Wilde’s sexual interests, just then, were fixed elsewhere. Being at the Albemarle placed him close to the Bodley Head premises on Vigo Street, where he was able to go over the production details for the new edition of his Poems. On his visits he took note of a tall ‘distinguished looking’ sales assistant called Edward Shelley, often stopping to chat with him for a few moments. The young man – eighteen years old – despite his modest background (his father was a blacksmith) had both literary and social aspirations; he spoke and dressed well, and Wilde described his face as ‘intellectual’. His rather nervous and needy disposition was partially obscured by his eagerness to learn, and his great admiration for Wilde’s work. Wilde encouraged these latter traits with gifts of books, including an inscribed copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray. According to Shelley’s own account, at the end of one day, Wilde invited him to come and dine at the Albemarle. He was thrilled to accept. If he did not recognize that this might be a prelude to seduction, he soon discovered it. Wilde ordered champagne. They talked of books, and about Shelley’s own literary aspirations. Then, after dinner, they sat in Wilde’s rooms, where they continued the conversation over whisky and soda and cigarettes. The evening ended with Wilde taking him to bed.12
The affair was carried on with Wilde’s now habitual recklessness, and in the face of Shelley’s shifting anxieties and demands. It may well have been Shelley that Wilde brought to a party in Frank Harris’s rooms in Jermyn Street that year. After dinner Harris noticed that the young man ‘was angry with Oscar and would scarcely speak to him, and that Oscar was making up to him. I heard snatches of pleading from Oscar – “I beg of you… It is not true… You have no cause”… All the while Oscar was standing apart from the rest of us with an arm on the young man’s shoulder; but his coaxing him was in vain, the youth turned away with petulant, sullen ill-temper.’ It was, Harris recalled, a troubling ‘snap-shot’.13
Nevertheless Shelley was one of those to whom Wilde distributed tickets for the opening night of his play on Saturday 20 February. Wilde arranged for another young friend to sit beside him in the dress circle, and keep him company.14 Others to receive seats, from what Wilde regarded as his too modest allocation, included Frances Forbes-Robertson and Coulson Kernahan. Wilde sent Richard Le Gallienne a pair, urging ‘bring your poem [i.e. wife] to sit beside you’. And he asked Arthur Clifton to look after Constance, and her aunt, in Box D: ‘[Constance] will be very nervous probably, and it would be nice for her to have an old friend with her.’15
In the midst of these arrangements Wilde was struck with ‘a new idea’. Encountering Graham Robertson (another of his invitees) on the eve of the premiere, he instructed him to go to a certain fashionable florist and order ‘a green carnation’ buttonhole for the following night. The carnations were ingeniously coloured, by having their stems placed in a solution of blue-green aniline dye. ‘I want a good many men to wear them tomorrow,’ Wilde explained. ‘It will annoy the public.’ To Robertson’s query, ‘But why annoy the public?’, he replied, ‘It likes to be annoyed.’ The actor playing the young dandy Cecil Graham would also be wearing the strangely tinted flower: ‘People will stare at it and wonder. Then they will look round the house and see every here and there more and more little specks of mystic green. “This must be some secret symbol,” they will say. “What on earth can it mean?”’ ‘And what does it mean?’ Robertson asked. ‘Nothing whatever,’ Wilde said, ‘but that is just what nobody will guess.’ Wilde was delighted at the thought.16†
Frank Harris’s memory of the first night was that the house was not only brilliant and fashionable but also intellectually distinguished. To the social columnist from the Pall Mall Gazette it was a distinctively ‘Oscar Wilde audience’ – the playwright’s many modes and moods reflected in the gathering of ‘painters and lawyers, actors and managers, pretty women’ (none prettier than Lillie Langtry, prominent in a box), and the ‘score of faultless young dandies’ scattered through the stalls, many of them sporting green carnations. The audience loved the play from the very first exchanges. Mrs Jopling’s recollection was that she had never enjoyed a first night so much.17
The critics, however, were less tractable. There remained much professional resentment of Wilde in literary and theatrical circles. During the first interval Harris went down to the foyer, where he found the newspaper reviewers quite untouched by the delightful ‘freshness’ and ‘unexpected humour’ of Wilde’s treatment. ‘The humour is mechanical, unreal,’ pronounced Joe Knight, the lumbering critic for the Athenaeum (a man whom Wilde had consistently mocked during his book-reviewing career). It was an opinion supported by several other pressmen. Harris was astounded and said so. Even less than halfway through, he thought the play might be ‘the best’ and most ‘brilliant’ comedy in the English language; worthy to rank alongside Congreve. The dialogue – with its ‘stream of whimsical, elusive flippancies’ – might be far more artificial than even the most ponderous stage talk, but to many in the audience it seemed ‘natural’ because of its novelty. As Graham Robertson recalled, ‘it amused and amazed’.18
Wilde had the huge pleasure of witnessing the amusement and the amazement. His witticisms were laughed at. Almost every scene was greeted with ‘enthusiastic applause’ – and from all parts of the house. Henry James noted that the ‘pit and the gallery’ felt pleased with themselves at being ‘clever enough’ to ‘catch on’ to at least some of the ingenious and daring mots; while their belief that the dialogue faithfully represented ‘the talk of the grand monde’ made them feel ‘privileged and modern’.19 Wilde, for all his socially subversive touches of Ibsenism, also shared with Ouida that special gift for convincing the middle classes that he wrote ‘as Duchesses talk’.
