From 1884 on I met Oscar Wilde continually, now at the theatre, now in some society drawing room; most often, I think, at Mrs. Jeune’s (afterwards Lady St. Helier). His appearance was not in his favour; there was something oily and fat about him that repelled1 me. Naturally being British-born and young I tried to give my repugnance2 a moral foundation; fleshly indulgence and laziness, I said to myself, were written all over him. The snatches of his monologues3 which I caught from time to time seemed to me to consist chiefly of epigrams almost mechanically constructed of proverbs and familiar sayings turned upside down. Two of Balzac’s characters, it will be remembered, practised this form of humour. The desire to astonish and dazzle, the love of the uncommon4 for its own sake, was so evident that I shrugged5 my shoulders and avoided him. One evening, however, at Mrs. Jeune’s, I got to know him better. At the very door Mrs. Jeune came up to me:
“Have you ever met Mr. Oscar Wilde? You ought to know him: he is so delightfully6 clever, so brilliant!”
I went with her and was formally introduced to him. He shook hands in a limp way I disliked; his hands were flabby, greasy8; his skin looked bilious9 and dirty. He wore a great green scarab ring on one finger. He was over-dressed rather than well-dressed; his clothes fitted him too tightly; he was too stout10. He had a trick which I noticed even then, which grew on him later, of pulling his jowl with his right hand as he spoke11, and his jowl was already fat and pouchy12. His appearance filled me with distaste. I lay stress on this physical repulsion, because I think most people felt it, and in itself, it is a tribute to the fascination13 of the man that he should have overcome the first impression so completely and so quickly. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I noticed almost immediately that his grey eyes were finely expressive14; in turn vivacious15, laughing, sympathetic; always beautiful. The carven mouth, too, with its heavy, chiselled16, purple-tinged lips, had a certain attraction and significance in spite of a black front tooth which shocked one when he laughed. He was over six feet in height and both broad and thick-set; he looked like a Roman Emperor of the decadence17.
We had a certain interest in each other, an interest of curiosity, for I remember that he led the way almost at once into the inner drawing room in order to be free to talk in some seclusion18. After half an hour or so I asked him to lunch next day at The Café Royal, then the best restaurant in London.
At this time he was a superb talker, more brilliant than any I have ever heard in England, but nothing like what he became later. His talk soon made me forget his repellant physical peculiarities19; indeed I soon lost sight of them so completely that I have wondered since how I could have been so disagreeably affected21 by them at first sight. There was an extraordinary physical vivacity22 and geniality23 in the man, an extraordinary charm in his gaiety, and lightning-quick intelligence. His enthusiasms, too, were infectious. Every mental question interested him, especially if it had anything to do with art or literature. His whole face lit up as he spoke and one saw nothing but his soulful eyes, heard nothing but his musical tenor24 voice; he was indeed what the French call a charmeur.
In ten minutes I confessed to myself that I liked him, and his talk was intensely quickening. He had something unexpected to say on almost every subject. His mind was agile25 and powerful and he took a delight in using it. He was well-read too, in several languages, especially in French, and his excellent memory stood him in good stead. Even when he merely reproduced what the great writers had said perfectly27, he added a new colouring. And already his characteristic humour was beginning to illumine every topic with lambent flashes.
It was at our first lunch, I think, that he told me he had been asked by Harper’s to write a book of one hundred thousand words and offered a large sum for it — I think some five thousand dollars — in advance. He wrote to them gravely that there were not one hundred thousand words in English, so he could not undertake the work, and laughed merrily like a child at the cheeky reproof28.
“I have sent their letters and my reply to the press,” he added, and laughed again, while probing me with inquisitive29 eyes: how far did I understand the need of self-advertisement?
About this time an impromptu30 of his moved the town to laughter. At some dinner party it appeared the ladies sat a little too long; Oscar wanted to smoke. Suddenly the hostess drew his attention to a lamp the shade of which was smouldering.
“Please put it out, Mr. Wilde,” she said, “it’s smoking.”
Oscar turned to do as he was told with the remark:
“Happy lamp!”
