THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17941, 8 December 1923, Page 13

THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

HALF-HOURS IN A LIBRARY, (bpsciali.l wamrs ros "raa ?»»««• 5 By A. H. Gbixieso. XXXVIII.—OX OSCAR WILDE. Probably a better and more comprehensive title would have been 'On Failure and Success" since 1 propose to use Oscar Wilde to point the moral and adorn the tale. lam incited thereto by a remarkable dialogue entitled "Echo de Paris," described as "A Study from Life," published by Mr Laurence Hounnan in continuation tf that striking series which already includes ' Angels and Ministers," •'Possession' and "Dethronements." Mr Housman savs. by wav of explanation, that his original intention was to include this dialogue in his book of Dethronements; but he adds- "I was warned bv a good authority that if I did so tlw-interest of my commentators would be largely diverted from the political theme to" the personal." Tins is understandable "Dethronements' deals With men Of the political calibre of exPresident Wilson, whereas "Echo de Paris" is concerned in the mam with Oscar Wilde. Mr Housman therefore decided to let this other "Dethronement" stand alone in its first appearing "as different in kind from the rest." Which remarks make matter for the following comment: —

But though different, my reason for writing it was precisely the same. It is, like these others, a record of »i luro • and failures interest me more B«i6r»ll>, than success. If I am asked why my answer is that they seem to reveal human nature mote truly, and, on the whole, more encouragingly, than anything els in the world. The way a man faces failure is the best proof of him. hat he has done, before matters little, or only an a minor" degree, if, as the outcome of all, in the grip of final and nrretnevable ruin, he retains the stature of man. That places him far more truly than the verdicts of juries, or the judgment of contemporary society. Sometimes he may prove his worth more surely by failure than by succcs, , B ,°» s « im «L "£? only just manage to hold his ground but if he is able to do that without complaint or greedy self-justification and without speaking bitterly of those who have compassed his dowrfa , «*«»*" something stands to his credit, and there is a balance on the right side.

"And so," continues Mr Housman "the longer I live the more do failures attract me, making me believe not less in human nature but more.' Whether for this reason or not, 1 have for many years attracted by Oscar Wilde, his writings, and his personality, as a subject for literary study. I think I have read everything he has written; when perplexed by problems of political economy I turn to that, remarkable essay, "The Soul of Man ; when puzzling over the question ot capital punishment and the cruelties ot tho penal system I turn the pages of that haunting, poem, "The Ballad of Beading Gaol s '; meditating on the extraordinary .forms which English verse can assume, I love to chant the sounding stanzas of "The Sphinx"; and among my most preciou.s possessions I number a copy of the complete text of "The Story of Mr W. IL," the manuscript of which mysteriously disappeared at the sale by auction of Oscar Wilde's furniture and effects at his house in Tito street, Chelsea, and which

