Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters

To Lady Wilde

8 September 1868 Portora School

Darling Mama, The hamper came today, I never got such a jolly surprise, many thanks for it, it was more than kind of you to think of it. The grapes and pears are delicious and so cooling, but the blancmange got a little sour, I suppose by the knocking about, but the rest all came safe.

Don’t forget please to send me the National Review, is it not issued today?

The flannel shirts you sent in the hamper are both Willie’s, mine are one quite scarlet and the other lilac but it is too hot to wear them yet, the weather is so hot.

We went down to the horrid regatta on Thursday last. It was very jolly. There was a yacht race.

You never told me anything about the publisher in Glasgow. What does he say and have you written to Aunt Warren on the green note paper?

We played the officers of the 27th Regiment now stationed in Enniskillen, a few days ago and beat them hollow by about seventy runs.

You may imagine my delight this morning when I got Papa’s letter saying he had sent a hamper.

Now dear Mamma, I must bid you goodbye as the post goes very soon. Many thanks for letting me paint. With love to Papa, ever your affectionate son OSCAR WILDE

In 1871 he won an entrance scholarship to Trinity College, Dublin, and went there armed with an exhibition from Portora. During the next three years he had the distinction of being made a Foundation Scholar and won many prizes for classics, including the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek. He also came strongly under the influence of the Rev. John Pentland Mahaffy (1839–1919). This remarkable man (who later became Provost of the College and was knighted in 1918) was then Professor of Ancient History. His passion for all things Greek, his study of the art of conversation and his social technique all left their mark on his pupil.

In 1874, at the age of nineteen, Wilde crowned his Irish academic successes by winning a Demyship (scholarship) to Magdalen College, Oxford and in October, a week before his twentieth birthday, he took up residence there to read Classics. What Dublin had sowed, flowered intellectually in Oxford. He made the acquaintance of John Ruskin, Slade Professor of Fine Art, and having attended his lectures on Florentine Aesthetics in his first term, was soon persuaded to take part in his new mentor’s practical improvements to the countryside, and found himself rising at dawn to help build a country road. The reward was less in the toil than in the pleasure of breakfasting with Ruskin afterwards. The road, however, soon sank back into Hinksey Marsh but their friendship flourished. When Wilde sent him acopy of The Happy Prince in 1888 (see p. 108) he accompanied it with a note: ‘The dearest memories of my Oxford days are my walks and talks with you, and from you I learned nothing but what was good…There is in you something of prophet, of priest, and of poet.’

Soon after his arrival in Oxford Wilde read Walter Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance. Pater was a young don at Brasenose College whom Wilde did not meet in person until his third year but on whose theories of art and aesthetics he was already starting to base his own flamboyant style. He found himself disturbingly attuned to the book’s philosophies, especially those in the ‘Conclusion’ in which Pater said: ‘Not the fruit of experience but experience itself is the end’ and continued, ‘To bum always with this hard gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.’ He also declared that enrichment of our given lifespan consisted of ‘getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time’ and of having ‘the desire for beauty, the love of art for its own sake’. Writing from prison two decades later Wilde would refer to it as ‘that book which has had such a strange influence over my life’.

Ruskin and Pater each appealed to a different Wilde: Ruskin to the intellectual, the noble, the high-minded; Pater, more insidiously, to the sensual, the decadent, the mystical. Pater was less uplifting for the soul but dangerously attractive to the senses.

But the excitement of new teachings did not lead Oscar to abandon old friends. He still found time for Mahaffy and, together with a young Dubliner, William Goulding, they travelled through Italy during the summer vacation of 1875. Ruskin had fired him with the desire to experience the Renaissance for himself and his old tutor provided the opportunity. They visited Venice, Padua, Verona, Milan and Florence from where he wrote to his father, reflecting their shared interest in history and archaeology.

To Sir William Wilde

Tuesday [15 June 1875] Florence

Went in the morning to see San Lorenzo, built in the usual Florentine way, cruciform: a long aisle supported by Grecian pillars: a gorgeous dome in the centre and three small aisles leading off it. Behind it are the two Chapels of the Medici. The first, the Burial Chapel, is magnificent; of enormous height, octagonal in shape. Walls built entirely of gorgeous blocks of marble, all inlaid with various devices and of different colours, polished like a looking-glass. Six great sarcophagi of granite and porphyry stand in six niches: on top of each of them a cushion of inlaid mosaic bearing a gold crown. Above the sarcophagi are statues in gilded bronze of the Medici; on the dome, of course, frescoes and gilded carving.

