Oscar Wilde |
Oscar Wilde was a playwright, novelist, essayist, critic, poet and wit. The effete poses of his youth and his dandyish appearance can still serve to mask his serious intellect: he studied at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen, Oxford, graduating with a double first in classics – not the achievement of someone who spent his time at university lolling about dispensing barbed witticisms. He believed in beauty – in dress and furnishings, certainly, but also in art and human relations. He is often written about as though his Irish nationality were basically an accident and to all intents and purposes he was an Englishman, but his sense of himself as Irish was strong, and politically, he was a supporter of Parnell.
Wilde married Constance Mary Lloyd, a Dublin Protestant, in 1884; she gave birth to two sons in quick succession. In 1891, Wilde met Lord Alfred Douglas, son of the Marquess of Queensberry. His subsequent love affair with ‘Bosie’ effectively ruined his life. In 1895, Douglas’s father, famously aggressive, infuriated by his son’s relationship with Wilde, left a card at Wilde’s club inscribed ‘To Oscar Wilde – posing as Somdomite [sic]’. Wilde made the unwise decision to sue for libel. The case went to court but was abandoned. The vindictive Marquess pursued Wilde through the office of the public prosecutor, which resulted in his standing trial on various counts of gross indecency. He was found guilty and sentenced to two years’ hard labour; he served his sentence at Pentonville and then at Reading.
Wilde left prison physically and psychologically destroyed. Popular belief has it that he was abandoned by Douglas, but in fact, Lord Alfred wrote letters to the newspapers protesting the sentence, and petitioned the Queen for clemency. On his release, Wilde drifted from place to place (Constance had not divorced him, but had moved away, and changed her and the childrens’ surname), frequently meeting up with Douglas. He died in a Paris hotel room in 1900, declaring a few days beforehand, ‘My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has to go.’
Dearest of all Boys,
Your letter was delightful, red and yellow wine to me; but I am sad and out of sorts. Bosie, you must not make scenes with me. They kill me, they wreck the loveliness of life. I cannot see you, so Greek and gracious, distorted with passion. I cannot listen to your curved lips saying hideous things to me. I would sooner be blackmailed by every renter in London than have you bitter, unjust, hating. I must see you soon. You are the divine thing I want, the thing of grace and beauty; but I don’t know how to do it. Shall I come to Salisbury? My bill here is £49 for a week. I have also got a new sitting-room over the Thames. Why are you not here, my dear, my wonderful boy? I fear I must leave, no money, no credit, and a heart of lead.
Your own Oscar
My child,
Today it was asked to have the verdicts rendered separately. Taylor is probably being judged at this moment, so that I have been able to come back here. My sweet rose, my delicate flower, my lily of lilies, it is perhaps in prison that I am going to test the power of love. I am going to see if I cannot make the bitter warders sweet by the intensity of the love I bear you. I have had moments when I thought it would be wiser to separate. Ah! moments of weakness and madness! Now I see that that would have mutilated my life, ruined my art, broken the musical chords which make a perfect soul. Even covered with mud I shall praise you, from the deepest abysses I shall cry to you. In my solitude you will be with me. I am determined not to revolt but to accept every outrage through devotion to love, to let my body be dishonoured so long as my soul may always keep the image of you. From your silken hair to your delicate feet you are perfection to me. Pleasure hides love from us, but pain reveals it in its essence. O dearest of created things, if someone wounded by silence and solitude comes to you, dishonoured, a laughing-stock, Oh! you can close his wounds by touching them and restore his soul which unhappiness had for a moment smothered. Nothing will be difficult for you then, and remember, it is that hope which makes me live, and that hope alone. What wisdom is to the philosopher, what God is to his saint, you are to me. To keep you in my soul, such is the goal of this pain which men call life. O my love, you whom I cherish above all things, white narcissus in an unmown field, think of the burden which falls to you, a burden which love alone can make light. But be not saddened by that, rather be happy to have filled with an immortal love the soul of a man who now weeps in hell, and yet carries heaven in his heart. I love you, I love you, my heart is a rose which your love has brought to bloom, my life is a desert fanned by the delicious breeze of your breath, and whose cool spring are your eyes; the imprint of your little feet makes valleys of shade for me, the odour of your hair is like myrrh, and wherever you go you exhale the perfumes of the cassia tree.
Love me always, love me always. You have been the supreme, the perfect love of my life; there can be no other.
I decided that it was nobler and more beautiful to stay. We could not have been together. I did not want to be called a coward or a deserter. A false name, a disguise, a hunted life, all that is not for me, to whom you have been revealed on that high hill where beautiful things are transfigured.
O sweetest of all boys, most loved of all loves, my soul clings to your soul, my life is your life, and in all the world of pain and pleasure you are my ideal of admiration and joy.
Oscar