came into the hands of an American publisher only a few months ago. I have read practically everything that has been written about Oscar Wilde including the "Three Times Tried," the "Lives," by R. H. Sherard, L. C. Ingieby, the Countess of Brebont, and Prank Harris, the latter including the hitherto unpublished portion of the "De Irofunuis" manuscript, not forgetting the penetrating "studv" of Mr Andre bride and Mr Stuart Mason's exhaustive bibliography. Even so, Mr Laurence Housman in "Echo de Paris" casts some fresh beams of light upon an almost incomprehensible character. Mr Housman, for instance, helps to Mi? r XI S „ ®, controversy.as to whether 1 he Ballad of Reading Gaol" owed T n V>» "* ins P ir ation to "A Shropshire the similaritv in certain of th« stanzas is certainlv striking. In " V Shropshire Lad," Professor A. E Housman writes: T Th o ha ?" <1 IUS US ?f w in Shrewsbury jail, rhe whistles blow forlorn, And trains all 'night groan Tra the nil, -lo men that die ut morn. There sleeps in Shrewsbury jail to-night, Ur wakes as mav betide A J? ett " la <*. if things went right, n xn&a most, that sleep outside. Arid naked to the han<rman's noose, lje morning clocks will ring, A " c °k God made for -jther use Than sirangling in s> string. , ah «P the link of life wiTi snap. And dead in air will stand ■» Heels that held up as straight a chap As treads upon the land. So here 111 watch the night and wait To Bee the mornin? shine. When he will hear the stroke of eight, And net the stroke of nine. According to Professor Housman the greater part of "A Shropshire Lad" was_ written in the early months of 1895 while he was in a state of "continuous excitement,'' and the poem was first published in 1896. On Saturdav, Ma'- 25th, 1895, Oscar Wilde was sentenced to two yeras' imprisonment with hard labour, most of which period was passed at Wandsworth and Reading Gaols. On his release from Reading Gaol on May 19th, 1897, he at once went to France, and early in 1898 "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" was published "by the authorshio of the poepi being acknowledged shortly afterwards in an autograph edition. Mr Laurence Housman had only once met Wilde at the house of a friend. "He was then," says Mr Housman, "at the height of his fame and success, and I, an unknown beginner, still undecided whether to be book illustrator or author." An encouraging remark from Wilde determined Laurence Housman towards authorship; and in the "Foreword" to f'Echo de Paris," be writes: — Upon Wilde'a release from prison I had sent him my recently published booi "All Fellows: Seven Legends of Lowor Redemption," hoping that its title and contents would say something on my behalf, whicli, jt, his partiojlair case, I very much wished to convey. A" fortnight later a courteous and appreciative letter . reached me from the south of France, telling me incidentally that fry the same post had come a copy of "A. Shropshire Lad," sent with the good wishes of the author, whom ehe had never met. "Thns you and your brother," he wrote,, "have given me a few moments of that rare thing called happiness." From that time on 1 sent him each of my books as they appeared, and received letters of beautifully ornate criticism; and as I passed through Paris on my way back to Italy in the autumn of 1893, we met once more in the company of friends. "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" was begun at the Chalet Bourjeat Berneval near Dieppe in June, 1897, and on Mr Laurence Housman's Showing Wilde at that time in possession of a copy of "A Shropshire Lad"; the poem was finished at Naples, . where he added Parts V and VI. If Lord Alfred Douglas is to be believed Wilde's model for the ballad was "The Dream of Eugene Aram," with "The Ancient Mariner" thrown in on technical grounds. Mr Ransome affirms that a comparison of the version now printed with the poem as originally published reveals a change of attitude consequent on'.his removal from Berneval to Naples, since at Naples,, he came once more under the influence of Lord Alfred Douglas. '' The momentary re-tasto of his former life at Naples," says Mr Ransome. '' gave him the -more decorative verses which were then added." The "Ballad" was founded on fact; in July, 1896,. Cbarles Thomas Woodridge, aged 30, trooper in the Royal Horse • Guards Blue, was executed within the precincts of Reading Gaol for the murder of his wife." Tne sequel is a startling one; j it is set out by Mr" Darrell Figgis, in "A Chronicle of Jails" when de- j scribing his enforced sojourn at Read- j ing— ' j Yet what Astonished mo most was the I eight of flowers. Their presence mode the cobbled yard and the precincts seem almost collegiate, in neatly kept beds about the walls they lifted their heads with a happy gaiety very strange to soma of us who had known so human a touch banished from buildings more appropriately given over to the possession of flints and cinders. A few days after we were taken through the work yard behind the main prison. Here in . the work hall a canteen was opened on three days in the week for the interned prisoners who now occupied the prison, but be"c also waa the large exercise yard and it was covered with an abundance of flowers. The familiar asphalt paths could not be seen where they threickd their way amid blossoms. In teds beneath the walls tall flowers lifted their heads, and even the graves of ns.ngfd men could not be seen beneath the blooms that covered themIt was an amazing eight. There were not mereiy flowers, a sight astonishing in. itself; thero was a prodigality ot flowers. Then some of us remembered the cause. On« of the graves unlocked the secret. It was marked with the letters C. T. TT. and the date 1896, to whom Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol" had been inscribed, and in celebration of whose passing the poem had been penned. But neither milk-white rose nor red May bloom in prison air; The shard, the pebble, and the flint Art what they give us there; For flowers have been known to heal.' A' common man's despair. So never will wine-red rose or white Petal by petal fall On that stretch, of mud and sand that lies By the hideous prison wall, To tell the men who -tramp the yard 'That's God's Son died for aIL So "Wilde had sung, not in protest, but in bitter acceptance, never dreaming that a poet's song could change the flint, the pebble, and the shard of the yard he trod. But for us who came after him with the memory of his. eong in our minds the miracle had been wrought. Miracle it was, Mid it had been wrought in no common sort, for the great yard was a lake of loaf and bloom, and the hideous prison wall was transformed by gay figures decked in raiment thai not Solomon in all his glory oould outvie. The chief interest in "Echo de Paris" consists in its representation of Oscar Wilde as a brilliant conversationalist. "The brilliancy of conversation," says Laurence Housman, "is doubtfully reproduced in the cold medium of print, and I may have wholly failed to convey the peculiar and arresting quality of what, by wordf of mouth, sounded so well. But the impression left upon me from that occasion is that Oscar Wilde was incomparably the most accomplished talker I had ever met. The smooth-flowing utterance* sedate and self-possessed, oracular in tone, whimsical in substance, carried on .without halt or hesitation, or change of word, with the quiet zest of a man perfect at the jr.ime, and conscious that for the moment at least, he was back at his

