The Complete Short Fiction

by Oscar Wilde

  After some time a large White Duck swam up to him. She had yellow legs, and webbed feet, and was considered a great beauty on account of her waddle.

  ‘Quack, quack, quack,’ she said. ‘What a curious shape you are! May I ask were you born like that, or is it the result of an accident?’

  ‘It is quite evident that you have always lived in the country,’ answered the Rocket, ‘otherwise you would know who I am. However, I excuse your ignorance. It would be unfair to expect other people to be as remarkable as oneself. You will no doubt be surprised to hear that I can fly up into the sky, and come down in a shower of golden rain.’

  ‘I don’t think much of that,’ said the Duck, ‘as I cannot see what use it is to any one. Now, if you could plough the fields like the ox, or draw a cart like the horse, or look after the sheep like the collie-dog, that would be something.’

  ‘My good creature,’ cried the Rocket in a very haughty tone of voice, ‘I see that you belong to the lower orders. A person of my position is never useful. We have certain accomplishments, and that is more than sufficient. I have no sympathy myself with industry of any kind, least of all with such industries as you seem to recommend. Indeed, I have always been of opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.’7

  ‘Well, well,’ said the Duck, who was of a very peaceable disposition, and never quarrelled with any one, ‘everybody has different tastes. I hope, at any rate, that you are going to take up your residence here.’

  ‘Oh! dear no,’ cried the Rocket. ‘I am merely a visitor, a distinguished visitor. The fact is that I find this place rather tedious. There is neither society here, nor solitude. In fact, it is essentially suburban. I shall probably go back to Court, for I know that I am destined to make a sensation in the world.’

  ‘I had thoughts of entering public life once myself,’ remarked the Duck; ‘there are so many things that need reforming. Indeed, I took the chair at a meeting some time ago, and we passed resolutions condemning everything that we did not like. However, they did not seem to have much effect. Now I go in for domesticity, and look after my family.’

  ‘I am made for public life,’ said the Rocket, ‘and so are all my relations, even the humblest of them. Whenever we appear we excite great attention. I have not actually appeared myself, but when I do so it will be a magnificent sight. As for domesticity, it ages one rapidly, and distracts one’s mind from higher things.’

  ‘Ah! the higher things of life, how fine they are!’ said the Duck; ‘and that reminds me how hungry I feel:’ and she swam away down the stream, saying, ‘Quack, quack, quack.’

  ‘Come back! come back!’ screamed the Rocket, ‘I have a great deal to say to you;’ but the Duck paid no attention to him. ‘I am glad that she has gone,’ he said to himself, ‘she has a decidedly middle-class mind;’ and he sank a little deeper still into the mud, and began to think about the loneliness of genius, when suddenly two little boys in white smocks came running down the bank, with a kettle and some faggots.

  ‘This must be the deputation,’ said the Rocket, and he tried to look very dignified.

  ‘Hallo!’ cried one of the boys, ‘look at this old stick! I wonder how it came here;’ and he picked the Rocket out of the ditch.

  ‘OLD Stick!’ said the Rocket, ‘impossible! GOLD Stick, that is what he said. Gold Stick is very complimentary. In fact, he mistakes me for one of the Court dignitaries!’8

  ‘Let us put it into the fire!’ said the other boy, ‘it will help to boil the kettle.’

  So they piled the faggots together, and put the Rocket on top, and lit the fire.

  ‘This is magnificent,’ cried the Rocket, ‘they are going to let me off in broad daylight, so that every one can see me.’

  ‘We will go to sleep now,’ they said, ‘and when we wake up the kettle will be boiled;’ and they lay down on the grass, and shut their eyes.

  The Rocket was very damp, so he took a long time to burn. At last, however, the fire caught him.

  ‘Now I am going off!’ he cried, and he made himself very stiff and straight. ‘I know I shall go much higher than the stars, much higher than the moon, much higher than the sun. In fact, I shall go so high that –’

  Fizz! Fizz! Fizz! and he went straight up into the air.

  ‘Delightful!’ he cried, ‘I shall go on like this for ever. What a success I am!’

  But nobody saw him.

  Then he began to feel a curious tingling sensation all over him.

