The Fall of the House of Wilde (40 page)

It is with great hesitation and much misgiving that I appear before you, in the character of The Preacher . . . The people have been harassed with Art in every guise . . . They have been told how they should love Art, and live with it. Their homes have been invaded, their walls covered with paper, their very dress taken to task – until, roused at last, bewildered and filled with doubts and discomforts of senseless suggestion, they resent such intrusion, and cast forth the false prophets, who have brought the very name of the beautiful into disrepute, and derision upon themselves.

No one in the audience would have doubted at whom his criticisms were directed. Whistler's scarcely veiled target for abuse was Oscar who had made the popularisation of art and dress reform his mantra. Distancing himself from Oscar, from Ruskin and the whole jamboree of Aestheticism was Whistler's objective.

Alas! Ladies and gentlemen, Art has been maligned. She has naught in common with such practices . . . purposing in no way to better others.

She is, withal, selfishly occupied with her own perfection only – having no desire to teach – seeking and finding the beautiful in all conditions and in all times. . .

The master stands in no relation to the moment at which he occurs – a monument of isolation – hinting at sadness – having no part in the progress of his fellow men.
¹⁶

Society held no sway over the artist – the artist would produce art for its own sake; so said Whistler, aligning himself with Gautier's creed. Whistler placed himself beyond society, as higher; he was an artist out to please himself. He formulated the doctrine of artist as exile and outsider – he was both. So was Oscar, but he had also become a hack whipping up support for the commercialisation of art, for art in the home, for reform in the way women dressed, bringing, to repeat Whistler, ‘the very name of the beautiful into disrepute, and derision upon [himself]'. Oscar had been ingratiating himself with the public, mollifying them even, whereas Whistler never wavered in his resolve to
épater la bourgeoisie.
This was Whistler's argument and it had at least the merit of accuracy.

Many contemporaries would have said that Whistler achieved his goal with the ‘Ten O'Clock' lecture – it gave him back his sceptre and the eminence and publicity he needed. It was a talk of seminal importance in English art circles, as Whistler clearly articulated a concept of the artist's role in society, as exile and outsider, which would reverberate for generations. It earned him the respect of the eminent art institutions, and he was invited to repeat it at Oxford and Cambridge universities, at the Royal Academy's Students' Club and the Fine Art Society. Enough listeners cared what Whistler had to say about art to make his lecture widely discussed. Critics reviewed it as though it were an exhibition. A laudatory review by Oscar in the
Pall Mall Gazette
on 21 February 1885 declared Whistler's lecture ‘a masterpiece'. He admired the ‘really marvellous eloquence', found amusement in Whistler acting as ‘a miniature Mephistopheles, mocking the majority'. There were, Oscar added,

some arrows, barbed and brilliant, shot off, with all the speed and splendour of fireworks . . . at dilettanti in general, and amateurs in particular, and (
O mea culpa! 
) at dress reformers most of all. Mr Whistler's lecture last night was, like everything else he does, a masterpiece. Not merely for its clever satire and amusing jests will it be remembered, but for the pure and perfect beauty of its many passages – passages delivered with an earnestness which seemed to have amazed those who looked on Mr Whistler as a master of persiflage merely, and had not known him, as we do, as a master of painting also. For that he is indeed one of the very greatest masters of painting, is my opinion. And I may add that in this opinion Mr Whistler himself entirely concurs.
¹⁷

But Oscar was not prepared to concede all ground to Whistler, and if he could not disagree with the content, he could at least dethrone the role of the painter in favour of the poet. He reproached Whistler for crediting the painter with paranormal powers of perceptiveness, and continued,

the poet is the supreme artist, for he is the master of colour and of form, and the real musician besides, and is lord over all life and the arts; and so to the poet beyond all others are the mysteries known; to Edgar Allan Poe and to Baudelaire, not to Benjamin West and Paul Delaroche.
¹⁸

Oscar chose the artists carefully, knowing the admiration Whistler had for Poe and Baudelaire, and not for West and Delaroche. Whistler wrote to Oscar saying he found the review in the
Pall Mall Gazette
‘exquisite', though he was disappointed in ‘the naïveté of “the Poet”' – meaning Oscar – ‘in the choice of his Painters'. Whistler sent his response to the
World
and Oscar's reply was published in the
World
on 25 February 1885.

