“We live in an age of inordinate personal ambition and I am determined that the world shall understand me.’
After Wilde’s academic triumphs in the summer 0/1878, Magdalen renewed his Demy ship for a further (fifth) year. He was obliged to keep an extra Oxford term in order to pass the Divinity exam, which he had failed two years earlier, and found lodgings for that period at 71 High Street. On 22 November he satisfied the examiners in the Rudiments of Religion and on 28 November took his degree as Bachelor of Arts. It is not known how much of 1879 he spent in Oxford, but like other graduates of the time he seems to have been unable to make the final break with his Alma Mater for a while and made periodic visits to see undergraduate friends still in residence. From the first letter below it is clear that he was already looking for accommodation in London by the end of 1878, and planning to develop his aesthetic tastes and to charm Society with his conversation. However, in his application for a reader’s ticket to the British Museum in February he is unsure whether to give his Oxford college or London address, and George Macmillan’s reply to his letter of 22 March is addressed to Wilde at Oxford. By the time he came to review the opening of the 1879 Grosvenor Gallery exhibition in May, his feet seem to have been firmly planted in the metropolis. At first he appears to have been reluctant to put aside his classical background. He joined the newly founded Hellenic Society, becoming a member of the Council, suggested translations from the Greek to Macmillan (with whom he had travelled to Greece in 1877), applied for an archaeological studentship at Athens and even considered becoming an Inspector of Schoob.
22 March 1879 St Stephen’s Club, Westminster, London
Dear Macmillan, I was very glad to get your note and to see that the Society is really to be set on foot: I have every confidence in its success.
Nothing would please me more than to engage in literary work for your House. I have looked forward to this opportunity for some time.
Herodotos I should like to translate very much indeed – selections from that is – and I feel sure that the wonderful picturesqueness of his writings, as well as the pathos and tenderness of some of his stories, would command a great many readers. It is a work I should enjoy doing and should engage to have it done by September 1st next.
I do not know how many Greek plays you intend publishing, but I have been working at Euripides a good deal lately and should of all things wish to edit either the Mad Hercules or the Phoenissae: plays with which I am well acquainted. I think I see what style of editing is required completely.
I shall be glad to hear from you soon, as well as to see you at Salisbury Street any time you are not busy. Believe me very truly yours
OSCAR WILDE
Once in London, Oscar set up house with his friend Frank Miles in Salisbury Street just off the Strand, moving in the summer of 1880 to 1 Tite Street, Chebea, which Wilde quickly renamed ‘Keats House’. Frank was well connected through his work as an artist and introduced Oscar to Lillie Langtry, ‘Professional Beauty’ and mistress of the Prince of Wales, who in turn opened the door to London Society. He consolidated a friendship with the Cambridge don, Oscar Browning, and flattered the most prominent actresses of the day with sonnets, among them Sarah Bernhardt and Ellen Terry. That summer of 1879 Bernhardt was making the first of many visits to London with the Comedie Française and Wilde was said to have met her off the Channel ferry with an armful of lilies.
[3 June 1879] St Stephen’s Club
My dear Browning, Your bible and prayer book only exists in a bookseller’s Utopia! There is no such thing: I ransacked all Paternoster Row on this wretched rainy day and found nothing that would suit you. I told however the Bible Society to send you down a small paragraph Bible 10/- plainly rather uglily bound. The only thing I could find.
I am afraid you will have to take refuge in an Edition de Luxe of Keble’s Christian Year if you want something nice. I am so sorry my search is so unsuccessful.
I wish so much you could have been with me last night. Sarah Bernhardt’s Phedre was the most splendid creation I ever witnessed. The scene only lasted 10 minutes yet she worked the audience to a strained pitch of excitement such as I never saw. It seems so foolish to call French Tragedy stilted: the scene last night was not a bit ‘εχ δσυóς χαι πετσης’ [out of oak and stone] but the most impassioned human nature.
About Tuesday 17th I fear I must be in Oxford. I could not say definitely if I could come with you or not; it’s so far off and life is so intricate. I had a charming time at Cambridge for which accept my best thanks. Truly yours
OSCAR WILDE
Please remember me to your charming friend Stokes whom I like so much.
[Early July 1879] 13 Salisbury Street, London
Dear Miss Ellen Terry, Will you accept from me a poem which I have written to you in your character of Henrietta Maria as a small proof of my great and loyal admiration for your splendid artistic powers, and the noble tenderness and pathos of your acting.
No actress has ever affected me as you have. What I have said to you in my sonnet to you expresses quite inadequately the great effect your acting has had on me.
