The Complete Short Fiction (32 page)

As I indicated in ‘A Note on the Texts', this appendix prints one relatively unknown text, a manuscript fragment of a poem in prose.

Elder-tree, there stands a neglected grave. The grass grows thick and rank around it, and the weeds have covered it all over. No bird ever sings there, and even the sunbeams seem to avoid the spot. Yet in that lonely grave the most beautiful woman in the world lies asleep. Her throat is like a reed of ivory, and her mouth is like a ripe pomegranate. Like threads of fine gold are the threads of her flowing hair, and the turquoise is not so blue as her blue eyes.

Wilde extensively re-worked a group of themes throughout his creative life, and his
oeuvre
draws heavily upon largely unacknowledged self-quotation. In the following notes I have tried to indicate the extent of this self-borrowing. Occasionally Wilde's spelling of names in his texts is not entirely accurate. I have not made any corrections to the text, but in the explanatory notes the correct (or modernized) forms have been used; so, for example, the Venetian hotel in ‘Lord Arthur Savile's Crime' which in the text is spelt ‘Danielli' is silently corrected to ‘Danieli' in the appropriate explanatory note.

References to Wilde's other works are abbreviated as follows:

The Picture of Dorian Gray
, ed. Isobel Murray (Oxford, 1974):
DG
.

Lady Windermere's Fan
, ed. Ian Small (London, 1980):
LWF
.

A Woman of No Importance
, ed. Ian Small (London, 1993):
WNI
.

An Ideal Husband
, ed. Russell Jackson (London, 1980):
IH
.

The Importance of Being Earnest
, ed. Russell Jackson (London, 1993):
I BE
.

Other abbreviations:

Horst Schroeder,
Annotations to Oscar Wilde, ‘The Portrait of Mr. W. H.'
(Braunschweig, 1986):
Annotations.

Oxford English Dictionary: OED
.

1
Dedication
(p.
1
) Carlos Blacker (1859–1928) was an expatriate Englishman who lived mainly abroad, particularly in Paris, and who first met Wilde on his trips there.

1
Charity Children
(p.
3
) The pupils of Charity Schools, institutions supported by endowments and bequests for the education of children of the poor.

2
Sans-Souci
(p.
5
) I.e., without care. ‘sans-Souci' was the name given to King Frederick the Great's Palace in Potsdam.

3
Second Cataract
(p.
7
) This and other details of the journey of the swallow's friends (such as the reference to the Temple of Baalbec, below) are taken from Émile Gautier's poem ‘Ce que disent les hirondelles' in
Émauxs et Camées
.

4
Memnon
(p.
7
) The reference is to the statue of Memnon at Thebes and the legend that it emits musical notes when struck by the rays of the sun.

5
beryls
(p.
7
) Transparent precious pale-green stones.

6
King of the Mountains of the Moon
(p.
9
) The Mountains of the Moon are a range of mountains in what is now Uganda.

7
As he is no longer beautiful, he is no longer useful
(p.
11
) A comment that pointedly refers to a contemporary debate about art and utility. The immediate target is the socialist critic William Morris, who held that the Victorian opposition between utility and beauty was misplaced and that a notion of beauty should embrace utility. Wilde's view of the matter was more succinctly expressed in the ‘Preface' to
DG
: ‘All art is quite useless.'

1
she is all style, without any sincerity
(p.
15
) A contrast which was to find frequent expression in later works; cf. Gwendolen's comment in
I BE
: ‘In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing'(III, 28–9).

2
Echo
(p.
16
) In classical mythology a mountain nymph who possessed only the power to repeat the last words uttered by someone else; see also
note 20
to p. 113.

1
Gilly-flowers… the Flower-de-luce
(p.
25
) Wilde's list of flowers has been chosen more for its verbal picturesqueness than horticultural accuracy. Gilly-flower was a name already out of date in the nine
teenth century, and formerly applied to a variety of flowers, including wallflowers. Shepherds' Purse is a common cruciferous weed (
Capsella bursa pastoris
) with small white flowers. Fair-maids of France are a double-flowered variety of Crowfoot or ranunculus. Ladysmock is a common name for the Cuckoo-flower. Flower-de-luce is an obselete form of fleur-de-lis, a lily.

2
Lots of people act well… thing of the two
(p.
27
) An idea that Wilde used again in ‘The Critic as Artist' in
Intentions
(1891): ‘it is more difficult to talk about a thing than to do it, and… to do nothing is the most difficult thing in the world.'

3
story with a moral… dangerous thing to do
(p.
34
) The Victorian preoccupation with the moral purpose of literature was a constant butt of Wilde's humour. Cf. the ‘Preface' to
DG
: ‘There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book.'

1
Pyrotechnist
(p.
36
) I.e., one skilled in the making of fireworks.

2
Aurora Borealis… more natural
(p.
36
) The Aurora Borealis are the northern lights. Wilde enjoyed playing with concepts of naturalness and artificiality, most famously perhaps in ‘The Decay of Lying', where a sunset is described as a ‘second-rate Turner… with all the painter's faults exaggerated.'

3
Pylotechnic
(p.
38
) A nonce-word.

4
Bengal light
(p.
38
) A firework producing a steady and vivid blue-coloured light, used for signals (
OED
).

5
glee-club
(p.
42
) Singing or musical club.

6
I often have long conversations… I don't understand a single word of what I am saying
(p.
43
) A joke that underwent many repetitions; cf. Lord Goring's exchange with his father in
IH: ‘Lord Caversham
: Do you always really understand what you say, sir?
Lord Goring
: Yes, father, if I listen attentively' (III, 136–7).

7
hard work… whatever to do
(p.
44
) An idea which Wilde polished into an aphorism in ‘Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young': ‘The condition of perfection is idleness'.