At the final curtain, after the cast had been saluted three times, there were calls for the author. Wilde appeared before the footlights, sporting a large green carnation in his buttonhole, bowed, and then retired. When the calls were redoubled, he re-appeared, now smoking a cigarette. At the cries of ‘Speech’ he seemed to hesitate, but then, placing his right hand in his trouser pocket, he began: ‘I believe it is the privilege of an author to allow his works to be reproduced by others while he himself remains silent. But as you seem to wish to hear me speak, I accept the honour you are kind enough to confer upon me.’ Pausing only to puff on his cigarette (out of nervousness, according to Mrs Jopling), he went on to thank George Alexander for the ‘admirable completeness’ of the production, and to praise the entire company for the ‘infinite care’ they had taken in turning his ‘sketch’ into a ‘finished picture.’ He concluded neatly, by telling the audience: ‘I think that you have enjoyed the performance as much as I have, and I am pleased to believe that you like the piece almost as much as I do myself.’ This audacious piece of self-assertion was ‘received with hearty laughter and applause’, as Wilde, still smoking, left the stage.
The curtain call, however, incensed the literal-minded critics almost more than the play itself. Patronizing, impertinent and attention seeking were some of the epithets used of Wilde, his speech, his cigarette, and his ‘electric green boutonnière’. Only The Sunday Times thought his closing remark ‘clever’, and only the Era had the grace to admit that he was merely uttering aloud what all ‘successful dramatic authors invariably think of their works’.20
As for the play itself, despite a handful of good reviews – and a general recognition that, if ‘daring’ and ‘cynical’, it was ‘very clever’ and amusing – most critics lined up ungenerously to point out Wilde’s theatrical borrowings (from Dumas, Sardou, Haddon Chambers, et al.). Faults were found with the ‘construction’. Doubts were cast about the moral tone. Some considered the behaviour of Lord Windermere improbable; others thought the actions of his wife absurd.21
Wilde, though, could afford to be disdainful. He recognized that the pettiness of the critical response had been trumped by the enthusiasm of the audience. Even the meanest reviews had to concede that the play had been much enjoyed T
he novelist and magazine editor Oswald Crawfurd wrote spontaneously to the Pall Mall Gazette, redressing the balance of their official coverage with an encomium of the play: ‘an epoch in the history of the drama’, marking the overthrow of ‘dull’ and ‘unreal’ melodrama, by a concentration of ‘deliberate wit and finished epigram’ not heard ‘since the days of Sheridan’s School for Scandal’.22
Word of mouth ran ahead of the newspaper reports. There could be no denying – or stopping – the play’s success. The London Standard was soon condoling that Wilde would have to surrender his reputation for originality and eccentricity and ‘submit to the humiliation of being stigmatized as the author of a brilliantly successful play. It is even to be feared that it will have a long run and return a great deal of mere vulgar profit.’23
Wilde had thought that he would escape to the South of France immediately after the opening night. But with success achieved, he relaxed instead in the glow of euphoria. Coulson Kernahan recalled a visit from the excited playwright the morning after the premiere when Wilde ‘hugged himself with delight’ as they talked over the events of the evening.24 Wilde – no longer in a frenzy of nerves – relented over the important matter of when to disclose Mrs Erlynne’s true identity to the audience. Alexander had conspired with Clement Scott, getting the critic to point out, in his review, the need for such a change. The conspiracy, as it turned out, was hardly necessary since the fault was noted by almost all the critics, and most of the audience. Wilde sent ‘a graceful telegram’ to Alexander acknowledging that the actor had been ‘right all through’, and amended the text accordingly in time for the second performance on the Monday evening. He insisted, though – in a letter to the press – that his decision had not been prompted by the strictures of any ‘journalists’; he had acted on the advice of some young friends with whom he had supped after the performance: ‘The opinions of the old on matters of Art are, of course, of no value whatsoever. The artistic instincts of the young are invariably fascinating.’25
