The importance of Oscar Wilde

Quite a few years back, I shared a small office with a woman whose husband was named Ernest. One day I made the mistake of referring to him as Ernie. She let me know that his name was Ernest, and I was not to call him Ernie.
    Recently I learned from a friend who had had dinner with her and Ernest a couple of years ago that they were no longer married. The friend himself, I noticed, referred to Ernest as Ernie. I wondered about that.
    I mentioned this to another friend who had also known Ernest/Ernie and his former wife, and he suggested that maybe it was because she called him Ernie that they got divorced?
    I said, "Well, but our friend who told me that calls him Ernie too...."
    "Hmm," this other friend said.
    I said, "Maybe she called him Ernest one time too many?"
    He said, "Maybe she hadn't realized the extent, for her husband, of the importance of not being Ernest?"
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The photo from Wikipedia was captioned: "The original production of The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895 with Allan Aynesworth as Algernon (left) and George Alexander as Jack (right)."

GBS on Frank Harris on Oscar Wilde

A special feature of the edition of Frank Harris's life of Oscar Wilde that I finally finished reading today¹ is its inclusion of George Bernard Shaw's brief account, "My Memories of Oscar Wilde." Because Shaw lived until 1950, we may not remember that he was born the same year as Harris (1856-1931) and only two years after Wilde, who died in 1900.
    The part of GBS's account that I enjoyed most was his witty remarks about Harris, into which Harris inserted footnotes, on some of which GBS commented while reviewing the proof for publication:

What your book needs to complete it is a portrait of yourself as good as your portrait of Wilde....
    Pugnacious people, if they did not actually terrify Oscar, were at least the sort of people he could not control, and whom he feared as possibly able to coerce him. You suggest that the Queensberry pugnacity was something that Oscar could not deal with successfully. But how in that case could Oscar have felt quite safe with you? You were more pugnacious than six Queensberrys rolled into one. When people asked, "What has Frank Harris been?" the usual reply was, "Obviously a pirate from the Spanish main."
    ...You had quite an infernal scorn for nineteen out of twenty of the men and women you met in the circles he most wished to propitiate; and nothing could induce you to keep your knife in its sheath when they jarred on you. The Spanish Main itself would have blushed rosy red at your language when classical invective did not suffice to express your feelings.
    ...That is why, in his relations with you, he appears as a man always shirking action—more of a coward (all men are cowards more or less) than so proud a man can have been [sic]. Still this does not affect the truth and power of your portrait. Wilde's memory will have to stand or fall by it.
    ...You could not have carried kindness further without sentimental folly. I should have made a far sterner summing up. I am sure Oscar has not found the gates of heaven shut against him. He is too good company to be excluded; but he can hardly have been greeted as "Thou good and faithful servant." The first thing we ask a servant for is a testimonial to honesty, sobriety, and industry; for we soon find out that these are the scarce things, and that geniuses and clever people are as common as rats.

Here Harris placed a footnote: "The English paste in Shaw; genius is about the rarest thing on earth whereas the necessary guantum of 'honesty, sobriety, and industry' is beaten by life into nine humans out of ten."
    And GBS commented, "If so, it is the tenth who comes my way."

Shaw's account continues:

Well, Oscar was not sober, not honest, not industrious. Society praised him for being idle, and persecuted him savagely for an aberration [homosexual acts] which it had better have left unadvertized, thereby making a hero of him; for it is in the nature of people to worship those who have been made to suffer horribly. Indeed I have often said that if the crucifixion could be proved a myth, and Jesus convicted of dying of old age in comfortable circumstances, Christianity would lose ninety-nine per cent of its devotees.
    ...Now that you have written the best life of Oscar Wilde, let us have the best life of Frank Harris². Otherwise the man behind your works will go down to posterity as the hero of my very inadequate preface to "The Dark Lady of the Sonnets." [pp. 339-343, Appendix A]

