In due course I received the following MSS. from him in which he tells me what he thinks of my work:—“the best life of Wilde, . . . Wilde’s memory will have to stand or fall by it”; and then goes on to relate all his own meetings with Wilde, the impressions they made upon him and his judgment3 of Wilde as a writer and as a man.
He has given himself this labor4, he says, in order that I may publish his views in the Appendix to my book if I think fit — an example, not only of Shaw’s sympathy and generosity5, but of his light way of treating his own kindness.
I am delighted to be able to put Shaw’s considered judgment of Wilde beside my own for the benefit of my readers. For if there had been anything I had misseen or misjudged in Wilde, or any prominent trait of his character I had failed to note, the sin, whether of omission6 or commission, could scarcely have escaped this other pair of keen eyes. Now indeed this biography of Wilde may be regarded as definitive7.
Shaw says his judgment of Wilde is severer than mine —“far sterner,” are his words; but I am not sure that this is an exact estimate.
While Shaw accentuates8 Wilde’s snobbishness9, he discounts his “Irish charm,” and though he praises highly his gifts as dramatist and story-teller he lays little stress on his genuine kindness of nature and the courteous12 smiling ways which made him so incomparable a companion and intimate.
On the other hand he excuses Wilde’s perversion13 as pathological, as hereditary14 “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 extravagant15 sensuality and an absolute adoration16 of beauty and comeliness17; and so, with his own confessions and practises before me, I had to block him in, to use painters’ jargon18, with black shadows, and was delighted to find high lights to balance them — lights of courtesies, graces and unselfish kindness of heart.
On the whole I think our two pictures are very much alike and I am sure a good many readers will be almost as grateful to Shaw for his collaboration19 and corroboration20 as I am.
Postscript21
Since writing this foreword I have received the proof of his contribution which I had sent to Shaw. He has made some slight corrections in the text which, of course, have been carried out, and some comments besides on my notes as Editor. These, too, I have naturally wished to use and so, to avoid confusion, have inserted them in italics and with his initials. I hope the sequence will be clear to the reader.
My Memories of Oscar Wilde
By Bernard Shaw
MY DEAR HARRIS:—
“I have an interesting letter of yours to answer; but when you ask me to exchange biographies, you take an unfair advantage of the changes of scene and bustling22 movement of your own adventures. My autobiography23 would be like my best plays, fearfully long, and not divided into acts. Just consider this life of Wilde which you have just sent me, and which I finished ten minutes ago after putting aside everything else to read it at one stroke.
“Why was Wilde so good a subject for a biography that none of the previous attempts which you have just wiped out are bad? Just because his stupendous laziness simplified his life almost as if he knew instinctively25 that there must be no episodes to spoil the great situation at the end of the last act but one. It was a well made life in the Scribe sense. It was as simple as the life of Des Grieux, Manon Lescaut’s lover; and it beat that by omitting Manon and making Des Grieux his own lover and his own hero.
“Des Grieux was a worthless rascal26 by all conventional standards; and we forgive him everything. We think we forgive him because he was unselfish and loved greatly. Oscar seems to have said: ‘I will love nobody: I will be utterly27 selfish; and I will be not merely a rascal but a monster; and you shall forgive me everything. In other words, I will reduce your standards to absurdity29, not by writing them down, though I could do that so well — in fact, have done it — but by actually living them down and dying them down.’
“However, I mustn’t start writing a book to you about Wilde: I must just tumble a few things together and tell you them. To take things in the order of your book, I can remember only one occasion on which I saw Sir William Wilde, who, by the way, operated on my father to correct a squint30, and overdid31 the correction so much that my father squinted32 the other way all the rest of his life. To this day I never notice a squint: it is as normal to me as a nose or a tall hat.
“I was a boy at a concert in the Antient Concert Rooms in Brunswick Street in Dublin. Everybody was in evening dress; and — unless I am mixing up this concert with another (in which case I doubt if the Wildes would have been present)— the Lord Lieutenant33 was there with his blue waistcoated courtiers. Wilde was dressed in snuffy brown; and as he had the sort of skin that never looks clean, he produced a dramatic effect beside Lady Wilde (in full fig) of being, like Frederick the Great, Beyond Soap and Water, as his Nietzschean son was beyond Good and Evil. He was currently reported to have a family in every farmhouse34; and the wonder was that Lady Wilde didn’t mind — evidently a tradition from the Travers case, which I did not know about until I read your account, as I was only eight in 1864.
“Lady Wilde was nice to me in London during the desperate days between my arrival in 1876 and my first earning of an income by my pen in 1885, or rather until, a few years earlier, I threw myself into Socialism and cut myself contemptuously loose from everything of which her at-homes — themselves desperate affairs enough, as you saw for yourself — were part. I was at two or three of them; and I once dined with her in company with an ex-tragedy queen named Miss Glynn, who, having no visible external ears, reared a head like a turnip35. Lady Wilde talked about Schopenhauer; and Miss Glynn told me that Gladstone formed his oratorical36 style on Charles Kean.
