The Fall of the House of Wilde (30 page)

Langtry's simplicity of manner and her apparent need for assurance brought them together in an intimate way. Oscar would lounge around at her house in Pont Street, and often played her amanuensis, acting as her right hand, making excuses for her non-attendance at an event. He also played the gallant gent, a role he found easy, and rarely turned up without a flower. As Langtry tells it, ‘He always made a point of bringing me flowers, but he was not in circumstances to afford great posies, so, in coming to call, he would drop into Covent Garden flower market, buy me a single gorgeous amaryllis (all his slender purse could allow), and stroll down Piccadilly carefully carrying the solitary flower. The scribblers construed this act of homage as a pose, and thus I innocently conferred on him the title “Apostle of the Lily”.'
⁶

And if Oscar's financial circumstances were not flourishing, nor were Langtry's. In October 1880, Edward Langtry was declared bankrupt and his possessions taken. Langtry needed to earn money and Oscar suggested she take up acting. He arranged for her to train with Henrietta Labouchere, who had been an actress and was then preparing potential players. By 15 December 1881, Langtry was ready to play Kate Hardcastle in
She Stoops to Conquer
and she soon became a familiar presence on the London stage, with the Prince of Wales a familiar face in the audience.

Well before this, Oscar had paid her homage in a poem, ‘The New Helen', and had it published in
The Times
in July 1879. In christening Langtry the Helen of Troy of her generation, he helped to seal her remarkable beauty and to bring more celebrity to both of them. Over her lifetime, she inspired such artists as Whistler, Poynter, Watts, Burne-Jones, Leighton and Millais, all of whom painted her portrait. It was from Millais's portrait of Langtry, entitled
The Jersey Lily
, that her nickname originated; thus was her name linked in history with that of her friend Oscar, the ‘Apostle of the Lily'. Among other things, two go-getting émigrés eager to achieve celebrity in London's cultural life made them compatible spirits during these years. Her friendship was an astonishing conquest, and as an aspiring socialite, Oscar could hardly have hitched his ambitions to a better vehicle than the woman considered by many in England to be the most beautiful of her generation. Lillie Langtry would be the inspiration for the as-yet-unconceived Mrs Erlynne in
Lady Windermere's Fan
(1891). Mrs Erlynne is a high-class courtesan who walks a fine line between social elevation and social ostracism. It is that giddy line that fascinates Oscar, in life as in art, as we will see.

Oscar was assiduous in making himself known. He always attended first nights, and cut a conspicuous figure, wearing ‘a brightly coloured waistcoat' and carrying ‘pale lavender' gloves, used not for wear but ‘to give point to his gestures'.
⁷
At this juncture his hands were free of the lighted cigarette that later became a trademark of his appearance. Thus by the time Jane moved to London, in May 1879, he had any number of people to whom he could introduce her. He took her to parties, to the theatre, and invited her to tea at Salisbury Street. He urged his friends to visit his mother. For instance, he wrote in December 1879 to one friend, a Harold Boulton, then still an Oxford undergraduate. ‘Any Saturday you are in London I hope you will call and see my mother who is always at home from five to seven on Saturday. She is always glad to see my friends, and usually some good literary and artistic people take tea with her.'
⁸

Jane was soon writing for
Burlington Magazine
, a monthly publication,
Pall Mall Gazette
, an evening paper with articles of substance on political and social questions and
Queen
, a British society publication established in 1861. From time to time she contributed to the
Lady's Pictorial
, which called itself ‘a newspaper for the home'. She did not write for the weekly reviews, the
Academy
and the
Athenaeum
, the cream of literary criticism – though they did review her books.

