THE FOURTH PERIOD
It is with a sense of both reluctance and relief that I enter upon a short account of the fourth period, insomuch as this or that incident during it throws a light upon the character of him of whom we speak.
With a relief, because it is a far happier and more gracious task to endeavour to criticise and appreciate the literary works of a great genius than it is to chronicle facts in the life of a most unhappy man which may help to elucidate the puzzle of his personality.
With reluctance, because the fourth period is again one of almost unadulterated gloom and sadness. I shall be as brief as possible, and too much already has been written about the last days of Oscar Wilde after his release from prison.
A considerable amount of information has been placed at my disposal, but I design to use none of it. The facts that are already known to those who have taken an interest in Oscar Wilde may be briefly touched upon here, and that is all. An eloquent plea from a near relation of the poet should be respected here, and only such few facts as are really necessary to complete this incomplete study shall be given. "Nothing could have horrified him more than that men calling themselves his friends should publish concerning his latter days details so disgusting as those appearing in your issue of yesterday." Thus a paragraph from the appeal I have mentioned, an appeal which was prompted by the publication of many controversial articles as to the truth, or otherwise, of Mr Wilde's reception into the Roman Church, his debts, his manner of living towards the end. "I should be glad to think that this expression of my wish may put an end to this unpleasant correspondence. If it does not, I can only appeal to your correspondents to be very careful of what they write, and to reflect upon what Mr Oscar Wilde would think if he could read their letters. In life, he never said or countenanced a coarse or common thing. Personally, I write with too much reluctance to reply to them again, and I leave the matter to their sense of decency and chivalry."
Immediately upon his release from prison Oscar Wilde wrote his famous letters to The Daily Chronicle on "Children in Prison and Other Cruelties of Life in Gaol." He told a terrible story of a poor little child whose face was "like a white wedge of sheer terror," and in his eyes "the mute appeal of a hunted animal." Wilde had heard the poor little fellow at breakfast-time crying and calling to be let out. He was calling for his parents, and every now and then the elder prisoner could hear the harsh voice of the warder on duty telling the little boy to be quiet. The child had not been convicted of the offence with which he was charged, but was simply on remand. A kind-hearted warder, finding the little fellow crying with hunger and utterly unable to eat the bread and water given it for breakfast, brought it some sweet biscuits. This, Mr Wilde truthfully said, was a "beautiful action on the warder's part." The child, grateful for the man's kindness, told one of the senior warders about it. The result was that the warder who had brought the biscuits to the starving child was reported and dismissed from the service.
It is not too much to say that this story, told in the prose of a master of prose, written with a crushing and sledgehammer force all the more powerful because it was most marvellously simple, thrilled the whole of England. There followed an even more terrible story.
Three months or so before his release, Wilde had noticed, among the prisoners who took exercise with him, a young prisoner who was obviously either half-witted or trembling upon the verge of insanity. This poor creature used to gesticulate, laugh and talk to himself. "At chapel he used to sit right under the observation of two warders, who carefully watched him all the time. Sometimes he would bury his head in his hands, an offence against the chapel regulations, and his head would be immediately struck up by a warder.... He was on more than one occasion sent out of chapel to his cell, and of course he was continually punished.... I saw that he was becoming insane and was being treated as if he were shamming." There was a terrible denouement to this hideous story. Mr Wilde went on to say in words that do him eternal credit and which no one who has read them could ever forget:
"On Saturday week last, I was in my cell at about one o'clock occupied in cleaning and polishing the tins I had been using for dinner. Suddenly I was startled by the prison silence being broken by the most horrible and revolting shrieks, or rather howls, for at first I thought some animal like a bull or a cow was being unskilfully slaughtered outside the prison walls. I soon realised, however, that the howls proceeded from the basement of the prison, and I knew that some wretched man was being flogged. I need not say how hideous and terrible it was for me, and I began to wonder who it was being punished in this revolting manner. Suddenly it dawned upon me that they might be flogging this unfortunate lunatic. My feelings on the subject need not be chronicled; they have nothing to do with the question.