And here again Harris placed a footnote: "A characteristic flirt of Shaw's humor. He is a great caricaturist and not a portrait-painter.
    "When he thinks of my Celtic face and aggressive American frankness he talks of me as pugnacious and a pirate: 'a Captain Kidd.' In his preface to 'The Fair Lady of the Sonnets' [sic] he praises my 'idiosyncratic gift of pity'; says that I am 'wise through pity'; then he extols me as a prophet, not seeing that a pitying sage, prophet, and pirate constitute an inhuman superman.
    "I shall do more for Shaw than he has been able to do for me; he is the first figure in my new volume of 'Contemporary Portraits.' I have portrayed him there at his best, as I love to think of him, and henceforth he'll have to try to live up to my conception and that will keep him, I'm afraid, on strain."
    And GBS commented: "God help me!"
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1. Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions, 1916, 1917; 1997 edition (simply titled Oscar Wilde) with introduction by Wilde's grandson, Merlin Holland, which concludes with "Oscar's Last Days," by Oscar's lifelong friend Robbie Ross (1869-1918). As I learned from the text-overs at the end of "Wilde" the movie, Ross's remains were moved to Oscar's tomb about fifty years later, as seems to be confirmed on the web.
2. I think we have it, in Harris's memoir, My Life and Loves, 1931.

Conflicting passions, dominated by...?

Where was Oscar when we last looked in on him in Frank Harris's account of his life? At trial, anticipating prison.
    Now, in Chapter 18 of Oscar Wilde, he's in the final weeks of his two years of squalid incarceration, slimmed from prison food, chastened by the system's cruelty and instructed morally by its suffering and the kindness of some of the guards. In Oscar's words, from a conversation with Harris in prison about what prison had taught him:

[My mother] felt about prison as you do, Frank, and really I think you are both right; it has helped me. There are things I see now that I never saw before. I see what pity means. I thought a work of art should be beautiful and joyous. But now I see that that ideal is insufficient, even shallow; a work of art must be founded on pity; a book or poem which has no pity in it, had better not be written. [p. 210 in Chapter 18]

    By his final weeks in Reading Gaol, he had apparently achieved even a lightness of heart. A prison warder described Wilde at that time:

No more beautiful life had any man lived, no more beautiful life could any man live than Oscar Wilde lived during the short period I knew him in prison. He wore upon his face an eternal smile; sunshine was on his face, sunshine of some sort must have been in his heart. People say he was not sincere. He was the very soul of sincerity when I knew him....[p. 216 in Chapter 19]

Harris added his impressions of Oscar:

All this seems to me, in the main, true. Oscar's gay vivacity would have astonished any stranger. Besides, the regular hours and scant plain food of prison had improved his health [except for an injury in one ear from a fall, which is believed to have led to his death about three years later, at age 46] and the solitude and suffering had lent him a deeper emotional life. But there was an intense bitterness in him, a profound underlying sense of injury which came continually to passionate expression. Yet as soon as the miserable petty persecution of the prison was lifted from him, all the joyous gaiety and fun of his nature bubbled up irresistibly. There was no contradiction in this complexity. A man can hold in himself a hundred conflicting passions and impulses without confusion. At this time the dominant chord in Oscar was pity for others. [ibid]

My way of reading is to look for instruction or provocation to examine myself, especially these days, when I'm examining the apparent conflict between my outspokenness on religion and my essential compassion for others.
    Wednesday's visit with Spinoza (his view of the Bible) made me realize that a better man than I could be both critical of religious beliefs and respectful of them. And Oscar Wilde's hard-won sense of pity reminds me of my own compassion, which it seems I can set aside when necessary to pursue other items on my agenda.
    Another conflict has also come under the microscope of my self-analysis. It arose out of an exchange of comments in the Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper at UNC-Chapel Hill. As I mentioned on the day my wife and I "did the state fair," there was going to be a football game that [Thursday] night in Chapel Hill. To alleviate traffic and parking problems, the university asked certain employees to leave work early and to expect to make up the time later or not be paid for the missed hours. A letter to the editor of the DTH on Monday complained of this bitterly. On the newspaper's website, I commented "bravo" for the writer of the letter and used the occasion to rail briefly against sports fanaticism, which I said I had "realized in high school (fifty years ago) derogated sport and corrupted values," and I said that the university's arrangements for the day were an illustration. I implied that UNC alumni should maybe stop corrupting themselves by rooting for one team against another; they were maybe "in need of getting a life." I was (predictably, I can now see) attacked as "bitter" (even "bitter old man") and as exhibiting "elitism and false superiority." They thought that it was I who needed to get a life!
    It wasn't the first time I'd been accused of thinking myself superior. In 2004, a cousin my age out in Arizona emailed a group of his church friends and me that he was confident "the Lord would tell us how to vote." I replied-to-all that I sure as heck wasn't going to vote for George W. Bush. I told them in no uncertain terms (as I have said a few times on this blog) that I despised George W. Bush. I probably also said that if God advised anyone to vote for Bush, then he would thereby undermine his followers' claims that he was wise or omniscient. A bit more was said, and one of my cousin's wife's friends told her (and she copied me) that "he thinks he's superior." I remember thinking, Yes, you're right; I'm do think I'm superior to you. (This cousin subsequently started blocking all email from me; we have not spoken since. We may have played as children and teenagers, but we feud as responsible adults.)
    The apparent conflict surrounding my sense of superiority is illustrated right here on my blog. I wonder whether anyone has noticed it? Under my picture at the top of the right column is that quotation from Emily Dickinson (in response to the "about me" prompt in my profile):

