Endnotes
1 (p. 4)
send it . . . to the Grosvenor: Essentially founded in opposition to the Royal Academy, which was more prestigious but more tradition-bound, the Grosvenor Gallery exhibited contemporary art, most famously works by the Pre-Raphaelites and the American painter James McNeill Whistler. (Wilde loved the former and had a combative affinity with the latter.) Wilde praised the Grosvenor’s modernity in an 1877
Dublin University Magazine article. Meanwhile, the composers Sir William Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan satirized the Grosvenor in their operetta
Patience for attracting effete “greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery, Foot-in-the-grave” young men like Wilde.
2 (p. 9)
Conscience is the trade-name of the firm: Wilde uses a similar construction in his 1883 play
The Duchess of Padua: “Conscience is but the name which cowardice / Fleeing from battle scrawls upon its shield.”
3 (p. 10)
She tried to found a salon
, and only succeeded in opening a restaurant: Wilde would later snipe of the playwright and author André Raffalovich: “He came to London to open a salon but succeeded only in opening a saloon.” Raffalovich became the lifetime companion of John Gray, the working-class boy widely considered to be Wilde’s first homosexual passion.
4 (p. 25)
A new Hedonism: Hedonism posits that pleasure should be the main aim of life. Wilde’s more specific modern version, arrived at via Pater’s disapproval of the term’s vagueness, asserts that such pleasure should be refined and elegant, not coarse.
5 (p. 40)
Plato: A Greek philosopher and the founder of a school of philosophy in Athens known as the Academy, Plato (c.428-348 or 347 B.C.), asserted that objects in the material world are merely the shadowy representations of transcendent ideals; his work strongly influenced medieval and Renaissance religious thought.
6 (p. 48)
A statuette of Clodion . . . bound for Margaret of Valois by Clovis Eve: Clodion was an eighteenth-century French sculptor who specialized in themes of gallantry and revelry.
Les Cent Nouvelles, anonymously written in 1462, is a collection of lusty tales. Margaret of Valois (1553-1615) also called Margaret of Navarre after her marriage to Henri of Navarre, later King Henry IV of France, was known for her beauty and knowledge, as well as her loose behavior. Clovis Eve is a reference to Nicholas Eve, bookbinder to the late-sixteenth-century French court, who was famous for his ornamental botanical designs.
7 (p. 54)
Imagine a girl . . . with plaited coils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells of passion: Compare this to Wilde’s description of his future wife, Constance Lloyd, in a letter from 1883: “a grave, slight, violet-eyed little Artemis, with great coils of heavy brown hair which make her flower-like head droop like a blossom.”
8 (p. 55)
One evening she is Rosalind . . . reed-like throat: Many of the allusions in this passage are to well-known Shakespearean heroines. Rosalind is from
As You Like It, and Imogen is from
Cymbeline. Juliet dies in the tomb in
Romeo and Juliet, Ophelia goes mad in
Hamlet, and innocent Desdemona is smothered in
Othello.
9 (p. 62)
Giordano Bruno: This influential sixteenth-century Italian religious philosopher became a Dominican monk but was forced to leave the order and was eventually burned at the stake because of his unorthodox views, including his belief in Copernican, solar-centered astronomy. By the nineteenth century, Bruno was seen as a martyr to intellectual freedom. Walter Pater published an essay on Bruno in 1889.
10 (p. 90)
I have grown sick of shadows: Here Wilde echoes Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s 1832 poem “The Lady of Shalott.” Forced by threat of a curse never to look at the real world, the Lady can view its reflection (its “shadows”) only in a mirror. She overhears the noise of King Arthur’s Camelot below her tower windows and decides she is “half-sick of shadows.” She chooses the world, and the curse comes upon her.
11 (p. 107)
Some Jacobean tragedy . . . Tourneur: Tragic drama flourished during the reign of English King James I (1603-1625). John Webster (
The Duchess of Malfi), John Ford (
’Tis Pity She’s a Whore), and Cyril Tourneur (
The Revenger’s Tragedy) were three of the period’s most notable playwrights.
12 (p. 113)
Gautier . . . des arts: Théophile Gautier, a nineteenth-century French poet, novelist, and journalist, expounded the influential philosophy of creating “art for art’s sake.” He was one of Wilde’s favorites. In his lecture and essay “The English Renaissance” (1882), Wilde credits Gautier with providing the consolation of art, “the secret of modern life foreshadowed.”