"The next day, Sunday, I saw the poor fellow at exercise, his weak, ugly, wretched face bloated by tears and hysteria almost beyond recognition. He walked in the centre ring along with the old men, the beggars and the lame people, so that I was able to observe him the whole time. It was my last Sunday in prison, a perfectly lovely day, the finest day we had had the whole year, and there, in the beautiful sunlight, walked this poor creature—made once in the image of God—grinning like an ape, and making with his hands the most fantastic gestures."
The story continued with even more terrible details than these. It is no part of my plan to harrow the feelings of my readers by a reprint of such horrors. I have said enough, I trust, to fulfil my purpose in quoting Oscar Wilde's letters to all—to show how powerfully he himself was moved with pity, and how he strove, even in his own terrible re-entrance to a world which would have none of him, to influence public opinion on the behalf of one who was being done to death, not perhaps by conscious cruelty, but by the awful stupidity of those who live by an inflexible rule which can make no allowance for special circumstances, which is as hard as the nether millstone and as cold as death itself.
So Oscar Wilde passed out of England with pity flowing from his pen and with pity in his heart. I wish that it was possible to end this memoir here. As I have set out to give all the facts which seem necessary to provide a complete picture for readers who know little or nothing of Oscar Wilde's nature, beyond the fact of his triumphs as a playwright and his subsequent disgrace, I must not shrink from proceeding to the end, as I have not shrunk from frankly recording facts in the first and second periods. It would be a fault, and insincere, to allow a deep and very natural sympathy to interfere with the performance, however inadequately it has been carried out, of the task I set out to complete.
Oscar Wilde crossed immediately to Dieppe, and shortly afterwards installed himself in a villa at a small seaside place some miles away from the gay Norman bathing place. His life at Berneval was simple and happy. His biographer, Mr Robert Harborough Sherard, who visited him there, has told of the quiet repose and healing days which Oscar Wilde enjoyed. He had a sufficient sum of money to live in comfort for a year or so, and all would doubtless have gone well with him had it not been for certain malign influences which had already been prominent factors in wrecking his life, and which now appeared again to menace his newly found salvation of mind and spirit. Such references are not within the province of the book, the story has been told elsewhere. The thing would not have been referred to at all, did it not illustrate the impatience and weakness of Wilde's character, even at this point in his history. The malign influences eventually had their way with the poet—that is to say, certain companions whom it was most unwise of him to see or recognise, once more entered into his life in a certain degree.
A letter which was written to a gentleman who has translated a French memoir dealing with the poet, says: "No more beautiful life has 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." The forces of evil were too strong.
Oscar Wilde spent the last few years, and alas! miserable years, of his life in alternations of sordid poverty and sudden waves of temporary prosperity, in the city of Paris. There have been all sorts of stories about these last few years. The truth is simply this. Wilde's intellect was crushed and broken. The creative faculty flamed up for the last time in that brilliant and terrible poem, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." Then it sank again and was never revived. When I say "creative faculty" I mean the faculty of producing a sustained artistic effort. As a talker the poet was never more brilliant. "Every now and again 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 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 intimate learning, or whether he was keeping the table in a roar with his delightfully whimsical humour, a 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 at Athens without going to look at the Parthenon."
I think we should be glad to know that in the wrecked life of this period the poet had some happy moments when he could reconstruct in bright and brilliant surroundings some slight renewal of other days that were gone for ever. There is no doubt at all that friends, both those who had had a good and those who had had a bad influence on his past life, were very kind to him.
He was supplied with enough money to have lived in considerable comfort had he not been incurably reckless and a spendthrift. It has been said that he died in wretched poverty and in debt. This is partly true, but it was entirely his own fault. There is indubitable proof of the fairly large sums he received from time to time. Some of his letters to a man in London, who occasionally employed his pen, have been sold to the curious, and such poignant passages as: "I rely on your sending me a little money to-morrow. I have only succeeded in getting twenty francs from the Concierge, and I am in a bad way," or, "I wish to goodness you could come over, also—send me, if you can, £4 or even £3. I am now trying to leave my hotel and get rooms where I can be at rest, and so stay in during the morning."