  ‘Now I am going to explode,’ he cried. ‘I shall set the whole world on fire, and make such a noise, that nobody will talk about anything else for a whole year.’ And he certainly did explode. Bang! Bang! Bang! went the gunpowder. There was no doubt about it.

  But nobody heard him, not even the two little boys, for they were sound asleep.

  Then all that was left of him was the stick, and this fell down on the back of a Goose who was taking a walk by the side of the ditch.

  ‘Good heavens!’ cried the Goose. ‘It is going to rain sticks;’ and she rushed into the water.

  ‘I knew I should create a great sensation,’ gasped the Rocket, and he went out.

  The Portrait of Mr. W.H.

  The Portrait of Mr. W. H.

  I had been dining with Erskine in his pretty little house in Birdcage Walk,1 and we were sitting in the library over our coffee and cigarettes, when the question of literary forgeries happened to turn up in conversation. I cannot at present remember how it was that we stuck upon this somewhat curious topic, as it was at that time, but I know that we had a long discussion about Macpherson, Ireland, and Chatterton,2 and that with regard to the last I insisted that his so-called forgeries were merely the result of an artistic desire for perfect representation; that we had no right to quarrel with an artist for the conditions under which he chooses to present his work; and that all Art being to a certain degree a mode of acting, an attempt to realise one’s own personality on some imaginative plane3 out of reach of the trammelling accidents and limitations of real life, to censure an artist for a forgery was to confuse an ethical with an aesthetical problem.

  Erskine, who was a good deal older than I was, and had been listening to me with the amused deference of a man of forty, suddenly put his hand upon my shoulder and said to me, ‘What would you say about a young man who had a strange theory about a certain work of art, believed in his theory, and committed a forgery in order to prove it?’

  ‘Ah! that is quite a different matter,’ I answered.

  Erskine remained silent for a few moments, looking at the thin grey threads of smoke that were rising from his cigarette. ‘Yes,’ he said, after a pause, ‘quite different.’

  There was something in the tone of his voice, a slight touch of bitterness perhaps, that excited my curiosity. ‘Did you ever know anybody who did that?’ I cried.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered, throwing his cigarette into the fire, – ‘a great friend of mine, Cyril Graham.4 He was very fascinating, and very foolish, and very heartless. However, he left me the only legacy I ever received in my life.’

  ‘What was that?’ I exclaimed. Erskine rose from his seat, and going over to a tall inlaid cabinet that stood between the two windows, unlocked it, and came back to where I was sitting, holding in his hand a small panel picture set in an old and somewhat tarnished Elizabethan frame.

  It was a full-length portrait of a young man in late sixteenth-century costume, standing by a table, with his right hand resting on an open book. He seemed about seventeen years of age, and was of quite extraordinary personal beauty, though evidently somewhat effeminate. Indeed, had it not been for the dress and the closely cropped hair, one would have said that the face, with its dreamy wistful eyes, and its delicate scarlet lips, was the face of a girl. In manner, and especially in the treatment of the hands, the picture reminded one of François Clouet’s later work.5 The black velvet doublet with its fantastically gilded points, and the peacock-blue background against which
it showed up so pleasantly, and from which it gained such luminous value of colour, were quite in Clouet’s style; and the two masks of Tragedy and Comedy that hung somewhat formally from the marble pedestal had that hard severity of touch – so different from the facile grace of the Italians – which even at the Court of France the great Flemish master never completely lost, and which in itself has always been a characteristic of the northern temper.

  ‘It is a charming thing,’ I cried; ‘but who is this wonderful young man, whose beauty Art has so happily preserved for us?’

  ‘This is the portrait of Mr. W. H.,’ said Erskine, with a sad smile. It might have been a chance effect of light, but it seemed to me that his eyes were quite bright with tears.

  ‘Mr. W. H.!’ I exclaimed; ‘who was Mr. W. H.?’

  ‘Don’t you remember?’ he answered; ‘look at the book on which his hand is resting.’

  ‘I see there is some writing there, but I cannot make it out,’ I replied.

  ‘Take this magnifying-glass and try,’ said Erskine, with the same sad smile still playing about his mouth.

  I took the glass, and moving the lamp a little nearer, I began to spell out the crabbed sixteenth-century handwriting. ‘To the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets’… ‘Good heavens!’ I cried, ‘is this Shakespeare’s Mr. W. H.?’

