The Fall of the House of Wilde (52 page)

Anyway, Oscar split himself during these years: one side was given over to complete abandonment and the other became steely and implacable. His biographer Frank Harris spoke of a ‘change in him'. ‘He was now utterly contemptuous of criticism . . . he was gross, too, the rich food and wine seemed to ooze out of him and his manner was defiant, hard.'
¹²

Something of that change went into the writing of
A Woman of No Importance
. One detects in the play a blatant disdain for the society of aristocrats he brings together. There is nothing noble about these ‘dowagers and dowdies', sipping tea on the lawn, believing themselves grander than others, guarding their turf against outsiders. It is a society that has, as Miss Hester Worsley, a character in the play, puts it, ‘blinded its eyes, and stopped its ears'.
¹³
The old forms of social ritual lack animus and energy. In their beliefs and values these aristocrats are at odds with the modernity in which Oscar delighted. There are too many instances when the play declines into polemic, vitriol or even melodrama. It turns on a secret: Gerald Arbuthnot is Lord Illingworth's illegitimate son. The secret is revealed when Gerald Arbuthnot tries to kill Lord Illingworth for kissing Hester Worsley, only to find himself stopped by his mother, who knows Illingworth is his real but estranged father.

Doubts about society, and about class, become doubts about everything – about what can and cannot be represented. At one point it threatens to turn into another play, as Lord Illingworth is shown to have a homoerotic interest in Gerald Arbuthnot, the boy he has fathered, but this fizzles out. Gerald Arbuthnot is a young provincial bank clerk whom Illingworth plans to take to India as his diplomatic secretary, despite Gerald's not having the educational history of ‘Eton' and ‘Oxford' deemed necessary for such a post. ‘I took a great fancy to young Arbuthnot the moment I met him, and he'll be of considerable use to me in something I am foolish enough to think of doing.'
¹⁴
This marker of where life enters art – Oscar's relationship with the clerk, Edward Shelley – only serves to highlight what Oscar would have liked to write but could not; certainly not for the Haymarket Theatre audience.

The only character to really take shape is Lord Illingworth. He signifies modernity in his effort to introduce diversity into the upper echelons of the Establishment and to bequeath his property to his illegitimate son. He doesn't bother to pass on his title, however, as it is useless – it ‘is really a nuisance in these democratic days'.
¹⁵
Lord Illingworth is a free spirit, driven by whim, always surprising himself. Unlike Lord Henry Wotton in
The Picture of Dorian Gray
, who is a spectator of life, Lord Illingworth is for tasting life itself, for the ‘concrete' experience of the sensorium. Like Oscar at this juncture, Lord Illingworth is a man who loves himself. He ‘is always astonishing himself, of late he has been discovering all kinds of beautiful qualities in [his] own nature'.
¹⁶
But he has neither Lord Henry's perceptiveness nor his curiosity, and comes across as an airy dandy who cares far more about his necktie than diversity and democracy. If one puts
A Woman of No Importance
alongside
Lady Windermere's Fan
, it appears – in what it shows, and how it shows it – to be hardly a picture of modernity at all, as it was supposed to be, but rather a description of the Establishment's resilience in the face of the future.

Had Oscar given up believing in this society? On 26 May 1892, Oscar spoke at a meeting of the Royal General Theatrical Fund, with George Alexander in the chair. There an alderman named Routledge praised Oscar for condemning vice in
Lady Windermere's Fan
. Oscar denied any such objective.

I have . . . been accused of lashing vice, but I can assure you that nothing was further from my intentions. Those who have seen
Lady Windermere's Fan
will see that if there is one particular doctrine contained in it, it is that of sheer individualism. It is not for anyone to censure what anyone else does, and everyone should go his own way, to whatever place he chooses, in exactly the way he chooses.

He spoke of the conservatism of British theatre and concluded, somewhat gratuitously, ‘Nor do I consider the British public to be of the slightest importance.'
¹⁷
Individualism and liberty to act had become his watchwords. If society could not reconcile itself to him, then that was the problem of society and the onus was on it to change.

