8 CL, 250n; the exchange of letters although engineered for the weekly World (25 February 1885) in fact appeared first in the daily PMG (24 February 1885) under the heading, ‘Tenderness in Tite Street’.
9 OW to A. Milner, [1885], Bloomsbury Book Auctions (London), 19 May 2014, lot 49; the letter, sent from 16 Tite Street, runs ‘I want Comyns Carr’s Essays on Art, Macmillan, to review: it and Machin should have a column between them. Essays on Art are naturally what I like to write about – Ever Yours, Oscar Wilde’. Joseph Comyns Carr’s Papers on Art (not Essays on Art) was published by Macmillan in February 1885.
10 CL, 227; Dibb, 173, convincingly re-dates the letter to 11 February 1885 (rather than February 1884).
11 Dibb, 214–15.
12 Ernest Rhys, Everyman Remembers (1931), 53.
13 OET VI, xlvii; OW ‘The Critic as Artist’.
14 Not to be confused with a vulgar ‘bank holiday atmosphere’ – the epithet OW uses of Harry Quilter’s Sententiae Artis in ‘A “Jolly” Art Critic’, PMG, 18 November 1886.
15 ‘Dinners and Dishes’, PMG, 7 March 1885, in OET VI, 39–40.
16 OET VI, 96.
17 OET VI, 61.
18 OET VI, 87–8.
19 OET JVI, 50, 87, 101, 70.
20 W. B. Yeats to John O’Leary, in OET VI, xxviii.
21 OET VI, 102, 166.
22 ‘A Handbook to Marriage’, PMG, 18 November 1885, OET VI, 60; W. H. Chesson, ‘A Reminiscence of 1898’, Bookman, 34 (1911), in Mikhail, 380. Edward John Hardy (1849–1920) had married the daughter of WRWW’s sister, Margaret (wife of Rev. William Noble of Mostrim, Edgeworthstown); he was an assistant master at Portora (Mason, 136).
23 OET VI, 95, 114–17, 117–19, 101.
24 Mason, 137.
25 OW sought the right of reply to Quilter’s outraged letter of objection on the grounds that, as he told the editor, ‘my style is recognizable, at least by my friends’; quoted in OET VI, xxv.
26 George Bernard Shaw to David J. O’Donaghue, 9 May 1889 (Berg); Shaw to Tighe Hopkins, 31 Aug 1889, Dan H. Laurence, ed., Bernard Shaw Collected Letters, Vol. 1, 1874–1897 (1965), 222.
27 Mason, 135; Wills misspells OW’s name ‘Wylde’.
28 ‘The Letters Of A Great Woman’, PMG, 6 March 1886. OET VI, 64–6.
29 OET VI, 102.
30 OW turned down an offer to ‘do an interview’ of ‘some notable person’ for the Age for 2½ guineas. Joseph Hatton to OW, 8 April 1885 (TCD).
31 CL, 253; T. H. S. Escott, the editor of the Fortnightly Review, was also the deputy editor of the World until 1886.
32 Trevor Blackmore, The Art of Herbert Schmalz (1911), 35.
33 John Stokes, ‘Wilde’s World: Oscar Wilde and Theatrical Journalism in the 1880s’, in Wilde Writings: Contextual Conditions, ed. Joseph Bristow (2003), 41–58; The first issue of the Dramatic Review was 1 February 1885; the first of Godwin’s seven articles appeared in the second issue (8 February 1885); OW’s article appeared in the seventh issue (14 March 1885).
34 OW received 2 guineas for ‘Shakespeare of Stage Scenery’; CL, 256. Stokes, ‘Wilde’s World’.
35 CL, 262.
36 Hope, Letters of Engagement, 134; Laura Troubridge to Adrian Hope, 9 June 1885.
37 ‘Facetiae’, Illustrated Sydney News, 15 April 1886.