  ‘Cyril Graham used to say so,’ muttered Erskine.

  ‘But it is not a bit like Lord Pembroke,’6 I answered. ‘I know the Penshurst portraits7 very well. I was staying near there a few weeks ago.’

  ‘Do you really believe then that the Sonnets are addressed to Lord Pembroke?’ he asked.

  ‘I am sure of it,’ I answered. ‘Pembroke, Shakespeare, and Mrs. Mary Fitton8 are the three personages of the Sonnets; there is no doubt at all about it.’

  ‘Well, I agree with you,’ said Erskine, ‘but I did not always think so. I used to believe – well, I suppose I used to believe in Cyril Graham and his theory.’

  ‘And what was that?’ I asked, looking at the wonderful portrait, which had already begun to have a strange fascination for me.

  ‘It is a long story,’ said Erskine, taking the picture away from me – rather abruptly I thought at the time – ‘a very long story; but if you care to hear it, I will tell it to you.’

  ‘I love theories about the Sonnets,’ I cried; ‘but I don’t think I am likely to be converted to any new idea. The matter has ceased to be a mystery to any one. Indeed, I wonder that it ever was a mystery.’

  ‘As I don’t believe in the theory, I am not likely to convert you to it,’ said Erskine, laughing; ‘but it may interest you.’

  ‘Tell it to me, of course,’ I answered. ‘If it is half as delightful as the picture, I shall be more than satisfied.’

  ‘Well,’ said Erskine, lighting a cigarette, ‘I must begin by telling you about Cyril Graham himself. He and I were at the same house at Eton. I was a year or two older than he was, but we were immense friends, and did all our work and all our play together. There was, of course, a good deal more play than work, but I cannot say that I am sorry for that. It is always an advantage not to have received a sound commercial education, and what I learned in the playing fields at Eton9 has been quite as useful to me as anything I was taught at Cambridge. I should tell you that Cyril’s father and mother were both dead. They had been drowned in a horrible yachting accident off the Isle of Wight. His father had been in the diplomatic service, and had married a daughter, the only daughter, in fact, of old Lord Crediton, who became Cyril’s guardian after the death of his parents. I don’t think that Lord Crediton cared very much for Cyril. He had never really forgiven his daughter for marrying a man who had no title. He was an extraordinary old aristocrat, who swore like a costermonger, and had the manners of a farmer. I remember seeing him once on Speech-day. He growled at me, gave me a sovereign, and told me not to grow up “a damned Radical” like my father. Cyril had very little affection for him, and was only too glad to spend most of his holidays with us in Scotland. They never really got on together at all. Cyril thought him a bear, and he thought Cyril effeminate. He was effeminate, I suppose, in some things, though he was a very good rider and a capital fencer. In fact he got the foils before he left Eton. But he was very languid in his manner, and not a little vain of his good looks, and had a strong objection to football. The two things that really gave him pleasure were poetry and acting. At Eton he was always dressing up and reciting Shakespeare, and when we went up to Trinity he became a member of the A.D.C.10 his first term. I remember I was always very jealous of his acting. I was absurdly devoted to him; I suppose because we were so different in some things. I was a rather awkward, weakly lad, with huge feet, and horribly freckled. Freckles run in Scotch families just as gout does in English families. Cyril used to say that of the two he preferred the gout; but he always set an absurdly high value on personal appearance, and once read a paper before our debating society to prove that it was better to be good-looking than to be good.11 He certainly was wonderfully handsome. People who did not like him, Philistines12 and college tutors, and young men reading for the Church, used to say that he was merely pretty; but there was a great deal more in his face than mere prettiness. I think he was the most splendid creature I ever saw, and nothing could exceed the grace of his movements, the charm of his manner. He fascinated everybody who was worth fascinating, and a great many people who were not. He was often wilful and petulant, and I used to think him dreadfully insincere. It was due, I think, chiefly to his inordinate desire to please. Poor Cyril! I told him once that he was contented with very cheap triumphs, but he only laughed. He was horribly spoiled. All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.