“I ask myself where and how I came across Lady Wilde; for we had no social relations in the Dublin days. The explanation must be that my sister, then a very attractive girl who sang beautifully, had met and made some sort of innocent conquest of both Oscar and Willie. I met Oscar once at one of the at-homes; and he came and spoke37 to me with an evident intention of being specially38 kind to me. We put each other out frightfully; and this odd difficulty persisted between us to the very last, even when we were no longer mere28 boyish novices39 and had become men of the world with plenty of skill in social intercourse40. I saw him very seldom, as I avoided literary and artistic41 society like the plague, and refused the few invitations I received to go into society with burlesque42 ferocity, so as to keep out of it without offending people past their willingness to indulge me as a privileged lunatic.
“The last time I saw him was at that tragic43 luncheon44 of yours at the Café Royal; and I am quite sure our total of meetings from first to last did not exceed twelve, and may not have exceeded six.
“I definitely recollect45 six: (1) At the at-home aforesaid. (2) At Macmurdo’s house in Fitzroy Street in the days of the Century Guild46 and its paper ‘The Hobby Horse.’ (3) At a meeting somewhere in Westminster at which I delivered an address on Socialism, and at which Oscar turned up and spoke. Robert Ross surprised me greatly by telling me, long after Oscar’s death, that it was this address of mine that moved Oscar to try his hand at a similar feat47 by writing ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism.’ (4) A chance meeting near the stage door of the Haymarket Theatre, at which our queer shyness of one another made our resolutely48 cordial and appreciative49 conversation so difficult that our final laugh and shake-hands was almost a reciprocal confession2. (5) A really pleasant afternoon we spent together on catching50 one another in a place where our presence was an absurdity. It was some exhibition in Chelsea: a naval51 commemoration, where there was a replica52 of Nelson’s Victory and a set of P. & O. cabins which made one seasick53 by mere association of ideas. I don’t know why I went or why Wilde went; but we did; and the question what the devil we were doing in that galley54 tickled55 us both. It was my sole experience of Oscar’s wonderful gift as a raconteur56. I remember particularly an amazingly elaborate story which you have no doubt heard from him: an example of the cumulation of a single effect, as in Mark Twain’s story of the man who was persuaded to put lightning conductor after lightning conductor at every possible point on his roof until a thunderstorm came and all the lightning in the heavens went for his house and wiped it out.
“Oscar’s much more carefully and elegantly worked out story was of a young man who invented a theatre stall which economized57 space by ingenious contrivances which were all described. A friend of his invited twenty millionaires to meet him at dinner so that he might interest them in the invention. The young man convinced them completely by his demonstration58 of the saving in a theatre holding, in ordinary seats, six hundred people, leaving them eager and ready to make his fortune. Unfortunately he went on to calculate the annual saving in all the theatres of the world; then in all the churches of the world; then in all the legislatures; estimating finally the incidental and moral and religious effects of the invention until at the end of an hour he had estimated a profit of several thousand millions: the climax60 of course being that the millionaires folded their tents and silently stole away, leaving the ruined inventor a marked man for life.
“Wilde and I got on extraordinarily61 well on this occasion. I had not to talk myself, but to listen to a man telling me stories better than I could have told them. We did not refer to Art, about which, excluding literature from the definition, he knew only what could be picked up by reading about it. He was in a tweed suit and low hat like myself, and had been detected and had detected me in the act of clandestinely62 spending a happy day at Rosherville Gardens instead of pontificating in his frock coat and so forth63. And he had an audience on whom not one of his subtlest effects was lost. And so for once our meeting was a success; and I understood why Morris, when he was dying slowly, enjoyed a visit from Wilde more than from anybody else, as I understand why you say in your book that you would rather have Wilde back than any friend you have ever talked to, even though he was incapable64 of friendship, though not of the most touching65 kindness77 on occasion.
77 Excellent analysis. [Ed.]]
“Our sixth meeting, the only other one I can remember, was the one at the Café Royal. On that occasion he was not too preoccupied66 with his danger to be disgusted with me because I, who had praised his first plays handsomely, had turned traitor67 over ‘The Importance of Being Earnest.’ Clever as it was, it was his first really heartless play. In the others the chivalry68 of the eighteenth century Irishman and the romance of the disciple69 of Théophile Gautier (Oscar was really old-fashioned in the Irish way, except as a critic of morals) not only gave a certain kindness and gallantry to the serious passages and to the handling of the women, but provided that proximity71 of emotion without which laughter, however irresistible72, is destructive and sinister73. In ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ this had vanished; and the play, though extremely funny, was essentially74 hateful. I had no idea that Oscar was going to the dogs, and that this represented a real degeneracy produced by his debaucheries. I thought he was still developing; and I hazarded the unhappy guess that ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ was in idea a young work written or projected long before under the influence of Gilbert and furbished up for Alexander as a potboiler. At the Café Royal that day I calmly asked him whether I was not right. He indignantly repudiated75 my guess, and said loftily (the only time he ever tried on me the attitude he took to John Gray and his more abject76 disciples77) that he was disappointed in me. I suppose I said, ‘Then what on earth has happened to you?’ but I recollect nothing more on that subject except that we did not quarrel over it.
“When he was sentenced I spent a railway journey on a Socialist78 lecturing excursion to the North drafting a petition for his release. After that I met Willie Wilde at a theatre which I think must have been the Duke of York’s, because I connect it vaguely79 with St. Martin’s Lane. I spoke to him about the petition, asking him whether anything of the sort was being done, and warning him that though I and Stewart Headlam would sign it, that would be no use, as we were two notorious cranks, and our names would by themselves reduce the petition to absurdity and do Oscar more harm than good. Willie cordially agreed, and added, with maudlin80 pathos81 and an inconceivable want of tact82: ‘Oscar was NOT a man of bad character: you could have trusted him with a woman anywhere.’ He convinced me, as you discovered later, that signatures would not be obtainable; so the petition project dropped; and I don’t know what became of my draft.
