredith; never afterwards was he of any importance to me. he had always been to me a standard bearer in the eternal conflict, a leader in the liberation war of humanity, and here i found him pitiless to another who had been wounded on the same side in the great struggle: it seemed to me appalling. true, wilde had not been wounded in fighting for us; true, he had fallen out and come to grief, as a drunkard might. but after all he had been fighting on the right side: had been a quickening intellectual influence: it was dreadful to pass him on the wayside and allow him callously to bleed to death. it was revoltingly cruel! the foremost englishman of his time unable even to understand christ's example, much less reach his height! this refusal of meredith's not only hurt me, but almost destroyed my hope, though it did not alter my purpose. i wanted a figurehead for my petition, and the figurehead i had chosen i could not get. i began to wonder and doubt. i next approached a very different man, the late professor churton collins, a great friend of mine, who, in spite of an almost pedantic rigour of mind and character, had in him at bottom a curious spring of sympathy--a little pool of pure love for the poets and writers whom he admired. i got him to dinner and asked him to sign the petition; he refused, but on grounds other than those taken by meredith. "of course wilde ought to get out," he said, "the sentence was a savage one and showed bitter prejudice; but i have children, and my own way to make in the world, and if i did this i should be tarred with the wilde brush. i cannot afford to do it. if he were really a great man i hope i should do it, but i don't agree with your estimate of him. i cannot think i am called upon to bell the british cat in his defence: it has many claws and all sharp." as soon as he saw the position was unworthy of him, he shifted to new ground. "if you were justified in coming to me, i should do it; but i am no one; why don't you go to meredith, swinburne or hardy?" i had to give up the professor, as well as the poet. i knocked in turn at a great many doors, but all in vain. no one wished to take the odium on himself. one man, since become celebrated, said he had no position, his name was not good enough for the purpose. others left my letters unanswered. yet another sent a bare acknowledgment saying how sorry he was, but that public opinion was against mr. wilde; with one accord they all made excuses.... one day professor tyrrell of trinity college, dublin, happened to be in my office, while i was setting forth the difference between men of letters in france and england as exemplified by this conduct. in france among authors there is a recognised "_esprit de corps_," which constrains them to hold together. for instance when zola was threatened with prosecution for "nana," a dozen men like cherbuliez, feuillet, dumas _fils_, who hated his work and regarded it as sensational, tawdry, immoral even, took up the cudgels for him at once; declared that the police were not judges of art, and should not interfere with a serious workman. all these frenchmen, though they disliked zola's work, and believed that his popularity was won by a low appeal, still admitted that he was a force in letters, and stood by him resolutely in spite of their own prepossessions and prejudices. but in england the feeling is altogether more selfish. everyone consults his own sordid self-interest and is rather glad to see a social favourite come to grief: not a hand is stretched out to help him. suddenly, tyrrell broke in upon my exposition: "i don't know whether my name is of any good to you," he said, "but i agree with all you have said, and my name might be classed with that of churton collins, though, of course, i've no right to speak for literature," and without more ado he signed the petition, adding, "regius professor of greek at trinity college, dublin." "when you next see oscar," he continued, "please tell him that my wife and i asked after him. we both hold him in grateful memory as a most brilliant talker and writer, and a charming fellow to boot. confusion take all their english puritanism." merely living in ireland tends to make an englishman more humane; but one name was not enough, and tyrrell's was the only one i could get. in despair, and knowing that george wyndham had had a great liking for oscar, and admiration for his high talent, i asked him to lunch at the savoy; laid the matter before him, and begged him to give me his name. he refused, and in face of my astonishment he excused himself by saying that, as soon as the rumour had reached him of oscar's intimacy with bosie douglas, he had asked oscar whether there was any truth in the scandalous report. "you see," he went on, "bosie is by way of being a relation of mine, and so i had the right to ask. oscar gave me his word of honour that there was nothing but friendship between them. he lied to me, and that i can never forgive." a politician unable to forgive a lie--surely one can hear the mocking laughter of the gods! i could say nothing to such paltry affected nonsense. politician-like wyndham showed me how the wind of popular feeling blew, and i recognised that my efforts were in vain. there is no fellow-feeling among english men of letters; in fact they hold together less than any other class and, by himself, none of them wished to help a wounded member of the flock. i had to tell sir ruggles brise that i had failed. i have been informed since that if i had begun by asking thomas hardy, i might have succeeded. i knew hardy; but never cared greatly for his talent. i daresay if i had had nothing else to do i might have succeeded in some half degree. but all these two years i was extremely busy and anxious; the storm clouds in south africa were growing steadily darker and my attitude to south african affairs was exceedingly unpopular in london. it seemed to me vitally important to prevent england from making war on the boers. i had to abandon the attempt to get oscar's sentence shortened, and comfort myself with sir ruggles brise's assurance that he would be treated with the greatest possible consideration. still, my advocacy had had a good effect. oscar himself has told us what the kindness shown to him in the last six months of his prison life really did for him. he writes in _de profundis_ that for the first part of his sentence he could only wring his hands in impotent despair and cry, "what an ending, what an appalling ending!" but when the new spirit of kindness came to him, he could say with sincerity: "what a beginning, what a wonderful beginning!" he sums it all up in these words: "had i been released after eighteen months, as i hoped to be, i would have left my prison loathing it and every official in it with a bitterness of hatred that would have poisoned my life. i have had six months more of imprisonment, but humanity has been in the prison with us all the time, and now when i go out i shall always remember great kindnesses that i have received here from almost everybody, and on the day of my release i shall give many thanks to many people, and ask to be remembered by them in turn." this is the man whom mr. justice wills addressed as insensible to any high appeal. some time passed before i visited oscar again. the change in him was extraordinary. he was light-hearted, gay, and looked better than i had ever seen him: clearly the austerity of prison life suited him. he met me with a jest: "it is you, frank!" he cried as if astonished, "always original! you come back to prison of your own free-will!" he declared that the new governor--major nelson[ ] was his name--had been as kind as possible to him. he had not had a punishment for months, and "oh, frank, the joy of reading when you like and writing as you please--the delight of living again!" he was so infinitely improved that his talk delighted me. "what books have you?" i asked. "i thought i should like the 'oedipus rex,'" he replied gravely; "but i could not read it. it all seemed unreal to me. then i thought of st. augustine, but he was worse still. the fathers of the church were still further away from me; they all found it so easy to repent and change their lives: it does not seem to me easy. at last i got hold of dante. dante was what i wanted. i read the 'purgatorio' all through, forced myself to read it in italian to get the full savour and significance of it. dante, too, had been in the depths and drunk the bitter lees of despair. i shall want a little library when i come out, a library of a score of books. i wonder if you will help me to get it. i want flaubert, stevenson, baudelaire, maeterlinck, dumas _père_, keats, marlowe, chatterton, anatole france, théophile gautier, dante, goethe, meredith's poems, and his 'egoist,' the song of solomon, too, job, and, of course, the gospels." "i shall be delighted to get them for you," i said, "if you will send me the list. by the by, i hear that you have been reconciled to your wife; is that true? i should be glad to know it's true." "i hope it will be all right," he said gravely, "she is very good and kind. i suppose you have heard," he went on, "that my mother died since i came here, and that leaves a great gap in my life.... i always had the greatest admiration and love for my mother. she was a great woman, frank, a perfect idealist. my father got into trouble once in dublin, perhaps you have heard about it?" "oh, yes," i said, "i have read the case." (it is narrated in the first chapter of this book.) "well, frank, she stood up in court and bore witness for him with perfect serenity, with perfect trust and without a shadow of common womanly jealousy. she could not believe that the man she loved could be unworthy, and her conviction was so complete that it communicated itself to the jury: her trust was so noble that they became infected by it, and brought him in guiltless.[ ] extraordinary, was it not? she was quite sure too of the verdict. it is only noble souls who have that assurance and serenity.... [illustration: "speranza": lady wilde as a young woman] "when my father was dying it was the same thing. i always see her sitting there by his bedside with a sort of dark veil over her head: quite silent, quite calm. nothing ever troubled her optimism. she believed that only good can happen to us. when death came to the man she loved, she accepted it with the same serenity and when my sister died she bore it in the same high way. my sister was a wonderful creature, so gay and high-spirited, 'embodied sunshine,' i used to call her. "when we lost her, my mother simply took it that it was best for the child. women have infinitely more courage than men, don't you think? i have never known anyone with such perfect faith as my mother. she was one of the great figures of the world. what she must have suffered over my sentence i don't dare to think: i'm sure she endured agonies. she had great hopes of me. when she was told that she was going to die, and that she could not see me, for i was not allowed to go to her,[ ] she said, 'may the prison help him,' and turned her face to the wall. "she felt about the prison as you do, frank, and really i think you are both right; it has helped me. there are things i see now that i never saw before. i see what pity means. i thought a work of art should be beautiful and joyous. but now i see that that ideal is insufficient, even shallow; a work of art must be founded on pity; a book or poem which has no pity in it, had better not be written.... "i shall be very lonely when i come out, and i can't stand loneliness and solitude; it is intolerable to me, hateful, i have had too much of it.... "you see, frank, i am breaking with the past altogether. i am going to write the history of it. i am going to tell how i was tempted and fell, how i was pushed by the man i loved into that dreadful quarrel of his, driven forward to the fight with his father and then left to suffer alone.... "that is the story i am now going to tell. that is the book[ ] of pity and of love which i am writing now--a terrible book.... "i wonder would you publish it, frank? i should like it to appear in _the saturday_." "i'd be delighted to publish anything of yours," i replied, "and happier still to publish something to show that you have at length chosen the better part and are beginning a new life. i'd pay you, too, whatever the work turns out to be worth to me; in any case much more than i pay bernard shaw or anyone else." i said this to encourage him. "i'm sure of that," he answered. "i'll send you the book as soon as i've finished it. i think you'll like it"--and there for the moment the matter ended. at length i felt sure that all would be well with him. how could i help feeling sure? his mind was richer and stronger than it had ever been; and he had broken with all the dark past. i was overjoyed to believe that he would yet do greater things than he had ever done, and this belief and determination were in him too, as anyone can see on reading what he wrote at this time in prison: "there is before me so much to do that i would regard it as a terrible tragedy if i died before i was allowed to complete at any rate a little of it. i see new developments in art and life, each one of which is a fresh mode of perfection. i long to live so that i can explore what is no less than a new world to me. do you want to know what this new world is? i think you can guess what it is. it is the world in which i have been living. sorrow, then, and all that it teaches one, is my new world.... "i used to live entirely for pleasure. i shunned suffering and sorrow of every kind. i hated both...." through the prison bars oscar had begun to see how mistaken he had been, how much greater, and more salutary to the soul, suffering is than pleasure. "out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain." footnotes: [ ] cfr. appendix: "criticisms by robert ross." [ ] i give oscar's view of the trial just to show how his romantic imagination turned disagreeable facts into pleasant fiction. oscar could only have heard of the trial, and perhaps his mother was his informant--which adds to the interest of the story. [ ] permission to visit a dying mother is accorded in france, even to murderers. the english pretend to be more religious than the french; but are assuredly less humane. [ ] "de profundis." what oscar called "the terrible part" of the book--the indictment of lord alfred douglas--has since been read out in court and will be found in the appendix to this volume. chapter xix shortly before he came out of prison, one of oscar's intimates told me he was destitute, and begged me to get him some clothes. i took the name of his tailor and ordered two suits. the tailor refused to take the order: he was not going to make clothes for oscar wilde. i could not trust myself to talk to the man and therefore sent my assistant editor and friend, mr. blanchamp, to have it out with him. the tradesman soul yielded to the persuasiveness of cash in advance. i sent oscar the clothes and a cheque, and shortly after his release got a letter[ ] thanking me. a little later i heard on good authority a story which oscar afterwards confirmed, that when he left reading gaol the correspondent of an american paper offered him £ , for an interview dealing with his prison life and experiences, but he felt it beneath his dignity to take his sufferings to market. he thought it better to borrow than to earn. he is partly to be excused, perhaps, when one remembers that he had still some pounds left of the large sums given him before his condemnation, by miss s----, ross, more adey, and others. still his refusal of such a sum as that offered by the new york paper shows how utterly contemptuous he was of money, even at a moment when one would have thought money would have been his chief preoccupation. he always lived in the day and rather heedlessly. as soon as he left prison he crossed with some friends to france, and went to stay at the hotel de la plage at berneval, a quiet little village near dieppe. m. andré gide, who called on him there almost as soon as he arrived, gives a fair mental picture of him at this time. he tells how delighted he was to find in him the "oscar wilde of old," no longer the sensualist puffed out with pride and good living, but "the sweet wilde" of the days before . "i found myself taken back, not two years," he says, "but four or five. there was the same dreamy look, the same amused smile, the same voice." he told m. gide that prison had completely changed him, had taught him the meaning of pity. "you know," he went on, "how fond i used to be of 'madame bovary,' but flaubert would not admit pity into his work, and that is why it has a petty and restrained character about it. it is the sense of pity by means of which a work gains in expanse, and by which it opens up a boundless horizon. do you know, my dear fellow, it was pity which prevented my killing myself? during the first six months in prison i was dreadfully unhappy, so utterly miserable that i wanted to kill myself; but what kept me from doing so was looking at the others, and seeing that they were as unhappy as i was, and feeling sorry for them. oh dear! what a wonderful thing pity is, and i never knew it." he was speaking in a low voice without any excitement. "have you ever learned how wonderful a thing pity is? for my part i thank god every night, yes, on my knees i thank god for having taught it to me. i went into prison with a heart of stone, thinking only of my own pleasure; but now my heart is utterly broken--pity has entered into my heart. i have learned now that pity is the greatest and the most beautiful thing in the world. and that is why i cannot bear ill-will towards those who caused my suffering and those who condemned me; no, nor to anyone, because without them i should not have known all that. alfred douglas writes me terrible letters. he says he does not understand me, that he does not understand that i do not wish everyone ill, and that everyone has been horrid to me. no, he does not understand me. he cannot understand me any more. but i keep on telling him that in every letter: we cannot follow the same road. he has his and it is beautiful--i have mine. his is that of alcibiades; mine is now that of st. francis of assisi." how much of this is sincere and how much merely imagined and stated in order to incarnate the new ideal to perfection would be hard to say. the truth is not so saintly simple as the christianised oscar would have us believe. the unpublished portions of "de profundis" which were read out in the douglas-ransome trial prove, what all his friends know, that oscar wilde found it impossible to forgive or forget what seemed to him personal ill-treatment. there are beautiful pages in "de profundis," pages of sweetest christlike resignation and charity and no doubt in a certain mood oscar was sincere in writing them. but there was another mood in him, more vital and more enduring, if not so engaging, a mood in which he saw himself as one betrayed and sacrificed and abandoned, and then he attributed his ruin wholly to his friend and did not hesitate to speak of him as the "judas" whose shallow selfishness and imperious ill-temper and unfulfilled promises of monetary help had driven a great man to disaster. that unpublished portion of "de profundis" is in essence, from beginning to end, one long curse of lord alfred douglas, an indictment apparently impartial, particularly at first; but in reality a bitter and merciless accusation, showing in oscar wilde a curious want of sympathy even with the man he said he loved. those who would know oscar wilde as he really was will read that piece of rhetoric with care enough to notice that he reiterates the charge of shallow selfishness with such venom, that he discovers his own colossal egotism and essential hardness of heart. "love," we are told, "suffereth long and is kind ... beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things"--that sweet, generous, all-forgiving tenderness of love was not in the pagan, oscar wilde, and therefore even his deepest passion never won to complete reconciliation and ultimate redemption. in this same talk with m. gide, oscar is reported to have said that he had known beforehand that a catastrophe was unavoidable; "there was but one end possible.... that state of things could not last; there had to be some end to it." this view i believe is gide's and not oscar's. in any case i am sure that my description of him before the trials as full of insolent self-assurance is the truer truth. of course he must have had forebodings; he was warned as i've related, again and again; but he took character-colour from his associates and he met queensberry's first attempts at attack with utter disdain. he did not realise his danger at all. gide reports him more correctly as adding: "prison has completely changed me. i was relying on it for that--douglas is terrible. he cannot understand that--cannot understand that i am not taking up the same existence again. he accuses the others of having changed me." i may publish here part of a letter of a prison warder which mr. stuart mason reproduced in his excellent little book on oscar wilde. he says: "no more beautiful life had any man lived, no more beautiful life could any man live than oscar wilde lived during the short period i knew him in prison. he wore upon his face an eternal smile; sunshine was on his face, sunshine of some sort must have been in his heart. people say he was not sincere: he was the very soul of sincerity when i knew him. if he did not continue that life after he left prison, then the forces of evil must have been too strong for him. but he tried, he honestly tried, and in prison he succeeded." all this seems to me in the main, true. oscar's gay vivacity would have astonished any stranger. besides, the regular hours and scant plain food of prison had improved his health and the solitude and suffering had lent him a deeper emotional life. but there was an intense bitterness in him, a profound underlying sense of injury which came continually to passionate expression. yet as soon as the miserable petty persecution of the prison was lifted from him, all the joyous gaiety and fun of his nature bubbled up irresistibly. there was no contradiction in this complexity. a man can hold in himself a hundred conflicting passions and impulses without confusion. at this time the dominant chord in oscar was pity for others. to my delight the world had evidence of this changed oscar wilde in a very short time. on may th, a few days after he left prison, there appeared in _the daily chronicle_ a letter more than two columns in length, pleading for the kindlier treatment of little children in english prisons. the letter was written because warder martin[ ] of reading prison had been dismissed by the commissioners for the dreadful crime of "having given some sweet biscuits to a little hungry child."... i must quote a few paragraphs of this letter; because it shows how prison had deepened oscar wilde, how his own suffering had made him, as shakespeare says, "pregnant to good pity," and also because it tells us what life was like in an english prison in our time. oscar wrote: "i saw the three children myself on the monday preceding my release. they had just been convicted, and were standing in a row in the central hall in their prison dress carrying their sheets under their arms, previous to their being sent to the cells allotted to them.... they were quite small children, the youngest--the one to whom the warder gave the biscuits--being a tiny chap, for whom they had evidently been unable to find clothes small enough to fit. i had, of course, seen many children in prison during the two years during which i was myself confined. wandsworth prison, especially, contained always a large number of children. but the little child i saw on the afternoon of monday, the th, at reading, was tinier than any one of them. i need not say how utterly distressed i was to see these children at reading, for i knew the treatment in store for them. the cruelty that is practised by day and night on children in english prisons is incredible except to those that have witnessed it and are aware of the brutality of the system. "people nowadays do not understand what cruelty is.... ordinary cruelty is simply stupidity. "the prison treatment of children is terrible, primarily from people not understanding the peculiar psychology of the child's nature. a child can understand a punishment inflicted by an individual, such as a parent, or guardian, and bear it with a certain amount of acquiescence. what it cannot understand is a punishment inflicted by society. it cannot realise what society is.... "the terror of a child in prison is quite limitless. i remember once in reading, as i was going out to exercise, seeing in the dimly lit cell opposite mine a small boy. two warders--not unkindly men--were talking to him, with some sternness apparently, or perhaps giving him some useful advice about his conduct. one was in the cell with him, the other was standing outside. the child's face was like a white wedge of sheer terror. there was in his eyes the terror of a hunted animal. the next morning i heard him at breakfast time crying, and calling to be let out. his cry was for his parents. from time to time i could hear the deep voice of the warder on duty telling him to keep quiet. yet he was not even convicted of whatever little offence he had been charged with. he was simply on remand. that i knew by his wearing his own clothes, which seemed neat enough. he was, however, wearing prison socks and shoes. this showed that he was a very poor boy, whose own shoes, if he had any, were in a bad state. justices and magistrates, an entirely ignorant class as a rule, often remand children for a week, and then perhaps remit whatever sentence they are entitled to pass. they call this 'not sending a child to prison.' it is of course a stupid view on their part. to a little child, whether he is in prison on remand or after conviction is not a subtlety of position he can comprehend. to him the horrible thing is to be there at all. in the eyes of humanity it should be a horrible thing for him to be there at all. "this terror that seizes and dominates the child, as it seizes the grown man also, is of course intensified beyond power of expression by the solitary cellular system of our prisons. every child is confined to its cell for twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four. this is the appalling thing. to shut up a child in a dimly lit cell for twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four is an example of the cruelty of stupidity. if an individual, parent or guardian, did this to a child, he would be severely punished.... "the second thing from which a child suffers in prison is hunger. the food that is given to it consists of a piece of usually badly baked prison bread and a tin of water for breakfast at half past seven. at twelve o'clock it gets dinner, composed of a tin of coarse indian meal stirabout, and at half past five it gets a piece of dry bread and a tin of water for its supper. this diet in the case of a strong man is always productive of illness of some kind, chiefly, of course, diarrhoea, with its attendant weakness. in fact, in a big prison, astringent medicines are served out regularly by the warders as a matter of course. a child is as a rule incapable of eating the food at all. anyone who knows anything about children knows how easily a child's digestion is upset by a fit of crying, or trouble and mental distress of any kind. a child who has been crying all day long and perhaps half the night, in a lonely, dimly lit cell, and is preyed upon by terror, simply cannot eat food of this coarse, horrible kind. in the case of the little child to whom warder martin gave the biscuits, the child was crying with hunger on tuesday morning, and utterly unable to eat the bread and water served to it for breakfast. "martin went out after the breakfast had been served, and bought the few sweet biscuits for the child rather than see it starving. it was a beautiful action on his part, and was so recognised by the child, who, utterly unconscious of the regulation of the prison board, told one of the senior warders how kind this junior warder had been to him. the result was, of course, a report and a dismissal.[ ] "i know martin extremely well, and i was under his charge for the last seven weeks of my imprisonment.... i was struck by the singular kindness and humanity of the way in which he spoke to me and to the other prisoners. kind words are much in prison, and a pleasant 'good-morning' or 'good-evening' will make one as happy as one can be in prison. he was always gentle and considerate.... "a great deal has been talked and written lately about the contaminating influence of prison on young children. what is said is quite true. a child is utterly contaminated by prison life. but this contaminating influence is not that of the prisoners. it is that of the whole prison system--of the governor, the chaplain, the warders, the solitary cell, the isolation, the revolting food, the rules of the prison commissioners, the mode of discipline, as it is termed, of the life. "of course no child under fourteen years of age should be sent to prison at all. it is an absurdity, and, like many absurdities, of absolutely tragical results...." this letter, i am informed, brought about some improvement in the treatment of young children in british prisons. but in regard to adults the british prison is still the torture chamber it was in wilde's time; prisoners are still treated more brutally there than anywhere else in the civilised world; the food is the worst in europe, insufficient indeed to maintain health; in many cases men are only saved from death by starvation through being sent to the infirmary. though these facts are well known, _punch_, the pet organ of the british middle-class, was not ashamed a little while ago to make a mock of some suggested reform, by publishing a picture of a british convict, with the villainous face of a bill sykes, lying on a sofa in his cell smoking a cigar with champagne at hand. this is not altogether due to stupidity, as oscar tried to believe, but to reasoned selfishness. _punch_ and the class for which it caters would like to believe that many convicts are unfit to live, whereas the truth is that a good many of them are superior in humanity to the people who punish and slander them. while waiting for his wife to join him, oscar rented a little house, the châlet bourgeat, about two hundred yards away from the hotel at berneval, and furnished it. here he spent the whole of the summer writing, bathing, and talking to the few devoted friends who visited him from time to time. never had he been so happy: never in such perfect health. he was full of literary projects; indeed, no period of his whole life was so fruitful in good work. he was going to write some biblical plays; one entitled "pharaoh" first, and then one called "ahab and jezebel," which he pronounced isabelle. deeper problems, too, were much in his mind: he was already at work on "the ballad of reading gaol," but before coming to that let me first show how happy the song-bird was and how divinely he sang when the dreadful cage was opened and he was allowed to use his wings in the heavenly sunshine. here is a letter from him shortly after his release which is one of the most delightful things he ever wrote. fitly enough it was addressed to his friend of friends, robert ross, and i can only say that i am extremely obliged to ross for allowing me to publish it: hotel de la plage. berneval, near dieppe, monday night, may st ( ). my dearest robbie, i have decided that the only way in which to get boots properly is to go to france to receive them. the douane charged francs. how could you frighten me as you did? the next time you order boots please come to dieppe to get them sent to you. it is the only way and it will be an excuse for seeing you. i am going to-morrow on a pilgrimage. i always wanted to be a pilgrim, and i have decided to start early to-morrow to the shrine of notre dame de liesse. do you know what liesse is? it is an old word for joy. i suppose the same as letizia, lætitia. i just heard to-night of the shrine or chapel, by chance, as you would say, from the sweet woman of the auberge, who wants me to live always at berneval. she says notre dame de liesse is wonderful, and helps everyone to the secret of joy--i do not know how long it will take me to get to the shrine, as i must walk. but, from what she tells me, it will take at least six or seven minutes to get there, and as many to come back. in fact the chapel of notre dame de liesse is just fifty yards from the hotel. isn't it extraordinary? i intend to start after i have had my coffee, and then to bathe. need i say that this is a miracle? i wanted to go on a pilgrimage, and i find the little grey stone chapel of our lady of joy is brought to me. it has probably been waiting for me all these purple years of pleasure, and now it comes to meet me with liesse as its message. i simply don't know what to say. i wish you were not so hard to poor heretics,[ ] and would admit that even for the sheep who has no shepherd there is a stella maris to guide it home. but you and more, especially more, treat me as a dissenter. it is very painful and quite unjust. yesterday i attended mass at o'clock and afterwards bathed. so i went into the water without being a pagan. the consequence was that i was not tempted by either sirens or mermaidens, or any of the green-haired following of glaucus. i really think that this is a remarkable thing. in my pagan days the sea was always full of tritons blowing conchs, and other unpleasant things. now it is quite different. and yet you treat me as the president of mansfield college; and after i had canonised you too. dear boy, i wish you would tell me if your religion makes you happy. you conceal your religion from me in a monstrous way. you treat it like writing in the _saturday review_ for pollock, or dining in wardour street off the fascinating dish that is served with tomatoes and makes men mad.[ ] i know it is useless asking you, so don't tell me. i felt an outcast in chapel yesterday--not really, but a little in exile. i met a dear farmer in a corn field and he gave me a seat on his banc in church: so i was quite comfortable. he now visits me twice a day, and as he has no children, and is rich, i have made him promise to adopt _three_--two boys and a girl. i told him that if he wanted them, he would find them. he said he was afraid that they would turn out badly. i told him everyone did that. he really has promised to adopt three orphans. he is now filled with enthusiasm at the idea. he is to go to the _curé_ and talk to him. he told me that his own father had fallen down in a fit one day as they were talking together, and that he had caught him in his arms, and put him to bed, where he died, and that he himself had often thought how dreadful it was that if he had a fit there was no one to catch him in his arms. it is quite clear that he must adopt orphans, is it not? i feel that berneval is to be my home. i really do. notre dame de liesse will be sweet to me, if i go on my knees to her, and she will advise me. it is extraordinary being brought here by a white horse that was a native of the place, and knew the road, and wanted to see its parents, now of advanced years. it is also extraordinary that i knew berneval existed and was arranged for me. m. bonnet[ ] wants to build me a châlet, , metres of ground (i don't know how much that is--but i suppose about miles) and a châlet with a studio, a balcony, a salle-à-manger, a huge kitchen, and three bedrooms--a view of the sea, and trees--all for , francs--£ . if i can write a play i am going to have it begun. fancy one's own lovely house and grounds in france for £ . no rent of any kind. pray consider this, and approve, if you think well. of course, not till i have done my play. an old gentleman lives here in the hotel. he dines alone in his room, and then sits in the sun. he came here for two days and has stayed two years. his sole sorrow is that there is no theatre. monsieur bonnet is a little heartless about this, and says that as the old gentleman goes to bed at o'clock a theatre would be of no use to him. the old gentleman says he only goes to bed at o'clock because there is no theatre. they argued the point yesterday for an hour. i sided with the old gentleman, but logic sides with monsieur bonnet, i believe. i had a sweet letter from the sphinx.[ ] she gives me a delightful account of ernest[ ] subscribing to romeike while his divorce suit was running, and not being pleased with some of the notices. considering the growing appreciation of ibsen i must say that i am surprised the notices were not better, but nowadays everybody is jealous of everyone else, except, of course, husband and wife. i think i shall keep this last remark of mine for my play. have you got my silver spoon[ ] from reggie? you got my silver brushes out of humphreys,[ ] who is bald, so you might easily get my spoon out of reggie, who has so many, or used to have. you know my crest is on it. it is a bit of irish silver, and i don't want to lose it. there is an excellent substitute called britannia metal, very much liked at the adelphi and elsewhere. wilson barrett writes, "i prefer it to silver." it would suit dear reggie admirably. walter besant writes, "i use none other." mr. beerbohm tree also writes, "since i have tried it i am a different actor; my friends hardly recognise me." so there is obviously a demand for it. i am going to write a political economy in my heavier moments. the first law i lay down is, "whenever there exists a demand, there is _no_ supply." this is the only law that explains the extraordinary contrast between the soul of man and man's surroundings. civilisations continue because people hate them. a modern city is the exact opposite of what everyone wants. nineteenth-century dress is the result of our horror of the style. the tall hat will last as long as people dislike it. dear robbie, i wish you would be a little more considerate, and not keep me up so late talking to you. it is very flattering to me and all that, but you should remember that i need rest. good-night. you will find some cigarettes and some flowers by your bedside. coffee is served below at o'clock. do you mind? if it is too early for you i don't at all mind lying in bed an extra hour. i hope you will sleep well. you should as lloyd is not on the verandah.[ ] tuesday morning, . . the sea and sky are opal--no horrid drawing master's line between them--just one fishing boat, going slowly, and drawing the wind after it. i am going to bathe. o'clock. bathed and have seen a châlet here which i wish to take for the season--quite charming--a splendid view: a large writing room, a dining room, and three lovely bedrooms--besides servants' rooms and also a huge balcony. [in this blank space he had i don't know the scale roughly drawn a ground plan of the drawing, but the of the imagined châlet.] rooms are larger than the plan is. . salle-à-manger. all on ground floor . salon. with steps from balcony . balcony. to ground. the rent for the season or year is, what do you think?--£ . of course i must have it: i will take my meals here--separate and reserved table: it is within two minutes walk. do tell me to take it. when you come again your room will be waiting for you. all i need is a domestique. the people here are most kind. i made my pilgrimage--the interior of the chapel is of course a modern horror--but there is a black image of notre dame de liesse--the chapel is as tiny as an undergraduate's room at oxford. i hope to get the curé to celebrate mass in it soon; as a rule the service is only held there in july and august; but i want to see a mass quite close. there is also another thing i must write to you about. i adore this place. the whole country is lovely, and full of forest and deep meadow. it is simple and healthy. if i live in paris i may be doomed to things i don't desire. i am afraid of big towns. here i get up at . . i am happy all day. i go to bed at . i am frightened of paris. i want to live here. i have seen the "terrain." it is the best here, and the only one left. i must build a house. if i could build a châlet for , francs--£ --and live in a home of my own, how happy i would be. i must raise the money somehow. it would give me a home, quiet, retired, healthy, and near england. if i live in egypt i know what my life would be. if i live in the south of italy i know i should be idle and worse. i want to live here. do think over this and send me over the architect.[ ] m. bonnet is excellent and is ready to carry out any idea. i want a little châlet of wood and plaster walls, the wooden beams showing and the white square of plaster diapering the framework--like, i regret to say--shakespeare's house--like old english sixteenth-century farmers' houses. so your architect has me waiting for him, as he is waiting for me. do you think the idea absurd? i got the _chronicle_, many thanks. i see the writer on prince--a. . .--does not mention my name--foolish of her--it is a woman. i, as you, the poem of my days, are away, am forced to write. i have begun something that i think will be very good. i breakfast to-morrow with the stannards: what a great passionate, splendid writer john strange winter is! how little people understand her work! _bootle's baby_ is an "oeuvre symboliste"--it is really only the style and the subject that are wrong. pray never speak lightly of _bootle's baby_--indeed pray never speak of it at all--i never do. yours, oscar. please send a _chronicle_ to my wife. mrs. c.m. holland, maison benguerel, bevaix, pres de neuchatel, just marking it--and if my second letter appears, mark that. also cut out the letter[ ] and enclose it in an envelope to: mr. arthur cruthenden, poste restante, g.p.o., reading, with just these lines: dear friend, the enclosed will interest you. there is also another letter waiting in the post office for you from me with a little money. ask for it if you have not got it. yours sincerely, c. . . i have no one but you, dear robbie, to do anything. of course the letter to reading must go at once, as my friends come out on wednesday morning early. this letter displays almost every quality of oscar wilde's genius in perfect efflorescence--his gaiety, joyous merriment and exquisite sensibility. who can read of the little chapel to notre dame de liesse without emotion quickly to be changed to mirth by the sunny humour of those delicious specimens of self-advertisement: "mr. beerbohm tree also writes: 'since i have tried it, i am a different actor, my friends hardly recognise me.'" this letter is the most characteristic thing oscar wilde ever wrote, a thing produced in perfect health at the topmost height of happy hours, more characteristic even than "the importance of being earnest," for it has not only the humour of that delightful farce-comedy, but also more than a hint of the deeper feeling which was even then forming itself into a master-work that will form part of the inheritance of men forever. "the ballad of reading gaol" belongs to this summer of . a fortunate conjuncture of circumstances--the prison discipline excluding all sense-indulgence, the kindness shown him towards the end of his imprisonment and of course the delight of freedom--gave him perfect physical health and hope and joy in work, and so oscar was enabled for a few brief months to do better than his best. he assured me and i believe that the conception of "the ballad" came to him in prison and was due to the alleviation of his punishment and the permission accorded to him to write and read freely--a divine fruit born directly of his pity for others and the pity others felt for him. "the ballad of reading gaol"[ ] was published in january, , over the signature of c. . ., oscar's number in prison. in a few weeks it ran through dozens of editions in england and america and translations appeared in almost every european language, which is proof not so much of the excellence of the poem as the great place the author held in the curiosity of men. the enthusiasm with which it was accepted in england was astounding. one reviewer compared it with the best of sophocles; another said that "nothing like it has appeared in our time." no word of criticism was heard: the most cautious called it a "simple poignant ballad, ... one of the greatest in the english language." this praise is assuredly not too generous. yet even this was due to a revulsion of feeling in regard to oscar himself rather than to any understanding of the greatness of his work. the best public felt that he had been dreadfully over-punished, and made a scapegoat for worse offenders and was glad to have the opportunity of repairing its own fault by over-emphasising oscar's repentance and over-praising, as it imagined, the first fruits of the converted sinner. "the ballad of reading gaol" is far and away the best poem oscar wilde ever wrote; we should try to appreciate it as the future will appreciate it. we need not be afraid to trace it to its source and note what is borrowed in it and what is original. after all necessary qualifications are made, it will stand as a great and splendid achievement. shortly before "the ballad" was written, a little book of poetry called "a shropshire lad" was published by a.e. housman, now i believe professor of latin at cambridge. there are only a hundred odd pages in the booklet; but it is full of high poetry--sincere and passionate feeling set to varied music. his friend, reginald turner, sent oscar a copy of the book and one poem in particular made a deep impression on him. it is said that "his actual model for 'the ballad of reading gaol' was 'the dream of eugene aram' with 'the ancient mariner' thrown in on technical grounds"; but i believe that wilde owed most of his inspiration to "a shropshire lad." here are some verses from housman's poem and some verses from "the ballad": on moonlit heath and lonesome bank the sheep beside me graze; and yon the gallows used to clank fast by the four cross ways. a careless shepherd once would keep the flocks by moonlight there,[ ] and high amongst the glimmering sheep the dead men stood on air. they hang us now in shrewsbury jail: the whistles blow forlorn, and trains all night groan on the rail to men that die at morn. there sleeps in shrewsbury jail to-night, or wakes, as may betide, a better lad, if things went right, than most that sleep outside. and naked to the hangman's noose the morning clocks will ring a neck god made for other use than strangling in a string. and sharp the link of life will snap, and dead on air will stand heels that held up as straight a chap as treads upon the land. so here i'll watch the night and wait to see the morning shine when he will hear the stroke of eight and not the stroke of nine; and wish my friend as sound a sleep as lads i did not know, that shepherded the moonlit sheep a hundred years ago. the ballad of reading gaol it is sweet to dance to violins when love and life are fair: to dance to flutes, to dance to lutes, is delicate and rare: but it is not sweet with nimble feet to dance upon the air! and as one sees most fearful things in the crystal of a dream, we saw the greasy hempen rope hooked to the blackened beam and heard the prayer the hangman's snare strangled into a scream. and all the woe that moved him so that he gave that bitter cry, and the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats, none knew so well as i: for he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die. there are better things in "the ballad of reading gaol" than those inspired by housman. in the last of the three verses i quote there is a distinction of thought which housman hardly reached. "for he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die." there are verses, too, wrung from the heart which have a diviner influence than any product of the intellect: the chaplain would not kneel to pray by his dishonoured grave: nor mark it with that blessed cross that christ for sinners gave, because the man was one of those whom christ came down to save. * * * * * this too i know--and wise were it if each could know the same-- that every prison that men build is built with bricks of shame, and bound with bars lest christ should see how men their brothers maim. with bars they blur the gracious moon, and blind the goodly sun: and they do well to hide their hell, for in it things are done that son of god nor son of man ever should look upon! the vilest deeds like poison weeds bloom well in prison-air: it is only what is good in man that wastes and withers there: pale anguish keeps the heavy gate, and the warder is despair. * * * * * and he of the swollen purple throat, and the stark and staring eyes, waits for the holy hands that took the thief to paradise; and a broken and a contrite heart the lord will not despise. "the ballad of reading gaol" is beyond all comparison the greatest ballad in english: one of the noblest poems in the language. this is what prison did for oscar wilde. when speaking to him later about this poem i remember assuming that his prison experiences must have helped him to realise the suffering of the condemned soldier and certainly lent passion to his verse. but he would not hear of it. "oh, no, frank," he cried, "never; my experiences in prison were too horrible, too painful to be used. i simply blotted them out altogether and refused to recall them." "what about the verse?" i asked: "we sewed the sacks, we broke the stones, we turned the dusty drill: we banged the tins, and bawled the hymns, and sweated on the mill: and in the heart of every man terror was lying still." "characteristic details, frank, merely the _décor_ of prison life, not its reality; that no one could paint, not even dante, who had to turn away his eyes from lesser suffering." it may be worth while to notice here, as an example of the hatred with which oscar wilde's name and work were regarded, that even after he had paid the penalty for his crime the publisher and editor, alike in england and america, put anything but a high price on his best work. they would have bought a play readily enough because they would have known that it would make them money, but a ballad from his pen nobody seemed to want. the highest price offered in america for "the ballad of reading gaol" was one hundred dollars. oscar found difficulty in getting even £ for the english rights from the friend who published it; yet it has sold since by hundreds of thousands and is certain always to sell. i must insert here part of another letter from oscar wilde which appeared in _the daily chronicle_, th march, , on the cruelties of the english prison system; it was headed, "don't read this if you want to be happy to-day," and was signed by "the author of 'the ballad of reading gaol.'" it was manifestly a direct outcome of his prison experiences. the letter was simple and affecting; but it had little or no influence on the english conscience. the home secretary was about to reform (!) the prison system by appointing more inspectors. oscar wilde pointed out that inspectors could do nothing but see that the regulations were carried out. he took up the position that it was the regulations which needed reform. his plea was irrefutable in its moderation and simplicity: but it was beyond the comprehension of an english home secretary apparently, for all the abuses pointed out by oscar wilde still flourish. i can't help giving some extracts from this memorable indictment: memorable for its reserve and sanity and complete absence of any bitterness: "... the prisoner who has been allowed the smallest privilege dreads the arrival of the inspectors. and on the day of any prison inspection the prison officials are more than usually brutal to the prisoners. their object is, of course, to show the splendid discipline they maintain. "the necessary reforms are very simple. they concern the needs of the body and the needs of the mind of each unfortunate prisoner. "with regard to the first, there are three permanent punishments authorised by law in english prisons: " . hunger. " . insomnia. " . disease. "the food supplied to prisoners is entirely inadequate. most of it is revolting in character. all of it is insufficient. every prisoner suffers day and night from hunger.... "the result of the food--which in most cases consists of weak gruel, badly baked bread, suet and water--is disease in the form of incessant diarrhoea. this malady, which ultimately with most prisoners becomes a permanent disease, is a recognised institution in every prison. at wandsworth prison, for instance--where i was confined for two months, till i had to be carried into hospital, where i remained for another two months--the warders go round twice or three times a day with astringent medicine, which they serve out to the prisoners as a matter of course. after about a week of such treatment it is unnecessary to say that the medicine produces no effect at all. "the wretched prisoner is thus left a prey to the most weakening, depressing and humiliating malady that can be conceived, and if, as often happens, he fails from physical weakness to complete his required evolutions at the crank, or the mill, he is reported for idleness and punished with the greatest severity and brutality. nor is this all. "nothing can be worse than the sanitary arrangements of english prisons.... the foul air of the prison cells, increased by a system of ventilation that is utterly ineffective, is so sickening and unwholesome that it is not uncommon for warders, when they come into the room out of the fresh air, and open and inspect each cell, to be violently sick.... "with regard to the punishment of insomnia, it only exists in chinese and english prisons. in china it is inflicted by placing the prisoner in a small bamboo cage; in england by means of the plank bed. the object of the plank bed is to produce insomnia. there is no other object in it, and it invariably succeeds. and even when one is subsequently allowed a hard mattress, as happens in the course of imprisonment, one still suffers from insomnia. it is a revolting and ignorant punishment. "with regard to the needs of the mind, i beg that you will allow me to say something. "the present prison system seems almost to have for its aim the wrecking and the destruction of the mental faculties. the production of insanity is, if not its object, certainly its result. that is a well-ascertained fact. its causes are obvious. deprived of books, of all human intercourse, isolated from every humane and humanising influence, condemned to eternal silence, robbed of all intercourse with the external world, treated like an unintelligent animal, brutalised below the level of any of the brute-creation, the wretched man who is confined in an english prison can hardly escape becoming insane." this letter ended by saying that if all the reforms suggested were carried out much would still remain to be done. it would still be advisable to "humanise the governors of prisons, to civilise the warders, and to christianise the chaplains." this letter was the last effort of the new oscar, the oscar who had manfully tried to put the prison under his feet and to learn the significance of sorrow and the lesson of love which christ brought into the world. in the beautiful pages about jesus which form the greater part of _de profundis_, also written in those last hopeful months in reading gaol, oscar shows, i think, that he might have done much higher work than tolstoi or renan had he set himself resolutely to transmute his new insight into some form of art. now and then he divined the very secret of jesus: "when he says 'forgive your enemies' it is not for the sake of the enemy, but for one's own sake that he says so, and because love is more beautiful than hate. in his own entreaty to the young man, 'sell all that thou hast and give to the poor,' it is not of the state of the poor that he is thinking but of the soul of the young man, the soul that wealth was marring." in many of these pages oscar wilde really came close to the divine master; "the image of the man of sorrows," he says, "has fascinated and dominated art as no greek god succeeded in doing."