Oscar Wilde. Leonard Cresswell Ingleby
I expect my Lecture will be a success. So does Dollar Carte—I mean D'Oyley Carte. Too-Toothless Senility may jeer, and poor, positive Propriety may shake her rusty curls; but I am here in my creamy lustihood, to pipe of Passion's venturous Poesy, and reap the scorching harvest of Self-Love! I am not quite sure what I mean. The true Poet never is. In fact, true Poetry is nothing if it is intelligible. She is only to be compared to Salmacis, who is not a boy or girl, but yet is both."
And so forth, and so forth.
About the conversation and superficial manner of Oscar Wilde there must have been something strangely according to formula. Among intimate friends, friends who were sympathetic to his real ideals, his talk was wonderful. That fact is vouched for in a hundred quarters, it is not to be denied.
As I write I have dozens of undeniable testimonies to the fact, I myself can bear witness to it on at least one occasion. But when Wilde was not with people for whose opinion of him he cared much—really cared—his odd perversity of phrase, his persistent wish to astonish the fools, his extraordinary carelessness of average opinion often compelled him to talk the most frantic nonsense which was only redeemed from mere childish inversion of phrase by the air and manner with which it was said, and the merest tinsel pretence of wit. The wittiest talker of his generation, certainly the wittiest writer, gave the very worst of his wit to the pressmen who pestered him but who, and this was the thing he was unable to appreciate at its true value, represented him to the world during this "first period."
The mock interviews in Punch which have been quoted from are really no very wide departures from the real thing. A year or two after the Æsthetic movement was not so prominent in the public eye as was the success of Wilde as a writer of plays, an actual interview with him appeared in a well-known weekly paper in which he talked not much less extravagantly than he was caricatured as talking in Punch. A play of his had been produced and, while it was a complete and satisfying success, it had been assailed in that unfortunately hostile way by the critics to which he was accustomed.
He was asked what he thought about the attitude of the critics towards his play.
"For a man to be a dramatic critic," he is said to have replied, "is as foolish and inartistic as it would be for a man to be a critic of epics, or a pastoral critic, or a critic of lyrics. All modes of art are one, and the modes of the art that employs words as its medium are quite indivisible. The result of the vulgar specialisation of criticism is an elaborate scientific knowledge of the stage—almost as elaborate as that of the stage-carpenter, and quite on a par with that of the call-boy—combined with an entire incapacity to realise that a play is a work of art, or to receive any artistic impressions at all."
He was told that he was rather severe upon the dramatic critics.
"English dramatic criticism of our own day has never had a single success, in spite of the fact that it goes to all the first nights," was his reply.
Thereupon the interviewer suggested that dramatic criticism was at least influential.
"Certainly; that is why it is so bad," he replied, and went on to say:
"The moment criticism exercises any influence it ceases to be criticism. The aim of the true critic is to try and chronicle his own moods, not to try and correct the masterpieces of others."
"Real critics would be charming in your eyes, then?"
"Real critics? Ah, how perfectly charming they would be! I am always waiting for their arrival. An inaudible school would be nice. Why do you not found it?"
Oscar Wilde was asked if there were, then, absolutely no critics in London.
"There are just two," he answered, but refused to give their names. The interviewer goes on to recount his exact words:
"Mr. Wilde, with the elaborate courtesy for which he has always been famous, replied, 'I think I had better not mention their names; it might make the others so jealous.'
"'What do the literary cliques think of your plays?'
"'I don't write to please cliques; I write to please myself. Besides, I have always had grave suspicions that the basis of all literary cliques is a morbid love of meat-teas. That makes them sadly uncivilised.'
"'Still, if your critics offend you, why don't you reply to them?'
"'I have far too much time. But I think some day I will give a general answer, in the form of a lecture, in a public hall, which I shall call "Straight Talks to Old Men."'
"'What is your feeling towards your audiences—towards the public?'
"'Which public? There are as many publics as there are personalities.'
"'Are you nervous on the night that you are producing a new play?'
"'Oh no, I am exquisitely indifferent. My nervousness ends at the last dress rehearsal; I know then what effect my play, as presented upon the stage, has produced upon me. My interest in the play ends there, and I feel curiously envious of the public—they have such wonderful fresh emotions in store for them.'
"I laughed, but Mr. Wilde rebuked me with a look of surprise.
"'It is the public, not the play, that I desire to make a success,' he said.
"'But I'm afraid I don't quite understand——'
"'The public makes a success when it realises that a play is a work of art. On the three first nights I have had in London the public has been most successful, and had the dimensions of the stage admitted of it, I would have called them before the curtain. Most managers, I believe, call them behind.'"
There are pages more of this sort of thing, and the earlier and pretended interview in Punch differs a little in period but very little in manner from this real interview.
Punch continued its gibes during the whole time of the first period. Really witty parodies of Oscar Wilde's poems and plays appeared from time to time. Pictures of him were drawn in caricature by well-known artists. It was the same in almost every society. The band of enthusiasts listened to the message, but gave more prominence to the poses and extravagances which accompanied it. The message was obscured and it was the fault of Oscar Wilde's eccentricity.
We are reaping the benefit of it all now, at present I am merely the chronicler of opinion when the movement was in what the unobservant thought was its heyday, but which has proved to be its infancy.
The chorus of dislike and mistrust was almost universal. At Oxford itself, popularly supposed to be a stronghold of æstheticism at the time, a debate on the question took place at the Union. A very prominent undergraduate of the day, Mr. J. A. Simon, of Wadham College, reflected the bulk of Oxford opinion when he spoke as follows:—
"Mr. J. A. Simon (Wadham) said he felt nervous, for it was an extraordinary occasion for him to be on the side that would gain a majority. He did not consider that the motion had at all the meaning the mover gave it. He quite agreed with him as to the advances made in the illustrated press, and other things, and that many of these selected changes were good. The motion, however, evidently referred to the movement headed by Oscar Wilde, and represented by such things as the 'Yellow Book,' etc. He always thought that the mover was most natural when he was on the stage (applause) and they had all been given pleasure by his impersonations (applause). He believed, though, that he had been acting that night, and the speaker quoted from the speeches of Bassanio passages which he considered described the way the mover had led them off the scent. He intended to discuss the matter seriously. As a book entitled 'Degeneracy' pointed out, the new movement was the outcome of a craving for novelty, and the absurdities in connection with it would do credit to a madhouse. People were eccentric in the hope that they would be taken to be original (applause). It was not a development at all; it was but a jerk or twitching, the work of a moment. Oscar Wilde had actually signed his name to a most awful pun, as those who had seen 'The Importance Of Being Earnest' would understand. The writer's many epigrams were doubtless clever, for next to pretending to be drunk, pretending to be mad was the most difficult (applause). The process was to turn a proverb