You will have many more triumphs but I do not think you will ever have a more sincere and impassioned admirer than I am.
I look forward to your winning new laurels in new parts, and remain most sincerely yours
OSCAR WILDE
[28 November 1879] St Stephen’s Club
Dear Reggie, I was only in Cambridge for the night with Oscar Browning (I wish he was not called Oscar) and left the next morning for the Hicks-Beachs’ in Hampshire, to kill time and pheasants and the ennui of not having set the world quite on fire as yet.
I will come some day and stay with you, though your letters are rather what boys call ‘Philippic’.
I am going to night with Ruskin to see Irving as Shylock, and afterwards to the Millais Ball. How odd it is. Dear Reg, ever yours
OSCAR
Remember me to Tom Peyton.
Important though Society contacts were, Wilde was also anxious to be seen in literary and artistic circles. The Forbes-Robertsons (Norman, Ian, Johnston, Eric and Frankie) were predominantly an acting family with whom he remained friendly for many years, Frankie being especially kind to him after his imprisonment (see p. 346). Margaret Hunt was a successful popular novelist married to the landscape painter Alfred Hunt. Wilde toyed briefly with the idea of marrying her daughter Violet.
[?Circa 16 March 1880] St Stephen’s Club
My dear Norman, I suppose you are engaged for Saturday and that there is no chance of our going to the Boat Race together? If you have any time do come and see me soon.
I don’t know if I bored you the other night with my life and its troubles. There seems something so sympathetic and gentle about your nature, and you have been so charming whenever I have seen you, that I felt somehow that although I knew you only a short time, yet that still I could talk to you about things, which I only talk of to people whom I like – to those whom I count my friends.
If you will let me count you as one of my friends, it would give a new pleasure to my life.
I hope so much to see you again. Till I do, ever yours
OSCAR WILDE
25 August [1880] 1 Tite Street, Chelsea, London
Dear Mrs Hunt, It was so good of you to take the trouble of sending me such a long account of your little village. I have been hoping to go every week, but have had so many engagements that it has been out of my power; which, believe me, is no small disappointment. I should like so much to be with you all.
And now I am trying to settle a new house, where Mr Miles and I are going to live. The address is horrid but the house very pretty. It is much nearer you than my old house, so I hope we shall often, if you let me, have ‘dishes of tea’ at one another’s houses.
I have broken a promise shamefully to Miss Violet about a poem I promised to send her. My only excuse is that nowadays the selection of colours and furniture has quite taken the place of the cases of conscience of the middle ages, and usually involves quite as much remorse. However I send her one I have just published. I hope she will see some beauty in it, and that your wonderful husband’s wonderful radicalism will be appeased by my first attempt at political prophecy, which occurs in the last verse. If she will send me a little line to say what she thinks of it, it will give me such pleasure.
I hope she has been writing herself. After all, the Muses are as often to be met with in our English fields as they ever were by Castaly, or Helicon, though I have always in my heart thought that the simultaneous appearance of nine (unmarried) sisters at a time must have been a little embarrassing.
Please remember me most kindly to your husband, and all yours, and believe me very truly yours
OSCAR WILDE
Wilde by this time had spent the best part of a year and a half in London making himself seen and talked about, regularly caricatured by du Maurier in Punch. He now needed to show that he was capable of more than a few sonnets to actresses and accordingly wrote and published privately his first play, Vera; or, the Nihilists, a drama set in mid-nineteenth-century Russia. He sent copies to leading theatrical figures, among them two Americans, Clara Morris and Hermann Vezin (who later gave him voice coaching before his lecture tour of America), but received no offer to produce it.
[Circa September 1880] Keats House, Tite Street
Dear Madam, Permit me to send you a copy of a new and original drama I have written: the character of the heroine is drawn in all those varying moods and notes of passion which you can so well touch. Your great fame, which has long ago passed over here, and a suggestion of my friend Mr Dion Boucicault have emboldened me, being a very young writer, to send you my first play; and if you do not think it suitable for dramatic representation in America, at any rate accept it as a homage to your genius.
On account of its avowedly republican sentiments I have not been able to get permission to have it brought out here, but with you there is more freedom, and though democracy is the note through which the play is expressed, yet the tragedy is an entirely human one. Believe me, Madam, your obedient servant
OSCAR WILDE
In case you approve of the play I shall be so happy to correspond on the subject.
[Circa 1 October 1880] Keats House, Tite Street
My dear Norman, I am so glad you have not forgotten about the play and send you a copy with great pleasure. I hope you are getting stronger as your dear mother was rather anxious about you. I have not yet finished furnishing my rooms, and have spent all my money over it already, so if no manager gives me gold for the Nihilists I don’t know what I shall do; but then I couldn’t really have anything but Chippendale and satinwood – I shouldn’t have been able to write.