13 (p. 119) Symbolistes: This group of late-nineteenth-century French poets (known as Symbolists in English) included Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine. They wrote opaque verse producing the merest suggestion of meaning and used instead evocative personal symbols. The Symbolists strongly influenced young British and Irish writers, among them W. B. Yeats and his Rhymers’ Club circle of the 1890s. The play
Salomé is Wilde’s most Symbolist-inspired work.
14 (p. 132)
The company whom Dante describes as having sought to “make themselves perfect by the worship of beauty”: Although the Italian poet Dante employs this neo-Platonic theme, the quotation is not his. The phrase echoes one that Walter Pater uses to describe the title character in his 1885 novel
Marius the Epicurean, another extremely influential book for Wilde and his circle.
15 (p. 132)
Like Gautier, he was one for whom “the visible world existed”: Wilde seems to be referring to the nineteenth-century French novelists and critics Edmund and Jules de Goncourt, who cited Théophile Gautier, another nineteenth-century man of letters, as saying, “I am a man for whom the outside world exists.”
16 (p. 137)
He devoted himself entirely to music: Wilde takes the examples and descriptions of exotic music and other curiosities that appear throughout this chapter, often verbatim, from selected texts and museum handbooks on the subjects. He lifts his comments on embroidery (beginning on p. 140) from a contemporary history of the subject that he reviewed favorably while serving as editor of
Woman’s World magazine, from 1887 to 1889.
17 (p. 138)
Tannhäuser: This 1845 opera by Richard Wagner tells the story of a medieval minstrel who is seduced by Venus into a life of sensuality, then goes on a pilgrimage to beg forgiveness from the pope. The story recurs often in Wilde’s work. Aubrey Beardsley, iconic 1890s illustrator of Wilde’s play
Salomé, retold the story in his illustrated poem “Venus and Tannhäuser.”
18 (p. 138)
Anne de Joyeuse: Admiral Anne de Joyeuse was a favorite of Henri III, homosexual sixteenth-century king of France, who arranged for Joyeuse to marry the queen’s sister. Both the king and Joyeuse appeared at the wedding wearing clothes outrageously beaded with pearls.
19 (p. 139)
He discovered wonderful stories . . . danger by fire: In this paragraph, Wilde refers to
St. Alphonsus Liguori (whom Wilde calls Alphonso), an eighteenth-century Neapolitan bishop known for his missionary zeal and numerous theological texts;
Alexander the Great, who conquered much of the known world, including Emathia (as the regions of Macedonia and Thessaly were then known);
Philostratus, a third-century Greek philosopher;
Pierre de Boniface, a fourteenth-century alchemist and writer on gems;
Leonardo Camillus, a sixteenth-century Italian physician and author; and
Democritus, a fifth-century B.C. Greek philosopher and physical scientist.
20 (pp. 139-140)
The King of Ceilan . . . he worshiped: In this paragraph, Wilde makes copious references to figures from the annals of gemology. John the Priest (also known as Prester John) was a legendary medieval Asian king noteworthy both for his Christian sympathies and his love of jewels. Thomas Lodge, an English poet, makes references to lavish gems in his sixteenth-century poem “A Margarite of America.” Marco Polo, the thirteenth-century Venetian explorer, writes of the legendary riches of Zipangu (as he called Japan) in his travelogues. The historian Procopius tells of an incident in the sixth-century wars between the Persian King Perozes and Anastasius I, a ruler of the eastern Roman Empire. The king of Malabar ruled a region of southern India with a large number of Christians.
21 (p. 140)
When the Duke de Valentinois . . . with sapphires: Wilde begins this paragraph by retelling a story from Seigneur de Brantôme (also known as Pierre de Bourdeille), a well-known chronicler of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The Duke de Valentinois is Cesare Borgia, son of Rodrigo Borgia, who would become Pope Alexander VI, and brother of Lucrezia Borgia. Wilde then describes the jewels with which several kings of England adorned themselves. Hall is Edward Hall, a sixteenth-century English historian and an important source for Shakespeare’s history plays. Piers Gaveston was a homosexual favorite of Edward II. Charles the Rash was a fifteenth-century Duke of Burgundy.