These letters seem to show that Oscar Wilde was nearly starving. I can assure my readers this was not the case. With the realisation that there would never be any more place for him in the world had come a carelessness and recklessness to all but immediate and petty sensual gratifications from day to day.
His landlord stated that towards the end it became very difficult for Wilde to write at all. "He used to whip himself up with cognac. A litre bottle would hardly see him through the night. And he ate little. And he took little exercise. He used to sleep till noon, and then breakfast, and then sleep again till five or six in the evening."
This is enough. I have said as little as can well be said. But let us remember the frightful and crushing disabilities under which Wilde suffered. Who is there who dare cast a stone? His death came as a happy release, and it was sordid and dreadful enough to complete the grim tragedy of his life without deviation from its completeness. True, an attached friend was by him at the end. True, the offices of the Holy Catholic Church lightened his passing. Yet, nevertheless, there was an abiding and sinister gloom about all his last hours. Details can be found in other places. "How Oscar Wilde died" was a journalistic sensation at the time.
I will simply quote the words of a French critic, who, after the end, went to pay his last sad duties to the shell which had held the poet's soul: "... The hotel in which he died was one of those horrible places which are called in the popular papers 'Houses of Crime.' A veritable Hercules of a porter led me through a long, evil-smelling corridor. At last the odour of some disinfectant struck my nostrils. An open door. A little square room. I stood before the corpse. His whitish, emaciated face, strangely altered through the growth of a beard after death, seemed to be lost in profound contemplation. A hand, cramped in agony, still clutched the dirty bed cloth. There was no one to watch by his body. Only much later they sent him some flowers. The noise of the street pierced the thin walls of the building. A stale odour filled the air. Ah, what loneliness, what an end!"
If I have quoted this ugly and vulgar picture of the poet's body in the sordid room I have done so with intention.
It is in the contemplation of such scenes as this that our minds and hearts are uplifted from the material to the supreme hope of all of us. The man who had suffered and sinned and done noble things in this world had gone away from it. Doubtless, when the Frenchman with his prying eyes and notebook was gloating over the material sensation of the scene, the soul of the poet was hearing harmonies too long unknown to it, and was beginning to undergo the Purification.
Requiescat.
Oscar Wilde was always a loving student of Dante. In that contempt for the world's opinion, which is sometimes the strength and also the ruin of great geniuses, Wilde bore a strong resemblance to the great Italian who said "Lascia dir le genti." The versatility of Oscar Wilde was supreme, and that is in itself the real solution of whatever is most astonishing in his power or startling in his madness, of all that most draws us towards him or repels us with an equal strength. "A variety of powers almost boundless, a pride not less vast in displaying them—a susceptibility of new impressions and impulses, even beyond the usual allotment of genius ... such were the two great and leading sources of all that varied spectacle which his life exhibited; and that succession of victories achieved by his genius, in almost every field of mind that genius ever trod, and of all those sallies of character in every shape and direction that unchecked feeling and dominant self-will can dictate."
It is not for the author of this memoir, whose attitude has been studiously impersonal throughout, to attempt any dictation to his readers as to the judgment they shall ultimately form upon the character of Oscar Wilde.
At the same time, he hopes that it may not be forbidden him to give his own, and doubtless very imperfect, view. He thinks that in regarding the whole field of the poet's life, as far as it can be known to others, one finds him to be a sweet and noble nature with much of the serenity of "highness" which accompanies a great genius, yet, obscured, soiled, overlapped, and periodically destroyed by a terrible and riotous madness, both of talk and of thought. It is a facile and dangerous thing to attribute all the good and noble actions of any man to his "real self," and to say that all the evil he wrought and did came from madness or irresponsibility. If such a doctrine were to be generally accepted and believed, laws would lose their raison d'être, punishment would become a mockery, and society would inevitably end.
Yet, possibly it may be that some few souls exist and have existed of whom such a statement may be true. If such exceptions do exist and have existed, then surely Oscar Wilde was one of them. There seems to be no other explanation of him but just this; and if we do not accept it I, at anyrate, cannot see any other.
Let each reader of this book appropriate his own, and I conclude the first part of it by repeating the old, old prayer—
Requiescat.