... and again: "out of the carpenter's shop at nazareth had come a personality infinitely greater than any made by myth and legend, and one, strangely enough, destined to reveal to the world the mystical meaning of wine and the real beauties of the lilies of the field as none, either on cithæron or enna, has ever done. the song of isaiah, 'he is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him,' had seemed to him to prefigure himself, and in him the prophecy was fulfilled." in this spirit oscar made up his mind that he would write about "christ as the precursor of the romantic movement in life" and about "the artistic life considered in its relation to conduct." by bitter suffering he had been brought to see that the moment of repentance is the moment of absolution and self-realisation, that tears can wash out even blood. in "the ballad of reading gaol" he wrote: and with tears of blood he cleansed the hand, the hand that held the steel: for only blood can wipe out blood, and only tears can heal: and the crimson stain that was of cain became christ's snow-white seal. this is the highest height oscar wilde ever reached, and alas! he only trod the summit for a moment. but as he says himself: "one has perhaps to go to prison to understand that. and, if so, it may be worth while going to prison." he was by nature a pagan who for a few months became a christian, but to live as a lover of jesus was impossible to this "greek born out of due time," and he never even dreamed of a reconciling synthesis.... the arrest of his development makes him a better representative of his time: he was an artistic expression of the best english mind: a pagan and epicurean, his rule of conduct was a selfish individualism:--"am i my brother's keeper?" this attitude must entail a dreadful nemesis, for it condemns one briton in every four to a pauper's grave. the result will convince the most hardened that such selfishness is not a creed by which human beings can live in society. * * * * * this summer of was the harvest time in oscar wilde's life; and his golden indian summer. we owe it "de profundis," the best pages of prose he ever wrote, and "the ballad of reading gaol," his only original poem; yet one that will live as long as the language: we owe it also that sweet and charming letter to bobbie ross which shows him in his habit as he lived. i must still say a word or two about him in this summer in order to show the ordinary working of his mind. on his release, and, indeed, for a year or two later, he called himself sebastian melmoth. but one had hardly spoken a half a dozen words to him, when he used to beg to be called oscar wilde. i remember how he pulled up someone who had just been introduced to him, who persisted in addressing him as mr. melmoth. "call me oscar wilde," he pleaded, "mr. melmoth is unknown, you see." "i thought you preferred it," said the stranger excusing himself. "oh, dear, no," interrupted oscar smiling, "i only use the name melmoth to spare the blushes of the postman, to preserve his modesty," and he laughed in the old delightful way. it was always significant to me the eager delight with which he shuffled off the new name and took up the old one which he had made famous. an anecdote from his life in the châlet at this time showed that the old witty pagan in oscar was not yet extinct. an english lady who had written a great many novels and happened to be staying in dieppe heard of him, and out of kindness or curiosity, or perhaps a mixture of both motives, wrote and invited him to luncheon. he accepted the invitation. the good lady did not know how to talk to mr. sebastian melmoth, and time went heavily. at length she began to expatiate on the cheapness of things in france; did mr. melmoth know how wonderfully cheap and good the living was? "only fancy," she went on, "you would not believe what that claret you are drinking costs." "really?" questioned oscar, with a polite smile. "of course i get it wholesale," she explained, "but it only costs me sixpence a quart." "oh, my dear lady, i'm afraid you have been cheated," he exclaimed, "ladies should never buy wine. i'm afraid you have been sadly overcharged." the humour may excuse the discourtesy, but oscar was so uniformly polite to everyone that the incident simply shows how ineffably he had been bored. this summer of was the decisive period and final turning-point in oscar wilde's career. so long as the sunny weather lasted and friends came to visit him from time to time oscar was content to live in the châlet bourgeat; but when the days began to draw in and the weather became unsettled, the dreariness of a life passed in solitude, indoors, and without a library became insupportable. he was being drawn in two opposite directions. i did not know it at the time; indeed he only told me about it months later when the matter had been decided irrevocably; but this was the moment when his soul was at stake between good and evil. the question was whether his wife would come to him again or whether he would yield to the solicitations of lord alfred douglas and go to live with him. mr. sherard has told in his book how he brought about the first reconciliation between oscar and his wife; and how immediately afterwards he received a letter from lord alfred douglas threatening to shoot him like a dog, if, by any words of his, wilde's friendship was lost to him, douglas. unluckily mrs. wilde's family were against her going back to her husband; they begged her not to go; talked to her of her duty to her children and herself, and the poor woman hesitated. finally her advisers decided for her, and mrs. wilde wrote this decision to oscar's solicitors shortly before his release: oscar's probation was to last at least a year. i do not know enough about mrs. wilde and her relations with her family and with her husband even to discuss her inaction: i dare not criticise her: but she did not go to her husband when if she had gone boldly she might have saved him. she knew lord alfred douglas' influence over him; knew that it had already brought him to grief. gide says, and oscar himself told me afterwards, that he had come out of prison determined not to go back to alfred douglas and the old life. it seems a pity that his wife did not act promptly; she allowed herself to believe that a time of probation was necessary. the delay wounded oscar, and all the while, as he told me a little later, he was resisting an influence which had dominated his life in the past. "i got a letter almost every day, frank, begging me to come to posilippo, to the villa which lord alfred douglas had rented. every day i heard his voice calling, 'come, come, to sunshine and to me. come to naples with its wonderful museum of bronzes and pompeii and pæstum, the city of poseidon: i am waiting to welcome you. come.' "who could resist it, frank? love calling, calling with outstretched arms; who could stay in bleak berneval and watch the sheets of rain falling, falling--and the grey mist shrouding the grey sea, and think of naples and love and sunshine; who could resist it all? i could not, frank, i was so lonely and i hated solitude. i resisted as long as i could, but when chill october came and bosie came to rouen for me, i gave up the struggle and yielded." could oscar wilde have won and made for himself a new and greater life? the majority of men are content to think that such a victory was impossible to him. everyone knows that he lost; but i at least believe that he might have won. his wife was on the point of yielding, i have since been told; on the point of complete reconciliation when she heard that he had gone to naples and returned to his old habit of living; a few days made all the difference. it was at the instigation of lord alfred douglas that oscar began the insane action against lord queensberry, in which he put to hazard his success, his position, his good name and liberty, and lost them all. two years later at the same tempting, he committed soul-suicide. he was not only better in health than he had ever been; but he was talking and writing better than ever before and full of literary projects which would certainly have given him money and position and a measure of happiness besides increasing his reputation. from the moment he went to naples he was lost, and he knew it himself; he never afterwards wrote anything: as he used to say, he could never afterwards face his own soul. he could never have won up again, the world says, and shrugs careless shoulders. it is a cheap, unworthy conclusion. some of us still persist in believing that oscar wilde might easily have won and never again been caught in that dreadful wind which whips the victims of sensual desire about unceasingly, driving them hither and thither without rest in that awful place where: "nulla speranza gli conforta mai." (no hope ever comforts!) footnotes: [ ] reproduced in the appendix. [ ] fac-simile copies of some of the notes oscar wrote to warder martin about these children are reproduced in the appendix. the notes were written on scraps of paper and pushed under his cell-door; they are among the most convincing evidences of oscar's essential humanity and kindness of heart. [ ] the home secretary, sir matthew white ridley, when questioned by mr. michael davitt in the house of commons, may , , declared that this dismissal of a warder for feeding a little hungry child at his own expense was "fully justified" and a "proper step." this same home secretary appointed his utterly incompetent brother to be a judge of the high court. [ ] the correspondent to whom wilde writes and the other friend referred to are roman catholics. [ ] this refers to a story which wilde was much interested in at the time. [ ] the proprietor of the hotel. [ ] the sphinx is a nickname for mrs. leverson, author of "the eleventh hour," and other witty novels. [ ] ernest was her husband. [ ] the silver spoon is a proposed line for a play given by ross to turner (reggie). [ ] wilde's solicitor in regina v. wilde. [ ] a reference to the "vailima letters" of stevenson which wilde read when he was in prison. [ ] an architect who sent wilde books on his release from prison. [ ] his letter to _the daily chronicle_ about warder martin and the little children. [ ] the ballad was finished in naples and alfred douglas has since declared that he helped oscar wilde to write it. i have no wish to dispute this: alfred douglas' poetic gift was extraordinary, far greater than oscar wilde's. the poem was conceived in prison and a good deal of it was printed before oscar went near alfred douglas and some of the best stanzas in it are to be found in this earlier portion: no part of the credit of it, in my opinion, belongs to alfred douglas. see appendix for ross's opinion. [ ] hanging in chains was called keeping sheep by moonlight. chapter xx "non dispetto, ma doglia."--_dante._ oscar wilde did not stay long in naples, a few brief months; the forbidden fruit quickly turned to ashes in his mouth. i give the following extracts from a letter he wrote to robert ross in december, , shortly after leaving naples, because it describes the second great crisis in his life and is besides the bitterest thing he ever wrote and therefore of peculiar value: "the facts of naples are very bald. bosie for four months, by endless lies, offered me a home. he offered me love, affection, and care, and promised that i should never want for anything. after four months i accepted his offer, but when we met on our way to naples, i found he had no money, no plans, and had forgotten all his promises. his one idea was that i should raise the money for us both; i did so to the extent of £ . on this bosie lived quite happy. when it came to his having to pay his own share he became terribly unkind and penurious, except where his own pleasures were concerned, and when my allowance ceased, he left. "with regard to the £ [ ] which he said was a debt of honour, he has written to me to say that he admits the debt of honour, but as lots of gentlemen don't pay their debts of honour, it is quite a common thing and no one thinks any the worse of them. "i don't know what you said to constance, but the bald fact is that i accepted the offer of the home, and found that i was expected to provide the money, and when i could no longer do so i was left to my own devices. it is the most bitter experience of a bitter life. it is a blow quite awful. it had to come, but i know it is better i should never see him again, i don't want to, it fills me with horror." a word of explanation will explain his reference to his wife, constance, in this letter: by a deed of separation made at the end of his imprisonment, mrs. wilde undertook to allow oscar £ a year for life, under the condition that the allowance was to be forfeited if oscar ever lived under the same roof with lord alfred douglas. having forfeited the allowance oscar got robert ross to ask his wife to continue it and in spite of the forfeiture mrs. wilde continually sent oscar money through robert ross, merely stipulating that her husband should not be told whence the money came. ross, too, who had also sent him £ a year, resumed his monthly payments as soon as he left douglas. my friendship with oscar wilde, which had been interrupted after he left prison by a silly gibe directed rather against the go-between he had sent to me than against him, was renewed in paris early in . i have related the little misunderstanding in the appendix. i had never felt anything but the most cordial affection for oscar and as soon as i went to paris and met him i explained what had seemed to him unkind. when i asked him about his life since his release he told me simply that he had quarrelled with bosie douglas. i did not attribute much importance to this; but i could not help noticing the extraordinary change that had taken place in him since he had been in naples. his health was almost as good as ever; in fact, the prison discipline with its two years of hard living had done him so much good that his health continued excellent almost to the end. but his whole manner and attitude to life had again changed: he now resembled the successful oscar of the early nineties: i caught echoes, too, in his speech of a harder, smaller nature; "that talk about reformation, frank, is all nonsense; no one ever really reforms or changes. i am what i always was." he was mistaken: he took up again the old pagan standpoint; but he was not the same; he was reckless now, not thoughtless, and, as soon as one probed a little beneath the surface, depressed almost to despairing. he had learnt the meaning of suffering and pity, had sensed their value; he had turned his back upon them all, it is true, but he could not return to pagan carelessness, and the light-hearted enjoyment of pleasure. he did his best and almost succeeded; but the effort was there. his creed now was what it used to be about : "let us get what pleasure we may in the fleeting days; for the night cometh, and the silence that can never be broken." the old doctrine of original sin, we now call reversion to type; the most lovely garden rose, if allowed to go without discipline and tendance, will in a few generations become again the common scentless dog-rose of our hedges. such a reversion to type had taken place in oscar wilde. it must be inferred perhaps that the old pagan greek in him was stronger than the christian virtues which had been called into being by the discipline and suffering of prison. little by little, as he began to live his old life again, the lessons learned in prison seemed to drop from him and be forgotten. but in reality the high thoughts he had lived with, were not lost; his lips had been touched by the divine fire; his eyes had seen the world-wonder of sympathy, pity and love and, strangely enough, this higher vision helped, as we shall soon see, to shake his individuality from its centre, and thus destroyed his power of work and completed his soul-ruin. oscar's second fall--this time from a height--was fatal and made writing impossible to him. it is all clear enough now in retrospect though i did not understand it at the time. when he went to live with bosie douglas he threw off the christian attitude, but afterwards had to recognise that "de profundis" and "the ballad of reading gaol" were deeper and better work than any of his earlier writings. he resumed the pagan position; outwardly and for the time being he was the old oscar again, with his greek love of beauty and hatred of disease, deformity and ugliness, and whenever he met a kindred spirit, he absolutely revelled in gay paradoxes and brilliant flashes of humour. but he was at war with himself, like milton's satan always conscious of his fall, always regretful of his lost estate and by reason of this division of spirit unable to write. perhaps because of this he threw himself more than ever into talk. he was beyond all comparison the most interesting companion i have ever known: the most brilliant talker, i cannot but think, that ever lived. no one surely ever gave himself more entirely in speech. again and again he declared that he had only put his talent into his books and plays, but his genius into his life. if he had said into his talk, it would have been the exact truth. people have differed a great deal about his mental and physical condition after he came out of prison. all who knew him really, ross, turner, more adey, lord alfred douglas and myself, are agreed that in spite of a slight deafness he was never better in health, never indeed so well. but some french friends were determined to make him out a martyr. in his picture of wilde's last years, gide tells us that "he had suffered too grievously from his imprisonment.... his will had been broken ... nothing remained in his shattered life but a mouldy ruin,[ ] painful to contemplate, of his former self. at times he seemed to wish to show that his brain was still active. humour there was; but it was far-fetched, forced and threadbare." these touches may be necessary in order to complete a french picture of the social outcast. they are not only untrue when applied to oscar wilde, but the reverse of the truth; he never talked so well, was never so charming a companion as in the last years of his life. in the very last year his talk was more genial, more humorous, more vivid than ever, with a wider range of thought and intenser stimulus than before. he was a born _improvisatore_. at the moment he always dazzled one out of judgment. a phonograph would have discovered the truth; a great part of his charm was physical; much of his talk mere topsy-turvy paradox, the very froth of thought carried off by gleaming, dancing eyes, smiling, happy lips, and a melodious voice. the entertainment usually started with some humorous play on words. one of the company would say something obvious or trivial, repeat a proverb or commonplace tag such as, "genius is born, not made," and oscar would flash in smiling, "not 'paid,' my dear fellow, not 'paid.'" an interesting comment would follow on some doing of the day, a skit on some accepted belief or a parody of some pretentious solemnity, a winged word on a new book or a new author, and when everyone was smiling with amused enjoyment, the fine eyes would become introspective, the beautiful voice would take on a grave music and oscar would begin a story, a story with symbolic second meaning or a glimpse of new thought, and when all were listening enthralled, of a sudden the eyes would dance, the smile break forth again like sunshine and some sparkling witticism would set everyone laughing. the spell was broken, but only for a moment. a new clue would soon be given and at once oscar was off again with renewed brio to finer effects. the talking itself warmed and quickened him extraordinarily: he loved to show off and astonish his audience, and usually talked better after an hour or two than at the beginning. his verve was inexhaustible. but always a great part of the fascination lay in the quick changes from grave to gay, from pathos to mockery, from philosophy to fun. there was but little of the actor in him. when telling a story he never mimicked his personages; his drama seldom lay in clash of character, but in thought; it was the sheer beauty of the words, the melody of the cadenced voice, the glowing eyes which fascinated you and always and above all the scintillating, coruscating humour that lifted his monologues into works of art. curiously enough he seldom talked of himself or of the incidents of his past life. after the prison he always regarded himself as a sort of prometheus and his life as symbolic; but his earlier experiences never suggested themselves to him as specially significant; the happenings of his life after his fall seemed predestined and fateful to him; yet of those he spoke but seldom. even when carried away by his own eloquence, he kept the tone of good society. when you came afterwards to think over one of those wonderful evenings when he had talked for hours, almost without interruption, you hardly found more than an epigram, a fugitive flash of critical insight, an apologue or pretty story charmingly told. over all this he had cast the glittering, sparkling robe of his celtic gaiety, verbal humour, and sensual enjoyment of living. it was all like champagne; meant to be drunk quickly; if you let it stand, you soon realised that some still wines had rarer virtues. but there was always about him the magic of a rich and _puissant_ personality; like some great actor he could take a poor part and fill it with the passion and vivacity of his own nature, till it became a living and memorable creation. he gave the impression of wide intellectual range, yet in reality he was not broad; life was not his study nor the world-drama his field. his talk was all of literature and art and the vanities; the light drawing-room comedy on the edge of farce was his kingdom; there he ruled as a sovereign. anyone who has read oscar wilde's plays at all carefully, especially "the importance of being earnest," must, i think, see that in kindly, happy humour he is without a peer in literature. who can ever forget the scene between the town and country girl in that delightful farce-comedy. as soon as the london girl realises that the country girl has hardly any opportunity of making new friends or meeting new men, she exclaims: "ah! now i know what they mean when they talk of agricultural depression." this sunny humour is wilde's especial contribution to literature: he calls forth a smile whereas others try to provoke laughter. yet he was as witty as anyone of whom we have record, and some of the best epigrams in english are his. "the cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing" is better than the best of la rochefoucauld, as good as the best of vauvenargues or joubert. he was as wittily urbane as congreve. but all the witty things that one man can say may be numbered on one's fingers. it was through his humour that wilde reigned supreme. it was his humour that lent his talk its singular attraction. he was the only man i have ever met or heard of who could keep one smiling with amusement hour after hour. true, much of the humour was merely verbal, but it was always gay and genial: summer-lightning humour, i used to call it, unexpected, dazzling, full of colour yet harmless. let me try and catch here some of the fleeting iridescence of that radiant spirit. some years before i had been introduced to mdlle. marie anne de bovet by sir charles dilke. mdlle. de bovet was a writer of talent and knew english uncommonly well; but in spite of masses of fair hair and vivacious eyes she was certainly very plain. as soon as she heard i was in paris, she asked me to present oscar wilde to her. he had no objection, and so i made a meeting between them. when he caught sight of her, he stopped short: seeing his astonishment, she cried to him in her quick, abrupt way: "n'est-ce pas, m. wilde, que je suis la femme la plus laide de france?" (come, confess, mr. wilde, that i am the ugliest woman in france.) bowing low, oscar replied with smiling courtesy: "du monde, madame, du monde." (in the world, madame, in the world.) no one could help laughing; the retort was irresistible. he should have said: "au monde, madame, au monde," but the meaning was clear. sometimes this thought-quickness and happy dexterity had to be used in self-defence. jean lorrain was the wittiest talker i have ever heard in france, and a most brilliant journalist. his life was as abandoned as it could well be; in fact, he made a parade of strange vices. in the days of oscar's supremacy he always pretended to be a friend and admirer. about this time oscar wanted me to know stephane mallarmé. he took me to his rooms one afternoon when there was a reception. there were a great many people present. mallarmé was standing at the other end of the room leaning against the chimney piece. near the door was lorrain, and we both went towards him, oscar with outstretched hands: "delighted to see you, jean." for some reason or other, most probably out of tawdry vanity, lorrain folded his arms theatrically and replied: "i regret i cannot say as much: i can no longer be one of your friends, m. wilde." the insult was stupid, brutal; yet everyone was on tiptoe to see how oscar would answer it. "how true that is," he said quietly, as quickly as if he had expected the traitor-thrust, "how true and how sad! at a certain time in life all of us who have done anything like you and me, lorrain, must realise that we no longer have any friends in this world; but only lovers." (plus d'amis, seulement des amants.) a smile of approval lighted up every face. "well said, well said," was the general exclamation. his humour was almost invariably generous, kind. one day in a paris studio the conversation turned on the character of marat: one frenchman would have it that he was a fiend, another saw in him the incarnation of the revolution, a third insisted that he was merely the gamin of the paris streets grown up. suddenly one turned to oscar, who was sitting silent, and asked his opinion: he took the ball at once, gravely. "_ce malheureux! il n'avait pas de veine--pour une fois qu'il a pris un bain_...." (poor devil, he was unlucky! to come to such grief for once taking a bath.) for a little while oscar was interested in the dreyfus case, and especially in the commandant esterhazy, who played such a prominent part in it with the infamous _bordereau_ which brought about the conviction of dreyfus. most frenchmen now know that the _bordereau_ was a forgery and without any real value. i was curious to see esterhazy, and oscar brought him to lunch one day at durand's. he was a little below middle height, extremely thin and as dark as any italian, with an enormous hook nose and heavy jaw. he looked to me like some foul bird of prey: greed and cunning in the restless brown eyes set close together, quick resolution in the out-thrust, bony jaws and hard chin; but manifestly he had no capacity, no mind: he was meagre in all ways. for a long time he bored us by insisting that dreyfus was a traitor, a jew, and a german; to him a trinity of faults, whereas he, esterhazy, was perfectly innocent and had been very badly treated. at length oscar leant across the table and said to him in french with, strange to say, a slight irish accent, not noticeable when he spoke english: "the innocent," he said, "always suffer, m. le commandant; it is their _métier_. besides, we are all innocent till we are found out; it is a poor, common part to play and within the compass of the meanest. the interesting thing surely is to be guilty and so wear as a halo the seduction of sin." esterhazy appeared put out for a moment, and then he caught the genial gaiety of the reproof and the hint contained in it. his vanity would not allow him to remain long in a secondary _rôle_, and so, to our amazement, he suddenly broke out: "why should i not make my confession to you? i will. it is i, esterhazy, who alone am guilty. i wrote the _bordereau_. i put dreyfus in prison, and all france can not liberate him. i am the maker of the plot, and the chief part in it is mine." to his surprise we both roared with laughter. the influence of the larger nature on the smaller to such an extraordinary issue was irresistibly comic. at the time no one even suspected esterhazy in connection with the _bordereau_. another example, this time of oscar's wit, may find a place here. sir lewis morris was a voluminous poetaster with a common mind. he once bored oscar by complaining that his books were boycotted by the press; after giving several instances of unfair treatment he burst out: "there's a conspiracy against me, a conspiracy of silence; but what can one do? what should i do?" "join it," replied oscar smiling. oscar's humour was for the most part intellectual, and something like it can be found in others, though the happy fecundity and lightsome gaiety of it belonged to the individual temperament and perished with him. i remember once trying to give an idea of the different sides of his humour, just to see how far it could be imitated. i made believe to have met him at paddington, after his release from reading, though he was brought to pentonville in private clothes by a warder on may th, and was released early the next morning, two years to the hour from the commencement of the sessions at which he was convicted on may th. the act says that you must be released from the prison in which you are first confined. i pretended, however, that i had met him. the train, i said, ran into paddington station early in the morning. i went across to him as he got out of the carriage: grey dawn filled the vast echoing space; a few porters could be seen scattered about; it was all chill and depressing. "welcome, welcome, oscar!" i cried holding out my hands. "i am sorry i'm alone. you ought to have been met by troops of boys and girls flower-crowned, but alas! you will have to content yourself with one middle-aged admirer." "yes, it's really terrible, frank," he replied gravely. "if england persists in treating her criminals like this, she does not deserve to have any...." "ah," said an old lady to him one day at lunch, "i know you people who pretend to be a great deal worse than you are, i know you. i shouldn't be afraid of you." "naturally we pretend to be bad, dear lady," he replied; "it is the only way to make ourselves interesting to you. everyone believes a man who pretends to be good, he is such a bore; but no one believes a man who says he is evil. that makes him interesting." "oh, you are too clever for me," replied the old lady nodding her head. "you see in my day none of us went to girton and newnham. there were no schools then for the higher education of women." "how absurd such schools are, are they not?" cried oscar. "were i a despot, i should immediately establish schools for the lower education of women. that's what they need. it usually takes ten years living with a man to complete a woman's education." "then what would you do," asked someone, "about the lower education of man?" "that's already provided for, my dear fellow, amply provided for; we have our public schools and universities to see to that. what we want are schools for the higher education of men, and schools for the lower education of women." genial persiflage of this sort was his particular _forte_ whether my imitation of it is good or bad. his kindliness was ingrained. i never heard him say a gross or even a vulgar word, hardly even a sharp or unkind thing. whether in company or with one person, his mind was all dedicated to genial, kindly, flattering thoughts. he hated rudeness or discussion or insistence as he hated ugliness or deformity. one evening of this summer a trivial incident showed me that he was sinking deeper in the mud-honey of life. a new play was about to be given at the français and because he expressed a wish to see it i bought a couple of tickets. we went in and he made me change places with him in order to be able to talk to me; he was growing nearly deaf in the bad ear. after the first act we went outside to smoke a cigarette. "it's stupid," oscar began, "fancy us two going in there to listen to what that foolish frenchman says about love; he knows nothing about it; either of us could write much better on the theme. let's walk up and down here under the columns and talk." the people began to go into the theatre again and, as they were disappearing, i said: "it seems rather a pity to waste our tickets; so many wish to see the play." "we shall find someone to give them to," he said indifferently, stopping by one of the pillars. at that very moment as if under his hand appeared a boy of about fifteen or sixteen, one of the gutter-snipe of paris. to my amazement, he said: "bon soir, monsieur wilde." oscar turned to him smiling. "vous êtes jules, n'est-ce pas?" (you are jules, aren't you?) he questioned. "oui, m. wilde." "here is the very boy you want," oscar cried; "let's give him the tickets, and he'll sell them, and make something out of them," and oscar turned and began to explain to the boy how i had given two hundred francs for the tickets, and how, even now, they should be worth a louis or two. "des jaunets" (yellow boys), cried the youth, his sharp face lighting up, and in a flash he had vanished with the tickets. "you see he knows me, frank," said oscar, with the childish pleasure of gratified vanity. "yes," i replied drily, "not an acquaintance to be proud of, i should think." "i don't agree with you, frank," he said, resenting my tone, "did you notice his eyes? he is one of the most beautiful boys i have ever seen; an exact replica of emilienne d'alençon,[ ] i call him jules d'alençon, and i tell her he must be her brother. i had them both dining with me once and the boy is finer than the girl, his skin far more beautiful. "by the way," he went on, as we were walking up the avenue de l'opera, "why should we not see emilienne; why should she not sup with us, and you could compare them? she is playing at olympia, near the grand hotel. let's go and compare aspasia and agathon, and for once i shall be alcibiades, and you the moralist, socrates." "i would rather talk to you," i replied. "we can talk afterwards, frank, when all the stars come out to listen; now is the time to live and enjoy." "as you will," i said, and we went to the music hall and got a box, and he wrote a little note to emilienne d'alençon, and she came afterwards to supper with us. though her face was pretty she was pre-eminently dull and uninteresting without two ideas in her bird's head. she was all greed and vanity, and could talk of nothing but the hope of getting an engagement in london: could he help her, or would monsieur, referring to me, as a journalist get her some good puffs in advance? oscar promised everything gravely. while we were supping inside, oscar caught sight of the boy passing along the boulevard. at once he tapped on the window, loud enough to attract his attention. nothing loth, the boy came in, and the four of us had supper together--a strange quartette. "now, frank," said oscar, "compare the two faces and you will see the likeness," and indeed there was in both the same greek beauty--the same regularity of feature, the same low brow and large eyes, the same perfect oval. "i am telling my friend," said oscar to emilienne in french, "how alike you two are, true brother and sister in beauty and in the finest of arts, the art of living," and they both laughed. "the boy is better looking," he went on to me in english. "her mouth is coarse and hard; her hands common, while the boy is quite perfect." "rather dirty, don't you think?" i could not help remarking. "dirty, of course, but that's nothing; nothing is so immaterial as colouring; form is everything, and his form is perfect, as exquisite as the david of donatello. that's what he's like, frank, the david of donatello," and he pulled his jowl, delighted to have found the painting word. as soon as emilienne saw that we were talking of the boy, her interest in the conversation vanished, even more quickly than her appetite. she had to go, she said suddenly; she was so sorry, and the discontented curiosity of her look gave place again to the smirk of affected politeness. "_au revoir, n'est-ce pas? à charing cross, n'est-ce-pas, monsieur? vous ne m'oublierez pas?..._" as we turned to walk along the boulevard i noticed that the boy, too, had disappeared. the moonlight was playing with the leaves and boughs of the plane trees and throwing them in japanese shadow-pictures on the pavement: i was given over to thought; evidently oscar imagined i was offended, for he launched out into a panegyric on paris. "the most wonderful city in the world, the only civilised capital; the only place on earth where you find absolute toleration for all human frailties, with passionate admiration for all human virtues and capacities. "do you remember verlaine, frank? his life was nameless and terrible, he did everything to excess, was drunken, dirty and debauched, and yet there he would sit in a café on the boul' mich', and everybody who came in would bow to him, and call him _maître_ and be proud of any sign of recognition from him because he was a great poet. "in england they would have murdered verlaine, and men who call themselves gentlemen would have gone out of their way to insult him in public. england is still only half-civilised; englishmen touch life at one or two points without suspecting its complexity. they are rude and harsh." all the while i could not help thinking of dante and his condemnation of florence, and its "hard, malignant people," the people who still had something in them of "the mountain and rock" of their birthplace:--"_e tiene ancor del monte e del macigno._" "you are not offended, frank, are you, with me, for making you meet two caryatides of the parisian temple of pleasure?" "no, no," i cried, "i was thinking how dante condemned florence and its people, its ungrateful malignant people, and how when his teacher, brunetto latini, and his companions came to him in the underworld, he felt as if he, too, must throw himself into the pit with them. nothing prevented him from carrying out his good intention (_buona voglia_) except the fear of being himself burned and baked as they were. i was just thinking that it was his great love for latini which gave him the deathless words: ... "non dispetto, ma doglia la vostra condizion dentro mi fisse. "not contempt but sorrow...." "oh, frank," cried oscar, "what a beautiful incident! i remember it all. i read it this last winter in naples.... of course dante was full of pity as are all great poets, for they know the weakness of human nature." but even "the sorrow" of which dante spoke seemed to carry with it some hint of condemnation; for after a pause he went on: "you must not judge me, frank: you don't know what i have suffered. no wonder i snatch now at enjoyment with both hands. they did terrible things to me. did you know that when i was arrested the police let the reporters come to the cell and stare at me. think of it--the degradation and the shame--as if i had been a monster on show. oh! you knew! then you know, too, how i was really condemned before i was tried; and what a farce my trial was. that terrible judge with his insults to those he was sorry he could not send to the scaffold. "i never told you the worst thing that befell me. when they took me from wandsworth to reading, we had to stop at clapham junction. we were nearly an hour waiting for the train. there we sat on the platform. i was in the hideous prison clothes, handcuffed between two warders. you know how the trains come in every minute. almost at once i was recognised, and there passed before me a continual stream of men and boys, and one after the other offered some foul sneer or gibe or scoff. they stood before me, frank, calling me names and spitting on the ground--an eternity of torture." my heart bled for him. "i wonder if any punishment will teach humanity to such people, or understanding of their own baseness?" after walking a few paces he turned to me: "don't reproach me, frank, even in thought. you have no right to. you don't know me yet. some day you will know more and then you will be sorry, so sorry that there will be no room for any reproach of me. if i could tell you what i suffered this winter!" "this winter!" i cried. "in naples?" "yes, in gay, happy naples. it was last autumn that i really fell to ruin. i had come out of prison filled with good intentions, with all good resolutions. my wife had promised to come back to me. i hoped she would come very soon. if she had come at once, if she only had, it might all have been different. but she did not come. i have no doubt she was right from her point of view. she has always been right. "but i was alone there in berneval, and bosie kept on calling me, calling, and as you know i went to him. at first it was all wonderful. the bruised leaves began to unfold in the light and warmth of affection; the sore feeling began to die out of me. "but at once my allowance from my wife was stopped. yes, frank," he said, with a touch of the old humour, "they took it away when they should have doubled it. i did not care. when i had money i gave it to him without counting, so when i could not pay i thought bosie would pay, and i was content. but at once i discovered that he expected me to find the money. i did what i could; but when my means were exhausted, the evil days began. he expected me to write plays and get money for us both as in the past; but i couldn't; i simply could not. when we were dunned his temper went to pieces. he has never known what it is to want really. you have no conception of the wretchedness of it all. he has a terrible, imperious, irritable temper." "he's the son of his father," i interjected. "yes," said oscar, "i am afraid that's the truth, frank; he is the son of his father; violent, and irritable, with a tongue like a lash. as soon as the means of life were straitened, he became sullen and began reproaching me; why didn't i write? why didn't i earn money? what was the good of me? as if i could write under such conditions. no man, frank, has ever suffered worse shame and humiliation. "at last there was a washing bill to be paid; bosie was dunned for it, and when i came in, he raged and whipped me with his tongue. it was appalling; i had done everything for him, given him everything, lost everything, and now i could only stand and see love turned to hate: the strength of love's wine making the bitter more venomous. then he left me, frank, and now there is no hope for me. i am lost, finished, a derelict floating at the mercy of the stream, without plan or purpose.... and the worst of it is, i know, if men have treated me badly, i have treated myself worse; it is our sins against ourselves we can never forgive.... do you wonder that i snatch at any pleasure?" he turned and looked at me all shaken; i saw the tears