Modjeska has asked me to adapt some play for her – we have not yet settled what – probably Luisa Miller. I am looking forward to her first night for which Barrett has just sent me stalls. I envy you so much being with dear Nellie, the kindest-hearted, sweetest, loveliest of women. As for me I am lonely, désolé and wretched. I feel burned out – so do come back soon and let me see a great deal of you and believe me, your affectionate friend
OSCAR WILDE
[4 October 1880] Tite Street
My dear Vezin, I send you a copy of my drama which you were kind enough to hear me read some months ago; any suggestions about situations or dialogue I should be so glad to get from such an experienced artist as yourself: I have just found out what a difficult craft playwriting is.
Will you let me tell you what immense pleasure your Iago gave me. It seems to me the most perfect example I have ever seen of that right realism which is founded on consummate art, and sustained by consummate genius: the man Iago walked and talked before us. Two points particularly delighted me – the enormous character you gave to otherwise trivial details: a rare and splendid art, to make all common things symbolic of the leading idea, as Albert [sic] Diirer loved to do in his drawings. The other is your delivery of asides, notably in Act II: I never knew how they ought to be given before – but perhaps you are saying in an aside now ‘Ohé jam satis!’ [well, that’s enough], so believe me your friend and admirer
OSCAR WILDE
[Late 1880-early 1881] Keats House, Tite Street
Dear Mr Tadema, There is a good deal of difficulty in obtaining a really correct idea of Greek writing at the time of Sappho: Sappho is so early, 610 B C, that we have no inscriptions at all contemporary, and the earliest Aeolic coin is about 550. Taking this as my starting point and following out the Aeolic shapes of the letters, which are quite different from the Attic, I have drawn out the enclosed list, which is as accurate probably as one can get it.
The early shapes are curious and I imagine are conditioned by the material on which they wrote – paper or parchment – as opposed to the later forms when stone inscriptions became usual: and the lines consequently more rigid and straight, and, it seems to me, less beautiful.
I have written Mnasidika instead of Mnasidion as in your letter; all the MSS read Mnasidika in the line from Sappho, and besides Mnasidion is a man’s name. Gyrinnos is the Aeolic form for Gyrinna.
I remember your talking about Catullus the other night – one of the most beautiful of his poems is taken from a still extant song of Sappho’s beginning,
I don’t know if you would care to strike that literary note and scrawl it on your marble?
I hope that whenever you want any kind of information about Greek things, in which I might help you that you will let me know.
It is always a pleasure for me to work at any Greek subject, and a double pleasure to do so for anyone whose work mirrors so exquisitely and rightly, as yours does, that beautiful old Greek world. Believe me sincerely yours
OSCAR WILDE
[3 January 1881] Tite Street, Chelsea
My dear Nellie, I write to wish you every success tonight. You could not do anything that would not be a mirror of the highest artistic beauty, and I am so glad to hear you have an opportunity of showing us that passionate power which I know you have. You will have a great success – perhaps one of your greatest.
I send you some flowers – two crowns. Will you accept one of them, whichever you think will suit you best. The other – don’t think me treacherous, Nellie – but the other please give to Florrie from yourself. I should like to think that she was wearing something of mine the first night she comes on the stage, that anything of mine should touch her. Of course if you think – but you won’t think she will suspect? How could she? She thinks I never loved her, thinks I forget. My God how could I!
Dear Nellie, if you can do this – in any case accept these flowers from your devoted admirer, your affectionate friend
OSCAR WILDE
[17 February 1881] Keats House, Tite Street
Dear Mrs Hunt, Thank you so much for your kind invitations but I am in the ‘lion’s den’ on both days. Sunday I dine to meet Mr Lowell, a poet, statesman, and an American in one! A sort of three-headed Cerberus of civilisation who barks when he is baited and is often mistaken for a Hon, at a distance.
And on Wednesday the 2nd I have a long-standing engagement to dine with Sir Charles Dilke, a lion who has clipped his radical claws and only roars through the medium of a quarterly review now – a harmless way of roaring. So I cannot come to you, which makes me very sad.
I ought, like Sir Boyle Roche’s bird, to be able to be in two places at once, but in that case I should always be at Tor Villas. I hope to see you all soon again. Very truly yours
OSCAR WILDE
In 1881 Wilde published his second book, a volume of poems, this time with a publisher. There were 750 copies printed which he cannily divided into three equal ‘editions’ between June and September in the hope that it would attract more attention. Despite a complimentary review from Oscar Browning and an encouraging letter from Arnold the notices were generally unfavourable – Punch’s reviewer describing it as ‘Swinburne and water’. The library of the Oxford Union even went so far as to request a copy and then reject it as being too derivative. It also ended the friendship with Miles, whose clergyman father read dangerous sensuality into the volume and urged his son to have nothing more to do with the author.