“When Wilde was in Paris during his last phase I made a point of sending him inscribed83 copies of all my books as they came out; and he did the same to me.
“In writing about Wilde and Whistler, in the days when they were treated as witty84 triflers, and called Oscar and Jimmy in print, I always made a point of taking them seriously and with scrupulous85 good manners. Wilde on his part also made a point of recognizing me as a man of distinction by his manner, and repudiating86 the current estimate of me as a mere jester. This was not the usual reciprocal-admiration trick: I believe he was sincere, and felt indignant at what he thought was a vulgar underestimate of me; and I had the same feeling about him. My impulse to rally to him in his misfortune, and my disgust at ‘the man Wilde’ scurrilities of the newspapers, was irresistible: I don’t quite know why; for my charity to his perversion, and my recognition of the fact that it does not imply any general depravity or coarseness of character, came to me through reading and observation, not through sympathy.
“I have all the normal violent repugnance87 to homosexuality — if it is really normal, which nowadays one is sometimes provoked to doubt.
“Also, I was in no way predisposed to like him: he was my fellow-townsman, and a very prime specimen88 of the sort of fellow-townsman I most loathed89: to wit, the Dublin snob10. His Irish charm, potent90 with Englishmen, did not exist for me; and on the whole it may be claimed for him that he got no regard from me that he did not earn.
“What first established a friendly feeling in me was, unexpectedly enough, the affair of the Chicago anarchists91, whose Homer you constituted yourself by ‘The Bomb.’ I tried to get some literary men in London, all heroic rebels and skeptics on paper, to sign a memorial asking for the reprieve92 of these unfortunate men. The only signature I got was Oscar’s. It was a completely disinterested93 act on his part; and it secured my distinguished94 consideration for him for the rest of his life.
“To return for a moment to Lady Wilde. You know that there is a disease called giantism, caused by ‘a certain morbid95 process in the sphenoid bone of the skull96 — viz., an excessive development of the anterior97 lobe98 of the pituitary body’ (this is from the nearest encyclopedia). ‘When this condition does not become active until after the age of twenty-five, by which time the long bones are consolidated99, the result is acromegaly, which chiefly manifests itself in an enlargement of the hands and feet.’ I never saw Lady Wilde’s feet; but her hands were enormous, and never went straight to their aim when they grasped anything, but minced100 about, feeling for it. And the gigantic splaying of her palm was reproduced in her lumbar region.
“Now Oscar was an overgrown man, with something not quite normal about his bigness — something that made Lady Colin Campbell, who hated him, describe him as ‘that great white caterpillar101.’ You yourself describe the disagreeable impression he made on you physically102, in spite of his fine eyes and style. Well, I have always maintained that Oscar was a giant in the pathological sense, and that this explains a good deal of his weakness.
“I think you have affectionately underrated his snobbery103, mentioning only the pardonable and indeed justifiable104 side of it; the love of fine names and distinguished associations and luxury and good manners.78 You say repeatedly, and on certain planes, truly, that he was not bitter and did not use his tongue to wound people. But this is not true on the snobbish11 plane. On one occasion he wrote about T.P. O’Connor with deliberate, studied, wounding insolence105, with his Merrion Square Protestant pretentiousness106 in full cry against the Catholic. He repeatedly declaimed against the vulgarity of the British journalist, not as you or I might, but as an expression of the odious107 class feeling that is itself the vilest108 vulgarity. He made the mistake of not knowing his place. He objected to be addressed as Wilde, declaring that he was Oscar to his intimates and Mr. Wilde to others, quite unconscious of the fact that he was imposing109 on the men with whom, as a critic and journalist, he had to live and work, the alternative of granting him an intimacy110 he had no right to ask or a deference111 to which he had no claim. The vulgar hated him for snubbing them; and the valiant112 men damned his impudence113 and cut him. Thus he was left with a band of devoted114 satellites on the one hand, and a dining-out connection on the other, with here and there a man of talent and personality enough to command his respect, but utterly without that fortifying115 body of acquaintance among plain men in which a man must move as himself a plain man, and be Smith and Jones and Wilde and Shaw and Harris instead of Bosie and Robbie and Oscar and Mister. This is the sort of folly116 that does not last forever in a man of Wilde’s ability; but it lasted long enough to prevent Oscar laying any solid social foundations.79
78 I had touched on the evil side of his snobbery, I thought, by saying that it was only famous actresses and great ladies that he ever talked about, and in telling how he loved to speak of the great houses such as Clumber to which he had been invited, and by half a dozen other hints scattered117 through my book. I had attacked English snobbery so strenuously118 in my book on “The Man Shakespeare,” had resented its influence on the finest English intelligence so bitterly, that I thought if I again laid stress on it in Wilde, people would think I was crazy on the subject. But he was a snob, both by nature and training, and I understand by snob what Shaw evidently understands by it here.]
