Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters

To the Rev. H. R. Bramley

2 April 1877 Hotel St George, Corfu

My dear Mr Bramley, My old tutor Mr Mahaffy, Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, met me on my way to Rome and insisted on my going with him to Mykenae and Athens. The chance of seeing such great places – and in such good company – was too great for me and I find myself now in Corfu. I am afraid I will not be able to be back at the beginning of term. I hope you will not mind if I miss ten days at the beginning: seeing Greece is really a great education for anyone and will I think benefit me greatly, and Mr Mahaffy is such a clever man that it is quite as good as going to lectures to be in his society.

We came first to Genoa, which is a beautiful marble city of palaces over the sea, and then to Ravenna which is extremely interesting on account of the old Christian churches in it of enormous age and the magnificent mosaics of the fourth century. These mosaics were very remarkable as they contained two figures of the Madonna enthroned and receiving adoration; they completely upset the ordinary Protestant idea that the worship of the Virgin did not come in till late in the history of the Church.

I read the book you kindly lent me with much interest; the Roman Catholics certainly do seem to confuse together Catholic doctrines which we may all hold and the supremacy of the Pope which we need not hold.

I hope your health has been good this Easter. We expect to be in Athens by the 17th and I will post back to Oxford immediately. Yours very truly

OSCAR WILDE

The Easter term at Oxford started on 4 April and Wilde must have arrived back at least three weeks late. The Rev. Bramley (Dean of Arts at Magdalen, and responsible for internal college discipline) and the other Fellows decided that Wilde’s cavalier behaviour was intolerable, fined him half his annual scholarship and rusticated him for the rest of the academic year. As he later remarked to his friend Charles Ricketts, ‘I was sent down from Oxford for being the first undergraduate to visit Olympia.’ Turning adversity to advantage, he immediately had himself invited to the opening of the new Grosvenor Gallery, and networked his way around artistic and literary London.

To W. E. Gladstone

[14 May 1877] 1 Merrion Square North

Sir, Your noble and impassioned protests, both written and spoken, against the massacres of the Christians in Bulgaria have so roused my heart that I venture to send you a sonnet which I have written on the subject.

I am little more than a boy, and have no literary interest in London, but perhaps if you saw any good stuff in the lines I send you, some editor (of the Nineteenth Century perhaps or the Spectator) might publish them: and I feel sure that you can appreciate the very great longing that one has when young to have words of one’s own published for men to read. I remain, in deepest admiration, your obedient servant OSCAR WILDE

To Reginald Harding

Tuesday [15 May 1877] 1 Merrion Square North

My dear Boy, Thanks for your letter: I had made out the facts by a careful study of the statutes going up to town, but it was comforting all the same to have it confirmed by such an authority as the Schools Clerk.

I had a delightful time in town with Frank Miles and a lot of friends and came home on Friday. My mother was of course awfully astonished to hear my news and very much disgusted with the wretched stupidity of our college dons, while Mahaffy is raging] I never saw him so indignantly angry; he looks on it almost as an insult to himself.

The weather is charming, Florrie more lovely than ever, and I am going to give two lectures on Greece to the Alexandra College girls here, so I am rapidly forgetting the Boeotian αυαισθησια [insensibility] of Allen and the wretched time-serving of that old woman in petticoats, the Dean.

As I expected, all my friends here refuse to believe my story, and my brother who is down at Moytura at present writes me a letter marked ‘Private’ to ask ‘what it really is all about and why have I been rusticated’, treating my explanations as mere child’s play.

I hope you will write and tell me all about the College, who is desecrating my rooms and what is the latest scandal.

When Dunskie comes tell him to write to me and remember me to Dick and Gussy and little Dunlop and everyone you like or I like. Ever yours

OSCAR

I am going down I hope for my May fishing soon, but I am overwhelmed with business of all kinds.

Get Aurora Leigh by Mrs Browning and read it carefully.

To Lord Houghton

[Circa 17 May 1877] 1 Merrion Square North

Dear Lord Houghton, Knowing your love and admiration for John Keats I venture to send you a sonnet which I wrote lately at Rome on him: and should be very glad to know if you see any beauty or stuff in it.

Someway standing by his grave I felt that he too was a Martyr, and worthy to lie in the City of Martyrs. I thought of him as a Priest of Beauty slain before his time, a lovely Sebastian killed by the arrows of a lying and unjust tongue.

Hence – my sonnet. But I really have other views in writing to you than merely to gain your criticism of a boyish poem.