The delightful7 impertinence had an extraordinary success.
Early in our friendship I was fain to see that the love of the uncommon, his paradoxes31 and epigrams were natural to him, sprang immediately from his taste and temperament32. Perhaps it would be well to define once for all his attitude towards life with more scope and particularity than I have hitherto done.
It is often assumed that he had no clear and coherent view of life, no belief, no faith to guide his vagrant33 footsteps; but such an opinion does him injustice34. He had his own philosophy, and held to it for long years with astonishing tenacity35. His attitude towards life can best be seen if he is held up against Goethe. He took the artist’s view of life which Goethe was the first to state and indeed in youth had overstated with an astonishing persuasiveness36: “the beautiful is more than the good,” said Goethe; “for it includes the good.”
It seemed to Oscar, as it had seemed to young Goethe, that “the extraordinary alone survives”; the extraordinary whether good or bad; he therefore sought after the extraordinary, and naturally enough often fell into the extravagant37. But how stimulating38 it was in London, where sordid39 platitudes40 drip and drizzle41 all day long, to hear someone talking brilliant paradoxes.
Goethe did not linger long in the halfway42 house of unbelief; the murderer may win notoriety as easily as the martyr43, but his memory will not remain. “The fashion of this world passeth away,” said Goethe, “I would fain occupy myself with that which endures.” Midway in life Goethe accepted Kant’s moral imperative44 and restated his creed45: “A man must resolve to live,” he said, “for the Good, and Beautiful, and for the Common Weal.”
Oscar did not push his thought so far: the transcendental was not his field.
It was a pity, I sometimes felt, that he had not studied German as thoroughly46 as French; Goethe might have done more for him than Baudelaire or Balzac, for in spite of all his stodgy47 German faults, Goethe is the best guide through the mysteries of life whom the modern world has yet produced. Oscar Wilde stopped where the religion of Goethe began; he was far more of a pagan and individualist than the great German; he lived for the beautiful and extraordinary, but not for the Good and still less for the Whole; he acknowledged no moral obligation; in commune bonis was an ideal which never said anything to him; he cared nothing for the common weal; he held himself above the mass of the people with an Englishman’s extravagant insularity48 and aggressive pride. Politics, social problems, religion — everything interested him simply as a subject of art; life itself was merely material for art. He held the position Goethe had abandoned in youth.
The view was astounding49 in England and new everywhere in its onesidedness. Its passionate50 exaggeration, however, was quickening, and there is, of course, something to be said for it. The artistic51 view of life is often higher than the ordinary religious view; at least it does not deal in condemnations and exclusions52; it is more reasonable, more catholic, more finely perceptive53.
“The artist’s view of life is the only possible one,” Oscar used to say, “and should be applied54 to everything, most of all to religion and morality. Cavaliers and Puritans are interesting for their costumes and not for their convictions. . . .
“There is no general rule of health; it is all personal, individual. . . . I only demand that freedom which I willingly concede to others. No one condemns55 another for preferring green to gold. Why should any taste be ostracised? Liking56 and disliking are not under our control. I want to choose the nourishment57 which suits my body and my soul.”
I can almost hear him say the words with his charming humorous smile and exquisite58 flash of deprecation, as if he were half inclined to make fun of his own statement.
It was not his views on art, however, which recommended him to the aristocratic set in London; but his contempt for social reform, or rather his utter indifference59 to it, and his English love of inequality. The republicanism he flaunted60 in his early verses was not even skin deep; his political beliefs and prejudices were the prejudices of the English governing class and were all in favour of individual freedom, or anarchy61 under the protection of the policeman.
“The poor are poor creatures,” was his real belief, “and must always be hewers of wood and drawers of water. They are merely the virgin62 soil out of which men of genius and artists grow like flowers. Their function is to give birth to genius and nourish it. They have no other raison d’être. Were men as intelligent as bees, all gifted individuals would be supported by the community, as the bees support their queen. We should be the first charge on the state just as Socrates declared that he should be kept in the Prytaneum at the public expense.