PART II
THE MODERN PLAYWRIGHT
THE DRAMATIST
When Mr George Alexander produced "Lady Windermere's Fan" at the St James's Theatre, in the spring of 1892, it created an unprecedented furore among all ranks of the playgoing public, and placed the author at once upon a pedestal in the Valhalla of the Drama; not on account of the plot, which was frankly somewhat vieux jeu, nor yet upon any striking originality in the types of the personages who were to unravel it, but upon the sparkle of the dialogue, the brilliancy of the epigrams, a condition of things to which the English stage had hitherto been entirely unaccustomed. The author was acclaimed as a playwright who had at last succeeded in clothing stagecraft with the vesture of literature, and with happy phrase and nimble paradox delighted the minds of his audience. What promise of a long succession of social comedies, illuminated by the intimate knowledge of his subject that he so entirely possessed, was held out to us! Here was a man who treated society as it really exists; who was himself living in it; portraying its folk as he knew them, with their virtues and vices coming to them as naturally as the facile flow of their conversation; conversation interlarded with no stilted sentences, no well- (or ill-) rounded periods, but such as that which falls without conscious effort from the lips of people who, in whatever surroundings they may be placed, are, before all things, and at all times, thoroughly at their ease. It may be objected that people in real life, even in the higher life of the Upper Ten, do not habitually scatter sprightly pleasantries abroad as they sit around the five-o'clock tea-table. That Oscar Wilde made every personage he depicted talk as he himself was wont to talk. Passe encore. The real fact remains that he knew the social atmosphere he represented, had breathed it, and was familiar with all its traditions and mannerisms. He gave us the tone of Society as it had never before been given. He was at home in it. He could exhibit a ball upon the stage where real ladies and gentlemen assembled together, quite distinct from the ancient "Adelphi guests" who had hitherto done yeoman's service in every form of entertainment imagined by the dramatist. The company who came to his great parties were at least vraisemblables, beings who conducted themselves as if they really might have been there. And so it was in every scene, in every situation. His types are drawn with the pen of knowledge, dipped in the ink of experience. That was his secret, the keynote of his success. And with what power he used it the world is now fully aware. It is not too much to say that Oscar Wilde revolutionised dramatic art. Henceforth it began to be understood that the playwright who would obtain the merit of a certain plausibility must endeavour to infuse something of the breath of life into his creations, and make them act and talk in a manner that was at least possible.
It has been a popular pose among certain superior persons, equally devoid of humour themselves as of the power of appreciating it in others, that Oscar Wilde sacrificed dramatic action to dialogue; that his plays were lacking in human interest, his plots of the very poorest; a fact that was skilfully concealed by the sallies of smart sayings and witty repartee, which carried the hearers away during the representation, so that in the charm of the style they forgot the absence of the substance. But such is by no means the case. The author recognised, with his fine artistic flair, that mere talk, however admirable, will not carry a play to a successful issue without a strong underlying stratum of histrionic interest to support it. There are situations in his comedies as powerful in their handling as could be desired by the most devout stickler for dramatic intention. There are scenes in which the humorist lays aside his motley, and becomes the moralist, unsparing in his methods to enforce, à l'outrance, the significance of his text. In each of his plays there are moments in which the action is followed by the spectator with absorbed attention; incidents of emotional value treated in no half-hearted fashion. Such are the hall mark of the true dramatist who can touch, with the unerring instinct of the poet, the finest feelings, the deepest sympathies of his audience, and which place Oscar Wilde by the side of Victorien Sardou. As has been well written by one of our most impartial critics: "No other among our playwrights equals this distinguished Frenchman, either in imagination or in poignancy of style."