I don’t know if you have visited Keats’s grave since a marble tablet in his memory was put up on the wall close to the tomb. There are some fairly good lines of poetry on it, but what is really objectionable in it is the bas-relief of Keats’s head – or rather a medallion profile, which is extremely ugly, exaggerates his facial angle so as almost to give him a hatchet-face and instead of the finely cut nostril, and Greek sensuous delicate lips that he had, gives him thick almost negro lips and nose.

Keats we know was lovely as Hyakinthos, or Apollo, to look at, and this medallion is a very terrible lie and misrepresentation. I wish it could be removed and a tinted bust of Keats put in its place, like the beautiful coloured bust of the Rajah of Koolapoor at Florence. Keats’s delicate features and rich colour could not be conveyed I think in plain white marble.

In any case I do not think this very ugly thing ought to be allowed to remain: I am sure a photograph of it could easily be got, and you would see how horrid it is.

Your influence and great name could achieve anything and everything in the matter, and I think a really beautiful memorial might be erected to him. Surely if everyone who loves to read Keats gave even half-a-crown, a great sum of money could be got for it.

I know you always are engaged in Politics and Poetry, but I feel sure that with your name at the head of the list, a great deal of money would be got: in any case the ugly libel of Keats could be taken down.

I should be very glad to hear a line from you about it, and feel sure that you will pardon my writing to you on the subject. For you are fitted above all others to do anything for Keats’s memory.

I hope we will see you again in Ireland: I have very pleasant memories of some delightful evenings passed in your society. Believe me yours truly

OSCAR WILDE

Oscar turned the spare time on his hands to good account. Apart from writing to Lord Houghton about Keats (which gained him a valuable letter of introduction when he went to America four years later) he penned his first piece of art criticism on the Grosvenor Gallery and had it published by the Dublin University Magazine. If the pleasure he took in this was somewhat soured by the death that summer of his ‘cousin’, Henry Wilson (actually one of Sir William’s three illegitimate children), it was later increased by the notice which Walter Pater took of the copy of the review which Wilde had calculatingly sent him.

To Keningale Cook

[May-June 1877] 1 Merrion Square North

I return proof. What I meant by two proofs was one with your marginal corrections for my guide, the other plain, but of course both from the same type. Naturally, one of the great sorrows of youthful artists is that they always ‘expurgate’ bits of their articles, the very bits that they think best. However, I am glad to get the article published in your July number before the Gallery closes. Please have all my corrections attended to. Some of them are merely ‘style’ corrections, which, for an Oxford man, must be always attended to. As regards the additions, they are absolutely necessary, and as I intend to take up the critic’s life, I would not wish the article published without them. I would sooner pay for the proof and publish elsewhere.

(I) I and Lord Ronald Gower and Mr Ruskin, and all artists of my acquaintance, hold that Alma-Tadema’s drawing of men and women is disgraceful. I could not let an article signed with my name state he was a powerful drawer.

(2) I always say I and not ‘we’. We belongs to the days of anonymous articles, not to signed articles like mine. To say ‘we have seen at Argos’ either implies that I am a Royal Personage, or that the whole staff of the DUM visited Argos. And I always say clearly what I know to be true, such as that the revival of culture is due to Mr Ruskin, or that Mr Richmond has not read Aeschylus’s Choephoroe. To say ‘perhaps’ spoils the remark.

(3) I have been obliged to explain what I mean by imaginative colour, and what Mr Pater means by it. We mean thought expressed by colour such as the sleep of Merlin being implied and expressed in the colour. I do not mean odd, unnatural colouring. I mean ‘thought in colour’.

(4) I think Mr Legros’s landscape very smudgy and the worst French style. I cannot say it is bold or original – and I wish my full remarks on Mr Whistler to be put in (as per margin). I know he will take them in good part, and besides they are really clever and amusing. I am sorry you left out my quotation from Pater at the end. However, I shall be glad to get a second proof before you go to press with my corrections. I am afraid you would find my account of our ride through Greece too enthusiastic and too full of metaphor for the DUM.

When I receive the second proof I am going to have small notes of the article appearing in DUM by me sent to the Oxford booksellers. I know it would have a good sale there and also here if properly advertised, but for the past year the articles have been so terribly dull in the DUM that people require to be told beforehand what they are to get for 2/6.

