Oscar

by Sturgis, Matthew;

  The rift gave Wilde a first bracing taste of British hypocrisy. For all his poetic allusions to kissing ‘the mouth of sin’, he himself still remained notably pure in his conduct. There was no trace of sexual deviancy, and little enough of sexual interest. Rennell Rodd recalled his sensitivity to ‘the peril of undesirable associations’ – and his remark about one seemingly impressive gentleman, met with at a studio exhibition, that, although ‘most agreeable… he is not a man in whose company we could afford to be seen’.48

  Thrust out of Tite Street, and banished from Miles’s exalted social milieu, Wilde moved to Mayfair. He took a pair of furnished rooms on the third floor at 9 Charles Street (now Carlos Place), just off Grosvenor Square. The rooms were small but the address ‘implied opulence’ and indeed the house, kept by a retired butler and his wife, offered very good service. Its decor was anything but Aesthetic: the walls were panelled in oak and decorated with old engravings in heavy black frames.49

  The move was a piece of defiant extravagance, but it did bring into even sharper focus Wilde’s pressing need for money. Living alone, he now had to rely entirely on his own resources. The achievements of 1881 were gratifying: he had been parodied in Punch and Patience, had published Poems and been presented to the Prince of Wales; he could lay claim to ‘fame’, ‘notoriety’ and some measure of ‘success’. Yet none of these things produced what he called ‘the means for sustaining life’. If Wilde was reluctant to address the matter, his friends were more practical. George Lewis and his wife took a positive interest in him – as they also did in Lillie Langtry, who was similarly in need of a career. Discussions were held at Portland Place on ‘schemes for Oscar’s future’.50

  Wilde continued to hope for a production of Vera. His expectations were perhaps encouraged by the success of another Russian-set melodrama, Michael Strogoff, which had opened at the Adelphi in March. And the topicality of his own play seemed to have been enhanced that same month when Czar Alexander II was assassinated by Nihilists in St Petersburg. Nevertheless, in the absence of any immediate offers, he needed to explore different options – some more fanciful than others. Paragraphs appeared in the papers claiming that ‘Mr Oscar Wilde intends to come before the public next season as a Shakespearian actor’.51 Archibald Forbes – intrepid war correspondent for the Daily News and friend of the Lewises – unhelpfully suggested that, as ‘an alternative to aestheticism and insolvency’, Wilde should ‘enlist in a cavalry regiment and try a year’s soldiering as a private dragoon’ (a notion received with ‘a shudder of horror’ by the penurious Aesthete).52 There were even reports that Wilde might take up nursery gardening and grow ‘acres of daffodils’.53†

  Lewis, though, favoured lecturing in America.54 Good money could be made on the circuit there. Indeed it was the path being followed, very successfully, by Archibald Forbes. The idea had been mooted earlier in the year by Dion Boucicault – and perhaps by Sarah Bernhardt even before that – but Wilde had been wary, doubtful of his ability to speak from a platform.55 Now the moment seemed more propitious. He was becoming ever more self-assured. And growing transatlantic interest in both himself and his work, confirmed by the generous reception of Poems, suggested that he might find an audience.56 The plan was enthusiastically endorsed by his friends and supporters.57

  A promoter had to be found, and Lewis ‘broached the matter’ with the brilliant young impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte. The move was well made, and well timed. Carte had established his reputation as the producer for Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas: he had just completed construction of the luxurious Savoy Theatre as a showcase for their work. International in outlook, he also managed productions and lecture tours across America and the Colonies; he was managing Forbes. He was certainly impressed by Wilde, finding him ‘a clever young man’ with ‘lots to say’.58 But, more than this, he recognized that Wilde offered an opportunity. An American production of Patience had opened in New York in September 1881 and was doing well; others productions were being planned across the country. Although the satire of Aestheticism was greatly enjoyed, direct knowledge of the subject in America was limited. Wilde’s name, however, had frequently been mentioned in the reporting on the opera, not just as the author of a much-discussed book of Aesthetic poems, but as ‘the originator of the aesthetic idea’. Carte realized that if Wilde could be brought to the States ‘with the view of illustrating in a public way his idea of the aesthetic… the general public would be interested in hearing from him’.59 Wilde’s social success in London might also secure him an entrée into American society, lending cachet to the venture and increasing the scope for publicity. More importantly, though, just as Patience had stimulated American interest in Wilde, so Wilde might stimulate American interest in Patience.