3 The reason that Oscar, snobbish as he was, and admirer of England and the English as he was, could not lay any solid social foundations in England was, in my opinion, his intellectual interests and his intellectual superiority to the men he met. No one with a fine mind devoted to things of the spirit is capable of laying solid social foundations in England. Shaw, too, has no solid social foundations in that country.
This passing shot at English society serves it right. Yet able men have found niches119 in London. Where was Oscar’s? — G.B.S.]
“Another difficulty I have already hinted at. Wilde started as an apostle of Art; and in that capacity he was a humbug121. The notion that a Portora boy, passed on to T.C.D. and thence to Oxford122 and spending his vacations in Dublin, could without special circumstances have any genuine intimacy with music and painting, is to me ridiculous.80 When Wilde was at Portora, I was at home in a house where important musical works, including several typical masterpieces, were being rehearsed from the point of blank amateur ignorance up to fitness for public performance. I could whistle them from the first bar to the last as a butcher’s boy whistles music hall songs, before I was twelve. The toleration of popular music — Strauss’s waltzes, for instance — was to me positively123 a painful acquirement, a sort of republican duty.
80 I had already marked it down to put in this popular edition of my book that Wilde continually pretended to a knowledge of music which he had not got. He could hardly tell one tune59 from another, but he loved to talk of that “scarlet thing of Dvorak,” hoping in this way to be accepted as a real critic of music, when he knew nothing about it and cared even less. His eulogies124 of music and painting betrayed him continually though he did not know it.]
“I was so fascinated by painting that I haunted the National Gallery, which Doyle had made perhaps the finest collection of its size in the world; and I longed for money to buy painting materials with. This afterwards saved me from starving: it was as a critic of music and painting in the World that I won through my ten years of journalism125 before I finished up with you on the Saturday Review. I could make deaf stockbrokers126 read my two pages on music, the alleged127 joke being that I knew nothing about it. The real joke was that I knew all about it.
“Now it was quite evident to me, as it was to Whistler and Beardsley, that Oscar knew no more about pictures81 than anyone of his general culture and with his opportunities can pick up as he goes along. He could be witty about Art, as I could be witty about engineering; but that is no use when you have to seize and hold the attention and interest of people who really love music and painting. Therefore, Oscar was handicapped by a false start, and got a reputation82 for shallowness and insincerity which he never retrieved128 until it was too late.
81 I touched upon Oscar’s ignorance of art sufficiently129 I think, when I said in my book that he had learned all he knew of art and of controversy130 from Whistler, and that his lectures on the subject, even after sitting at the feet of the Master, were almost worthless.]
82 Perfectly131 true, and a notable instance of Shaw’s insight.]
“Comedy: the criticism of morals and manners viva voce, was his real forte132. When he settled down to that he was great. But, as you found when you approached Meredith about him, his initial mistake had produced that ‘rather low opinion of Wilde’s capacities,’ that ‘deep-rooted contempt for the showman in him,’ which persisted as a first impression and will persist until the last man who remembers his esthetic133 period has perished. The world has been in some ways so unjust to him that one must be careful not to be unjust to the world.
“In the preface on education, called ‘Parents and Children,’ to my volume of plays beginning with Misalliance, there is a section headed ‘Artist Idolatry,’ which is really about Wilde. Dealing134 with ‘the powers enjoyed by brilliant persons who are also connoisseurs135 in art,’ I say, ‘the influence they can exercise on young people who have been brought up in the darkness and wretchedness of a home without art, and in whom a natural bent137 towards art has always been baffled and snubbed, is incredible to those who have not witnessed and understood it. He (or she) who reveals the world of art to them opens heaven to them. They become satellites, disciples, worshippers of the apostle. Now the apostle may be a voluptuary without much conscience. Nature may have given him enough virtue138 to suffice in a reasonable environment. But this allowance may not be enough to defend him against the temptation and demoralization of finding himself a little god on the strength of what ought to be a quite ordinary culture. He may find adorers in all directions in our uncultivated society among people of stronger character than himself, not one of whom, if they had been artistically139 educated, would have had anything to learn from him, or regarded him as in any way extraordinary apart from his actual achievements as an artist. Tartufe is not always a priest. Indeed, he is not always a rascal: he is often a weak man absurdly credited with omniscience140 and perfection, and taking unfair advantages only because they are offered to him and he is too weak to refuse. Give everyone his culture, and no one will offer him more than his due.’
“That paragraph was the outcome of a walk and talk I had one afternoon at Chartres with Robert Ross.
“You reveal Wilde as a weaker man than I thought him: I still believe that his fierce Irish pride had something to do with his refusal to run away from the trial. But in the main your evidence is conclusive141. It was part of his tragedy that people asked more moral strength from him that he could bear the burden of, because they made the very common mistake — of which actors get the benefit — of regarding style as evidence of strength, just as in the case of women they are apt to regard paint as evidence of beauty. Now Wilde was so in love with style that he never realized the danger of biting off more than he could chew: in other words, of putting up more style than his matter would carry. Wise kings wear shabby clothes, and leave the gold lace to the drum major.