I hope we will come to terms about this article – and others. Believe me I am most anxious to continue my father’s connection with the DUM which, I am sure, under your brilliant guidance will regain its lost laurels. Yours truly

OSCAR WILDE

To Reginald Harding

[Circa 16 June 1877] 1 Merrion Square North

My dear Kitten, Many thanks for your delightful letter. I am glad you are in the midst of beautiful scenery and Aurora Leigh.

I am very much down in spirits and depressed. A cousin of ours to whom we were all very much attached has just died – quite suddenly from some chill caught riding. I dined with him on Saturday and he was dead on Wednesday. My brother and I were always supposed to be his heirs but his will was an unpleasant surprise, like most wills. He leaves my father’s hospital about £8000, my brother £2000, and me £100 on condition of my being a Protestant!

He was, poor fellow, bigotedly intolerant of the Catholics and seeing me ‘on the brink’ struck me out of his will. It is a terrible disappointment to me; you see I suffer a good deal from my Romish leanings, in pocket and mind.

My father had given him a share in my fishing lodge in Connemara, which of course ought to have reverted to me on his death; well, even this I lose ‘if I become a Roman Catholic for five years’ which is very infamous.

Fancy a man going before ‘God and the Eternal Silences’ with his wretched Protestant prejudices and bigotry clinging still to him.

However, I won’t bore you with myself any more. The world seems too much out of joint for me to set it right.

I send you a little notice of Keats’s grave I have just written which may interest you. I visited it with Bouncer and Dunskie.

If you would care to see my views on the Grosvenor Gallery send for the enclosed, and write soon to me. Ever yours

OSCAR WILDE

I heard from little Bouncer from Constantinople lately: he said he was coming home. Love to Puss.

To William Ward

[Postmark 19 July 1877] 1 Merrion Square North

Dear old Boy, I hear you are back: did you get my telegram at the Lord Warden? Do write and tell me about the Turks. I like their attitude towards life very much, though it seems strange that the descendants of the wild Arabs should be the Sybarites of our day.

I sent you two mags, to Frenchay: one with a memoir of Keats, the other religious.

Do you remember our delightful visit to Keats’s grave, and Dunskie’s disgust. Poor Dunskie: I know he looks on me as a renegade; still I have suffered very much for my Roman fever in mind and pocket and happiness.

I am going down to Connemara for a month or more next week to try and read. I have not opened a book yet, I have been so bothered with business and other matters. I shall be quite alone. Will you come? I will give you fishing and scenery – and bring your books – and some notebooks for me. I am in despair about ‘Greats’.

It is roughing it, you know, but you will have

(I) bed

(2) table and chair

(3) knife and fork

(4) fishing

(5) scenery – sunsets – bathing – heather – mountains – lakes

(6) whisky and salmon to eat. Write and say when you can come, and also send me please immediately the name and address of Miss Fletcher whom I rode with at Rome, and of her stepfather. I have never sent her some articles of Pater’s I promised her.

I want you to read my article on the Grosvenor Gallery in the Dublin University Magazine of July – my first art-essay.

I have had such delightful letters from many of the painters, and from Pater such sympathetic praise. I must send you his letter: or rather do so, but return it in registered letter by next post: don’t forget. Ever yours OSCAR After all I can’t trust my letter from Pater to the mercies of the postman, but I send you a copy:

Dear Mr Wilde, Accept my best thanks for the magazine and your letter. Your excellent article on the Grosvenor Gallery I read with very great pleasure: it makes me much wish to make your acquaintance, and I hope you will give me an early call on your return to Oxford.

I should much like to talk over some of the points with you, though on the whole I think your criticisms very just, and they are certainly very pleasantly expressed. The article shows that you possess some beautiful, and, for your age, quite exceptionally cultivated tastes: and a considerable knowledge too of many beautiful things. I hope you will write a great deal in time to come. Very truly yours

WALTER PATER

You won’t think me snobbish for sending you this? After all, it is something to be honestly proud of.

O. F. W.

To William Ward

[August 1877] Illaunroe Lodge, Lough Fee, Connemara

My dear Bouncer, So very glad to hear from you at last: I was afraid that you were still seedy.

I need not say how disappointed I was that you could not come and see this part of the world. I have two fellows staying with me, Dick Trench and Jack Barrow, who took a lodge near here for July and came to stay with me about three weeks ago. They are both capital fellows, indeed Dick Trench is I think my oldest friend, but I don’t do any reading someway and pass my evenings in ‘Pool, Ecarte and Potheen Punch’. I wish you had come; one requires sympathy to read.