  Carte’s intuitions were confirmed by his business partner (and future wife) Helen Lenoir, who was over in New York. A well-connected ‘lady’ journalist there assured her, and Colonel W. F. Morse (the manager of Carte’s New York office), that the American public would certainly be open to hearing Wilde lecture on Aestheticism – providing he did so in costume, with a sunflower in his buttonhole, and a lily in his hand.60 Reassured, Carte acted decisively. A cable was dispatched to Wilde from New York: ‘Responsible agent asks me to enquire if you will consider an offer he makes by letter for fifty readings, beginning November first. This is confidential. Answer.’ Wilde cabled back the next day (1 October): ‘Yes if offer good.’61 It was a basis on which to begin negotiations.62

  For Wilde it was exciting to be in demand. His initial thought was to present three talks: one ‘devoted to a consideration of “The Beautiful” as seen in everyday life’; another ‘illustrative of the poetical methods used by Shakespeare’; and the third, a reading of ‘a Lyric Poem’, most probably his favourite, ‘Charmides’. The response, however, of the American booking agents, who were being solicited by Morse, encouraged him to reconsider. The Americans wanted their Aesthete to talk about Aestheticism – or, as Carte and Morse put it, the ‘latest form of fashionable madness’.63 The notion of a fifty-date tour was soon modified too. It was decided to open in New York, and then – depending on how matters went there – to visit some of the major eastern cities. The date, meanwhile, was pushed back into the new year. News of these arrangements was relayed in the press on both sides of the Atlantic.

  The extent to which Wilde was going to be promoted as an embodiment of the spirit of Patience became gradually more apparent. As Carte reported to Helen Lenoir, Wilde was ‘slightly sensitive’ on the point, ‘although I don’t think appalling[ly] so.’ There was ‘some awkwardness’ after a couple of ‘stupid paragraphs’ appeared in the Sporting Times, one saying that Wilde was being sent out to America ‘as a sandwich man for Patience ’, another claiming that the tour was off, because ‘D’Oyly Carte found that he could get actual “sandwich men” in America with longer hair for half the money’. But Carte was able to smooth matters over, and push forward with his plans.64

  He suggested to Wilde that, on arriving in New York, there would be a virtue in him going to the opera – in the ‘private box’ – ‘and we were to let it be known beforehand’ as ‘he would probably be recognized’. Wilde ‘quite took’ to the idea, as did George Lewis, who was – as ever – on hand. Having gained this point Carte told Wilde that ‘he must not mind my using a little bunkum to push him in America’.65 Wilde was prepared to be persuaded: he had, after all, been using more than a little ‘bunkum’ to push himself in London. Carte stipulated that Wilde, in his lecture, should mention Patience at least once, and that he should appear on the platform dressed, like Bunthorne, in an ‘Aesthetic’ ensemble of black velvet jacket and knee-breeches66 (Wilde already possessed the breeches from his old Masonic outfit, if not from his ‘Prince Rupert’ fancy-dress costume).

  Terms, too, were under discussion. Wilde – guided by George Lewis – finally settled with Carte for half of net receipts, once expenses had been deducted.67 There was much else for Wilde to do: he wor
ked on his lecture, and considered his wardrobe. Besides his Bunthorne costume, he bought a ‘befrogged and wonderfully befurred green overcoat’ together with a Polish cap – provoking the amused indignation of Whistler: ‘OSCAR, – How dare you! What means this disguise? Restore these things to Nathan’s [the theatrical costumier], and never let me find you masquerading the streets of my Chelsea in the combined costumes of Kossuth and Mr. Mantalini.’68‡ Wilde also contacted numerous acquaintances – and friends – asking for letters of introduction. ‘I know what a passport to all that is brilliant and intellectual in America your name is,’ he told the American Minister in London, James Russell Lowell – as well as Lord Houghton and, doubtless, dozens more.69