Wilde was thrilled with his triumph, as was his mother. Both of them set such store by success, and they were now able to enjoy it to the full. There were gratifying letters from Ettie Grenfell and Wilfrid Blunt. Curzon invited Wilde to dinner. Lady Elcho had to be dissuaded from taking a walk-on part in the ball scene. The ‘best lines’ were repeated ‘all over town’: ‘I can resist everything except temptation.’ ‘In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.’ ‘Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.’ ‘A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.’ ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.’ When asked how the play was going, Wilde boasted, ‘Capitally. I am told Royalty is turned away nightly.’ To Alexander’s observation that the cheap seats seemed to be as crowded as the stalls and boxes, Wilde replied complacently, ‘My dear Alexander, the answer is easy. Servants listen to conversations in drawing rooms and dining rooms. They hear people discussing my play, their curiosity is aroused, and so they fill your theatre. I can see they are servants by their perfect manners.’26
The green carnation, following its appearance on the opening night, became the fashionable flower of the moment. It ‘bloomed profusely in the stalls’ when John Gray’s verse translation of de Banville’s Le Baiser was staged by the Independent Theatre that March.27 André Raffalovich published a sonnet ‘against’ it, in some ‘weekly rag’, counting the poem as his ‘public rejection’ of the whole Oscar Wilde ‘set’.28
From the beginning the play drew ‘exceptionally large’ audiences. Wilde’s arrangement with Alexander was for 5 per cent of the gross receipts (until he had earned £600) and 7.5 per cent thereafter, and he was soon earning more than £40 per week. For only the second time in his life he was confronted with the delightful prospect of making money. To improve matters still further Constance received a legacy of £3,000 on the death of her aunt Emily. Although the immediate call on their resources was to repay debts built up over several years, it seemed as though the pervading sense of financial worry might be lifting. There was even a thought that they might move to a larger house in Tite Street.29
Among the new friends that the play brought into Wilde’s orbit was Ada Leverson. It was she perhaps who wrote the good-natured skit, ‘A Wilde “Tag” to a Tame Play’, that appeared in Punch. She was certainly a contributor to Oswald Crawfurd’s magazine, Black and White, and it was at the Crawfurds’ house that Wilde met her. Leverson was then twenty-nine, clever, amusing and literary, but shackled to a conventional and much older husband. She and Wilde fell into an easy and intimate friendship, Leverson’s intellect and humour stimulating Wilde’s own. He was soon calling her ‘the wittiest woman in London’.30
The play’s success was something to be built upon, and Wilde now perceived that writing modern society comedies was his métier. ‘I always knew that play-writing was my province,’ he told Frank Harris. His mistake had been to write ‘plays in verse’ or dramas about the Russian politics. ‘Now I know better,’ he announced. ‘I’m sure of myself, and of success.’31 But if he was confident that he would be able to repeat the trick, he did not want to limit himself. His other literary projects might be carried up on the thermal of Lady Windermere’s success. He began to imagine a whole range of dramatic possibilities. He was keen to follow up on the excitement of composing Salomé: bringing out a Symbolist drama would give him literary prestige. And – despite his reservations about ‘plays in verse’ – he remained ever hopeful of finding an English producer for The Duchess of Padua.