By the aid of a biographical dictionary I discovered that there were once two painters, called Benjamin West and Paul Delaroche, who recklessly took to lecturing on Art. As of their works nothing at all remains, I conclude that they explained themselves away. Be warned in time, James; and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood.
¹⁹

Oscar pointing out the incongruity of Whistler preaching on art while holding fast to the idea of the artist as aloof from society irritated Whistler. But why Whistler reacted so extremely, only he could answer. Certainly, he resented Oscar's growing prestige in art circles and wanted to emphasise his separation. He saw himself as the true visionary and mocker of the moral majority. He once said to Walter Sickert, ‘funny about Oscar . . . that it should be his fate – in everything to be after me'.
²⁰
Whistler was a master who was hell-bent on destroying his disciple psychologically. Oscar had solicited his aid in 1883 for the Royal Academy lecture, and Whistler made him pay for his dependence by mocking him in public, a classic case of the sadistic master trying to break the spirit of the disciple. This last exchange came close to being a valediction, and social London took care not to have both on the same guest list.

Few people entered Whistler's domain without getting mugged in public, and Oscar was no exception. When in 1886 Whistler was asked to help organise a reformist, anti-Academy national art exhibition, he refused on the basis that critics, among them Harry Quilter and Oscar Wilde, were involved. Declining the invitation, he sent a copy to the
World
, where it was published on 17 November 1886.

I am naturally interested in any effort made among Painters to prove that they are alive – but when I find, thrust in the van of your leaders, the body of my dead 'Arry, (Harry Quilter) I know that putrefaction alone can result. When, following 'Arry, there comes on Oscar, you end in farce, and bring upon yourselves the scorn and ridicule of your confrères in Europe.

What has Oscar in common with Art? Except that he dines at our tables, and picks from our platters the plums for the pudding he peddles in the Provinces.

Oscar – the amiable, irresponsible, esurient Oscar – with no more sense of a picture, than the fit of a coat – has the ‘courage of the opinions' of others!

With 'Arry and Oscar you have avenged the Academy!
²¹

For Whistler to accuse Oscar of insensitivity to all but brass in the domain of art, and to describe him as a critic brave enough only to chant the opinions of others, was bad enough. Placing him alongside the reactionary Harry Quilter was especially offensive, as Oscar saw himself as a utopian reformer. That Whistler insinuated otherwise might have touched a raw nerve in the married Oscar, who had indeed mellowed in his itch to
épater la bourgeoisie.
Oscar, then glumly marking time between reviews and lectures, refrained from challenging Whistler. Oscar was a nurturer of friendship, and grudges and malice did not fare well in the warmth of his circle. All he said in reply was, ‘this is all very sad! With our James, vulgarity begins at home, and should be allowed to stay there.'
²²
As Oscar became more successful, Whistler fumed over the attention being given to him as if oxygen was being sucked out of the air he breathed, and aesthetic questions turned to ad hominem attacks. Drawing caricatures of Oscar became therapeutic exercise for him. In one he depicts Oscar with Whistlerian top hat and stick, and in another as a pig, his body fleshy and bloated. No thaw ever came in their relationship. Whistler would become a revenant in Oscar's life. But a nagging one, I suspect. Whistler had come close to the truth in his description of Oscar as a bourgeois. But did Whistler's public deriding of Oscar as bogus art critic quicken him into action, urge him perhaps to pick up the pen and apply himself to literature, to the form where he had his own inimitable voice?