  In the midst of these preparations a scheme came to fruition for a staging of Vera. It was not to be a full-scale production but a promotional performance – for one afternoon only – on the stage of the Adelphi (Charles Reade’s It’s Never Too Late To Change was running successfully in the evenings). The moving spirit behind the venture seems to have been the actress Mrs Bernard Beere, who was a protégée of Willie’s. And, having launched her career supporting Modjeska, she had come to know Oscar too. She perhaps saw in Vera a chance to establish her credentials as a leading lady. The title role was a striking one; and the piece – coming as it did from ‘Oscar Wilde’ – was sure to attract publicity. ‘Dot’ Boucicault (Dion Boucicault’s twenty-two-year-old son) also agreed to take a ‘prominent part’.70 It is unclear who was to fund the production. Even a one-off matinee involved considerable expense: the theatre had to be hired; staff had to be paid. Wilde put the cost at about £100.71 Nevertheless, paragraphs trailing the play – to be staged ‘about the 17th December’ – were soon appearing in the press.72

  Within days, however, they were contradicted. On 30 November the World announced: ‘Considering the present state of political feeling in England, Mr. Oscar Wilde has decided on postponing, for a time, the production of his drama, Vera.’ The suggestion – elaborated in further reports – was that the republican sentiments of the play and the several ‘speeches of a very violent and revolutionary character’ made the piece ‘too risky for the “loyal English gallery and pit”’.73 Indeed it was even claimed that ‘so effusive has become the loyalty in theatrical circles since her Majesty witnessed The Colonel’ (and allowed the leading actor to be presented to her) that Wilde had found it ‘impossible to get actors, for love or money, to impersonate the Republicans in his play’.74 Wilde himself hinted that he had been refused ‘permission’ to mount the piece – presumably by the inspector of plays – on account of its ‘avowedly republican’ tenor.75 While, following the recent assassination of the czar, a diplomatic dimension was also suggested in some quarters: at least one paper reported that the foreign secretary had received a communication on the subject from the Russian ambassador.76 But such reasons, though colourful, and not implausible, seem contrived. They served to divert the public. The postponement was more likely due to lack of funds.77 Wilde consoled himself with the thought that he might find a taker for the play in republican America and – using Boucicault’s name – he sent off copies to various New York producers, as well as to the American actress Clara Morris.78

  The only theatrical debut that Wilde witnessed that winter was Lillie Langtry’s. Having been swept up by Labouchère’s actress-wife, Henriette (very probably through Wilde’s influence), Langtry was bounced into appearing in an amateur production of Tom Taylor’s comic curtain-raiser A Fair Encounter at Twickenham Town Hall.79 Wilde was prominent in the audience, sitting next to Mr Labouchère, ‘the whiteness of [his] cravat, plastron, and waistcoat… relieved by a kerchief of sunflower hue, thrust with cunning carelessness into the last named garment’.80 A few weeks later, he was once more in attendance when Langtry made her London bow – again as an amateur –in a charity production of She Stoops to Conquer at the Haymarket Theatre. The Prince and Princess of Wales were in the royal box, but Wilde still drew notice, sitting in the front row of the stalls, and conversing with Lady Lonsdale during the entr’actes.81

  The event could be accounted a success. Despite Langtry’s limitations as an actress, she had the aura of a star. The press was kind and the public enthusiastic. Wilde was able to praise her ‘wonderfully musical and well-modulated voice’, her ‘delightfully joyous’ manner, and her rich potential.82 Squire Bancroft and his wife, Minnie, who had the management of the Haymarket, were impressed: they promptly engaged her – at a pleasingly ‘high salary’ – to appear in their first production of the coming year. She had, it seemed, found ‘salvation’ upon the stage.83 For Wilde, on the brink of his own new adventure, her success must have been both encouraging and daunting.

  As the time of his departure approached, there was much to hearten him. He was saluted in the 1881 ‘Christmas Number’ of the World as one of that year’s illustrious ‘Lights of London’ (others included Gilbert and Sullivan, Swinburne, Labouchère, Dion Boucicault, Robert Browning and George Lewis).84 Labouchère’s Truth carried a generous paragraph about his forthcoming trip, prophesying success for his ‘Republican play’ and his lectures on ‘modern life in its romantic aspect’;85 from the publishers of an American illustrated weekly called Our Continent he received a cabled request to ‘write a poem, twenty lines, terms a guinea a line; subject – sunflower or lily, to be delivered on arrival’. It was a flattering confirmation of the interest in his work, and a first glimpse of the forthright transatlantic approach to both business and poetry.86