Willie joined the staff of a handful of publications –
Vanity Fair
, the
Pelican
, the
Gentlewoman
 – as their drama critic, and he was already writing for
World
, as social columnist. Then, in the early 1880s, he became chief correspondent and leader writer for the
Daily Telegraph
. As contributions were generally unsigned, dates and duration are not certain, so our information comes from memoirists, and what they emphasised was Willie's talent. In
A Pelican's Tale
, on Fleet Street, M. Boyd spoke of Willie's commentary in the
Daily Telegraph
as ‘the best in England'.
⁹
Another of his contemporaries, Leonard Cresswell Ingleby, in his book
Oscar Wilde: Some Reminiscences
, published in 1912, spoke at length of Willie:

Nothing like Willy Wilde's work had ever been done in journalism. It was absolutely sane. There was nothing of the affection, no hint or trace of the paradox or the epigram employed by Oscar. Clear, witty statement every time, and with a pulsing sense of intellect behind it, which most certainly influenced many fortunes when Willy was, par excellence, the journalist of his day.

His ability to write with speed on any subject at short notice was admired by Ingleby:

Upon the staff of the
Daily Telegraph
, in its earlier days, Willie performed the most astonishing feats of writing. He was able to sum up a situation, political or social, in a single moment. He was able, immediately afterwards, to write a column in the body of the paper, or leading article so succinct, so directly to the point, so informed with a sort of lambent, though cynical Irish wit, that the next morning the actual words seemed to stand out from the printed page.
¹⁰

Willie was also an outstanding social columnist. One observer put it thus:

Willie Wilde formulated a paragraph for the World which became the type for society journalism: ‘Baroness Burdett Coutts was in her box with Mr Ashmead Bartlett in attendance; Mr Chamberlain, who was accompanied by his pretty young wife, discoursed of orchids to Archdeacon Sinclair; Mr Theodore Watts brought Mr Swinburne; Miss Braddon outlined her new novel to Sir Edward Lawson; Dr Morell Mackenzie congratulated Sir Edward Clarke on his speech in the Penge mystery trial,' and so on.
¹¹

Willie was putting his experience of the salon at Merrion Square to profitable use.

Oscar also acknowledged Willie's talent. ‘Oscar himself always paid tribute to his brother's brilliant cleverness,' noted one memoirist, ‘and I am not at all certain that, of the two, William Wilde's was not the greater intelligence.'
¹²
Willie was generous in support of Oscar. When Oscar published his first volume of poetry, to which we will return, Willie broadcast it as assiduously as the best of publicity agents. As social gossip columnist of
World
, he published Oscar's
bon mots
and his activities. For instance, when Sarah Bernhardt came to London to play the title role of
Phèdre
, Oscar travelled to Folkestone to welcome her with a bouquet of lilies, and Willie wrote in the
World
of Oscar pouring out his soul at Bernhardt's feet. On another occasion he wrote of Oscar sending Ellen Terry sonnets on her performance of Portia in
The Merchant of Venice
and Henrietta Maria in
Charles I.

Not for Willie, then, the provincial journalist traineeship or the circuitous route that took George Bernard Shaw to the sporting pages as his entrée into journalism. Being told by John Morley, then editor of the
Pall Mall Gazette
, that ‘nobody would pay a farthing for a stroke of [his] pen', did not stop the ambitious, self-educated Shaw from inching his way into journalism. After many years of receiving one rejection after another, Shaw hit upon boxing as a route into his chosen career. Deeming the English more interested in sport than serious politics, he trained as a boxer so he could spread his political views through the sports pages. Shaw made boxing an allegory of capitalism, the ring a place where he could exhibit his Shavian theories on the distribution of income. ‘Paradoxing is a useful rhyme to boxing,' Shaw once told a journalist. Shaw's knowledge of boxing formed part of an armoury that by the end of the 1880s (fourteen years after he left Dublin) was to make him, in Max Beerbohm's opinion, ‘the most brilliant and remarkable journalist in London'.
¹³
The traditionally educated Willie needed no side doors to enter journalism. Nothing in Willie's cosseted and privileged upbringing had given him Shaw's appetite for success, the appetite of the self-made man his father had. Ingleby described Willie as ‘the supreme type of the cultured journalist of the past'.
¹⁴
That was the problem – Willie could not reconcile himself to the rigours of the modern era.

Willie soon earned a reputation for indolence and casualness. In his chronicle of the time,
Pitcher and Paradise
, the author and journalist Arthur Binstead provides a comical sketch of a day in the life of Willie Wilde as leader writer on the
Daily Telegraph
. ‘The journalist life irksome? Dear me, not at all. Take my life as an example.' Willie calls on the editor at noon and suggests a leader on the anniversary of the penny postage stamp.