Again, it has been contended, with a sneer, that the turning out of witty speeches is but a trick, easy of imitation by any theatrical scribe who sets himself to the task. But how many of Wilde's imitators—and there have been not a few—have accomplished such command of language, such literary charm, such "fineness" of wit? Who among them all has ever managed to hold an audience spellbound in the same way? How many have succeeded in drawing from a miscellaneous crowd of spectators such spontaneous expressions of delighted approval as "How brilliant! How true!" first muttered by each under the breath to himself, and then tossed loudly from one to the other in pure enjoyment, as the solid truth, underlying the varnish of the paradox, was borne home to them? Surely, not one can be indicated. Nor is the reason far to seek. For in all Oscar Wilde's seemingly irresponsible witticisms it is not only the device of the inverted epigram that is made a characteristic feature of the dialogue; there is real human nature behind the artificialities, there is poetry beneath the prose, the grip of the master's hand in seemingly toying with truth. And it is the possession of these innate qualities that differentiates the inventor from his imitators, and leaves them hopelessly behind in the race for dramatic distinction.
To invent anything is difficult, and in proportion to its merits praiseworthy. To cavil at that which has been devised, to point with the finger of scorn at its imperfections, to "run it down," is only too easy a pastime. Oscar Wilde was before all an inventor. Whatever he touched he endowed with the gracious gift of style that bore the stamp of his own individual genius. He originated a new treatment for ancient themes. For there is no such thing as an absolutely new "plot." Every play that has been written is founded on doings, dealings, incidents that have happened over and over again. Love, licit or illicit, the mainspring of all drama, is the same to-day as it was yesterday, and will be for ever and ever in this world. One man and one woman, or one woman and two men, or again, as a pleasant variant, two women and one man. Such are the eternal puppets that play the game of Love upon the Stage of Life; the unconscious victims of the sentiment which sometimes makes for tragedy. They are always with us, placed in the same situations, and extricating themselves (or otherwise) in the same old way. So that when a new playwright is condemned by the critics as a furbisher-up of well-known clichés he is hardly treated. He cannot help himself. He must tread the familiar paths, faute de mieux. And the public, with its big human heart and unquestioning traditions, knows this, and is satisfied therewith. Nothing really pleases people so much as to tell them something they already know. What an accomplished dramatist can do is to rehabilitate his characters by the power of his own personality, and by felicitous treatment invest his action with fresh interest. And this is what Oscar Wilde effected in stagecraft. He vitalised it.
It is well-nigh impossible, under the existing conditions of the theatre in England, to form any just appreciation of the dramatist's work at all. A novel may be read at any time, but a play depends on the caprice of a manager to "present" it or not, as suits his commercial convenience. Happily for us the comedies of Oscar Wilde are printed and published, and can be enjoyed equally in the study as in the stalls. We must go back to Congreve and Sheridan to find a parallel. It is the triumph of the littérateur over the histrionic hack, the man whose volumes are taken down from the shelves where they repose, again and again, and require no adventitious aid of scenery and costume to enhance the pleasure they afford. Albeit that the habit of reading plays is not particularly an English one. The old Puritan feeling that all things theatrical were tainted with more or less immorality still clings to many a mind. Emotion is yet looked upon with suspicion, and as the theatre is the hotbed of emotion it is even now regarded in some quarters as a dangerous, if exciting, pleasure-ground. Sober-minded folk prefer rather to take their doses of love tales in the form of the novel, however inexpert, than in that of the play, however masterly it may be. Let an author put to the vote his appeal to his public through their eyes or their ears, it will be found that the eyes have it. They prefer to stop at home and read, as they consider, seriously, than to go abroad and listen to what they hold to be, trivialities. Oscar Wilde has, in great measure, been instrumental in putting these illiberal views to flight. Men and women are now to be found in the theatre when his pieces are represented who not so long ago pooh-poohed the drama from an intelligent standpoint. He has turned attention to the fact that the dramatic method of telling a story may be made as intellectually interesting as in the best-written romances of the novelist. He brought to bear upon his work a singular power of observation, a fine imagination, a unique wit, and above all, and beneath all, an extensive knowledge of human life, and human character. Plays imbued with all these qualities were bound to make their mark. He knocked away the absurd conventions, the stereotyped phrases of the stage as he knew it. He placed on it living people in the place of mechanical puppets, and by his happy inspiration created a new order in the profession of dramaturgy.
