The Fall of the House of Wilde (29 page)

In 1877 Oscar joined the battle of detractors in his comments on Whistler's works. He took exception to Whistler's undermining of the rational principles upon which language rests, and described the title Whistler gave his portrait of Henry Irving,
Arrangement in Black No. 3
, as ‘apparently some pseudonym for our greatest living actor'. In portraiture Oscar looked for the traditional reliance on resemblance. He could not embrace Whistler's way of glancing off surfaces, his preference for evoking mood or prompting vague associations. Whistler's paintings, with their sensuous figures, colour harmonies, elegant patterning and synaesthetic stimulation of one sense by another, were for Oscar ‘black smudges'. More famously, Ruskin objected to the paintings Whistler exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery, saying, ‘[I] never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.' A public dispute arose, culminating in Whistler suing Ruskin for libel, claiming damages of £1,000. Whistler won the case but not the argument, as he was awarded a laughable farthing in damages.

‘Art for art's sake' was not a morally neutral position – the sexual candour of Swinburne's poetry is evidence enough. The arrest in 1873 of the artist Simon Solomon, then in the same circle as Swinburne, Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Pater, on charges of homosexual activity, and the dismissal from Eton of the schoolmasters William Cory and Oscar Browning in 1872 and 1875, though isolated incidents, were indicative of a move against any loosening of moral codes. The Bishop of Oxford's indictment of Pater added to the furore.

Oscar, we recall, sent Pater a copy of his Grosvenor Gallery review in the summer of 1877 and met him shortly afterwards for the first time. Among much else, Pater asked Oscar why he favoured the writing of poetry over prose. Only later, Oscar admitted, did he come to see that prose could be an art the equal of poetry, and criticism the equal of art. Pater's praise meant a lot to Oscar. Though his ego scarcely needed boosting, judging by the remark he made in May/June 1877 to Keningdale Cook, the editor publishing the review in
Dublin University Magazine
, ‘I always say I and not “we”.'
¹⁰
Oscar was eager to stand out, to create a sensation, and to tell all of his admiration for paintings of boys ‘as beautiful as the Charmides of Plato'.

Oscar was on a roll. On 11 June 1878, like Ruskin before him, Oscar won the Newdigate Prize for his poem ‘Ravenna'. He sent Jane a telegram with the news, and her reply congratulating him reads as if the emotion informing it could not pause.

Oh Gloria, Gloria! Thank you a million times for the telegram – It is the first pleasant throb of joy I have had this year – How I long to read the poem – Well, after all we have genius. That is something. Attorneys can't take that away.

Oh, I do hope you will have some joy in your heart – You have got honour & recognition – And this at only 22 is a grand thing [Oscar would be twenty-four on October 16 of that year, that is, older than most of his fellow graduates]. I am proud of you – & I am happier that [
sic
] I can tell – This gives you a certainty of success in the future. You can now trust your own intellect & know what it can do – I should so like to see the smile on your face now.

Willie, too, was delighted. According to Jane, ‘the moment we got the telegram he took a cab & drove off with it to all the Dublin papers'.
¹¹
The county papers also carried the news, and the poem was printed for all across the country to read.

Then, on 19 July 1878 Oscar was awarded a double first in Latin and Greek languages and literature, commonly known as ‘Greats' for the intellectual demands of the course. Throughout the century Greats stood at the apex of academic achievement, and the rare feat of a double first ranked Oscar high in a society where Classics carried a mark of distinction.

While Oscar's prospects brightened, Willie's darkened. Jane wrote to Oscar in mid-1878 to say Willie was bust:

Willie has spent all his money & is now in debt to the bank & all his personal expenses are unpaid – So here's a smash – Of course this house is now his only resource. He says he will wait for the British Association [August 1878] & then sell off everything – Meanwhile he is jolly and enjoys life.
¹²

The speed with which Willie ran through the money he had inherited angered Oscar, who briefly cut communication with his brother. That Oscar's ire was incited by the magnitude of Willie's reckless extravagance is ironic given Oscar was twice ordered by the vice-chancellor's court to pay his debts to tradesmen. Lest the profligacy that was derailing Willie afflict Oscar as well, Jane laced her letters to him with gossip of acquaintances who ended up either in debtors' prison or who were on the run from creditors.