Having abandoned his idea of a restorative trip to the South of France, Wilde instead went over to Paris for a few weeks at the end of March. Beside the pleasures of Paris in the springtime, it seems he wanted to consult with his friends there on plans to have Salomé published in France. Merrill was asked to look over the manuscript and to remove any egregious grammatical errors. He did manage to dissuade Wilde from beginning most of the principal speeches with the idiomatic expletive, ‘Enfin’, but his other suggestions were ignored, Wilde loftily declaring that the American-born (but Paris-raised and bilingual) Merrill was ‘a foreigner and did not know French’. Merrill, much amused at this, passed Wilde on to Retté – who culled a few more Anglicisms and cut down a very long list of precious stones recited by Herod – before he too was superseded. Pierre Louÿs was brought in as a third arbiter, putting forward some final suggestions (which were largely ignored) and making some final corrections, mainly relating to the use of the subjunctive (which were largely accepted). The manuscript was then handed over to the printers.32
Back in England, Wilde discovered that the success of his play had called forth the tribute of parody. The actor Charles Brookfield – together with the composer Jimmy Glover (an old Dublin friend) – had put together a skit on Wilde and Lady Windermere’s Fan. It was titled the The Poet and the Puppets, in allusion to Wilde’s now infamous comments about ‘puppets’ being preferable to actors. Wilde, having embraced the satires of Punch and Patience for the sake of notoriety in the early 1880s, had come to doubt the benefits of such advertisement. He knew, though, that it was both futile and fatal to complain. He also knew that the censorship laws, in theory, forbade the representation of living people on the stage. Actors might impersonate individuals, but the play text itself was supposed to be free of direct portraiture. Wilde looked to the licenser of plays, E. F. S. Pigott, for protection. He also requested that he might review the script himself.
A reading was arranged at Tite Street. Glover recalled how, ‘while cigars burned’ Wilde ‘punctuated each page as it was read with such praises as “Delightful!” “Charming, my old friends!… It’s exquisite!” etc., etc.’ Wilde was clearly recognizable as the effete Oxford-educated ‘Poet’ of the piece. The dialogue borrowed many of his mots, including ‘the greatest pleasure in life is to be misunderstood’. But there was nothing in the way of personal attack, and no sly allusions to sexual
relations with young men. Nevertheless, to make his point, Wilde did raise an objection to having his name specifically mentioned in the opening song (not wanting to cross the censor, Brookfield agreed to alter the line). As Wilde showed the collaborators to the door he gave them a ‘parting shot: “I feel, however, that I have been, well, Brookfield, what is the word? What is the thing you call it in your delightfully epigrammatic Stage English. Eh? Oh yes! delightfully spoofed!”’33‡
Wilde’s lordly refusal to be offended by the satire sharpened Brookfield’s existing animus against him. The Eton-educated actor, with his own small reputation as a wit, had long been jealous of Wilde’s preeminence. It was said, too, that he harboured a resentment at having once been corrected by Wilde over some solecism in his dress. And the increasingly insistent rumours about Wilde’s sexual proclivities allowed him to colour his enmity with a sense of moral outrage. Wilde was too perceptive not to detect such antipathy, but too certain of his own powers to care.34
Brookfield’s ‘travestie’ (which opened on 19 May) achieved its own minor triumph without compromising Wilde’s play or Wilde’s name. Charles Hawtrey gave an ‘exquisitely comic’ impersonation of Wilde – exact in every gesture and cadence. One of the few not to be impressed was the actor Hermann Vezin; he thought Wilde should write his own ‘burlesque’ (‘I believe it would be a great success’). Wilde, though, confined his comments upon Lady Windermere’s Fan to a speech delivered at the Royal General Theatrical Fund dinner. In response to a toast from a well-meaning Alderman, which had praised him for having written a play that ‘lashed vice as it was supposed to exist’, and revealing himself as an author prepared to ‘call a spade a spade’, Wilde demurred. ‘I would like to protest against the statement that I ever called a spade a spade,’ he began. ‘The man who did so should be condemned to use one.’ As to ‘lashing vice’, he could assure the company that nothing was further from his intentions. ‘Those who have seen Lady Windermere’s Fan will see that if there is one particular doctrine contained in it, it is one of sheer individualism. It is not for anyone to censure what anyone else does, and everyone should go his own way, to whatever place he chooses, in exactly the way that he chooses.’35
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