pouring down his cheeks. "i cannot talk any more, frank," he said in a broken voice, "i must go." i called a cab. my heart was so heavy within me, so sore, that i said nothing to stop him. he lifted his hand to me in sign of farewell, and i turned again to walk home alone, understanding, for the first time in my life, the full significance of the marvellous line in which shakespeare summed up his impeachment of the world and his own justification: the only justification of any of us mortals: "a man more sinn'd against than sinning." footnotes: [ ] this was the sum promised by the whole queensberry family and by lord alfred douglas in particular to oscar to defray the costs of that first action for libel which they persuaded him to bring against lord queensberry. ross has since stated in court that it was never paid. the history of the monies promised and supplied to oscar at that time is so extraordinary and so characteristic of the age that it might well furnish a chapter to itself. here it is enough just to say that those who ought to have supplied him with money evaded the obligation, while others upon whom he had no claim, helped him liberally; but even large sums slipped through his careless fingers like water. [ ] cfr. appendix: "criticisms by robert ross." [ ] one of the prettiest daughters of the game to be found in paris at the time. chapter xxi the more i considered the matter, the more clearly i saw, or thought i saw, that the only chance of salvation for oscar was to get him to work, to give him some purpose in life, and the reader should remember here that at this time i had not read "de profundis" and did not know that oscar in prison had himself recognised this necessity. after all, i said to myself, nothing is lost if he will only begin to write. a man should be able to whistle happiness and hope down the wind and take despair to his bed and heart, and win courage from his harsh companion. happiness is not essential to the artist: happiness never creates anything but memories. if oscar would work and not brood over the past and study himself like an indian fakir, he might yet come to soul-health and achievement. he could win back everything; his own respect, and the respect of his fellows, if indeed that were worth winning. an artist, i knew, must have at least the self-abnegation of the hero, and heroic resolution to strive and strive, or he will never bring it far even in his art. if i could only get oscar to work, it seemed to me everything might yet come right. i spent a week with him, lunching and dining and putting all this before him, in every way. i noticed that he enjoyed the good eating and the good drinking as intensely as ever. he was even drinking too much i thought, was beginning to get stout and flabby again, but the good living was a necessity to him, and it certainly did not prevent him from talking charmingly. but as soon as i pressed him to write he would shake his head: "oh, frank, i cannot, you know my rooms; how could i write there? a horrid bedroom like a closet, and a little sitting room without any outlook. books everywhere; and no place to write; to tell you the truth i cannot even read in it. i can do nothing in such miserable poverty." again and again he came back to this. he harped upon his destitution, so that i could not but see purpose in it. he was already cunning in the art of getting money without asking for it. my heart ached for him; one goes down hill with such fatal speed and ease, and the mire at the bottom is so loathsome. i hastened to say: "i can let you have a little money; but you ought to work, oscar. after all why should anyone help you, if you will not help yourself? if i cannot aid you to save yourself, i am only doing you harm." "a base sophism, frank, mere sophistry, as you know: a good lunch is better than a bad one for any living man." i smiled, "don't do yourself injustice: you could easily gain thousands and live like a prince again. why not make the effort?" "if i had pleasant, sunny rooms i'd try.... it's harder than you think." "nonsense, it's easy for you. your punishment has made your name known in every country in the world. a book of yours would sell like wildfire; a play of yours would draw in any capital. you might live here like a prince. shakespeare lost love and friendship, hope and health to boot--everything, and yet forced himself to write 'the tempest.' why can't you?" "i'll try, frank, i'll try." i may just mention here that any praise of another man, even of shakespeare, was sure to move oscar to emulation. he acknowledged no superior. in some articles in _the saturday review_ i had said that no one had ever given completer record of himself than shakespeare. "we know him better than we know any of our contemporaries," i went on, "and he is better worth knowing." at once oscar wrote to me objecting to this phrase. "surely, frank, you have forgotten me. surely, i am better worth knowing than shakespeare?" the question astonished me so that i could not make up my mind at once; but when he pressed me later i had to tell him that shakespeare had reached higher heights of thought and feeling than any modern, though i was probably wrong in saying that i knew him better than i knew a living man. i had to go back to england and some little time elapsed before i could return to paris; but i crossed again early in the summer, and found he had written nothing. i often talked with him about it; but now he changed his ground a little. "i can't write, frank. when i take up my pen all the past comes back: i cannot bear the thoughts ... regret and remorse, like twin dogs, wait to seize me at any idle moment. i must go out and watch life, amuse, interest myself, or i should go mad. you don't know how sore it is about my heart, as soon as i am alone. i am face to face with my own soul; the oscar of four years ago, with his beautiful secure life, and his glorious easy triumphs, comes up before me, and i cannot stand the contrast.... my eyes burn with tears. if you care for me, frank, you will not ask me to write." "you promised to try," i said somewhat harshly, "and i want you to try. you haven't suffered more than dante suffered in exile and poverty; yet you know if he had suffered ten times as much, he would have written it all down. tears, indeed! the fire in his eyes would have dried the tears." "true enough, frank, but dante was all of one piece whereas i am drawn in two different directions. i was born to sing the joy and pride of life, the pleasure of living, the delight in everything beautiful in this most beautiful world, and they took me and tortured me till i learned pity and sorrow. now i cannot sing the joy, heartily, because i know the suffering, and i was never made to sing of suffering. i hate it, and i want to sing the love songs of joy and pleasure. it is joy alone which appeals to my soul; the joy of life and beauty and love--i could sing the song of apollo the sun-god, and they try to force me to sing the song of the tortured marsyas." this to me was his true and final confession. his second fall after leaving prison had put him "at war with himself." this is, i think, the very heart of truth about his soul; the song of sorrow, of pity and renunciation was not his song, and the experience of suffering prevented him from singing the delight of life and the joy he took in beauty. it never seemed to occur to him that he could reach a faith which should include both self-indulgence and renunciation in a larger acceptance of life. in spite of his sunny nature he had a certain amount of jealousy and envy in him which was always brought to light by the popular success of those whom he had known and measured. i remember his telling me once that he wrote his first play because he was annoyed at the way pinero was being praised--"pinero, who can't write at all: he is a stage-carpenter and nothing else. his characters are made of dough; and never was there such a worthless style, or rather such a complete absence of style: he writes like a grocer's assistant." i noticed now that this trait of jealousy was stronger in him than ever. one day i showed him an english illustrated paper which i had bought on my way to lunch. it contained a picture of george curzon (i beg his pardon, lord curzon) as viceroy of india. he was photographed in a carriage with his wife by his side: the gorgeous state carriage drawn by four horses, with outriders, and escorted by cavalry and cheering crowds--all the paraphernalia and pomp of imperial power. "do you see that?" cried oscar angrily; "fancy george curzon being treated like that. i know him well; a more perfect example of plodding mediocrity was never seen in the world. he had never a thought or phrase above the common." "i know him pretty well, too," i replied. "his incurable commonness is the secret of his success. he 'voices,' as he would say himself, the opinion of the average man on every subject. he might be a leader-writer on the _mail_ or _times_. what do you know of the average man or of his opinions? but the man in the street, as he is called to-day, can only learn from the man who is just one step above himself, and so the george curzons come to success in life. that, too, is the secret of the popularity of this or that writer. hall caine is an even larger george curzon, a better endowed mediocrity." "but why should he have fame and state and power?" oscar cried indignantly. "state and power, because he is george curzon, but fame he never will have, and i suspect if the truth were known, in the moments when he too comes face to face with his own soul, as you say, he would give a good deal of his state and power for a very little of your fame." "that is probably true, frank," cried oscar, "that is almost certainly the crumpled rose-leaf of his couch, but how grossly he is over-estimated and over-rewarded.... do you know wilfred blunt?" "i have met him," i replied, "but don't know him. we met once and he bragged preposterously about his arab ponies. i was at that time editor of _the evening news_: and mr. blunt tried hard to talk down to my level." "he is by way of being a poet, and he has a very real love of literature." "i know," i said; "i really know his work and a good deal about him and have nothing but praise for the way he championed the egyptians, and for his poetry when he has anything to say." "well, frank, he had a sort of club at crabbett park, a club for poets, to which only poets were invited, and he was a most admirable and perfect host. lady blunt could never make out what he was up to. he used to get us all down to crabbett, and the poet who was received last had to make a speech about the new poet--a speech in which he was supposed to tell the truth about the new-comer. blunt took the idea, no doubt, from the custom of the french academy. well, he asked me down to crabbett park, and george curzon, if you please, was the poet picked to make the speech about me." "good god," i cried, "curzon a poet. it's like kitchener being taken for a great captain, or salisbury for a statesman." "he writes verses, frank, but of course there is not a line of poetry in him: his verses are good enough though, well-turned, i mean, and sharp, if not witty. well, curzon had to make this speech about me after dinner. we had a delightful dinner, quite perfect, and then curzon got up. he had evidently prepared his speech carefully, it was bristling with innuendoes; sneering side-hits at strange sins. everyone looked at his fellow and thought the speech the height of bad taste. "mediocrity always detests ability, and loathes genius; curzon wanted to prove to himself that at any rate in the moralities he was my superior. "when he sat down i had to answer him. that was the programme. of course i had not prepared a speech, had not thought about curzon, or what he might say, but i got up, frank, and told the kindliest truth about him, and everyone took it for the bitterest sarcasm, and cheered and cheered me, though what i said was merely the truth. i told how difficult it was for curzon to work and study at oxford. everyone wanted to know him because of his position, because he was going into parliament, and certain to make a great figure there; and everyone tried to make up to him, but he knew that he must not yield to such seduction, so he sat in his room with a wet towel about his head, and worked and worked without ceasing. "in the earlier examinations, which demand only memory, he won first honours. but even success could not induce him to relax his efforts; he lived laborious days and took every college examination seriously; he made out dates in red ink, and hung them on his wall, and learnt pages of uninteresting events and put them in blue ink in his memory, and at last came out of the 'final schools' with second honours. and now, i concluded, 'this model youth is going into life, and he is certain to treat it seriously, certain to win at any rate second honours in it, and have a great and praiseworthy career.' "frank, they roared with laughter, and, to do curzon justice, at the end he came up to me and apologised, and was charming. indeed, they all made much of me and we had a great night. "i remember we talked all the night through, or rather i talked and everyone else listened, for the great principle of the division of labour is beginning to be understood in english society. the host gives excellent food, excellent wine, excellent cigarettes, and super-excellent coffee, that's his part, and all the men listen, that's theirs: while i talk and the stars twinkle their delight. "wyndham was there, too; you know george wyndham, with his beautiful face and fine figure: he is infinitely cleverer than curzon but he has not curzon's push and force, or perhaps, as you say, he is not in such close touch with the average man as curzon; he was charming to me. "in the morning we all trooped out to see the dawn, and some of the young ones, wild with youth and high spirits, curzon of course among the number, stripped off their clothes and rushed down to the lake and began swimming and diving about like a lot of schoolboys. there is a great deal of the schoolboy in all englishmen, that is what makes them so lovable. when they came out they ran over the grass to dry themselves, and then began playing lawn tennis, just as they were, stark naked, the future rulers of england. i shall never forget the scene. wilfred blunt had gone up to his wife's apartments and had changed into some fantastic pyjamas; suddenly he opened an upper window and came out and perched himself, cross-legged, on the balcony, looking down at the mad game of lawn tennis, for all the world like a sort of pink and green buddha, while i strolled about with someone, and ordered fresh coffee and talked till the dawn came with silent silver feet lighting up the beautiful greenery of the park.... "now george curzon plays king in india: wyndham is on the way to power, and i'm hiding in shame and poverty here in paris, an exile and outcast. do you wonder that i cannot write, frank? the awful injustice of life maddens me. after all, what have they done in comparison with what i have done? "close the eyes of all of us now and fifty years hence, or a hundred years hence, no one will know anything about curzon or wyndham or blunt: whether they lived or died will be a matter of indifference to everyone; but my comedies and my stories and 'the ballad of reading gaol' will be known and read by millions, and even my unhappy fate will call forth world-wide sympathy." it was all true enough, and good to keep in mind; but even when oscar spoke of greater men than himself, he took the same attitude: his self-esteem was extraordinary. he did not compare his work with that of others; was not anxious to find his true place, as even shakespeare was. from the beginning, from youth on, he was convinced that he was a great man and going to do great things. many of us have the same belief and are just as persuaded, but the belief is not ever present with us as it was with oscar, moulding all his actions. for instance, i remarked once that his handwriting was unforgettable and characteristic. "i worked at it," he said, "as a boy; i wanted a distinctive handwriting; it had to be clear and beautiful and peculiar to me. at length i got it but it took time and patience. i always wanted everything about me to be distinctive," he added, smiling. he was proud of his physical appearance, inordinately pleased with his great height, vain of it even. "height gives distinction," he declared, and once even went so far as to say, "one can't picture napoleon as small; one thinks only of his magnificent head and forgets the little podgy figure; it must have been a great nuisance to him: small men have no dignity." all this utterly unconscious of the fact that most tall men have no ever present-sense of their height as an advantage. yet on the whole one agrees with montaigne that height is the chief beauty of a man: it gives presence. oscar never learned anything from criticism; he had a good deal of personal dignity in spite of his amiability, and when one found fault with his work, he would smile vaguely or change the subject as if it didn't interest him. again and again i played on his self-esteem to get him to write; but always met the same answer. "oh, frank, it's impossible, impossible for me to work under these disgraceful conditions." "but you can have better conditions now and lots of money if you'll begin to work." he shook his head despairingly. again and again i tried, but failed to move him, even when i dangled money before him. i didn't then know that he was receiving regularly more than £ a year. i thought he was completely destitute, dependent on such casual help as friends could give him. i have a letter from him about this time asking me for even £ [ ] as if he were in extremest need. on one of my visits to paris after discussing his position, i could not help saying to him: "the only thing that will make you write, oscar, is absolute, blank poverty. that's the sharpest spur after all--necessity." "you don't know me," he replied sharply. "i would kill myself. i can endure to the end; but to be absolutely destitute would show me suicide as the open door." suddenly his depressed manner changed and his whole face lighted up. "isn't it comic, frank, the way the english talk of the 'open door,' while their doors are always locked, and barred, and bolted, even their church doors? yet it is not hypocrisy in them; they simply cannot see themselves as they are; they have no imagination." a long pause, and he went on gravely: "suicide, frank, is always the temptation of the unfortunate, a great temptation." "suicide is the natural end of the world-weary," i replied; "but you enjoy life intensely. for you to talk of suicide is ridiculous." "do you know that my wife is dead, frank?"[ ] "i had heard it," i said. "my way back to hope and a new life ends in her grave," he went on. "everything i do, frank, is irrevocable." he spoke with a certain grave sincerity. "the great tragedies of the world are all final and complete; socrates would not escape death, though crito opened the prison door for him. i could not avoid prison, though you showed me the way to safety. we are fated to suffer, don't you think? as an example to humanity--'an echo and a light unto eternity.'" "i think it would be finer, instead of taking the punishment lying down, to trample it under your feet, and make it a rung of the ladder." "oh, frank, you would turn all the tragedies into triumphs, you are a fighter. my life is done." "you love life," i cried, "as much as ever you did; more than anyone i have ever seen." "it is true," he cried, his face lighting up quickly, "more than anyone, frank. life delights me. the people passing on the boulevards, the play of the sunshine in the trees; the noise, the quick movement of the cabs, the costumes of the _cochers_ and _sergents-de-ville_; workers and beggars, pimps and prostitutes--all please me to the soul, charm me, and if you would only let me talk instead of bothering me to write i should be quite happy. why should i write any more? i have done enough for fame. "i will tell you a story, frank," he broke off, and he told me a slight thing about judas. the little tale was told delightfully, with eloquent inflections of voice and still more eloquent pauses.... "the end of all this is," i said before going back to london, "that you will not write?" "no, no, frank," he said, "that i cannot write under these conditions. if i had money enough; if i could shake off paris, and forget those awful rooms of mine and get to the riviera for the winter and live in some seaside village of the latins with the blue sea at my feet, and the blue sky above, and god's sunlight about me and no care for money, then i would write as naturally as a bird sings, because i should be happy and could not help it.... "you write stories taken from the fight of life; you are careless of surroundings, i am a poet and can only sing in the sunshine when i am happy." "all right," i said, snatching at the half-promise. "it is just possible that i may get hold of some money during the next few months, and, if i do, you shall go and winter in the south, and live as you please without care of money. if you can only sing when the cage is beautiful and sunlight floods it, i know the very place for you." with this sort of vague understanding we parted for some months. footnotes: [ ] _cfr._ appendix. [ ] see appendix. chapter xxii "a great romantic passion" there is no more difficult problem for the writer, no harder task than to decide how far he should allow himself to go in picturing human weakness. we have all come from the animal and can all without any assistance from books imagine easily enough the effects of unrestrained self-indulgence. yet it is instructive and pregnant with warning to remark that, as soon as the sheet anchor of high resolve is gone, the frailties of man tend to become master-vices. all our civilisation is artificially built up by effort; all high humanity is the reward of constant striving against natural desires. in the fall of this year, , i sold _the saturday review_ to lord hardwicke and his friends, and as soon as the purchase was completed, i think in november, i wired to oscar that i should be in paris in a short time, and ready to take him to the south for his holiday. i sent him some money to pave the way. a few days later i crossed and wired to him from calais to dine with me at durand's, and to begin dinner if i happened to be late. while waiting for dinner, i said: "i want to stay two or three days in paris to see some pictures. would you be ready to start south on thursday next?" it was then monday, i think. "on thursday?" he repeated. "yes, frank, i think so." "there is some money for anything you may want to buy," i said and handed him a cheque i had made payable to self and signed, for he knew where he could cash it. "how good of you, frank, i cannot thank you enough. you start on thursday," he added, as if considering it. "if you would rather wait a little," i said, "say so: i'm quite willing." "no, frank, i think thursday will do. we are really going to the south for the whole winter. how wonderful; how gorgeous it will be." we had a great dinner and talked and talked. he spoke of some of the new frenchmen, and at great length of pierre louÿs, whom he described as a disciple: "it was i, frank, who induced him to write his 'aphrodite' in prose." he spoke, too, of the grand guignol theatre. "le grand guignol is the first theatre in paris. it looks like a nonconformist chapel, a barn of a room with a gallery at the back and a little wooden stage. there you see the primitive tragedies of real life. they are as ugly and as fascinating as life itself. you must see it and we will go to antoine's as well: you must see antoine's new piece; he is doing great work." we kept dinner up to an unconscionable hour. i had much to tell of london and much to hear of paris, and we talked and drank coffee till one o'clock, and when i proposed supper oscar accepted the idea with enthusiasm. "i have often lunched with you from two o'clock till nine, frank, and now i am going to dine with you from nine o'clock till breakfast to-morrow morning." "what shall we drink?" i asked. "the same champagne, frank, don't you think?" he said, pulling his jowl; "there is no wine so inspiring as that dry champagne with the exquisite _bouquet_. you were the first to say my plays were the champagne of literature." when we came out it was three o'clock and i was tired and sleepy with my journey, and oscar had drunk perhaps more than was good for him. knowing how he hated walking i got a _voiture de cercle_ and told him to take it, and i would walk to my hotel. he thanked me and seemed to hesitate. "what is it now?" i asked, wanting to get to bed. "just a word with you," he said, and drew me away from the carriage where the _chasseur_ was waiting with the rug. when he got me three or four paces away he said, hesitatingly: "frank, could you ... can you let me have a few pounds? i'm very hard up." i stared at him; i had given him a cheque at the beginning of the dinner: had he forgotten? or did he perchance want to keep the hundred pounds intact for some reason? suddenly it occurred to me that he might be without even enough for the carriage. i took out a hundred franc note and gave it to him. "thank you, so much," he said, thrusting it into his waistcoat pocket, "it's very kind of you." "you will turn up to-morrow at lunch at one?" i said, as i put him into the little brougham. "yes, of course, yes," he cried, and i turned away. next day at lunch he seemed to meet me with some embarrassment: "frank, i want to ask you something. i'm really confused about last night; we dined most wisely, if too well. this morning i found you had given me a cheque, and i found besides in my waistcoat pocket a note for a hundred francs. did i ask you for it at the end? 'tap' you, the french call it," he added, trying to laugh. i nodded. "how dreadful!" he cried. "how dreadful poverty is! i had forgotten that you had given me a cheque, and i was so hard up, so afraid you might go away without giving me anything, that i asked you for it. isn't poverty dreadful?" i nodded; i could not say a word: the fact told so much. the chastened mood of self-condemnation did not last long with him or go deep; soon he was talking as merrily and gaily as ever. before parting i said to him: "you won't forget that you are going on thursday night?" "oh, really!" he cried, to my surprise, "thursday is very near; i don't know whether i shall be able to come." "what on earth do you mean?" i asked. "the truth is, you know, i have debts to pay, and i have not enough." "but i will give you more," i cried, "what will clear you?" "fifty more i think will do. how good you are!" "i will bring it with me to-morrow morning." "in notes please, will you? french money. i find i shall want it to pay some little things at once, and the time is short." i thought nothing of the matter. the next day at lunch i gave him the money in french notes. that night i said to him: "you know we are going away to-morrow evening: i hope you'll be ready? i have got the tickets for the _train de luxe_." "oh, i'm so sorry!" he cried, "i can't be ready." "what is it now?" i asked. "well, it's money. some more debts have come in." "why will you not be frank with me, and tell me what you owe? i will give you a cheque for it. i don't want to drag it out of you bit by bit. tell me a sum that will make you free, and i will give it to you. i want you to have a perfect six months, and how can you if you are bothered with debts?" "how kind you are to me! do you really mean it?" "of course i do." "really?" he said. "yes," i said, "tell me what it is." "i think, i believe ... would another fifty be too much?" "i will give it you to-morrow. are you sure that will be enough?" "oh, yes, frank; but let's go on sunday. sunday is such a good day for travelling, and it's always so dull everywhere, we might just as well spend it on the train. besides, no one travels on sunday in france, so we are sure to be able to take our ease in our train. won't sunday do, frank?" "of course it will," i replied laughing; but a day or two later he was again embarrassed, and again told me it was money, and then he confessed to me that he was afraid at first i should not have paid all his debts, if i had known how much they were, and so he thought by telling me of them little by little, he would make sure at least of something. this pitiful, pitiable confession depressed me on his account. it showed practice in such petty tricks and all too little pride. of course it did not alter my admiration of his qualities; nor weaken in any degree my resolve to give him a fair chance. if he could be saved, i was determined to save him. we met at the gare de lyons on sunday evening. i found he had dined at the buffet: there was a surprising number of empty bottles on the table; he seemed terribly depressed. "someone was dining with me, frank, a friend," he offered by way of explanation. "why did he not wait? i should like to have seen him." "oh, he was no one you would have cared about, frank," he replied. i sat with him and took a cup of coffee, whilst waiting for the train. he was wretchedly gloomy; scarcely spoke indeed; i could not make it out. from time to time he sighed heavily, and i noticed that his eyes were red, as if he had been crying. "what is the matter?" i asked. "i will tell you later, perhaps. it is very hard; parting is like dying," and his eyes filled with tears. we were soon in the train running out into the night. i was as light-hearted as could be. at length i was free of journalism, i thought, and i was going to the south to write my shakespeare book, and oscar would work, too, when the conditions were pleasant. but i could not win a single smile from him; he sat downcast, sighing hopelessly from time to time. "what on earth's the matter?" i cried. "here you are going to the sunshine, to blue skies, and the wine-tinted mediterranean, and you're not content. we shall stop in a hotel near a little sun-baked valley running down to the sea. you walk from the hotel over a carpet of pine needles, and when you get into the open, violets and anemones bloom about your feet, and the scent of rosemary and myrtle will be in your nostrils; yet instead of singing for joy the bird droops his feathers and hangs his head as if he had the 'pip.'" "oh, don't," he cried, "don't," and he looked at me with tears filling his eyes; "you don't know, frank, what a great romantic passion is." "is that what you are suffering from?" "yes, a great romantic passion." "good god!" i laughed; "who has inspired this new devotion?" "don't make fun of me, frank, or i will not tell you; but if you will listen i will try to tell you all about it, for i think you should know, besides, i think telling it may ease my pain, so come into the cabin and listen. "do you remember once in the summer you wired me from calais to meet you at maire's restaurant, meaning to go afterwards to antoine's theatre, and i was very late? you remember, the evening rostand was dining at the next table. well, it was that evening. i drove up to maire's in time, and i was just getting out of the victoria when a little soldier passed, and our eyes met. my heart stood still; he had great dark eyes and an exquisite olive-dark face--a florentine bronze, frank, by a great master. he looked like napoleon when he was first consul, only--less imperious, more beautiful.... "i got out hypnotised, and followed him down the boulevard as in a dream; the _cocher_ came running after me, i remember, and i gave him a five franc piece, and waved him off; i had no idea what i owed him; i did not want to hear his voice; it might break the spell; mutely i followed my fate. i overtook the boy in a short time and asked him to come and have a drink, and he said to me in his quaint french way: "'_ce n'est pas de refus!_' (too good to refuse.) "we went into a café, and i ordered something, i forget what, and we began to talk. i told him i liked his face; i had had a friend once like him; and i wanted to know all about him. i was in a hurry to meet you, but i had to make friends with him first. he began by telling me all about his mother, frank, yes, his mother." oscar smiled here in spite of himself. "but at last i got from him that he was always free on thursdays, and he would be very glad to see me then, though he did not know what i could see in him to like. i found out that the thing he desired most in the world was a bicycle; he talked of nickel-plated handle bars, and chains--and finally i told him it might be arranged. he was very grateful and so we made a rendezvous for the next thursday, and i came on at once to dine with you." "goodness!" i cried laughing. "a soldier, a nickel-plated bicycle and a great romantic passion!" "if i had said a brooch, or a necklace, some trinket which would have cost ten times as much, you would have found it quite natural." "yes," i admitted, "but i don't think i'd have introduced the necklace the first evening if there had been any romance in the affair, and the nickel-plated bicycle to me seems irresistibly comic." "frank," he cried reprovingly, "i cannot talk to you if you laugh; i am quite serious. i don't believe you know what a great romantic passion is; i am going to convince you that you don't know the meaning of it." "fire away," i replied, "i am here to be convinced. but i don't think you will teach me that there is any romance except where there is another sex." "don't talk to me of the other sex," he cried with distaste in voice and manner. "first of all in beauty there is no comparison between a boy and a girl. think of the enormous, fat hips which every sculptor has to tone down, and make lighter, and the great udder breasts which the artist has to make small and round and firm, and then picture the exquisite slim lines of a boy's figure. no one who loves beauty can hesitate for a moment. the greeks knew that; they had the sense of plastic beauty, and they understood that there is no comparison." "you must not say that," i replied; "you are going too far; the venus of milo is as fine as any apollo, in sheer beauty; the flowing curves appeal to me more than your weedy lines." "perhaps they do, frank," he retorted, "but you must see that the boy is far more beautiful. it is your sex-instinct, your sinful sex-instinct which prevents you worshipping the higher form of beauty. height and length of limb give distinction; slightness gives grace; women are squat! you must admit that the boy's figure is more beautiful; the appeal it makes far higher, more spiritual." "six of one and half-a-dozen of the other," i barked. "your sculptor knows it is just as hard to find an ideal boy's figure as an ideal girl's; and if he has to modify the most perfect girl's figure, he has to modify the most perfect boy's figure as well. if he refines the girl's breasts and hips he has to pad the boy's ribs and tone down the great staring knee-bones and the unlovely large ankles; but please go on, i enjoy your special pleading and your romantic passion interests me; though you have not yet come to the romance, let alone the passion." "oh, frank," he cried, "the story is full of romance; every meeting was an event in my life. you have no idea how intelligent he is; every evening we spent together he was different; he had grown, developed. i lent him books and he read them, and his mind opened from week to week like a flower, till in a short time, a few months, he became an exquisite companion and disciple. frank, no girl grows like that; they have no minds, and what intelligence they have is all given to wretched vanities, and personal jealousies. there is no intellectual companionship possible with them. they want to talk of dress, and not of ideas, and how persons look and not of what they are. how can you have the flower of romance without a brotherhood of soul?" "sisterhood of soul seems to me infinitely finer," i said, "but go on." "i shall convince you," he declared; "i must be able to, because all reason is on my side. let me give you one instance. of course my boy had his bicycle; he used to come to me on it and go to and fro from the barracks on it. when you came to paris in september, you invited me to dine one night, one thursday night, when he was to come to me. i told him i had to go and dine with you. he didn't mind; but was glad when i said i had an english editor for a friend, glad that i should have someone to talk to about london and the people i used to know. if it had been a woman i loved, i should have been forced to tell lies: she would have been jealous of my past. i told him the truth, and when i spoke about you he grew interested and excited, and at last he put a wish before me. he wanted to know if he might come and leave his bicycle outside and look through the window of the restaurant, just to see us at dinner. i told him there might possibly be women-guests. he replied that he would be delighted to see me in dress-clothes talking to gentlemen and ladies. "might he come?" he persisted. "of course i said he could come, and he came, but i never saw him. "the next time we met he told me all about it; how he had picked you out from my description of you, and how he knew baüer from his likeness to dumas _père_, and he was delightful about it all. "now, frank, would any girl have come to see you enjoying yourself with other people? would any girl have stared through the window and been glad to see you inside amusing yourself with other men and women? you know there's not a girl on earth with such unselfish devotion. there is no comparison, i tell you, between the boy and the girl; i say again deliberately, you don't know what a great romantic passion is or the high unselfishness of true love." "you have put it with extraordinary ability," i said, "as of course i knew you would. i think i can understand the charm of such companionship; but only from the young boy's point of view, not from yours. i can understand how you have opened to him a new heaven and a new earth, but what has he given you? nothing. on the other hand any finely gifted girl would have given you something. if you had really touched her heart, you would have found in her some instinctive tenderness, some proof of unselfish, exquisite devotion that would have made your eyes prickle with a sense of inferiority. "after all, the essence of love, the finest spirit of that companionship you speak about, of the sisterhood of soul, is that the other person should quicken you, too; open to you new horizons, discover new possibilities; and how could your soldier boy help you in any way? he brought you no new ideas, no new feelings, could reveal no new thoughts to you. i can see no romance, no growth of soul in such a connection. but the girl is different from the man in all ways. you have as much to learn from her as she has from you, and neither of you can come to ideal growth in any other way: you are both half-parts of humanity--complements, and in need of each other." "you have put it very cunningly, frank, as i expected you would, to return your compliment, but you must admit that with the boy, at any rate, you have no jealousy, no mean envyings, no silly inanities. there it is, frank, some of us hate 'cats.' i can give reasons for my dislike, which to me are conclusive." "the boy who would beg for a bicycle is not likely to be without mean envyings," i replied. "now you have talked about romance and companionship," i went on, "but can you really feel passion?" "frank, what a silly question! do you remember how socrates says he felt when the chlamys blew aside and showed him the limbs of charmides? don't you remember how the blood throbbed in his veins and how he grew blind with desire, a scene more magical than the passionate love-lines of sappho? "there is no other passion to be compared with it. a woman's passion is degrading. she is continually tempting you. she wants your desire as a satisfaction for her vanity more than anything else, and her vanity is insatiable if her desire is weak, and so she continually tempts you to excess, and then blames you for the physical satiety and disgust which she herself has created. with a boy there is no vanity in the matter, no jealousy, and therefore none of the tempting, not a tenth part of the coarseness; and consequently desire is always fresh and keen. oh, frank, believe me, you don't know what a great romantic passion is." "what you say only shows how little you know women," i replied. "if you explained all this to the girl who loves you, she would see it at once, and her tenderness would grow with her self-abnegation; we all grow by giving. if the woman cares more than the man for caresses and kindness, it is because she feels more tenderness, and is capable of intenser devotion." "you don't know what you are talking about, frank," he retorted. "you repeat the old accepted commonplaces. the boy came to the station with me to-night. he knew i was going away for six months. his heart was like lead, tears gathered in his eyes again and again in spite of himself, and yet he tried to be gay and bright for my sake; he wanted to show me how glad he was that i should be happy, how thankful he was for all i had done for him, and the new mental life i had created in him. he did his best to keep my courage up. i cried, but he shook his tears away. 'six months will soon be over,' he said, 'and perhaps you will come back to me, and i shall be glad again.' meantime he will write charming letters to me, i'm sure. "would any girl take a parting like that? no; she would be jealous and envious, and wonder why you were enjoying yourself in the south while she was condemned to live in the rainy, cold north. would she ask you to tell her of all the beautiful girls you met, and whether they were charming and bright, as the boy asked me to tell him of all the interesting people i should meet, so that he, too, might take an interest in them? a girl in his place would have been ill with envy and malice and jealousy. again i repeat, you don't know what a high romantic passion is." "your argument is illogical," i cried, "if the girl is jealous, it is because she has given herself more completely: her exclusiveness is the other side of her devotion and tenderness; she wants to do everything for you, to be with you and help you in every way, and in case of illness or poverty or danger, you would find how much more she had to give than your red-breeched soldier." "that's merely a rude gibe and not an argument, frank." "as good an argument as your 'cats,'" i replied; "your little soldier boy with his nickel-plated bicycle only makes me grin," and i grinned. "you are unpardonable," he cried, "unpardonable, and in your soul you know that all the weight of argument is on my side. in your soul you must know it. what is the food of passion, frank, but beauty, beauty alone, beauty always, and in beauty of form and vigour of life there is no comparison. if you loved beauty as intensely as i do, you would feel as i feel. it is beauty which gives me joy, makes me drunk as with wine, blind with insatiable desire...." chapter xxiii he was an incomparable companion, perfectly amiable, yet vivid, and eager as a child, always interested and interesting. we awoke at avignon and went out in pyjamas and overcoats to stretch our legs and get a bowl of coffee on the platform in the pearly grey light of early morning. after coffee and cigarettes he led the way to the other end of the platform, that we might catch a glimpse of the town wall which, though terribly restored, yet, when seen from a distance, transports one back five hundred years to the age of chivalry. "how i should have loved to be a troubadour, or a _trouvère_, frank; that was my true _métier_, to travel from castle to castle singing love songs and telling romantic stories to while away the tedium of the lives of the great. fancy the reception they would have given me for bringing a new joy into their castled isolation, new ideas, new passions--a breath of gossip and scandal from the outside world to relieve the intolerable boredom of the middle ages. i should have been kept at the court of aix: i think they would have bound me with flower-chains, and my fame would have spread all through the sunny vineyards and grey olive-clad hills of provence." when we got into the train again he began: "we stop next at marseilles, don't we, frank? a great historic town for nearly three thousand years. one really feels a barbarian in comparison, and yet all i know of marseilles is that it is famous for _bouillabaisse_. suppose we stop and get some?" "_bouillabaisse_," i replied, "is not peculiar to marseilles or the _rue cannebière_. you can get it all along this coast. there is only one thing necessary to it and that is _rascasse_, a fish caught only among the rocks: you will get excellent _bouillabaisse_ at lunch where we are going." "where are we going? you have not told me yet." "it is for you to decide," i answered. "if you want perfect quiet there are two places in the esterel mountains, agay and la napoule. agay is in the middle of the esterel. you would be absolutely alone there except for the visit of an occasional french painter. la napoule is eight or ten miles from cannes, so that you are within reach of a town and its amusements. there is still another place i had thought of, quieter than either, in the mountains behind nice." "nice sounds wonderful, frank, but i should meet too many english people there who would know me, and they are horribly rude. i think we will choose la napoule." about ten o'clock we got out at la napoule and installed ourselves in the little hotel, taking up three of the best rooms on the second or top floor, much to the delight of the landlord. at twelve we had breakfast under a big umbrella in the open air, looking over the sea. i had put the landlord on his mettle, and he gave us a fry of little red mullet, which made us understand how tasteless whitebait are: then a plain beefsteak _aux pommes_, a morsel of cheese, and a sweet omelette. we both agreed that we had had a most excellent breakfast. the coffee left a good deal to be desired, and there was no champagne on the list fit to drink; but both these faults could be remedied by the morrow, and were remedied. we spent the rest of the day wandering between the seashore and the pine-clad hills. the next morning i put in some work, but in the afternoon i was free to walk and explore. on one of my first tramps i discovered a monastery among the hills hundreds of feet above the sea, built and governed by an italian monk. i got to know the père vergile[ ] and had a great talk with him. he was both wise and strong, with ingratiating, gentle manners. had he gone as a boy from his little italian fishing village to new york or paris, he would have certainly come to greatness and honour. one afternoon i took oscar to see him: the monastery was not more than three-quarters of an hour's stroll from our hotel; but oscar grumbled at the walk as a nuisance, said it was miles and miles; the road, too, was rough, and the sun hot. the truth was, he was abnormally lazy. but he fascinated the italian with his courteous manner and vivid speech, and as soon as we were alone the abbé asked me who he was. "he must be a great man," he said, "he has the stamp of a great man, and he must have lived in courts: he has the charming, graceful, smiling courtesy of the great." "yes," i nodded mysteriously, "a great man--incognito." the abbé kept us to dinner, made us taste of his oldest wines, and a special liqueur of his own distilling; told us how he had built the monastery with no money, and when we exclaimed with wonder, reproved us gently: "all great things are built with faith, and not with money; why wonder that this little building stands firmly on that everlasting foundation?" when we came out of the monastery it was already night, and the moonlight was throwing fantastic leafy shadows on the path, as we walked down through the avenue of forest to the sea shore. "you remember those words of vergil, frank--_per amica silentia lunæ_--they always seem to me indescribably beautiful; the most magic line about the moon ever written, except browning's in the poem in which he mentioned keats--'him even.' i love that 'amica silentia.' what a beautiful nature the man had who could feel 'the _friendly_ silences of the moon.'" when we got down the hill he declared himself tired. "tired after a mile?" i asked. "tired to death, worn out," he said, laughing at his own laziness. "shall we get a boat and row across the bay?" "how splendid! of course, let's do it," and we went down to the landing stage. i had never seen the water so calm; half the bay was veiled by the mountain, and opaque like unpolished steel; a little further out, the water was a purple shield, emblazoned with shimmering silver. we called a fisherman and explained what we wanted. when we got into the boat, to my astonishment, oscar began calling the fisher boy by his name; evidently he knew him quite well. when we landed i went up from the boat to the hotel, leaving oscar and the boy together.... a fortnight taught me a good deal about oscar at this time; he was intensely indolent: quite content to kill time by the hour talking to the fisher lads, or he would take a little carriage and drive to cannes and amuse himself at some wayside café. he never cared to walk and i walked for miles daily, so that we spent only one or at most two afternoons a week together, meeting so seldom that nearly all