[May 1881] Keats House, Tite Street
Dear Sir, I am anxious to publish a volume of poems immediately, and should like to enter into a treaty with your house about it. I can forward you the manuscript on hearing that you will begin negotiations.
Possibly my name requires no introduction. Yours truly
OSCAR WILDE
[June 1881] Keats House, Tite Street
My dear Browning, If you get the opportunity, and would care for it, I wish you would review my first volume of poems just about to appear: books so often fall into stupid and illiterate hands that I am anxious to be really criticised: ignorant praise or ignorant blame is so insulting. Truly yours
OSCAR WILDE
[June 1881] Keats House, Tite Street
Dear Mr Browning, Will you accept from me the first copy of my poems – the only tribute I can offer you in return for the delight and the wonder which the strength and splendour of your work has given me from my boyhood.
Believe me, in all affectionate admiration, very truly yours
OSCAR WILDE
[June-July 1881] Keats House, Tite Street
Dear Mr Arnold, Will you accept from me my first volume of poems…of the constant source of joy and wonder that your beautiful work was to all of us at Oxford…for I have only now, too late perhaps, found out how all art requires solitude as its companion, only now indeed know the splendid difficulty of this great art in which you are a master illustrious and supreme. Still, such as it is, let me offer it to you, and believe me in all affectionate admiration, truly yours
OSCAR WILDE
[Postmark 22 July 1881] Keats House, Tite Street
Dear Miss Violet Hunt, I thank you very much for your kind letter, and am infinitely delighted that you have thought my poems beautiful. In an age like this when Slander, and Ridicule, and Envy walk quite unashamed among us, and when any attempt to produce serious beautiful work is greeted with a very tornado of lies and evil-speaking, it is a wonderful joy, a wonderful spur for ambition and work, to receive any such encouragement and appreciation as your letter brought me, and I thank you for it again and again.
The poem I like best is ‘The Burden of Itys’ and next to that ‘The Garden of Eros’. They are the most lyrical, and I would sooner have any power or quality of ‘song’ writing than be the greatest sonnet writer since Petrarch.
I go to the Thames this afternoon with Mr Burne-Jones but will hope to see you when I return.
You have made me very happy. Believe me ever sincerely yours
OSCAR WILDE
When both her sons moved to London in 1879, Lady Wilde came to join them and was living in somewhat reduced circumstances, her London tea parties being a pale imitation of her famous Saturday conversazioni in Dublin. Although not yet able to help her financially, Oscar seemed to realise that his mother’s mantle had fallen on his shoulders and attempted to puff her to the editor of the Nineteenth Century.
[October 1881] Keats House, Tite Street
Dear Mr Knowles, I send you a – rather soiled – copy of my mother’s pamphlet on the reflux wave of practical republicanism which the return of the Irish emigrants has brought on Ireland. It was written three years ago nearly, and is extremely interesting as a political prophecy. You probably know my mother’s name as the ‘Speranza’ of the Nation newspaper in 1848. I don’t think that age has dimmed the fire and enthusiasm of that pen which set the young Irelanders in a blaze.
I should like so much to have the privilege of introducing you to my mother – all brilliant people should cross each other’s cycles, like some of the nicest planets. In any case I am glad to be able to send you the article. It is part of the thought of the nineteenth century, and will I hope interest you. Believe me, truly yours
OSCAR WILDE
[November 1881] 9 Charles Street, Grosvenor Square, London
My dear Curzon, You are a brick! and I thank you very much for your chivalrous defence of me in the Union. So much of what is best in England passes through Oxford that I should have been sorry to think that discourtesy so gross and narrow-mindedness so evil could have been suffered to exist without some voice of scorn being raised against them.
Our sweet city with its dreaming towers must not be given entirely over to the Philistines. They have Gath and Ekron and Ashdod and many other cities of dirt and dread and despair, and we must not yield them the quiet cloister of Magdalen to brawl in, or the windows of Merton to peer from.
I hope you will come and see me in town. I have left my house at Chelsea but will be always delighted to see you, for, in spite of the story of Aristides, I have not got tired yet of hearing Rennell Rodd call you perfect.
I send you a bill of my first attack on Tyranny. I wish you could get it posted in the ‘High’, but perhaps I bother you? Very truly yours
OSCAR WILDE