38 CL, 262.
39 CL, 261.
40 Moyle, 124; CMW to Otho Lloyd, 29 July 1887.
41 CL, 264, 266, 280.
42 CL, 278, 279.
43 CL, 264–5.
Chapter 6: L’Amour de L’Impossible
1 CL, 278.
2 ‘Ignotus’ [Edwin Palmer], Dramatic Review, 23 May 1885, 267, in Stokes, ‘Wilde’s World’, 54.
3 Arthur Bourchier to OW, Christ Church, Oxford, ‘Wednesday’ [1887] (Austin).
4 CL, 266–7.
5 CL, 269.
6 J. H. Badley, Memories and Reflections (1955), 78–9. Eumenides ran at Theatre Royal, Cambridge, from 30 November to 5 December 1885; see www.cambridgegreekplay.
7 Marillier memoirs, quoted in Fryer, ‘Harry Marillier and the Love of the Impossible’, 5–6; the fire damage was hastily patched up by the young American painter Harper Pennington, who happened to be present; with a few brush strokes he ‘turned the charred panel into a lurid vision of Venice by night’. Beddington, All That I Have Met, 35; CL, 296.
8 OW was very aware of Ruskin’s engagement with the fairy story. On 5 June 1883 OW, with his mother, attended a private lecture by Ruskin on the subject of ‘Fairyland’. Morning Post, 7 June 1883.
9 OW to Mr. [Frank R.] Stockton [c. 1889], typed copy (Clark): ‘It was a great pleasure meeting you – your work has charmed and delighted me for a long time’; Stockton’s Floating Prince was published in 1881, and his most famous story, ‘The Lady, or the Tiger’ in 1882.
10 Badley, Memories and Reflections, 79.
11 CL, 273, 274; 281; Marillier memoirs, in Fryer, ‘Harry Marillier and the Love of the Impossible’, 7; Beddington, All That I Have Met, 39–40; H. L. Marillier to A. J. A. Symons, 4 May (Clark); Marillier, responding to OW’s creativity, composed his own poem about ‘the moonstone people’.
12 CL, 272.
13 J. A. Symonds, Animi Figura (1882); for contemporary reviews, see ‘Mr. Symonds’ New Poems’, PMG, 25 July 1882; ‘Literary Notes’, Liverpool Mercury, 14 June 1882.
14 Phyllis Grosskurth, ed., The Memoirs of John Addington Symonds (1984), 240, 267, 272.
15 Raffalovich, in Ellmann, 238.
16 OW, ‘The Critic as Artist’.
17 CL, 282; Badley, Memories and Reflections describes Marillier as the most sympathetically attractive person he had known; his Norwegian landlady nicknamed him the ‘Thief of Hearts’.
18 Fryer, ‘Harry Marillier and the Love of the Impossible’, 7; Marillier did see OW once more, in November 1886, at the Shelley Society’s production of the verse drama Hellas at St James’s Hall, London (H. Marillier to A. J. A. Symons, 4 May [1937?] (Clark).
19 Century Guild Hobby Horse, 1 July 1886.
20 CL, 283.
21 CL, 284, 285, 289–90.
22 CL, 290.
23 ‘Chatterton’ (Clark), in Dibb, 297, 327. The epithet was borrowed from Theodore Watts’s essay on Chatterton, in T. H. Ward, ed., The English Poets, Selections with Critical Introductions, Volume 3 (1880); see also Joseph Bristow and Rebecca N. Mitchell, Oscar Wilde’s Chatterton: Literary History, Romanticism, and the Art of Forgery (2015).
24 ‘Chatterton’ (Clark), in Dibb, 326–7; the opening passage echoes in places the phraseology of Theodore Watts’s essay on Chatterton; see Dibb, 209.
