The Fall of the House of Wilde (55 page)

The Importance of Being Earnest
, and its subtitle, ‘a trivial comedy for serious people' is Oscar's riposte to the Victorian zeitgeist. What do these modern, fickle, inconstant, degenerate aristocrats, Algernon and Jack, care for seriousness, sincerity or work, with a quality cigarette, a smoking suit, a walking cane, silk gloves and the promise of late-night supper at the Savoy? Lightness, cheerfulness, frivolity, irony – art saying yes to the world. One critic described it as a ‘
rondo capriccioso
, in which the artist's fingers run with crisp irresponsibility up and down the keyboard of life . . . imitating nothing, representing nothing, meaning nothing'.
⁹
Oscar was settling accounts with the earnest sincerity of an earlier age with an extravagant triviality. He was Aristophanes in modern guise.

The Importance of Being Earnest
expects us to see the society at its centre as unbelievable. Jack is found in a handbag, making his lineage unknown, displaying, as Lady Bracknell said, ‘a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life'.
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Lady Bracknell herself cannot recall the first name of her brother-in-law and asks her nephew, Algernon, to search for his name in the published lists of dead generals. The leading men – Algernon and Jack – are never safely one person or another. Jack is known as Ernest in town and Algernon as Ernest in the country. The women also – the Hon. Gwendolen Fairfax, Cecily Cardew and Lady Bracknell – are artificial, slightly cartoonish. Gwendolen tells her suitor, Jack, ‘You look as if your name is Ernest.' Jack thinks the name does not ‘suit' him at all, but Gwendolen insists it does: ‘It suits you perfectly.'
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The language is one of fashion, fit and image. The characters are flat, like façades. They are masks.

The play trivialises the social symbolic rituals of courtship, marriage and baptism – turns them into a farce. Jack and Algernon are willing to be baptised ‘Ernest' to satisfy Gwendolen and Cecily, both of whom have always nursed a penchant for this most fashionable of names. Marriage, around which the play ostensibly revolves, has lost its romance. The widowed Lady Harbury, for example, ‘looks quite twenty years younger' since her husband's death. And Lady Bracknell uses the language of commodification, and of investment and return, to size up the eligibility of Jack for her daughter, Gwendolen, and of Cecily for her nephew, Algernon.

Money is an issue in the play. Oscar pours his anguish about money into Algernon. He made of Algernon a profligate dandy, aimless, feckless and impulsive. Nothing can satisfy his insatiable demand for pleasure and sensation. He consumes his pâté de foie gras and 1889 champagne as though it were bread and water. Marriage to Cecily is a ruse to alleviate debt. Act two is given over to the financial consequences of extravagant living and includes an attempt to commit Algernon to Holloway Prison, generating his famous remark, ‘I really am not going to be imprisoned in the suburbs for having dined in the West End.' Oscar also puts into Jack's mouth the words of a stern father dealing with a wayward child, ‘This proposed incarceration [in Holloway] might be most salutary.'
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Bunburying is given much attention in the play, and signifies more than fine dining. It is about ‘Late Night Suppers' and hiring a ‘suite' at the Savoy. Though the cues are fragmentary and opaque, prostitution is what bunburying signifies. Bunburying is Dionysian wildness, ecstasy, being on the edge of the human, out of place, losing one's stance on the ground and being nameless, as in Jack/Ernest and Algernon/Ernest. The point of bunburying is its exit from categories. This presence of prostitution – thinly disguised in the play – is something critics did not mention in 1895. One can only speculate as to why Oscar chose to draw attention to it at a time when he was the subject of gossip, and, occasionally, social ostracism. He may have thought joking about it had the duel benefit of killing off the rumours, and thus making it harder for those ready to damage him, on the basis that there is no point when the victim has named himself. Whatever the reason, this urge to betray himself was there from his earliest work.

