PART II: THE LIBRARY
CHAPTER 14
1. Sherard, Real, p. 188.
2. Complete Letters, p. 224.
3. See the Victorian manual of how to design, and furnish, a library The Private Library (London, 1897) by Wilde’s friend, Arthur L. Humphreys (London, 1897) p. 119.
4. See H. Montgomery Hyde, ‘Oscar Wilde and his Architect’, Architectural Review (March 1951), p. 175.
5. Complete Letters, p. 237.
6. Ricketts, p. 33.
7. Hampshire Telegraph & Sussex Chronicle, 27 April 1895.
8. ‘The House Beautiful’, published in K. O’Brien, Oscar Wilde in Canada (Toronto, 1982), p. 171.
9. The benefactor was Sir Peter Daubeny. I am indebted to Anthony Smith, the former President of Magdalen, for information regarding the fireplace, which is in Room 3 on the Kitchen Staircase.
10. Tite Street Catalogue, pp. 13–4.
11. Mikhail (ed.), Vol. I, p. 39.
12. Tite Street Catalogue, p. 14.
13. Complete Letters, p. 915.
14. R. Sherard, Oscar Wilde: The History of an Unhappy Friendship (London, 1902), pp. 28–9.
15. T. Wratislaw, Oscar Wilde: A Memoir (London, 1979), p. 17 describes Wilde as ‘sitting at a table in his ground-floor workroom overlooking the street’.
16. Tite Street Catalogue, pp. 13–4. For a description of the desk see the Glasgow Herald, 25 April 1895.
17. See Wilde’s bills for cigarettes from the tobacconist Robert Lewis & Co. among Wilde’s bankruptcy papers, PRO B9/429.
18. Vyvyan Holland, p. 41.
19. Miscellanies, p. 154.
20. ‘The House Beautiful’, O’Brien, p. 177.
21. ‘The Decay of Lying’, Collected Works, p. 934.
22. Ricketts, p. 35 and see also his Self-Portrait (London, 1939), p. 245.
CHAPTER 15
1. List of alterations and additions drawn up by Wilde on 13 January 1885. The Eccles Bequest, the British Library.
2. H. Montgomery Hyde, Oscar Wilde (London, 1976), p. 121.
3. Tite Street Catalogue, p. 14.
4. Humphreys, p. 129.
5. ‘The House Beautiful’, O’Brien, p. 177.
6. See Andrew Lang, The Library (London, 1881), p. 68 and Humphreys, p. 62.
7. ‘The House Beautiful’, O’Brien, p. 177.
8. Newspaper clipping, (no date) the Eccles Bequest, the British Library.
9. London Post Office Directory 1895 (London, 1895).
10. Vyvyan Holland, p. 51.
11. Ibid.
12. Dorian Gray, Collected Works, p. 44.
13. Complete Letters, p. 443.
14. Vyvyan Holland, p. 51.
15. Ibid., p. 41.
16. Ibid.
17. Lang, p. 34.
18. De Profundis, Selected Letters, p. 155.
19. Lang, p. 34.
20. Holbrook Jackson, p. 449.
CHAPTER 16
1. Complete Letters, p. 352.
2. PRO File B9/428. I am indebted to Merlin Holland’s paper ‘Oscar Wilde: Plagiarist or Pioneer?’ for alerting me to its existence. Holland’s paper was published in C.G. Sandulescu (ed.), Rediscovering Oscar Wilde (Gerrards Cross, 1994).
3. Complete Letters, p. 372 and H. Pearson, The Life of Oscar Wilde, revised edn (London, 1954), p. 101.
4. Mikhail (ed.), Vol. II, p. 356.
5. Collected Letters, p. 372 and p. 2, n.
6. Mikhail (ed.), Vol. I, p. 45.
7. Reviews, p. 157.
8. Wilde’s book bill from Franz Thimm has survived, but it is written in a scarcely legible hand. Made out to Oscar Wilde Esq. of 9 Charles Street and dated 8 September (the year is probably 1884), it appears to include, along with The Virgin Soil (Les Tierres vierges, probably in Viardot’s 1879 translation), Paul de Saint-Victor’s work of dramatic criticism Hommes et dieux (Paris, 1882) and Alphonse de Lamartine’s Oeuvres (Paris, 1884). It also contains a request for another Turgenev volume, Scènes de la vie Russe, which seems to have been unobtainable. William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, T443Z W6721. I am very grateful to Bruce Whiteman for sending me information regarding the bill, and to Merlin Holland and Donald Mead for their help in deciphering it.