our talks were significant. several times contemporary names came up and i was compelled to notice for the first time that really he was contemptuous of almost everyone, and had a sharp word to say about many who were supposed to be his friends. one day we spoke of ricketts and shannon; i was saying that had ricketts lived in paris he would have had a great reputation: many of his designs i thought extraordinary, and his intellect was peculiarly french--_mordant_ even. oscar did not like to hear praise of anyone. "do you know my word for them, frank? i like it. i call them 'temper and temperament.'" was his punishment making him a little spiteful or was it the temptation of the witty phrase? "what do you think of arthur symons?" i asked. "oh, frank, i said of him long ago that he was a sad example of an egoist who had no ego." "and what of your compatriot, george moore? he's popular enough," i continued. "popular, frank, as if that counted. george moore has conducted his whole education in public. he had written two or three books before he found out there was such a thing as english grammar. he at once announced his discovery and so won the admiration of the illiterate. a few years later he discovered that there was something architectural in style, that sentences had to be built up into a paragraph, and paragraphs into chapters and so on. naturally he cried this revelation, too, from the housetops, and thus won the admiration of the journalists who had been making rubble-heaps all their lives without knowing it. i'm much afraid, frank, in spite of all his efforts, he will die before he reaches the level from which writers start. it's a pity because he has certainly a little real talent. he differs from symons in that he has an ego, but his ego has five senses and no soul." "what about bernard shaw?" i probed further, "after all he's going to count." "yes, frank, a man of real ability but with a bleak mind. humorous gleams as of wintry sunlight on a bare, harsh landscape. he has no passion, no feeling, and without passionate feeling how can one be an artist? he believes in nothing, loves nothing, not even bernard shaw, and really, on the whole, i don't wonder at his indifference," and he laughed mischievously. "and wells?" i asked. "a scientific jules verne," he replied with a shrug. "did you ever care for hardy?" i continued. "not greatly. he has just found out that women have legs underneath their dresses, and this discovery has almost wrecked his life. he writes poetry, i believe, in his leisure moments, and i am afraid it will be very hard reading. he knows nothing of love; passion to him is a childish illness like measles--poor unhappy spirit!" "you might be describing mrs. humphry ward," i cried. "god forbid, frank," he exclaimed with such mock horror i had to laugh. "after all, hardy is a writer and a great landscape painter." "i don't know why it is," he went on, "but i am always match-making when i think of english celebrities. i should so much like to have introduced mrs. humphry ward blushing at eighteen or twenty to swinburne, who would of course have bitten her neck in a furious kiss, and she would have run away and exposed him in court, or else have suffered agonies of mingled delight and shame in silence. "and if one could only marry thomas hardy to victoria cross he might have gained some inkling of real passion with which to animate his little keepsake pictures of starched ladies. a great many writers, i think, might be saved in this way, but there would still be left the corellis and hall caines that one could do nothing with except bind them back to back, which would not even tantalise them, and throw them into the river, a new _noyade_: the thames at barking, i think, would be about the place for them...." "where do you go every afternoon?" i asked him once casually. "i go to cannes, frank, and sit in a café and look across the sea to capri, where tiberius used to sit like a spider watching, and i think of myself as an exile, the victim of one of his inscrutable suspicions, or else i am in rome looking at the people dancing naked, but with gilded lips, through the streets at the _floralia_. i sup with the _arbiter elegantiarum_ and come back to la napoule, frank," and he pulled his jowl, "to the simple life and the charm of restful friendship." more and more clearly i saw that the effort, the hard work, of writing was altogether beyond him: he was now one of those men of genius, talkers merely, half artists, half dreamers, whom balzac describes contemptuously as wasting their lives, "talking to hear themselves talk"; capable indeed of fine conceptions and of occasional fine phrases, but incapable of the punishing toil of execution; charming companions, fated in the long run to fall to misery and destitution. constant creation is the first condition of art as it is the first condition of life. i asked him one day if he remembered the terrible passage about those "eunuchs of art" in "la cousine bette." "yes, frank," he replied; "but balzac was probably envious of the artist-talker; at any rate, we who talk should not be condemned by those to whom we dedicate our talents. it is for posterity to blame us; but after all i have written a good deal. do you remember how browning's sarto defends himself? "some good son paint my two hundred pictures--let him try." he did not see that balzac, one of the greatest talkers that ever lived according to théophile gautier, was condemning the temptation to which he himself had no doubt yielded too often. to my surprise, oscar did not even read much now. he was not eager to hear new thoughts, a little rebellious to any new mental influence. he had reached his zenith, i suppose: had begun to fossilise, as men do when they cease to grow. one day at lunch i questioned him: "you told me once that you always imagined yourself in the place of every historic personage. suppose you had been jesus, what religion would you have preached?" "what a wonderful question!" he cried. "what religion is mine? what belief have i? "i believe most of all in personal liberty for every human soul. each man ought to do what he likes, to develop as he will. england, or rather london, for i know little of england outside london, was an ideal place to me, till they punished me because i did not share their tastes. what an absurdity it all was, frank: how dared they punish me for what is good in my eyes? how dared they?" and he fell into moody thought.... the idea of a new gospel did not really interest him. it was about this time he first told me of a new play he had in mind. "it has a great scene, frank," he said. "imagine a _roué_ of forty-five who is married; incorrigible, of course, frank, a great noble who gets the person he is in love with to come and stay with him in the country. one evening his wife, who has gone upstairs to lie down with a headache, is behind a screen in a room half asleep; she is awakened by her husband's courting. she cannot move, she is bound breathless to her couch; she hears everything. then, frank, the husband comes to the door and finds it locked, and knowing that his wife is inside with the host, beats upon the door and will have entrance, and while the guilty ones whisper together--the woman blaming the man, the man trying to think of some excuse, some way out of the net--the wife gets up very quietly and turns on the lights while the two cowards stare at her with wild surmise. she passes to the door and opens it and the husband rushes in to find his hostess as well as the host and his wife. i think it is a great scene, frank, a great stage picture." "it is," i said, "a great scene; why don't you write it?" "perhaps i shall, frank, one of these days, but now i am thinking of some poetry, a 'ballad of a fisher boy,' a sort of companion to 'the ballad of reading gaol,' in which i sing of liberty instead of prison, joy instead of sorrow, a kiss instead of an execution. i shall do this joy-song much better than i did the song of sorrow and despair." "like davidson's 'ballad of a nun,'" i said, for the sake of saying something. "naturally davidson would write the 'ballad of a nun,' frank; his talent is scotch and severe; but i should like to write 'the ballad of a fisher boy,'" and he fell to dreaming. the thought of his punishment was oft with him. it seemed to him hideously wrong and unjust. but he never questioned the right of society to punish. he did not see that, if you once grant that, the wrong done to him could be defended. "i used to think myself a lord of life," he said. "how dared those little wretches condemn me and punish me? everyone of them tainted with a sensuality which i loathe." to call him out of this bitter way of regret i quoted shakespeare's sonnet: "for why should others' false adulterate eyes give salutation to my sportive blood? or on my frailties why are frailer spies, which in their wills count bad what i think good?" "his complaint is exactly yours, oscar." "it's astonishing, frank, how well you know him, and yet you deny his intimacy with pembroke. to you he is a living man; you always talk of him as if he had just gone out of the room, and yet you persist in believing in his innocence." "you misapprehend me," i said, "the passion of his life was for mary fitton, to give her a name; i mean the 'dark lady' of the sonnets, who was beatrice, cressida and cleopatra, and you yourself admit that a man who has a mad passion for a woman is immune, i think the doctors call it, to other influences." "oh, yes, frank, of course; but how could shakespeare with his beautiful nature love a woman to that mad excess?" "shakespeare hadn't your overwhelming love of plastic beauty," i replied; "he fell in love with a dominant personality, the complement of his own yielding, amiable disposition." "that's it," he broke in, "our opposites attract us irresistibly--the charm of the unknown!" "you often talk now," i went on, "as if you had never loved a woman; yet you must have loved--more than one." "my salad days, frank," he quoted, smiling, "when i was green in judgment, cold of blood." "no, no," i persisted, "it is not a great while since you praised lady so and so and the terrys enthusiastically." "lady ----," he began gravely (and i could not but notice that the mere title seduced him to conventional, poetic language), "moves like a lily in water; i always think of her as a lily; just as i used to think of lily langtry as a tulip, with a figure like a greek vase carved in ivory. but i always adored the terrys: marion is a great actress with subtle charm and enigmatic fascination: she was my 'woman of no importance,' artificial and enthralling; she belongs to my theatre--" as he seemed to have lost the thread, i questioned again. "and ellen?" "oh, ellen's a perfect wonder," he broke out, "a great character. do you know her history?" and then, without waiting for an answer, he continued: "she began as a model for watts, the painter, when she was only some fifteen or sixteen years of age. in a week she read him as easily as if he had been a printed book. he treated her with condescending courtesy, _en grand seigneur_, and, naturally, she had her revenge on him. "one day her mother came in and asked watts what he was going to do about ellen. watts said he didn't understand. 'you have made ellen in love with you,' said the mother, and it is impossible that could have happened unless you had been attentive to her.' "poor watts protested and protested, but the mother broke down and sobbed, and said the girl's heart would be broken, and at length, in despair, watts asked what he was to do, and the mother could only suggest marriage. "finally they were married." "you don't mean that," i cried, "i never knew that watts had married ellen terry." "oh, yes," said oscar, "they were married all right. the mother saw to that, and to do him justice, watts kept the whole family like a gentleman. but like an idealist, or, as a man of the world would say, a fool, he was ashamed of his wife; he showed great reserve to her, and when he gave his usual dinners or receptions, he invited only men and so, carefully, left her out. "one evening he had a dinner; a great many well-known people were present and a bishop was on his right hand, when, suddenly, between the cheese and the pear, as the french would say, ellen came dancing into the room in pink tights with a basket of roses around her waist with which she began pelting the guests. watts was horrified, but everyone else delighted, the bishop in especial, it is said, declared he had never seen anything so romantically beautiful. watts nearly had a fit, but ellen danced out of the room with all their hearts in her basket instead of her roses. "to me that's the true story of ellen terry's life. it may be true or false in reality, but i believe it to be true in fact as in symbol; it is not only an image of her life, but of her art. no one knows how she met irving or learned to act, though, as you know, she was one of the best actresses that ever graced the english stage. a great personality. her children even have inherited some of her talent." it was only famous actresses such as ellen terry and sarah bernhardt and great ladies that oscar ever praised. he was a snob by nature; indeed this was the chief link between him and english society. besides, he had a rooted contempt for women and especially for their brains. he said once, of some one: "he is like a woman, sure to remember the trivial and forget the important." it was this disdain of the sex which led him, later, to take up our whole dispute again. "i have been thinking over our argument in the train," he began; "really it was preposterous of me to let you off with a drawn battle; you should have been beaten and forced to haul down your flag. we talked of love and i let you place the girl against the boy: it is all nonsense. a girl is not made for love; she is not even a good instrument of love." "some of us care more for the person than the pleasure," i replied, "and others--. you remember browning: nearer we hold of god who gives, than of his tribes that take, i must believe." "yes, yes," he replied impatiently, "but that's not the point. i mean that a woman is not made for passion and love; but to be a mother. "when i married, my wife was a beautiful girl, white and slim as a lily, with dancing eyes and gay rippling laughter like music. in a year or so the flower-like grace had all vanished; she became heavy, shapeless, deformed: she dragged herself about the house in uncouth misery with drawn blotched face and hideous body, sick at heart because of our love. it was dreadful. i tried to be kind to her; forced myself to touch and kiss her; but she was sick always, and--oh! i cannot recall it, it is all loathsome.... i used to wash my mouth and open the window to cleanse my lips in the pure air. oh, nature is disgusting; it takes beauty and defiles it: it defaces the ivory-white body we have adored, with the vile cicatrices of maternity: it befouls the altar of the soul. "how can you talk of such intimacy as love? how can you idealise it? love is not possible to the artist unless it is sterile." "all her suffering did not endear her to you?" i asked in amazement; "did not call forth that pity in you which you used to speak of as divine?" "pity, frank," he exclaimed impatiently; "pity has nothing to do with love. how can one desire what is shapeless, deformed, ugly? desire is killed by maternity; passion buried in conception," and he flung away from the table. at length i understood his dominant motive: _trahit sua quemque voluptas_, his greek love of form, his intolerant cult of physical beauty, could take no heed of the happiness or well-being of the beloved. "i will not talk to you about it, frank; i am like a persian, who lives by warmth and worships the sun, talking to some esquimau, who answers me with praise of blubber and nights spent in ice houses and baths of foul vapour. let's talk of something else." footnotes: [ ] he lived till november, . chapter xxiv a little later i was called to monte carlo and went for a few days, leaving oscar, as he said, perfectly happy, with good food, excellent champagne, absinthe and coffee, and his simple fisher friends. when i came back to la napoule, i found everything altered and altered for the worse. there was an englishman of a good class named m---- staying at the hotel. he was accompanied by a youth of seventeen or eighteen whom he called his servant. oscar wanted to know if i minded meeting him. "he is charming, frank, and well read, and he admires me very much: you won't mind his dining with us, will you?" "of course not," i replied. but when i saw m---- i thought him an insignificant, foolish creature, who put to show a great admiration for oscar, and drank in his words with parted lips; and well he might, for he had hardly any brains of his own. he had, however, a certain liking for the poetry and literature of passion.[ ] to my astonishment oscar was charming to him, chiefly i think because he was well off, and was pressing oscar to spend the summer with him at some place he had in switzerland. this support made oscar recalcitrant to any influence i might have had over him. when i asked him if he had written anything whilst i was away, he replied casually: "no, frank, i don't think i shall be able to write any more. what is the good of it? i cannot force myself to write." "and your 'ballad of a fisher boy'?" i asked. "i have composed three or four verses of it," he said, smiling at me, "i have got them in my head," and he recited two or three, one of which was quite good, but none of them startling. not having seen him for some days, i noticed that he was growing stout again: the good living and constant drinking seemed to ooze out of him; he began to look as he looked in the old days in london just before the catastrophe. one morning i asked him to put the verses on paper which he had recited to me, but he would not; and when i pressed him, cried: "let me live, frank; tasks remind me of prison. you do not know how i abhor even the memory of it: it was degrading, inhuman!" "prison was the making of you," i could not help retorting, irritated by what seemed to me a mere excuse. "you came out of it better in health and stronger than i have ever known you. the hard living, regular hours and compulsory chastity did you all the good in the world. that is why you wrote those superb letters to the 'daily chronicle,' and the 'ballad of reading gaol'; the state ought really to put you in prison and keep you there." for the first time in my life i saw angry dislike in his eyes. "you talk poisonous nonsense, frank," he retorted. "bad food is bad for everyone, and abstinence from tobacco is mere torture to me. chastity is just as unnatural and devilish as hunger; i hate both. self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of christianity." to all this m---- giggled applause, which naturally excited the combative instincts in me--always too alert. "all great artists," i replied, "have had to practise chastity; it is chastity alone which gives vigour and tone to mind and body, while building up a reserve of extraordinary strength. your favourite greeks never allowed an athlete to go into the palæstra unless he had previously lived a life of complete chastity for a whole year. balzac, too, practised it and extolled its virtues, and goodness knows he loved all the mud-honey of paris." "you are hopelessly wrong, frank, what madness will you preach next! you are always bothering one to write, and now forsooth you recommend chastity and 'skilly,' though i admit," he added laughing, "that your 'skilly' includes all the indelicacies of the season, with champagne, mocha coffee, and absinthe to boot. but surely you are getting too puritanical. it's absurd of you; the other day you defended conventional love against my ideal passion." he provoked me: his tone was that of rather contemptuous superiority. i kept silent: i did not wish to retort as i might have done if m---- had not been present. but oscar was determined to assert his peculiar view. one or two days afterwards he came in very red and excited and more angry than i had ever seen him. "what do you think has happened, frank?" "i do not know. nothing serious, i hope." "i was sitting by the roadside on the way to cannes. i had taken out a vergil with me and had begun reading it. as i sat there reading, i happened to raise my eyes, and who should i see but george alexander--george alexander on a bicycle. i had known him intimately in the old days, and naturally i got up delighted to see him, and went towards him. but he turned his head aside and pedalled past me deliberately. he meant to cut me. of course i know that just before my trial in london he took my name off the bill of my comedy, though he went on playing it. but i was not angry with him for that, though he might have behaved as well as wyndham,[ ] who owed me nothing, don't you think? "here there was nobody to see him, yet he cut me. what brutes men are! they not only punish me as a society, but now they are trying as individuals to punish me, and after all i have not done worse than they do. what difference is there between one form of sexual indulgence and another? i hate hypocrisy and hypocrites! think of alexander, who made all his money out of my works, cutting me, alexander! it is too ignoble. wouldn't you be angry, frank?" "i daresay i should be," i replied coolly, hoping the incident would be a spur to him. "i've always wondered why you gave alexander a play? surely you didn't think him an actor?" "no, no!" he exclaimed, a sudden smile lighting up his face; "alexander doesn't act on the stage; he behaves. but wasn't it mean of him?" i couldn't help smiling, the dart was so deserved. "begin another play," i said, "and the alexanders will immediately go on their knees to you again. on the other hand, if you do nothing you may expect worse than discourtesy. men love to condemn their neighbours' pet vice. you ought to know the world by this time." he did not even notice the hint to work, but broke out angrily: "what you call vice, frank, is not vice: it is as good to me as it was to cæsar, alexander, michelangelo and shakespeare. it was first of all made a sin by monasticism, and it has been made a crime in recent times, by the goths--the germans and english--who have done little or nothing since to refine or exalt the ideals of humanity. they all damn the sins they have no mind to, and that's their morality. a brutal race; they overeat and overdrink and condemn the lusts of the flesh, while revelling in all the vilest sins of the spirit. if they would read the rd chapter of st. matthew and apply it to themselves, they would learn more than by condemning a pleasure they don't understand. why, even bentham refused to put what you call a 'vice' in his penal code, and you yourself admitted that it should not be punished as a crime; for it carries no temptation with it. it may be a malady; but, if so, it appears only to attack the highest natures. it is disgraceful to punish it. the wit of man can find no argument which justifies its punishment." "don't be too sure of that," i retorted. "i have never heard a convincing argument which condemns it, frank; i do not believe such a reason exists." "don't forget," i said, "that this practice which you defend is condemned by a hundred generations of the most civilised races of mankind." "mere prejudice of the unlettered, frank." "and what is such a prejudice?" i asked. "it is the reason of a thousand generations of men, a reason so sanctified by secular experience that it has passed into flesh and blood and become an emotion and is no longer merely an argument. i would rather have one such prejudice held by men of a dozen different races than a myriad reasons. such a prejudice is incarnate reason approved by immemorial experience. "what argument have you against cannibalism; what reason is there why we should not fatten babies for the spit and eat their flesh? the flesh is sweeter, african travellers tell us, than any other meat, tenderer at once and more sustaining; all reasons are in favour of it. what hinders us from indulging in this appetite but prejudice, sacred prejudice, an instinctive loathing at the bare idea? "humanity, it seems to me, is toiling up a long slope leading from the brute to the god: again and again whole generations, sometimes whole races, have fallen back and disappeared in the abyss. every slip fills the survivors with fear and horror which with ages have become instinctive, and now you appear and laugh at their fears and tell them that human flesh is excellent food, and that sterile kisses are the noblest form of passion. they shudder from you and hate and punish you, and if you persist they will kill you. who shall say they are wrong? who shall sneer at their instinctive repulsion hallowed by ages of successful endeavour?" "fine rhetoric, i concede," he replied, "but mere rhetoric. i never heard such a defence of prejudice before. i should not have expected it from you. you admit you don't share the prejudice; you don't feel the horror, the instinctive loathing you describe. why? because you are educated, frank, because you know that the passion socrates felt was not a low passion, because you know that cæsar's weakness, let us say, or the weakness of michelangelo or of shakespeare, is not despicable. if the desire is not a characteristic of the highest humanity, at least it is consistent with it."[ ] "i cannot admit that," i answered. "first of all, let us leave shakespeare out of the question, or i should have to ask you for proofs of his guilt, and there are none. about the others there is this to be said, it is not by imitating the vices and weaknesses of great men that we shall get to their level. and suppose we are fated to climb above them, then their weaknesses are to be dreaded. "i have not even tried to put the strongest reasons before you; i should have thought your own mind would have supplied them; but surely you see that the historical argument is against you. this vice of yours is dropping out of life, like cannibalism: it is no longer a practice of the highest races. it may have seemed natural enough to the greeks, to us it is unnatural. even the best athenians condemned it; socrates took pride in never having yielded to it; all moderns denounce it disdainfully. you must see that the whole progress of the world, the current of educated opinion, is against you, that you are now a 'sport,' a peculiarity, an abnormality, a man with six fingers: not a 'sport' that is, full of promise for the future, but a 'sport' of the dim backward and abysm of time, an arrested development." "you are bitter, frank, almost rude." "forgive me, oscar, forgive me, please; it is because i want you at long last to open your eyes, and see things as they are." "but i thought you were with us, frank, i thought at least you condemned the punishment, did not believe in the barbarous penalties." "i disbelieve in all punishment," i said; "it is by love and not by hate that men must be redeemed. i believe, too, that the time is already come when the better law might be put in force, and above all, i condemn punishment which strikes a man, an artist like you, who has done beautiful and charming things as if he had done nothing. at least the good you have accomplished should be set against the evil. it has always seemed monstrous to me that you should have been punished like a taylor. the french were right in their treatment of verlaine: they condemned the sin, while forgiving the sinner because of his genius. the rigour in england is mere puritanic hypocrisy, shortsightedness and racial self-esteem." "all i can say, frank, is, i would not limit individual desire in any way. what right has society to punish us unless it can prove we have hurt or injured someone else against his will? besides, if you limit passion you impoverish life, you weaken the mainspring of art, and narrow the realm of beauty." "all societies," i replied, "and most individuals, too, punish what they dislike, right or wrong. there are bad smells which do not injure anyone; yet the manufacturers of them would be indicted for committing a nuisance. nor does your plea that by limiting the choice of passion you impoverish life, appeal to me. on the contrary, i think i could prove that passion, the desire of the man for the woman and the woman for the man, has been enormously strengthened in modern times. christianity has created, or at least cultivated, modesty, and modesty has sharpened desire. christianity has helped to lift woman to an equality with man, and this modern intellectual development has again intensified passion out of all knowledge. the woman who is not a slave but an equal, who gives herself according to her own feeling, is infinitely more desirable to a man than any submissive serf who is always waiting on his will. and this movement intensifying passion is every day gaining force. "we have a far higher love in us than the greeks, infinitely higher and more intense than the romans knew; our sensuality is like a river banked in with stone parapets, the current flows higher and more vehemently in the narrower bed." "you may talk as you please, frank, but you will never get me to believe that what i know is good to me, is evil. suppose i like a food that is poison to other people, and yet quickens me; how dare they punish me for eating of it?" "they would say," i replied, "that they only punish you for inducing others to eat it." he broke in: "it is all ignorant prejudice, frank; the world is slowly growing more tolerant and one day men will be ashamed of their barbarous treatment of me, as they are now ashamed of the torturings of the middle ages. the current of opinion is making in our favour and not against us." "you don't believe what you say," i cried; "if you really thought humanity was going your way, you would have been delighted to play galileo. instead of writing a book in prison condemning your companion who pushed you to discovery and disgrace, you would have written a book vindicating your actions. 'i am a martyr,' you would have cried, 'and not a criminal, and everyone who holds the contrary is wrong.' "you would have said to the jury: "'in spite of your beliefs, and your cherished dogmas; in spite of your religion and prejudice and fanatical hatred of me, you are wrong and i am right: the world does move.' "but you didn't say that, and you don't think it. if you did you would be glad you went into the queensberry trial, glad you were accused, glad you were imprisoned and punished because all these things must bring your vindication more quickly; you are sorry for them all, because in your heart you know you were wrong. this old world in the main is right: it's you who are wrong." "of course everything can be argued, frank; but i hold to my conviction: the best minds even now don't condemn us, and the world is becoming more tolerant.[ ] i didn't justify myself in court because i was told i should be punished lightly if i respected the common prejudices, and when i tried to speak afterwards the judge would not let me." "and i believe," i retorted, "that you were hopelessly beaten and could never have made a fight of it, because you felt the time-spirit was against you. how else was a silly, narrow judge able to wave you to silence? do you think he could have silenced me? not all the judges in christendom. let me give you an example. i believe with voltaire that when modesty goes out of life it goes into the language as prudery. i am quite certain that our present habit of not discussing sexual questions in our books is bound to disappear, and that free and dignified speech will take the place of our present prurient mealy-mouthedness. i have long thought it possible, probable even, in the present state of society in england, where we are still more or less under the heel of the illiterate and prudish philistinism of our middle class, that i might be had up to answer some charge of publishing an indecent book. the current of the time appears to be against me. in the spacious days of elizabeth, in the modish time of the georges, a freedom of speech was habitual which to-day is tabooed. our cases, therefore, are somewhat alike. do you think i should dread the issue or allow myself to be silenced by a judge? i would set forth my defence before the judge and before the jury with the assurance of victory in me! i should not minimise what i had written; i should not try to explain it away; i should seek to make it stronger. i should justify every word, and finally i'd warn both judge and jury that if they condemned and punished me they would only make my ultimate triumph more conspicuous. 'all the great men of the past are with me,' i would cry; 'all the great minds of to-day in other countries, and some of the best in england; condemn me at your peril: you will only condemn yourselves. you are spitting against the wind and the shame will be on your own faces.' "do you believe i should be left to suffer? i doubt it even in england to-day. if i'm right, and i'm sure i'm right, then about me there would be an invisible cloud of witnesses. you would see a strange movement of opinion in my favour. the judge would probably lecture me and bind me over to come up for judgment; but if he sentenced me vindictively then the home secretary[ ] would be petitioned and the movement in my favour would grow, till it swept away opposition. this is the very soul of my faith. if i did not believe with every fibre in me that this poor stupid world is honestly groping its way up the altar stairs to god, and not down, i would not live in it an hour." "why do you argue against me, frank? it is brutal of you." "to induce you even now to turn and pull yourself out of the mud. you are forty odd years of age, and the keenest sensations of life are over for you. turn back whilst there's time, get to work, write your ballad and your plays, and not the alexanders alone, but all the people who really count, the best of all countries--the salt of the earth--will give you another chance. begin to work and you'll be borne up on all hands: no one sinks to the dregs but by his own weight. if you don't bear fruit why should men care for you?" he shrugged his shoulders and turned from me with disdainful indifference. "i've done enough for their respect, frank, and received nothing but hatred. every man must dree his own weird. thank heaven, life's not without compensations. i'm sorry i cannot please you," and he added carelessly, "m----has asked me to go and spend the summer with him at gland in switzerland. _he_ does not mind whether i write or not." "i assure you," i cried, "it is not my pleasure i am thinking about. what can it matter to me whether you write or not? it is your own good i am thinking of." "oh, bother good! one's friends like one as one is; the outside public hate one or scoff at one as they please." "well, i hope i shall always be your friend," i replied, "but you will yet be forced to see, oscar, that everyone grows tired of holding up an empty sack." "frank, you insult me." "i don't mean to; i'm sorry; i shall never be so brutally frank again; but you had to hear the truth for once." "then, frank, you only cared for me in so far as i agreed with you?" "oh, that's not fair," i replied. "i have tried with all my strength to prevent you committing soul-suicide, but if you are resolved on it, i can't prevent you. i must draw away. i can do no good." "then you won't help me for the rest of the winter?" "of course i will," i replied, "i shall do all i promised and more; but there's a limit now, and till now the only limit was my power, not my will." it was at napoule a few days later that an incident occurred which gave me to a certain extent a new sidelight on oscar's nature by showing just what he thought of me. i make no scruple of setting forth his opinion here in its entirety, though the confession took place after a futile evening when he had talked to m---- of great houses in england and the great people he had met there. the talk had evidently impressed m---- as much as it had bored me. i must first say that oscar's bedroom was separated from mine by a large sitting-room we had in common. as a rule i worked in my bedroom in the mornings and he spent a great deal of time out of doors. on this especial morning, however, i had gone into the sitting-room early to write some letters. i heard him get up and splash about in his bath: shortly afterwards he must have gone into the next room, which was m----'s, for suddenly he began talking to him in a loud voice from one room to the other, as if he were carrying on a conversation already begun, through the open door. "of course it's absurd of frank talking of social position or the great people of english society at all. he never had any social position to be compared with mine!" (the petulant tone made me smile; but what oscar said was true: nor did i ever pretend to have such a position.) "he had a house in park lane and owned _the saturday review_ and had a certain power; but i was the centre of every party, the most honoured guest everywhere, at clieveden and taplow court and clumber. the difference was frank was proud of meeting balfour while balfour was proud of meeting me: d'ye see?" (i was so interested i was unconscious of any indiscretion in listening: it made me smile to hear that i was proud of meeting arthur balfour: it would never have occurred to me that i should be proud of that: still no doubt oscar was right in a general way). "when frank talks of literature, he amuses me: he pretends to bring new standards into it; he does: he brings america to judge oxford and london, much like bringing macedon or boeotia to judge athens--quite ridiculous! what can americans know about english literature?... "yet the curious thing is he has read a lot and has a sort of vision: that shakespeare stuff of his is extraordinary; but he takes sincerity for style, and poetry as poetry has no appeal for him. you heard him admit that himself last night.... "he's comic, really: curiously provincial like all americans. fancy a jeremiad preached by a man in a fur coat! frank's comic. but he's really kind and fights for his friends. he helped me in prison greatly: sympathy is a sort of religion to him: that's why we can meet without murder and separate without suicide.... "talking literature with him is very like playing rugby football.... i never did play football, you know; but talking literature with frank must be very like playing rugby where you end by being kicked violently through your own goal," and he laughed delightedly. i had listened without thinking as i often listened to his talk for the mere music of the utterance; now, at a break in the monologue, i went into the next room, feeling that to listen consciously would be unworthy. on the whole his view of me was not unkindly: he disliked to hear any opinion that differed from his own and it never came into his head that oxford was no nearer the meridian of truth than lawrence, kansas, and certainly at least as far from heaven. some weeks later i left la napoule and went on a visit to some friends. he wrote complaining that without me the place was dull. i wired him and went over to nice to meet him and we lunched together at the café de la regence. he was terribly downcast, and yet rebellious. he had come over to stay at nice, and stopped at the hotel terminus, a tenth-rate hotel near the station; the proprietor called on him two or three days afterwards and informed him he must leave the hotel, as his room had been let. "evidently someone has told him, frank, who i am. what am i to do?" i soon found him a better hotel where he was well treated, but the incident coming on top of the alexander affair seemed to have frightened him. "there are too many english on this coast," he said to me one day, "and they are all brutal to me. i think i should like to go to italy if you would not mind." "the world is all before you," i replied. "i shall only be too glad for you to get a comfortable place," and i gave him the money he wanted. he lingered on at nice for nearly a week. i saw him several times. he lunched with me at the reserve once at beaulieu, and was full of delight at the beauty of the bay and the quiet of it. in the middle of the meal some english people came in and showed their dislike of him rudely. he at once shrank into himself, and as soon as possible made some pretext to leave. of course i went with him. i was more than sorry for him, but i felt as unable to help him as i should have been unable to hold him back if he had determined to throw himself down a precipice. footnotes: [ ] cfr. appendix: "criticisms by robert ross." [ ] the incident is worth recording for the honour of human nature. at the moment of oscar's trial charles wyndham had let his theatre, the criterion, to lewis waller and h.h. morell to produce in it "an ideal husband" which had been running for over nights at the haymarket. when alexander took oscar's name off the bill, wyndham wrote to the young managers, saying that, if under the altered circumstances they wished to cancel their agreement, he would allow them to do so. but if they "put on" a play of mr. wilde's, the author's name must be on all the bills and placards as usual. he could not allow his theatre to be used to insult a man who was on his trial. [ ] cfr. end of appendix:--a last word. [ ] cfr. end of appendix:--a last word. [ ] this was written years before a home secretary, mr. reginald mackenna, tortured women and girls in prison in england by forcible feeding, because they tried to present petitions in favour of woman's suffrage. he afterwards defended himself in parliament by declaring that "'forcible feeding' was not unpleasant." the torturers of the inquisition also befouled cruelty with hypocritical falsehood: they would burn their victims; but would not shed blood. chapter xxv "the gods are just and of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us." it was full summer before i met oscar again; he had come back to paris and taken up his old quarters in the mean little hotel in the rue des beaux arts. he lunched and dined with me as usual. his talk was as humorous and charming as ever, and he was just as engaging a companion. for the first time, however, he complained of his health: "i ate some mussels and oysters in italy, and they must have poisoned me; for i have come out in great red blotches all over my arms and chest and back, and i don't feel well." "have you consulted a doctor?" "oh, yes, but doctors are no good: they all advise you differently; the best of it is they all listen to you with an air of intense interest when you are talking about yourself--which is an excellent tonic." "they sometimes tell one what's the matter; give a name and significance to the unknown," i interjected. "they bore me by forbidding me to smoke and drink. they are worse than m----, who grudged me his wine." "what do you mean?" i asked in wonder. "a tragi-comic history, frank. you were so right about m---- and i was mistaken in him. you know he wanted me to stay with him at gland in switzerland, begged me to come, said he would do everything for me. when the weather got warm at genoa i went to him. at first he seemed very glad to see me and made me welcome. the food was not very good, the drink anything but good, still i could not complain, and i put up with the discomforts. but in a week or two the wine disappeared, and beer took its place, and i suggested i must be going. he begged me so cordially not to go that i stayed on; but in a little while i noticed that the beer got less and less in quantity, and one day when i ventured to ask for a second bottle at lunch he told me that it cost a great deal and that he could not afford it. of course i made some decent pretext and left his house as soon as possible. if one has to suffer poverty, one had best suffer alone. but to get discomforts grudgingly and as a charity is the extremity of shame. i prefer to look on it from the other side; m---- grudging me his small beer belongs to farce." he spoke with bitterness and contempt, as he used never to speak of anyone. i could not help sympathising with him, though visibly the cloth was wearing threadbare. he asked me now at once for money, and a little later again and again. formerly he had invented pretexts; he had not received his allowance when he expected it, or he was bothered by a bill and so forth; but now he simply begged and begged, railing the while at fortune. it was distressing. he wanted money constantly, and spent it as always like water, without a thought. i asked him one day whether he had seen much of his soldier boy since he had returned to paris. "i have seen him, frank, but not often," and he laughed gaily. "it's a farce-comedy; sentiment always begins romantically and ends in laughter--_tabulae solvuntur risu_. i taught him so much, frank, that he was made a corporal and forthwith a nursemaid fell in love with his stripes. he's devoted to her: i suppose he likes to play teacher in his turn." "and so the great romantic passion comes to this tame conclusion?" "what would you, frank? whatever begins must also end." "is there anyone else?" i asked, "or have you learned reason at last?" "of course there's always someone else, frank: change is the essence of passion: the _reason_ you talk of is merely another name for impotence." "montaigne declares," i said, "that love belongs to early youth, 'the next period after infancy,' is his phrase, but that is at the best a frenchman's view of it. sophocles was nearer the truth when he called himself happy in that age had freed him from the whip of passion. when are you going to reach that serenity?" "never, frank, never, i hope: life without desire would not be worth living to me. as one gets older one is more difficult to please: but the sting of pleasure is even keener than in youth and far more egotistic. "one comes to understand the marquis de sade and that strange, scarlet story of de retz--the pleasure they got from inflicting pain, the curious, intense underworld of cruelty--" "that's unlike you, oscar," i broke in. "i thought you shrank from giving pain always: to me it's the unforgivable sin." "to me, also," he rejoined instantly, "intellectually one may understand it; but in reality it's horrible. i want my pleasure unembittered by any drop of pain. that reminds me: i read a terrible, little book the other day, octave mirbeau's 'le jardin des supplices'; it is quite awful, a _sadique_ joy in pain pulses through it; but for all that it's wonderful. his soul seems to have wandered in fearsome places. you with your contempt of fear, will face the book with courage--i--" "i simply couldn't read it," i replied; "it was revolting to me, impossible--" "a sort of grey adder," he summed up and i nodded in complete agreement. i passed the next winter on the riviera. a speculation which i had gone in for there had caused me heavy loss and much anxiety. in the spring i returned to paris, and of course, asked him to meet me. he was much brighter than he had been for a long time. lord alfred douglas, it appeared, had come in for a large legacy from his father's estate and had given him some money, and he was much more cheerful. we had a great lunch at durand's and he was at his very best. i asked him about his health. "i'm all right, frank, but the rash continually comes back, a ghostly visitant, frank: i'm afraid the doctors are in league with the devil. it generally returns after a good dinner, a sort of aftermath of champagne. the doctors say i must not drink champagne, and must stop smoking, the silly people, who regard pleasure as their natural enemies; whereas it is our pleasures which provide them with a living!" he looked fairly well, i thought; he was a little fatter, his skin a little dingier than of old, and he had grown very deaf, but in every other way he seemed at his best, though he was certainly drinking too freely--spirits between times as well as wine at meals. i had heard on the riviera during the winter that smithers had tried to buy a play from him, so one day i brought up the subject. "by the way, smithers says that you have been working on your play; you know the one i mean, the one with the great screen scene in it." "oh, yes, frank," he remarked indifferently. "won't you tell me what you've done?" i asked. "have you written any of it?" "no, frank," he replied casually, "it's the scenario smithers talked about." a little while afterwards he asked me for money. i told him i could not afford any at the moment, and pressed him to write his play. "i shall never write again, frank," he said. "i can't, i simply can't face my thoughts. don't ask me!" then suddenly: "why don't you buy the scenario and write the play yourself?" "i don't care for the stage," i replied; "it's a sort of rude encaustic work i don't like; its effects are theatrical!" "a play pays far better than a book, you know--" but i was not interested. that evening thinking over what he had said, i realised all at once that a story i had in mind to write would suit "the screen scene" of oscar's scenario; why shouldn't i write a play instead of a story? when we met next day i broached the idea to oscar: "i have a story in my head," i said, "which would fit into that scenario of yours, so far as you have sketched it to me. i could write it as a play and do the second, third and fourth acts very quickly, as all the personages are alive to me. could you do the first act?" "of course i could, frank." "but," i said, "will you?" "what would be the good, you could not sell it, frank." "in any case," i went on, "i could try; but i would infinitely prefer you to write the whole play if you would; then it would sell fast enough." "oh, frank, don't ask me." the idea of the collaboration was a mistake; but it seemed to me at the moment the best way to get him to do something. suddenly he asked me to give him £ for the scenario at once, then i could do what i liked with it. after a good deal of talk i consented to give him the £ if he would promise to write the first act; he promised and i gave him the money.