5

In Black and White

‘To the critic the work of art is simply a suggestion for a new work of his own.’

oscar wilde

The move into 16 Tite Street might also have been expected to draw Wilde closer to Whistler, but it had the opposite effect. Always jealous of his own position and prestige, Whistler was becoming irritated by Wilde’s continuing fame, by his gradually acknowledged role as an arbiter in matters of taste, and by the money he was earning on the lecture circuit. He convinced himself that Wilde’s success derived entirely from ideas picked up in ‘the Master’s’ studio. As early as March 1884 Alan Cole noted in his diary that Whistler was ‘strong on Oscar Wilde’s notions on Art, which he had derived from him (Jimmy)’.1 In his mind Whistler kept returning to the help he had given in preparing Wilde for his address to the Royal Academy students.2 Wilde’s new lecture on ‘The Value of Art in Modern Life’ borrowed heavily from that talk. And despite – or, perhaps, because of – its extended paean in praise of Whistler it became a particular bugbear. Whistler developed a hatred of it that verged on paranoia.3

Although there was no direct confrontation, Wilde cannot have been unaware of his friend’s simmering resentment. At one dinner, Whistler steered the conversation to Wilde’s lecturing: ‘Now, Oscar,’ he demanded, ‘tell us what you said to them?’ Wilde was obliged to repeat all his points in turn; at each phrase Whistler rose and made a solemn bow ‘with his hand across his breast, in mock acceptance of his guests’ applause’.4 To the generous spirited Wilde, with his magpie instincts and broad understanding of intellectual history, such petty point scoring must have seemed a complete irrelevance. Certainly he refused to take offence. He retained his affection for Whistler as a man, and his admiration for him as an artist.

Whistler’s growing animus, however, found a further outlet early in 1885. Anxious to assert his authority and reclaim his own Aesthetic theories, he had determined to give a lecture himself. Enlisting the support of Archibald Forbes, he even persuaded D’Oyly Carte to promote the venture: a single London appearance at Prince’s Hall on 20 February, at the improbable hour of ten o’clock in the evening – an hour that allowed the fashionable audience to dine beforehand.

Whistler had laboured long on his text. The talk was a sparkling declaration of his artistic creed, a creed almost identical to the one espoused by Wilde in his recent lectures: that art was free from all moral and social obligations, that it was ‘occupied with [its] own perfection only’, and that such perfection could be achieved, not by direct imitation from nature, but only by inspired selection and arrangement. Not a few of the phrase echoed Wilde’s dicta. ‘Nature,’ Whistler declared, ‘contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artist is born to pick and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful… To say to the painter, that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player, that he may sit on the piano.’ The same metaphor – albeit without the closing joke – was employed by Wilde in his talks.

Among the several objects of Whistler’s contempt, the principal ones may have been Ruskin and Harry Quilter – ‘the Sage of the Universities’ and ‘the Art Critic’– but Wilde was not ignored. In discussing the contemporary enthusiasm for trying to educate the public about art (a matter on which they should have ‘nothing to say’), Whistler lamented the rise of the self-appointed expert: ‘the Dilettante stalks abroad! – The Amateur is loosed – the voice of the Aesthete is heard in the land – and catastrophe is upon us!’ And if all art experts were decried, special ridicule was reserved for the dress reformer: ‘Costume is not dress – and the wearers of wardrobes may not be doctors of “taste”! – For by what authority shall these be pretty masters! – Look well, and nothing have they invented! – nothing put together for comeliness’ sake… Haphazard from their shoulders hang the garments of the Hawker – combining in their person, the motely of many manners, with the medley of the mummers’ closet.’