9. Reviews, pp. 157–8.
10. Ibid., p. 368 and Complete Letters, p. 399.
11. Mikhail (ed.), Vol. I, p. 173. All of these titles are listed in the Tite Street Catalogue.
12. ‘The Critic as Artist, Part II’, Collected Works, p. 1015.
13. All of these titles are listed in the Tite Street Catalogue pp. 7–10.
14. ‘The Critic as Artist, Part I’, Collected Works, p. 973. See also Wilde’s notes on the Poetics in the ‘Exercise book used for Greek and Latin at Trinity College Dublin, 1873?’ William Andrews Clark Library, W6721M3 E96.
15. Aristotle, Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (London, 1895), p. 207.
16. See Complete Letters, p. 554.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid., pp. 563–4.
19. Beckson, Encyclopaedia, p. 338.
20. Tite Street Catalogue, p. 7.
21. Ibid., p. 5.
22. Ibid., p. 4.
23. The ‘Eighty Club’ (London, 1890). The book is now in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, PR5828. E34. I am greatly indebted to Bruce Whiteman, Head Librarian of the Clark, for alerting me to its existence.
24. Tite Street Catalogue, p. 9.
25. Sherard, The Life, p. 91.
26. Nutt invoice. ‘The Vision of MacConglinne: A Middle Irish Wonder Tale’, ed. and trans. K. Meyer (London, 1891). Wilde purchased it on 1 November 1891.
27. Ibid. It was published in London in 1888.
28. Nutt invoice. Wilde purchased it on 27 March 1889.
29. Reviews, p. 430.
30. Clippings from auctioneers’ and book dealers’ catalogues, the Eccles Collection, the British Library.
31. Reviews, pp. 420–4.
32. Ibid., p. 356.
33. Ibid., pp. 448–9.
34. Ibid., p. 452.
35. ‘The Decay of Lying’, Collected Works, p. 928.
36. K. Beckson (ed.), Oscar Wilde: The Critical Heritage (London, 1970), p. 83.
37. ‘The Soul of Man’, Collected Works, p. 1053.
38. Complete Letters, p. 1052.
39. Miscellanies, p. 258.
40. Ellmann, pp. 323–4.
41. ‘The Decay of Lying’, Collected Works, p. 931.
CHAPTER 17
1. E. Behuke, Voice Exercises and Walton’s Compleat Angler, Tite Street Catalogue, p. 7 and p. 10.
2. Edward Heron-Allen sent Wilde his Violin-making (London, 1884): see Complete Letters, p. 245. The Eccles Bequest, the British Library contains a copy of Amy Fay’s Music-Study in Germany (Chicago, 1882) inscribed to Wilde. The cuttings from the auctioneers’ and book dealers’ catalogues in the Eccles Bequest also mention an inscribed copy of Leo Engel’s American & Other Drinks (New York, 1878).
3. The Theory of Theatrical Dancing (London, 1888). Tite Street Catalogue, p. 10,
4. Benjamin Williams was the author. The book was published in London in 1877.
5. Complete Letters, p. 617.
6. I. Small, Oscar Wilde Revalued (Greensboro, 1993), p. 144.
7. The book was published in London in 1889. See Tite Street Catalogue, p. 4.
8. Franz Hartmann, The Life of Paracelsus (London, 1887), it is listed in the Tite Street Catalogue on p. 7.
9. Hartmann, pp. v–vii.
10. ‘The Critic as Artist’, Part II, Collected Works, p. 997.
11. Tite Street Catalogue, p. 9.
12. (London, 1893), Tite Street Catalogue, p. 5.
13. The book was published in London in 1888. Tite Street Catalogue, p. 5.
14. The Five Talents of Woman, p. 112.
15. Reviews, p. 75 and p. 42.
16. ‘The Decay of Lying’, Collected Works, p. 925.
17. ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, Collected Works, p. 712 and p. 685.
18. Comyns Carr, Margaret Maliphant (London, 1889), W. M. Hardinge, Eugenia, An Episode (London, 1883), and Blanche Roosevelt, Hazel Fane (London, 1891), Tite Street Catalogue, pp. 6–8.
19. This was published in London in 1894. Tite Street Catalogue p. 7.
20. Ibid., p. 11.
21. Alison [A Novel] By the author of ‘Miss Molly’ (London, 1883).
22. Complete Letters, pp. 623–4.
23. Ibid., n. p. 3 and p. 230.
24. (London, 1891), the Eccles Bequest, the British Library.
25. Complete Letters, p. 249.
26. See Kerry Powell, ‘Tom Dick and Dorian Gray: Magic-Picture Mania in Late Victorian Fiction’, Philological Quarterly, 62:2 (1983) and also his ‘The Mesmerizing of Dorian Gray’, Victorian Newsletter, 65 (1984).
27. Margot Asquith, More Memories (London, 1933), p. 119.
28. Anthony Hope, The Dolly Dialogues (London, 1894), p. 4.
29. Alison, p. 564.
30. Dorian Gray, Collected Works, p. 113.
31. Reviews, pp. 472–3.
CHAPTER 18
1. J. Clegg (ed.), The Directory of Second-Hand Booksellers and List of Public Libraries British & Foreign (London, 1888).
2. Complete Letters, p. 80.
3. See Charles Hirsch, ‘Hirsch’s Memoirs of Oscar Wilde and Smithers’, Appendix D. P. Mendes, Clandestine Erotic Fiction in English 1800-1930 (Aldershot, 1993), pp. 447–9.
4. Hodgson & Co., catalogue, no. 19 (1919–20) and Ellmann, p. 401.
5. Nutt invoice and Complete Letters, p. 540.
6. Ibid., p. 611.
7. See Wilde’s bankruptcy papers, PRO File B9/428. Unfortunately Hatchards did not draw up an itemised invoice of Wilde’s purchases.
8. The Eccles Bequest, the British Library.
9. Charles Hirsch, in Mendes, pp. 447–9.
10. Sherard, Real, p. 189.
11. Complete Letters, p. 588.
12. Holbrook Jackson, pp. 600 and 621.
13. This was published in London in 1893.
14. White purchased Wilde’s copy of Harry Quilter, Sententiae Artis (London, 1886) soon after the Tite Street sale in 1895, and adorned it with his bookplate.
15. See introduction to The Library of Edmund Gosse (London, 1924).
16. Sherard, Real, p. 188.
17. Complete Letters, p. 917.
18. Ibid., p. 356.
19. Ibid., p. 501.
20. Stephen Calloway, ‘Oscar Wilde and the Dandyism of the Senses’, in P. Raby (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde (Cambridge, 1997), p. 48.
21. These books were published in London in 1869 and 1874 respectively.
22. Holbrook Jackson, p. 424.
CHAPTER 19
1. ‘The Truth of Masks’, Collected Works, p. 1037.
2. De Profundis, Selected Letters, p. 179.
3. Complete Letters, p. 569.
4. Ibid., p. 616 and p. 2, n. This book was offered for sale by John Hart in his catalogue no. 75, (2007) Books of the Nineties.
5. Tennyson, Poems (1858) ‘with Carlyle’s autograph’. Horæ Hellincæ‘with Daniel O’Connell’s autograph’. Tite Street Catalogue, pp. 5–6. Horæ Hellinciæ probably refers to John Stuart Blackie’s Horae Hellenicae: Essays and Discussions on Important Points of Greek Philology and Antiquity (London, 1874), although Daniel O’Connell, who died in 1847, could not, of course, have owned this volume. Once again, the confusion must be due to the inaccuracy of the Tite Street Catalogue.
6. Endymion (London, 1818), Lamia (London, 1820) Cuttings from auctioneers’ and book dealers’ catalogues, the Eccles Bequest, the British Library.
