by Oscar Wilde
The story of De Profundis, Wilde’s letter from Reading Goal to Alfred Douglas, is as eventful in its own small way, as the life of its author, including a posthumous trial and a fifty-year spell under lock and key. It was not until Wilde had been in prison for fourteen months, until he had passed from Pentonville to Wandsworth to Reading that he was finally allowed writing materials in his cell. This privilege was granted exceptionally by the Chairman of the Prison Commissioners, Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, subject to certain conditions, principally that pen and paper were to be removed each night at locking-up and anything written was to be submitted to the governor. At first Wilde only had a coarsely bound notebook, but as he wrote to a friend in September 1896: ‘I take notes of books I read, and copy lines and phrases in poets: the mere handling of pen and ink helps me…I cling to my notebook: before I had it my brain was going in very evil circles.’ Then early in 1897 he started on his letter to Douglas. Within three months it was complete and his intention was to send it to Robert Ross, who was to have two typed copies made and send the original to Douglas. However the Prison Commissioners flatly refused to allow the letter to be sent out and instructed Major Nelson, the governor, to keep it and give it to the prisoner on his release. Wilde finally handed Ross the manuscript when they met in Dieppe on 20 May, but because of its length the typing was not complete until August. Ross, so he later testified, then kept the original and sent one of the copies to Douglas and from that moment – silence. By October, after an emotional reunion, Wilde and Douglas had set up house in Naples, the potentially explosive recriminations in the letter ignored or more probably unread. In later years Douglas initially admitted receiving a long document from Ross and throwing it into the river Marne after reading the first few pages; later he denied ever having received it at all. Wilde never mentions it again.
In 1905, five years after his friend’s death, Robert Ross felt that the time was right to give the world an expurgated version of the letter. About one third was published by Methuen to generally good press reviews including one by Douglas, oblivious that he was the intended recipient. In 1909 after publishing a slightly enlarged version in the Collected Works, Ross deposited the manuscript in the British Museum with the proviso that it was to be sealed for fifty years. And there it would have remained had Arthur Ransome not referred to it in his 1912 biography of Wilde as being ‘addressed…to a man to whom Wilde felt that he owed some, at least, of the circumstances of his public disgrace’. Douglas immediately sued author, publisher and the Times book-club distributing the book, and when the case came to court, the manuscript had to be produced from the British Museum to support Ransome’s plea of justification. Some of the unpublished portions, fiercely critical of Douglas’s character, were read out. At one stage Douglas was nearly-held in contempt of court for refusing to be present at the readings. In the end the jury decided that the libel was justified and he lost his case.
In 1927 my father decided to sell a large collection of Wilde’s letters which had been left to him on Ross’s death in 1918. Among them was the letter instructing Ross to make copies of De Profundis and to send Douglas the original. It prompted Douglas to press his claim to the Museum for ownership of the manuscript. The Trustees refused to hand it over. Had they done so, given Douglas’s attitude at the time, it would almost certainly have been destroyed. It was not until 1949, four years after Douglas’s death, that my father was finally able to publish the work from the single typescript copy which Ross had kept and bequeathed to him. Even that was littered with errors and omissions and it was not until 1962, once the manuscript was open to the public, that the first complete and accurate version was published in The Letters of Oscar Wilde.
It is difficult to read De Profundis without conflicting emotions. The compassion for a man of Wilde’s sensibilities being broken in prison for what today is not even an offence; the astonishment at his arrogance, his ego, the extraordinary projection of himself into the figure of the suffering artist, crucified Christ-like by society; the touches of genuine humility. Above all, it is a record of those last two years spent with Douglas before he lost his reason and allowed himself (willingly) to be used as a pawn in the game between Douglas and his father. Douglas always maintained that it was nothing but lies, which was hard to believe then, and is now seen to be false from the corroborative evidence elsewhere. It is made all the more poignant when one realises that within three and a half years of writing it he was dead and had never seen his wife and children again.
Now, long after his death Wilde still manages to put up his mask of clever superficiality, designed, one feels, to conceal any great seriousness of thought, while revealing just enough to counter accusations of banality. The world is expected to view him as an enigma, Sphinx-like, countering question with paradox, always one step ahead and just out of reach of the critic’s scalpel. ‘Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible,’ he wrote to Whistler in 1885. ‘To be great is to be misunderstood.’ But in this collection of miscellaneous pieces he has left the reader just enough clues to look behind the scenes from where, in the end, an even greater man may emerge by being that much better understood.
THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL
The decorative arts have flourished most when the position of women was highly honoured, when woman occupied that place on the social scale which she ever ought to do. One of the most striking facts of history is that art was never so fine, never so delicate as where women were highly honoured, while there has been no good decorative work done in any age or any country where women have not occupied a high social position. It has been from the desire of women to beautify their households that decorative art has always received its impulse and encouragement. Women have natural art instincts, which men usually acquire only after long special training and study; and it may be the mission of the women in this country to revive decorative art into honest, healthy life.