The other chapel is very small, built simply of white marble. Two mausoleums in it to two great Medici; one bearing Michelangelo’s statues of Night and Morning and the other those of Evening and Dawn.

Then to the Biblioteca Laurenziana in the cloisters of San Lorenzo, where I was shown wonderfully illuminated missals and unreadable manuscripts and autographs. I remarked the extreme clearness of the initial letters in the Italian missals and bibles, so different from those in the Book of Kells etc., which might stand for anything. The early illuminations are very beautiful in design and sentiment, but the later are mere mechanical tours de force of geometrical scroll-work and absurd designs.

Then to the Etruscan Museum, which is in the suppressed monastery of San Onofrio and most interesting. You come first to a big tomb, transplanted from Arezzo; Cyclopean stonework, doorway with sloping jambs and oblong lintel, roof slightly conical, walls covered with wonderfully beautiful frescoes, representing first the soul in the shape of a young man naked, led by a beautifully winged angel or genius to the two-horsed chariot which is to convey them to Elysium – and then represents the banquet which awaits him. This same idea of the resurrection of the soul and a state of happiness after death pervades the whole system of Etruscan art. There were also wonderful sarcophagi which I have roughly drawn for you. [Overleaf]

On the top the figure of the dead man or woman holding a plate containing the obol for paying the ferryman over Styx. Also extraordinary jars with heads and arms – funeral of course – I have drawn them. The sarcophagi, of which there are over a hundred and fifty to be seen, are about two and a half feet long and about three feet high. The sides of the sarcophagi are sculptured with the achievements and adventures of the dead man, mostly in bas-relief which are sometimes coloured. There were some with frescoes instead of sculpture, beautifully done. Of course urns and vases of every possible shape, and all painted exquisitely.

A great collection of coins, from the old as, a solid pound weight of metal about as big as a large bun and stamped with a ship on one side and a double-faced Janus on the other, down to tiny little gold coins the same size as gold five-franc pieces. The goldsmiths’ work for beauty of design and delicacy of workmanship exceeded anything I have ever seen. As I was kept there for a long time by an awful thunderstorm I copied a few which I send you.

I cannot of course give you the wonderful grace and delicacy of workmanship, only the design. Goblets and bowls of jasper and all sorts of transparent pebbles – enamelled jars in abundance. Swords of the leaf shape, regular torques but somewhat same design, metal hand-mirrors, and household utensils of all kinds, and every thing, even the commonest plate or jug, done with greatest delicacy and of beautiful design. They must have been a people among whom artistic feeling and power was most widely spread. There is also a museum of Egyptian antiquities, but their devices and frescoes appeared to me grotesque and uncouth after the purity and sentiment of the Etruscan. You would have been much interested in all the Etruscan work: I spent two delightful hours there.

In the evening I dined at a restaurant on top of San Miniato, air delightfully clear and cool after the thunderstorm. Coming back I met just opposite the Pitti Palace a wonderful funeral; a long procession of monks bearing torches, all in white and wearing a long linen veil over their faces – only their eyes can be seen. They bore two coffins and looked like those awful monks you see in pictures of the Inquisition.

Mahaffy is not come yet. I do hope he will arrive today, as I shan’t be able to stay much longer away. Today is the anniversary of the birth of Michelangelo: there will be great fetes.

Hope Abbotstown will turn out well. It certainly spoiled the look of the place, and that terrible large ditch between us and it will, I suppose, be bridged over. Yours ever truly affectionately OSCAR O’F. WI. WILDE

To Lady Wilde

Wednesday [23 June 1875] Albergo della Francia, Milan

So busy travelling and sight-seeing for last five days that I have had no time to write.

Diary. Left Florence with much regret on Saturday night; passed through the Apennines, beautiful Alpine scenery; train runs on side of mountains half-way up, above us pine-forests and crags, below us the valley, villages and swollen rivers. Supper at Bologna; about 5.30 in the morning came near Venice. Immediately on leaving the mountains a broad flat tableland (there are no hills in Italy – mountains or flat plains) cultivated like a rich garden. Within four miles of Venice a complete change; a black bog, exactly like Bog of Allen only flatter; crossed over a big laguna on a bridge and arrived at Venice 7.30. Seized on immediately by gondoliers and embarked with our luggage, into a black hearse-like barge, such as King Arthur was taken away in after the fatal battle. Finally through long narrow canals we arrived at our hotel, which was in the great Piazza San Marco – the only place in Venice except the Rialto anyone walks in. Plan of it. [Rough sketch.] The Church of San Marco is most gorgeous; a splendid Byzantine church, covered with gilding and mosaics, inside and out. The floor of inlaid marbles, of colour and design indescribable, and through the sinking of the piles undulates in big sweeping waves. Splendid gates of bronze, everything glorious. Next to it the Doge’s Palace, which is beyond praise. Inside, giant council chambers; the walls painted with frescoes by Titian of the great battles of the Venetians; the ceiling crossed by gilded beams and rich in gilded carving; rooms fit for the noble-looking grave senators whose pictures are on the walls by Titian or Tintoretto.