In September 1894, while Oscar was still in Worthing, a book called
The Green Carnation
was published anonymously. It depicted Oscar and Douglas as Esme Amarinth and Lord Reginald Hastings, whose zealous interest in young boys is scarcely masked. Widespread gossip ensued. Oscar soon discovered the author to be Robert Smythe Hichens, a man Douglas had met in Cairo.
The Green Carnation
was a huge success for this first-time author, who saw his book reprinted four times by 1895. According to his biographer, Harris, ‘“The Green Carnation” ruined Oscar Wilde's character with the general public. On all sides the book was referred to as confirming the worst suspicions.'
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Worse,
Punch
, on 10 November 1894, continued the damning sketch in a cartoon entitled ‘Two Decadent Guys: A Colour Study in Green Carnations', in which Oscar and Douglas were drawn as Guy Fawkes dummies, bound and ready to be burned. The caption leaves little to the imagination: ‘See Raggie, here come our youthful disciples! Do they not look deliciously innocent and enthusiastic? I wish though, we could contrive to imbue them with something of our own lovely limpness.'

This embarrassing publicity affected Constance by making her marriage look ridiculous. The day the cartoon appeared, she reached for Georgina: ‘I am very distraught and worried, and no one can help me. I can only pray for help from God, and that I seem now to spend my time in doing: some time I trust that my prayers will be answered – but when or how I don't know. Destroy this letter please.'
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Constance had returned to London in September while Oscar and Douglas stayed on in Worthing. Douglas soon grew tired of Worthing and insisted they go to Brighton. Oscar consented. Douglas caught a bout of influenza. Oscar waited upon him night and day, and ordered fruit, flowers, presents and books for him. Oscar then caught the bug, and Douglas repaid the kindness with impatience and left for London on the pretext of some business matter. He returned a day later than expected, having left Oscar unable to fetch the milk and medicine prescribed by the doctor. When Oscar charged Douglas with selfishness, he received a barrage of abuse. Worse, Douglas went to the Grand Hotel in Brighton and stayed at Oscar's expense, returning in a rage, uttering ‘every hideous word' imaginable and accusing Oscar of having selfish expectations, ‘of standing between [him] and [his] amusements'. Douglas had only come back to change into his dress clothes, and returned to the flat again the next morning, sullen and silent, grabbed his suitcase and left, but not before taking all the money he could find lying around. A few days later, on Oscar's fortieth birthday, 16 October 1894, a letter arrived from Douglas. It was not, as Oscar expected, a letter of remorse, but one of insult. Seeing Oscar sick, Douglas said, was ‘
an ugly moment
', [Oscar's italics] ‘
uglier than you imagine'.
He added, ‘
When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting. The next time you are ill I will go away at once.
'
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Oscar resolved, once again, to give Douglas up for good.

But then, on 19 October 1894, when Oscar was returning to London, he saw the announcement of the death of Douglas's eldest brother, Francis, Viscount Drumlanrig, in the morning paper. A hunting accident was reported but suicide was suspected. Drumlanrig may have been the target of blackmail, as there were rumours that he was in a homosexual relationship with Lord Rosebery, then the minister for foreign affairs, and later prime minister. Oscar at once forgot his wound, and thought only of what Douglas might be suffering. And so their affair recommenced.

38

‘It is said that Passion makes one think in a circle'

Oscar returned to London and took rooms at the Avondale Hotel, Piccadilly. Douglas joined him and ran up an exorbitant bill. More and more, companionship with Douglas was crowding out Oscar's life, and Jane felt the absence of her peripatetic son.

Willie's new wife, Lily Lees, was now living at Oakley Street. Jane had come to terms with Willie's marriage to Lily, had indeed grown to appreciate his wife's good-natured temperament. In a letter to Oscar on 27 December 1894, she wrote, ‘Willie and his wife go on very well here. [She] is sensible & active in arranging in the house & very good tempered.' Jane herself had been unwell, but true to her stoical creed, she spent most of the day reading – reading ‘with avidity' French books Oscar had given her. She was seventy-three, and still kept abreast of what was being published. She gave the brouhaha over
The Green Carnation
her undivided attention. She read the book as soon as it was published in September, and if this celebration of homosexuality awoke suspicions, she kept them to herself, as her response to Oscar indicates. ‘I have read The Green Carnation! Very clever & not ill-natured. It is very amusing altogether.' Jane trusted in Oscar's ability to fend off criticism, and, along with Willie, delighted in the letter of defence Oscar sent to the
Pall Mall Gazette
, ‘thought it so cleverly sarcastic'.
¹
A part of Jane thought Oscar invincible.