Wilde was, of course, in the audience (conspicuous in the sixth row).5 He was not there, however, simply to listen. He had secured a commission to review the lecture from his friends at the Pall Mall Gazette. It was a task that he carried out with aplomb, turning the occasion deftly to his own account, without appearing to rise to Whistler’s bait. Those of Whistler’s friends who had supposed that Wilde had been riled by the lecture were disabused.6

Adopting an air of easy equality, he was gracious in his praises. He hailed the ‘really marvellous eloquence’ of the lecture – even if he promptly capped Whistler’s own rather strained attempts at alliteration by describing the artist, memorably, as ‘a miniature Mephistopheles, mocking the majority’. The opening note of genial approval sanctioned a succession of lightly phrased – and apt – caveats. Wilde pointed up the irony of Whistler lecturing an art-loving audience about how they did not, could not and should not know anything about art. For his own part, he cheerfully acknowledged that he was indeed a ‘dress reformer’ – ‘(O mea culpa!)’ – but asserted the importance of the role. ‘Of course,’ he remarked, ‘with regard to the value of beautiful surroundings I differ entirely from Mr. Whistler.’ And just because true artists could ‘find beauty in ugliness, le beau dans l’horrible’, that was no excuse for condemning ‘charming people’ to live surrounded by the hideousness of ‘magenta ottomans and Albert blue curtains’. He disputed too Whistler’s ‘dictum that only a painter is a judge of painting’ – contending, instead, that ‘only an artist is a judge of art’ – and that all the arts were one – ‘poem, picture, and Parthenon, sonnet and statue – all are in their essence the same, and he who knows one knows all’. He went on to claim that ‘the poet’ was ‘the supreme artist, for he is master of colour and form, and the real musician besides, and is lord over all life, and all arts; and so to the poet beyond all others are these mysteries known, to Edgar Allan Poe and to Baudelaire, not to Benjamin West and Paul Delaroche [two unfashionable mid-nineteenth-century history painters]’.

The lecture, nevertheless, he declared ‘a masterpiece’ – to be remembered not only for its wit:

But for the pure and perfect beauty of many of its passages – passages delivered with an earnestness which seemed to amaze those who had looked on Mr. Whistler as a master of persiflage merely, and had not known him as we do, as a master of painting also. For that he is indeed one of the very greatest masters of painting is my opinion. And I may add that in this opinion Mr. Whistler himself entirely concurs.

Wilde’s article appeared prominently – under his name – on the front page of the Pall Mall Gazette the afternoon following the lecture. Despite its arch tone it was, in the general press reaction to the talk, among the more generous responses. The ‘smartly-written critique’ was soon being commented upon, and quoted from, in other papers. In such articles the reviewer was given equal weight with the reviewed; indeed one piece appeared under the headline ‘Mr. Wilde and Mr. Whistler’.7

Although ‘Mr. Wilde’ must have been delighted by the attention – and by the ordering of their names – ‘Mr. Whistler’ was not. He responded to Wilde’s review with the inevitable letter in the World: ‘I have read your exquisite article in the Pall Mall. Nothing is more delicate, in the flattery of “the Poet” to “the Painter”, than the naiveté of “the Poet”, in the choice of his Painters – Benjamin West and Paul Delaroche! You have pointed out that “the Painter’s” mission is to find “le beau dans l’horrible”, and have left to “the Poet” the discovery of “l’horrible” dans “le beau”!’

Wilde deftly turned away the thrust. ‘Dear Butterfly,’ he replied, ‘By the aid of a biographical dictionary I made the discovery that there were once two painters, called Benjamin West and Paul Delaroche, who rashly lectured upon Art. As of their works nothing at all remains, I concluded that they explained themselves away. Be warned in time, James; and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood. Tout à vous, Oscar.’ This letter was published alongside Whistler’s in the World; the correspondence also appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette.8 In their previous exchanges, Whistler’s egotism had always secured him a victory of sorts, and certainly the final word. But on this occasion he was bested.

Keeping the game going, the Pall Mall Gazette commissioned a second signed article from Wilde: ‘The Relation of Dress to Art: A Note in Black and White on Mr. Whistler’s Lecture.’ It allowed Wilde – amid further praise for Whistler as an orator and an artist – to contrast the passionless ‘wisdom’ of Whistler’s perfectly ‘true’ claim that art ‘can never have any other aim but own perfection’ with the ‘noble unwisdom’ of his own campaign for dress reform, which sought to make art ‘the natural and national inheritance of all’. Indeed beauty in dress, Wilde suggested, might benefit not only society, but also art:

For Art is not to be taught in the Academies. It is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes the artist. The real schools should be the streets. There is not, for instance, a single delicate line, or delightful proportion, in the dress of the Greeks, which is not echoed exquisitely in their architecture. A nation arrayed in stove-pipe hats, and dress improvers, might have built the Pantechnicon [furniture bazaar], possibly, but the Parthenon, never.

