 Chapter 4 of Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions. Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions, by Frank Harris. Chapter 4. Formative Influences, Oscar's Poems. 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 1876, leaving to his wife, Lady Wilde, nearly all he possessed, some seven thousand pounds, 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, lashings 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 overeducated, 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 1877 he accompanied Professor Mahaffey 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 find 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 Nudigate 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 Peter 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 often used 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 thrown in the Vatican. He preferred Nairobi 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. Langtree, 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 Marion 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 his 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, Cotterboss, 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 wholehearted enthusiasm. Fortunately for them, it is impossible to develop the body without at the same time stealing 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 accidents. 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 Mordlin he had been taught luxurious living, the delight of gratifying expensive tastes. He had been brought up and enervated, so to speak, in capoe. 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 capped 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 siborite in the deadly grapple of modern life, where the first quality is will-power, the only knowledge needed and 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 alumnae Oxoniense's Oscar Wilde described himself on leaving Oxford as a professor of aesthetics 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 muckrakes. Gadarene swine, as Carlisle called them, busily grubbing and grunting in search of pig-nuts. 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 orortries or palaces of art or temples for the spirit. Not the time for a professor of aesthetics, one would say, and assuredly not the place. One wonders whether Zulu land 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 to 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 aesthetics. 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. May hap England was even further removed from the ideal than the would-be professor of aesthetics, 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 organised in England since the Middle Ages. In the meantime, we have invented new arts, new sciences and new letters. When will these be organised 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 pig-nuts, 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 organised 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 organised body. It's as 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 aesthetics 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 cheap jack paid to puff his master's wares. Clearly our professor of aesthetics 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's nature the present is everything. Just for today 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 any one 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. Langtree 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 Neville, Lady de Grey and Mrs. Jeanne, 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 himself 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 Wistler. 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 talked and praised was often totally unsuited to modern conditions. Wistler, 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 Degoncours 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 the most caustic wit. Oscar sat at his feet and imbibed as much as he could of the new aesthetic 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. Humphrey Ward, had come to see an exhibition of whistler's pictures. Filled with an undue sense of his own importance, he button-hulled 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 your shirt 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 aesthetics 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-bridges and silk stockings, wearing strange flowers in his coat, green corn-flowers, 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 lumbard 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 were 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 all 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-bridges and silken hoes, and above all the continual attacks in the society papers, came to his aid, and the book appeared in the early summer of 1881, with all the importance that imposing form, good paper, broad margins, and high price, ten shillings and sixpence, 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 one lily over drenched with rain. The clamorous clang of arms, the ensanguine sky, war's ruin, and the wreck of chivalry, to her proud soul no common fear can bring. Bravely she tarryeth for her lord the king, her soul aflame with passionate ecstasy. Oh hair of gold, oh crimson lips, oh 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, times straightened 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 risartus, 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 Athenaeum gave the book the place of honour in its number for the 23rd of July. The review was severe, but not unjust. Mr. Wild'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, in sincerity, 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. Wild may be aesthetic, but he is not original. A volume of echoes. Swinburne and water. Now, what did the Athenaeum 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 Athenaeum mistook Oscar Wild for a continuator of the pre-Raphaelite movement, with a subconscious and peculiarly English suggestion that whatever is aesthetic 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 two ataleata. Nine Englishmen out of ten took delight in the savage contempt, poured upon what was known euphemistically as the aesthetic 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. Single exclamation point. Oscar at luncheon. Two exclamation points. Oscar at dinner. Three exclamation points. Oscar at supper. Four exclamation points. 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 along willowy hand through his waving hair, he swept away a stray cull paper with the nonchalance of a darset. 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 east-eat, it published such stuff as this. My love is as fair as a lily-flower. The peacock blue has a sacred sheen. O bright are the blooms in her maiden-bar. 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 to his notoriety, but it 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? End of Chapter 4. Recording by Martin Geeson in Hazelmere Surrey. Chapter 5 of Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Martin Geeson. Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions, by Frank Harris. Chapter 5 Oscar's Quarrel with Wistler and Marriage. 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 1880, but fell flat. The assassination of the Tsar Alexander, however, in March 1881, 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 Beer, an actress of some merit, to accept Vera for the stage. It was suddenly announced that Vera would be put on by Mrs. Bernard Beer at the Adelphi in December 1981. 