It would be an interesting subject for speculation—were it not such a deeply sad one—how far Oscar Wilde, had he been permitted to live, would have gone in the new voie he had chosen for the expression of his artistic perceptions. Between "Lady Windermere's Fan" and "The Importance Of Being Earnest," the first and last of his comedies, there is evidence of very marked and rapid advancement in his art. In the former he shows us the invention of a hitherto unhandseled form of histrionic composition—the dialogue-drama. But he is feeling his way in this new departure of his, diffident of its success; while in the latter he has perfected what was more or less crude, incomplete, found wanting, and what was originally the natural hesitation of the novice has developed into the assured pronouncements of the adept. He was moving onwards. He was making theatrical history. He was becoming a power. And we who now read, mark, learn, be it on the stage or in the study, what he achieved in the production of but four modern comedies, can only premise that to-day he would have "arrived" at the meridian of his art. For, not in vain, was born the delicate wit that played around a philosophy of life, founded upon subtle observation, and one that has animated some of the most prominent literary and dramatic productions of our generation. Not in vain was struck that note of truth and sincerity in social ethics, unheard in the ad captandum strains of our professional novelists. Underlying those "phraseological inversions," so daintily cooed by the dove, was the wisdom of the serpent. It is the spirit of the poet speaking through the medium of prose. It is the utterance of the great artist that must compel attention even from the Philistines who sit in the seats of the scornful.
"LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN"
(Produced by Mr George Alexander at the St James's Theatre on 22nd February 1892)
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 19th April 1903)
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 3rd January 1895)
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.
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 1895, 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 6th 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. 21. 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. 22. 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. 23. And he sware unto her, Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me, I will give it thee, unto the half of my kingdom.
v. 24. And she went forth, and said unto her mother, What shall I ask? And she said, The head of John the Baptist.
v. 25. 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. 26. 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. 27. And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison,
v. 28. And brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel: and the damsel gave it to her mother.
v. 29. 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. 6) 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 1892, 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 1896 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 33 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 1905 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 10th and May 13th 1905
Characters of the drama in the order of their speaking:
A Young Syrian Captain Mr Herbert Alexander Page of Herodias Mrs Gwendolen Bishop 1st Soldier Mr Charles Gee 2nd 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.
| A Young Syrian Captain | Mr Herbert Alexander |
| Page of Herodias | Mrs Gwendolen Bishop |
| 1st Soldier | Mr Charles Gee |
| 2nd 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 |
The following paragraphs are taken from a criticism on the performance which appeared in The Daily Chronicle of 11th May 1905:
"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 1906 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, 1905, 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 110 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, 1907, 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 1904 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 1795. It is described as "A Drama in a prologue and four acts," and was written in 1881. 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.
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, 1800.
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 18th June 1906, 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 1895, 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 1897. It was sent to the author in Paris, and was not heard of again. After his death in 1900 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 400 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 1896.
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 1888, 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 1891, 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 1895 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 1891 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 1881 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."
"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—
(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 1885. 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 13th June 1885. First, an edition of the poem was brought out privately by the Methuen Press in 1904 with five illustrations by Althea Gyles, in which the bizarre note is markedly, though artistically, dominant. Another edition was privately printed in London in 1905 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 cœur?
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 sœurs 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 1894 by Messrs Elkin Mathews and John Lane, and was limited to two hundred copies issued at 42s. with twenty-five on larger paper at 105s. 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'œuvre.
Although the author's identity was concealed under the cypher "C33," 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 1904. 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 7th, 1896.
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 C33, 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 1890; "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, 1890, 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:
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 1609, 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 126 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 1591 and 1597.
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:—
1. 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.
2. That the Sonnets, as we learn from Meres, were written before 1598 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 1594, or at latest 1595, that Lord Pembroke was born in 1580 and did not come to London till he was eighteen (i.e. 1598) so that Shakespeare could not have met him till after the sonnet had been written; and that Pembroke's father did not die till 1601, whereas W. H.'s father was dead in 1598, as is proved by the line—
"You had a father, let your son say so."
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. That the boy's name was Hughes.
These points he proves from the Sonnets themselves. As regards No. 1 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."
2 and 3 effectually dispose of the pretensions of Pembroke and Surrey.
4. 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 20th 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