  To send him on his way, Whistler, Rodd and the rest of the Tite Street gang gave him a dinner ‘in a Bohemian tavern’. When Wilde remarked, ‘I hope that I shall not be sea-sick crossing the Atlantic,’ Whistler replied, ‘Well, Oscar, if you are, throw up Burne-Jones.’ On 24 December 1881, with this advice ringing in his ears, he boarded the SS Arizona at Liverpool, bound for New York.87

  * Rossetti’s personal assistant, Hall Cane, claimed that, on receiving a gold-inscribed copy of the book, Rossetti was quick to recognize ‘the gifts that underlay a good deal of [the author’s] amusing affectation’. But this account is undercut by the fact that the poet himself told Jane Morris, on 1 October 1881, ‘I saw the wretched Oscar Wilde book, & glanced at it enough to see clearly what trash it is. Did Georgie [Burne-Jones] say Ned [Burne-Jones] really admires it? If so, he must be driveling.’

  † Discussions over Lillie Langtry’s future followed a not dissimilar path. Frank Miles had suggested she set up a market garden for ‘hardy flowers’; Wilde dismissed the idea, pointing out ‘tragically’ that it would ‘compel the Lily to tramp the fields in muddy boots’. Whistler counselled her to become a painter; other friends suggested millinery and dressmaking. She was offered a generous contract to be a gossip columnist. Wilde, though, was convinced that ‘the stage was the natural solution’ to her future.

  ‡ Lajos Kossuth was a Hungarian (rather than Polish) political reformer; Mr Mantalini was the affected dandy in Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby.

  -PART IV-

  The Remarkable

  Rocket

  1882

  age 27–28

  Oscar Wilde by Napoleon Sarony, 1882.

  1

  The Best Place

  ‘I am torn to bits by Society.’

  oscar wilde

  The SS Arizona arrived off Staten Island on the evening of 2 January 1882. Unable to clear quarantine until the following morning, it anchored outside New York harbour. Wilde, full of the hope, anticipation and anxiety of arrival, had to endure the delay. Whatever his frustration, though, it was more than matched by that of the New York press.

  Colonel Morse and Helen Lenoir had been working with great and effective energy to stimulate interest in Wilde’s advent. They were happy to maintain a certain confusion as to whether Wilde was arriving in America as the comical ‘too-too’ embodiment of Bunthorne and Postlethwaite, or as a brilliant poet and scholar on a serious mission to explain the ‘Aesthetic cult’ to an interested public. An
d they added to both sides of the equation. Among their more ‘serious’ initiatives they had produced a small pamphlet, giving a brief account of ‘the young English poet’ – his distinguished parents, his glittering academic career at Trinity and Oxford (his time at Portora was reduced to a single year), his cultural influences (Ruskin, Italy and ancient Greece), his literary successes (the volume of Poems and his few reviews), his social distinction, and his deep knowledge of Aestheticism. But the glowing portrait was subtly guyed in places. Without quite mentioning either Patience or Punch, the pamphlet acknowledged that Wilde’s ‘exaggerated expression’ of Aesthetic ideas – the excusable ‘enthusiasm and recklessness of youthful speech’ – had led to him being ridiculed by some sections of the British media.1 Much of that ridicule found its way into an anonymous illustrated pamphlet, entitled Ye Soul Agonies in ye life of Oscar Wilde, which offered an alternative introduction to the great Aesthete, running from the moment when, as an infant, he had first closed ‘his mottled fist upon a sunflower’ up to his becoming ‘inseparable’ from Ellen Terry, Sarah Bernhardt and the Prince of Wales.

  The New York papers were eager to add their own touches to this picture; so eager, in fact, that several reporters hired a rowing boat to bring them out to the Arizona as it rode at anchor. Directed by Wilde’s excited fellow passengers, they tracked ‘the great English exponent of Aestheticism’ to the captain’s room. He came out to meet them, amused, but also slightly disconcerted by the jostle of notepads and fusillade of questions: How did he like America? How was the crossing? What was his mission here? What were his plans? Would he produce a play in New York? Would he get it copyrighted? Was he going to lecture? And, if so, how often? How long would he stay in America? Was Aestheticism a philosophy? Could he give a definition of it?