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. His phrase to the revenue offices 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 fugal man of his cast, 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 clerk, 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 the 9th, 1882, 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-bridges and long hair are good as far as they go, but Bunthorn 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 four thousand pounds. He received about twelve hundred pounds, 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 Peter and Arnold, though the titles were borrowed from Whistler. Dr. Ernest Benz, in his monograph on the influence of Peter 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-bridges 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 swallowtail coats, knee-bridges, 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 scarf, if they did not exactly remain to pray, at least left the music hall with feelings of cardial liking, and perhaps to their own surprise, of respect for Oscar Wilde. As he travelled west to Louisville and Omaha, his popularity dwindled 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 the 6th he sent eighty pounds 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 1883, 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 Oscars 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 1885, 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 perciflage too filled me with admiration, and I declared that the lecture ranked with the best ever heard in London, with cold ridges on Shakespeare and collials on heroes. Do my astonishment, Oscar would not admit the superlative quality of Whistler's talk. He thought the message paradoxical, and the ridicule of the professor's 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 Palmal 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, assuriant 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 his special 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 cost 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 1883 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 mask 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 schoolboyish, became quite good. He always said that Balzac, and especially his poet Lucien de Ribanprès, 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 seemed to me inferior even to Vera in interest, more academic and further from life, and when produced in New York in 1891 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 rums 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 rums 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 rums near her. She never doubted his ultimate triumph. She knew all his poems by heart, took the dross for diamonds, and welcomed the chance of introducing her brilliant son to the Irish nationalist members, and other pinch-beck 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 common place. 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 teacups 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 highfalutin 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 aesthetic dresses were extravagant, the enthousiasms 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 Harlitz 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 gin when released from the bottle. The fugal men were determined to find something wonderful in everything he did. And the title of The Harlitz 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 you 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-fared, 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 Renaissance bronzes. In fact, he had all the artists' desires, as well as those of the poet and Vivard. 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. It is 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. It is 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 caviar. 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 at 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. What was to be done? Suddenly he cut the knot and married the daughter of a QC, 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. End of chapter 5 Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey. Chapter 6 of Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Martin Giesen. Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions by Frank Harris. Chapter 6 Oscar Wilde's Faith and Practice. From 1884 on I met Oscar Wilde continually, now at the theatre, now in some society drawing-room. Most often I think at Mrs. Jones, afterwards Lady Centelia. 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 practiced 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. Jones I got to know him better. At the very door Mrs. Jones 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 billious and dirty. He wore a great green scarab ring on one finger. He was overdressed 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 gray eyes were finely expressive, in turn vivacious, laughing, sympathetic, always beautiful. The carven mouth, too, with its heavy, chiseled, 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 Cafe 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 repellent 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 enthousiasms, 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 a remark, Happy Lamp! The delightful impertinence had an extraordinary success. Early in our friendship I was feigned 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 passes 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 wheel. Oscar did not push his thought so far that 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 Comune Bonnice was an ideal which never said anything to him. He cared nothing for the common wheel. 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 one-sidedness. 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 could 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. When 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 Britannium 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 Rubenpré. 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 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 Wilde Goose, I find this. My little fancies clogged with gush, my little liar is false in tone, and when I lyrically moan, I hear the impatient critics tosh. But I have impressions, these are grand, mere dabs of words, mere blobs of tint, displayed on canvas or in print. Men lord and think they understand, a smudge of brown, a smear of yellow, no tail, no subject, there you are, impressions, and the strangest far is that the bards are 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, it is sweet to decay. I have watered with chlorodin, tears of chagrin. The church-yard mould I have planted the inn, upside down, in an intense way, in a rough red flowerpot, sweeter than sin, that I bought for a hipony yesterday. The italics are mine, but the suggestion was always implicit. Yet this constant wind of pure italic hatred blowing against him helped instead of hindering his progress. Strong men are made by opposition. Like kites they go up against the wind. End of chapter 6. Recording by Martin Giesen in Hazelmere Surrey. Chapter 7 of Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Martin Giesen. Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions by Frank Harris. Chapter 7. Oscar's Reputation and Supporters. Believe me, child, all the gentlemen'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, if feat, 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 life-long 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 Palmal 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 one's self, 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, hey, 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 pear 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 Palmal 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 one 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 sale 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 Musianus, 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 fugul men. 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 guild 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 12 to 18 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 Eaton, 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 episcene have soft voices and ingratiating manners, and aren't 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 decadence and esthetes, 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 fugulman 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 Caesar, or an organiser 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 Michelangelo 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 episcene esthetes. 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 calamity, 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 pitting 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 1886 to 7 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 1887 he accepted the editorship of a lady's paper, The Woman's Wilde, 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 1887 to 8 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.