25 Margery Ross, in her edited compendium of her uncle’s correspondence, Robert Ross – Friend of Friends (1952), 9, states that ‘his first meeting with Oscar Wilde was at Oxford in 1886’. This has often been dismissed on the grounds that Ross did not go to Oxford University but to Cambridge (and even then not until 1888) but it could, of course, be a mere statement of geographical fact, accurately reporting established family knowledge. OW was in Oxford at least twice during 1886, for the performance of Twelfth Night in February, and to hear Henry Irving lecture on acting on 26 June (‘English Gossip, London July 1 [1886]’, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 August 1886; ‘The Commemoration’, Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 26 June 1886). There were probably other visits too. He wrote, for example, to Douglas Ainslie (then an undergraduate at Exeter College, Oxford) promising to visit him and his friends (CL, 281). And it is certainly possible that, if Ross were also visiting friends in Oxford on one of these occasions, he could have been introduced to Wilde. Other potential connections were through Frances Richards (1852–1934), a Canadian painter, whom Wilde had met in Ottawa in 1882. She was a friend of Ross’s sister, Mary (Maureen Borland, Wilde’s Devoted Friend: A Life of Robert Ross, 1869–1918 (1990), 19). She had relocated to England by 1887 (the Ottawa Citizen, quoted in Intentions, April 2006, suggests that she may have introduced OW to Robbie Ross). Ross’s elder broth
er, Alec (1860–1927), was a figure on London’s literary scene. He was the founder and secretary of the Society of Authors, an organization that OW joined in 1887 (CL, 291, 294–5). Frank Harris claimed to have been told that OW had met Ross when the younger man had propositioned him in a public lavatory (Moyle, 121, citing BL Eccles 81731) The story, however, seems unlikely.
26 CL, 360.
27 That Wilde’s first homosexual encounter was with Robbie Ross in 1886 is remarkably well supported – given that the incident was private, covert and illegal. It was attested, independently, by both parties. In 1935 Reggie Turner, writing to A. J. A. Symons, declared, ‘As to his [OW’s] abnormal inclinations and practices I don’t think he ever developed them till much later [than his university days]. He certainly never hinted at any such early relationships or episodes. Indeed he asked me – not long before he died – to guess who it was who had seduced him.’ Turner was coy of writing down the seducer’s name in a letter – ‘even though they are dead’. And he also declared that the unnamed person, when taxed on the subject, has claimed it was an ‘invention of Oscar’s’. (Reginald Turner to A. J. A. Symons, 26 August 1935 (Clark)). Symons replied saying that he supposed that Turner was referring to Ross. He explained that Ross had told Christopher Millard ‘(according to the latter) that it was because he [Ross] had first led O.W. “astray” that he felt responsible for Cyril’s and Vyvyan’s welfare’. Millard also pointed out the statement in Arthur Ransome’s 1912 study of Wilde: ‘In 1886 he [OW] began that course of conduct that was to lead to his downfall in 1895.’ Ransome got most of his biographical information from Ross – and it was because of Ross’s involvement in the matter that he was thus able to date OW’s ‘change of nature’ so accurately (A. J. A. Symons to Reggie Turner, 29 August 1935 (Clark)). This information confirmed Turner in his conviction that OW had been telling the truth. Ross’s denial, he suspected, had been on account of the fact that he was just then having to defend himself in the courts against charges of homosexual activity levelled by Lord Alfred Douglas. Turner had been impressed by OW’s ‘seriousness’ in making the claim, while at the same time noting, ‘Oscar himself did not set much importance by it but told it to me as a matter of interest & not in any way of fixing any blame on anybody. He was far too wise for that’ (Reginald Turner to A. J. A. Symons, 4 September 1935 (Clark)). Despite this body of evidence, there have been periodic attempts to suggest – or claim – that OW must have had earlier homosexual experiences with Frank Miles, Reggie Harding, Rennell Rodd, Harry Marillier and/or others. See Croft-Cooke and McKenna. There is no direct evidence to support such claims, although Croft-Cooke, 42, reported that ‘it was only during a sentimental visit of return [by OW] to Oxford with Bosie Douglas in 1892 that Douglas learned the bare fact that Frank Miles has been his predecessor in Oscar’s affections, and thereafter Wilde could not be induced to speak of Miles, perhaps because of his tragic end, from which Oscar would naturally have averted his memory’. Croft-Cooke did know Douglas (1870–1945) during the latter part of Douglas’s life. But the account of OW’s visit to Oxford and his reference to Frank Miles does not appear in any of Croft-Cooke’s earlier works relating to OW, Bosie: The Story of Lord Alfred Douglas (1963) or Feasting With Panthers (1967) nor indeed in any other printed source, and must – I think – be treated with some caution.
