The Fall of the House of Wilde (69 page)

13.
Letter from Willie Wilde to Oscar Wilde, William Andrews Clark Library.

14.
Tipper,
Lady Jane Wilde's Letters to Oscar Wilde
, p. 88.

15.
Letter from Willie Wilde to Oscar Wilde, William Andrews Clark Library.

16.
Tipper,
Lady Jane Wilde's Letters to Oscar Wilde
, p. 73.

17.
O'Brien,
Oscar Wilde: an apostle for the arts
, p. 140.

18.
Tipper,
Lady Jane Wilde's Letters to Oscar Wilde
, p. 75.

19.
Ibid., pp. 88–90.

24: ‘Mr Oscar Wilde is “not such a fool as he looks”'

1.
O'Brien,
Oscar Wilde: an apostle for the arts
, p. 56.

2.
Mikhail,
Oscar Wilde: Interviews and Recollections
, vol. I, p. 83.

3.
O'Brien,
Oscar Wilde: an apostle for the arts
, pp. 107, 57.

4.
Mikhail,
Oscar Wilde: Interviews and Recollections
, vol. I, p. 84.

5.
Ibid., pp. 82–6.

6.
O'Brien,
Oscar Wilde: an apostle for the arts
, p. 103.

7.
Ibid., pp. 107–8.

8.
Ibid., pp. 123–4.

9.
Ibid., p. 120.

10.
Ibid., p. 140.

11.
Mikhail,
Oscar Wilde: Interviews and Recollections
, vol. I, pp. 108–9.

25: Marriage: A Gold Band Sliced in Half

1.
Tipper,
Lady Jane Wilde's Letters to Oscar Wilde
, pp. 88, 95–6.

2.
Ibid., pp. 78, 74, 90.

3.
Robert Sherard,
Oscar Wilde: The Story of an Unhappy Friendship
, London, 1905, p. 71.

4.
Robert Sherard,
The Real Oscar Wilde
, London, 1917, p. 67.

5.
Sherard,
The Story of an Unhappy Friendship
, p. 20.

6.
Sherard,
The Real Oscar Wilde
, pp. 22–5.

7.
Sherard,
The Story of an Unhappy Friendship
, p. 58, 35.

8.
Ibid., p. 43.

9.
Ibid., p. 31.

10.
Ibid., p. 267.

11.
Wilde's notes, see Ellmann,
Oscar Wilde
, p. 203.

12.
Sherard,
The Story of an Unhappy Friendship
, pp. 17–19, 23.

13.
Hart-Davis,
The Letters of Oscar Wilde
, p. 145.

14.
‘The Sphinx',
The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde
, pp. 833–42, 833, 835.

15.
Ibid., pp. 841, 836.

16.
Hart-Davis,
The Letters of Oscar Wilde
, pp. 135–6.

17.
Ellmann,
Oscar Wilde
, p. 212.

18.
Tipper,
Lady Jane Wilde's Letters to Oscar Wilde
, pp. 75, 91.

19.
Moyle, F.,
Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs Oscar Wilde
, London, 2012, p. 45. Moyle gives an excellent account of Constance's background, from which I have drawn.

20.
Ibid., p. 4.

21.
Ibid., p. 27; Letters to Otho Lloyd Holland, MSS collection of Merlin Holland, quoted in ibid., pp. 46, 47.

22.
Ibid., pp. 45, 14, 27, 46, 47.

23.
Melville,
Mother of Oscar
, p. 179.

24.
Hart-Davis,
The Letters of Oscar Wilde
, p. 155.

25.
British Library (BL), Eccles Centre for American Studies, MS 18690.

26.
Hart-Davis,
The Letters of Oscar Wilde
, p. 153.

27.
BL, Eccles MS 81690.

28.
William Andrews Clark Library; see Moyle for details of marriage contract.

29.
Hart-Davis,
The Letters of Oscar Wilde
, p. 153.

30.
Ellmann writes of Oscar having made two earlier proposals, one to Violet Hunt, supposed to have been made around 1880, but Hunt says nothing about it in her autobiography,
The Flurried Years
(1926); the second proposal Ellmann refers to was to Charlotte Montefiore, whose brother Oscar knew from Oxford, but again the only evidence is hearsay. Ellmann rightly mentions Florence Balcombe, whom Oscar met in Dublin when he was twenty and she was seventeen. She was beautiful and he admired her, but nothing serious developed and she subsequently married Bram Stoker.

31.
Sherard,
The Story of an Unhappy Friendship
, p. 91.

32.
Hart-Davis,
The Letters of Oscar Wilde
, p. 154.

33.
BL Eccles MS 81690.

34.
Ibid.

35.
Quoted in Moyle,
Constance
, pp. 81, 85.

36.
Tipper,
Lady Jane Wilde's Letters to Oscar Wilde
, p. 105.

37.
Letter to Oscar Wilde, William Andrews Clark Library.

38.
Letter to Nellie Hutchinson from Otho Lloyd, Holland family private papers, quoted in Melville,
Mother of Oscar
, p. 182.

39.
Tipper,
Lady Jane Wilde's Letters to Oscar Wilde
, p. 101.

40.
Letter to Rosalie Olivecrona, National Library of Ireland.

41.
Letters to Lotten
, pp. 63–5.

42.
Tipper,
Lady Jane Wilde's Letters to Oscar Wilde
, pp. 100–3.

43.
Willie Wilde, ‘A Witless Thing', in
World
, 24 October 1883. Scrapbook, belonging to Stuart Mason's
Bibliography of Oscar Wilde
, ‘once belonging to Lady Wilde', in Robert Ross Memorial Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford.