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you—Nobody—too?

How can I at the same time be both nobody and superior to others? A feeling of superiority to others seems in strong conflict with my understanding of compassion as "feeling no more deserving than the next person"—a definition I've shared more than once on this blog.
    I'm not sure that I should let myself by absolved by Frank Harris's assurance that this is "no contradiction," for a person's "dominant chord" alternates with other chords over time. That view seems to deny the possibility of personal, moral integrity. But Harris's view does suggest that I might let up and not be so hard on myself for the recent occasions of my outspokenness. As I concluded my final comment on the Daily Tar Heel:

Trying to discuss sports fanaticism might be rather like trying to discuss religion. The best option would seem to have been to keep my mouth shut.

On both topics!

If only Wilde had been religious!

As the movie and Frank Harris's book both make very clear, Oscar Wilde was told emphatically by friends that he would certainly lose in court if he sued Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie)'s father, the Marquis of Queensberry (1844-1900), for libel over Queensberry's publicly calling Wilde a sodomite. Harris seemed to have been among the most vocal in warning Oscar. At any rate, he describes several emotional conversations with Wilde, from which it is clear that Wilde, influenced by Bosie, who vehemently disliked his father, fully intended to proceed in court. Finally, when Wilde asked Harris, "But what can I do, Frank?," Harris replied in exasperation, "Don't ask for advice you won't take."

But Oscar would have had to take a resolution and act in order to stop, and he was incapable of such energy....
    "I am bringing an action against Queensberry, Frank," [Oscar] began gravely, "for criminal libel. He is a mere wild beast. My solicitors tell me that I am certain to win...."
    [Oscar asks Harris if he would give evidence for him, and Harris says he would be perfectly willing.]..."but I want you to consider the matter carefully...."
    ..."Don't forget," I persisted, "all British prejudices will be against you. Here is a father, the fools will say, trying to protect his young son [!]. If he has made a mistake, it is only through excess of laudable zeal...."[pp. 112-114, Chapter 12 of Oscar Wilde]

And here Harris told Wilde something rather extraordinary:

"...You would have to prove yourself a religious maniac in order to have any chance against him in England."

    I suppose it's possible that Harris was suggesting that Wilde, if perceived to be a "religious maniac," might have been able to get off "by reason of insanity," but I take it that he was rather making a point that Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins all condemned in their recent books on religion: if a person's motives are "religious," he is above criticism and all is forgiven.
    Of course, there was no question of Wilde's having religious motives, and Harris doesn't mention religion again [to the point I've read so far, at any rate.]

