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diff --git a/32849.txt b/32849.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..42d73ee --- /dev/null +++ b/32849.txt @@ -0,0 +1,711 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Oscar Wilde, by Edgar Saltus + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Oscar Wilde + An Idler's Impression + +Author: Edgar Saltus + +Release Date: June 17, 2010 [EBook #32849] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OSCAR WILDE *** + + + + +Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Adam Buchbinder, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net +(This book was produced from scanned images of public +domain material from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + + + OSCAR WILDE + + _An Idler's Impression_ + + + BY + + EDGAR SALTUS + + + [Illustration: Logo] + + + + + CHICAGO + + BROTHERS OF THE BOOK + + 1917 + + + + COPYRIGHT 1917 + + BY + + EDGAR SALTUS + + * * * * * + + + + +Of this first edition of _Oscar Wilde: An Idler's Impression, by Edgar +Saltus_, there have been printed four hundred and seventy-four copies, +and the type distributed. No second edition will be made. The +autographed copies were all subscribed for before publication. + + The edition consists of + + 49 copies on Inomachi vellum, in full binding, each copy + autographed by the author. Numbered from 1 to 49 inclusive. + + 100 copies on Inomachi vellum, in three-quarters binding. + Numbered from 50 to 149 inclusive. + + 325 copies on Fabriano hand-made paper, in boards. Numbered + from 150 to 474 inclusive. + + This Copy is Number + + * * * * * + + + + +_Oscar Wilde: An Idler's Impression_ + +OSCAR WILDE + + +Years ago, in a Paris club, one man said to another: "Well, what's +up?" The other shook a paper: "There is only one genius in England and +they have put him in jail." + +One may wonder though whether it were their doing, or even Wilde's, +that put him there. One may wonder whether it were not the high fates +who so gratified him in order that, from his purgatory, he might rise +to a life more evolved. But that view is perhaps obvious. Wilde +himself, who was the least mystic of men, accepted it. In the "De +Profundis," after weighing his disasters, he said: "Of these things I +am not yet worthy." + +The genuflexion has been called a pose. It may have been. Even so, it +is perhaps better to kneel, though it be in the gallery, than to stoop +at nothing, and Wilde, who had stood very high, bent very low. He saw +that there is one thing greater than greatness and that is humility. + +Yet though he saw it, it is presumable that he forgot it. It is +presumable that the grace which was his in prison departed in Paris. +On the other hand it may not have. There are no human scales for any +soul. + +It was at Delmonico's, shortly after he told our local Customs that he +had nothing to declare but genius, that I first met him. He was +dressed like a mountebank. Without, at the entrance, a crowd had +collected. In the restaurant people stood up and stared. Wilde was +beautifully unmoved. He was talking, at first about nothing whatever, +which is always an interesting topic, then about "Vera," a play of his +for which a local manager had offered him an advance, five thousand +dollars I think, "mere starvation wages," as he put it, and he went on +to say that the manager wanted him to make certain changes in it. He +paused and added: "But who am I to tamper with a masterpiece?"--a +jest which afterward he was too generous to hoard. + +Later, in London, I saw him again. In appearance and mode of life he +had become entirely conventional. The long hair, the knee-breeches, +the lilies, the velvet, all the mountebank trappings had gone. He was +married, he was a father, and in his house in Tite street he seemed a +bit bourgeois. Of that he may have been conscious. I remember one of +his children running and calling at him: "My good papa!" and I +remember Wilde patting the boy and saying: "Don't call me that, it +sounds so respectable." + +In Tite street I had the privilege of meeting Mrs. Oscar, who asked me +to write something in an album. I have always hated albumenous poetry +and, as I turned the pages in search of possible inspiration, I +happened on this: _From a poet to a poem. Robert Browning._ + +Poets exaggerate and why should they not? They have been found, too, +with their hands in other people's paragraphs. Wilde helped himself to +that line which he put in a sonnet to this lady, who had blue eyes, +fair hair, chapped lips, and a look of constant bewilderment. + +As for that, Oscar was sufficiently bewildering. He talked infinitely +better than he wrote, and on no topic, no matter what, could he talk +as other mortals must. Once only I heard of him uttering a platitude +and from any one else that platitude would have been a paradox. He +exuded wit and waded in it with a serenity that was disconcerting. + +It was on this abnormal serenity and on his equally abnormal +brilliance that he relied to defeat the prosecution. "I have