“You do not, unless my memory is betraying me as usual, quite recollect the order of events just before the trial. That day at the Café Royal, Wilde said he had come to ask you to go into the witness box next day and testify that Dorian Gray was a highly moral work. Your answer was something like this: ‘For God’s sake, man, put everything on that plane out of your head. You don’t realize what is going to happen to you. It is not going to be a matter of clever talk about your books. They are going to bring up a string of witnesses that will put art and literature out of the question. Clarke will throw up his brief. He will carry the case to a certain point; and then, when he sees the avalanche142 coming, he will back out and leave you in the dock. What you have to do is to cross to France to-night. Leave a letter saying that you cannot face the squalor and horror of a law case; that you are an artist and unfitted for such things. Don’t stay here clutching at straws like testimonials to Dorian Gray. I tell you I know. I know what is going to happen. I know Clarke’s sort. I know what evidence they have got. You must go.’
“It was no use. Wilde was in a curious double temper. He made no pretence143 either of innocence144 or of questioning the folly of his proceedings145 against Queensberry. But he had an infatuate haughtiness146 as to the impossibility of his retreating, and as to his right to dictate147 your course. Douglas sat in silence, a haughty148 indignant silence, copying Wilde’s attitude as all Wilde’s admirers did, but quite probably influencing Wilde as you suggest, by the copy. Oscar finally rose with a mixture of impatience149 and his grand air, and walked out with the remark that he had now found out who were his real friends; and Douglas followed him, absurdly smaller, and imitating his walk, like a curate following an archbishop.83 You remember it the other way about; but just consider this. Douglas was in the wretched position of having ruined Wilde merely to annoy his father, and of having attempted it so idiotically that he had actually prepared a triumph for him. He was, besides, much the youngest man present, and looked younger than he was. You did not make him welcome: as far as I recollect you did not greet him by a word or nod. If he had given the smallest provocation150 or attempted to take the lead in any way, I should not have given twopence for the chance of your keeping your temper. And Wilde, even in his ruin — which, however, he did not yet fully24 realize — kept his air of authority on questions of taste and conduct. It was practically impossible under such circumstances that Douglas should have taken the stage in any way. Everyone thought him a horrid151 little brat152; but I, not having met him before to my knowledge, and having some sort of flair153 for his literary talent, was curious to hear what he had to say for himself. But, except to echo Wilde once or twice, he said nothing.84 You are right in effect, because it was evident that Wilde was in his hands, and was really echoing him. But Wilde automatically kept the prompter off the stage and himself in the middle of it.
7 This is an inimitable picture, but Shaw’s fine sense of comedy has misled him. The scene took place absolutely as I recorded it. Douglas went out first saying —“Your telling him to run away shows that you are no friend of Oscar’s.” Then Oscar got up to follow him. He said good-bye to Shaw, adding a courteous word or two. As he turned to the door I got up and said:—“I hope you do not doubt my friendship; you have no reason to.”
“I do not think this is friendly of you, Frank,” he said, and went on out.]
8 I am sure Douglas took the initiative and walked out first.
I have no doubt you are right, and that my vision of the exit is really a reminiscence of the entrance. In fact, now that you prompt my memory, I recall quite distinctly that Douglas, who came in as the follower154, went out as the leader, and that the last word was spoken by Wilde after he had gone. — G.B.S.]
“What your book needs to complete it is a portrait of yourself as good as your portrait of Wilde. Oscar was not combative155, though he was supercilious156 in his early pose. When his snobbery was not in action, he liked to make people devoted to him and to flatter them exquisitely157 with that end. Mrs. Calvert, whose great final period as a stage old woman began with her appearance in my Arms and the Man, told me one day, when apologizing for being, as she thought, a bad rehearser, that no author had ever been so nice to her except Mr. Wilde.
“Pugnacious158 people, if they did not actually terrify Oscar, were at least the sort of people he could not control, and whom he feared as possibly able to coerce159 him. You suggest that the Queensberry pugnacity160 was something that Oscar could not deal with successfully. But how in that case could Oscar have felt quite safe with you? You were more pugnacious than six Queensberrys rolled into one. When people asked, ‘What has Frank Harris been?’ the usual reply was, ‘Obviously a pirate from the Spanish Main.’
“Oscar, from the moment he gained your attachment161, could never have been afraid of what you might do to him, as he was sufficient of a connoisseur136 in Blut Bruderschaft to appreciate yours; but he must always have been mortally afraid of what you might do or say to his friends.85
85 This insight on Shaw’s part makes me smile because it is absolutely true. Oscar commended Bosie Douglas to me again and again and again, begged me to be nice to him if we ever met by chance; but I refused to meet him for months and months.]
“You had quite an infernal scorn for nineteen out of twenty of the men and women you met in the circles he most wished to propitiate162; and nothing could induce you to keep your knife in its sheath when they jarred on you. The Spanish Main itself would have blushed rosy163 red at your language when classical invective164 did not suffice to express your feelings.
“It may be that if, say, Edmund Gosse had come to Oscar when he was out on bail165, with a couple of first class tickets in his pocket, and gently suggested a mild trip to Folkestone, or the Channel Islands, Oscar might have let himself be coaxed166 away. But to be called on to gallop167 ventre à terre to Erith — it might have been Deal — and hoist168 the Jolly Roger on board your lugger, was like casting a light comedian169 and first lover for Richard III. Oscar could not see himself in the part.
“I must not press the point too far; but it illustrates170, I think, what does not come out at all in your book: that you were a very different person from the submissive and sympathetic disciples to whom he was accustomed. There are things more terrifying to a soul like Oscar’s than an as yet unrealized possibility of a sentence of hard labor. A voyage with Captain Kidd may have been one of them. Wilde was a conventional man: his unconventionality was the very pedantry171 of convention: never was there a man less an outlaw172 than he. You were a born outlaw, and will never be anything else.