7. The Schwob volume, which was published in Paris in 1894, is in the Eccles Bequest, the British Library.
8. Complete Letters, p. 624.
9. Rossetti, Poems (London, 1881), Michael Field, The Tragic Mary (London, 1890).
10. Michael Field, Works and Days (London, 1933), p. 139.
11. Wilde’s Sidonia is in the collection of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. I am indebted to Mark Samuels Lasner for alerting me to its existence.
12. Dorian Gray, Collected Works, p. 19.
13. Complete Letters, p. 984.
14. Mikhail (ed.), Vol. II, p. 380.
15. Reviews, p. 392.
16. Complete Letters, p. 395.
17. Ibid., p. 1173.
18. Ibid., p. 969.
19. Unpublished and undated letter offered for sale in January 2007 on abebooks.co.uk by Michael Silverman.
20. Complete Letters, p. 502.
21. A House of Pomegranates (London, 1891), The Sphinx (London, 1894). For further discussion of Wilde’s idea of ‘the Book Beautiful’ and of his first editions, see Nicholas Frankel’s study Oscar Wilde’s Decorated Books (Michigan, 2000).
22. C. Millard, ‘Memoir of Wilde’, in H. Montgomery Hyde, Christopher Sclater Millard (London, 1990) p. 130.
23. Dorian Gray, Collected Works, p. 89.
24. Ibid., p. 34.
25. ‘Pen, Pencil and Poison’, Collected Works, p. 950.
26. ‘The Critic as Artist’ Part II, Collected Works, p. 994.
27. O’Sullivan, p. 217.
CHAPTER 20
1. Mikhail (ed.), Vol. II, p. 429.
2. Complete Letters, p. 453.
3. He was referring to William Morris’s translation of the Odyssey. Reviews, pp. 154–5.
4. Of William Morris’s The Roots of the Mountain. Complete Letters, p. 476.
5. Reviews, p. 339.
6. Complete Letters, p. 666.
7. Reviews, pp. 11–2.
8. Dorian Gray, Collected Works, p. 88.
9. Ibid., p. 114.
10. Complete Letters, p. 1144.
11. Reviews, p. 247.
12. ‘The Critic as Artist, Part I’, Collected Works, p. 972.
13. Reviews, p. 79.
14. Ibid., p. 389.
15. Sherard, Real, p. 188.
16. Both books are in the Eccles Bequest, the British Library.
17. Wilde, O. Notes on the Fragments of the Greek Poets.
18. (New edition, 1877), The book is in the Old Library at Magdalen College, Oxford. I am grateful to Magdalen’s librarian, Dr Christine Ferdinand for showing it to me.
19. Wilde’s copy of Symonds’s Studies (First Series), p. 12.
20. Complete Letters, p. 287.
21. Reviews, p. 1.
22. ‘The Critic as Artist’, Part II, Collected Works, p. 1006.
23. Ibid.
24. Biograph, p. 131.
25. From the diary of George Ives, quoted in John Stokes, Myths, Miracles and Imitations (Cambridge, 1996), p. 83.
26. De Profundis, Selected Letters, p. 237.
27. ‘The Critic as Artist, Part II’, Collected Works, p. 1009.
28. ‘The Young King’, ibid., p. 248.
29. Mason, p. 368.
30. Vyvyan Holland, p. 54.
31. Sherard, Real, p. 84.
32. O’Sullivan, p. 96. The book was by W.E. Henley.
33. Dorian Gray, Collected Works, p. 90.
34. ‘The Critic as Artist, Part I’, Collected Works, p. 974.
35. Miscellanies, p. 273.
36. ‘The Critic as Artist, Part II’, Collected Works, p. 1005.
37. Ibid., p. 1003.
38. Ibid., p. 999.
39. Dorian Gray, ibid., pp. 99–100.
40. Reviews, p. 540.
41. The Critic as Artist, Part II,’ Collected Works, p. 998.
42. Quoted in Philipe Jullian, Oscar Wilde (London, 1969), p. 200.
43. ‘The Spirit Lamp’, The London Mercury, 25: 148, (February 1932), p. 387.
44. Sherard, The Life, p. 23.
45. ‘The Critic as Artist, Part I’, Collected Works, p. 978.