[ ] a little later i noticed a certain tension in his relations with lord alfred douglas. one day he told me frankly that lord alfred douglas had come into a fortune of £ , or £ , , "and," he added, "of course he's always able to get money. he'll marry an american millionairess or some rich widow" (oscar's ideas of life were nearly all conventional, derived from novels and plays); "and i wanted him to give me enough to make my life comfortable, to settle enough on me to make a decent life possible to me. it would only have cost him two or three thousand pounds, perhaps less. i get £ a year and i wanted him to make it up to £ .[ ] i lost that through going to him at naples. i think he ought to give me that at the very least, don't you? won't you speak to him, frank?" "i could not possibly interfere," i replied. "i gave him everything," he went on, in a depressed way. "when i had money, he never had to ask for it; all that was mine was his. and now that he is rich, i have to beg from him, and he gives me small sums and puts me off. it is terrible of him; it is really very, very wrong of him." i changed the subject as soon as i could; there was a note of bitterness which i did not like, which indeed i had already remarked in him. i was destined very soon to hear the other side. a day or two later lord alfred douglas told me that he had bought some racehorses and was training them at chantilly; would i come down and see them? "i am not much of a judge of racehorses," i replied, "and i don't know much about racing; but i should not mind coming down one evening. i could spend the night at an hotel, and see the horses and your stable in the morning. the life of the english stable lads in france must be rather peculiar." "it is droll," he said, "a complete english colony in france. there are practically no french jockeys or trainers worth their salt; it is all english, english slang, english ways, even english food and of course english drinks. no french boy seems to have nerve enough to make a good rider." i made an arrangement with him and went down. i missed my train and was very late; i found that lord alfred douglas had dined and gone out. i had my dinner, and about midnight went up to my room. half an hour later there came a knocking at the door. i opened it and found lord alfred douglas. "may i come in?" he asked. "i'm glad you've not gone to bed yet." "of course," i said, "what is it?" he was pale and seemed extraordinarily excited. "i have had such a row with oscar," he jerked out, nervously moving about (i noticed the strained white face i had seen before at the café royal), "such a row, and i wanted to speak to you about it. of course you know in the old days when his plays were being given in london he was rich and gave me some money, and now he says i ought to settle a large sum on him; i think it ridiculous, don't you?" "i would rather not say anything about it," i replied; "i don't know enough about the circumstances." he was too filled with a sense of his own injuries; too excited to catch my tone or understand any reproof in my attitude. "oscar is really too dreadful," he went on; "he is quite shameless now; he begs and begs and begs, and of course i have given him money, have given him hundreds, quite as much as he ever gave me: but he is insatiable and recklessly extravagant besides. of course i want to be quite fair to him: i've already given him back all he gave me. don't you think that is all anyone can ask of me?" i looked at him in astonishment. "that is for you and oscar," i said, "to decide together. no one else can judge between you." "why not?" he snapped out in his irritable way, "you know us both and our relations." "no," i replied, "i don't know all the obligations and the interwoven services. besides, i could not judge fairly between you." he turned on me angrily, though i had spoken with as much kindness as i could. "he seemed to want to make you judge between us," he cried. "i don't care who's the judge. i think if you give a man back what he has given you, that is all he can ask. it's a d----d lot more than most people get in this world." after a pause he started off on a new line of thought: "the first time i ever noticed any fault in oscar was over that 'salome' translation. he's appallingly conceited. you know i did the play into english. i found that his choice of words was poor, anything but good; his prose is wooden.... "of course he's not a poet," he broke off contemptuously, "even you must admit that." "i know what you mean," i replied; "though i should have to make a vast reservation in favour of the man who wrote 'the ballad of reading gaol.'" "one ballad doesn't make a man a poet," he barked; "i mean by poet one to whom verse lends power: in that sense he's not a poet and i am." his tone was that of defiant challenge. "you are certainly," i replied. "well, i did the translation of 'salome' very carefully, as no one else could have done it," and he flushed angrily, "and all the while oscar kept on altering it for the worse. at last i had to tell him the truth, and we had a row. he imagines he's the greatest person in the world, and the only person to be considered. his conceit is stupid.... i helped[ ] him again and again with that 'ballad of reading gaol' you're always praising: i suppose he'd deny that now. "he's got his money back; what more can he want? he disgusts me when he begs." i could not contain myself altogether. "he seems to blame you," i said quietly, "for egging him on to that insane action against your father which brought him to ruin." "i've no doubt he'd find some reason to blame me," he whipped out. "how did i know how the case would go?... why did he take my advice, if he didn't want to? he was surely old enough to know his own interest.... he's simply disgusting now; he's getting fat and bloated, and always demanding money, money, money, like a daughter of the horse-leech--just as if he had a claim to it." i could not stand it any longer; i had to try to move him to kindness. "sometimes one gives willingly to a man one has never had anything from. misery and want in one we like and admire have a very strong claim." "i do not see that there is any claim at all," he cried bitterly, as if the very word maddened him, "and i am not going to pamper him any more. he could earn all the money he wants if he would only write; but he won't do anything. he is lazy, and getting lazier and lazier every day; and he drinks far too much. he is intolerable. i thought when he kept asking me for that money to-night, he was like an old prostitute." "good god!" i cried. "good god! has it come to that between you?" "yes," he repeated, not heeding what i said, "he was just like an old fat prostitute," and he gloated over the word, "and i told him so." i looked at the man but could not speak; indeed there was nothing to be said. surely at last, i thought, oscar wilde has reached the lowest depth. i could think of nothing but oscar; this hard, small, bitter nature made oscar's suffering plain to me. "as i can do no good," i said, "do you mind letting me sleep? i'm simply tired to death." "i'm sorry," he said, looking for his hat; "will you come out in the morning and see the 'gees'?" "i don't think so," i replied, "i'm incapable of a resolution now, i'm so tired i would rather sleep. i think i'll go up to paris in the morning. i have something rather urgent to do." he said "good night" and went away. i lay awake, my eyes prickling with sorrow and sympathy for poor oscar, insulted in his misery and destitution, outraged and trodden on by the man he had loved, by the man who had thrust him into the pit....[ ] i made up my mind to go to oscar at once and try to comfort him a little. after all, i thought, another fifty pounds or so wouldn't make a great deal of difference to me, and i dwelt on the many delightful hours i had passed with him, hours of gay talk and superb intellectual enjoyment. i went up by the morning train to paris, and drove across the river to oscar's hotel. he had two rooms, a small sitting-room and a still smaller bedroom adjoining. he was lying half-dressed on the bed as i entered. the rooms affected me unpleasantly. they were ordinary, mean little french rooms, furnished without taste; the usual mahogany chairs, gilt clock on the mantelpiece and a preposterous bilious paper on the walls. what struck me was the disorder everywhere; books all over the round table; books on the chairs; books on the floor and higgledy-piggledy, here a pair of socks, there a hat and cane, and on the floor his overcoat. the sense of order and neatness which he used to have in his rooms at tite street was utterly lacking. he was not living here, intent on making the best of things; he was merely existing without plan or purpose. i told him i wanted him to come to lunch. while he was finishing dressing it came to me that his clothes had undergone much the same change as his dwelling. in his golden days in london he had been a good deal of a dandy; he usually wore white waistcoats at night; was particular about the flowers in his buttonhole, his gloves and cane. now he was decently dressed and that was all; as far below the average as he had been above it. clearly, he had let go of himself and no longer took pleasure in the vanities: it seemed to me a bad sign. i had always thought of him as very healthy, likely to live till sixty or seventy; but he had no longer any hold on himself and that depressed me; some spring of life seemed broken in him. bosie douglas' second betrayal had been the _coup de grâce_. in the carriage he was preoccupied, out of sorts, and immediately began to apologise. "i shall be poor company, frank," he warned me with quivering lips. the fragrant summer air in the champs elysées seemed to revive him a little, but he was evidently lost in bitter reflections and scarcely noticed where he was going. from time to time he sighed heavily as if oppressed. i talked as well as i could of this and that, tried to lure him away from the hateful subject that i knew must be in his mind; but all in vain. towards the end of the lunch he said gravely: "i want you to tell me something, frank; i want you to tell me honestly if you think i am in the wrong. i wish i could think i was.... you know i spoke to you the other day about bosie; he is rich now and he is throwing his money away with both hands in racing. "i asked him to settle £ , or £ , on me to buy me an annuity, or to do something that would give me £ a year. you said you did not care to ask him, so i did. i told him it was really his duty to do it at once, and he turned round and lashed me savagely with his tongue. he called me dreadful names. said dreadful things to me, frank. i did not think it was possible to suffer more than i suffered in prison, but he has left me bleeding ..." and the fine eyes filled with tears. seeing that i remained silent, he cried out: "frank, you must tell me for our friendship's sake. is it my fault? was he wrong or was i wrong?" his weakness was pathetic, or was it that his affection was still so great that he wanted to blame himself rather than his friend? "of course he seems to me to be wrong," i said, "utterly wrong." i could not help saying it and i went on: "but you know his temper is insane; if he even praises himself, as he did to me lately, he gets into a rage in order to do it, and perhaps unwittingly you annoyed him by the way you asked. if you put it to his generosity and vainglory you would get it easier than from his sense of justice and right. he has not much moral sense." "oh, frank," he broke in earnestly, "i put it to him as well as i could, quite quietly and gently. i talked of our old affection, of the good and evil days we had passed together: you know i could never be harsh to him, never. "there never was," he burst out, in a sort of exaltation, "there never was in the world such a betrayal. do you remember once telling me that the only flaw you could find in the perfect symbolism of the gospel story was that jesus was betrayed by judas, the foreigner from kerioth, when he should have been betrayed by john, the beloved disciple; for it is only those we love who can betray us? frank, how true, how tragically true that is! it is those we love who betray us with a kiss." he was silent for some time and then went on wearily, "i wish you would speak to him, frank, and show him how unjust and unkind he is to me." "i cannot possibly do that, oscar," i said, "i do not know all the relations between you and the myriad bands that unite you: i should only do harm and not good." "frank," he cried, "you do know, you must know that he is responsible for everything, for my downfall and my ruin. it was he who drove me to fight with his father. i begged him not to, but he whipped me to it; asked me what his father could do; pointed out to me contemptuously that he could prove nothing; said he was the most loathsome, hateful creature in the world, and that it was my duty to stop him, and that if i did not, everyone would be laughing at me, and he could never care for a coward. all his family, his brother and his mother, too, begged me to attack queensberry, all promised me their support and afterwards-- "you know, frank, in the café royal before the trial how bosie spoke to you, when you warned me and implored me to drop the insane suit and go abroad; how angry he got. you were not a friend of mine, he said. you know he drove me to ruin in order to revenge himself on his father, and then left me to suffer. "and that's not the worst of it, frank: i came out of prison determined not to see him any more. i promised my poor wife i would not see him again. i had forgiven him; but i did not want to see him. i had suffered too much by him and through him, far too much. and then he wrote and wrote of his love, crying it to me every hour, begging me to come, telling me he only wanted me, in order to be happy, me in the whole world. how could i help believing him, how could i keep away from him? at last i yielded and went to him, and as soon as the difficulties began he turned on me in naples like a wild beast, blaming me and insulting me. "i had to fly to paris, having lost everything through him--wife and income and self-respect, everything; but i always thought that he was at least generous as a man of his name should be: i had no idea he could be stingy and mean; but now he is comparatively rich, he prefers to squander his money on jockeys and trainers and horses, of which he knows nothing, instead of lifting me out of my misery. surely it is not too much to ask him to give me a tenth when i gave him all? won't you ask him?" "i think he ought to have done what you want, without asking," i admitted, "but i am certain my speaking would not do any good. he shows me hatred already whenever i do not agree with him. hate is nearer to him always than sympathy: he is his father's son, oscar, and i can do nothing. i cannot even speak to him about it." "oh, frank, you ought to," said oscar. "but suppose he retorted and said you led him astray, what could i answer?" "led him astray!" cried oscar, starting up, "you cannot believe that. you know better than that. it is not true. it is he who always led, always dominated me; he is as imperious as a cæsar. it was he who began our intimacy: he who came to me in london when i did not want to see him, or rather, frank, i wanted to but i was afraid; at the very beginning i was afraid of what it would all lead to, and i avoided him; the desperate aristocratic pride in him, the dreadful bold, imperious temper in him terrified me. but he came to london and sent for me to come to him, said he would come to my house if i didn't. i went, thinking i could reason with him; but it was impossible. when i told him we must be very careful, for i was afraid of what might happen, he made fun of my fears, and encouraged me. he knew that they'd never dare to punish him; he's allied to half the peerage and he did not care what became of me.... "he led me first to the street, introduced me to the male prostitution in london. from the beginning to the end he has driven me like the oestrum of which the greeks wrote, which drove the ill-fated to disaster. "and now he says he owes me nothing; i have no _claim_, i who gave to him without counting; he says he needs all his money for himself: he wants to win races and to write poetry, frank, the pretty verses which he thinks poetry. "he has ruined me, soul and body, and now he puts himself in the balance against me and declares he outweighs me. yes, frank, he does; he told me the other day i was not a poet, not a true poet, and he was, alfred douglas greater than oscar wilde. "i have not done much in the world," he went on hotly, "i know it better than anyone, not a quarter of what i should have done, but there are some things i have done which the world will not forget, can hardly forget. if all the tribe of douglas from the beginning and all their achievements were added together and thrown into the balance, they would not weigh as dust in comparison. yet he reviled me, frank, whipped me, shamed me.... he has broken me, he has broken me, the man i loved; my very heart is a cold weight in me," ... and he got up and moved aside with the tears pouring down his cheeks. "don't take it so much to heart," i said in a minute or two, going after him, "the loss of affection i cannot help, but a hundred or so a year is not much; i will see that you get that every year." "oh, frank, it is not the money; it is his denial, his insults, his hate that kills me; the fact that i have ruined myself for someone who cares nothing; who puts a little money before me; it is as if i were choked with mud.... "once i thought myself master of my life; lord of my fate, who could do what i pleased and would always succeed. i was as a crowned king till i met him, and now i am an exile and outcast and despised. "i have lost my way in life; the passers-by all scorn me and the man whom i loved whips me with foul insults and contempt. there is no example in history of such a betrayal, no parallel. i am finished. it is all over with me now--all! i hope the end will come quickly," and he moved away to the window, his tears falling heavily. footnotes: [ ] the rest of this story concerns me chiefly and i have therefore relegated it to the appendix for those who care to read it. [ ] oscar was already getting £ a year from his wife and robert ross, to say nothing of the hundreds given to him from time to time by other friends. [ ] the truth about this i have already stated. [ ] though i have reported this conversation as faithfully as i can and have indeed softened the impression lord alfred douglas made upon me at the time; still i am conscious that i may be doing him some injustice. i have never really been in sympathy with him and it may well be that in reporting him here faithfully i am showing him at his worst. i am aware that the incident does not reveal him at his best. he has proved since in his writings and notably in some superb sonnets that he had a real affection and admiration for oscar wilde. if i have been in any degree unfair to him i can best correct it, i think, by reproducing here the noble sonnet he wrote on oscar after his death: in sheer beauty and sincerity of feeling it ranks with shelley's lament for keats: _the dead poet_[ ] i dreamed of him last night, i saw his face all radiant and unshadowed of distress, and as of old, in music measureless, i heard his golden voice and marked him trace under the common thing the hidden grace, and conjure wonder out of emptiness, till mean things put on beauty like a dress and all the world was an enchanted place. and then methought outside a fast locked gate i mourned the loss of unrecorded words, forgotten tales and mysteries half said wonders that might have been articulate, and voiceless thoughts like murdered singing birds and so i woke and knew that he was dead. [ ] in the appendix i have published the first sketch of this fine sonnet: lovers of poetry will like to compare them. chapter xxvi in a day or two, however, the clouds lifted and the sun shone as brilliantly as ever. oscar's spirits could not be depressed for long: he took a child's joy in living and in every incident of life. when i left him in paris a week or so later, in midsummer, he was full of gaiety and humour, talking as delightfully as ever with a touch of cynicism that added piquancy to his wit. shortly after i arrived in london he wrote saying he was ill, and that i really ought to send him some money. i had already paid him more than the amount we had agreed upon at first for his scenario, and i was hard up and anything but well. i had chronic bronchitis which prostrated me time and again that autumn. having heard from mutual friends that oscar's illness did not hinder him from dining out and enjoying himself, i received his plaints and requests with a certain impatience, and replied to him curtly. his illness appeared to me to be merely a pretext. when my play was accepted his demands became as insistent as they were extravagant. finally i went back to paris in september to see him, persuaded that i could settle everything amicably in five minutes' talk: he must remember our agreement. i found him well in health, but childishly annoyed that my play was going to be produced and resolved to get all the money he could from me by hook or by crook. i never met such persistence in demands. i could only settle with him decently by paying him a further sum, which i did. in the course of this bargaining and begging i realised that contrary to my previous opinion he was not gifted as a friend, and did not attribute any importance to friendship. his affection for bosie douglas even had given place to hatred: indeed his liking for him had never been founded on understanding or admiration; it was almost wholly snobbish: he loved the title, the romantic name--lord alfred douglas. robert ross was the only friend of whom he always spoke with liking and appreciation: "one of the wittiest of men," he used to call him and would jest at his handwriting, which was peculiarly bad, but always good-naturedly; "a letter merely shows that bobbie has something to conceal"; but he would add, "how kind he is, how good," as if ross's devotion surprised him, as in fact it did. ross has since told me that oscar never cared much for him. indeed oscar cared so little for anyone that an unselfish affection astonished him beyond measure: he could find in himself no explanation of it. his vanity was always more active than his gratitude, as indeed it is with most of us. now and then when ross played mentor or took him to task, he became prickly at once and would retort: "really, bobbie, you ride the high horse so well, and so willingly, it seems a pity that you never tried pegasus"--not a sneer exactly, but a rap on the knuckles to call his monitor to order. like most men of charming manners, oscar was selfish and self-centred, too convinced of his own importance to spend much thought on others; yet generous to the needy and kind to all. after my return to london he kept on begging for money by almost every post. as soon as my play was advertised i found myself dunned and persecuted by a horde of people who declared that oscar had sold them the scenario he afterwards sold to me.[ ] several of them threatened to get injunctions to prevent me staging my play, "mr. and mrs. daventry," if i did not first settle with them. naturally, i wrote rather sharply to oscar for having led me into this hornets' nest. it was in the midst of all this unpleasantness that i heard from turner, in october, i believe, that oscar was seriously ill, and that if i owed him money, as he asserted, it would be a kindness to send it, as he was in great need. the letter found me in bed. i could not say now whether i answered it or not: it made me impatient; his friends must have known that i owed oscar nothing; but later i received a telegram from ross saying that oscar was not expected to live. i was ill and unable to move, or i should have gone at once to paris. as it was i sent for my friend, bell, gave him some money and a cheque, and begged him to go across and let me know if oscar were really in danger, which i could hardly believe. as luck would have it, the next afternoon, when i hoped bell had started, his wife came to tell me that he had had a severe asthmatic attack, but would cross as soon as he dared. i was too hard up myself to wire money that might not be needed, and oscar had cried "wolf" about his health too often to be a credible witness. yet i was dissatisfied with myself and anxious for bell to start. day after day passed in troubled doubts and fears; but it was not long when a period was put to all my anxiety. a telegram came telling me he was dead. i could hardly believe my eyes: it seemed incredible--the fount of joy and gaiety; the delightful source of intellectual vivacity and interest stilled forever. the world went greyer to me because of oscar wilde's death. months afterwards robert ross gave me the particulars of his last illness. ross went to paris in october: as soon as he saw oscar, he was shocked by the change in his appearance: he insisted on taking him to a doctor; but to his surprise the doctor saw no ground for immediate alarm: if oscar would only stop drinking wine and _a fortiori_ spirits, he might live for years: absinthe was absolutely forbidden. but oscar paid no heed to the warning and ross could only take him for drives whenever the weather permitted and seek to amuse him harmlessly. the will to live had almost left oscar: so long as he could live pleasantly and without effort he was content; but as soon as ill-health came, or pain, or even discomfort, he grew impatient for deliverance. but to the last he kept his joyous humour and charming gaiety. his disease brought with it a certain irritation of the skin, annoying rather than painful. meeting ross one morning after a day's separation he apologised for scratching himself: "really," he exclaimed, "i'm more like a great ape than ever; but i hope you'll give me a lunch, bobbie, and not a nut." on one of the last drives with this friend he asked for champagne and when it was brought declared that he was dying as he had lived, "beyond his means"--his happy humour lighting up even his last hours. early in november ross left paris to go down to the riviera with his mother: for reggie turner had undertaken to stay with oscar. reggie turner describes how he grew gradually feebler and feebler, though to the end flashes of the old humour would astonish his attendants. he persisted in saying that reggie, with his perpetual prohibitions, was qualifying for a doctor. "when you can refuse bread to the hungry, reggie," he would say, "and drink to the thirsty, you can apply for your diploma." towards the end of november reggie wired for ross and ross left everything and reached paris next day. when all was over he wrote to a friend giving him a very complete account of the last hours of oscar wilde; that account he generously allows me to reproduce and it will be found word for word in the appendix; it is too long and too detailed to be used here. ross's letter should be read by the student; but several touches in it are too timid; certain experiences that should be put in high relief are slurred over: in conversation with me he told more and told it better. for example, when talking of his drives with oscar, he mentions casually that oscar "insisted on drinking absinthe," and leaves it at that. the truth is that oscar stopped the victoria at almost the first café, got down and had an absinthe. two or three hundred yards further on, he stopped the carriage again to have another absinthe: at the next stoppage a few minutes later ross ventured to remonstrate: "you'll kill yourself, oscar," he cried, "you know the doctors said absinthe was poison to you!" oscar stopped on the sidewalk: "and what have i to live for, bobbie?" he asked gravely. and ross looking at him and noting the wreck--the symptoms of old age and broken health--could only bow his head and walk on with him in silence. what indeed had he to live for who had abandoned all the fair uses of life? the second scene is horrible: but is, so to speak, the inevitable resultant of the first, and has its own awful moral. ross tells how he came one morning to oscar's death-bed and found him practically insensible: he describes the dreadful loud death-rattle of his breath, and says: "terrible offices had to be carried out." the truth is still more appalling. oscar had eaten too much and drunk too much almost habitually ever since the catastrophe in naples. the dreadful disease from which he was suffering, or from the after effects of which he was suffering, weakens all the tissues of the body, and this weakness is aggravated by drinking wine and still more by drinking spirits. suddenly, as the two friends sat by the bedside in sorrowful anxiety, there was a loud explosion: mucus poured out of oscar's mouth and nose, and-- even the bedding had to be burned. if it is true that all those who draw the sword shall perish by the sword, it is no less certain that all those who live for the body shall perish by the body, and there is no death more degrading. * * * * * one more scene, and this the last, and i shall have done. when robert ross was arranging to bury oscar at bagneux he had already made up his mind as soon as he could to transfer his body to père lachaise and erect over his remains some worthy memorial. it became the purpose of his life to pay his friend's debts, annul his bankruptcy, and publish his books in suitable manner; in fine to clear oscar's memory from obloquy while leaving to his lovable spirit the shining raiment of immortality. in a few years he had accomplished all but one part of his high task. he had not only paid off all oscar wilde's debts; but he had managed to remit thousands of pounds yearly to his children, and had established his popularity on the widest and surest foundation. he crossed to paris with oscar's son, vyvyan, to render the last service to his friend. when preparing the body for the grave years before ross had taken medical advice as to what should be done to make his purpose possible. the doctors told him to put wilde's body in quicklime, like the body of the man in "the ballad of reading gaol." the quicklime, they said, would consume the flesh and leave the white bones--the skeleton--intact, which could then be moved easily. to his horror, when the grave was opened, ross found that the quicklime, instead of destroying the flesh, had preserved it. oscar's face was recognisable, only his hair and beard had grown long. at once ross sent the son away, and when the sextons were about to use their shovels, he ordered them to desist, and descending into the grave, moved the body with his own hands into the new coffin in loving reverence. those who hold our mortal vesture in respect for the sake of the spirit will know how to thank robert ross for the supreme devotion he showed to his friend's remains: in his case at least love was stronger than death. one can be sure, too, that the man who won such fervid self-denying tenderness, had deserved it, called it forth by charm of companionship, or magic of loving intercourse. footnotes: [ ] see appendix: p. and especially p. . chapter xxvii it was the inhumanity of the prison doctor and the english prison system that killed oscar wilde. the sore place in his ear caused by the fall when he fainted that sunday morning in wandsworth prison chapel formed into an abscess and was the final cause of his death. the "operation" ross speaks of in his letter was the excision of this tumour. the imprisonment and starvation, and above all the cruelty of his gaolers, had done their work. the local malady was inflamed, as i have already said, by a more general and more terrible disease. the doctors attributed the red flush oscar complained of on his chest and back, which he declared was due to eating mussels, to another and graver cause. they warned him at once to stop drinking and smoking and to live with the greatest abstemiousness, for they recognised in him the tertiary symptoms of that dreadful disease which the brainless prudery in england allows to decimate the flower of english manhood unchecked. oscar took no heed of their advice. he had little to live for. the pleasures of eating and drinking in good company were almost the only pleasures left to him. why should he deny himself the immediate enjoyment for a very vague and questionable future benefit? he never believed in any form of asceticism or self-denial, and towards the end, feeling that life had nothing more to offer him, the pagan spirit in him refused to prolong an existence that was no longer joyous. "i have lived," he would have said with profound truth. much has been made of the fact that oscar was buried in an out-of-the-way cemetery at bagneux under depressing circumstances. it rained the day of the funeral, it appears, and a cold wind blew: the way was muddy and long, and only a half-a-dozen friends accompanied the coffin to its resting-place. but after all, such accidents, depressing as they are at the moment, are unimportant. the dead clay knows nothing of our feelings, and whether it is borne to the grave in pompous procession and laid to rest in a great abbey amid the mourning of a nation or tossed as dust to the wind, is a matter of utter indifference. heine's verse holds the supreme consolation: immerhin mich wird umgeben gotteshimmel dort wie hier und wie todtenlampen schweben nachts die sterne ueber mir. oscar wilde's work was over, his gift to the world completed years before. even the friends who loved him and delighted in the charm of his talk, in his light-hearted gaiety and humour, would scarcely have kept him longer in the pillory, exposed to the loathing and contempt of this all-hating world. the good he did lives after him, and is immortal, the evil is buried in his grave. who would deny to-day that he was a quickening and liberating influence? if his life was given overmuch to self-indulgence, it must be remembered that his writings and conversation were singularly kindly, singularly amiable, singularly pure. no harsh or coarse or bitter word ever passed those eloquent laughing lips. if he served beauty in her myriad forms, he only showed in his works the beauty that was amiable and of good report. if only half-a-dozen men mourned for him, their sorrow was unaffected and intense, and perhaps the greatest of men have not found in their lifetime even half-a-dozen devoted admirers and lovers. it is well with our friend, we say: at any rate, he was not forced to drink the bitter lees of a suffering and dishonourable old age: death was merciful to him. my task is finished. i don't think anyone will doubt that i have done it in a reverent spirit, telling the truth as i see it, from the beginning to the end, and hiding or omitting as little as might be of what ought to be told. yet when i come to the parting i am painfully conscious that i have not done oscar wilde justice; that some fault or other in me has led me to dwell too much on his faults and failings and grudged praise to his soul-subduing charm and the incomparable sweetness and gaiety of his nature. let me now make amends. when to the sessions of sad memory i summon up the spirits of those whom i have met in the world and loved, men famous and men of unfulfilled renown, i miss no one so much as i miss oscar wilde. i would rather spend an evening with him than with renan or carlyle, or verlaine or dick burton or davidson. i would rather have him back now than almost anyone i have ever met. i have known more heroic souls and some deeper souls; souls much more keenly alive to ideas of duty and generosity; but i have known no more charming, no more quickening, no more delightful spirit. this may be my shortcoming; it may be that i prize humour and good-humour and eloquent or poetic speech, the artist qualities, more than goodness or loyalty or manliness, and so over-estimate things amiable. but the lovable and joyous things are to me the priceless things, and the most charming man i have ever met was assuredly oscar wilde. i do not believe that in all the realms of death there is a more fascinating or delightful companion. one last word on oscar wilde's place in english literature. in the course of this narrative i have indicated sufficiently, i think, the value and importance of his work; he will live with congreve and with sheridan as the wittiest and most humorous of all our playwrights. "the importance of being earnest" has its own place among the best of english comedies. but oscar wilde has done better work than congreve or sheridan: he is a master not only of the smiles, but of the tears of men. "the ballad of reading gaol" is the best ballad in english; it is more, it is the noblest utterance that has yet reached us from a modern prison, the only high utterance indeed that has ever come from that underworld of man's hatred and man's inhumanity. in it, and by the spirit of jesus which breathes through it, oscar wilde has done much, not only to reform english prisons, but to abolish them altogether, for they are as degrading to the intelligence as they are harmful to the soul. what gaoler and what gaol could do anything but evil to the author of such a verse as this: this too i know--and wise it were if each could know the same-- that every prison that men build is built with bricks of shame, and bound with bars, lest christ should see how men their brothers maim. indeed, is it not clear that the man who, in his own wretchedness, wrote that letter to the warder which i have reproduced, and was eager to bring about the freeing of the little children at his own cost, is far above the judge who condemned him or the society which sanctions such punishments? "the ballad of reading gaol," i repeat, and some pages of "de profundis," and, above all, the tragic fate of which these were the outcome, render oscar wilde more interesting to men than any of his peers. he has been indeed well served by the malice and cruelty of his enemies; in this sense his word in "de profundis" that he stood in symbolic relation to the art and life of his time is justified. the english drove byron and shelley and keats into exile and allowed chatterton, davidson and middleton to die of misery and destitution; but they treated none of their artists and seers with the malevolent cruelty they showed to oscar wilde. his fate in england is symbolic of the fate of all artists; in some degree they will all be punished as he was punished by a grossly materialised people who prefer to go in blinkers and accept idiotic conventions because they distrust the intellect and have no taste for mental virtues. all english artists will be judged by their inferiors and condemned, as dante's master was condemned, for their good deeds (_per tuo ben far_): for it must not be thought that oscar wilde was punished solely or even chiefly for the evil he wrought: he was punished for his popularity and his preëminence, for the superiority of his mind and wit; he was punished by the envy of journalists, and by the malignant pedantry of half-civilised judges. envy in his case overleaped itself: the hate of his justicers was so diabolic that they have given him to the pity of mankind forever; they it is who have made him eternally interesting to humanity, a tragic figure of imperishable renown. the end. appendix here are the two poems of lord alfred douglas which were read out in court, on account of which the prosecution sought to incriminate oscar wilde. my readers can judge for themselves the value of any inference to be drawn from such work by another hand. to me, i must confess, the poems themselves seem harmless and pretty--i had almost said, academic and unimportant. two loves to "the sphinx" two loves i have of comfort and despair that like two spirits do suggest me still, my better angel is a man right fair, my worse a woman tempting me to ill.--_shakespeare_. i dreamed i stood upon a little hill, and at my feet there lay a ground, that seemed like a waste garden, flowering at its will with flowers and blossoms. there were pools that dreamed black and unruffled; there were white lilies a few, and crocuses, and violets purple or pale, snake-like fritillaries scarce seen for the rank grass, and through green nets blue eyes of shy pervenche winked in the sun. and there were curious flowers, before unknown, flowers that were stained with moonlight, or with shades of nature's wilful moods; and here a one that had drunk in the transitory tone of one brief moment in a sunset; blades of grass that in an hundred springs had been slowly but exquisitely nurtured by the stars, and watered with the scented dew long cupped in lilies, that for rays of sun had seen only god's glory, for never a sunrise mars the luminous air of heaven. beyond, abrupt, a gray stone wall, o'ergrown with velvet moss uprose. and gazing i stood long, all mazed to see a place so strange, so sweet, so fair. and as i stood and marvelled, lo! across the garden came a youth, one hand he raised to shield him from the sun, his wind-tossed hair was twined with flowers, and in his hand he bore a purple bunch of bursting grapes, his eyes were clear as crystal, naked all was he, white as the snow on pathless mountains frore, red were his lips as red wine-spilth that dyes a marble floor, his brow chalcedony. and he came near me, with his lips uncurled and kind, and caught my hand and kissed my mouth, and gave me grapes to eat, and said, "sweet friend, come, i will show thee shadows of the world and images of life. see, from the south comes the pale pageant that hath never an end." and lo! within the garden of my dream i saw two walking on a shining plain of golden light. the one did joyous seem and fair and blooming, and a sweet refrain came from his lips; he sang of pretty maids and joyous love of comely girl and boy; his eyes were bright, and 'mid the dancing blades of golden grass his feet did trip for joy. and in his hands he held an ivory lute, with strings of gold that were as maidens' hair, and sang with voice as tuneful as a flute, and round his neck three chains of roses were. but he that was his comrade walked aside; he was full sad and sweet, and his large eyes were strange with wondrous brightness, staring wide with gazing; and he sighed with many sighs that moved me, and his cheeks were wan and white like pallid lilies, and his lips were red like poppies, and his hands he clenched tight, and yet again unclenched, and his head was wreathed with moon-flowers pale as lips of death. a purple robe he wore, o'erwrought in gold with the device of a great snake, whose breath was fiery flame: which when i did behold i fell a-weeping and i cried, "sweet youth tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove these pleasant realms? i pray thee speak me sooth what is thy name?" he said, "my name is love." then straight the first did turn himself to me and cried, "he lieth, for his name is shame, but i am love, and i was wont to be alone in this fair garden, till he came unasked by night; i am true love, i fill the hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame." then sighing said the other, "have thy will, i am the love that dare not speak its name." lord alfred douglas. september, . in praise of shame unto my bed last night, methought there came our lady of strange dreams, and from an urn she poured live fire, so that mine eyes did burn at sight of it. anon the floating flame took many shapes, and one cried, "i am shame that walks with love, i am most wise to turn cold lips and limbs to fire; therefore discern and see my loveliness, and praise my name." and afterward, in radiant garments dressed, with sound of flutes and laughing of glad lips, a pomp of all the passions passed along, all the night through; till the white phantom ships of dawn sailed in. whereat i said this song, "of all sweet passions shame is loveliest." lord alfred douglas. the unpublished portion of "de profundis" this is not the whole of the unpublished portion of "de profundis"; but that part only which was read out in court and used for the purpose of discrediting lord alfred douglas; still, it is more than half of the whole in length and absolutely more than the whole in importance: nothing of any moment is omitted, except the reiteration of accusations and just this repetition weakens the effect of the argument and strengthens the impression of querulous nagging instead of dispassionate statement. if the whole were printed oscar wilde would stand worse; somewhat more selfish and more vindictive. i have commented the document as it stands mainly for the sake of clearness and because it justifies in every particular and almost in every epithet the shadows of the portrait which i have endeavoured to paint in this book. curiously enough oscar wilde depicts himself unconsciously in this part of "de profundis" in a more unfavourable light than that accorded him in my memory. i believe mine is the more faithful portrait of him, but that is for my readers to determine. frank harris. new york, december, . h.m. prison, reading. dear bosie, after long and fruitless waiting i have determined to write to you myself, as much for your sake as for mine, as i would not like to think that i had passed through two long years of imprisonment without ever having received a single line from you, or any news or message even, except such as gave me pain. our ill-fated and most lamentable friendship has ended in ruin and public infamy for me, yet the memory of our ancient affection is often with me, and the thought that loathing, bitterness and contempt should for ever take the place in my heart once held by love is very sad to me; and you yourself will, i think, feel in your heart that to write to me as i lie in the loneliness of prison life is better than to publish my letters without my permission, or to dedicate poems to me unasked, though the world will know nothing of whatever words of grief or passion, of remorse or indifference, you may choose to send as your answer or your appeal. i have no doubt that in this letter which i have to write of your life and mine, of the past and of the future, of sweet things changed to bitterness and of bitter things that may be turned to joy, there will be much that will wound your vanity to the quick. if it prove so, read the letter over and over again till it kills your vanity. if you find in it something of which you feel that you are unjustly accused, remember that one should be thankful that there is any fault of which one can be unjustly accused. if there be in it one single passage that brings tears to your eyes, weep as we weep in prison, where the day no less than the night is set apart for tears. it is the only thing that can save you. if you go complaining to your mother, as you did with reference to the scorn of you i displayed in my letter to robbie, so that she may flatter and soothe you back into self-complacency or conceit, you will be completely lost. if you find one false excuse for yourself you will soon find a hundred, and be just what you were before. do you still say, as you said to robbie in your answer, that i "attribute unworthy motives" to you? ah! you had no motives in life. you had appetites merely. a motive is an intellectual aim. that you were "very young" when our friendship began? your defect was not that you knew so little about life, but that you knew so much. the morning dawn of boyhood with its delicate bloom, its clear pure light, its joy of innocence and expectation, you had left far behind you. with very swift and running feet you had passed from romance to realism. the gutter and the things that live in it had begun to fascinate you. that was the origin of the trouble[ ] in which you sought my aid, and i, unwisely, according to the wisdom of this world, out of pity and kindness, gave it to you. you must read this letter right through, though each word may become to you as the fire or knife of the surgeon that makes the delicate flesh burn or bleed. remember that the fool to the eyes of the gods and the fool to the eyes of man are very different. one who is entirely ignorant[ ] of the modes of art in its revelation or the moods of thought in its progress, of the pomp of the latin line or the richer music of the vowelled greek, of tuscan sculpture or elizabethan song, may yet be full of the very sweetest wisdom. the real fool, such as the gods mock or mar, is he who does not know himself. i was such a one too long. you have been such a one too long. be so no more. do not be afraid. the supreme vice is shallowness. everything that is realised is right. remember also that whatever is misery to you to read, is still greater misery to me to set down. they have permitted you to see the strange and tragic shapes of life as one sees shadows in a crystal. the head of medusa that turns living men to stone, you have been allowed to look at in a mirror merely. you yourself have walked free among the flowers. from me the beautiful world of colour and motion has been taken away. i will begin