In asking you to build and decorate your houses more beautifully, I do not ask you to spend large sums, as art does not depend in the slightest degree upon extravagance or luxury, but rather the procuring of articles which, however cheaply purchased and unpretending, are beautiful and fitted to impart pleasure to the observer as they did to the maker. And so I do not address those millionaires who can pillage Europe for their pleasure, but those of moderate means who can, if they will, have designs of worth and beauty before them always and at little cost.
Nothing that is made is too trivial or too poor for art to ennoble, for genius can glorify stone, metal, and wood by the manner in which these simple materials are fashioned and shaped. Why, the most valuable curio in an art museum is, perhaps, a little urn out of which a Greek girl drew water from a well over two thousand years ago and made of the clay on which we walk, yet more artistic than all the dreadful silver centre-pieces of modern times, with their distorted camels and electroplated palm-trees.
Today even a man of taste and wealth cannot always get his ideas embodied in art; he cannot escape the ugly surroundings of the age or procure any but the shoddy articles which are usually made. Nor will your art improve until you seek your workmen and educate them to higher views of their relation to art, and reveal to them the possibilities of their callings, for the great difficulty that stands in the way of your artistic development is not a lack of interest in art, not a lack of love for art, but that you do not honour the handicraftsman sufficiently, and do not recognise him as you should; all art must begin with the handicraftsman, and you must reinstate him into his rightful position, and thus make labour, which is always honourable, noble also.
And you must have here a school of decorative art where the principles of good taste and the simpler truths about design would be taught, for the workman’s technical knowledge of his craft makes it easy to teach him the practice of art principles. And this school should be in direct relation with manufacture and commerce. If a manufacturer wanted a new pattern for a carpet, or a new design for wallpaper, he could go to this
school, and offer a prize for the best design for the purpose he required. In this way everyone will learn that it is more practical to build and decorate in an artistic manner.
In the question of decoration the first necessity is that any system of art should bear the impress of a distinct individuality; it is difficult to lay down rules as to the decoration of dwellings because every home should wear an individual air in all its furnishings and decorations. This individuality in most cases up to the present has been left to the upholsterers, with the consequence of a general sameness about many dwellings which is not worth looking at, for the decorations of a house should express the feeling of those who live in it. There are, however, certain broad principles of art which should be generally observed, and within which there is plenty of room for the play of individual tastes. Have nothing in your house that has not given pleasure to the man who made it and is not a pleasure to those who use it. Have nothing in your house that is not useful or beautiful; if such a rule were followed out, you would be astonished at the amount of rubbish you would get rid of. Let there be no sham imitation of one material in another, such as paper representing marble, or wood painted to resemble stone, and have no machine-made ornaments. Let us have everything perfectly bare of ornament rather than have any machine-made ornament; ornament should represent the feeling in a man’s life, as of course nothing machine-made can do; and, by the way, a man who works with his hands alone is only a machine.
As regards materials for houses: if rich enough, you will probably have marble. I would not object to this, but don’t treat it as if it were ordinary stone, and build a house of mere blocks of it, like those great plain, staring, white structures so common in this country. I hope you will employ workmen competent to beautify it with delicate tracings and that you will have it beautifully inlaid with coloured marbles, as at Venice, to lend it colour and warmth. And next – stone. The use of the natural hues of stone is one of the real signs of proper architecture. This country affords unusual facilities for using different varieties of stones, in every variety of hue, from pale yellow to purple, red to orange, green to grey and white, and beautiful harmonies may be achieved in ingraining them. Let the painter’s work be reserved for the inner chambers.
If one cannot build in marble or coloured stones, there remains red brick or wood. Red brick is warm and delightful to look at and is the most beautiful and simple form of those who have not much to spend. In England we build of red brick, and the stately homes from the reign of the Tudors down to that of George II give good designs for brick houses. Cut brick gives you the opportunity of working in terracotta ornamentation, the most beautiful of all exterior decorations – the old Lombard’s special prize, and an art we are trying to revive in England.
Wood is the universal material. Wood buildings I like, but wish to see them painted in a better way. You must have warmer colours: there is far too much white and that cold grey colour used; they never look well in large bodies and are dreary in wet weather and glaring in fine weather; imitate rather the rich browns and olive-greens found in nature. The frame house could be made more joyous to look upon with the air of the carver. Every child should be taught woodcarving, and I recommend the establishment in this city of a school of design for the sole purpose of teaching woodcarving. Even the poor Swiss shepherd boy spends his leisure time doing beautiful carving instead of reading detestable novels. Americans might carve as well, and I am sadly disappointed that you do not develop this art more.
All ornaments should be carved, and have no cast-iron ornaments, nor any of those ugly things made by machinery. You should not have cast-iron railings fixed outside the house, which boys are always knocking down, and very rightly too, for they always look cheap and shabby. If possible have beaten ironwork; of all the metal works in this country, so far as it relates to cast iron, it is a shame that none are nobly or beautifully wrought like the beaten globes of even the poorest Italian cities. The old iron ornaments of Verona that were worked by hand out of the noble metal into beautiful figures are as beautiful and strong now as when wrought three or four hundred years ago by artistic handicraftsmen. Finally, your black-leaded knocker should give way to a bright brass one.