So, in the autumn of 1878, Willie announced he would quit Dublin, he would ‘throw it all up', and try his luck in London as a journalist. Jane wrote to tell Oscar that Willie was putting the Bar behind him, and continued, ‘[Willie] and I will try London – a small house – so on – Then let who likes takes no.1. We have done with Dublin – This is what is now in my heart – What profit in truth has a man's name. Times is bad.' Jane was prepared to accept Willie's excuse for giving up the Bar, his protestation that only with kin connections could one succeed, telling Oscar, Willie ‘is now seeing that you need have an attorney of kin to get on – brilliancy won't do'.
¹³
With debts mounting, Willie had to seek employment straight away.

It is difficult to know what Jane really thought about leaving Dublin. William's death and their financial downfall had cast a pall over everything. Oscar and Willie were her lifeline and she would not have wanted to be left in Dublin without them. Besides, had she remained, she might have struggled to keep alive the aura of majesty she carried there. The Dublin in which the Wildes and their circle had thrived was changing. The Catholic middle class, hitherto deprived of equal opportunity, was coming at life with verve and appetite to succeed. Politically, there was growing support for Home Rule and redistribution of land rights. In this newly confident and mercantile Dublin, the ground of the Protestant establishment looked wobbly, and Jane may not have kept her balance. On what could she lean? The family had brains to burn, were rich in culture and were far more sophisticated than the emerging mercantile class. But what about vim and vigour? Or the vitality to succeed by the new criteria – money? The Irish Protestants had constructed imperishable monuments, but the generation that had had such high hopes for the country was dying out. Willie, most certainly, had nothing in him of his father's determination or idealism, nor anything of the ambition that made his father so productive and successful. If the signs were not already clear, time would tell how far the son was from the father in temperament and values.

In March 1879 No. 1 Merrion Square was sold to Dr O'Leary for £3,500. It had been the Wilde home for over twenty years. Jane and Willie had eight weeks before they had to hand over the keys of Merrion Square to the new owner. In a letter to Oscar, dated March 1879, Jane wrote, ‘[we have] not an idea where to lay our heads'. Willie at that stage was in London trying to secure work and buy a house. Jane heard nothing from him for weeks. When he eventually wrote, it was one brief note deflating her expectations – the cost of a house was beyond them. It looked as though they would have to take ‘furnished lodging in London', she told Oscar. It was not in her character to complain about the weather. But the cold had entered her heart. ‘I am perishing,' she wrote to Oscar. ‘Never was such awful weather. The sun is going out.' And signed herself ‘La Madre Desolata'.
¹⁴

Jane waited in vain for more news from Willie, her frustration mounting, as she had to vacate Merrion Square in May. She eventually set out for London alone, staying first at an hotel, intending to find lodgings herself. On 13 May, she sent Oscar a desperate note.

Willie telegraphed ‘all right' but I know nothing more – so went out yesterday & almost took lodgings at Mudie's Library . . . I tried 15 [Lisle] Street. £10 a month for 2 rooms. I don't know what to do. The Bram Stokers have 6 rooms unfurnished lodging in Southampton Street for £100 a year – Phil says we could get the same opposite them. Perhaps you might see [if] lodgings in your street would do me [Oscar was then living at 13 Salisbury Street, just off the Strand] – Suppose next door to you. A suite of rooms for me – what am I to do! Meanwhile I know nothing of Willie's wishes. Is the furniture to be sold or brought over? I know not – I think I'll die & end it – Meantime I have a dozen trunks & books to put somewhere – but where. Your deplorable mother, Senza Speranza [without hope].
¹⁵

In the end she and Willie rented a flat together at 1 Ovington Square in Knightsbridge. Jane was fifty-eight, unknown in London, and with nothing to declare but her genius. She had never wanted the world to stand still and it had certainly obliged her in the previous few years.