all the +criminal classes with me," he announced, and that was his one +platitude, a banality that contrived to be tragic. Then headlong down +the stair of life he fell. + +Hell he had long since summarised as the union of souls without bodies +to bodies without souls. There are worse definitions than this which +years later I recalled when, through a curious forethought of fate, he +was taken, en route to the cemetery, through the Porte de l'Enfer. + +But in Tite street, at this time, and in Regent street where he +occasionally dined, he was gentle, wholesome, and joyous; a man who +paid compliments because, as he put it, he could pay nothing else. He +had been caricatured: the caricatures had ceased. People had turned to +look: they looked no longer. He was forgiven and, what is worse, +forgotten. Yet that tiger, his destiny, was but sharpening its claws. + +At an inn where Gautier dined, the epigrams were so demoralising that +a waiter became insane. Similarly in the Regent street restaurant it +was reported, perhaps falsely, that a waiter had also lost his reason. +But Wilde, though a three decanter man, always preserved his own. He +preserved, too, his courtesy which was invariable. The most venomous +thing that he ever said of anyone was that he was a tedious person, +and the only time he ever rebuked anybody was at the conclusion of one +of those after-dinner stories which some host or other interrupted by +rising and saying: "Shall we continue the conversation in the +drawing-room?" + +But I am in error. That was not his only rebuke. On one occasion I +drove with him to Tite street. An hour previous he had executed a +variation on the "Si j'etais roi." "If I were king," he had sung, "I +would sit in a great hall and paint on green ivory and when my +ministers came and told me that the people were starving, I would +continue to paint on green ivory and say: 'Let them starve.'" + +The aria was rendered in the rooms of Francis Hope, a young man who +later married and divorced May Yohe, but who at the time showed an +absurd interest in stocks. Someone else entered and Hope asked what +was new in the City. "Money is very tight," came the reply. "Ah, +yes," Wilde cut in. "And of a tightness that has been felt even in +Tite street. Believe me, I passed the forenoon at the British Museum +looking at a gold-piece in a case." + +Afterward we drove to Chelsea. It was a vile night, bleak and bitter. +On alighting, a man came up to me. He wore a short jacket which he +opened. From neck to waist he was bare. I gave him a shilling. Then +came the rebuke. With entire simplicity Wilde took off his overcoat +and put it about the man. + +But the simplicity seemed to me too Hugoesque and I said: "Why didn't +you ask him in to dinner?" + +Wilde gestured. "Dinner is not a feast, it is a ceremony." + +Subsequently that ceremony must have been contemplated, for Mrs. Wilde +was kind enough to invite me. The invitation reached me sometime in +advance and I took it of course that there would be other guests. But +on the appointed evening, or what I thought was the appointed +evening, when I reached this house--on which Oscar objected to paying +taxes because, as he told the astonished assessors, he was so seldom +at home--when I reached it, it seemed to me that I must be the only +guest. Then, presently, in the dreary drawing-room, Oscar appeared. +"This is delightful of you," he told me. "I have been late for dinner +a half hour, again a whole hour; you are late an entire week. That is +what I call originality." + +I put a bold face on it. "Come to my shop," I said, "and have dinner +with me. Though," I added, "I don't know what I can give you." + +"Oh, anything," Wilde replied. "Anything, no matter what. I have the +simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best." + +He was not boasting. One evening he dined on his "Sphinx." +Subsequently I supped with him on "Salome." + +That was in the Regent street restaurant where, apropos of nothing, or +rather with what to me at the time was curious irrelevance, Oscar, +while tossing off glass after glass of liquor, spoke of Pheme, a +goddess rare even in mythology, who, after appearing twice in Homer, +flashed through a verse of Hesiod and vanished behind a page of +Herodotos. In telling of her, suddenly his eyes lifted, his mouth +contracted, a spasm of pain--or was it dread?