The Amenities of Book-Collecting and Kindred Affections

by A. Edward Newton

Southey’s life gives the lie to that solemn remark about genius being simply a capacity for hard work: if it were so, he would have ranked high; he worked incessantly, produced his to-day neglected poems, supported his family and contributed toward the support of the families of his friends. He was a good man, and worked himself to death; but he was not a genius.

On the other hand, Wilde was; but his life was not good, it was not pure; he did injury to his friends; and to his wife and children, the greatest wrong a man could do them, so that she died of a broken heart, and his sons live under an assumed name; yet, notwithstanding all this, perhaps to some extent by reason of it, he is a most interesting personality, and no doubt his future place in literature will be to some extent influenced by the fate which struck him down just at the moment of his greatest success.

Remembering Dr. Johnson’s remark that in lapidary work a man is not upon oath, it has always seemed to me that something like the epitaph he wrote for Goldsmith’s monument in Westminster Abbey might with equal justice have been carved upon Wilde’s obscure tombstone in a neglected corner of Bagneux Cemetery in Paris. The inscription I refer to translates: “He left scarcely any style of writing untouched and touched nothing that he did not adorn.”

I am too good a Goldsmithian to compare Goldsmith, with all his faults and follies, to Wilde, with his faults and follies, and vices superadded; but Wilde wrote “Dorian Gray,” a novel original and powerful in conception, as powerful as “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”; and remembering that Wilde was also an essayist, a poet, and a dramatist, I think we may fairly say that he too touched nothing that he did not adorn.

But, to begin at the beginning. Wilde was not especially fortunate in his parents. His father was a surgeon-oculist of Dublin, and was knighted by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland—just why, does not appear, nor is it important; his son always seemed a little ashamed of the incident. His mother was the daughter of a clergyman of the Church of England. She was “advanced” for her time, wrote prose and verse, under the nom de plume of “Speranza,” which were published frequently in a magazine, which was finally suppressed for sedition. If Lady Wilde was emancipated in thought, of her lord it may be said that he put no restraint whatever upon his acts. They were a brilliant, but what we would call to-day a Bohemian, couple. I have formed an impression that the father, in spite of certain weaknesses of character, was a man of solid attainments, while of the mother someone has said that she reminded him of a tragedy queen at a suburban theatre. This is awful.

Oscar Wilde was a second son, born in Dublin, on the 16th of October, 1854. He went to a school at Enniskillen, afterwards to Trinity College, Dublin, and finally to Magdalen College, Oxford. He had already begun to make a name for himself at Trinity, where he won a gold medal for an essay on the Greek comic poets; but when, in June, 1878, he received the Newdigate Prize for English verse for a poem, “Ravenna,” which was recited at the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, it can fairly be said that he had achieved distinction.

While at Magdalen, Wilde is said to have fallen under the influence of Ruskin, and spent some time in breaking stones on the highways, upon which operation Ruskin was experimenting. It may be admitted that the work for its own sake never attracted Wilde: it was the reward which followed—breakfast-parties, with informal and unlimited talk, in Ruskin’s rooms.

One does not have to read much of Wilde to discover that he had as great an aversion to games, which kept him in the open, as to physical labor. Bernard Shaw, that other Irish enigma, who in many ways of thought and speech resembles Wilde, when asked what his recreations were, replied, “Anything except sport.” Wilde said that he would not play cricket because of the indecent postures it demanded; fox-hunting—his phrase will be remembered—was “the unspeakable after the uneatable.” But he was the leader, if not the founder, of the æsthetic cult, the symbols of which were peacock-feathers, sunflowers, lilies, and blue china. His rooms, perhaps the most talked about in Oxford, were beautifully paneled in oak, decorated with porcelain supposed to be very valuable, and hung with old engravings. From the windows there was a lovely view of the River Cherwell and the beautiful grounds of Magdalen College.

He soon made himself the most talked-of person in the place: abusing his foes, who feared his tongue. His friends, as he later said of someone, did not care for him very much—no one cares to furnish material for incessant persiflage.

When he left Oxford Oscar Wilde was already a well-known figure: his sayings were passed from mouth to mouth, and he was a favorite subject for caricature in the pages of “Punch.” Finally, he became known to all the world as Bunthorne in Gilbert and Sullivan’s opera, “Patience.” From being the most talked-of man in Oxford, he became the most talked-of man in London—a very different thing: many a reputation has been lost on the road between Oxford and London. His reputation, stimulated by long hair and velveteen knee-breeches, gave Whistler a chance to say, “Our Oscar is knee plush ultra.” People compared him with Disraeli. When he first became the talk of the town, great things were expected of him; just what, no one presumed to say. To keep in the going while the going was good, Wilde published his volume of Poems (1881); it followed that everyone wanted to know what this singular young man had to say for himself, and paid half a guinea to find out. The volume immediately went through several editions, and, as I have mentioned, was reprinted in this country.