by telling you that i blame myself terribly. as i sit in this dark cell in convict clothes, a disgraced and ruined man, i blame myself. in the perturbed and fitful nights of anguish, in the long monotonous days of pain, it is myself i blame. i blame myself for allowing an intellectual friendship, a friendship whose primary aim was not the creation and contemplation of beautiful things, entirely to dominate my life. from the very first there was too wide a gap between us. you had been idle at your school, worse than idle[ ] at your university. you did not realise that an artist, and especially such an artist as i am, one, that is to say, the quality of whose work depends on the intensification of personality, requires an intellectual atmosphere, quiet, peace, and solitude. you admired my work when it was finished: you enjoyed the brilliant successes of my first nights, and the brilliant banquets that followed them: you were proud, and quite naturally so, of being the intimate friend of an artist so distinguished: but you could not understand the conditions requisite for the production of artistic work. i am not speaking in phrases of rhetorical exaggeration, but in terms of absolute truth to actual fact when i remind you that during the whole time we were together i never wrote one single line. whether at torquay, goring, london, florence, or elsewhere, my life, as long as you were by my side, was entirely sterile and uncreative. and with but few intervals, you were, i regret to say, by my side always. i remember, for instance, in september, ' , to select merely one instance out of many, taking a set of chambers, purely in order to work undisturbed, as i had broken my contract with john hare, for whom i had promised to write a play, and who was pressing me on the subject. during the first week you kept away. we had, not unnaturally indeed, differed on the question of the artistic value[ ] of your translation of _salomé_. so you contented yourself with sending me foolish letters on the subject. in that week i wrote and completed in every detail, as it was ultimately performed, the first act of an _an ideal husband_. the second week you returned, and my work practically had to be given up. i arrived at st. james's place every morning at . in order to have the opportunity of thinking and writing without the interruption inseparable from my own household, quiet and peaceful as that household was. but the attempt was vain. at o'clock you drove up and stayed smoking cigarettes and chattering till . , when i had to take you out to luncheon at the café royal or the berkeley. luncheon with its liqueurs lasted usually till . . for an hour you retired to white's. at tea time you appeared again and stayed till it was time to dress for dinner. you dined with me either at the savoy or at tite street. we did not separate as a rule till after midnight, as supper at willis' had to wind up the entrancing day. that was my life for those three months, every single day, except during the four days when you went abroad. i then, of course, had to go over to calais to fetch you back. for one of my nature and temperament it was a position at once grotesque and tragic. you surely must realise that now. you must see now that your incapacity of being alone: your nature so exigent in its persistent claim on the attention and time of others: your lack of any power of sustained intellectual concentration: the unfortunate accident--for i like to think it was no more--that you had not been able to acquire the "oxford temper" in intellectual matters, never, i mean, been one who could play gracefully with ideas, but had arrived at violence of opinion merely--that all these things, combined with the fact that your desires and your interests were in life, not in art, were as destructive to your own progress in culture as they were to my work as an artist. when i compare my friendship with you to my friendship with still younger men, as john gray and pierre louys, i feel ashamed. my real life, my higher life, was with them and such as they. of the appalling results of my friendship with you i don't speak at present. i am thinking merely of its quality while it lasted. it was intellectually degrading to me. you had the rudiments[ ] of an artistic temperament in its germ. but i met you either too late or too soon. i don't know which. when you were away i was all right. the moment, in the early december of the year to which i have been alluding, i had succeeded in inducing your mother to send you out of england, i collected again the torn and ravelled web of my imagination, got my life back into my own hands, and not merely finished the three remaining acts of the _ideal husband_, but conceived and had almost completed two other plays of a completely different type, the _florentine tragedy_ and _la sainte courtesane_, when suddenly, unbidden, unwelcome, and under circumstances fatal to my happiness, you returned. the two works left then imperfect i was unable to take up again. the mood that created them i could never recover. you now, having yourself published a volume of verse, will be able to recognise the truth of everything i have said here. whether you can or not it remains as a hideous truth in the very heart of our friendship. while you were with me you were the absolute ruin of my art, and in allowing you to stand persistently between art and myself, i give to myself shame and blame in the fullest degree. you couldn't appreciate, you couldn't know, you couldn't understand. i had no right to expect it of you at all. your interests were merely in your meals and moods. your desires were simply for amusements, for ordinary or less ordinary pleasures. they were what your temperament needed, or thought it needed for the moment. i should have forbidden you my house and my chambers except when i specially invited you. i blame myself without reserve for my weakness. it was merely weakness. one half-hour with art was always more to me than a cycle with you. nothing really at any period of my life was ever of the smallest importance[ ] to me compared with art. but in the case of an artist, weakness is nothing less than a crime when it is a weakness that paralyses the imagination. i blame myself for having allowed you to bring me to utter and discreditable financial ruin. i remember one morning in the early october of ' , sitting in the yellowing woods at bracknell with your mother. at that time i knew very little of your real nature. i had stayed from a saturday to monday with you at oxford. you had stayed with me at cromer for ten days and played golf. the conversation turned on you, and your mother began to speak to me about your character. she told me of your two chief faults, your vanity, and your being, as she termed it, "all wrong about money." i have a distinct recollection of how i laughed. i had no idea that the first would bring me to prison and the second to bankruptcy. i thought vanity a sort of graceful flower for a young man to wear, as for extravagance--the virtues of prudence and thrift were not in my own nature or my own race. but before our friendship was one month older i began to see what your mother really meant. your insistence on a life of reckless profusion: your incessant demands for money: your claim that all your pleasures should be paid for by me, whether i was with you or not, brought me, after some time, into serious monetary difficulties, and what made the extravagance to me, at any rate, so monotonously uninteresting, as your persistent grasp on my life grew stronger and stronger, was that the money was spent on little more than the pleasures of eating, drinking and the like. now and then it is a joy to have one's table red with wine and roses, but you outstripped all taste and temperance. you demanded without grace and received without thanks. you grew to think that you had a sort of right to live at my expense, and in a profuse luxury to which you had never been accustomed, and which, for that reason, made your appetites all the more keen, and at the end, if you lost money gambling in some algiers casino, you simply telegraphed next morning to me in london to lodge the amount of your losses to your account at your bank, and gave the matter no further thought of any kind. when i tell you that between the autumn of and the date of my imprisonment, i spent with you and on you, more than £ , in actual money, irrespective of the bills i incurred, you will have some idea of the sort of life on which you insisted. do you think i exaggerate? my ordinary expenses with you for an ordinary day in london--for luncheon, dinner, supper, amusements, hansoms, and the rest of it--ranged from £ to £ , and the week's expenses were naturally in proportion and ranged from £ to £ . for our three months at goring my expenses (rent, of course, included) were £ , . step by step with the bankruptcy receiver i had to go over every item of my life. it was horrible. "plain living and high thinking," was, of course, an ideal you could not at that time have appreciated, but such an extravagance was a disgrace to both of us. one of the most delightful dinners i remember ever having had is one robbie and i had together in a little soho café, which cost about as many shillings as my dinners to you used to cost pounds. out of my dinner with robbie came the first and best of all my dialogues. idea, title, treatment, mode, everything was struck out at a franc c. table d'hôte. out of the reckless dinners with you nothing remains but the memory that too much was eaten and too much was drunk. and my yielding to your demands was bad for you. you know that now. it made you grasping often: at times not a little unscrupulous: ungracious always. there was, on far too many occasions, too little joy or privilege in being your host. you forgot--i will not say the formal courtesy of thanks, for formal courtesies will strain a close friendship--but simply the grace of sweet companionship, the charm of pleasant conversation, and all those gentle humanities that make life lovely, and are an accompaniment to life as music might be, keeping things in tune and filling with melody the harsh or silent places. and though it may seem strange to you that one in the terrible position in which i am situated, should find a difference between one disgrace and another, still i frankly admit that the folly of throwing away all this money on you, and letting you squander my fortune to your own hurt as well as to mine, gives to me and in my eyes a note of common profligacy to my bankruptcy that makes me doubly ashamed of it. i was made for other things. but most of all i blame myself for the entire ethical degradation i allowed you to bring on me. the basis of character is will power, and my will power became absolutely subject[ ] to yours. it sounds a grotesque thing to say, but it is none the less true. those incessant scenes that seemed to be almost physically necessary to you, and in which your mind and body grew distorted, and you became a thing as terrible to look at as to listen to: that dreadful mania you inherit from your father, the mania for writing revolting and loathsome letters: your entire lack of any control over your emotions as displayed in your long resentful moods of sullen silence, no less than in the sudden fits of almost epileptic rage: all these things in reference to which one of my letters to you, left by you lying about in the savoy or some other hotel, and so produced in court by your father's counsel, contained an entreaty not devoid of pathos, had you at that time been able to recognise pathos either in its elements or its expression--these, i say, were the origin and causes of my fatal yielding to you in your daily increasing demands. you wore me out. it was the triumph of the smaller over the bigger nature. it was the case of that tyranny of the weak over the strong which somewhere in one of my plays i describe as being "the only tyranny that lasts." and it was inevitable. in every relation of life with others one has to find some _moyen de vivre_. i had always thought that my giving up to you in small things meant nothing: that when a great moment arrived i could myself re-assert my will power in its natural superiority. it was not so. at the great moment my will power completely failed me. in life there is really no great or small thing. all things are of equal value and of equal size. my habit--due to indifference chiefly at first--of giving up to you in everything had become insensibly a real part of my nature. without my knowing it, it had stereotyped my temperament to one permanent and fatal mood. that is why, in the subtle epilogue to the first edition of his essays, pater says that "failure is to form habits." when he said it the dull oxford people thought the phrase a mere wilful inversion of the somewhat wearisome text of aristotelian ethics, but there is a wonderful, a terrible truth hidden in it. i had allowed you to sap my strength of character, and to me the formation of a habit had proved to be not failure merely, but ruin. ethically you had been even still more destructive to me than you had been artistically. the warrant once granted, your will, of course, directed everything. at a time when i should have been in london taking wise counsel and calmly considering the hideous trap in which i had allowed myself to be caught--the booby trap, as your father calls it to the present day--you insisted on my taking you to monte carlo, of all revolting places on god's earth, that all day and all night as well, you might gamble as long as the casino remained open. as for me--baccarat[ ] having no charms for me--i was left alone outside by myself. you refused to discuss even for five minutes the position to which you and your father had brought me. my business was merely to pay your hotel expenses and your losses. the slightest allusion to the ordeal awaiting me was regarded as a bore. a new brand of champagne that was recommended to us had more interest for you. on our return to london those of my friends who really desired my welfare implored me to retire abroad, and not to face an impossible trial. you imputed mean motives to them for giving such advice and cowardice to me for listening to it. you forced me to stay to brazen it out, if possible, in the box by absurd and silly perjuries. at the end, of course, i was arrested, and your father became the hero of the hour. as far as i can make out, i ended my friendship with you every three months regularly. and each time that i did so you managed by means of entreaties, telegrams, letters, the interposition of your friends, the interposition of mine, and the like to induce me to allow you back. but the froth and folly of our life grew often very wearisome to me: it was only in the mire that we met: and fascinating, terribly fascinating though the one[ ] topic round which your talk invariably centered was, still at the end it became quite monotonous to me. i was often bored to death by it, and accepted it as i accepted your passion for music halls, or your mania for absurd extravagance in eating and drinking, or any other of your to me less attractive characteristics, as a thing that is to say, that one simply had to put up with, a part of the high price one had to pay for knowing you. when you came one monday evening to my rooms, accompanied by two[ ] of your friends, i found myself actually flying abroad next morning to escape from you, giving my family some absurd reason for my sudden departure, and leaving a false address with my servant for fear you might follow me by the next train.... our friendship had always been a source of distress to my wife: not merely because she had never liked you personally, but because she saw how your continual companionship altered me, and not for the better. you started without delay for paris, sending me passionate telegrams on the road to beg me to see you once, at any rate. i declined. you arrived in paris late on a saturday night and found a brief letter from me waiting for you at your hotel stating that i would not see you. next morning i received in tite street a telegram of some ten or eleven pages in length from you. you stated in it that no matter what you had done to me you could not believe that i would absolutely decline to see you; you reminded me that for the sake of seeing me even for one hour you had travelled six days and six nights across europe without stopping once on the way; you made what i must admit was a most pathetic appeal, and ended with what seemed to me a threat of suicide and one not thinly veiled. you had yourself often told me how many of your race there had been who had stained their hands in their own blood: your uncle certainly, your grandfather possibly; many others in the mad bad line from which you come. pity, my old affection for you, regard for your mother, to whom your death under such dreadful circumstances would have been a blow almost too great for her to bear, the horror of the idea that so young a life, and one that amidst all its ugly faults had still promise of beauty in it, should come to so revolting an end, mere humanity itself--all these, if excuses be necessary, must serve as an excuse for consenting to accord you one last interview. when i arrived in paris, your tears breaking out again and again all through the evening, and falling over your cheeks like rain as we sat at dinner first at voisin's, at supper at paillard's afterwards, the unfeigned joy you evinced at seeing me, holding my hand whenever you could, as though you were a gentle and penitent child; your contrition, so simple and sincere at the moment made me consent to renew our friendship. two days after we had returned to london, your father saw you having luncheon with me at the café royal, joined my table, drank of my wine, and that afternoon, through a letter addressed to you, began his first attack on me.... it may be strange, but i had once again, i will not say the chance, but the duty, of separating from you forced on me. i need hardly remind you that i refer to your conduct to me at brighton from october th to th, . three years is a long time for you to go back. but we who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments. we have nothing else to think of. suffering, curious as it may sound to you, is the means by which we exist, because it is the only means by which we become conscious of existing; and the remembrance of suffering in the past is necessary to us as the warrant, the evidence, of our continued identity. between myself and the memory of joy lies a gulf no less deep than that between myself and joy in its actuality. had our life together been as the world fancied it to be, one simply of pleasure, profligacies and laughter, i would not be able to recall a single passage in it. it is because it was full of moments and days tragic, bitter, sinister in their warnings, dull or dreadful in their monotonous scenes and unseemly violences, that i can see or hear each separate incident in its detail, can indeed see or hear little else. so much in this place do men live by pain that my friendship with you, in the way through which i am forced to remember it, appears to me always as a prelude consonant with those varying modes of anguish which each day i have to realise, nay more, to necessitate them even; as though my life, whatever it had seemed to myself and others, had all the while been a real symphony of sorrow, passing through its rhythmically linked movements to its certain resolution, with that inevitableness that in art characterises the treatment of every great theme.... i spoke of your conduct to me on three successive days three years ago, did i not? i entertained you, of course, i had no option in the matter; but elsewhere, and not in my own home. the next day, monday, your companion returned to the duties[ ] of his profession, and you stayed with me. bored with worthing, and still more, i have no doubt, with my fruitless efforts to concentrate my attention on my play, the only thing that really interested me at the moment, you insist on being taken to the grand hotel at brighton. the night we arrive you fall ill with that dreadful low fever that is foolishly called the influenza, your second, if not your third, attack. i need not remind you how i waited on you, and tended you, not merely with every luxury of fruit, flowers, presents, books and the like that money can procure, but with that affection, tenderness and love that, whatever you may think, is not to be procured for money. except for an hour's walk in the morning, an hour's drive in the afternoon, i never left the hotel. i got special grapes from london for you as you did not care for those the hotel supplied; invented things to please you; remained either with you or in the room next to yours; sat with you every evening to quiet or amuse you. after four or five days you recover, and i take lodgings in order to try and finish my play. you, of course, accompany me. the morning after the day on which we were installed i feel extremely ill. the doctor finds i have caught the influenza from you. there is no manservant to wait on me, not even any one to send out on a message, or to get what the doctor orders. but you are there. i feel no alarm. the next two days you leave me entirely alone without care, without attendance, without anything. it was not a question of grapes, flowers and charming gifts: it was a question of mere necessities. and when i was left all day without anything to read, you calmly tell me that you bought the book i wanted, and that they had promised to send it down, a statement which i found by chance afterwards to have been entirely untrue, from beginning to end. all the while you are, of course, living at my expense, driving about, dining at the grand hotel, and indeed only appearing in my room for money. on the saturday night, you having completely left me unattended and alone since the morning, i asked you to come back after dinner, and sit with me for a little. with irritable voice and ungracious manner you promise to do so. i wait till o'clock, and you never appear. at three in the morning, unable to sleep, and tortured with thirst, i made my way in the dark and cold, down to the sitting-room in the hopes of finding some water there. i found you. you fell on me with every hideous word an intemperate mood, an undisciplined and untutored nature could suggest. by the terrible alchemy of egotism you converted your remorse into rage. you accused me of selfishness in expecting you to be with me when i was ill; of standing between you and your amusements; of trying to deprive you of your pleasures. you told me, and i know it was quite true, that you had come back at midnight simply in order to change your dress-clothes, and go out again. i told you at length to leave the room; you pretended to do so, but when i lifted up my head from the pillow in which i had buried it, you were still there, and with brutality of laughter and hysteria of rage you moved suddenly towards me. a sense of horror came over me, for what exact reason i could not make out; but i got out of my bed at once, and bare-footed and just as i was, made my way down the two nights of stairs to the sitting-room. you returned silently for money; took what you could find on the dressing table, and mantelpiece, and left the house with your luggage. need i tell you what i thought of you during the two lonely wretched days of illness that followed? is it necessary for me to state, that i saw clearly that it would be a dishonour to myself to continue even an acquaintance with such a one as you had showed yourself to be? that i recognised that the ultimate moment had come and recognised it as being really a great relief? and that i knew that for the future my art and life would be freer and better and more beautiful in every possible way? ill as i was, i felt at ease. the fact that the separation was irrevocable gave me peace. wednesday was my birthday. amongst the telegrams and communications on my table was a letter in your handwriting. i opened it with a sense of sadness on me. i knew that the time had gone by when a pretty phrase, an expression of affection, a word of sorrow, would make me take you back. but i was entirely deceived. i had underrated you. you congratulated me on my prudence in leaving the sick bed, on my sudden flight downstairs. "it was an ugly moment for you," you said, "uglier than you imagine." ah! i felt it but too well. what it had really meant i do not know; whether you had with you the pistol you had bought to try to frighten your father with, and that thinking it to be unloaded, you had once fired off in a public restaurant in my company; whether your hand was moving towards a common dinner knife that by chance was lying on the table between us; whether forgetting in your rage your low[ ] stature and inferior strength, you had thought of some special personal insult, or attack even, as i lay ill there; i could not tell. i do not know to the present moment. all i know is that a feeling of utter horror had come over me, and that i had felt that unless i left the room at once and got away, you would have done or tried to do something that would have been, even to you, a source of lifelong shame.... on your return to town from the actual scene of the tragedy to which you had been summoned, you came at once to me very sweetly and very simply, in your suit of woe, and with your eyes dim with tears. you sought consolation and help, as a child might seek it. i opened to you my house, my home, my heart. i made your sorrow mine also, that you might have help in bearing it. never even by one word, did i allude to your conduct towards me, to the revolting scenes, and the revolting letter. the gods are strange. it is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. they bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving. but for my pity and affection for you and yours, i would not now be weeping in this terrible place. of course, i discern in all our relations, not destiny merely, but doom--doom that walks always swiftly, because she goes to the shedding of blood. through your father you come of a race, marriage with whom is horrible, friendship fatal, and that lays violent hands either on its own life, or on the lives of others. in every little circumstance in which the ways of our lives met, in every point of great or seemingly trivial import in which you came to me for pleasure or help, in the small chances, the slight accidents that look, in their relation to life, to be no more than the dust that dances in a beam, or the leaf that flutters from a tree, ruin followed like the echo of a bitter cry, or the shadow that hunts with the beast of prey. our friendship really begins with your begging me, in a most pathetic and charming letter, to assist you in a position appalling to anyone, doubly so to a young man at oxford. i do so, and ultimately, through your using my name as your friend with sir george lewis i begin to lose his esteem and friendship, a friendship of fifteen years' standing. when i was deprived of his advice and help and regard, i was deprived of the one great safeguard of my life. you send me a very nice poem of the undergraduate school of verse for my approval. i reply by a letter of fantastic literary conceits; i compare you to hylas, or hyacinth, jonquil or narcissus, or some one whom the great god of poetry favoured, and honoured with his love. the letter is like a passage from one of shakespeare's sonnets transposed to a minor key. it was, let me say frankly, the sort of letter i would, in a happy, if wilful moment, have written to any graceful young man of either university who had sent me a poem of his own making, certain that he would have sufficient wit, or culture, to interpret rightly its fantastic phrases. look at the history of that letter! it passes from you into the hands of a loathsome companion[ ], from him to a gang of blackmailers, copies of it are sent about london to my friends, and to the manager[ ] of the theatre where my work is being performed, every construction but the right one is put on it, society is thrilled with the absurd rumours that i have had to pay a high sum of money for having written an infamous letter to you; this forms the basis of your father's worst attack. i produce the original letter myself in court to show what it really is; it is denounced by your father's counsel as a revolting and insidious attempt to corrupt innocence; ultimately it forms part of a criminal charge; the crown takes it up; the judge sums up on it with little learning and much morality; i go to prison for it at last. that is the result of writing you a charming letter. it makes me feel sometimes as if you yourself had been merely a puppet worked by some secret and unseen hand to bring terrible events to a terrible issue. but puppets themselves have passions. they will bring a new plot into what they are presenting, and twist the ordered issue of vicissitude to suit some whim or appetite of their own. to be entirely free, and at the same time entirely dominated by law, is the eternal paradox of human life that we realise at every moment; and this, i often think, is the only explanation possible of your nature, if indeed for the profound and terrible mystery of a human soul there is any explanation at all, except one that makes the mystery all the more marvellous still. i thought life was going to be a brilliant comedy, and that you were to be one of the graceful figures in it. i found it to be a revolting and repellent tragedy, and that the sinister occasion of the great catastrophe, sinister in its concentration of aim and intensity of narrowed will power, was yourself stripped of the mask of joy and pleasure by which you, no less than i, had been deceived and led astray. the memory of our friendship is the shadow that walks with me here: that seems never to leave me: that wakes me up at night to tell me the same story over and over till its wearisome iteration makes all sleep abandon me till dawn: at dawn it begins again: it follows me into the prison yard and makes me talk to myself as i tramp round: each detail that accompanied each dreadful moment i am forced to recall: there is nothing that happened in those ill-starred years that i cannot recreate in that chamber of the brain which is set apart for grief or for despair; every strained note of your voice, every twitch and gesture of your nervous hands, every bitter word, every poisonous phrase comes back to me: i remember the street or river down which we passed: the wall or woodland that surrounded us; at what figure on the dial stood the hands of the clock; which way went the wings of the wind, the shape and colour of the moon. there is, i know, one answer to all that i have said to you, and that is that you loved me: that all through those two and a half years during which the fates were weaving into one scarlet pattern the threads of our divided lives you really loved me. though i saw quite clearly that my position in the world of art, the interest that my personality had always excited, my money, the luxury in which i lived, the thousand and one things that went to make up a life so charmingly and so wonderfully improbable as mine was, were, each and all of them, elements that fascinated you and made you cling to me; yet besides all this there was something more, some strange attraction for you: you loved me far better than you loved anyone else. but you, like myself, have had a terrible tragedy in your life, though one of an entirely opposite character to mine. do you want to learn what it was? it was this. in you, hate was always stronger than love. your hatred[ ] of your father was of such stature that it entirely outstripped, overgrew, and overshadowed your love of me. there was no struggle between them at all, or but little; of such dimensions was your hatred and of such monstrous growth. you did not realise that there was no room for both passions in the same soul: they cannot live together in that fair carven house. love is fed by the imagination, by which we become wiser than we know, better than we feel, nobler than we are; by which we can see life as a whole; by which and by which alone, we can understand others in their real as in their ideal relations. only what is fine, and finely conceived, can feed love. but anything will feed hate. there was not a glass of champagne that you drank, not a rich dish that you ate of in all those years, that did not feed your hate and make it fat. so to gratify it, you gambled with my life, as you gambled with my money, carelessly, recklessly, indifferent to the consequences. if you lost, the loss would not, you fancied, be yours. if you won, yours, you knew, would be the exultation and the advantages of victory. hate blinds people. you were not aware of that. love can read the writing on the remotest star, but hate so blinded you that you could see no further than the narrow, walled in, and already lust-withered garden of your common desires. your terrible lack of imagination, the one really fatal defect in your character, was entirely the result of the hate that lived in you. subtly, silently, and in secret, hate gnawed at your nature, as the lichen bites at the root of some sallow plant, till you grew to see nothing but the most meagre interests and the most petty aims. that faculty in you which love would have fostered, hate poisoned and paralysed. the idea of your being the object of a terrible quarrel between your father and a man of my position seemed to delight you. you scented the chance of a public scandal and flew to it. the prospect of a battle in which you would be safe delighted you. you know what my art was to me, the great primal note by which i had revealed, first myself to myself, and then myself to the world, the great passion of my life, the love to which all other loves were as marsh water to red wine, or the glow worm of the marsh to the magic mirror of the moon.... don't you understand now that your lack of imagination was the one really fatal defect of your character? what you had to do was quite simple, and quite clear before you; but hate had blinded you, and you could see nothing. life is quite lovely to you. and yet, if you are wise, and wish to find life much lovelier still, and in a different manner you will let the reading of this terrible letter--for such i know it is--prove to you as important a crisis and turning point of your life as the writing of it is to me. your pale face used to flush easily with wine or pleasure. if, as you read what is here written, it from time to time becomes scorched, as though by a furnace blast, with shame, it will be all the better for you. the supreme vice is shallowness. whatever is realised is right. how clearly i saw it then, as now, i need not tell you. but i said to myself, "at all costs i must keep love in my heart. if i go into prison without love, what will become of my soul?" the letters i wrote to you at that time from holloway were my efforts to keep love as the dominant note of my own nature. i could, if i had chosen, have torn you to pieces with bitter reproaches. i could have rent you with maledictions. the sins of another were being placed to my account. had i so chosen, i could on either trial have saved myself at his expense, not from shame indeed, but from imprisonment.[ ] had i cared to show that the crown witnesses--the three most important--had been carefully coached by your father and his solicitors, not in reticences merely, but in assertions, in the absolute transference deliberate, plotted, and rehearsed, of the actions and doings of someone else on to me, i could have had each one of them dismissed from the box by the judge, more summarily than even wretched perjured atkins was. i could have walked out of court with my tongue in my cheek, and my hands in my pockets, a free man. the strongest pressure was put upon me to do so, i was earnestly advised, begged, entreated to do so by people, whose sole interest was my welfare, and the welfare of my house. but i refused. i did not choose to do so. i have never regretted my decision for a single moment, even in the most bitter periods of my imprisonment. such a course of action would have been beneath me. sins of the flesh are nothing. they are maladies for physicians to cure, if they should be cured. sins of the soul alone are shameful. to have secured my acquittal by such means would have been a life-long torture to me. but do you really think that you were worthy of the love i was showing you then, or that for a single moment i thought you were? do you really think that any period of our friendship you were worthy of the love i showed you, or that for a single moment i thought you were? i knew you were not. but love does not traffic in a market place, nor use a huckster's scales. its joy, like the joy of the intellect, is to feel itself alive. the aim of love is to love; no more, and no less. you were my enemy; such an enemy as no man ever had. i had given you my life; and to gratify the lowest and most contemptible of all human passions, hatred and vanity and greed, you had thrown it away. in less than three years you had entirely ruined me from every point of view. after my terrible sentence, when the prison dress was on me, and the prison house closed, i sat amidst the ruins of my wonderful life, crushed by anguish, bewildered with terror, dazed through pain. but i would not hate you. every day i said to myself, "i must keep love in my heart to-day, else how shall i live through the day?" i reminded myself that you meant no evil to me at any rate.... it all flashed across me, and i remember that for the first and last time in my entire prison life, i laughed. in that laugh was all the scorn of all the world. prince fleur de lys! i saw that nothing that had happened had made you realise a single thing. you were, in your own eyes, still the graceful prince of a trivial comedy, not the sombre figure of a tragic show. had there been nothing in your heart to cry out against so vulgar a sacrilege, you might at least have remembered the sonnet he wrote who saw with such sorrow and scorn the letters of john keats sold by public auction in london, and have understood at last the real meaning of my lines: "... i think they love not art who break the crystal of a poet's heart that small and sickly eyes may glare or gloat." one cannot always keep an adder in one's breast to feed on one, nor rise up every night to sow thorns in the garden of one's soul. i cannot allow you to go through life bearing in your heart the burden of having ruined a man like me. does it ever occur to you what an awful position i would have been in if, for the last two years, during my appalling sentence, i had been dependent on you as a friend? do you ever think of that? do you ever feel any gratitude to those who by kindness without stint, devotion without limit, cheerfulness and joy in giving, have lightened my black burden for me, have arranged my future life for me, have visited me again and again, have written to me beautiful and sympathetic letters, have managed my affairs for me, have stood by me in the teeth of obloquy, taunt, open sneer or insult even? i thank god every day that he gave me friends other than you. i owe everything to them. the very books in my cell are paid for by robbie out of his pocket money. from the same source[ ] are to come clothes for me when i am released. i am not ashamed of taking a thing that is given by love and affection. i am proud of it. but do you ever think of what friends such as more adey, robbie, robert sherard, frank harris, and arthur clifton have been to me in giving me comfort, help, affection, sympathy and the like?... i know that your mother, lady queensberry, puts the blame on me. i hear of it, not from people who know you, but from people who do not know you, and do not desire to know you. i hear of it often. she talks of the influence of an elder over a younger man, for instance. it is one of her favourite attitudes towards the question, as it is always a successful appeal to popular prejudice and ignorance. i need not ask you what influence i had over you. you know i had none. it was one of your frequent boasts that i had none, the only one indeed, that was well founded. what was there, as a mere matter of fact, in you that i could influence? your brain? it was undeveloped. your imagination? it was dead. your heart? it was not yet born. of all the people who have ever crossed my life, you were the one, and the only one, i was unable in any way to influence in any direction. i waited month after month to hear from you. even if i had not been waiting but had shut the doors against you, you should have remembered that no one can possibly shut the doors against love forever. the unjust judge in the gospels rises up at length to give a just decision because justice comes daily knocking at his door: and at night time the friend, in whose heart there is no real friendship, yields at length to his friend "because of his importunity." there is no prison in any world into which love cannot force an entrance. if you did not understand that, you did not understand anything about love at all.... write to me with full frankness, about yourself: about your life: your friends: your occupations: your books. whatever you have to say for yourself, say it without fear. don't write what you don't mean: that is all. if anything in your letter is false or counterfeit i shall detect it by the ring at once. it is not for nothing, or to no purpose that in my lifelong cult of literature, i have made myself, "miser of sound and syllable, no less than midas of his coinage." remember also that i have yet to know you. perhaps we have yet to know each other. for myself, i have but this last thing to say. do not be afraid of the past. if people tell you that it is irrevocable, do not believe them. the past, the present and the future are but one moment in the sight of god, in whose sight we should try to live. time and space, succession and extension, are merely accidental conditions of a thought. the imagination can transcend them and more, in a free sphere of ideal existences. things, also, are in their essence what we choose to make them. a thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it. "where others," says blake, "see but the dawn coming over the hill, i see the sons of god shouting for joy." what seemed to the world and to myself my future i lost irretrievably when i let myself be taunted into taking the action against your father, had, i daresay, lost in reality long before that. what lies before me is the past. i have got to make myself look on that with different eyes, to make the world look on it with different eyes, to make god look on it with different eyes. this i cannot do by ignoring it, or slighting it, or praising it, or denying it. it is only to be done fully by accepting it as an inevitable part of the evolution of my life and character: by bowing my head to everything that i have suffered. how far i am away from the true temper of soul, this letter in its changing, uncertain moods, its scorn and bitterness, its aspirations and its failures to realise those aspirations shows you quite clearly. but do not forget in what a terrible school i am setting at my task. and incomplete, imperfect, as i am, yet from me you may have still much to gain. you came to me to learn the pleasure of life and the pleasure of art. perhaps i am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful, the meaning of sorrow and its beauty. your affectionate friend, oscar wilde. this letter of oscar wilde to lord alfred douglas is curiously self-revealing and characteristic. while reading it one should recall oscar's provocation. lord alfred douglas had driven him to the prosecution, and then deserted him and left him in prison without using his influence to mitigate his friend's suffering or his pen to console and encourage him. the abandonment was heartless and complete. the letter, however, is vindictive: in spite of its intimate revelations oscar took care that his indictment should be made public. the flagrant self-deceptions of the plea show its sincerity: oscar even accuses young alfred douglas of having induced him to eat and drink too much. the tap-root of the letter is a colossal vanity; the bitterness of it, wounded egotism; the falseness of it, a self-righteous pose of ineffable superiority as of a superman. oscar denies to alfred douglas imagination, scholarship, or even a knowledge of poetry: he tells him in so many words:--he is without brain or heart. then why did he allow himself to be hag-ridden to his ruin by such a creature? yet how human the letter is, how pathetic! oscar wilde's kindness of heart here is a note which oscar wilde wrote to warder martin towards the end of his imprisonment in reading gaol. warder martin, it will be remembered, was dismissed from his post for having given some sweet biscuits, bought with his own money, to some hungry little children confined in the prison. wilde happened to see the children and immediately wrote this note on a scrap of paper and slipped it under his door so that it should catch warder martin's eye as he patrolled the corridor. please find out for me the name of a. . . also, the names of the children who are in for the rabbits, and the amount of the fine. can i pay this and get them out? if so i will get them out tomorrow. please, dear friend, do this for me. i must get them out. think what a thing for me it would be to be able to help three little children. i would be delighted beyond words: if i can do this by paying the fine tell the children that they are to be released tomorrow by a friend, and ask them to be happy and not to tell anyone. here is a second note which shows oscar's peculiar sensitiveness; what is ugly and terrible cannot, he thinks, furnish even the subject of art; he shrinks from whatever gives pain. i hope to write about prison-life and to try and change it for others, but it is too terrible and ugly to make a work of art of. i have suffered too much in it to write plays about it. a third note simply thanks warder martin for all his kindness. it ends with the words: ... everyone tells me i am looking better and happier. this is because i have a good friend who gives me _the chronicle_ and promises me ginger biscuits. o.w. my coldness towards oscar in (see page ) when i talked with oscar in reading gaol, he told me that the only reason he didn't write was that no one would accept his work. i assured him that i would publish it in _the saturday review_ and would pay for it not only at the rate i paid bernard shaw but also if it increased the sale of the journal i'd try to compute its value to the paper and give him that besides. he told me that was too liberal; he would be quite content with what i paid shaw: he feared that no one else in england would ever publish his work again. he promised to send me the book "de profundis" as soon as it was finished. just before his release his friend, mr. more adey, called upon me and wanted to know whether i would publish oscar's work. i said i would. he then asked me what i would give for it. i told him i didn't want to make anything out of oscar and would give him as much as i could, rehearsing the proposal i had made to oscar. thereupon he told me oscar would prefer a fixed price. i thought the answer extraordinary and the gentle, urbane manner of mr. more adey, whom i hardly knew at that time and misunderstood, got on my nerves. i replied curtly that before i could state a price, i'd have to see the work, adding at the same time that i had wished to do oscar a good turn, but, if he could find another publisher, i'd be delighted. mr. more adey assured me that there was nothing in the book to which any prude even could object, no _arrière pensée_ of any kind, and so forth and so on. i answered with a jest, a wretched play on his french phrase. that night i happened to dine with whistler and telling him of what had occurred called forth a most stinging gibe at oscar's expense. whistler's _mot_ cannot be published. a week or two later oscar asked me to get him some clothes, which i did and on his release sent them to him, and received in reply a letter thanking me which i reproduce on page . in that same talk with oscar in reading gaol, i was so desirous of helping him that i proposed a driving tour through france. i told him of one i had made a couple of years before which was full of delightful episodes--an entrancing holiday. he jumped at the idea, said nothing would please him better, he would feel safe with me, and so forth. in order to carry out the idea in the best way i ordered an american mail phaeton so that a pair of horses would find the load, even with luggage, ridiculously light. i asked mr. more adey whether oscar had spoken to him of this proposed trip: he told me he had heard nothing of it. in one letter to me oscar asked me to postpone the tour; afterwards he never mentioned it. i thought i had been treated rather cavalierly. as i had gone to some expense in getting everything ready and making myself free, i, no doubt, expressed some amazement at oscar's silence on the matter. at any rate the idea got about that i was angry with him, and oscar believed it. nothing could have been further from the truth. what i had done and proposed was simply in his interest: i expected no benefit of any kind and therefore could not be cross; but the belief that i was angry drew this sincere and touching letter from oscar, which i think shows him almost as perfectly as that still more beautiful letter to robert ross which i have