old form again; this, combined with the pleasure, infections to his listeners, of finding himself once more in a group of friends who'se view of his downfall was not the world's view, made memorable to others beside myself a reunion more happily prolonged than this selected portion of it would indicate." Oscar "Wilde died in Paris on November 30tft, 1900; the conversation recorded by Mr Housman took place just a year before his death. The the outside of a Paris restaurant —is true to history, and the actors in this httle drama are scarcely veiled under initials. The chief speaker, "0.W." is, of course, Wilde himself; and his French friend "H.D." is presumably M. Jdenri Davray. Of the three Englishman "L.H." is Laurence Housman; "RJR," is the late Robert Ross. Wilde's literary executor; as to the identity of "R.A." there is room for speculation. Mr Housman is careful to explain that the "non-arriving guest with the unreal name" (Harvey .Terrold in the text) was "generic rather than individual" and is intended to symbolise those of his former friends who turned their back upon Wilde after his release from prison. In a concluding footnote, Mr Housillan raises the question whether the "strange pathological trouble" which caused Wilde's downfall should not have been treated from the medical rather than from the criminal standpoint, a contention likely tc arouse a storm of controversy. The point of the dialogue set down bv Mr Housman raises the vexed question of success and failure; what constitutes real success and what actual failure. Robert Ross is represented as asking the question, "Why cannot a Scotsman be a genius as comfortably as anyone else?" To which Wilde makes reply. — Because your Scotsman believes only in success. How can a. man who Tegards success as the goal of life be a true artist r God saved the genius of Robert Burns to poetry by driving him through drink to failure. Think what an appalling figure in literature "a successful Burns would have been! He was already trying to write poems in polite English, which was about as ludicrous as for v pobte Englishman to try to write poetry in the dialect of Burns. Riotous living and dying saved him from that last degrada-J t : on of smug prosperity which threatened j him. ... _ I Never was there «v Scotsman" of genius who survived his youth, who was not fatally compromised by his nationality. To fail and to die young is the only hope for «• Scotsman who wishes to remain an artist. "When at the end of the eighteenth century Scotland' produced her second great writer of genius, she inspired him to a terrible betrayal (for which the tradespeople of literature still praise him) —to break his art on the wheel of commercial rectitude, to write books which became worse and worse in order to satisfy h's creditors! In Dante's "Purgatorio" there is nothing to equal the horror of it. But he succeeded, and Scotland in consequence is proud of him. . . . Think of unhappy Sir Walter, writing his transcendent pot-boilers for no other reason than to wipe out bankruptcy! By the majority such an expression may seem to call for reprobation as perverse philosophy; but it will bear looking into. Wilde went on to say that fewer Scotsmen go bankrupt than any other nationality, and this not merely because monetary success seduces them as because success' in all its aspects "has for them a baleful attraction. Thpy succumb to it intellectually, morally, spiritually." Wilde* qites Carlyle as illustration in the following striking passage: —■ Carlyle was the greatest intellectual miser of the nineteenth century. In his prime he wrote his greatest work —the history of a failure—the French Revolution. The time came when, with all his powers matured, he stood equipped for the writing of his supreme masterpiece. There was no need to look far afield, for a subject; it stood obvious awaiting him. After hia French Revolution he should have written the life of Napoleon—the greatest success, the greatest failure that the world has ever known. He would have . done it magnificently. What a spectacle for the world: the Man of Destiny receiving from the eon of humble Scottish peasants his right measure of immortality! But because Carlyle was a Scotsman he would not take for his hero the man whose life ended in failure; he could not bring himself to face the debacle of Waterloo, the enduring; ignominy and defeat of St.. Helena. Had he been true to his art, he would have realised that St. Helena, was the greatest theme of all—for an artist, the most completely significant in the whole of modern history. But because he had the soul of a Scotsman, because he worshipped success, he looked for his -hero, and found him, in that most mean and despicable character, Frederick the Great; a man to whom heaven had given the powers of «• supreme genius and hell „ the soul of a commercial traveller. "Echo de Paris" is a hook -wßich will be treasured by every student of the psychological problem which Wilde's life and writings present. It is also valuable when discussing the relative value of success and failure. "I have had great success," Wilde is made to exclaim. "I have had great failure. I have learned the value of each; and I know now that failure means more—always must mean more than success." Mr R.-B. Cunninghame-Grahani echoes the same thought when he writes: "How few successful men are interesting!"