“That is why, in his relations with you, he appears as a man always shirking action — more of a coward (all men are cowards more or less) than so proud a man can have been. Still this does not affect the truth and power of your portrait. Wilde’s memory will have to stand or fall by it.
“You will be blamed, I imagine, because you have not written a lying epitaph instead of a faithful chronicle and study of him; but you will not lose your sleep over that. As a matter of fact, you could not have carried kindness further without sentimental173 folly. I should have made a far sterner summing up. I am sure Oscar has not found the gates of heaven shut against him: he is too good company to be excluded; but he can hardly have been greeted as, ‘Thou good and faithful servant.’ The first thing we ask a servant for is a testimonial to honesty, sobriety and industry; for we soon find out that these are the scarce things, and that geniuses86 and clever people are as common as rats. Well, Oscar was not sober, not honest, not industrious174. Society praised him for being idle, and persecuted175 him savagely176 for an aberration177 which it had better have left unadvertized, thereby178 making a hero of him; for it is in the nature of people to worship those who have been made to suffer horribly: indeed I have often said that if the crucifixion could be proved a myth, and Jesus convicted of dying of old age in comfortable circumstances, Christianity would lose ninety-nine per cent. of its devotees.
86 The English paste in Shaw; genius is about the rarest thing on earth whereas the necessary quantum of “honesty, sobriety and industry,” is beaten by life into nine humans out of ten. — ED.
If so, it is the tenth who comes my way. — G.B.S.]
“We must try to imagine what judgment we should have passed on Oscar if he had been a normal man, and had dug his grave with his teeth in the ordinary respectable fashion, as his brother Willie did. This brother, by the way, gives us some cue; for Willie, who had exactly the same education and the same chances, must be ruthlessly set aside by literary history as a vulgar journalist of no account. Well, suppose Oscar and Willie had both died the day before Queensberry left that card at the Club! Oscar would still have been remembered as a wit and a dandy, and would have had a niche120 beside Congreve in the drama. A volume of his aphorisms179 would have stood creditably on the library shelf with La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims180. We should have missed the ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’ and ‘De Profundis’; but he would still have cut a considerable figure in the Dictionary of National Biography, and been read and quoted outside the British Museum reading room.
“As to the ‘Ballad’ and ‘De Profundis,’ I think it is greatly to Oscar’s credit that, whilst he was sincere and deeply moved when he was protesting against the cruelty of our present system to children and to prisoners generally, he could not write about his own individual share in that suffering with any conviction or sympathy.87 Except for the passage where he describes his exposure at Clapham Junction181, there is hardly a line in ‘De Profundis’ that he might not have written as a literary feat five years earlier. But in the ‘Ballad,’ even in borrowing form and melody from Coleridge, he shews that he could pity others when he could not seriously pity himself. And this, I think, may be pleaded against the reproach that he was selfish. Externally, in the ordinary action of life as distinguished from the literary action proper to his genius, he was no doubt sluggish182 and weak because of his giantism. He ended as an unproductive drunkard and swindler; for the repeated sales of the Daventry plot, in so far as they imposed on the buyers and were not transparent183 excuses for begging, were undeniably swindles. For all that, he does not appear in his writings a selfish or base-minded man. He is at his worst and weakest in the suppressed88 part of ‘De Profundis’; but in my opinion it had better be published, for several reasons. It explains some of his personal weakness by the stifling184 narrowness of his daily round, ruinous to a man whose proper place was in a large public life. And its concealment185 is mischievous186 because, first, it leads people to imagine all sorts of horrors in a document which contains nothing worse than any record of the squabbles of two touchy187 idlers; and, second, it is clearly a monstrous188 thing that Douglas should have a torpedo189 launched at him and timed to explode after his death. The torpedo is a very harmless squib; for there is nothing in it that cannot be guessed from Douglas’s own book; but the public does not know that. By the way, it is rather a humorous stroke of Fate’s irony190 that the son of the Marquis of Queensberry should be forced to expiate191 his sins by suffering a succession of blows beneath the belt.
87 Superb criticism.]
88 I have said this in my way.]
“Now that you have written the best life of Oscar Wilde, let us have the best life of Frank Harris. Otherwise the man behind your works will go down to posterity89 as the hero of my very inadequate192 preface to ‘The Dark Lady of the Sonnets193.’”
G. BERNARD SHAW.
89 A characteristic flirt194 of Shaw’s humor. He is a great caricaturist and not a portrait-painter.
When he thinks of my Celtic face and aggressive American frankness he talks of me as pugnacious and a pirate: “a Captain Kidd”: in his preface to “The Fair Lady of the Sonnets” he praises my “idiosyncratic gift of pity”; says that I am “wise through pity”; then he extols195 me as a prophet, not seeing that a pitying sage70, prophet and pirate constitute an inhuman196 superman.
I shall do more for Shaw than he has been able to do for me; he is the first figure in my new volume of “Contemporary Portraits.” I have portrayed197 him there at his best, as I love to think of him, and henceforth he’ll have to try to live up to my conception and that will keep him, I’m afraid, on strain.
God help me! — G.B.S.]