inserted in chapter xix. from m. sebastian melmoth, hotel de la plage, bernavol-sur-mer, dieppe. june , ' my dear frank: i know you do not like writing letters, but still i think you might have written me a line in answer, or acknowledgment of my letter[ ] to you from dieppe. i am thinking of a story to be called "the silence of frank harris." i have, however, heard during the last few days that you do not speak of me in the friendly manner i would like. this distresses me very much. i am told that you are hurt with me because my letter of thanks to you was not sufficiently elaborated in expression. this i can hardly credit. it seems so unworthy of a big strong nature like yours, that knows the realities of life. i told you i was grateful to you for your kindness to me. words, _now_, to me signify things, actualities, real emotions, realised thoughts. i learnt in prison to be grateful. i used to think gratitude a burden. now i know that it is something that makes life lighter as well as lovelier for one. i am grateful for a thousand things, from my good friends down to the sun and the sea. but i cannot say more than that i am grateful. i cannot make phrases about it. for _me_ to use such a word shows an enormous development in my nature. two years ago i did not know the feeling the word denotes. now i know it, and i am thankful that i have learnt that much, at any rate, by having been in prison. but i must say again that i no longer make _roulades_ of phrases about the deep things i feel. when i write directly to you, i speak directly: violin variations don't interest me. i am grateful to you. if that does not content you, then you do not understand, what you of all men should understand, how sincerity of feeling expresses itself. but i dare say the story told of you is untrue. it comes from so many quarters that it probably is. i am told also that you are hurt[ ] because i did not go on the driving-tour with you. you should understand, that in telling you that it was impossible for me to do so, i was thinking as much of _you_ as of myself. to think of the feelings and happiness of others is not an entirely new emotion in my nature. i would be unjust to myself and my friends, if i said it was. but i think of those things far more than i used to do. if i had gone with you, you would not have been happy, nor enjoyed yourself. nor would i. you must try to realise what two years cellular confinement is, and what two years of absolute silence means to a man of my intellectual power. to have survived at all--to have come out sane in mind and sound of body--is a thing so marvellous to me, that it seems to me sometimes, not that the age of miracles is over, but that it is just beginning; that there are powers in god, and powers in man, of which the world has up to the present known little. but while i am cheerful, happy, and have sustained to the full that passionate interest in life and art that was the dominant chord of my nature, and made all modes of existence and all forms of expression utterly fascinating to me always--still i need rest, quiet, and often complete solitude. friends have come to see me here for a day, and have been delighted to find me like my old self, in all intellectual energy and sensitiveness to the play of life, but it has always proved afterwards to have been a strain upon a nervous force, much of which has been destroyed. i have now no _storage_[ ] of nervous force. when i expend what i have, in an afternoon, nothing remains. i look to quiet, to a simple mode of existence, to nature in all the infinite meanings of an infinite word, to charge the cells for me. every day, if i meet a friend, or write a letter longer than a few lines, or even read a book that makes, as all fine books do, a direct claim on me, a direct appeal, an intellectual challenge of any kind, i am utterly exhausted in the evening, and often sleep badly. and yet it is three whole weeks since i was released. had i gone with you on the driving tour, where we would have of necessity been in immediate contact with each other from dawn to sunset, i would have certainly broken off the tour the third day, probably broken down the second. you would have then found yourself in a pitiable position: your tour would have been arrested at its outset: your companion would have been ill without doubt: perhaps might have needed care and attendance, in some little remote french village. you would have given it to me, i know. but i felt it would have been wrong, stupid, and thoughtless of me to have started an expedition doomed to swift failure, and perhaps fraught with disaster and distress. you are a man of dominant personality: your intellect is exigent, more so than that of any man i ever knew: your demands on life are enormous: you require response, or you annihilate: the pleasure of being with you is in the clash of personality, the intellectual battle, the war of ideas. to survive you, one must have a strong brain, an assertive ego, a dynamic character. in your luncheon parties, in the old days, the remains of the guests were taken away with the _débris_ of the feast. i have often lunched with you in park lane and found myself the only survivor. i might have driven on the white roads, or through the leafy lanes, of france, with a fool, or with the wisest of all things, a child: with you, it would have been impossible. you should thank me sincerely for having saved you from an experience that each of us would have always regretted. will you ask me why then, when i was in prison, i accepted with grateful thanks your offer? my dear frank, i don't think you will ask so thoughtless a question. the prisoner looks to liberty as an immediate return to all his ancient energy, quickened into more vital forces by long disuse. when he goes out, he finds he has still to suffer: his punishment, as far as its effects go, lasts intellectually and physically just as it lasts socially: he has still to pay: one gets no receipt for the past when one walks out into the beautiful air.... i have now spent the whole of my sunday afternoon--the first real day of summer we have had--in writing to you this long letter of explanation. i have written directly and simply: i need not tell the author of "elder conklin" that sweetness and simplicity of expression take more out of one than fiddling harmonics on one string. i felt it my duty to write, but it has been a distressing one. it would have been _better_ for me to have lain in the brown grass on the cliff, or to have walked slowly by the sea. it would have been kinder of you to have written to me directly about whatever harsh or hurt feelings you may have about me. it would have saved me an afternoon of strain, and tension. but i have something more to say. it is pleasanter to me, now, to write about others, than about myself. the enclosed is from a brother prisoner of mine: released june th: pray read it: you will see his age, offence, and aim in life. if you can give him a trial, do so. if you see your way to this kind action, and write to him to come and see you, kindly state in your letter that it is about a situation. he may think otherwise that it is about the flogging of a. . ., a thing that does not interest _you_, and about which _he_ is a little afraid to talk. if the result of this long letter will be that you will help this fellow prisoner of mine to a place in your service, i shall consider my afternoon better spent than any afternoon for the last two years, and three weeks. in any case i have now written to you fully on all things as reported to me. i again assure you of my gratitude for your kindness to me during my imprisonment, and on my release. and am always your sincere friend and admirer oscar wilde. _with regard to lawley_ all soldiers are neat, and smart, and make capital servants. he would be a good _groom_: he is, i believe, a rd hussars man--he was a quiet, well-conducted chap in reading always. naturally i replied to this letter at once, saying that he had been misinformed, that i was not angry and if i could do anything for him i should be delighted: i did my best, too, for lawley. here is his letter of thanks to me for helping him when he came out of prison. sandwich hotel, dieppe. my dear frank: just a line to thank you for your great kindness to me--for the lovely clothes, and for the generous cheque. you have been a real good friend to me--and i shall never forget your kindness: to remember such a debt as mine to you--a debt of kind fellowship--is a pleasure. about our tour--later on let us think about it. my friends have been so kind to me here that i am feeling happy already. yours, oscar wilde. if you write to me please do so under cover to r.b. ross, who is here with me. in the next letter of his which i have kept oscar is perfectly friendly again; he tells me that he is "entirely without money, having received nothing from his trustees for months," and asks me for even £ , adding, "i drift in ridiculous impecuniosity without a sou." the mystery of personality i transcribe here another letter of oscar to me from the second year after his release to show his interest in all intellectual things and for a flash of characteristic humour at the expense of the paris police. the envelope is dated october , :-- from m. sebastian melmoth, hotel d'alsace, rue des beaux-arts, paris. my dear frank: how are you? i read your appreciation of rodin's "balzac" with intensest pleasure, and i am looking forward to more shakespeare--you will of course put all your shakespearean essays into a book, and, equally of course, i must have a copy. it is a great era in shakespearean criticism--the first time that one has looked in the plays not for philosophy, for there is none, but for the wonder of a great personality--something far better, and far more mysterious than any philosophy--it is a great thing that you have done. i remember writing once in "intentions" that the more objective a work of art is in form, the more subjective it really is in matter--and that it is only when you give the poet a mask that he can tell you the truth. but you have shown it fully in the case of the one artist whose personality was supposed to be a mystery of deep seas, a secret as impenetrable as the secret of the moon. paris is terrible in its heat. i walk in streets of brass, and there is no one here. even the criminal classes have gone to the seaside, and the gendarmes yawn and regret their enforced idleness. giving wrong directions to the english tourists is the only thing that consoles them. you were most kind and generous last month in letting me have a cheque--it gives me just the margin to live on and to live by. may i have it again this month? or has gold flown away from you? ever yours, oscar. the dedication of "an ideal husband" i received the following letter from oscar early in i imagine. it was written in the spring after the winter we spent in la napoule. from m. sebastian melmoth, gland, canton vaud, switzerland. my dear frank: i am, as you see from above, in switzerland with m----: a rather dreadful combination: the villa is pretty, and on the borders of the lake with pretty pines about: on the other side are the mountains of savoy and mont blanc: we are an hour, by a slow train, from geneva. but m----is tedious, and lacks conversation: also he gives me swiss wine to drink: it is horrible: he occupies himself with small economies, and mean domestic interests, so i suffer very much. _ennui_ is the enemy. i want to know if you will allow me to dedicate to you my next play, "the ideal husband"--which smithers is bringing out for me in the same form as the others, of which i hope you received your copy. i should so much like to write your name and a few words on the dedicatory page. i look back with joy and regret to the lovely sunlight of the riviera, and the charming winter you so generously and kindly gave me: it was most good of you: how can it ever be forgotten by me. next week a petroleum launch is to arrive here, so that will console me a little, as i love to be on the water: and the savoy side is starred with pretty villages and green valleys. of course we won our bet--the phrase on shelley is in arnold's preface to byron: but m---- won't pay me! he suffers agony over a franc. it is very annoying as i have had no money since my arrival here. however i regard the place as a swiss pension--where there is no weekly bill.... ever yours, oscar. i believe i answered; but am not sure. i was naturally delighted to have just "an ideal husband" dedicated to me, because i had suggested the plot of it to oscar--not that the plot was in any true sense mine. an interesting and clever american in cairo, a mr. cope whitehouse, had given it to me as i tell in this book. the story whitehouse told may not be true; but my mind jumped at once to the thought of a story where an english minister would be confronted with some early sin of that sort. i had hardly bettered the story given to me when i related it to oscar who used it almost immediately with great effect. dedicatory words are usually as flattering as epitaphs; those of "an ideal husband" run: to frank harris a slight tribute to his power and distinction as an artist his chivalry and nobility as a friend mrs. wilde's epitaph (see page ) an evil fate seems to have pursued even oscar's wife. she died in genoa and was buried in the corner of the campo santo set apart for protestants. this is what one reads on her tombstone: constance daughter of the late horatio lloyd, q.c. born ---- died ---- no reference to her marriage or to the famous man who was the father of her two sons. the irony of chance wills it that the late horatio lloyd, q.c., had been more than suspected of sexual viciousness: cfr. "criticisms by robert ross" at end of appendix. sonnet (see page ) to oscar wilde i dreamed of you last night, i saw your face all radiant and unshadowed of distress, and as of old, in measured tunefulness, i heard your golden voice and marked you trace under the common thing the hidden grace, and conjure wonder out of emptiness, till mean things put on beauty like a dress, and all the world was an enchanted place. and so i knew that it was well with you, and that unprisoned, gloriously free, across the dark you stretched me out your hand. and all the spite of this besotted crew, (scrabbling on pillars of eternity) how small it seems! love made me understand. alfred douglas. december , . whoever chooses to compare this first sketch of the sonnet of with the sonnet as it was published in will remark three notable differences. the first sketch was entitled "to oscar wilde," the revision to "the dead poet." in the early draft, the first line: "i dreamed of you last night, i saw your face," has become less intimate, having been changed into: "i dreamed of him last night, i saw his face." finally the sextet which in the first sketch was very inferior to the rest has now been discarded in favour of six lines which are worthy of the octave. the published sonnet is assuredly superior to the first sketch, superb though that was. the story of "mr. and mrs. daventry" (see page ) there has been so much discussion about the play entitled "mr. and mrs. daventry," and oscar wilde's share in it, that i had better set forth here briefly what happened. when i returned to london in the summer of after buying, as i thought, all rights in the sketch of the scenario from oscar, i wrote at once the second, third and fourth acts of the play, as i had told oscar i would. i sent him what i had written and asked him to write the first act as he had promised for the £ . some time before this i had seen mr. forbes robertson and mrs. patrick campbell in "hamlet," and mrs. patrick campbell's ophelia had made a deeper impression on me than even the hamlet of forbes robertson. i wished her to take my play, and as luck would have it, she had just gone into management on her own account and leased the royalty theatre. i read her my play one afternoon, and at once she told me she would take it; but i must write a first act. i told her that i was no good at preliminary scenes and that oscar wilde had promised to write a first act, which would, of course, enhance the value of the play enormously. to my surprise mrs. patrick campbell would not hear of it: "quite impossible," she said, "a play's not a patchwork quilt; you must write the first act yourself." "i must write to oscar then," i replied, "and see whether he has finished it already or not." mrs. campbell insisted that the play, if she was to accept it, must be the work of one hand. i wrote to oscar at once, asking him whether he had written the first act, adding that if he had not written it and would send me his idea of the scenario, i would write it. i was overjoyed to tell him that mrs. patrick campbell had provisionally accepted the play. to my astonishment oscar replied in evident ill-temper to say that he could not write the first act, or the scenario, but at the same time he hoped i would now send him some money for having helped to make my _début_ on the stage. i returned to tell mrs. campbell my disappointment and to see if she had any idea of what she wanted in the first act. she was delighted with my news, and said that all i had to do was to write an act introducing my characters, and that i ought, for the sake of contrast, to give her a mother. some impish spirit suggested to me the idea of making a mother much younger than her daughter, that is, a very flighty ordinary woman, impulsive and feather-brained, with a mania for attending sales and collecting odds and ends at bargain prices. full of this idea i wrote the first act off hand. mrs. patrick campbell did not like it much, and in this, as indeed always, showed excellent judgment and an extraordinary understanding of the requirements of the stage; nevertheless she accepted the play and settled terms. a little later i went to leeds, where she was playing, and read the play to her and her "company." we discussed the cast, and i suggested mr. kerr to play mr. daventry. mrs. patrick campbell jumped at the idea, and everything was settled. i wrote the good news to oscar, and back came another letter from him, more ill-tempered than the first, saying he had never thought i would take his scenario; i had no right to touch it; but as i had taken it, i must really pay him something substantial. the claim was absurd, but i hated to dispute with him or even appear to bargain. i wrote to him that if i made anything out of the play i would send him some more money. he replied that he was sure my play would be a failure; but i ought to get a good sum down in advance of royalties from mrs. patrick campbell, and at once send him half of it. his letters were childishly ill-conditioned and unreasonable; but, believing him to be in extreme indigence, i felt too sorry for him even to argue the point. again and again i had helped him, and it seemed sordid and silly to hurt our old friendship for money. i couldn't believe that he would talk of my having done anything that i ought not to have done if we met, so as soon as i could i crossed to paris to have it out with him. to my astonishment i found him obdurate in his wrong-headedness. when i asked him what he had sold me for the £ i paid him, he coolly said he didn't think i was serious, that no man would write a play on another man's scenario; it was absurd, impossible--"_c'est ridicule!_" he repeated again and again. when i reminded him that shakespeare had done it, he got angry: it was altogether different then--today: "_c'est ridicule!_" tired of going over and over the old ground i pressed him to tell me what he wanted. for hours he wouldn't say: then at length he declared he ought to have half of all the play fetched, and even that wouldn't be fair to him, as he was a dramatist and i was not, and i ought not to have touched his scenario and so on, over and over again. i returned to my hotel wearied in heart and head by his ridiculous demands and reiterations. after thrashing the beaten straw to dust on the following day, i agreed at length to give him another £ down and another £ later. even then he pretended to be very sorry indeed that i had taken what he called "his play," and assured me in the same breath that "mr. and mrs. daventry" would be a rank failure: "plays cannot be written by amateurs; plays require knowledge of the stage. it's quite absurd of you, frank, who hardly ever go to the theatre, to think you can write a successful play straight off. i always loved the theatre, always went to every first night in london, have the stage in my blood," and so forth and so on. i could not help recalling what he had told me years before, that when he had to write his first play for george alexander, he shut himself up for a fortnight with the most successful modern french plays, and so learned his _métier_. next day i returned to london, understanding now something of the unreasonable persistence in begging which had aroused lord alfred douglas' rage. as soon as my play was advertised a crowd of people confronted me with claims i had never expected. mrs. brown potter wrote to me saying that some years before she had bought a play from oscar wilde which he had not delivered, and as she understood that i was bringing it out, she hoped i would give it to her to stage. i replied saying that oscar had not written a word of my play. she wrote again, saying that she had paid £ for the scenario: would i see mr. kyrle bellew on the matter? i saw them both a dozen times; but came to no decision. while these negotiations were going on, a host of other richmonds came into the field. horace sedger had also bought the same scenario, and then in quick succession it appeared that tree and alexander and ada rehan had also paid for the same privilege. when i wrote to oscar about this expressing my surprise he replied coolly that he could have gone on selling the play now to french managers, and later to german managers, if i had not interfered: "you have deprived me of a certain income:" was his argument, "and therefore you owe me more than you will ever get from the play, which is sure to fall flat." a little later miss nethersole presented herself, and when i would not yield to her demands, went to paris, and oscar wrote to me saying she ought to stage the piece as she would do it splendidly, or at least i should repay her the money she had advanced to him. this letter showed me that oscar had not only deceived me, but, for some cause or other, some pricking of vanity i couldn't understand, was willing to embarrass me as much as possible without any scruple. finally smithers, the publisher of three of oscar's books, whom i knew to be a real friend of oscar, came to me with a still more appealing story. when oscar was in italy, and in absolute need, smithers got a man named roberts to advance £ on the scenario. i found that oscar had written out the whole scenario for him and outlined the characters of his drama. this was evidently the completest claim that had yet been brought before me: it was also, smithers proved, the earliest, and smithers himself was in dire need. i wrote to oscar that i thought smithers had the best claim because he was the first buyer, and certainly ought to have something. oscar replied, begging me not to be a fool: to send him the money and tell smithers to go to sheol. thereupon i told smithers i could not afford to give him any money at the moment; but if the play was a success he should have something out of it. the play was a success: it was stopped for a week by queen victoria's death, in january, and was, i think, the only play that survived that ordeal. mrs. patrick campbell was good enough to allow me to rewrite the first act for the fiftieth performance, and it ran, if i remember rightly, some nights. about the twentieth representation i paid smithers. for the first weeks of the run i was bombarded with letters from oscar, begging money and demanding money in every tone. he made nothing of the fact that i had already paid him three times the price agreed upon, and paid smithers to boot, and lost through his previous sales of the scenario whatever little repute the success of the piece might have brought me. nine people out of ten believed that oscar had written the play and that i had merely lent my name to the production in order to enable him, as a bankrupt, to receive the money from it. even men of letters deceived themselves in this way. george moore told bernard shaw that he recognised oscar's hand in the writing again and again, though shaw himself was far too keen-witted to be so misled. as a matter of fact oscar did not write a word of the play and the characters he sketched for smithers and roberts were altogether different from mine and were not known to me when i wrote my story. i have set forth the bare facts of the affair here because oscar managed to half-persuade ross and turner and other friends that i owed him money which i would not pay; though ross had discounted most of his complaints, even before hearing my side. oscar got me over to paris in september under the pretext that he was ill; but i found him as well as could be, and anxious merely to get more money out of me by any means. i put it all down to his poverty. i did not then know that ross was giving him £ a year; that indeed all his friends had helped him and were helping him with singular generosity, and i recalled the fact that when he had had money he never showed any meanness, or any desire to over-reach. want is a dreadful teacher, and i did not hold oscar altogether responsible for his weird attitude to me personally. oscar's last days! letter from robert ross to ---- dec. th, . on tuesday, october th, i wrote to oscar, from whom i had not heard for some time, that i would be in paris on thursday, october the th, for a few days, when i hoped to see him. on thursday, october th, i got a telegram from him as follows:--"operated on yesterday--come over as soon as possible." i wired that i would endeavour to do so. a wire came in response, "terribly weak--please come." i started on the evening of tuesday, october th. on wednesday morning i went to see him about . . he was in very good spirits; and though he assured me his sufferings were dreadful, at the same time he shouted with laughter and told many stories against the doctors and himself. i stayed until . and returned about . , when oscar recounted his grievances about the harris play. oscar, of course, had deceived harris about the whole matter--as far as i could make out the story--harris wrote the play under the impression that only sedger had to be bought off at £ , which oscar had received in advance for the commission; whereas kyrle bellew, louis nethersole, ada rehan, and even smithers, had all given oscar £ on different occasions, and all threatened harris with proceedings--harris, therefore, only gave oscar £ on account,[ ] as he was obliged to square these people first--hence oscar's grievance. when i pointed out to him that he was in a much better position than formerly, because harris, at any rate, would eventually pay off the people who had advanced money and that oscar would eventually get something himself, he replied in the characteristic way, "frank has deprived me of my only source of income by taking a play on which i could always have raised £ ." i continued to see oscar every day until i left paris. reggie and myself sometimes dined or lunched in his bedroom, when he was always very talkative, although he looked very ill. on october th, my brother aleck came to see him, when oscar was in particularly good form. his sister-in-law, mrs. willie, and her husband, texeira, were then passing through paris on their honeymoon, and came at the same time. on this occasion he said he was "dying above his means" ... he would never outlive the century ... the english people would not stand him--he was responsible for the failure of the exhibition, the english having gone away when they saw him there so well-dressed and happy ... all the french people knew this, too, and would not stand him any more.... on october the th, oscar got up for the first time at mid-day, and after dinner in the evening insisted on going out--he assured me that the doctor had said he might do so and would not listen to any protest. i had urged him to get up some days before as the doctor said he might do so, but he had hitherto refused. we went to a small café in the latin quartier, where he insisted on drinking absinthe. he walked there and back with some difficulty, but seemed fairly well. only i thought he had suddenly aged in face, and remarked to reggie next day how different he looked when up and dressed. he appeared _comparatively_ well in bed. (i noticed for the first time that his hair was slightly tinged with grey. i had always remarked that his hair had never altered its colour while he was in reading;[ ] it retained its soft brown tone. you must remember the jests he used to make about it, he always amused the warders by saying that his hair was perfectly white.) next day i was not surprised to find oscar suffering with a cold and great pain in his ear; however, dr. tucker said he might go out again, and the following afternoon, a very mild day, we drove in the bois. oscar was much better, but complained of giddiness; we returned about . . on saturday morning, november rd, i met the panseur hennion (reggie always called him the libre penseur), he came every day to dress oscar's wounds. he asked me if i was a great friend or knew oscar's relatives. he assured me that oscar's general condition was very serious--that he could not live more than three or four months unless he altered his way of life--that i ought to speak to dr. tucker, who did not realise oscar's serious state--that the ear trouble was not of much importance in itself, but a grave symptom. on sunday morning i saw dr. tucker--he is a silly, kind, excellent man; he said oscar ought to write more--that he was much better, and that his condition would only become serious when he got up and went about in the usual way. i begged him to be frank. he promised to ask oscar if he might talk to me openly on the subject of oscar's health. i saw him on the tuesday following by appointment; he was very vague; and though he endorsed hennion's view to some extent, said that oscar was getting well now, though he could not live long unless he stopped drinking. on going to see oscar later in the day i found him very agitated. he said he did not want to know what the doctor had told me. he said he did not care if he had only a short time to live and then went off on to the subject of his debts, which i gather amounted to something over more than £ .[ ] he asked me to see that at all events some of them were paid if i was in a position to do so after he was dead; he suffered remorse about some of his creditors. reggie came in shortly afterwards much to my relief. oscar told us that he had had a horrible dream the previous night--"that he had been supping with the dead." reggie made a very typical response, "my dear oscar, you were probably the life and soul of the party." this delighted oscar, who became high-spirited again, almost hysterical. i left feeling rather anxious. that night i wrote to douglas saying that i was compelled to leave paris--that the doctor thought oscar very ill--that ---- ought to pay some of his bills as they worried him very much, and the matter was retarding his recovery--a great point made by dr. tucker. on november nd, all souls' day, i had gone to père la chaise with ----. oscar was much interested and asked me if i had chosen a place for his tomb. he discussed epitaphs in a perfectly light-hearted way, and i never dreamt he was so near death. on monday, november th, i went to the hotel d'alsace with reggie to say good-bye, as i was leaving for the riviera next day. it was late in the evening after dinner. oscar went all over his financial troubles. he had just had a letter from harris about the smithers claim, and was much upset; his speech seemed to me a little thick, but he had been given morphia the previous night, and he always drank too much champagne during the day. he knew i was coming to say good-bye, but paid little attention when i entered the room, which at the time i thought rather strange; he addressed all his observations to reggie. while we were talking, the post arrived with a very nice letter from alfred douglas, enclosing a cheque. it was partly in response to my letter i think. oscar wept a little but soon recovered himself. then we all had a friendly discussion, during which oscar walked around the room and declaimed in rather an excited way. about . i got up to go. suddenly oscar asked reggie and the nurse to leave the room for a minute, as he wanted to say good-bye. he rambled at first about his debts in paris: and then he implored me not to go away, because he felt that a great change had come over him during the last few days. i adopted a rather stern attitude, as i really thought that oscar was simply hysterical, though i knew that he was genuinely upset at my departure. suddenly he broke into a violent sobbing, and said he would never see me again because he felt that everything was at an end--this very painful incident lasted about three-quarters of an hour. he talked about various things which i can scarcely repeat here. though it was very harrowing, i really did not attach any importance to my farewell, and i did not respond to poor oscar's emotion as i ought to have done, especially as he said, when i was going out of the room, "look out for some little cup in the hills near nice where i can go when i am better, and where you can come and see me often." those were the last articulate words he ever spoke to me. i left for nice the following evening, november th. during my absence reggie went every day to see oscar, and wrote me short bulletins every other day. oscar went out several times with him driving, and seemed much better. on tuesday, november th, i received the first of reggie's letters, which i enclose (the others came after i had started), and i started back for paris; i send them because they will give you a very good idea of how things stood. i had decided that when i had moved my mother to mentone on the following friday, i would go to paris on saturday, but on the wednesday evening, at five-thirty, i got a telegram from reggie saying, "almost hopeless." i just caught the express and arrived in paris at . in the morning. dr. tucker and dr. kleiss, a specialist called in by reggie, were there. they informed me that oscar could not live for more than two days. his appearance was very painful, he had become quite thin, the flesh was livid, his breathing heavy. he was trying to speak. he was conscious that people were in the room, and raised his hand when i asked him whether he understood. he pressed our hands. i then went in search of a priest, and after great difficulty found father cuthbert dunn, of the passionists, who came with me at once and administered baptism and extreme unction--oscar could not take the eucharist. you know i had always promised to bring a priest to oscar when he was dying, and i felt rather guilty that i had so often dissuaded him from becoming a catholic, but you know my reasons for doing so. i then sent wires to frank harris, to holman (for communicating with adrian hope) and to douglas. tucker called again later and said that oscar might linger a few days. a _garde malade_ was requisitioned as the nurse had been rather overworked. terrible offices had to be carried out into which i need not enter. reggie was a perfect wreck. he and i slept at the hotel d'alsace that night in a room upstairs. we were called twice by the nurse, who thought oscar was actually dying. about . in the morning a complete change came over him, the lines of the face altered, and i believe what is called the death rattle began, but i had never heard anything like it before; it sounded like the horrible turning of a crank, and it never ceased until the end. his eyes did not respond to the light test any longer. foam and blood came from his mouth, and had to be wiped away by someone standing by him all the time. at o'clock i went out to get some food, reggie mounting guard. he went out at . . from o'clock we did not leave the room; the painful noise from the throat became louder and louder. reggie and myself destroyed letters to keep ourselves from breaking down. the two nurses were out, and the proprietor of the hotel had come up to take their place; at . the time of his breathing altered. i went to the bedside and held his hand, his pulse began to flutter. he heaved a deep sigh, the only natural one i had heard since i arrived, the limbs seemed to stretch involuntarily, the breathing came fainter; he passed at minutes to p.m. exactly. after washing and winding the body, and removing the appalling _débris_ which had to be burnt, reggie and myself and the proprietor started for the maine to make the official declaration. there is no use recounting the tedious experiences which only make me angry to think about. the excellent dupoirier lost his head and complicated matters by making a mystery over oscar's name, though there was a difficulty, as oscar was registered under the name of melmoth at the hotel, and it is contrary to the french law to be under an assumed name in your hotel. from . till p.m. we hung about the maine and the commissaire de police offices. i then got angry and insisted on going to gesling, the undertaker to the english embassy, to whom father cuthbert had recommended me. after settling matters with him i went off to find some nuns to watch the body. i thought that in paris of all places this would be quite easy, but it was only after incredible difficulties i got two franciscan sisters. gesling was most intelligent and promised to call at the hotel d'alsace at o'clock next morning. while reggie stayed at the hotel interviewing journalists and clamorous creditors, i started with gesling to see officials. we did not part till . , so you can imagine the formalities and oaths and exclamations and signing of papers. dying in paris is really a very difficult and expensive luxury for a foreigner. it was in the afternoon the district doctor called and asked if oscar had committed suicide or was murdered. he would not look at the signed certificates of kleiss and tucker. gesling had warned me the previous evening that owing to the assumed name and oscar's identity, the authorities might insist on his body being taken to the morgue. of course i was appalled at the prospect, it really seemed the final touch of horror. after examining the body, and, indeed, everybody in the hotel, and after a series of drinks and unseasonable jests, and a liberal fee, the district doctor consented to sign the permission for burial. then arrived some other revolting official; he asked how many collars oscar had, and the value of his umbrella. (this is quite true, and not a mere exaggeration of mine.) then various poets and literary people called, raymond de la tailhade, tardieu, charles sibleigh, jehan rictus, robert d'humieres, george sinclair, and various english people, who gave assumed names, together with two veiled women. they were all allowed to see the body when they signed their names.... i am glad to say dear oscar looked calm and dignified, just as he did when he came out of prison, and there was nothing at all horrible about the body after it had been washed. around his neck was the blessed rosary which you gave me, and on the breast a franciscan medal given me by one of the nuns, a few flowers placed there by myself and an anonymous friend who had brought some on behalf of the children, though i do not suppose the children know that their father is dead. of course there was the usual crucifix, candles and holy water. gesling had advised me to have the remains placed in the coffin at once, as decomposition would begin very rapidly, and at . in the evening the men came to screw it down. an unsuccessful photograph of oscar was taken by maurice gilbert at my request, the flashlight did not work properly. henri davray came just before they had put on the lid. he was very kind and nice. on sunday, the next day, alfred douglas arrived, and various people whom i do not know called. i expect most of them were journalists. on monday morning at o'clock, the funeral started from the hotel--we all walked to the church of st. germain des près behind the hearse--alfred douglas, reggie turner and myself, dupoirier, the proprietor of the hotel, henri the nurse, and jules, the servant of the hotel, dr. hennion and maurice gilbert, together with two strangers whom i did not know. after a low mass, said by one of the vicaires at the altar behind the sanctuary, part of the burial office was read by father cuthbert. the suisse told me that there were fifty-six people present--there were five ladies in deep mourning--i had ordered three coaches only, as i had sent out no official notices, being anxious to keep the funeral quiet. the first coach contained father cuthbert and the acolyte; the second alfred douglas, turner, the proprietor of the hotel, and myself; the third contained madame stuart merrill, paul fort, henri davray and sar luis; a cab followed containing strangers unknown to me. the drive took one hour and a half; the grave is at bagneux, in a temporary concession hired in my name--when i am able i shall purchase ground elsewhere at père la chaise for choice. i have not yet decided what to do, or the nature of the monument. there were altogether twenty-four wreaths of flowers; some were sent anonymously. the proprietor of the hotel supplied a pathetic bead trophy, inscribed, "a mon locataire," and there was another of the same kind from "the service de l'hotel," the remaining twenty-two were, of course, of real flowers. wreaths came from, or at the request of, the following: alfred douglas, more adey, reginald turner, miss schuster, arthur clifton, the mercure de france, louis wilkinson, harold mellor, mr. and mrs. texiera de mattos, maurice gilbert, and dr. tucker. at the head of the coffin i placed a wreath of laurels inscribed, "a tribute to his literary achievements and distinction." i tied inside the wreath the following names of those who had shown kindness to him during or after his imprisonment, "arthur humphreys, max beerbohm, arthur clifton, ricketts, shannon, conder, rothenstein, dal young, mrs. leverson, more adey, alfred douglas, reginald turner, frank harris, louis wilkinson, mellor, miss schuster, rowland strong," and by special request a friend who wished to be known as "c.b." i can scarcely speak in moderation of the magnanimity, humanity and charity of john dupoirier, the proprietor of the hotel d'alsace. just before i left paris oscar told me he owed him over £ . from the day oscar was laid up he never said anything about it. he never mentioned the subject to me until after oscar's death, and then i started the subject. he was present at oscar's operation, and attended to him personally every morning. he paid himself for luxuries and necessities ordered by the doctor or by oscar out of his own pocket. i hope that ---- or ---- will at any rate pay him the money still owing. dr. tucker is also owed a large sum of money. he was most kind and attentive, although i think he entirely misunderstood oscar's case. reggie turner had the worst time of all in many ways--he experienced all the horrible uncertainty and the appalling responsibility of which he did not know the extent. it will always be a source of satisfaction to those who were fond of oscar, that he had someone like reggie near him during his last days while he was articulate and sensible of kindness and attention.... robert ross. criticisms by robert ross vol. i. page line . i demur very much to your statement in this paragraph. wilde was too much of a student of greek to have learned anything about controversy from whistler. no doubt whistler was more nimble and more naturally gifted with the power of repartee, but when wilde indulged in controversy with his critics, whether he got the best of it or not, he never borrowed the whistlerian method. cf. his controversy with henley over dorian gray. then whatever you may think of ruskin, wilde learnt a great deal about the history and philosophy of art from him. he learned more from pater and he was the friend and intimate of burne-jones long before he knew whistler. i quite agree with your remark that he had "no joy in conflict" and no doubt he had little or no knowledge of the technique of art in the modern expert's sense. [there never was a greater master of controversy than whistler, and i believe wilde borrowed his method of making fun of the adversary. robert ross's second point is rather controversial. shaw agrees with me that wilde never knew anything really of music or of painting and neither the history nor the so-called philosophy of art makes one a connoisseur of contemporary masters. f.h.] page . last line. for "happy candle" read "happy lamp." it was at the period when oil lamps were put in the middle of the dinner table just before the general introduction of electric light; by putting "candle" you lose the period. cf. du maurier's pictures of dinner parties in _punch_. page . i venture to think that you should state that wilde at the end of his story of 'mr. w.h.' definitely says that the theory is all nonsense. it always appeared to me a semi-satire of shakespearean commentary. i remember wilde saying to me after it was published that his next shakespearean book would be a discussion as to whether the commentators on hamlet were mad or only pretending to be. i think you take wilde's phantasy too seriously but i am not disputing whether you are right or wrong in your opinion of it; but it strikes me as a little solemn when on page you say that the 'whole theory is completely mistaken'; but you are quite right when you say that it did wilde a great deal of harm. [ross does not seem to realise that if the theory were merely fantastic the public might be excused for condemning oscar for playing with such a subject. as a matter of fact i remember oscar defending the theory to me years later with all earnestness: that's why i stated my opinion of it. f.h.] page line . what wilde said in front of the curtain was: "i have enjoyed this evening immensely." [i seem to remember that wilde said this; my note was written after a dinner a day or two later when oscar acted the whole scene over again and probably elaborated his effect. i give the elaboration as most characteristic. f.h.] vol. ii. page line . major nelson was the name of the governor at reading prison. he was one of the most charming men i ever came across. i think he was a little hurt by the "ballad of reading gaol," which he fancied rather reflected on him though major isaacson was the governor at the time the soldier was executed. isaacson was a perfect monster. wilde sent nelson copies of his books, "the ideal husband" and "the importance of being earnest," which were published as you remember after the release, and nelson acknowledged them in a most delightful way. he is dead now. [major isaacson was the governor who boasted to me that he was knocking the nonsense out of wilde; he seemed to me almost inhuman. my report got him relieved and nelson appointed in his stead. nelson was an ideal governor. f.h.] page . in the first edition of the "ballad of reading gaol" issued by methuen i have given the original draft of the poem which was in my hands in september , long before wilde rejoined douglas. i will send you a copy of it if you like, but it is much more likely to reach you if you order it through putnam's in new york as they are methuen's agents. i would like you to see it because it fortifies your opinion about douglas' ridiculous contention; though i could explode the whole thing by wilde's letters to myself from berneval. certain verses were indeed added at naples. i do not know what you will think, but to me they prove the mental decline due to the atmosphere and life that wilde was leading at the time. let us be just and say that perhaps douglas assisted more than he was conscious of in their composition. to me they are terribly poor stuff, but then, unlike yourself, i am a heretic about the ballad. page . in fairness to gide: gide is describing wilde after he had come back from naples in the year , not in , when he had just come out of prison. appendix page line . forgive me if i say it, but i think your method of sneering at curzon unworthy of frank harris. sneer by all means; but not in that particular way. [robert ross is mistaken here: no sneer was intended. i added curzon's title to avoid giving myself the air of an intimate. f.h.] page line . you really are wrong about mellor's admiration for wilde. he liked his society but loathed his writing. i was quite angry in when mellor came to see me at mentone (after wilde's death, of course), when he said he could never see any merit whatever in wilde's plays or books. however the point is a small one. page line . the only thing i can claim to have invented in connection with wilde were the two titles "de profundis" and "the ballad of reading gaol," for which let me say i can produce documentary evidence. the publication of "de profundis" was delayed for a month in because i could not decide on what to call it. it happened to catch on but i do not think it a very good title. page line . do you happen to have compared douglas' translation of salome in lane's first edition (with beardsley's illustrations) with lane's second edition (with beardsley's illustrations) or lane's little editions (without beardsley's