22 (pp. 140-142)
Then he turned . . . its canopy: In this long paragraph, Wilde chronicles historic figures who are linked in one way or another with fantastic embroidery. Chilperic I was an infamously cruel sixth-century king of the Franks who was assassinated. The Bishop of Pontus is Pontus de Tyard, sixteenth-century French bishop and poet. Embroidery on the sleeve of Charles of Or léans, a fifteenth-century French poet and the father of King Louis XII, reads, “Madame, I am quite delighted.” Queen Joan of Burgundy was the wife of Philip VI, a fourteenth-century king of France. Catherine de’ Medici was the queen of France and regent through much of the latter part of the sixteenth century; she wielded enormous power. Sobieski, a king of Poland officially known as John III Sobieski, led several campaigns against the Turks before and during his reign, from 1674 to 1696.
23 (p. 143)
St. Sebastian: Wilde was drawn to this third-century Roman soldier who, under the emperor Diocletian, was martyred for his efforts to convert other soldiers to Christianity. Sebastian was a popular subject for Renaissance artists, who often portrayed him as a beautiful youth bound to a column and pierced by arrows. Wilde particularly liked Guido Reni’s sensuous painting of the saint. Wilde compared the poet John Keats to Sebastian and adopted the name Sebastian Melmoth while in exile in France.
24 (pp. 146-148)
Such, at any rate . . . wherever he went: In this lengthy paragraph, Wilde makes references to eighteenth-century nobles whose temperaments Dorian Gray believes he might share. Philip Herbert was a homosexual favorite of Edward II. Lord Ferrars is a reference to Earl Ferrars, who was hanged in 1760 for the murder of his valet. English King George IV, when prince regent, secretly and illegally married Maria Fitzherbert, a Roman Catholic.
25 (pp. 148-149)
The hero . . . in mystic marriage to the Sun: In this paragraph, Wilde alludes to several infamously cruel, debauched Roman emperors: Tiberius, Caligula, Domitian, Nero Caesar (also known simply as Nero), and Elagabalus. Elephantis was an ancient Greek who wrote erotic poetry.
26 (pp. 149-150)
Over and over again . . . blessed him: In this paragraph Wilde mentions Italian, Spanish, or French figures of the Renaissance who are infamous for their murderous tendencies. Wilde took these stories from
The Renaissance in Italy, a seven-volume work (published 1875-1886) by John Addington Symonds, who was also known for his works on homosexuality.
27 (pp. 167-168)
When he had stretched himself . . . Sur le marbre d’un escalier: In 1881, the French publisher Charpentier reprinted
Émaux et Camées (
Enamels and Cameos), a collection of poetry by Théophile Gautier first published in 1852. The 1881 edition included an etching by fourteenth-century French illuminator Jacquemart de Hesdin. “Etudes de Mains, II” describes the hand of an executed criminal, Pierre Lacenaire; it is “scarcely rid of its torture stain” and has a “faun’s fingers.” The quoted stanzas are from Gautier’s poem “Variations sur le Carnaval de Venise: II. Sur les lagunes” (“Variations on the Carnival of Venice, II: On the Lagoons”); the last two lines are repeated on p. 168. F. C. DeSumichrast translated them as the following (Gascon Edition of Gautier’s Collected Works, vol. 12. London: Postlethwaite, Taylor and Knowles, 1909):
To see, her bosom covered o’er
With pearls, her body suave,
The Adriatic Venus soar
On sound’s chromatic wave.
The domes that on the water dwell
Pursue the melody
In clear-drawn cadences, and swell
Like breasts of love that sigh.
My chains around a pillar cast,
I land before a fair
And rosy-pale façade at last,
Upon a marble stair.
28 (p. 169) monstre charmant: The “delightful monster” is an ancient Roman statue of a sleeping hermaphrodite in the Louvre museum in Paris. Théophile Gautier mentions the statue in the preface to his most famous novel,
Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835), the heroine of which is a bisexual woman. In the preface Gautier discusses the concept of art for art’s sake.
29 (p. 217)
I suppose in about a fortnight we shall be told he has been seen in San Francisco: Wilde stopped in San Francisco during his American lecture tour in 1882. When asked to comment on the beauties of its landscape, he is said to have replied that it was “Italy without its art.”
30 (p. 222)
You have crushed the grapes against your palate: Wilde echoes a line from John Keats’s 1819 poem, “Ode on Melancholy”:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
Wilde adored this Romantic poet, wrote poems celebrating him,
and once prostrated himself upon Keats’s grave, declaring it to
be the holiest place in Rome.
31 (pp. 222-223)
You may fancy yourself safe. . . . Browning writes about that somewhere: In his 1855 poem “Bishop Blougram’s Apology,” Robert Browning writes:
Just when we’re safest, there’s a sunset touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one’s death,
A chorus ending from Euripedes,
And that’s enough for fifty hopes and fears.