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1
confessions
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| n.承认( confession的名词复数 )；自首；声明；（向神父的）忏悔 | |
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confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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omission
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| n.省略，删节；遗漏或省略的事物，冗长 | |
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definitive
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| adj.确切的，权威性的；最后的，决定性的 | |
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accentuates
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| v.重读( accentuate的第三人称单数 )；使突出；使恶化；加重音符号于 | |
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snobbishness
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| 势利； 势利眼 | |
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snob
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| n.势利小人，自以为高雅、有学问的人 | |
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snobbish
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| adj.势利的，谄上欺下的 | |
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courteous
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| adj.彬彬有礼的，客气的 | |
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13
perversion
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| n.曲解；堕落；反常 | |
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hereditary
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| adj.遗传的，遗传性的，可继承的，世袭的 | |
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15
extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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adoration
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| n.爱慕，崇拜 | |
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comeliness
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| n. 清秀, 美丽, 合宜 | |
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jargon
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| n.术语，行话 | |
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collaboration
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| n.合作，协作；勾结 | |
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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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postscript
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| n.附言，又及；(正文后的)补充说明 | |
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22
bustling
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| adj.喧闹的 | |
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autobiography
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| n.自传 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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rascal
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| n.流氓；不诚实的人 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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30
squint
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| v. 使变斜视眼, 斜视, 眯眼看, 偏移, 窥视; n. 斜视, 斜孔小窗; adj. 斜视的, 斜的 | |
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31
overdid
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| v.做得过分( overdo的过去式 )；太夸张；把…煮得太久；（工作等）过度 | |
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32
squinted
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| 斜视( squint的过去式和过去分词 )； 眯着眼睛； 瞟； 从小孔或缝隙里看 | |
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33
lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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farmhouse
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| n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房） | |
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turnip
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| n.萝卜，芜菁 | |
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oratorical
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| adj.演说的，雄辩的 | |
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37
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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38
specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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novices
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| n.新手( novice的名词复数 )；初学修士（或修女）；（修会等的）初学生；尚未赢过大赛的赛马 | |
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40
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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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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42
burlesque
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| v.嘲弄，戏仿；n.嘲弄，取笑，滑稽模仿 | |
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43
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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44
luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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45
recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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46
guild
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| n.行会，同业公会，协会 | |
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47
feat
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| n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的 | |
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48
resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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49
appreciative
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| adj.有鉴赏力的，有眼力的；感激的 | |
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50
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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51
naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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52
replica
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| n.复制品 | |
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53
seasick
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| adj.晕船的 | |
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54
galley
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| n.（飞机或船上的）厨房单层甲板大帆船；军舰舰长用的大划艇； | |
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55
tickled
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| （使）发痒( tickle的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）愉快，逗乐 | |
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56
raconteur
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| n.善讲故事者 | |
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57
economized
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| v.节省，减少开支( economize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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58
demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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59
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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60
climax
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| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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61
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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62
clandestinely
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| adv.秘密地，暗中地 | |
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63
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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64
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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66
preoccupied
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| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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67
traitor
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| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
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68
chivalry
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| n.骑士气概，侠义；（男人）对女人彬彬有礼，献殷勤 | |
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69
disciple
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| n.信徒，门徒，追随者 | |
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70
sage
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| n.圣人，哲人；adj.贤明的，明智的 | |
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71
proximity
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| n.接近，邻近 | |
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72
irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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73
sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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75
repudiated
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| v.（正式地）否认( repudiate的过去式和过去分词 )；拒绝接受；拒绝与…往来；拒不履行（法律义务） | |
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abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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77
disciples
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| n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一 | |
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78
socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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79
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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80
maudlin
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| adj.感情脆弱的，爱哭的 | |
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81
pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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82
tact
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| n.机敏，圆滑，得体 | |
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83
inscribed
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| v.写，刻( inscribe的过去式和过去分词 )；内接 | |
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84
witty
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| adj.机智的，风趣的 | |
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85
scrupulous
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| adj.审慎的，小心翼翼的，完全的，纯粹的 | |
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86
repudiating
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| v.（正式地）否认( repudiate的现在分词 )；拒绝接受；拒绝与…往来；拒不履行（法律义务） | |
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87
repugnance
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| n.嫌恶 | |
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88
specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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89
loathed
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| v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的过去式和过去分词 )；极不喜欢 | |
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potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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anarchists
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| 无政府主义者( anarchist的名词复数 ) | |
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92
reprieve
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| n.暂缓执行（死刑）；v.缓期执行；给…带来缓解 | |
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93
disinterested
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| adj.不关心的，不感兴趣的 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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anterior
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| adj.较早的；在前的 | |
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lobe
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| n.耳垂，（肺，肝等的）叶 | |
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consolidated
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| a.联合的 | |
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100
minced
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| v.切碎( mince的过去式和过去分词 )；剁碎；绞碎；用绞肉机绞（食物，尤指肉） | |
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101
caterpillar
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| n.毛虫，蝴蝶的幼虫 | |
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102
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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103
snobbery
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| n. 充绅士气派, 俗不可耐的性格 | |
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104
justifiable
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| adj.有理由的，无可非议的 | |
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105
insolence
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| n.傲慢；无礼；厚颜；傲慢的态度 | |