46. Complete Letters, p. 855.
47. Ellmann, p. 235.
48. Reviews, p. 509.
49. W.B. Maxwell, Time Gathered (London, 1937), p. 142.
50. Ellmann, p. 21.
51. Holbrook Jackson, p. 434.
52. Maxwell, p. 142.
53. Ellmann, p. 21.
54. Mikhail (ed.), Vol. I, p. 192.
55. Ibid., p. 198. Wilde’s friend later discovered that the quotation actually appeared on page 8 of Pater’s book. We can only hope she was not heartless enough to inform Wilde of his slight error.
CHAPTER 21
1. W.B. Yeats, Autobiographies (New York, 1965) p. 136.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 136.
4. The friend was Robbie Ross. De Profundis, Selected Letters, p. 157.
5. Complete Letters, pp. 911 and 688.
6. See, for example, Laurence Housman’s Echo de Paris (London, 1923).
7. Wratislaw, p. 17.
8. Mikhail (ed.), Vol. II, p. 391.
9. William Andrews Clark Library, W6721M3.
10. Humphreys, pp. 127–8.
11. Pryde, p. 10.
12. Holbrook Jackson, p. 346.
13. Ibid., p. 286.
14. ‘The Decay of Lying’, Collected Works, p. 921.
CHAPTER 22
1. This is now at the Harry Ransom Humanities Center in Texas, shelfmark PN2597. I am indebted to John B. Thomas III for sending me this information.
2. Wilde’s copy of George Meredith’s One of Our Conquerors (London, 1891) is part of the Eccles Bequest, the British Library.
3. Reviews, p. 389.
4. See, for example, Complete Letters, p. 1, n; see also p. 531.
5. Ibid., p. 3, n; see also p. 1026.
6. Ibid., p. 898.
7. Ibid., p. 83.
8. The book was published in London in 1878. Sotheby’s catalogue, 29 October 2004 (London), p. 21.
9. Mikhail (ed.), Vol. I, p. 139.
10. I am indebted to the owner of the book, Nali Dinshaw, for this information, and to Tessa Milne of Sotheby’s for putting me in contact with her.
11. She was unable to do so. Letter from Nellie Sickert to Oscar Wilde c. 1881, in the Eccles Bequest, the British Library.
12. Complete Letters, p. 360.
13. Neil McKenna, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (London, 2003).
14. Complete Letters, p. 542.
15. De Profundis, Selected Letters, p. 157.
16. Complete Letters, pp. 407–8.
17. Ibid., p. 1229.
18. Ibid., p. 956.
19. Ibid., pp. 789–90.
20. It is now at Princeton. I am indebted to Mark Samuels Lasner for this information.
21. Arnold’s ‘Tristram and Iseult’ appeared in his volume Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems (London, 1852). Swinburne’s Tristram of Lyonesse was issued in London in 1882. Wilde would have known both books. See Complete Letters, ft. 1. p. 784.
22. Ibid., p. 1041.
23. Ibid., n. p. 1; see also p. 1128.
24. See Dowling, p. 34, n; see also p. 143.
25. The Eccles Bequest, The British Library.
26. Vyvyan Holland, p. 45.
27. I am indebted to Mark Samuels Lasner for this information.
28. It is now in the Eccles Collection, the British Library.
29. Sherard, The Life, pp. 317–8.
30. Complete Letters, pp. 241–2.
31. De Profundis, Selected Letters, p. 176.
32. Complete Letters, p. 785.
33. Ellmann, p. 222.
34. Ibid., p. 121.
35. Algernon Swinburne, Erechtheus: A Tragedy (London, 1876). The book is now in the William Andrews Clark Library, PR5828.S9E6.
36. Both of these books are in the Harry Ransom Humanities Center, University of Texas at Austin. I am indebted to John B. Thomas III, for alerting me to their existence.
37. Melville, pp. 227–8.
38. See, for example, a copy of The Ballad he gave to ‘Alfred’ (certainly not Alfred Douglas) in the Eccles Bequest, the British Library.
39. This volume is now at the Harry Ransom Humanities Center in Texas.
40. Catalogue of Hôtel Drouot, 2 April 1990 (Paris).
41. Mason, p. 9.
42. B. Fong and K. Beckson (eds.), Poems and Poems in Prose: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Oxford, 2000), p. 167 and pp. 300–1.