Something of that tone went into
A Woman of No Importance
and the first audience felt it as a sort of aggression. The play opened on 19 April 1893 at the Haymarket. The actors were warmly clapped, but the author was jeered. Oscar, sporting a white waistcoat and white lilies in his coat, appeared briefly and said, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, I regret to inform you that Mr Oscar Wilde is not in the house.'
¹⁸
He tried to make light of his embarrassment in front of the most distinguished of English society. Certainly Arthur Balfour, leader of the Conservatives and Joseph Chamberlain, leader of the Liberal Unionists, made it to the opening, and the Prince of Wales attended the second evening's performance. Oscar had held up a mirror to aristocratic society. With statements such as ‘your English society seems to be shallow, selfish, foolish' uttered by Hester, or ‘It lies like a leper in purple. It sits like a dead thing smeared with gold. It is all wrong, all wrong', is it any wonder he was not applauded?
¹⁹

The biographer Lytton Strachey, who saw a revival of the play directed by and starring Tree in 1907, wrote of it in a letter to his friend Duncan Grant. ‘It was rather amusing, as it was a complete mass of epigrams, with occasional whiffs of grotesque melodrama and drivelling sentiment. The queerest mixture. Mr Tree is a wicked Lord, staying in a country house, who has made up his mind to bugger one of his guests – a handsome young man of twenty. She [Mrs Arbuthnot] appeals to Lord Tree not to bugger his own son.' Strachey continues in this vein, bringing out the gay and incestuous undercurrents of the play. He winds up. ‘It seems an odd plot . . . Epigrams engulf it like a sea. Most of them were thoroughly rotten, and nearly all of them said quite cynically to the gallery . . . The audience was of course charmed.'
²⁰

The first critics noted neither the cynicism nor the gay inflection. They had other complaints to make. ‘Deficient . . . in action . . . redundant in idle talk,' was the verdict of the
Saturday Review.
Others bemoaned the repetitive use of paradox and epigram; another reviewer charged it with a lack of artistic variety, leading to a ‘monotony of cleverness'.
²¹
None of the first reviewers spotted the heavy borrowings of material from
The Picture of Dorian Gray
, with chunks of Lord Henry's musings on life put into the mouth of Lord Illingworth. Oscar had struck gold with his characterisation of the idle aristocrat, with enough epigrammatic wit and ironic perspective to turn any sensible notion into an absurdity. It was something new in literature, but here Oscar had overdone it; it had become monotonous.

In 1947, in an article called ‘The Unimportance of Being Oscar', Mary McCarthy made a good observation in saying she found ‘something outré in all of Wilde's work'. She explained, ‘The trouble with Wilde's wit is that he does not recognise when the party is over. The effect of this effrontery is provoking in both senses; the outrageous has its own monotony, and insolence can only strike once.'
²²
In life and in art, the party was in full swing for Oscar. On 16 August Oscar attended the last night of his play and he, Robbie Ross, the illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, Douglas and others made themselves conspicuous by brandishing vine leaves in their hair. He had entered what he later described as his ‘Neronian hours, rich, profligate, cynical, materialistic'. With fame and fortune, ‘I grew careless of the lives of others.'
²³

Not least that of Jane. Another mother might have complained, but she held her tongue, preferring not to judge. She showered him with praise, as was her wont. A few days after the play opened, on 24 April 1893, she wrote: ‘You are now the great sensation of London – & I am very proud of you – You have made your name, & taken your place and now hold a distinguished position in the circle of Intellectuals.' But she also grew concerned – and wrote: ‘Take care of yourself & of your health – & keep clear of suppers & late hours, & champagne. Your health, & calm of mind is most important.'
²⁴
She obviously saw the physical deterioration in Oscar of which Harris spoke.

She herself had become too disheartened with life to go out much. Weeks after
A Woman of No Importance
opened, despite securing tickets from Oscar for friends, she still had not attended. She wrote on 16 May 1893, ‘I shall wait for myself a little longer – I have now so many cares, & the moving must begin & my intellect is all too dark to go & enjoy your brilliant play as yet.' She signed herself, ‘La tua caramente La Madre.'
²⁵
Scarcity of money was a constant worry. She put together a collection of essays, largely pieces that had already been published in magazines over the years. The topics range from ‘The Bondage of Women', ‘Social Graces', ‘Genius and Marriage' to ‘Suitability of Dress', and included in the collection are translations of two short stories. They were published under the title of
Social Studies
in the spring of 1893. In December 1893 William Morris paid £25 for the rights to the first book she had translated,
Sidonia the Sorceress
, and produced an illustrated edition.