I am however in the midst of two articles, one on Greece, the other on Art, which keep me thinking if not writing. But of Greats work I have done nothing. After all there are more profitable studies, I suppose, than the Greats course: still I would like a good Class awfully and want you to lend me your notes on Philosophy: I know your style, and really it would be a very great advantage for me to have them – Ethics, Politics (Republic) and general Philosophy. Can you do this for me? If you could send them to me in Dublin? Or at least to Oxford next term? And also give me advice – a thing I can’t stand from my elders because it’s like preaching, but I think I would like some from you ‘who have passed through the fire’.

The weather is fair but not good for fishing. I have only got one salmon but our ‘bag’ yesterday of ‘twelve white trout and twenty brown’ was not bad. I have also had capital hare-shooting, but mountain-climbing is not my forte.

I heard, by the same post which brought me your letter, from Miss Fletcher, who is still in the Tyrol. She sends her best wishes to you of course, and writes as cleverly as she talks: I am much attracted by her in every way.

Please give my very best wishes to your sister on her approaching marriage. I remember Mr St John’s window very well, and will hope to have the pleasure of knowing him some day. He must be a very cultured artist. Will the wedding be soon? What form you will be in! Ever yours

OSCAR WILDE

I am going to Longford on Friday to shoot. Write to me Clonfin House, Granard, Co. Longford.

Few letters survive from his last year at Oxford, if indeed many were written, since Oscar was, as he put it, ‘reading hard for a Fourth in Greats’. In the end his Finals papers were judged overall to be the best of his year and he had achieved the coveted distinction of a ‘Double First’ in Mods and Greats. And if that was not enough, he was also awarded the Newdigate poetry prize. He left Oxford in a blaze of academic glory.

To William Ward

[Circa 24 July 1878] Magdalen College

My dear old Boy, You are the best of fellows to telegraph your congratulations: there were none I valued more. It is too delightful altogether this display of fireworks at the end of my career. I cannot understand my First except for the essays which I was fairly good in. I got a very complimentary viva voce.

The dons are ‘astonied’ beyond words – the Bad Boy doing so well in the end! They made me stay up for the Gaudy and said nice things about me. I am on the best terms with everyone including Allen! who I think is remorseful of his treatment of me.

Then I rowed to Pangbourne with Frank Miles in a birchbark canoe! and shot rapids and did wonders everywhere – it was delightful.

I cannot, I am afraid, yacht with you. I am so troubled about my law suit, which I have won but find my own costs heavy, though I was allowed them. I have to be in Ireland.

Dear old boy, I wish I could see you again. Ever yours OSCAR

To the Rev. Matthew Russell SJ

[?September 1878] Illaunroe Lodge, Connemara

Dear Father Russell, Thanks for the magazine. With regard to the Newdigate, if you look in the Oxford Calendar you will find the whole account of it. The subject is given out at the June Encaenia and is the same for all. There is besides the a prize of twenty guineas. It was originally limited to fifty lines, and the subject used to be necessarily taken from some classical subject, either Greek or Latin, and generally a work of art. The metre is heroic couplets, but as you have seen perhaps from my poem, of late years laxity is allowed from the horrid Popeian jingle of regular heroics, and now the subject may be taken from any country or time and there is no limit to the length. I rather think it is very much older than 1841. There is a picture of the Founder hanging in the dining hall of University College, Oxford, which as well as I remember is very old. Besides I have an idea that Ruskin and Dean Stanley got it. You might by looking at the Oxford Calendar get all information and make your article the locus classicus for the History of the Newdigate Prize.

There was a strange coincidence about my getting it. On the 31st of March 1877 (long before the subject was given out) I entered Ravenna on my way to Greece, and on 31st March 1878 I had to hand my poem in. It is quite the blue ribbon of the Varsity and my college presented me with a marble bust of the ‘young Augustus’ which had been bequeathed by an old Fellow of Magdalen, Dr Daubeny, to the first undergraduate who should get the Newdigate.

I am resting here in the mountains – great peace and quiet everywhere – and hope to send you a sonnet as the result. Believe me, very truly yours

OSCAR WILDE

Because Dublin held little in the way of a future for the newly self-styled ‘Professor of Aesthetics’, he bade farewell to his home town and the woman he once described as ‘an exquisitely pretty girl…with the most perfectly beautiful face I ever saw and not a sixpence of money’. To his chagrin Florrie Balcombe had accepted a proposal of marriage from Bram Stoker, who had just been appointed Henry Irving’s manager at the Lyceum Theatre and would later become known as the author of Dracula.