If Whistler had hoped to obliterate Wilde with his ‘Ten O’Clock’, or precipitate a definite break with him, he failed on both counts. Wilde emerged from the confrontation with his reputation as an Aesthetic reformer and a wit enhanced. Nevertheless, though he maintained a tone of generous good humour in his published comments, and continued to encounter Whistler socially (Chelsea – and, indeed, London – were too small for him not to), it was clear that the warm camaraderie of previous years was irretrievably lost. This cooling of relations was given an outward form when, shortly after the Wildes moved into their new home, Whistler moved out of Tite Street, relocating his studio to the far end of the Fulham Road, and his home to The Vale, a picturesque cul-de-sac on the far side of the King’s Road.

The contretemps precipitated another, rather happier, alteration in Wilde’s circumstances: it opened up to him the world of journalism – or at least the world of reviewing. His several well-received contributions to the Pall Mall Gazette encouraged Milner to offer him a role as a regular book reviewer for the paper, starting in March.9 The opportunity was welcome. The charms of lecturing had been waning for some time. The ceaseless travel, the endless repetition, the stress of the occasional mix-up, fluctuating audiences, uncertain returns, absence from London and from Constance: they all took their toll on Wilde’s spirit. ‘I am getting sick of the whole thing,’ he had confessed to Appleton.10 And though he held back from making an immediate break, he greatly reduced his commitments during the rest of the year. His role as the itinerant prophet of Aestheticism was gradually coming to an end.11*

To be reviewing for a London paper was, if not a significant professional advance, at least both a change and a relief. The Pall Mall Gazette was, moreover, an appropriate berth. One of a new breed of ‘Clubland’ papers (costing, at 1d, twice as much as ‘popular’ titles such as the Evening Standard, the Echo and the Star), it had established a reputation, under the editorship of W. T. Stead, as ‘the best evening paper London ever had’: entertaining, liberal and courageous.12 Although the paper’s book reviews were unsigned, and only modestly rewarded (2 guineas per 1,000 words was the paper’s usual rate), they could be accomplished from the comfort of the ‘vermilion garret’ at Tite Street, and accomplished quickly. Wilde’s gift for speed-reading stood in his favour, even before he evolved the theory that it was both harmful and unnecessary for a reviewer to read the entire book: ‘To know the vintage and quality of a wine one need not drink the whole cask. It must be perfectly easy in half an hour to say whether a book is worth anything or worth nothing. Ten minutes are really sufficient, if one has an instinct for form.’13 He doubtless hoped that the new regime would allow him scope to pursue his own literary projects.

Wilde, initially, expected that he would review books about art, and one of his first acts was to ask Milner if he could be sent Comyns Carr’s recently published Papers on Art. He received instead a cookery book called Dinners and Dishes. It was an early lesson in the promiscuous demands of book reviewing. Wilde, though, seems to have enjoyed the variety – and even the anonymity. Both were liberating. Certainly there is a happy holiday air about most of his Pall Mall Gazette reviews.14 Over the next five years he contributed sprightly critiques of epic poems, Irish legends, etiquette manuals, verse anthologies, handbooks on oil painting, historical biographies, collected letters, popular novels and more besides. The pieces were usually generous and always droll – ideas were sported with and phrases turned.

In praising Dinners and Dishes he reported, ‘it is brief, and concise, and makes no attempts at eloquence, which is extremely fortunate. For even on ortolans who could endure oratory? It also has the advantage of not being illustrated. The subject of a work of art has of course nothing to do with its beauty, but still there is always something depressing about the coloured lithograph of a leg of mutton.’ The real wonder of the work, however, he suggested, was that there was ‘actually a recipe for making Brussels sprouts eatable’.15