28

Momentous Changes

Just a year after Oscar and Constance married, Cyril was born, on 5 June 1885. Oscar marvelled over him and Jane dubbed him ‘Prince Cyril' and planned to have a wooden horse at Park Street to amuse him. Jane and Constance had become close companions. Constance often called on Jane, and they attended receptions together. Jane was also often present at Tite Street when Oscar and Constance entertained. But her spirits remained low. She worried about Willie as much as ever. He was now in the habit of starting his day at eleven o'clock ‘at the Landor', a public house, before proceeding to the offices of the
Daily Telegraph.
As Willie turned to drink for consolation, Jane as usual turned to books. Having finished Tolstoy, she wrote, in an undated letter in 1885, ‘I have read it all through – and feel better & stronger after it to face the despair of life.'
¹

Oscar, too, was unsettled. Outstanding debts and overspends on the renovation of Tite Street invaded his brain. In June 1885, he wrote to Godwin, ‘am ill with apprehension'.
²
It was over a disputed bill. What of Constance's inheritance? Her income did not cover the costs they were incurring. She had to borrow money from Otho, and promised to repay the funds with interest. Finances had got so out of control that they tried, unsuccessfully, to let Tite Street. ‘We have given up any hope of being able to let our house,' Constance told Otho, ‘I am afraid we shall still be living here rather too expensively as we neither of us have a notion how to live non extravagantly.'
³

Finances were bleak enough to prompt Oscar to seek a government post, as an inspector of schools. This was not a whimsical fantasy of Oscar's. In 1880, before he went to America, he had put himself forward for a post in education. Nor was his interest in education that odd. Indeed, it is consistent with his evangelical urge to transform contemporary attitudes to the Aesthetic. In Canada, unprompted, he shared his thoughts with a press reporter on education. He had strong opinions on the method of learning, on giving priority to training children to use their senses, not their minds, to apprehend the world. He also spoke about the need to make university education more egalitarian, catering for all classes.
⁴
Bred into his bones was the importance of education as a prerequisite to an independent mind; this had been his parents' view and it was his.

The job did not come his way. He worked instead as a critic for various magazines, including
Pall Mall Gazette
,
Dramatic Review
,
Saturday Review
and the
Speaker
. So large was his output that the posthumous volume of
Reviews
compiled by Robbie Ross came to over 500 pages. Most, but not all, reviews concerned literature. Shortage of funds, however, did not always allow him to be selective. Besides reviews, he wrote essays. The first significant one, ‘Shakespeare and Stage Costume', was published in the May 1885 edition of
Nineteenth Century
. This essay metamorphosed into ‘The Truth of Masks', when Oscar included it in a volume he entitled
Intentions
in 1891.

The essay was prompted by ‘Mary Anderson's Juliet', written by the poet and former viceroy of India Lord Lytton, and published in
Nineteenth Century
in December 1884. Lytton had, in Oscar's words, ‘laid it down as a dogma of art that archaeology is entirely out of place in the presentation of any of Shakespeare's plays, and the attempt to introduce it one of the stupidest pedantries of an age of prigs'. Defending the practice of archaeology, a subject close to his heart, given his father's lifetime devotion to the discipline and his own interest in pursuing it as a field of study, the essay is more a reaction to Lytton's opinions than inspired by any novel thoughts. Indeed, the idea of historical accuracy, using costumes and props from the time the play was set, was a convention in 1880s productions of Shakespeare, and had been at least from the time of W. C. Macready's performances at Covent Garden and Drury Lane in the 1830s. In any event, Oscar thought he had ‘views on archaeology enough to turn Lytton into a pillar of salt', as he put it to Godwin, whose knowledge of historical decor was widely recognised.
⁵
The points Oscar makes in the essay are uncontroversial. More important is the way he changed the essay for its republication in 1891 as ‘The Truth of Masks'.

In the revised version he tried to extricate himself from having supported the notion of historical accuracy, as it would smack too much of the realism and naturalism he had now denounced. Gone is the dry, descriptive title and in its place comes the paradoxical ‘The Truth of Masks', with a subtitle, ‘A Note on Illusion'. The content of the essay remains largely unchanged except that ‘a method of Realism' becomes ‘a method of artistic illusion', though the logic of the argument still holds. Equally important is his desire to claim that in art there is no such thing as ‘a universal truth'. Thus does he append a conclusion to the new version that reads: