Oscar Wilde

“ On the other hand he excuses Wilde's perversion as pathological, as hereditary "giantism," and so lightens the darkest shadows just as he has toned down the lights.
I never saw anything abnormal in Oscar Wilde either in body or soul save an extravagant sensuality and an absolute adoration of beauty and comeliness; and so, with his own confessions and practises before me, I had to block him in, to use painters' jargon, with black shadows, and was delighted to find high lights to balance them—lights of courtesies, graces and unselfish kindness of heart. ”

“ Again and again Lord Alfred Douglas flaunted acquaintance with youths of the lowest class; but no one knew him or paid much attention to him; Oscar Wilde, on the other hand, was already a famous personage whose every movement provoked comment. From this time on the rumours about Oscar took definite form and shaped themselves in specific accusations: his enemies began triumphantly to predict his ruin and disgrace.
Everything is known in London society; like water on sand the truth spreads wider and wider as it gradually filters lower. ”

“ Oscar Wilde's work was over, his gift to the world completed years before. Even the friends who loved him and delighted in the charm of his talk, in his light-hearted gaiety and humour, would scarcely have kept him longer in the pillory, exposed to the loathing and contempt of this all-hating world.
The good he did lives after him, and is immortal, the evil is buried in his grave. ”

“ Not long ago I encountered in a seriously written review the astounding announcement that Oscar Wilde was the author of some of the most remarkable verse of the nineteenth century, and this is hardly an isolated instance of an endeavour that seems at the moment widely spread to make the pitiable disaster of poor Wilde’s career the occasion of the most deplorably exaggerated appreciation of his gifts as a writer. ”

“ Life flows on, and the quips and merry jests of Oscar Wilde, his artful artlessness, his insolence, his self-pity, his loyalty and fickleness, his sensuality and tenderness, only fill after all a small space in the heart's chamber of those who read him and stare at his plays and let him go. ”

“ My friendship with Oscar Wilde, which had been interrupted after he left prison by a silly gibe directed rather against the go-between he had sent to me than against him, was renewed in Paris early in 1898. I have related the little misunderstanding in the Appendix. I had never felt anything but the most cordial affection for Oscar and as soon as I went to Paris and met him I explained what had seemed to him unkind. When I asked him about his life since his release he told me simply that he had quarrelled with Bosie Douglas. ”

“ I have been sybariticizing with thirteen beautiful little volumes of Oscar Wilde, recently published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons. It is a useful, although often painful, ordeal—ventilating the store-room of your old gods. There was a time when I worshipped Wilde unqualifiedly. As a freshman I wrote a pathetic paper in which I demanded the canonization of the author of De Profundis. Alas, I have come to discern spots on the sun.
As a decorative artist Wilde has no flaws. ”

“ The artist who finds in Oscar Wilde a great and provocative subject for his art needs no argument to justify his choice. If the picture is a great and living portrait, the moralist will be satisfied: the dark shadows must all be there, as well as the high lights, and the effect must be to increase our tolerance and intensify our pity. ”

“ In spite of all this extravagant eulogy Oscar Wilde's early plays and poems, like his lectures, were unimportant. The small remnant of people in England who really love the things of the spirit were disappointed in them, failed to find in them the genius so loudly and so arrogantly vaunted. ”

“ The delight I felt in his undoubted genius and success was not shared by others. Friends took occasion to tell me that I should not go about with Oscar Wilde.
"Why not?" I asked.
"He has a bad name," was the reply. "Strange things are said about him. He came down from Oxford with a vile reputation. You have only got to look at the man."
"Whatever the disease may be," I replied, "it's not catching—unfortunately."
The pleasure men take in denigration of the gifted is one of the puzzles of life to those who are not envious. ”

“ It seemed probable to Oscar that it might be accepted in America; at any rate, there could be no harm in trying: he sailed for New York.
It was on the cards that he might succeed in his new adventure. The taste of America in letters and art is still strongly influenced, if not formed, by English taste, and, if Oscar Wilde had been properly accredited, it is probable that his extraordinary gift of speech would have won him success in America as a lecturer. ”

“ When to the sessions of sad memory I summon up the spirits of those whom I have met in the world and loved, men famous and men of unfulfilled renown, I miss no one so much as I miss Oscar Wilde. I would rather spend an evening with him than with Renan or Carlyle, or Verlaine or Dick Burton or Davidson. I would rather have him back now than almost anyone I have ever met. I have known more heroic souls and some deeper souls; souls much more keenly alive to ideas of duty and generosity ”

“ Leverson turned the humorous sayings into current social coin in Punch, of all places in the world, and from a favourite Oscar Wilde rapidly became the idol of smart London.
The play was an intellectual triumph. This time Oscar had not only won success but had won also the suffrages of the best. Nearly all the journalist-critics were against him and made themselves ridiculous by their brainless strictures; Truth and The Times, for example, were poisonously puritanic, but thinking people came over to his side in a body. ”

“ CHAPTER II—OSCAR WILDE AS A SCHOOLBOY The Wildes had three children, two sons and a daughter. The first son was born in 1852, a year after the marriage, and was christened after his father William Charles Kingsbury Wills. The second son was born two years later, in 1854 and the names given to him seem to reveal the Nationalist sympathies and pride of his mother. He was christened Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde; but he appears to have suffered from the pompous string only in extreme youth. At school he concealed the "Fingal," as a young man he found it advisable to omit the "O'Flahertie." ”

“ Even as a young man Oscar had a very considerable understanding of life. He could not make his way as a journalist, the English did not care for his poetry; but there was still the lecture-platform. In his heart he knew that he could talk better than he wrote.
He got his brother to announce boldly in The World that owing to the "astonishing success of his 'Poems' Mr. Oscar Wilde had been invited to lecture in America." ”

“ With certain variations they are the mainstay—the French word is l'armature—of every comedy of genteel passions and misunderstandings that ever existed. Now, how does Oscar Wilde contrive to clothe this dramatic skeleton with the flesh and blood of real life? How invest the familiar figures with the plausible presentment of new-born interest? Simply by the wonderful power of his personality, which dominates all he touches, and rejuvenates the venerable bones of his dramatis personæ, compelling them, after the fashion of the "Pied Piper," to dance to any tune he chooses to call. ”

“ The versatility of Oscar Wilde was supreme, and that is in itself the real solution of whatever is most astonishing in his power or startling in his madness, of all that most draws us towards him or repels us with an equal strength. "A variety of powers almost boundless, a pride not less vast in displaying them—a susceptibility of new impressions and impulses, even beyond the usual allotment of genius ... ”

“ Some of us still persist in believing that Oscar Wilde might easily have won and never again been caught in that dreadful wind which whips the victims of sensual desire about unceasingly, driving them hither and thither without rest in that awful place where: "Nulla speranza gli conforta mai." ”

“ What chance had this cultured honour-loving Sybarite in the deadly grapple of modern life where the first quality is will power, the only knowledge needed a knowledge of the value of money. I must not be understood here as in any degree disparaging Oscar. I can surely state that a flower is weaker than a weed without exalting the weed or depreciating the flower.
The first part of life's voyage was over for Oscar Wilde; let us try to see him as he saw himself at this time and let us also determine his true relations to the world. ”

“ But there was an intense bitterness in him, a profound underlying sense of injury which came continually to passionate expression. Yet as soon as the miserable petty persecution of the prison was lifted from him, all the joyous gaiety and fun of his nature bubbled up irresistibly. There was no contradiction in this complexity. A man can hold in himself a hundred conflicting passions and impulses without confusion. At this time the dominant chord in Oscar was pity for others.
To my delight the world had evidence of this changed Oscar Wilde in a very short time. ”

“ We all get something like the education we desire, and Oscar Wilde, it always seemed to me, was over-educated, had learned, that is, too much from books and not enough from life and had thought too little for himself; [Pg 51] but my readers will be able to judge of this for themselves.
In 1877 he accompanied Professor Mahaffy on a long tour through Greece. The pleasure and profit Oscar got from the trip were so great that he failed to return to Oxford on the date fixed. The Dons fined him forty-five pounds for the breach of discipline ”

“ Oscar Wilde and hear a new story." Out of a dozen invitations sent out to men, seven or eight were refused, three or four telling me in all kindness that they would rather not meet Oscar Wilde. This confirmed my worst fears: when Englishmen speak out in this way the dislike must be near revolt.
I gave the lunch and saw plainly enough that my forebodings were justified. Oscar was more self-confident than ever, but his talk did not suffer; indeed, it seemed to improve. At this lunch he told the charming fable of "Narcissus," which is certainly one of his most characteristic short stories. ”

“ Though the artistic movement inaugurated years before by the Pre-Raphaelites was still laughed at and scorned by the many as a craze, a few had stood firm, and slowly the steadfast minority had begun to sway the majority as is often the case in democracies. Oscar Wilde profited by the victory of these art-loving forerunners. Here and there among the indifferent public, men were attracted by the artistic view of life and women by the emotional intensity of the new creed. Oscar Wilde became the prophet of an esoteric cult. ”

“ Oscar Wilde did well at school, but he did still better at college, where the competition was more severe. He entered Trinity on October 19th, 1871, just three days after his seventeenth birthday. Sir Edward Sullivan writes me that when Oscar matriculated at Trinity he was already "a thoroughly good classical scholar of a brilliant type," and he goes on to give an invaluable snap-shot of him at this time; a likeness, in fact, the chief features of which grew more and more characteristic as the years went on. ”

“ Shaw writes:
"Yet he (Harris) knows the taste and the value of humour. He was one of the few men of letters who really appreciated Oscar Wilde, though he did not rally fiercely to Wilde's side until the world deserted Oscar in his ruin. I myself was present at a curious meeting between the two when Harris on the eve of the Queensberry trial prophesied to Wilde with miraculous precision exactly what immediately afterwards happened to him and warned him to leave the country. ”

“ Indeed, whenever we discuss or criticise even the less important works of Oscar Wilde we are amazed at their craftsmanship and delighted with their achievement. The most unconsidered trifles from his pen stand out among similar productions as the moon among stars, and his [Pg 214] genius is so great that work for which other writers would expect and receive the highest praise in comparison with his greatest triumphs almost fails to excite more than a fugitive and passing admiration. ”

“ Oscar Wilde's elder brother, William Charles Kingsbury Wilde (1853–1899) , a journalist, who wrote much for the 'World' and the 'Daily Telegraph,' died in London in March 1899. His mother, who wrote under the signature 'Speranza,' had a literary salon at Dublin, where much clever talk was listened to by the children.
After education at Portora royal school, Enniskillen, Oscar Wilde studied during 1873–4 at Trinity College, Dublin, where he won the Berkeley gold medal with an essay on the Greek comic poets. He matriculated from Magdalen College, Oxford, 17 Oct. ”

“ When he gets tired of his flower and his pot, he puts them away, and seeks for some other scheme of colour produced by equally simple means."
Oscar Wilde now began to take a definite place in the English social world. His wit, his brilliance of conversation, his singular charm of manner all combined to render him a welcome guest, and in many cases a valued friend, in circles where distinction of intellect and charm of personality are the only passports. He began to make money and to indulge a natural taste for profusion and splendour. ”