“Don’t talk to me, Frank, about the hardships of the poor. The hardships of the poor are necessities, but talk to me of the hardships of men of genius, and I could weep tears of blood. I was never so affected by any book in my life as I was by the misery63 of Balzac’s poet, Lucien de Rubempré.”
Naturally this creed of an exaggerated individualism appealed peculiarly to the best set in London. It was eminently64 aristocratic and might almost be defended as scientific, for to a certain extent it found corroboration65 in Darwinism. All progress according to Darwin comes from peculiar20 individuals; “sports” as men of science call them, or the “heaven-sent” as rhetoricians prefer to style them. The many are only there to produce more “sports” and ultimately to benefit by them. All this is valid66 enough; but it leaves the crux67 of the question untouched. The poor in aristocratic England are too degraded to produce “sports” of genius, or indeed any “sports” of much value to humanity. Such an extravagant inequality of condition obtains there that the noble soul is miserable68, the strongest insecure. But Wilde’s creed was intensely popular with the “Smart Set” because of its very one-sidedness, and he was hailed as a prophet partly because he defended the cherished prejudices of the “landed” oligarchy69.
It will be seen from this that Oscar Wilde was in some danger of suffering from excessive popularity and unmerited renown70. Indeed if he had loved athletic71 sports, hunting and shooting instead of art and letters, he might have been the selected representative of aristocratic England.
In addition to his own popular qualities a strong current was sweeping72 him to success. He was detested73 by the whole of the middle or shop-keeping class which in England, according to Matthew Arnold, has “the sense of conduct — and has but little else.” This class hated and feared him; feared him for his intellectual freedom and his contempt of conventionality, and hated him because of his light-hearted self-indulgence, and also because it saw in him none of its own sordid virtues74. Punch is peculiarly the representative of this class and of all English prejudices, and Punch jeered75 at him now in prose, now in verse, week after week. Under the heading, “More Impressions” (by Oscuro Wildgoose) I find this:
“My little fancy’s clogged76 with gush77,
My little lyre is false in tone,
And when I lyrically moan,
I hear the impatient critic’s ‘Tush!’
“But I’ve ‘Impressions.’ These are grand!
Mere26 dabs78 of words, mere blobs of tint79,
Displayed on canvas or in print,
Men laud80, and think they understand.
“A smudge of brown, a smear81 of yellow,
No tale, no subject — there you are!
Impressions! — and the strangest far
Is — that the bard’s a clever fellow.”
A little later these lines appeared:
“My languid lily, my lank82 limp lily,
My long, lithe83 lily-love, men may grin —
Say that I’m soft and supremely84 silly —
What care I, while you whisper still;
What care I, while you smile? Not a pin!
While you smile, while you whisper —
’Tis sweet to decay!
I have watered with chlorodine, tears of chagrin85,
The churchyard mould I have planted thee in,
Upside down, in an intense way,
In a rough red flower-pot, sweeter than sin,
That I bought for a halfpenny, yesterday!”
The italics are mine; but the suggestion was always implicit86; yet this constant wind of puritanic hatred87 blowing against him helped instead of hindering his progress: strong men are made by opposition88; like kites they go up against the wind.
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1
repelled
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| v.击退( repel的过去式和过去分词 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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repugnance
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| n.嫌恶 | |
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3
monologues
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| n.（戏剧）长篇独白( monologue的名词复数 )；滔滔不绝的讲话；独角戏 | |
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uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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delightfully
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| 大喜，欣然 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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greasy
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| adj. 多脂的，油脂的 | |
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bilious
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| adj.胆汁过多的；易怒的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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pouchy
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| adj.多袋的，袋状的，松垂的 | |
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fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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vivacious
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| adj.活泼的，快活的 | |
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chiselled
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| adj.凿过的，凿光的； （文章等）精心雕琢的v.凿，雕，镌( chisel的过去式 ) | |
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decadence
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| n.衰落，颓废 | |
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seclusion
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| n.隐遁，隔离 | |
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peculiarities
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| n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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vivacity
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| n.快活，活泼，精神充沛 | |
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geniality
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| n.和蔼，诚恳；愉快 | |
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tenor
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| n.男高音（歌手），次中音（乐器），要旨，大意 | |
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agile
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| adj.敏捷的，灵活的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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reproof
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| n.斥责，责备 | |
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inquisitive
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| adj.求知欲强的，好奇的，好寻根究底的 | |
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30
impromptu
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| adj.即席的，即兴的；adv.即兴的(地)，无准备的(地) | |
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31
paradoxes
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| n.似非而是的隽语，看似矛盾而实际却可能正确的说法( paradox的名词复数 )；用于语言文学中的上述隽语；有矛盾特点的人[事物，情况] | |
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temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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vagrant
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| n.流浪者，游民；adj.流浪的，漂泊不定的 | |
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injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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35
tenacity
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| n.坚韧 | |
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36
persuasiveness
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| 说服力 | |
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extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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platitudes
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| n.平常的话，老生常谈，陈词滥调( platitude的名词复数 )；滥套子 | |
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41
drizzle
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| v.下毛毛雨；n.毛毛雨，蒙蒙细雨 | |
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halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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martyr
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| n.烈士，殉难者；vt.杀害，折磨，牺牲 | |
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imperative
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| n.命令，需要；规则；祈使语气；adj.强制的；紧急的 | |
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45
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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47
stodgy
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| adj.易饱的；笨重的；滞涩的；古板的 | |
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insularity
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| n.心胸狭窄；孤立；偏狭；岛国根性 | |
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49
astounding
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| adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词) | |
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50
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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51
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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52
exclusions
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| n.不包括的项目：如接受服务项目是由投保以前已患有的疾病或伤害引致的，保险公司有权拒绝支付。；拒绝( exclusion的名词复数 )；排除；被排斥在外的人（或事物）；排外主义 | |
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53
perceptive
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| adj.知觉的，有洞察力的，感知的 | |
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54
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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55
condemns
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| v.（通常因道义上的原因而）谴责( condemn的第三人称单数 )；宣判；宣布…不能使用；迫使…陷于不幸的境地 | |
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56
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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57
nourishment
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| n.食物，营养品；营养情况 | |
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58
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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60
flaunted
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| v.炫耀，夸耀( flaunt的过去式和过去分词 )；有什么能耐就施展出来 | |
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61
anarchy
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| n.无政府状态；社会秩序混乱，无秩序 | |
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virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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eminently
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| adv.突出地；显著地；不寻常地 | |
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corroboration
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| n.进一步的证实，进一步的证据 | |
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valid
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| adj.有确实根据的；有效的；正当的，合法的 | |
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crux
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| adj.十字形；难事，关键，最重要点 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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oligarchy
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| n.寡头政治 | |
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renown
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| n.声誉，名望 | |
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athletic
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| adj.擅长运动的，强健的；活跃的，体格健壮的 | |
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sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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detested
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| v.憎恶，嫌恶，痛恨( detest的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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75
jeered
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| v.嘲笑( jeer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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76
clogged
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| （使）阻碍( clog的过去式和过去分词 )； 淤滞 | |
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77
gush
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| v.喷，涌；滔滔不绝(说话)；n.喷，涌流；迸发 | |
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dabs
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| 少许( dab的名词复数 )； 是…能手； 做某事很在行； 在某方面技术熟练 | |
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79
tint
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| n.淡色，浅色；染发剂；vt.着以淡淡的颜色 | |
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80
laud
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| n.颂歌；v.赞美 | |
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81
smear
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| v.涂抹；诽谤，玷污；n.污点；诽谤，污蔑 | |
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82
lank
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| adj.瘦削的；稀疏的 | |
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83
lithe
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| adj.(指人、身体)柔软的，易弯的 | |
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84
supremely
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| adv.无上地，崇高地 | |
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85
chagrin
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| n.懊恼；气愤；委屈 | |
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86
implicit
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| a.暗示的，含蓄的，不明晰的，绝对的 | |
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87
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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88
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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