Council Room of the celebrated ‘Three’, black marble and gold. Two dismal passages lead from it across the Ponte dei Sospiri. In size and colour and dignity the rooms are beyond description, and the view from the windows across the sea wonderful. Beneath all this greatness are the most dismal dungeons and torture-rooms – most terrible.

Here we spent the morning; afterwards took a gondola and visited some of the islands off Venice; on one an Armenian monastery where Byron used to live. Went to another, the Lido, a favourite place on Sunday, and had oysters and shrimps. Returned home in the flood of a great sunset. Venice as a city just risen from the sea; a long line of crowded churches and palaces; everywhere white or gilded domes and tall campaniles; no opening in the whole city except at the Piazza San Marco. A great pink sunset with a long line of purple thunderclouds behind the city. After dinner went to the theatre and saw a good circus. Luckily a wonderful moon. We landed from our gondola coming from the theatre at the Lion of St Mark. The scene was so romantic that it seemed to be an ‘artistic’ scene from an opera. We sat on the base of the pillar; on one side of us the Doge’s Palace, on the other the King’s Palace, behind us the Campanile. The water-steps crowded with black gondolas, and a great flood of light coming right up to us across the water. Every moment a black silent gondola would glide across this great stream of light and be lost in the darkness.

To Lady Wilde

Thursday [24 June 1875] Milan

I believe you left me last looking at the moon from the Piazza San Marco. With difficulty we tore ourselves away to the hotel. Next morning we went up the Grand Canal in a gondola. Great palaces on each side with huge steps leading down to the water, and all round big posts to moor the gondolas to, coloured with the arms of the family. Wonderful colour everywhere – windows hung with striped yellow awnings, domes and churches of white marble, campaniles of red brick, great gondolas filled with fruit and vegetables going to the Rialto where the market is. Stopped to see the picture gallery which, as usual, was in a suppressed monastery. Titian and Tintoretto in great force. Titian’s Assumption certainly the best picture in Italy. Went to a lot of churches, all however in extravagant ‘baroque’ style – very rich in worked metal and polished marble and mosaic but as a rule inartistic. In the picture gallery besides the Titians there are two great pictures; one a beautiful Madonna by Bellini, the other a picture of Dives and Lazarus by Bonifazio containing the only lovely woman’s face I have seen in Italy.

Spent the day in gondolas and markets; in the evening a great band and promenade of all the swells of Venice in the Piazza San Marco. Every woman, nearly, over thirty powdered the front of her hair; most wore veils but I see that bonnets are now made with very high crowns and two wreaths, one under the diadem and one round the crown.

After marriage the Italian women degenerate awfully, but the boys and girls are beautiful. Amongst married women the general types are ‘Titiens’ and an ugly sallow likeness of Trebelli Bettini’.

In the morning breakfasted on board the P & O steamer Baroda. I was asked by the doctor, a young Dublin fellow called Fraser. Left for Padua at twelve o’clock. Believe me, Venice in beauty of architecture and colour is beyond description. It is the meeting-place of the Byzantine and Italian art – a city belonging to the East as much as to the West.

Arrived at Padua at two o’clock. In the middle of a rich vineyard stands the Baptistery, the great work of Giotto; the walls covered entirely with frescoes by him; one wall the life of Mary, the other the life of Christ; the ceiling blue with gold stars and medallion pictures; the west wall a great picture of Heaven and Hell suggested to him by Dante who, weary of trudging up the steep stairs, as he says, of the Scaligeri when in exile at Verona, came to stay at Padua with Giotto in a house still to be seen there. Of the beauty and purity of sentiment, the clear transparent colour, bright as the day it was painted, and the harmony of the whole building, I am unable to tell you. He is the first of all painters. We stayed over an hour in the Baptistery filled with wonder and reverence and above all love for the scenes he has painted.