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106
pretentiousness
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| n.矫饰；炫耀；自负；狂妄 | |
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odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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108
vilest
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| adj.卑鄙的( vile的最高级 )；可耻的；极坏的；非常讨厌的 | |
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109
imposing
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| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
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110
intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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111
deference
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| n.尊重，顺从；敬意 | |
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112
valiant
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| adj.勇敢的，英勇的；n.勇士，勇敢的人 | |
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113
impudence
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| n.厚颜无耻；冒失；无礼 | |
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114
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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115
fortifying
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| 筑防御工事于( fortify的现在分词 )； 筑堡于； 增强； 强化（食品） | |
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116
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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117
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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118
strenuously
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| adv.奋发地，费力地 | |
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119
niches
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| 壁龛( niche的名词复数 )； 合适的位置[工作等]； （产品的）商机； 生态位（一个生物所占据的生境的最小单位） | |
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120
niche
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| n.壁龛；合适的职务(环境、位置等) | |
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121
humbug
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| n.花招，谎话，欺骗 | |
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122
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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123
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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124
eulogies
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| n.颂词，颂文( eulogy的名词复数 ) | |
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125
journalism
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| n.新闻工作，报业 | |
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126
stockbrokers
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| n.股票经纪人( stockbroker的名词复数 ) | |
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127
alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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128
retrieved
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| v.取回( retrieve的过去式和过去分词 )；恢复；寻回；检索（储存的信息） | |
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129
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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130
controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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131
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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132
forte
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| n.长处，擅长；adj.(音乐)强音的 | |
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133
esthetic
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| adj.美学的，审美的；悦目的，雅致的 | |
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134
dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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135
connoisseurs
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| n.鉴赏家，鉴定家，行家( connoisseur的名词复数 ) | |
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136
connoisseur
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| n.鉴赏家，行家，内行 | |
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137
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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138
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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139
artistically
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| adv.艺术性地 | |
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140
omniscience
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| n.全知，全知者，上帝 | |
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141
conclusive
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| adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的 | |
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142
avalanche
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| n.雪崩，大量涌来 | |
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143
pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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144
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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145
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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146
haughtiness
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| n.傲慢；傲气 | |
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147
dictate
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| v.口授；(使)听写；指令，指示，命令 | |
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148
haughty
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| adj.傲慢的，高傲的 | |
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149
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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150
provocation
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| n.激怒，刺激，挑拨，挑衅的事物，激怒的原因 | |
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151
horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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152
brat
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| n.孩子；顽童 | |
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153
flair
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| n.天赋，本领，才华；洞察力 | |
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154
follower
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| n.跟随者；随员；门徒；信徒 | |
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155
combative
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| adj.好战的；好斗的 | |
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156
supercilious
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| adj.目中无人的，高傲的；adv.高傲地；n.高傲 | |
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157
exquisitely
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| adv.精致地；强烈地；剧烈地；异常地 | |
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158
pugnacious
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| adj.好斗的 | |
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159
coerce
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| v.强迫，压制 | |
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160
pugnacity
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| n.好斗，好战 | |
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161
attachment
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| n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附 | |
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162
propitiate
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| v.慰解，劝解 | |
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163
rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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164
invective
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| n.痛骂，恶意抨击 | |
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165
bail
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| v.舀（水），保释；n.保证金，保释，保释人 | |
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166
coaxed
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| v.哄，用好话劝说( coax的过去式和过去分词 )；巧言骗取；哄劝，劝诱 | |
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167
gallop
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| v./n.(马或骑马等)飞奔；飞速发展 | |
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168
hoist
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| n.升高，起重机，推动；v.升起，升高，举起 | |
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169
comedian
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| n.喜剧演员；滑稽演员 | |
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170
illustrates
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| 给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明 | |
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171
pedantry
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| n.迂腐，卖弄学问 | |
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172
outlaw
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| n.歹徒，亡命之徒；vt.宣布…为不合法 | |
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173
sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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174
industrious
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| adj.勤劳的，刻苦的，奋发的 | |
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175
persecuted
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| （尤指宗教或政治信仰的）迫害(~sb. for sth.)( persecute的过去式和过去分词 )； 烦扰，困扰或骚扰某人 | |
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176
savagely
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| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
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177
aberration
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| n.离开正路，脱离常规，色差 | |
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178
thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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179
aphorisms
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| 格言，警句( aphorism的名词复数 ) | |
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180
maxims
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| n.格言，座右铭( maxim的名词复数 ) | |
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181
junction
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| n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站 | |
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182
sluggish
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| adj.懒惰的，迟钝的，无精打采的 | |
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183
transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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184
stifling
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| a.令人窒息的 | |
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185
concealment
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| n.隐藏, 掩盖，隐瞒 | |
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186
mischievous
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| adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的 | |
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187
touchy
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| adj.易怒的；棘手的 | |
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188
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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189
torpedo
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| n.水雷，地雷；v.用鱼雷破坏 | |
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190
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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191
expiate
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| v.抵补，赎罪 | |
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192
inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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193
sonnets
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| n.十四行诗( sonnet的名词复数 ) | |
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194
flirt
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| v.调情，挑逗，调戏；n.调情者，卖俏者 | |
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195
extols
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| v.赞颂，赞扬，赞美( extol的第三人称单数 ) | |
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196
inhuman
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| adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的 | |
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197
portrayed
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| v.画像( portray的过去式和过去分词 )；描述；描绘；描画 | |
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