Jane had had to leave 146 Oakley Street for a time while urgent maintenance was carried out, and lived temporarily at No. 26. She was indignant to receive a court summons for ‘injuries' done to No. 26 over the two months she had lived there. On 28 August 1893, she wrote to Oscar, ‘I would rather go into court, on oath . . . the charges made are all utterly absurd.' She wrote a twelve-page letter delineating the dilapidated state in which she had taken on the house – shabby carpets, soiled curtains, rusty kitchen and so forth. Oscar paid the small sums demanded, and, as ever, Jane was deeply grateful. On 18 September 1893, she wrote:

Best & most generous of sons! I am truly gratified for your great kindness. Your letter was a most pleasant surprise – to find it all settled. This was really something. No! I must regret the money I have cost you which you have paid so freely and generously. Again & again I thank you dear Oscar – you have always been my best and truest help in everything. Ever yours, Lovingly & gratefully, La Madre.
²⁶

Though Oscar often left his own bills unpaid, even when he had the funds to cover them, he was more assiduous in paying Jane's. He would often scan the bills on the mantelpiece and settle them. The tortuous drama of life had come full circle for Jane, shifting from one rundown abode to the next as she had done as a small child in Lesson Street, when her mother tried to make the best of a change in fortune. Tolerating adversity was not getting easier for Jane, then aged seventy-two.

While Jane was holed up in Oakley Street, Oscar tasted every pleasure money could buy. In the summer of 1893, he and Constance had taken a house at Goring-on-Thames, where they were joined by Douglas. Douglas played lord of the manor, taking proprietary control over the management of the place. At Oscar's expense, he hired eight servants – a butler who had once served his father, an under-butler, parlour maids and cooks. He took charge of the food and beverages, most of which he procured from the best suppliers in London – only the finest champagne would do for Douglas, who obviously enjoyed exploiting the emotional power he had won over Oscar. He took, as he put it, ‘exquisite pleasure' in his financial dependence on Oscar, who had come to adore Douglas, to whom he refused nothing. Indeed, Oscar seemed determined to tie himself in a bond of financial provider to Douglas, whose aristocratic disdain for bourgeois prudence he may have found attractive. The three months at Goring cost Oscar £1,340.

Meanwhile, Willie was back in London. Where or whether Willie was working is not known, but he asked Oscar if he could join him at Goring. Oscar would not have wanted Willie to know of his life with Douglas. He deflected the request with a breezy letter, and sent Willie a cheque for cigarettes. Written in July 1893, the letter begins:

My dear Willie, This Saturday is, I fear, impossible, as people are staying here, and things are tedious. You and Dan should have come down for the regatta, even in the evening: there were fireworks of surpassing beauty. I am greatly distressed to hear you and the fascinating Dan are smoking American cigarettes. You really must not do anything so horrid. Charming people should smoke gold-tipped cigarettes or die, so I enclose a small piece of paper, for which reckless bankers may give you gold, as I don't want you to die. With best love, ever yours, Oscar.
²⁷

Oscar's mention of death, not once but twice, may suggest he was not oblivious to the warning flashes from Willie's decaying body. Their next exchange would not be so light and cordial.

Two months later, on 18 September 1893, the
New York Times
ran an article on Willie. The pretext was his expulsion from the Lotos Club for non-settlement of bills, amounting to $14. The paper took the opportunity to rehash the image of Willie as a loafer. The headline ran thus: ‘Mr William Wilde Forgot a Little Matter of $14.' And continued, ‘Known to Fame as Oscar, the Aesthete's, Brother, as Mrs Frank Leslie's Ex-Husband, as Having Been “Born Tired,” and as Chronically Willing to Drink All Night at Somebody Else's Expense.' Willie, one Lotos Club member said,