More than ever, Jane was living from hand to mouth. In September 1894, she had written to Oscar, ‘I am in a very unhappy condition without a shilling in the world . . . Dare I ask for a little help?' And ‘I know it is dreadful to ask you to give or lend me money – But I am helpless – £5 or £10 would be a salvation to me. Can I ask you for any money like this amount?' She wrote again to Oscar on 6 November, ‘I have not a six pence in the house & numerous claims. Mr Smyly has promised a cheque [from Moytura] but none has come & I am at present only living on loans from Mrs Faithful [Jane's maid]. It is dreadful to ask you for money, but if I had £20 I might get on – & be able to pay you some back, should Smyly send anything.'
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Any response from Oscar was met with effusive appreciation. On the receipt of £15 from Oscar in December 1894, she wrote, ‘You are always good & kind & generous, & have ever been my best aid & comforter.' That Christmas Oscar sent his mother one luxury after another – a rug, a pillow, a shawl. ‘I am overwhelmed,' she wrote in response. ‘I never had so many pretty & useful things given to me before, & all so eloquent of your consideration for me. I am indeed truly grateful & proud of my son. Your visit was charming yesterday & I trust all will go well with the new play. I am very proud of your success, & very proud to call you my son. Ever dear Oscar, Your grateful and loving Madre, Francesca.'
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She did not seek sympathy for her condition – it was not in her nature to be self-indulgent.

Although
An Ideal Husband
was written and completed in the autumn of 1893, it was not produced until January 1895. As ever, the opening filled Oscar with anguish. When worried he became ill. Constance enlarges upon this in letters. ‘Oscar is very unwell,' Constance told Georgina in early December, ‘and altogether we are terribly worried . . . but I hope that Oscar is going to make something by this play, alas I doubt it, for he is so depressed about it.'
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Oscar was never as blasé as he appeared to the public.
An Ideal Husband
opened on 3 January 1895 at the Haymarket, and the public loved it. Their applause called for the author and Oscar appeared before a distinguished gathering including, once again, the Prince of Wales, Balfour and Joseph Chamberlain.

Relieved, Oscar left London with Douglas on 17 January for Algiers, where he stayed until 3 February. Constance had become a hostage to illness, left immobile after a fall down the stairs, but that did not figure in his plans. Neither did he stay and preside over rehearsals for
The Importance of Being Earnest
, as he once would have done. This time he left it in the hands of George Alexander.

In Algiers Oscar crossed paths with André Gide, whose homosexual life had begun. What Gide saw was an Oscar bloated with success. ‘One felt there was less tenderness in his looks, that there was something harsh in his laughter, and a wild madness in his joy.'
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‘He went to pleasure as one marches to duty,' wrote a disapproving Gide. He saw a ‘conceited Oscar', with little interest in anything other than pleasing himself.
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Gone was the younger Oscar who had taken such interest in him. For Gide, it appears, Oscar's life had become some kind of perversion of
carpe diem
, seizing the day only to leave himself always dissatisfied, wanting more, so immune had he become to pleasure through excess. Equally disappointing for Gide was his loss of ambition. ‘I am running away from art,' he told Gide, ‘I want to worship only the sun.'
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Oscar bragged about how easily he could write these plays.
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The takings and the applause for a performance was what mattered now. So what if it was largely the applause of the bourgeoisie, whose opinion he did not respect? He was holding a mirror up to society so it could laugh at itself – little did he expect it would soon be laughing at him.

Oscar returned to London and once again Queensberry occupied his thoughts. This time he planned to disrupt the opening performance of
The Importance of Being Earnest
at St James's on 14 February. Oscar got wind of his ruse and asked George Alexander to invalidate his ticket. Also, together with Alexander, he appealed to Scotland Yard, which arranged for twenty police ‘to guard the theatre'. So when Queensberry turned up as planned, with one of his heavyweights in tow, he was refused access. Not a man easily deterred, ‘he prowled about for three hours, then left chattering like a monstrous ape', according to Oscar, but not before leaving a gift for the author of the play – a bouquet of rotting vegetables.
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