8
Gold Stick… Court dignitaries
(p.
45
) The reference is to the gilt rod carried on state occasions by a colonel of the Life Guards.

In the following notes I have drawn extensively upon Horst Schroeder's thorough and informed work of scholarship,
Annotations to Oscar Wilde, ‘The Portrait of Mr. W. H.'
(Braunschweig, 1986). This volume and its companion,
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Portrait of Mr. W.H.' – Its Composition, Publication and Reception
(Braunschweig, 1984) deserve far greater recognition by Wilde scholars in Britain and the United States than has hitherto been the case.

1
Birdcage Walk
(p.
49
) A street on the south of St James's Park, and so one of the fashionable milieux of London that so many of Wilde's characters inhabit.

2
Macpherson, Ireland and Chatterton
(p.
49
) Three literary forgers. James Macpherson (1736–96) published what he alleged were translations of Ossian; William Henry Ireland (1777–1835) forged Shakespeare manuscripts; and Thomas Chatterton (1752–70) forged medieval manuscripts. Wilde had lectured on Chatterton; the manuscript of his talk, ironically and unashamedly plagiarized from the work of others, is in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in the University of California, Los Angeles.

3
to realise one's own personality on some imaginative plane
(p.
49
) This represents one of Wilde's earliest statements of what was to become a central concern in both his critical and creative works – the proposition that the main function of art or criticism or (on some occasions) certain modes of behaviour, such as that exemplified by the dandy, was to express the individual.

4
Cyril Graham
(p.
50
) The name Graham recurs in
LWF
; Wilde's elder son was called Cyril and he used the name again in
Intentions
.

5
François Clouefs later work
(p.
50
) François Clouet (1520–72) was a distinguished French court portraitist. The work of Clouet and his father Jean Clouet, also a portraitist, had been popularized by Le Comte de Laborde in
La Renaissance des arts à la cour de France
in 1855. It was Jean Clouet, rather than (as Wilde implies in his phrase the ‘great Flemish master') François, who was Flemish born.

6
Lord Pembroke
(p.
51
) William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke (1580–1630), was the patron of many poets; he was the dedicatee of the first folio of Shakespeare's work and thought by many to be the ‘Mr. W. H.' of Shakespeare's Sonnets.

7
the Penshurst portraits
(p.
51
) An error. Penshurst was the birthplace of
Sir Philip Sidney. The Wilton portraits of Lord Pembroke (of which Wilde was thinking) are by Daniel Mytens and Van Dyck.

8
Mary Fitton
(p.
51
) A maid of honour to Elizabeth I and mistress of William Herbert; identified in 1886 by Thomas Tyler as the original ‘Dark Lady' of the Sonnets.

9
the playing fields at Eton
(p.
51
) In a saying attributed to the Duke of Wellington, ‘the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton'; Wilde is mocking attributes of character such as earnestness.

10
A.D.C
. (p.
52
) The Amateur Dramatic Company at the University of Cambridge from which (as Wilde indicates later) women were excluded; they continued to be so until well into the twentieth century.

11
better to be good-looking than to be good
(p.
52
) A sentiment which Wilde was to repeat in
DG
: ‘it is better to be beautiful than to be good' (p.
194
).

12
Philistines
(p.
52
) A term used by Matthew Arnold (particularly in 1869 in
Culture and Anarchy
) to identify middle-class values, and adopted by Wilde to denote materialist (and anti-intellectual) British culture.

13
read for the diplomatic
(p.
53
) I.e., for the public examinations for foreign and colonial services. In
WNI
Lord Illingworth refuses a career in diplomacy despite being ‘offered Vienna'.

14
It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal
(p.
53
) Once more a theme that underwent modification and variation and is best known in a speech by Lord Goring to his father in
IH
: ‘I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself' (I, 623–5).

15
overlooking the Green Park
(p.
53
) A location also used in ‘The Critic as Artist' in
Intentions
.

16
Lord Southampton
(p.
54
) Henry Wriothesley (1573–1624), the third Earl of Southampton; like Pembroke, he was a patron of poets, including Shakespeare and, also like Pembroke, he was thought by many to be the subject of Shakespeare's sonnets.

17
Meres
(p.
54
) Francis Meres (1565–1647) who published in 1598
Palladis Tamia, Wit's Treasury
, a history of English literature from Chaucer's time to his own.

18
preface is from the publisher's hand
(p.
55
) The initials ‘T. T.' in the dedication of the Sonnets stand for Thomas Thorpe, in whose name they were entered in the
Stationers' Registers
in 1609.

19
Lord Buckhurst… Mr. Sackville
(p.
55
) Thomas Sackville (1536–1608) became the first Earl of Dorset and Baron Buckhurst in 1567.
Robert Allott's anthology
England's Parnassus
, containing contributions by Sackville (under the initial ‘M.') was published in 1600.

20
Elizabeth Vernon
(p.
55
) Cousin of the second Earl of Essex, Vernon was Southampton's mistress and later his wife.

21
Mr. W. Hall… Mr. W. H. the writer and not the subject of the dedication
(p.
55
) These explanations of the Sonnets had, in fact, been suggested by Shakespearean scholars in the 1850s and 1860s (and in particular by Andrew Brae and Samuel Neill). William Hathaway was Shakespeare's brother-in-law.

22
W. H.… “Mr. William Himself”
(p.
56
) An idea suggested by D. Bamstorff in
Schlüssel zu Shakespeares Sonnetten
in 1860. For details of this idea and many others, Wilde was indebted to Edmund Dowden's
The Sonnets of William Shakespeare
(1881).

23
Drayton
(p.
56
) I.e., the poet Michael Drayton (1563–1631).