28 Reginald Turner to A. J. A. Symons, 28 August 1935 (Clark).
29 Reginald Turner to A. J. A. Symons, 26 August 1935 (Clark).
30 Before settling on the name, OW had suggested to Adrian Hope that he was thinking of calling his new son, ‘Nothing’ – as then ‘it can be said he is nothing Wild(e)’. The spelling of Vyvyan’s name was variable. Although christened ‘Vyvyan’, he was usually referred to by his parents, in their letters, as ‘Vivian’. Nevertheless, since he became known in adult life as ‘Vyvyan’, that spelling is preferred.
31 Harris, 284–5; although the coarseness of Harris’s account seems wholly unconvincing, there is no reason to doubt that it did record some aspect of OW’s feeling.
32 Reginald Turner to A. J. A. Symons, 26 August 1935 (Clark); the passage is hard to decipher. Turner is describing how OW had told him about Ross being the first to seduce him: ‘Though he said he was conscious of impending fate [or ‘taste’] before that.’
33 M. A. Raffalovich, L’Affaire Oscar Wilde (1895), 5: where OW’s comment is apropos all ‘the unisexuals of the world’.
34 For Victorian understanding of same-sex relations see Joseph Bristow, ‘A Complex Multiform Creature’, in Peter Raby, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde (1997), 198.
35 Ricketts, 31.
36 ‘A Bevy of Poets’, PMG, 27 March 1885; exactly where and how OW met Raffalovich is unknown. Raffalovich, in his 1927 memoir of OW (written for Blackfriars and reprinted in Brocard Sewell, Footnote to the Nineties (1968)), thinks it may have been through Whistler. He also mentions, as another point of contact, a leading society hostess; Raffalovich disguised her under the name ‘Egeria Stevenson (not yet Lady Keats)’; and she may well have been the indefatigable Mrs Jeune (later Lady St Helier). Raffalovich was also a friend of George Lewis and his wife, dining twice chez Lewis, on 7 July 1883 and 8 March 1884. Mrs Lewis became ‘Lady Lewis’ in 1893 when her husband was knighted.
37 Jacomb-Hood, With Brush and Pencil, 42.
38 CL, 347.
39 CL, 352.
40 Raffalovich/Michaelson, 109.
41 CL, 374.
42 OW presented copies of Poems and The Happy Prince to Dickinson in 1888 (see 1910 US Book Auction Records) simply inscribed to ‘John Ehret Dickinson, Esq. from his friend the author’; the fulsome inscription – done on a sheet of paper – is dated 1894, and was probably for insertion into a copy of The Sphinx. Regarding his will, see Morning Post, 31 December 1896.
43 Merle Secrest, Being Bernard Berenson (1980), 126; Ernest Samuels, Bernard Berenson, The Making of a Connoisseur (1979), 63, quoting Mary Berenson’s unpublished ‘Life of BB’. Secrest reports that Berenson had told at least two friends (Kenneth Clark and Frances Francis) that OW had never made a pass at him. It was to the Philadelphia collector Henry P. McIlhenny that he confessed the attempted seduction.
44 CL, 1095.
45 Kerrison Preston, ed., Letters from Graham Robertson (1953), xvi. McKenna, 129, claims that ‘Robertson was proud of having been a favoured lover of Oscar, even boasting of it in later life’ – but gives no reference.