43. Henry Danielson, A Catalogue of Books, no. 12, 1921 (London).
44. De Profundis, Selected Letters, p. 179.
45. In a Music Hall and Other Poems by John Davidson (London, 1891) given to Wilde on 7 January 1892. Clippings from auctioneers’ and book dealers’ catalogues, the Eccles Collection, the British Library.
46. Marcel Schwob, Le Roi au masque d’or (Paris, 1893). This book is now in the collection of Merlin Holland, who kindly alerted me to its existence.
47. I am indebted to Ludovica Piombino, Gino Scatasta and Paolo Trucco of the University of San Rocchino for identifying the poem.
48. Ellmann, ft p. 125. The Eccles Bequest, the British Library.
CHAPTER 23
1. Complete Letters, pp. 289–90.
2. Ibid., pp. 284–290.
3. Mikhail (ed.), Vol. I, p. 230.
4. Wilde, ‘Chatterton Lecture’ (1886?), pp. 6 and 82–4.
5. R. Rodd, Social and Diplomatic Memories (London, 1922), p. 22.
6. Complete Letters, p. 874.
7. See ‘The Critic as Artist, Part I’, Collected Works, p. 976.
8. Complete Letters, p. 1080.
9. Wilde, notes on Fragments of the Greek Poets (1873).
10. Reviews, p. 259.
11. Ibid., p. 92.
12. Ricketts, Recollections, p. 13.
13. Reviews, p. 86.
14. Complete Letters, p. 480.
15. Reviews, p. 542.
16. The manuscript of ‘The Women of Homer’ is held at the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, MA 3574; the William Andrews Clark Library has a typescript version prepared by Robert Ross, which he re-christened ‘Greek Women’. It has recently been published for the first time as the Oscar Wilde Society Publication: T. Wright and D. Mead (eds.), Oscar Wilde: The Women of Homer (London, 2008).
17. T. Wright and D. Mead (eds.), p. 33, and Studies (First Series), p. 97. Wilde’s undergraduate essay represents the final stage of a systematic attempt to absorb Symonds’s style. The markings in Wilde’s copy of Studies suggest that one of his primary aims, in reading it, was to learn tricks and effects from its prose. Thus he glosses marvellous metaphors with comments such as ‘very charming’. In his undergraduate notebooks, Wilde also paraphases Symonds, as though in an attempt to assimilate his style. See introduction to T. Wright and D. Mead (eds.).
18. R. Miracco (ed.), Oscar Wilde. Verso il Sole (Napoli, 1981). p. 31.
19. This description of Wilde in full flow comes from his actress friend Elizabeth Robins and is reproduced in Sandulescu (ed.), p. 317.
20. Ellmann, p. 140.
21. For a discussion of Wilde’s plagiarism see J. Guy and I. Small, Oscar Wilde’s Profession (Oxford, 2000) and also I. Small, Conditions of Criticism (Oxford, 1991), from which I have derived some of the ideas contained in this chapter.
22. See letter of W.E. Henley to Wilde, 25 November 1888, reproduced in I. Small, Oscar Wilde Revalued, p. 78. For Wilde’s reply to Henley see Complete Letters, p. 372.
23. See T. d’arch Smith and H. Schroeder, ‘Feasting with Panthers’, Notes & Queries, NS 45 (1995), pp. 201–2.
24. For example, Wilde plundered E. Lefébure’s Embroidery and Lace (London, 1888), a book he had enthusiastically reviewed. Reviews, pp. 327–341.
25. R. Hart-Davis (ed.), Max Beerbohm, Letters to Reggie Turner (London, 1964), p. 36.
26. Quoted in Robert Ross, ‘A Note on Salome’, Salome (London, 1909), pp. 20–1.
27. Complete Letters, p. 915.
28. I have stolen this idea from Merlin Holland’s paper ‘Oscar Wilde: Plagiarist or Pioneer?’
29. Mikhail (ed.), Vol. II, p. 308.
30. Wilde, ‘Chatterton Lecture’ (1886?), pp. 84–7.
31. Complete Letters, p. 856.