Within the house: the hall should not be papered, since the walls are exposed more or less to the elements by the frequent opening and closing of the door; it could be wainscoted with some of America’s beautiful woods, such as the maple, or distempered with ordinary paint. Wainscoting makes the house warm, it is easily done by any carpenter, and it will admit of fine work in panel painting, which is a style of decoration most desirable, and one that is growing greatly in favour.
Don’t carpet the floor: ordinary red brick tiles make a warm and beautiful floor, and I prefer it to the geometrically arranged tiles of the present day. There should be no pictures in the hall, for it is no place for a good picture, and a poor one should be put nowhere. It is a mere passageway, except in stately mansions, and no picture should be placed where you have not time to sit down and reverence and admire and study it.
Hat racks are, I suppose, necessary. I have never seen a really nice hat rack; the ordinary one is more like some horrible instrument of torture than anything useful or graceful, and it is perhaps the ugliest thing in the house. A large painted oak chest is the best stand for cloaks; for hats, a pretty rack in wood to hang on the wall in light wood or bamboo would be best. A few large chairs would complete the furniture in the hallway. Have none of those gloomy horrors, stuffed animals or stuffed birds, in the hall, or anywhere else under glass cases. Plain marble tables, such as I have seen in America in such number, should not be tolerated unless the marble is beautifully inlaid and the wood carved.
As regards rooms generally: in America the great fault in decoration is the entire want of harmony or a definite scheme in colour; there is generally a collection of a great many things individually pretty but which do not combine to make a harmonious whole. Colours resemble musical notes: a single false colour or false note destroys the whole. Therefore, in decorating a room one keynote of colour should predominate; it must be decided before hand what scheme of colour is desired and have all else adapted to it, like the answering calls in a symphony of music; otherwise, your room will be a museum of colours. With regard to choice of colour, the disciples of the new school of decorative art are said to be very fond of gloomy colours. Well, we set great value on toned or secondary colours, because all decoration means gradually ascending colours, while bright colours should be kept for ornament. On the walls secondary colours should be used, and the ceiling should never be painted in bright colours; the best Eastern embroidery, for instance, is filled with light colours. Start with a low tone as the keynote, and then you get the real value of primary colours by having little bits of colour, beautiful embroidery, and artwork set like precious gems in the more sombre colours. If you have the whole room and things generally in bright colours, the capabilities of the room are exhausted for all other colour effects, and you would have to have fireworks for ornaments to set it off. All depends upon the graduation of colour; look at the rose and see how all its beauty depends upon its exquisite gradations of colour, one answering to the other.
Mr Whistler has recently done two rooms in London which are marvels of beauty. One is the famous Peacock Room, which I regard as the finest thing in colour and art decoration that the world has ever known since Correggio painted that wonderful room in Italy where the little children are dancing on the walls; everything is of the colours in peacocks’ feathers, and each part so coloured with regard to the whole that the room, when lighted up, seems like a great peacock tail spread out. It cost £3,000. Mr Whistler finished the other room just before I came away – a breakfast room in blue and yellow, and costing only £30. The walls are distempered in blue, the ceiling is a light and warm yellow; the floor is laid with a richly painted matting in light yellow, with a light line or leaf here and there of blue. The woodwork is all caneyellow, and the shelves are filled
with blue and white china; the curtains of white serge have a yellow border tastefully worked in, and hang in careless but graceful folds. When the breakfast-table is laid in this apartment, with its light cloth and its dainty blue and white china, with a cluster of red and yellow chrysanthemums in an old Nankin vase in the centre, it is a charming room, catching all the warm light and taking on of all surrounding beauty, and giving to the guest a sense of joyousness, comfort, and rest. Nothing could be simpler, it costs little, and it shows what a great effect might be realised with a little and simple colour.
A designer must imagine in colour, must think in colour, must see in colour. Your workmen should be taught to work more freely in colours, and this can only be done by accustoming them to beautiful ones. Even in imaginative art predominance must now be given to colour: a picture is primarily a flat surface coloured to produce a delightful effect upon the beholder, and if it fails of that, it is surely a bad picture. The aim of all art is simply to make life more joyous.
You should have such men as Whistler among you to teach you the beauty and joy of colour. When he paints a picture, he paints by reference not to the subject, which is merely intellectual, but to colour. I was speaking to Mr Whistler once, before a great critic, of what could be done with one colour. The critic chose white as the colour offering fewest tones; Mr Whistler painted his beautiful Symphony in White, which you no doubt have imagined to be something quite bizarre. It is nothing of the sort. Think of a cool grey sky with white clouds, a grey sea flecked with the crests of white-capped waves; a grey balcony on which are two little girls clad in pure white leaning over the railing; an almond tree covered in white blossoms is by the side of the balcony, from which one of the girls is idly plucking with white hands the petals which flutter across the picture. Such pictures as this one are of infinitely more value than horrible pictures of historical scenes; here are no extensive intellectual schemes to trouble you and no metaphysics, of which we have had quite enough in art. If the simple and unaided colour strikes the right keynote, the whole conception is made clear. I doubt not that our Aesthetic movement has given to the world an increased sense of the value of colour, and that in time a new science of the art of dealing in colour will be evolved.
