NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, 3 June 1920, Page 26

NOTES

Oscar Wilde Wilde’s life, up to the time of his sentence, is well known to most readers of current literature, bout the years that intervened between his release and his death most people have vague and incorrect ideas. To know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about Wilde’s life and death you must read Frank Harris’s wonderful biography of the man whom he championed while he believed in him and after he could no longer believe. Wilde came forth from prison a chastened and a purified man. His real friends— Harris and Robert Ross—induced him to go over to France and to settle down in a quiet country spot where he could take up the broken threads of his life and devote himself to art and literature. Wilde meant well then; and all would have been well had not his evil genius sought him out and lured him away to Naples.' To Lord Alfred Douglas Wilde himself attributed his first fall and his punishment; to the same decadent noble may be attributed his ultimate ruin. It is true that he did come back from Naples and Douglas; but he came back a broken and a ruined man, incapable of further work, too weak to make a fight against temptation, shattered and undermined by disease. The most wonderful thing about those last years is the unselfish devotion of his true friends, who never deserted him until the grave closed upon him, One of them, at least—Frank Harris—believed in Wilde almost to the end. Even when his eyes were opened, even when the now debauched and ruined man confessed his guilt, Harris still made heroic efforts to save him. There have been few tests of friendship like that one. A Jester With Genius Wilde’s reputation is an elusive thing still. It is difficult to fix his place in literature. In Germany he is known as the author of Salome; to the French he is a poet and a critic; in England he is the author of many brilliant plays, and of the Ballad of Beading Gaol. By that ballad, with its strange weft of realism and romance, he will be best known to future readers. His essays are ephemeral and dazzling, but they will not live; his plays will be revived from time to time; Be Prof midis will be discussed in literary circles and' men will wonder how much of it is sincere and how much a pose; but the Ballad will remain as one of the great ballads of the English language. What a wonderful thing it is, and what a variety of emotions it arouses. See the picture of the murderer:

He did not wear his scarlet coat, ' For blood and wine are red. . And blood and wine were on his hands When they found him with the dead. And the grim, bitter swarm of criminals at work: We tore the tarry rope to shreds With blunt and bleeding nails We rubbed the doors and scrubbed the floors, And cleaned the shining rails. And, rank by rank, we soaked the plank. And clattered with the pails. And hear the haunting refrain of the paradoxical lines : And all men kill the thing they love, By all let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword. The Ballad of Heading Gaol as poignant notes that ring true so has Be. Profundis. Yet, the more one reads about Wilde the more one doubts his sincerity. Arthur Symons may be right when he calls him “a jester with genius.” — e Heredity Does heredity explain the mystery ? Lady Wilde, in her girlhood an ardent patriot, was rather a fond and foolish mother who spoiled her boy. She had in her later years a love of posing that may well have been her gift to Oscar. Sir William Wilde was a distinguished Dublin specialist, one of the ornaments of the medical profession. But— well, to put it charitably there were rumors that he had fits of erotomania. From such antecedents we may gather some light on Wilde s character. Tie was a born actor ; his vanity was colossal ; he had no sense of how ridiculous his posing made him; he assumed the airs of a modern Petronius: all that may well have come to him from Lady Wilde. Of his depravity and decadence there is now no longer . room -for doubt: readers of Frank Harris s book will find sufficient information about Sir William Wilde to warrant them in suspecting that both father and son were in some respects mentally unsound. With such beginnings Oscar was launched upon the world. Had his lot been a hard one he might have won through, but as from the beginning he walked the primrose paths, amid the applause of society sycophants, his downfall was made almost' inevitable. It was indeed swift and tragic. Instigated by Lord Douglas to take action against the latter’s father, he found himself changing places with the defendant and ended in gaol. We note that Shaw also thought he was mentally unbalanceda specimen of giantism,” malformed in brain and body. Shaw knew him i well m earlier years, and he allows us to see that he also knew somewhat of-the reputation of Sir William Wilde. Egotism, selfishness, vanity, sensuality, whether inherited or not, certainly combined in v l ?*-? 0 ! mar - a great m telligence and to wreck a delightful genius. A Mystery Was he ever serious and sincere? We used to think Be Profundi* a true book, but recent publication of hitherto unpublished passages makes us doubtful now. Here is a passage formerly omitted: m aVe Sadd ttmt to speak the truth is a painful tiling. To be forced to tell lies is much worse I remember as I was sitting in the dock on the occasion my as trial, listening to Lockwood’s appalling denunciations of me—like a thing out of Tacitus, like mPttf SSag F ’ In Dante, like one of Savonorola’s indictments of the Popes at Rome-and being sickened

with the horror of what I heard : suddenly it occurred to me, How splendid it would be, if I was saying it all about myself.’ I saw then at once that what is said of a man is nothing, the point''is, who says it. A man’s very highest moment" is, I have no doubt, when he kneels in the dust and beats , his breast and tells all the sins of his life..” ’ That passage makes us' see Wilde as a man who looks on life as a play from beginning to end. He is always acting; nothing concerns him but playing to the gallery; his beautiful prose; his beautiful, verse; his witty conversation, are all part and parcel of the pose which was his philosophy.... “I treated art,” he says ’ as the supreme reality, and life as a mere mode ff .- fiction. What is the verdict on him? Our old mend Mr. Dooley would probably say it was all a case of a spared rod and a spoiled child. 7