Wilde the movie

Last evening I watched again the 1997 film, "Wilde," directed by Brian Gilbert and starring Stephen Fry as Oscar, Jude Law as Lord Alfred Douglas ("Bosie") (1870-1945), and Tom Wilkinson as the latter's father, the Marquis of Queensberry. I found it even harder to watch or enjoy than the first time, likely because I know more now about Wilde's submissive participation with Bosie in his own undoing—and also, perhaps, because there were more scenes of homosexual sodomy than I recalled the film's having. Bosie was no more forgivable for being portrayed prettily by Law, although Wilde may have been even more pitiful for Fry's pathetic portrayal.
    Most interesting, actually, was this time recognizing the Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd, whose portrayal of William Wilberforce (1759-1833) in the 2006 film, "Amazing Grace," I'd watched the night before (and whose portrayal of Horatio Hornblower we enjoyed months ago in the TV series). In "Wilde," he plays John Gray, whom Frank Harris described as having "not only great personal distinction, but charming manners and a marked poetic gift, a much greater gift than Oscar possessed." Harris identified Gray as the likely source for the last name of the title character in Wilde's novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Remember, Harris knew the people involved; he was Wilde's junior by only sixteen months.
    From the blurb at the bottom of the front cover of Frank Harris's life of Wilde ("Now a major motion picture starring Stephen Fry"—see the cover photo on Thursday's post), I was expecting to see that the film was based on the book. Not so, alas; it was said to be based on Richard Ellmann's biography (which I've had for years but not read yet).
    Ellmann (1918-1987) is said in the introduction to Harris's book (by Wilde's grandson, Merlin Holland, copyright 1997) to have distanced himself from Harris's account:

Such, though, is Harris's reputation that even modern biographers are often reluctant to quote him. Harris in Chapter 4 tells the story of the famous Wilde/Whistler exchange culminating in Whistler's "You will, Oscar, you will." Hesketh Pearson's 1946 biography repeats the incident word for word and Richard Ellmann quotes it in his 1987 biography of Wilde, but gives Pearson as the source rather than the generally discredited Harris....[p. ix, Oscar Wilde]

I note, however, that Ellmann gave Harris almost half a column in his index, with over thirty references.

Oscar's brilliant talk

Continuing to read Frank Harris's life of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) (before we encounter Wilde's disastrous relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas):

No season, it is said, is so beautiful as the brief northern summer. Three-fourths of the year is cold and dark, and the ice-bound landscape is swept by snowstorm and blizzard. Summer comes like a goddess; in a twinkling the snow vanishes and Nature puts on her robes of tenderest green; the birds arrive in flocks; flowers spring to life on all sides, and the sun shines by night as by day. Such a summertide, so beautiful and so brief, was accorded to Oscar Wilde before the final desolation.

Oscar Wilde's method of work

Having learned from Frank Harris's memoir, My Life and Loves, that he was very well acquainted with Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) and had written a life of Wilde (who was the "greatest talker" Harris ever met—and Harris talked with the likes of Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, and Guy de Maupassant), I decided to read it. Chapter 8 begins:

The period of growth of any organism is the most interesting and most instructive. And there is no moment of growth in the individual life which can be compared in importance [to] the moment when a man begins to outtop his age, and to suggest the future evolution of humanity by his own genius....
    This period for Oscar Wilde began with his marriage [1884]....
    During this period we were often together. He lunched with me once or twice a week, and I began to know his method of work. Everything came to him in the excitement of talk, epigrams, paradoxes, and stories; and when people of great position or title were about him he generally managed to surpass himself....
    As soon as he lost his editorship [of The Woman's World], he took to writing for the reviews; his articles were merely the resumé of his monologues....
    [They] made it manifest that Wilde had at length, as Heine phrased it, reached the topmost height of the culture of his time and was now able to say new and interesting things...In fact, all the papers which in 1891 were gathered together and published in book form under the title of Intentions had about them the stamp of originality. They achieved a noteworthy success with the best minds, and laid the foundation of his fame. Every paper contained, here and there, a happy phrase or epigram or flirt of humor, which made it memorable to the lover of letters.

But:

They were all...conceived and written from the standpoint of the artist, and the artist alone, who never takes account of ethics, but uses right and wrong indifferently as colors of his pallette. "The Decay of Lying" seemed to the ordinary, matter-of-fact Englishman a cynical plea in defence of mendacity. To the majority of readers, "Pen, Pencil, and Poison" was hardly more than a shameful attempt to condone cold-blooded murder. The very articles which grounded his fame as a writer helped to injure his standing and repute....[pp. 66-68, Chapter 8 of Oscar Wilde]

Oscar Wilde (1850-1900) still timely

The quotation below, found at Notable Quotes and represented as coming from Oscar Wilde's The Critic as Artist, certainly sounds like something Oscar Wilde might have said. Wilde could be speaking about much of what passes for journalism today, the practice of quoting "opposing sides" without objective analysis, the practice of reporting both politics and government as though they were varieties of sport, the more aggressive and emotional the blocks and jabs and feints and punts the more exciting the reportage.

There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.