XII

OSCAR WILDE

My interest in Oscar Wilde is a very old story: I went to hear him lecture when I was a boy, and, boy-like, I wrote and asked him for his autograph, which he sent me and which I still have.

It seems strange that I can look back through thirty years to his visit to Philadelphia, and in imagination see him on the platform of old Horticultural Hall. I remember, too, the discussion which his visit occasioned, preceded as it was by the publication in Boston of his volume of poems, the English edition having been received with greater cordiality than usually marks a young poet's first production - for such it practically was.

At the time of his appearance on the lecture platform he was a large, well-built, distinguished-looking man, about twenty-six years old, with rather long hair, generally wearing knee-breeches and silk stockings. Any impressions which I may have received of this lecture are now very vague. I remember that he used the word "renaissance" a good deal, and that at the time it was a new word to me; and it has always since been a word which has rattled round in my head very much as the blessed word "Mesopotamia" did in the mind of the old lady, who

remarked that no one should deprive her of the hope of eternal punishment.

Now, it would be well at the outset, in discussing Oscar Wilde, to abandon immediately all hope of eternal punishment — for others. My subject is a somewhat difficult one, and it is not easy to speak of Wilde without overturning some of the more or less fixed traditions we have grown up with. We all have a lot of axioms in our systems, even if we are discreet enough to keep them from our tongues; and to do Wilde justice, it is necessary for us to free ourselves of some of these. To make my meaning clear, take the accepted one that genius is simply the capacity for hard work. This is all very well at the top of a copy-book, or to repeat to your son when you are didactically inclined; but for the purposes of this discussion, this and others like it should be abandoned. Having cleared our minds of cant, we might also frankly admit that a romantic or sinful life is, generally speaking, more interesting than a good one.

Few men in English literature have lived a nobler, purer life than Robert Southey, and yet his very name sets us a-yawning, and if he lives at all it is solely due to his little pot-boiler, become a classic, the "Life of Nelson." The two great events in Nelson's life were his meeting with Lady Emma Hamilton and his meeting with the French. Now, disguise it as we may, it still remains true that, in thinking of Nelson, we think as much of Lady Emma

as we do of Trafalgar. Of course, in saying this I realize that I am not an Englishman making a public address on the anniversary of the great battle.

Southey's life gives the lie to that solemn remark about genius being simply a capacity for hard work: if it were so, he would have ranked high; he worked incessantly, produced his to-day neglected poems, supported his family and contributed toward the support of the families of his friends. He was a good man, and worked himself to death; but he was not a genius.

On the other hand, Wilde was; but his life was not good, it was not pure; he did injury to his friends; and to his wife and children, the greatest wrong a man could do them, so that she died of a broken heart, and his sons live under an assumed name; yet, notwithstanding all this, perhaps to some extent by reason of it, he is a most interesting personality, and no doubt his future place in literature will be to some extent influenced by the fate which struck him down just at the moment of his greatest success.

Remembering Dr. Johnson's remark that in lapidary work a man is not upon oath, it has always seemed to me that something like the epitaph he wrote for Goldsmith's monument in Westminster Abbey might with equal justice have been carved upon Wilde's obscure tombstone in a neglected corner of Bagneux Cemetery in Paris. The inscription I refer to translates: "He left scarcely any style of writing untouched and touched nothing that he did not adorn."

I am too good a Goldsmithian to compare Goldsmith, with all his faults and follies, to Wilde, with his faults and follies, and vices superadded; but Wilde wrote "Dorian Gray," a novel original and powerful in conception, as powerful as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"; and remembering that Wilde was also an essayist, a poet, and a dramatist, I think we may fairly say that he too touched nothing that he did not adorn.

But, to begin at the beginning. Wilde was not especially fortunate in his parents. His father was a surgeon-oculist of Dublin, and was knighted by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland - just why, does not appear, nor is it important; his son always seemed a little ashamed of the incident. His mother was the daughter of a clergyman of the Church of England. She was "advanced" for her time, wrote prose and verse, under the nom de plume of "Speranza," which were published frequently in a magazine, which was finally suppressed for sedition. If Lady Wilde was emancipated in thought, of her lord it may be said that he put no restraint whatever upon his acts. They were a brilliant, but what we would call to-day a Bohemian, couple. I have formed an impression that the father, in spite of certain weaknesses of character, was a man of solid attainments, while of the mother someone has said that she reminded him of a tragedy queen at a suburban theatre. This is awful.

Oscar Wilde was a second son, born in Dublin, on the 16th of October, 1854. He went to a school at