Kind-hearted by nature, and having suffered himself from spiteful notices, Wilde strove especially to be generous to minor poets. There was almost always a word of praise, however faint. Of one feeble but well-produced volume he reported, ‘if it is not quite worth reading, [it] is at least worth looking at’.16 A steady course of popular novels (often reviewed three or four at a time) convinced him that, although ‘the nineteenth century may be a prosaic age… it is not an age of prose’.17 While he generously allowed that almost all of ‘our ordinary English novelists’ did have ‘some story to tell’ and most of them told it in ‘an interesting manner’, he considered that they nearly always failed ‘in concentration of style’. Their characters were all ‘far too eloquent, and talk themselves to tatters. What we want is a little more reality and a little less rhetoric.’ Nevertheless, he conceded that ‘one should not be too severe on English novels’ since they were ‘the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed’.18 And severe he was not, even if his lightly scattered compliments were often double-edged: ‘It seems to be a novel with a high purpose and a noble meaning. Yet it is never dull’; ‘The book can be read without any trouble, and was probably written without any trouble also. The style is pleasing and prattling.’ ‘Astray. A Tale of a Country Town is a very serious volume. It has taken four people to write it, and even to read it requires assistance’. He drew the line, however, at Mr. E. O. Pleydell-Bouverie’s J.S.; or Trivialities: ‘The only point of interest presented by the book is the problem of how it ever came to be written.’19

He learnt to be careful in requesting specific titles for review, as the editors were ‘much afraid of log-rolling’ and would try to thwart any attempt of his simply to puff his friends.20 It was probably chance that gave him the opportunity to say nice things about Mrs Alfred Hunt’s three-volume novel, and to salute William Money Hardinge for his ‘charming style’.21 Design, though, must surely have been behind his reviewing How To Be Happy Though Married, a lightly humorous book written, pseudonymously, by the husband of his first cousin. Wilde hailed Rev. E. J. Hardy’s work as ‘a complete handbook to an earthly Paradise’, calling the author ‘the Murray of matrimony and the Baedeker of bliss’. This phrase – as much as his general endorsement – carried the book through five editions; Wilde always thought he should have received a royalty.22†

From behind his mask of anonymity Wilde criticized J. A. Symonds for his too-facile rhetoric and Edmund Gosse for his sciolism; he gently mocked the ‘common sense’ approach to art of his Tite Street neighbour John Collier, and less gently denigrated the philistinism of his old Oxford adversary Rhoda Broughton (‘whatever harsh criticisms may be passed on the construction of her sentences, she at least possesses that one touch of vulgarity that make the whole world kin’).23 The mask, however, sometimes slipped. When Wilde wrote an anonymous attack on the pretensions of George Saintsbury, gleefully listing the writer’s grammatical errors and infelicities, his authorship was guessed, and widely reported.24 Not that Wilde seems to have minded. He certainly hoped that his responsibility for the delightfully disingenuous demolition of Harry Quilter would be recognized.25 Nevertheless there was always scope for confusion: some of Wilde’s more astringent reviews were credited by their hapless victims to George Bernard Shaw (who started writing for the Pall Mall Gazette at the same time as Wilde) or to William Archer, while their pieces were sometimes ascribed to him.26 Well-connected writers, though, could usually discover the true authorship of any unsigned review, whether bad or good. It was probably inside information that led W. G. Wills to write, thanking Wilde for the generous praise of his epic poem Melchior.27

A review of George Sand’s letters allowed Wilde to elucidate his ever-shifting ideas on art and its relation to life: ‘Perhaps [Sand] valued good intentions in art a little too much, and she hardly understood that art for art’s sake [to which she had voiced objections] is not meant to express the final cause of art but is merely a formula of creation.’ He thought, though, that Sand was right to challenge Flaubert’s attempts to obliterate his own personality in his work: ‘Art without personality is impossible. And yet the aim of art is not to reveal personality but to please.’28 The importance of pleasing was now a concern. Of another work he remarked, ‘Seriousness, like property, has its duties as well as its rights, and the first duty of a novel is to please.’29

Seriousness, as well as pleasure, had, though, a certain attraction. Wilde had no desire to enter the coarse and bustling world of newspaper journalism that had laid claim to Willie, who was now a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph (an occupation that only too well suited his easy wit, fluent pen and indolent temperament).30‡ There was, though, the ‘higher journalism’ of informed critical comment and erudite discussion carried on in the monthly reviews: the forum in which Matthew Arnold and Swinburne (as a critic) had made their names. Wilde recognized that this might be a useful stage on which to appear. He followed up a suggestion from the editor of the Fortnightly Review that he should contribute an article – proposing ‘Impressionism in Literature’ – ‘a subject I have been for some time studying’. But the idea languished.31 More successful was an essay on ‘Shakespeare and Stage Costume’, which, combining his interests in literature and dress, appeared under his name in the May 1885 issue of the prestigious Nineteenth Century. It marked a small but gratifying debut in this elevated intellectual sphere.