I may then eat a few oysters and drink half a bottle of Chablis at Sweetings, or, alternatively, partake of a light lunch at this admirable club . . . I then stroll towards the Park. I bow to the fashionable. I am seen along incomparable Piccadilly . . . But meantime I am thinking only of the penny postage stamp . . . I repair to my club. I order out my ink and paper. I go to my room. I am undisturbed for an hour. My pen moves. Ideas flow. The leader on the penny postage stamp is being evolved. Three great, meaty, solid paragraphs, each one third of a column. My ideas flow fast and free. Suddenly someone knocks at the door. Two hours have fled! How time goes! It is an old friend. We are to eat a little dinner at the Café Royal and drop into the Alhambra for the new ballet. The leader is dispatched to Fleet Street.
¹⁵

The impression of Willie as a disengaged journalist, aloof from the pressures of deadlines, is supported by Luther Munday, a family acquaintance. ‘Willie used often to sit until the last minute with his pals around the fire, often at some night club, and get up to rush away and write his leader; the subject (we sometimes suggested it) appeared in the
Daily Telegraph
only a few hours later. Writing came to him quite naturally . . .'
¹⁶
Munday thought he was ‘a born journalist'. He described Willie as ‘impulsive, slovenly in his person & dress, generous, witty, kindhearted to a fault, unconventional & full of courtesy, a stranger to all pedantry & posing, changeable, quick-tempered, and a born journalist'.

A favourite hangout of Willie's was the Spoofs Club, where ‘nobody made the egregious mistake of taking life seriously'. One of its members said of Willie ‘no gentler humourist or more polished gentleman ever entertained the thoughtless patrons of the Spoofs . . .'
¹⁷
And James Holroyd, in his essay ‘Brother to Oscar', confirms Willie's enjoyment of fraternising with like-minded souls: ‘[Willie] established himself among the kind of company which made it a point of honour not to go to bed on the same day they got up'.
¹⁸

Earnestness, the trait most revered by Victorians, was not Willie's strong point. The mania of the age for progressive ideals had not gripped him. He lived at a time when England was teeming with reformers and philanthropists of all descriptions – feminists, rationalists, spiritualists, socialists, atheists, aesthetes – all promulgating ideals, all striving to fill the void with a purpose after Darwin's earthquake. That many replaced duty to God with duty to community was understandable in a London where nearly a third lived in poverty, despite it being the richest city in the world. Shaw turned socialist when he saw London's poverty, and after years of an isolated existence educating himself in the reading rooms of the British Museum, directed his writings to reform. Witnessing the famine had awakened Jane's political conscience, as growing up in the west of Ireland had convinced William that a self-respecting mind, gained from education, was the country's only hope of an independent future. Even Oscar will don the mantle of Aesthetic prophet and reformer. Willie, however, stood aloof from this: he found no cause or creed on which to hang his faith. He showed no desire to turn his knowledge into beliefs or his thoughts into action.

Though Willie and Oscar moved in different social circles, they often attended the theatre together or crossed paths in such places as Willis's in the Strand or the Café Royal, then the epitome of
fin-de-siècle
London. Situated at the end of Nash's gracefully curved Regent Street, the spacious gilded room of the Café Royal, with its mirrors, arabesques and seductive lines, was the favourite destination of artists and émigrés, ‘a meeting place for all the cosmopolitans of Upper Bohemia', as one chronicler of the era put it. Willie, however, looked more the Victorian gent than the bohemian, got up in ‘long braided morning or frock coat' and a ‘wide-brimmed silk hat'. That said, a few drinks could set his hat raffishly at an angle. Not for Willie the meticulous attention to attire Oscar invariably paid, nor did he wear his luxuriant crown of dark-brown hair long like his rebellious brother. He did accentuate his difference from Oscar, though, by growing ‘a heavy pointed beard' and ‘a strangling black moustache', having been teased by friends convinced he could be mistaken for his brother.
¹⁹
That the clean-shaven Oscar did not approve of his brother's facial hair did not affect Willie, who remained unrepentantly bearded.