21

Literary Bohemia

Oscar had moved to London in the early months of 1879. He had sold the Bray properties the previous year, but how much profit he made is unclear. Indeed, so complex was it that one of the purchasers sued and the sale had to be resolved in court in a case that was heard in July 1878. Whatever the proceeds were, they allowed Oscar to set up house with a friend, Frank Miles, at 13 Salisbury Street. Two years older than Oscar, Miles was tall, blond and handsome. He was a portrait painter, skilled at making women appear more beautiful than they were. Not surprisingly, his trade flourished, especially among society women. Miles was not without talent – he won the Turner Prize at the Royal Academy in 1880 – and his mother, too, was an artist, his father a canon. He and Oscar were well acquainted, having spent parts of their holidays in each other's company, either at Miles's home at Bingham Rectory in Nottinghamshire or at Moytura and Illaunroe, where Frank had showed his itch to paint by covering one wall with a mural of two cherubs as fisherboys. He had less of an itch to shoot, much to the disappointment of Oscar, who had tried unsuccessfully to put a gun into the hand of his ‘handsome' friend. Together the two kept, according to Oscar, an ‘untidy and romantic house'. Miles occupied the top floor, Oscar the second, and a young schoolboy named Harry Marillier was allowed to use the ground floor as a place to house his books and in which to study. From Marillier's account, 13 Salisbury Street was a rickety, dilapidated place. Oscar brightened his floor of this bohemian dwelling with white paint, and decked it out with blue china, Damascus tiles, Blake and Burne-Jones drawings, Tangara figures, Greek rugs and hangings, and lilies everywhere.
¹
He christened it ‘Thames House', as it overlooked the river, and by December 1879 he and Frank had held an afternoon salon dubbed ‘Tea and Beauties' for artists, actresses and those with interesting sensibilities who crossed their paths.
²
Whistler, Burne-Jones, Walter Sickert, the Prince of Wales and Lillie Langtry were among those who came.

Lillie Langtry assumed great importance in Oscar's life during his early years in London. Oscar first met Langtry at Frank Miles's studio in 1877. A year older than Oscar, Langtry was married to an Irish landowner, Edward Langtry, who proved incapable of holding his wife to her vows. Born Emilie Charlotte Le Breton, Langtry hailed from Jersey, where her father was a dean, but not a puritan dean: his serial infidelity led to the break-up of his marriage. Not willing to resign herself to the obscurity of Jersey, Langtry set her sights on London. There her beauty was soon recognised – Frank Miles was the first to pay her attention. He spotted the strikingly attractive Langtry at a reception given by Lord Ranelagh, insisted upon doing her portrait, and sold it to Prince Leopold. Langtry soon became the toast of
le beau monde.
When she met Oscar, her star was already in the ascendant, and that same year she became mistress to the Prince of Wales. Oscar saw in the abundantly ambitious Langtry the spunk he admired in women. And Langtry, in
The Days I Knew
, said Oscar ‘possessed a remarkably fascinating and compelling personality, and what in an actor would be termed wonderful “stage presence” . . . there was about him an enthusiasm singularly captivating. He had one of the most alluring voices that I have ever listened to, round and soft, and full of variety and expression, and the cleverness of his remarks received added value from his manner of delivering them.' She warmed to his
savoir-vivre
, always ‘bubbling over with temperament', which seemed to come from the heart, and hers rose to meet it.
³

Like brother and sister they confided in each other, and built a friendship of pure pleasure, with nothing in it to inspire jealousy or sexual tension. If Langtry needed consolation, advice or entertainment, she had only to call impromptu on Oscar and he would meet her needs straight away. The frankness in their relationship is evident in the correspondence. Anxious about what she should wear to a fancy-dress ball, Langtry popped into Salisbury Street to seek Oscar's opinion. As she tells it, ‘I called at Salisbury Street about an hour before you left. I wanted to ask you how I should go to a fancy ball here, but I chose a soft black Greek dress with a fringe of silver crescents and stars, and diamond ones in my hair and on my neck, and called it Queen of Night. I made it myself. I want to write more but this horrid paper and pen prevent me so when we meet I will tell you more: (only don't tell Frank).'

But the confidants were also master and pupil. Oscar took a proprietary hold on her mind, teaching her Latin and encouraging her to learn about Greek art. She wrote in May 1880 to reassure him of her readiness to learn: ‘of course I'm longing to learn more Latin but we stay here [Plymouth] till Wednesday night so I shan't be able to see my kind tutor before Thursday. Do come and see me on that afternoon about six if you can.'
⁴
With Oscar's encouragement, she accompanied him to ‘Newton's lectures on Greek art'.
⁵