The article, an elegantly phrased endorsement of Godwin’s views on the virtues of ‘archaeologically’ authentic stage design, was based on a shorter (but no less elegantly phrased) piece – ‘Shakespeare on Stage Scenery’ – that Wilde had published a few weeks earlier in a newly established weekly called the Dramatic Review. The line taken in both pieces was the direct opposite of the one that he usually adopted. He had told the Royal Academy students that ‘archaeology’ was ‘merely the science of making excuses for bad art’, while to a young painter who was working on a ‘Viking picture’ he remarked, ‘Why so far back? You know, where archaeology begins, art ceases.’32 It was yet another instance of his gift for holding, and enjoying, contrary positions.

If Nineteenth Century did not, at once, offer Wilde any more work, the Dramatic Review did. Under the energetic editorship of its founder, the Irish-born Edwin Palmer, the journal was committed to stimulating debate on cultural topics. William Archer was an early contributor. Shaw was taken on to write music criticism. Hermann Vezin had a regular column reminiscing about old actors. And during 1885 Godwin published a series of articles about ‘Archaeology on the Stage’. It was not surprising that Wilde was drawn into the circle.33 Following the success of his first article he began to provide occasional theatre reviews. They were no better paid than his pieces for the Pall Mall Gazette, but served to keep him close to the world of the stage – and his name before the public. Articles appeared above a facsimile of the author’s signature.34

On 5 June 1885 Constance gave birth to a son. Wilde was thrilled with the arrival. ‘The baby is wonderful,’ he wrote to Norman Forbes-Robertson. ‘Constance is doing capitally and is in excellent spirits… you must get married at once!’35 Beyond the family circle, speculation was rife at how the child would fare. Laura Troubridge thought it ‘much to be pitied’, suspecting it would soon be ‘swathed in artistic baby-clothes’ of ‘sage green’ and ‘peacock blue’.36 The newspapers relished the gap between the Aesthetic ideal and the realities of parenthood: ‘O wondrous cherub! Aesthete fair!’, they imagined Wilde apostrophizing the infant. ‘Style Renaissance, Greek and Doric; / Always howling, I declare! / Fetch me quick the paregoric.’37 The boy was christened Cyril. As a further consideration, Edward Heron-Allen was asked to cast the child’s horoscope (although both parents were anxious to know the child’s ‘fate’, when Heron-Allen finally gave his report ‘it grieved them very much).38

Wilde took to fatherhood with enthusiasm: within hours of the child’s birth he was boasting that the ‘amazing boy… already knows me quite well’.39 He was conscious, though, of new responsibilities, and of new expenses too. Money was needed. Constance’s income had not been enough to support the household even before Cyril’s arrival. And the nugatory amounts that Wilde received for reviewing, together with the falling returns from his few remaining lectures, were not enough to make up the shortfall. The Duchess of Padua was as far as ever from securing a production. And economy seemed out of the question. Constance lamented to her brother that neither she nor her husband had ‘a notion how to live non-extravagantly’.40 A different measure was attempted: Wilde tried to get a job.