  ‘However, I must tell you about Cyril’s acting. You know that no actresses are allowed to play at the A. D. C. At least they were not in my time. I don’t know how it is now. Well, of course Cyril was always cast for the girls’ parts, and when As You Like It was produced he played Rosalind. It was a marvellous performance. In fact, Cyril Graham was the only perfect Rosalind I have ever seen. It would be impossible to describe to you the beauty, the delicacy, the refinement of the whole thing. It made an immense sensation, and the horrid little theatre, as it was then, was crowded every night. Even when I read the play now I can’t help thinking of Cyril. It might have been written for him. The next term he took his degree, and came to London to read for the diplomatic.13 But he never did any work. He spent his days in reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and his evenings at the theatre. He was, of course, wild to go on the stage. It was all that I and Lord Crediton could do to prevent him. Perhaps if he had gone on the stage he would be alive now. It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.14 I hope you will never fall into that error. If you do, you will be sorry for it.

  ‘Well, to come to the real point of the story, one day I got a letter from Cyril asking me to come round to his rooms that evening. He had charming chambers in Piccadilly overlooking the Green Park,15 and as I used to go to see him every day, I was rather surprised at his taking the trouble to write. Of course I went, and when I arrived I found him in a state of great excitement. He told me that he had at last discovered the true secret of Shakespeare’s Sonnets; that all the scholars and critics had been entirely on the wrong tack; and that he was the first who, working purely by internal evidence, had found out who Mr. W. H. really was. He was perfectly wild with delight, and for a long time would not tell me his theory. Finally, he produced a bundle of notes, took his copy of the Sonnets off the mantelpiece, and sat down and gave me a long lecture on the whole subject.

  ‘He began by pointing out that the young man to whom Shakespeare addressed these strangely passionate poems must have been somebody who was a really vital factor in the development of his dramatic art, and that this could not be said either of Lord Pembroke or Lord Southampton.16 Indeed, whoever he was, he could not have been anybody of high birth, as was shown very clearly b
y the 25th Sonnet, in which Shakespeare contrasts himself with those who are “great princes’ favourites;” says quite frankly –

  “Let those who are in favour with their stars

  Of public honour and proud titles boast,

  Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,

  Unlook’d for joy in that I honour most;”

  and ends the sonnet by congratulating himself on the mean state of him he so adored:

  “Then happy I, that loved and am beloved

  Where I may not remove nor be removed.”

  This sonnet Cyril declared would be quite unintelligible if we fancied that it was addressed to either the Earl of Pembroke or the Earl of Southampton, both of whom were men of the highest position in England and fully entitled to be called “great princes”; and he in corroboration of his view read me Sonnets CXXIV and CXXV, in which Shakespeare tells us that his love is not “the child of state,” that it “suffers not in smiling pomp,” but is “builded far from accident.” I listened with a good deal of interest, for I don’t think the point had ever been made before; but what followed was still more curious, and seemed to me at the time to entirely dispose of Pembroke’s claim. We know from Meres17 that the Sonnets had been written before 1598, and Sonnet CIV informs us that Shakespeare’s friendship for Mr. W. H. had been already in existence for three years. Now Lord Pembroke, who was born in 1580, did not come to London till he was eighteen years of age, that is to say till 1598, and Shakespeare’s acquaintance with Mr. W. H. must have begun in 1594, or at the latest in 1595. Shakespeare, accordingly, could not have known Lord Pembroke till after the Sonnets had been written.

  ‘Cyril pointed out also that Pembroke’s father did not the till 1601; whereas it was evident from the line,

  “You had a father, let your son say so,”

  that the father of Mr. W. H. was dead in 1598. Besides, it was absurd to imagine that any publisher of the time, and the preface is from the publisher’s hand,18 would have ventured to address William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, as Mr. W. H.; the case of Lord Buckhurst being spoken of as Mr. Sackville19 being not really a parallel instance, as Lord Buckhurst was not a peer, but merely the younger son of a peer, with a courtesy title, and the passage in England’s Parnassus, where he is so spoken of, is not a formal and stately dedication, but simply a casual allusion. So far for Lord Pembroke, whose supposed claims Cyril easily demolished while I sat by in wonder. With Lord Southampton Cyril had even less difficulty. Southampton became at a very early age the lover of Elizabeth Vernon,20 so he needed no entreaties to marry; he was not beautiful; he did not resemble his mother, as Mr. W. H. did –