--had gripped him. A +moment only. His face relaxed. It had gone. + +I have since wondered, could he have evoked the goddess then? For +Pheme typified what modern occultism terms the impact--the premonition +that surges and warns. It was Wilde's fate to die three times--to die +in the dock, to die in prison, to die all along the boulevards of +Paris. Often since I have wondered could the goddess then have been +lifting, however slightly, some fringe of the crimson curtain, behind +which, in all its horror, his destiny crouched. If so, he braved it. + +I had looked away. I looked again. Before me was a fat pauper, florid +and over-dressed, who, in the voice of an immortal, was reading the +fantasies of the damned. In his hand was a manuscript, and we were +supping on "Salome." + +As the banquet proceeded, I experienced that sense of sacred terror +which his friends, the Greeks, knew so well. For this thing could have +been conceived only by genius wedded to insanity and, at the end, when +the tetrarch, rising and bundling his robes about him, cries: "Kill +that woman!" the mysterious divinity whom the poet may have evoked, +deigned perhaps to visit me. For, as I applauded, I shuddered, and +told him that I had. + +Indifferently he nodded and, assimilating Hugo with superb unconcern, +threw out: "It is only the shudder that counts." + +That was long before the crash. After it, Mrs. Wilde said that he was +mad and had been for three years, "quite mad" as the poor woman +expressed it. + +It may be that she was right. St. George, I believe, fought a dragon +with a spear. Whether or not he killed the brute I have forgotten. +But Wilde fought poverty, which is perhaps more brutal, with a pen. +The fight, if indolent, was protracted. Then, abruptly, his inkstand +became a Vesuvius of gold. London that had laughed at him, laughed +with him and laughed colossally. A penny-a-liner was famous. The +international hurdle-race of the stage had been won in a canter and +won by a hack. A sub-editor was top of the heap. + +The ascent was perhaps too rapid. The spiderous Fates that sit and +spin are jealous of sudden success. It may be that Mrs. Wilde was +right. In any event, for some time before the crash he saw few of his +former friends. After his release few of his former friends saw him. +But personally, if I may refer to myself, I am not near sighted. I saw +him in Paris, saw too, and to my regret, that he looked like a drunken +coachman, and told him how greatly I admired the "Ballad,"--that poem +which tells of his life, or rather of his death, in jail. Half +covering his mouth with his hand, he laughed and said: "It does not +seem to me sufficiently vecu." + +Before the enormity of that I fell back. But at once he became more +human. He complained that even the opiate of work was denied him, +since no one would handle his wares. + +The Athenians, who lived surrounded by statues, learned from them the +value of silence, the mystery that it lends to beauty, in particular +the dignity that it gives to grief. In their tragedies any victim of +destiny is as though stricken dumb. Wilde knew that, he knew +everything, in addition to being a thorough Hellenist. None the less +he told of his fate. It was human, therefore terrible, but it was not +the tragic muse. It was merely a tragedy of letters. + +Letters, yes, but lower case. Wilde was a third rate poet who +occasionally rose to the second class but not once to the first. Prose +is more difficult than verse and in it he is rather sloppy. In spite +of which, or perhaps precisely on that account, he called himself +lord of language. Well, why not, if he wanted to? Besides, in his talk +he was lord and more--sultan, pontifex maximus. Hook, Jerrold, Smith, +Sheridan, rolled into one, could not have been as brilliant. In talk +he blinded and it is the subsiding wonder of it that his plays +contain. + +In the old maps, on the vague places, early geographers used to put: +Hic sunt leones--Here are lions. On any catalogue of Wilde's plays +there should be written: Here lions might have been. For assuming his +madness, one must also admit his genius and the uninterrupted +conjunction of the two might have produced brilliancies such as few +bookshelves display. + +Therein is the tragedy of letters. Renan said that morality is the +supreme illusion. The diagnosis may or may not be exact. Yet it is on +illusions that we all subsist. We live on lies by day and dreams at +night. From the standpoint of the higher mathematics, morality may be +an illusion. But it is very sustaining. Formerly it was also Oscar +Wilde inspirational. In post-pagan days it created a new conception of +beauty. Apart from that, it has nothing whatever to do with the arts, +except the art of never displeasing, which, in itself, is the whole +secret of mediocrity. + +Oscar Wilde lacked that art, and I can think of no better epitaph for +him. + +Here ends this book written by Edgar Saltus, arranged in this form by +Laurence C. Woodworth, Scrivener, and printed for the BROTHERS OF THE +BOOK at the press of The Faithorn Company, Chicago, 1917. + +[Illustration: Logo] + +_Incipit Vita Nova_ + + * * * * * + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Oscar Wilde, by Edgar Saltus + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OSCAR WILDE *** + +***** This file should be named 32849.txt or 32849.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/2/8/4/32849/ + +Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Adam Buchbinder, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net +(This book was produced from scanned images of public +domain material from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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