Padua is a quaint town with good colonnades along each street, a university like a barracks, one charming church (Sant’ Anastasia) and a lot of bad ones, and the best restaurant in Italy, where we dined.

Arrived at Milan in a shower of rain; went in the evening to the theatre and saw a good ballet.

This morning the Cathedral. Outside most elaborate in pinnacles and statues awfully out of proportion with the rest of the building. Inside most impressive through its huge size and giant pillars supporting the roof; some good old stained glass and a lot of hideous modern windows. These moderns don’t see that the use of a window in a church is to show a beautiful massing together and blending of colour; a good old window has the rich pattern of a Turkey carpet. The figures are quite subordinate and only serve to show the sentiment of the designer. The modern fresco style of window has suâ naturâ to compete with painting and of course looks monstrous and theatrical.

The Cathedral is an awful failure. Outside the design is monstrous and inartistic. The over-elaborated details stuck high up where no one can see them; everything is vile in it; it is, however, imposing and gigantic as a failure, through its great size and elaborate execution.

From Padua I forgot to tell you we went to Verona at six o’clock, and in the old Roman amphitheatre (as perfect inside as it was in the old Roman times) saw the play of Hamlet performed – and certainly indifferently – but you can imagine how romantic it was to sit in the old amphitheatre on a lovely moonlight night. In the morning went to see the tombs of the Scaligeri – good examples of rich florid Gothic work and ironwork; a good market-place filled with the most gigantic umbrellas I ever saw – like young palm trees – under which sat the fruit-sellers. Of our arrival at Milan I have told you.

Yesterday (Thursday) went first to the Ambrosian Library where we saw some great manuscripts and two very good palimpsests, and a bible with Irish glosses of the sixth or seventh century which has been collated by Todd and Whitley Stokes and others; a good collection of pictures besides, particularly a set of drawings and sketches in chalk by Raffaelli – much more interesting I think than his pictures – good Holbeins and Albrecht Durers.

Then to the picture gallery. Some good Correggios and Peruginos; the gem of the whole collection is a lovely Madonna by Bernardino standing among a lot of trellised roses that Morris and Rossetti would love; another by him we saw in the library with a background of lilies.

Milan is a second Paris. Wonderful arcades and galleries; all the town white stone and gilding. Dined excellently at the Biffi Restaurant and had some good wine of Asti, like good cider or sweet champagne. In the evening went to see a new opera, Dolores, by a young maestro called Auteri; a good imitation of Bellini in some parts, some pretty rondos; but its general character was inharmonious shouting. However, the frantic enthusiasm of the people knew no bounds. Every five minutes a terrible furore and yelling of Bravas from every part of the house, followed by a frantic rush of all the actors for the composer, who was posted at the side-scenes ready to rush out on the slightest symptom of approval. A weak-looking creature who placed his grimy hand on a shady-looking shirt to show his emotion, fell on the prima donna’s neck in ecstasy, and blew kisses to us all. He came out no less than nineteen times, and finally three crowns were brought out, one of which, a green laurel one with green ribbons, was clapped on his head, and as his head was very narrow it rested partly on a very large angular nose and partly on his grimy shirt-collar. Such an absurd scene as the whole thing was I never saw. The opera except in two places is absolutely devoid of merit. The Princess Margherita was there, very high-bred and pale.

I write this at Arona on the Lago Maggiore, a beautiful spot. Mahaffy and young Goulding I left at Milan and they will go on to Genoa. As I had no money I was obliged to leave them and feel very lonely. We have had a delightful tour.

Tonight at twelve o’clock the diligence starts. We go over the Simplon Pass till near Lausanne; eighteen hours en diligence. Tomorrow night (Saturday) I get to Lausanne. Yours OSCAR

It was at Oxford that Wilde started to form his first intense friendships, the most important being with William ‘Bouncer’ Ward, Reginald ‘Kitten’ Harding and David ‘Dunskie’ Hunter-Blair. Wilde admired Ward, also a Classical Scholar, for his intelligence; Harding attracted him by his charm and good looks; and Hunter-Blair’s appeal was his devout Catholicism and contacts with the Roman Church in which Wilde was increasingly interested. He also made friends with a young London artist, Frank Miles, whose father was a clergyman and with whom he would share rooms when he came down from Oxford. Between taking his first exams in Honour Moderations (Mods) in June and his viva voce in July, Oscar went to visit his late father’s elder brother, who was a clergyman in Lincolnshire. Sir William died in April 1876.