Only weeks after Cyril’s birth, he revived his idea of becoming ‘one of her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools’, asking his friend George Curzon (now a rising star in the Tory Party) to support the application. Not immediately successful, he continued his campaign over the coming months, badgering Curzon a second time, and enlisting the additional assistance of Mahaffy.41 But even this was not enough to secure a post. Exploring other avenues, he applied to become the secretary of the Beaumont Trust Fund, a charity engaged in creating ‘The People’s Palace’ in London’s East End – an institute dedicated to promoting the arts and sciences among the urban poor. Wilde, in his letter of application, after citing his long experience as a lecturer on ‘art-knowledge’ and ‘art-appreciation’, called the Palace ‘the realization of much that I have long hoped for.’ Again, though, he was overlooked.42

These were real disappointments. Their implications were not merely practical, but artistic. Frustrated by his inability to write anything beyond reviews, Wilde had come to believe that ‘leisure and freedom from sordid care’ were necessary if he was to create ‘pure literary work’ of real worth. He hoped that a regular job might offer such freedom. As he explained to one young correspondent, if only he could ‘make some profession… the basis and mainstay of [his] life’, he would then be able ‘to keep literature for [his] finest, rarest moments’.43 He needed a proper job. Or so he thought. Shackled to the round of reviewing – and his ever-dwindling series of lectures – fine moments seemed rare indeed, and ‘pure literary work’ a dream.

* With barely more than a dozen dates during the autumn/winter season that ran from October 1885 into 1886, Wilde’s concerted three-year campaign of lecturing across Britain quietly closed with a talk on ‘Dress and the Mission of Art in the Nineteenth Century’ at Penzance on Monday 25 January 1886. From then on he might address the occasional society or group, but the days of touring were over.

† The book actually cited Wilde as an authority (on home decor rather than marriage): ‘As regards one’s relations when they are really decorative, even Mr Oscar Wilde can see no reason why their photographs should not be hung on the walls, though he hopes that, if called on to make a stand between principles of domestic affection and decorative art, the latter may have the first place.’

‡ One of his fellow hacks left a vivid record of Willie’s account of the working day: ‘The journalistic life irksome? Dear me, not at all. Take my daily life as an example. I report at the office, let us say at twelve o’clock. To the Editor I say, “Good morning, my dear Le Sage,” and he replies, “Good morning, my dear Wilde, have you an idea to-day?” “Oh yes, Sir, indeed I have,” I respond. “It is the anniversary of the penny postage stamp.” “That is a delightful subject for a leader,” cries my editor, beaming on me, “and would you be good enough, my dear Wilde, to write us a leader, then, on the anniversary of the penny postage stamp?” “Indeed I will that with pleasure,” is my answer. “Ah! thank you, my dear boy,” cries my editor, “and be sure to have your copy in early the earlier the better.” That is the final, injunction, and I bow myself out. I may then eat a few oysters and drink half a bottle of Chablis at Sweeting’s, or alternatively partake of a light lunch at this admirable club [the Spoofs], for as rare Ben Jonson says, “The first speech in my Cataline, spoken by Sylla’s ghost, was writ after I had parted with my friends at the Devil Tavern. I had drank well and had brave notions.” I then stroll towards the Park. I bow to the fashionables, I am seen along incomparable Piccadilly. It is grand. But meantime I am thinking only of that penny postage stamp. I try to recall all that I ever heard about penny postage stamps. Let me see? There is Mr. So-and-so the inventor, there is the early opposition, the first postal legislation, then the way stamps are made, putting the holes in the paper; the gum on the back; the printing – all these details come back to me; then a paragraph or two about present postal laws; a few examples of the crude drolleries of the official Postal Guide; perhaps as a conclusion, something about the crying need for cheaper letter rates. I think of all these circumstances as I stroll back along Pall Mall. I might go to the British Museum and grub up a lot of musty facts, but that would be unworthy of a great leader writer, you may well understand that. And then comes the writing. Ah! here is where I earn my money. I repair to my club. I order out my ink and paper. I go to my room. I close the door. I am undisturbed for an hour. My pen moves. Ideas flow. The leader on the penny postage stamp is being evolved. Three great meaty, solid paragraphs each one-third of a column – that is the consummation to be wished. My ideas flow fast and free. Suddenly some one knocks at the door. Two hours have fled. How time goes! It is an old friend. We are to eat a little dinner at the Cafe Royal and drop into the Alhambra for the new ballet. I touch the button; my messenger appears. The leader is despatched to 141, Fleet Street, in the Parish of St. Bride, and off we go arm in arm. After the shower the sunshine. Now for the enjoyment of that paradise of cigar ashes, bottles, corks, ballet, and those countless circumstances of gaiety and relaxation known only to those who are indwellers in the magic circles of London’s Literary Bohemia.’