46 Brocard Sewell, Footnote to the Nineties: a memoir of John Gray and André Raffalovich (1968); Lord Alfred Douglas, in his unpublished 1896 article for the Revue Blanche (Austin) claimed that Raffalovich had, in London, ‘the reputation of a confirmed sodomite’, but Douglas’s extreme hostility towards Raffalovich makes the accuracy of the statement suspect.
47 Raffalovich/Michaelson, 109–10.
48 CL, 1229.
49 Moyle, 123–4.
50 CL, 330–1.
51 CL, 337.
52 Sir George Turner, Unorthodox Reminiscences (1931), 152; Lady St Helier (Mrs Jeune), Memories of Fifty Years (1909), 183.
53 ‘A Lady’s London Gossip, July 5th’, West Australian, 31 August 1886; among material relating to his reception is an invitation card from CMW to Herbert Horne: ‘At Home. July 1st 4–7’ (Fales); Frederic Leighton to Mrs Oscar Wilde, regretting he cannot come on 1 July due to a ‘previous engagement’ (Yale); Laura Troubridge to Adrian Hope, 1 July 1886, Letters of Engagement, 247; copy of Leconte de Lisle, Poèmes Tragiques (1886) inscribed by Edgar Saltus to ‘The poet of the Sphinx’ – London – ‘1 July ’86’.
54 CL, 301, 352.
55 ‘Wilde’s Personal Appearance’ by his ‘sister-in-law’, 150.
56 ‘Wilde’s Personal Appearance’ by his ‘sister-in-law’, 150.
57 Harris, 79.
58 ‘Wilde’s Personal Appearance’ by his ‘sister-in-law’, 150.
59 Edgar Saltus, Oscar Wilde: An Idler’s Impression (1917), 13–26, in Mikhail, 427.
61 Harris, 76.
62 Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters 1930–1939 (1966), 274.
63 ‘Wilde’s Personal Appearance’ by his ‘sister-in-law’, 150.
64 PMG, 16 September 1887.
65 Saltus, Oscar Wilde: An Idler’s Impression, 13–26, in Mikhail, 428; in June 1887 OW attended the press view for an exhibition of Gerald Du Maurier’s latest cartoons at the Fine Art Society. There were none of him (Northern Echo, 11 June 1887).
66 PMG, 16 September 1887.
67 Maguire, 19, CL, 287, 356/9.
68 CL, 256, 259; Harris, 100, though Harris gives the wrong date.
69 Laurence Housman to Hesketh Pearson, 4 April 1944 (Austin). Housman reversed the dynamic of the anecdote when he used it in Echo de Paris.
70 Harris, 67.
71 Henri de Régnier, Les Annales Politiques et Littéraires, 29 November 1925, in Mikhail, 463.
72 JFW to OW, 21 September, in Tipper, Oscar, 103. Tipper dates the letter to 1883, but 1884, around the time of OW’s visit to the Isle of Wight, might be more likely.
73 Guy & Small, 68; Anya Clayworth has speculated that OW’s initial approach to G. Macmillan had been for a book of Turgenev short stories, and that Macmillan, having turned down that idea, passed on the single story to the editor of Macmillan’s Magazine.
74 CL, 385.
75 Laura Troubridge to Adrian Hope, 1 July 1886.
76 OET VI, xxx–xxxi.
77 New York Tribune, 28 March 1887; CL, 295; OW later received a welcome cheque ‘for £8 odd’ from Reid, CL, 325. The amount of the cheque OW received from Robertson of the Court and Society Review around 2 March 1887 is unknown; BL RP3752 (i). There is a curious undated letter from OW, on Court and Society Review letterhead, offering ‘my ghost story’ to ‘Dear Robinson’ (BL RP 4301). Phil Robinson was the editor of The Sunday Times, but it is hard to believe that OW offered the story to The Sunday Times before he had offered it to the Court and Society Review on Court and Society Review letterhead.
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