illustrations)? or have you ever compared the aforesaid first edition with the original? douglas' translation omits a great deal of the text and is actually wrong as a rendering of the text in many cases. i have had this out with a good many people. i believe douglas is to this day sublimely unconscious that his text, of which there were never more than copies issued in england, has been entirely scrapped; his name at my instance was removed from the current issues for the very good reason that the new translation is not his. but this is merely an observation not a correction. [i talked this matter over with douglas more than once. he did not know french well; but he could understand it and he was a rarely good translator as his version of a baudelaire sonnet shows. in any dispute as to the value of a word or phrase i should prefer his opinion to oscar's. but ross is doubtless right on this point. f.h.] appendix page . your memory is at fault here. the charge against horatio lloyd was of a normal kind. it was for exposing himself to nursemaids in the gardens of the temple. [i have corrected this as indeed i have always used ross's corrections on matters of fact. f.h.] page line . i think there ought to be a capital "e" in exhibition to emphasise that it is the exhibition in paris. the soul of man under socialism when i was editing "the fortnightly review," oscar wilde wrote for me "the soul of man under socialism." on reading it then it seemed to me that he knew very little about socialism and i disliked his airy way of dealing with a religion he hadn't taken the trouble to fathom. the essay now appears to me in a somewhat different light. oscar had no deep understanding of socialism, it is true, much less of the fact that in a healthy body corporate socialism or co-operation would govern all public utilities and public services while the individual would be left in possession of all such industries as his activity can control. but oscar's genius was such that as soon as he had stated one side of the problem he felt that the other side had to be considered and so we get from him if not the ideal of an ordered state at least _aperçus_ of astounding truth and value. for example he writes: "socialism ... by converting private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and insure the material well-being of each member of the community." then comes the return on himself: "but for the full development of life ... something more is needed. what is needed is individualism." and the ideal is always implicit: "private property has led individualism entirely astray. it has made gain not growth its aim." humor too is never far away: "only one class thinks more about money than the rich and that is the poor." his short stay in the united states also benefited him.... "democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. it has been found out." taken all in all a provocative delightful essay which like _salome_ in the æsthetic field marks the end of his _lehrjahre_ and the beginning of his work as a master. a last word in the couple of years that have elapsed since the first edition of this book was published, i have received many letters from readers asking for information about wilde which i have omitted to give. i have been threatened with prosecution and must not speak plainly; but something may be said in answer to those who contend that oscar might have brought forward weightier arguments in his defence than are to be found in chapter xxiv. as a matter of fact i have made him more persuasive than he was. when oscar declared (as recorded on page ) that his weakness was "consistent with the highest ideal of humanity if not a characteristic of it," i asked him: "would he make the same defence for the lesbians?" he turned aside showing the utmost disgust in face and words, thus in my opinion giving his whole case away. he could have made a better defence. he might have said that as we often eat or drink or smoke for pleasure, so we may indulge in other sensualities. if he had argued that his sin was comparatively venial and so personal-peculiar that it carried with it no temptation to the normal man, i should not have disputed his point. moreover, love at its highest is independent of sex and sensuality. since luther we have been living in a centrifugal movement, in a wild individualism where all ties of love and affection have been loosened, and now that the centripetal movement has come into power we shall find that in another fifty years or so friendship and love will win again to honor and affinities of all sorts will proclaim themselves without shame and without fear. in this sense oscar might have regarded himself as a forerunner and not as a survival or "sport." and it may well be that some instinctive feeling of this sort was at the back of his mind though too vague to be formulated in words. for even in our dispute (see page ) he pleaded that the world was becoming more tolerant, which, one hopes, is true. to become more tolerant of the faults of others is the first lesson in the religion of humanity. _the end._ _a letter from lord alfred douglas to oscar wilde that i reproduce here speaks for itself and settles once for all, i imagine, the question of their relations. had lord alfred douglas not denied the truth and posed as oscar wilde's patron, i should never have published this letter though it was given to me to establish the truth. this letter was written between oscar's first and second trial; ten days later oscar wilde was sentenced to two years imprisonment with hard labor._ _frank harris._ hotel des deux mondes , avenue de l'opera, paris wednesday, may , . my darling oscar: have just arrived here. it seems too dreadful to be here without you, but i hope you will join me next week. dieppe was too awful for anything; it is the most depressing place in the world, even petits chevaux was not to be had as the casino was closed. they are very nice here, and i can stay as long as i like without paying my bill which is a good thing, as i am quite penniless. the proprietor is very nice and most sympathetic; he asked after you at once and expressed his regret and indignation at the treatment you had received. i shall have to send this by a cab to the gare du nord to catch the post as i want you to get it first post to-morrow. i am going to see if i can find robert sherard to-morrow if he is in paris. charlie is with me and sends you his best love. i had a long letter from more (adey) this morning about you. do keep up your spirits, my dearest darling. i continue to think of you day and night and i send you all my love. i am always your own loving and devoted boy. bosie. _this letter now published for the first time is the most characteristic i received from oscar wilde in the years after his imprisonment. it dates i think from the winter of , say some eight months after his release. f.h._ hotel de nice rue des beaux arts paris my dear frank: i cannot express to you how deeply touched i am by your letter--it is _une vraie poignée de main_. i simply long to see you and to come again in contact with your strong sane wonderful personality. i cannot understand about the poem (the ballad of reading gaol) my publisher tells me that, as i had begged him to do, he sent the two _first_ copies to the "saturday" and the "chronicle"--and he also tells me that arthur symons told him he had written especially to you to ask you to allow him to do a _signed_ article. i suppose publishers are untrustworthy. they certainly always look it. i hope some notice will appear, as your paper, or rather yourself, is a great force in london and when you speak men listen. i of course feel that the poem is too autobiographical and that real experience are alien things that should never influence one, but it was wrung out of me, a cry of pain, the cry of marsyas, not the song of apollo. still, there are some good things in it. i feel as if i had made a sonnet out of skilly, and that is something. when you return from monte carlo please let me know. i long to dine with you. as regards a comedy, my dear frank, i have lost the mainspring of life and art--_la joie de vivre_--it is dreadful. i have pleasures and passions, but the joy of life is gone. i am going under, the morgue yawns for me. i go and look at my zinc bed there. after all i had a wonderful life, which is, i fear, over. but i must dine once with you first. ever yours, oscar wilde. footnotes: [ ] oscar told me this story; but as it only concerns lord alfred douglas, and throws no new light on oscar's character, i don't use it. [ ] this is extravagant condemnation of lord alfred douglas' want of education; for he certainly knew a great deal about the poetic art even then and he has since acquired a very considerable knowledge of "elizabethan song." [ ] whoever wishes to understand this bitter allusion should read his father's letter to lord alfred douglas transcribed in the first volume. the marquis of queensberry doesn't hesitate to hint why his son was "sent down" from oxford. [ ] cfr. appendix: "criticisms by robert ross." [ ] oscar is not flattering his friend in this: lord alfred douglas has written two or three sonnets which rank among the best in the language. [ ] this statement--more than half true--is oscar wilde's _apologia_ and justification. [ ] this is, i believe, true and the explanation that follows is probably true also. [ ] baccarat is not played in the casino: _roulette_ and _trente et quarante_ are the games: roulette was lord alfred douglas' favourite. [ ] this is a confession almost as much as an accusation. [ ] oscar here crosses the _t's_ and dots the _i's_ of his charge. [ ] the previous accusation repeated, with bitterest sarcasm. [ ] lord alfred douglas is well above the middle height: he holds himself badly but is fully five feet nine inches in height. [ ] the old accusation. [ ] mr. beerbohm tree. [ ] the very truth, it seems to me. [ ] proving another guilty would not have exculpated oscar. readers of my book will remember that i urged oscar to tell the truth and how he answered me. [ ] as will be seen from a letter of oscar wilde which i reproduce later, i supplied the clothes. [ ] his letter was merely an acknowledgment that he had received the clothes and cheque and was grateful. i saw nothing in it to answer as he had not even mentioned the driving tour. [ ] i felt hurt that he dropped the idea without giving me any reason or even letting me know his change of purpose. [ ] i think this was true; though it had never struck me till i read this letter. later, in order to excuse himself for not working, he magnified the effect on his health of prison life. a year after his release i think he had as large a reserve of nervous energy as ever. [ ] fifty pounds was all oscar asked me: the whole sum agreed upon. as a matter of fact i gave him fifty pounds more before leaving paris. i didn't then know that he had ever told the scenario to anyone else, much less sold it; though i ought perhaps to have guessed it.--f.h. [ ] i (frank harris) noticed at reading that his hair was getting grey in front and at the sides; but when we met later the grey had disappeared. i thought he used some dye. i only mention this to show how two good witnesses can differ on a plain matter of fact. [ ] ross found afterwards that they amounted to £ . memories of oscar wilde by g. bernard shaw copyright, , by bernard shaw introduction george bernard shaw ordered a special copy of this book of mine: "oscar wilde: his life and confessions," as soon as it was announced. i sent it to him and asked him to write me his opinion of the book. in due course i received the following mss. from him in which he tells me what he thinks of my work:--"the best life of wilde, ... wilde's memory will have to stand or fall by it"; and then goes on to relate all his own meetings with wilde, the impressions they made upon him and his judgment of wilde as a writer and as a man. he has given himself this labor, he says, in order that i may publish his views in the appendix to my book if i think fit--an example, not only of shaw's sympathy and generosity, but of his light way of treating his own kindness. i am delighted to be able to put shaw's considered judgment of wilde beside my own for the benefit of my readers. for if there had been anything i had misseen or misjudged in wilde, or any prominent trait of his character i had failed to note, the sin, whether of omission or commission, could scarcely have escaped this other pair of keen eyes. now indeed this biography of wilde may be regarded as definitive. shaw says his judgment of wilde is severer than mine--"far sterner," are his words; but i am not sure that this is an exact estimate. while shaw accentuates wilde's snobbishness, he discounts his "irish charm," and though he praises highly his gifts as dramatist and story-teller he lays little stress on his genuine kindness of nature and the courteous smiling ways which made him so incomparable a companion and intimate. on the other hand he excuses wilde's perversion as pathological, as hereditary "giantism," and so lightens the darkest shadows just as he has toned down the lights. i never saw anything abnormal in oscar wilde either in body or soul save an extravagant sensuality and an absolute adoration of beauty and comeliness; and so, with his own confessions and practises before me, i had to block him in, to use painters' jargon, with black shadows, and was delighted to find high lights to balance them--lights of courtesies, graces and unselfish kindness of heart. on the whole i think our two pictures are very much alike and i am sure a good many readers will be almost as grateful to shaw for his collaboration and corroboration as i am. postscript since writing this foreword i have received the proof of his contribution which i had sent to shaw. he has made some slight corrections in the text which, of course, have been carried out, and some comments besides on my notes as editor. these, too, i have naturally wished to use and so, to avoid confusion, have inserted them in italics and with his initials. i hope the sequence will be clear to the reader. my memories of oscar wilde by bernard shaw my dear harris:-- "i have an interesting letter of yours to answer; but when you ask me to exchange biographies, you take an unfair advantage of the changes of scene and bustling movement of your own adventures. my autobiography would be like my best plays, fearfully long, and not divided into acts. just consider this life of wilde which you have just sent me, and which i finished ten minutes ago after putting aside everything else to read it at one stroke. "why was wilde so good a subject for a biography that none of the previous attempts which you have just wiped out are bad? just because his stupendous laziness simplified his life almost as if he knew instinctively that there must be no episodes to spoil the great situation at the end of the last act but one. it was a well made life in the scribe sense. it was as simple as the life of des grieux, manon lescaut's lover; and it beat that by omitting manon and making des grieux his own lover and his own hero. "des grieux was a worthless rascal by all conventional standards; and we forgive him everything. we think we forgive him because he was unselfish and loved greatly. oscar seems to have said: 'i will love nobody: i will be utterly selfish; and i will be not merely a rascal but a monster; and you shall forgive me everything. in other words, i will reduce your standards to absurdity, not by writing them down, though i could do that so well--in fact, _have_ done it--but by actually living them down and dying them down.' "however, i mustn't start writing a book to you about wilde: i must just tumble a few things together and tell you them. to take things in the order of your book, i can remember only one occasion on which i saw sir william wilde, who, by the way, operated on my father to correct a squint, and overdid the correction so much that my father squinted the other way all the rest of his life. to this day i never notice a squint: it is as normal to me as a nose or a tall hat. "i was a boy at a concert in the antient concert rooms in brunswick street in dublin. everybody was in evening dress; and--unless i am mixing up this concert with another (in which case i doubt if the wildes would have been present)--the lord lieutenant was there with his blue waistcoated courtiers. wilde was dressed in snuffy brown; and as he had the sort of skin that never looks clean, he produced a dramatic effect beside lady wilde (in full fig) of being, like frederick the great, beyond soap and water, as his nietzschean son was beyond good and evil. he was currently reported to have a family in every farmhouse; and the wonder was that lady wilde didn't mind--evidently a tradition from the travers case, which i did not know about until i read your account, as i was only eight in . "lady wilde was nice to me in london during the desperate days between my arrival in and my first earning of an income by my pen in , or rather until, a few years earlier, i threw myself into socialism and cut myself contemptuously loose from everything of which her at-homes--themselves desperate affairs enough, as you saw for yourself--were part. i was at two or three of them; and i once dined with her in company with an ex-tragedy queen named miss glynn, who, having no visible external ears, reared a head like a turnip. lady wilde talked about schopenhauer; and miss glynn told me that gladstone formed his oratorical style on charles kean. "i ask myself where and how i came across lady wilde; for we had no social relations in the dublin days. the explanation must be that my sister, then a very attractive girl who sang beautifully, had met and made some sort of innocent conquest of both oscar and willie. i met oscar once at one of the at-homes; and he came and spoke to me with an evident intention of being specially kind to me. we put each other out frightfully; and this odd difficulty persisted between us to the very last, even when we were no longer mere boyish novices and had become men of the world with plenty of skill in social intercourse. i saw him very seldom, as i avoided literary and artistic society like the plague, and refused the few invitations i received to go into society with burlesque ferocity, so as to keep out of it without offending people past their willingness to indulge me as a privileged lunatic. "the last time i saw him was at that tragic luncheon of yours at the café royal; and i am quite sure our total of meetings from first to last did not exceed twelve, and may not have exceeded six. "i definitely recollect six: ( ) at the at-home aforesaid. ( ) at macmurdo's house in fitzroy street in the days of the century guild and its paper '_the hobby horse_.' ( ) at a meeting somewhere in westminster at which i delivered an address on socialism, and at which oscar turned up and spoke. robert ross surprised me greatly by telling me, long after oscar's death, that it was this address of mine that moved oscar to try his hand at a similar feat by writing 'the soul of man under socialism.' ( ) a chance meeting near the stage door of the haymarket theatre, at which our queer shyness of one another made our resolutely cordial and appreciative conversation so difficult that our final laugh and shake-hands was almost a reciprocal confession. ( ) a really pleasant afternoon we spent together on catching one another in a place where our presence was an absurdity. it was some exhibition in chelsea: a naval commemoration, where there was a replica of nelson's victory and a set of p. & o. cabins which made one seasick by mere association of ideas. i don't know why i went or why wilde went; but we did; and the question what the devil we were doing in that galley tickled us both. it was my sole experience of oscar's wonderful gift as a raconteur. i remember particularly an amazingly elaborate story which you have no doubt heard from him: an example of the cumulation of a single effect, as in mark twain's story of the man who was persuaded to put lightning conductor after lightning conductor at every possible point on his roof until a thunderstorm came and all the lightning in the heavens went for his house and wiped it out. "oscar's much more carefully and elegantly worked out story was of a young man who invented a theatre stall which economized space by ingenious contrivances which were all described. a friend of his invited twenty millionaires to meet him at dinner so that he might interest them in the invention. the young man convinced them completely by his demonstration of the saving in a theatre holding, in ordinary seats, six hundred people, leaving them eager and ready to make his fortune. unfortunately he went on to calculate the annual saving in all the theatres of the world; then in all the churches of the world; then in all the legislatures; estimating finally the incidental and moral and religious effects of the invention until at the end of an hour he had estimated a profit of several thousand millions: the climax of course being that the millionaires folded their tents and silently stole away, leaving the ruined inventor a marked man for life. "wilde and i got on extraordinarily well on this occasion. i had not to talk myself, but to listen to a man telling me stories better than i could have told them. we did not refer to art, about which, excluding literature from the definition, he knew only what could be picked up by reading about it. he was in a tweed suit and low hat like myself, and had been detected and had detected me in the act of clandestinely spending a happy day at rosherville gardens instead of pontificating in his frock coat and so forth. and he had an audience on whom not one of his subtlest effects was lost. and so for once our meeting was a success; and i understood why morris, when he was dying slowly, enjoyed a visit from wilde more than from anybody else, as i understand why you say in your book that you would rather have wilde back than any friend you have ever talked to, even though he was incapable of friendship, though not of the most touching kindness[ ] on occasion. [footnote : excellent analysis. [ed.]] "our sixth meeting, the only other one i can remember, was the one at the café royal. on that occasion he was not too preoccupied with his danger to be disgusted with me because i, who had praised his first plays handsomely, had turned traitor over 'the importance of being earnest.' clever as it was, it was his first really heartless play. in the others the chivalry of the eighteenth century irishman and the romance of the disciple of théophile gautier (oscar was really old-fashioned in the irish way, except as a critic of morals) not only gave a certain kindness and gallantry to the serious passages and to the handling of the women, but provided that proximity of emotion without which laughter, however irresistible, is destructive and sinister. in 'the importance of being earnest' this had vanished; and the play, though extremely funny, was essentially hateful. i had no idea that oscar was going to the dogs, and that this represented a real degeneracy produced by his debaucheries. i thought he was still developing; and i hazarded the unhappy guess that 'the importance of being earnest' was in idea a young work written or projected long before under the influence of gilbert and furbished up for alexander as a potboiler. at the café royal that day i calmly asked him whether i was not right. he indignantly repudiated my guess, and said loftily (the only time he ever tried on me the attitude he took to john gray and his more abject disciples) that he was disappointed in me. i suppose i said, 'then what on earth has happened to you?' but i recollect nothing more on that subject except that we did not quarrel over it. "when he was sentenced i spent a railway journey on a socialist lecturing excursion to the north drafting a petition for his release. after that i met willie wilde at a theatre which i think must have been the duke of york's, because i connect it vaguely with st. martin's lane. i spoke to him about the petition, asking him whether anything of the sort was being done, and warning him that though i and stewart headlam would sign it, that would be no use, as we were two notorious cranks, and our names would by themselves reduce the petition to absurdity and do oscar more harm than good. willie cordially agreed, and added, with maudlin pathos and an inconceivable want of tact: 'oscar was not a man of bad character: you could have trusted him with a woman anywhere.' he convinced me, as you discovered later, that signatures would not be obtainable; so the petition project dropped; and i don't know what became of my draft. "when wilde was in paris during his last phase i made a point of sending him inscribed copies of all my books as they came out; and he did the same to me. "in writing about wilde and whistler, in the days when they were treated as witty triflers, and called oscar and jimmy in print, i always made a point of taking them seriously and with scrupulous good manners. wilde on his part also made a point of recognizing me as a man of distinction by his manner, and repudiating the current estimate of me as a mere jester. this was not the usual reciprocal-admiration trick: i believe he was sincere, and felt indignant at what he thought was a vulgar underestimate of me; and i had the same feeling about him. my impulse to rally to him in his misfortune, and my disgust at 'the man wilde' scurrilities of the newspapers, was irresistible: i don't quite know why; for my charity to his perversion, and my recognition of the fact that it does not imply any general depravity or coarseness of character, came to me through reading and observation, not through sympathy. "i have all the normal violent repugnance to homosexuality--if it is really normal, which nowadays one is sometimes provoked to doubt. "also, i was in no way predisposed to like him: he was my fellow-townsman, and a very prime specimen of the sort of fellow-townsman i most loathed: to wit, the dublin snob. his irish charm, potent with englishmen, did not exist for me; and on the whole it may be claimed for him that he got no regard from me that he did not earn. "what first established a friendly feeling in me was, unexpectedly enough, the affair of the chicago anarchists, whose homer you constituted yourself by '_the bomb_.' i tried to get some literary men in london, all heroic rebels and skeptics on paper, to sign a memorial asking for the reprieve of these unfortunate men. the only signature i got was oscar's. it was a completely disinterested act on his part; and it secured my distinguished consideration for him for the rest of his life. "to return for a moment to lady wilde. you know that there is a disease called giantism, caused by 'a certain morbid process in the sphenoid bone of the skull--viz., an excessive development of the anterior lobe of the pituitary body' (this is from the nearest encyclopedia). 'when this condition does not become active until after the age of twenty-five, by which time the long bones are consolidated, the result is acromegaly, which chiefly manifests itself in an enlargement of the hands and feet.' i never saw lady wilde's feet; but her hands were enormous, and never went straight to their aim when they grasped anything, but minced about, feeling for it. and the gigantic splaying of her palm was reproduced in her lumbar region. "now oscar was an overgrown man, with something not quite normal about his bigness--something that made lady colin campbell, who hated him, describe him as 'that great white caterpillar.' you yourself describe the disagreeable impression he made on you physically, in spite of his fine eyes and style. well, i have always maintained that oscar was a giant in the pathological sense, and that this explains a good deal of his weakness. "i think you have affectionately underrated his snobbery, mentioning only the pardonable and indeed justifiable side of it; the love of fine names and distinguished associations and luxury and good manners.[ ] you say repeatedly, and _on certain planes_, truly, that he was not bitter and did not use his tongue to wound people. but this is not true on the snobbish plane. on one occasion he wrote about t.p. o'connor with deliberate, studied, wounding insolence, with his merrion square protestant pretentiousness in full cry against the catholic. he repeatedly declaimed against the vulgarity of the british journalist, not as you or i might, but as an expression of the odious class feeling that is itself the vilest vulgarity. he made the mistake of not knowing his place. he objected to be addressed as wilde, declaring that he was oscar to his intimates and mr. wilde to others, quite unconscious of the fact that he was imposing on the men with whom, as a critic and journalist, he had to live and work, the alternative of granting him an intimacy he had no right to ask or a deference to which he had no claim. the vulgar hated him for snubbing them; and the valiant men damned his impudence and cut him. thus he was left with a band of devoted satellites on the one hand, and a dining-out connection on the other, with here and there a man of talent and personality enough to command his respect, but utterly without that fortifying body of acquaintance among plain men in which a man must move as himself a plain man, and be smith and jones and wilde and shaw and harris instead of bosie and robbie and oscar and mister. this is the sort of folly that does not last forever in a man of wilde's ability; but it lasted long enough to prevent oscar laying any solid social foundations.[ ] [footnote : i had touched on the evil side of his snobbery, i thought, by saying that it was only famous actresses and great ladies that he ever talked about, and in telling how he loved to speak of the great houses such as clumber to which he had been invited, and by half a dozen other hints scattered through my book. i had attacked english snobbery so strenuously in my book on "the man shakespeare," had resented its influence on the finest english intelligence so bitterly, that i thought if i again laid stress on it in wilde, people would think i was crazy on the subject. but he was a snob, both by nature and training, and i understand by snob what shaw evidently understands by it here.] [footnote : the reason that oscar, snobbish as he was, and admirer of england and the english as he was, could not lay any solid social foundations in england was, in my opinion, his intellectual interests and his intellectual superiority to the men he met. no one with a fine mind devoted to things of the spirit is capable of laying solid social foundations in england. shaw, too, has no solid social foundations in that country. _this passing shot at english society serves it right. yet able men have found niches in london. where was oscar's?--g.b.s._] "another difficulty i have already hinted at. wilde started as an apostle of art; and in that capacity he was a humbug. the notion that a portora boy, passed on to t.c.d. and thence to oxford and spending his vacations in dublin, could without special circumstances have any genuine intimacy with music and painting, is to me ridiculous.[ ] when wilde was at portora, i was at home in a house where important musical works, including several typical masterpieces, were being rehearsed from the point of blank amateur ignorance up to fitness for public performance. i could whistle them from the first bar to the last as a butcher's boy whistles music hall songs, before i was twelve. the toleration of popular music--strauss's waltzes, for instance--was to me positively a painful acquirement, a sort of republican duty. [footnote : i had already marked it down to put in this popular edition of my book that wilde continually pretended to a knowledge of music which he had not got. he could hardly tell one tune from another, but he loved to talk of that "scarlet thing of dvorak," hoping in this way to be accepted as a real critic of music, when he knew nothing about it and cared even less. his eulogies of music and painting betrayed him continually though he did not know it.] "i was so fascinated by painting that i haunted the national gallery, which doyle had made perhaps the finest collection of its size in the world; and i longed for money to buy painting materials with. this afterwards saved me from starving: it was as a critic of music and painting in the _world_ that i won through my ten years of journalism before i finished up with you on the _saturday review_. i could make deaf stockbrokers read my two pages on music, the alleged joke being that i knew nothing about it. the real joke was that i knew all about it. "now it was quite evident to me, as it was to whistler and beardsley, that oscar knew no more about pictures[ ] than anyone of his general culture and with his opportunities can pick up as he goes along. he could be witty about art, as i could be witty about engineering; but that is no use when you have to seize and hold the attention and interest of people who really love music and painting. therefore, oscar was handicapped by a false start, and got a reputation[ ] for shallowness and insincerity which he never retrieved until it was too late. [footnote : i touched upon oscar's ignorance of art sufficiently i think, when i said in my book that he had learned all he knew of art and of controversy from whistler, and that his lectures on the subject, even after sitting at the feet of the master, were almost worthless.] [footnote : perfectly true, and a notable instance of shaw's insight.] "comedy: the criticism of morals and manners _viva voce_, was his real forte. when he settled down to that he was great. but, as you found when you approached meredith about him, his initial mistake had produced that 'rather low opinion of wilde's capacities,' that 'deep-rooted contempt for the showman in him,' which persisted as a first impression and will persist until the last man who remembers his esthetic period has perished. the world has been in some ways so unjust to him that one must be careful not to be unjust to the world. "in the preface on education, called 'parents and children,' to my volume of plays beginning with _misalliance_, there is a section headed 'artist idolatry,' which is really about wilde. dealing with 'the powers enjoyed by brilliant persons who are also connoisseurs in art,' i say, 'the influence they can exercise on young people who have been brought up in the darkness and wretchedness of a home without art, and in whom a natural bent towards art has always been baffled and snubbed, is incredible to those who have not witnessed and understood it. he (or she) who reveals the world of art to them opens heaven to them. they become satellites, disciples, worshippers of the apostle. now the apostle may be a voluptuary without much conscience. nature may have given him enough virtue to suffice in a reasonable environment. but this allowance may not be enough to defend him against the temptation and demoralization of finding himself a little god on the strength of what ought to be a quite ordinary culture. he may find adorers in all directions in our uncultivated society among people of stronger character than himself, not one of whom, if they had been artistically educated, would have had anything to learn from him, or regarded him as in any way extraordinary apart from his actual achievements as an artist. tartufe is not always a priest. indeed, he is not always a rascal: he is often a weak man absurdly credited with omniscience and perfection, and taking unfair advantages only because they are offered to him and he is too weak to refuse. give everyone his culture, and no one will offer him more than his due.' "that paragraph was the outcome of a walk and talk i had one afternoon at chartres with robert ross. "you reveal wilde as a weaker man than i thought him: i still believe that his fierce irish pride had something to do with his refusal to run away from the trial. but in the main your evidence is conclusive. it was part of his tragedy that people asked more moral strength from him that he could bear the burden of, because they made the very common mistake--of which actors get the benefit--of regarding style as evidence of strength, just as in the case of women they are apt to regard paint as evidence of beauty. now wilde was so in love with style that he never realized the danger of biting off more than he could chew: in other words, of putting up more style than his matter would carry. wise kings wear shabby clothes, and leave the gold lace to the drum major. "you do not, unless my memory is betraying me as usual, quite recollect the order of events just before the trial. that day at the café royal, wilde said he had come to ask you to go into the witness box next day and testify that _dorian gray_ was a highly moral work. your answer was something like this: 'for god's sake, man, put everything on that plane out of your head. you don't realize what is going to happen to you. it is not going to be a matter of clever talk about your books. they are going to bring up a string of witnesses that will put art and literature out of the question. clarke will throw up his brief. he will carry the case to a certain point; and then, when he sees the avalanche coming, he will back out and leave you in the dock. what you have to do is to cross to france to-night. leave a letter saying that you cannot face the squalor and horror of a law case; that you are an artist and unfitted for such things. don't stay here clutching at straws like testimonials to _dorian gray_. _i tell you i know._ i know what is going to happen. i know clarke's sort. i know what evidence they have got. you must go.' "it was no use. wilde was in a curious double temper. he made no pretence either of innocence or of questioning the folly of his proceedings against queensberry. but he had an infatuate haughtiness as to the impossibility of his retreating, and as to his right to dictate your course. douglas sat in silence, a haughty indignant silence, copying wilde's attitude as all wilde's admirers did, but quite probably influencing wilde as you suggest, by the copy. oscar finally rose with a mixture of impatience and his grand air, and walked out with the remark that he had now found out who were his real friends; and douglas followed him, absurdly smaller, and imitating his walk, like a curate following an archbishop.[ ] you remember it the other way about; but just consider this. douglas was in the wretched position of having ruined wilde merely to annoy his father, and of having attempted it so idiotically that he had actually prepared a triumph for him. he was, besides, much the youngest man present, and looked younger than he was. you did not make him welcome: as far as i recollect you did not greet him by a word or nod. if he had given the smallest provocation or attempted to take the lead in any way, i should not have given twopence for the chance of your keeping your temper. and wilde, even in his ruin--which, however, he did not yet fully realize--kept his air of authority on questions of taste and conduct. it was practically impossible under such circumstances that douglas should have taken the stage in any way. everyone thought him a horrid little brat; but i, not having met him before to my knowledge, and having some sort of flair for his literary talent, was curious to hear what he had to say for himself. but, except to echo wilde once or twice, he said nothing.[ ] you are right in effect, because it was evident that wilde was in his hands, and was really echoing him. but wilde automatically kept the prompter off the stage and himself in the middle of it. [footnote : this is an inimitable picture, but shaw's fine sense of comedy has misled him. the scene took place absolutely as i recorded it. douglas went out first saying--"your telling him to run away shows that you are no friend of oscar's." then oscar got up to follow him. he said good-bye to shaw, adding a courteous word or two. as he turned to the door i got up and said:--"i hope you do not doubt my friendship; you have no reason to." "i do not think this is friendly of you, frank," he said, and went on out.] [footnote : i am sure douglas took the initiative and walked out first. _i have no doubt you are right, and that my vision of the exit is really a reminiscence of the entrance. in fact, now that you prompt my memory, i recall quite distinctly that douglas, who came in as the follower, went out as the leader, and that the last word was spoken by wilde after he had gone.--g.b.s._] "what your book needs to complete it is a portrait of yourself as good as your portrait of wilde. oscar was not combative, though he was supercilious in his early pose. when his snobbery was not in action, he liked to make people devoted to him and to flatter them exquisitely with that end. mrs. calvert, whose great final period as a stage old woman began with her appearance in my _arms and the man_, told me one day, when apologizing for being, as she thought, a bad rehearser, that no author had ever been so nice to her except mr. wilde. "pugnacious people, if they did not actually terrify oscar, were at least the sort of people he could not control, and whom he feared as possibly able to coerce him. you suggest that the queensberry pugnacity was something that oscar could not deal with successfully. but how in that case could oscar have felt quite safe with you? you were more pugnacious than six queensberrys rolled into one. when people asked, 'what has frank harris been?' the usual reply was, 'obviously a pirate from the spanish main.' "oscar, from the moment he gained your attachment, could never have been afraid of what you might do to him, as he was sufficient of a connoisseur in blut bruderschaft to appreciate yours; but he must always have been mortally afraid of what you might do or say to his friends.[ ] [footnote : this insight on shaw's part makes me smile because it is absolutely true. oscar commended bosie douglas to me again and again and again, begged me to be nice to him if we ever met by chance; but i refused to meet him for months and months.] "you had quite an infernal scorn for nineteen out of twenty of the men and women you met in the circles he most wished to propitiate; and nothing could induce you to keep your knife in its sheath when they jarred on you. the spanish main itself would have blushed rosy red at your language when classical invective did not suffice to express your feelings. "it may be that if, say, edmund gosse had come to oscar when he was out on bail, with a couple of first class tickets in his pocket, and gently suggested a mild trip to folkestone, or the channel islands, oscar might have let himself be coaxed away. but to be called on to gallop _ventre à terre_ to erith--it might have been deal--and hoist the jolly roger on board your lugger, was like casting a light comedian and first lover for _richard iii_. oscar could not see himself in the part. "i must not press the point too far; but it illustrates, i think, what does not come out at all in your book: that you were a very different person from the submissive and sympathetic disciples to whom he was accustomed. there are things more terrifying to a soul like oscar's than an as yet unrealized possibility of a sentence of hard labor. a voyage with captain kidd may have been one of them. wilde was a conventional man: his unconventionality was the very pedantry of convention: never was there a man less an outlaw than he. you were a born outlaw, and will never be anything else. "that is why, in his relations with you, he appears as a man always shirking action--more of a coward (all men are cowards more or less) than so proud a man can have been. still this does not affect the truth and power of your portrait. wilde's memory will have to stand or fall by it. "you will be blamed, i imagine, because you have not written a lying epitaph instead of a faithful chronicle and study of him; but you will not lose your sleep over that. as a matter of fact, you could not have carried kindness further without sentimental folly. i should have made a far sterner summing up. i am sure oscar has not found the gates of heaven shut against him: he is too good company to be excluded; but he can hardly have been greeted as, 'thou good and faithful servant.' the first thing we ask a servant for is a testimonial to honesty, sobriety and industry; for we soon find out that these are the scarce things, and that geniuses[ ] and clever people are as common as rats. well, oscar was not sober, not honest, not industrious. society praised him for being idle, and persecuted him savagely for an aberration which it had better have left unadvertized, thereby making a hero of him; for it is in the nature of people to worship those who have been made to suffer horribly: indeed i have often said that if the crucifixion could be proved a myth, and jesus convicted of dying of old age in comfortable circumstances, christianity would lose ninety-nine per cent. of its devotees. [footnote : the english paste in shaw; genius is about the rarest thing on earth whereas the necessary quantum of "honesty, sobriety and industry," is beaten by life into nine humans out of ten.--ed. _if so, it is the tenth who comes my way.--g.b.s._] "we must try to imagine what judgment we should have passed on oscar if he had been a normal man, and had dug his grave with his teeth in the ordinary respectable fashion, as his brother willie did. this brother, by the way, gives us some cue; for willie, who had exactly the same education and the same chances, must be ruthlessly set aside by literary history as a vulgar journalist of no account. well, suppose oscar and willie had both died the day before queensberry left that card at the club! oscar would still have been remembered as a wit and a dandy, and would have had a niche beside congreve in the drama. a volume of his aphorisms would have stood creditably on the library shelf with la rochefoucauld's maxims. we should have missed the 'ballad of reading gaol' and 'de profundis'; but he would still have cut a considerable figure in the dictionary of national biography, and been read and quoted outside the british museum reading room. "as to the 'ballad' and 'de profundis,' i think it is greatly to oscar's credit that, whilst he was sincere and deeply moved when he was protesting against the cruelty of our present system to children and to prisoners generally, he could not write about his own individual share in that suffering with any conviction or sympathy.[ ] except for the passage where he describes his exposure at clapham junction, there is hardly a line in 'de profundis' that he might not have written as a literary feat five years earlier. but in the 'ballad,' even in borrowing form and melody from coleridge, he shews that he could pity others when he could not seriously pity himself. and this, i think, may be pleaded against the reproach that he was selfish. externally, in the ordinary action of life as distinguished from the literary action proper to his genius, he was no doubt sluggish and weak because of his giantism. he ended as an unproductive drunkard and swindler; for the repeated sales of the daventry plot, in so far as they imposed on the buyers and were not transparent excuses for begging, were undeniably swindles. for all that, he does not appear in his writings a selfish or base-minded man. he is at his worst and weakest in the suppressed[ ] part of 'de profundis'; but in my opinion it had better be published, for several reasons. it explains some of his personal weakness by the stifling narrowness of his daily round, ruinous to a man whose proper place was in a large public life. and its concealment is mischievous because, first, it leads people to imagine all sorts of horrors in a document which contains nothing worse than any record of the squabbles of two touchy idlers; and, second, it is clearly a monstrous thing that douglas should have a torpedo launched at him and timed to explode after his death. the torpedo is a very harmless squib; for there is nothing in it that cannot be guessed from douglas's own book; but the public does not know that. by the way, it is rather a humorous stroke of fate's irony that the son of the marquis of queensberry should be forced to expiate his sins by suffering a succession of blows beneath the belt. [footnote : superb criticism.] [footnote : i have said this in my way.] "now that you have written the best life of oscar wilde, let us have the best life of frank harris. otherwise the man behind your works will go down to posterity[ ] as the hero of my very inadequate preface to 'the dark lady of the sonnets.'" g. bernard shaw. [footnote : a characteristic flirt of shaw's humor. he is a great caricaturist and not a portrait-painter. when he thinks of my celtic face and aggressive american frankness he talks of me as pugnacious and a pirate: "a captain kidd": in his preface to "the fair lady of the sonnets" he praises my "idiosyncratic gift of pity"; says that i am "wise through pity"; then he extols me as a prophet, not seeing that a pitying sage, prophet and pirate constitute an inhuman superman. i shall do more for shaw than he has been able to do for me; he is the first figure in my new volume of "contemporary portraits." i have portrayed him there at his best, as i love to think of him, and henceforth he'll have to try to live up to my conception and that will keep him, i'm afraid, on strain. _god help me!--g.b.s._] none