44.
Tipper,
Lady Jane Wilde's Letters to Oscar Wilde
, p. 106.

45.
Sherard,
The Story of an Unhappy Friendship
, p. 98.

46.
Quoted in Moyle,
Constance
, p. 87.

26: ‘The Crushes'

1.
Michael Holroyd,
George Bernard Shaw
, London, 1988, vol. I, p. 100.

2.
George Bernard Shaw,
My Memories of Oscar Wilde
, included in Harris,
Oscar Wilde
, p. 330.

3.
‘Suitability of Dress',
Social Studies
, pp. 108–22.

4.
Harris,
Oscar Wilde
, p. 49.

5.
Melville,
Mother of Oscar
, p. 158.

6.
Katharine Tynan,
Twenty-five Years: Reminiscences
, London, 1913, p. 127.

7.
Cockran, H.,
Celebrities and I,
London, 1902, p. 137.

8.
‘Suitability of Dress',
Social Studies
, pp. 117–18.

9.
Comtesse de Brémont,
Oscar Wilde and His Mother
, pp. 41, 42.

10.
Ibid., p. 45.

11.
Ibid., pp. 43–6.

12.
Ibid., p. 47.

13.
Ibid., pp. 54, 47.

14.
Ibid., p. 55.

15.
Ibid., p. 49.

16.
Ibid., pp. 62, 65.

17.
Ibid., p. 53.

18.
Harris,
Oscar Wilde
, p. 49.

19.
Ibid., p. 61.

27: Aesthetic Living

1.
Comtesse de Brémont,
Oscar Wilde and His Mother
, pp. 65–9.

2.
Ruskin, Tennyson, Pater quoted in S. Calloway and F. Orr (eds),
The Cult of Beauty
, London, 2011, p. 90.

3.
Calloway and Orr,
Cult of Beauty
, p. 93.

4.
Mikhail,
Oscar Wilde: Interviews and Recollections
, vol. I, p. 4.

5.
Whistler, quoted in Calloway and Orr,
Cult of Beauty
, p. 101.

6.
Weintraub, S.,
Whistler: A Biography
, London, 1974, p. 294.

7.
Harris,
Oscar Wilde
, pp. 37–8.

8.
Weintraub,
Whistler
, p. 3.

9.
Hart-Davis,
The Letters of Oscar Wilde,
p. 135.

10.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
, see
The Epigrams of Oscar Wilde
, London, 1952, p. 142.

11.
Weintraub,
Whistler
, p. 291.

12.
Ibid., p. 294.

13.
Ibid., p. 289.

14.
Ibid., pp. 295–6.

15.
Ibid., p. 298.

16.
Ibid., pp. 298–300.

17.
‘Mr Whistler's Ten O'Clock', Ellmann,
The Artist as Critic
, p. 14.

18.
Ibid., p. 16.

19.
Hart-Davis,
The Letters of Oscar Wilde
, p. 171.

20.
Weintraub,
Whistler
, p. 303.

21.
Ibid., p. 303.

22.
Hart-Davis,
The Letters of Oscar Wilde
, p. 191.

28: Momentous Changes

1.
Tipper,
Lady Jane Wilde's Letters to Oscar Wilde
, pp. 109–10.

2.
Hart-Davis,
The Letters of Oscar Wilde
, p. 177.

3.
Quoted in Moyle,
Constance
, p. 124.

4.
O'Brien,
Oscar Wilde:
an apostel for the arts
, p. 58.

5.
Hart-Davis,
The Letters of Oscar Wilde
, pp. 177, 176.

6.
Ellmann,
The Artist as Critic
, p. 432.

7.
Harris,
Oscar Wilde
, pp. 284–5.

8.
Ibid., p. 270.

9.
Ibid., pp. 271, 282.

10.
Hart-Davis,
The Letters of Oscar Wilde
, pp. 180–1.

11.
‘petal by petal', a phrase used by Oscar for reading poetry, Hart-Davis,
The Letters of Oscar Wilde
, p. 190.

12.
Hart-Davis,
The Letters of Oscar Wilde
, pp. 247, 245.

13.
‘The Critic as Artist', in Ellman,
The Artist as Critic
, p. 166.

14.
Hart-Davis,
The Letters of Oscar Wilde
, p. 245.

15.
Harris,
Oscar Wilde
, p. 69.

29: Colonial Resistance

1.
Vyver, B.,
Memoirs of Marie Corelli
, London, 1930.

2.
Wilde,
Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland: with Sketches of the Irish Past
, pp. 14–15, 2, 11–13, 17.

3.
Athenaeum
, 27 August 1887;
Academy
, 14 May 1887.

4.
Lady Wilde,
Ancient Cures, Charms, and Usages of Ireland: Contributions to Irish Lore
, London, 1890, pp. 234, 239, 241, 242.

5.
Athenaeum
, 29 March 1890.

6.
Letter from Ward and Downey, William Andrews Clark Library.

7.
Spencer, quoted in E. W. Said,
Culture and Imperialism
, London, 1994, p. 268.

8.
Academy
, 27 September 1890.

9.
William Butler Yeats,
The Poems
, ‘The Tower', London, 1990, p. 241.

10.
A Critic in Pall Mall
, reviewed in
Woman's World
, February 1889 by Oscar Wilde, pp. 152–3.

11.
Horace Reynolds (ed.), William Butler Yeats,
Letters to the New Island
, Oxford, 1934, pp. 17–18.

12.
John Kelly (ed.), William Butler Yeats,
The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats
, vol. I, 1865–95, Oxford, 1986, p. 87.

13.
Yeats,
Letters to the New Island
, pp. 76–7, 19.

14.
‘Irish Minstrelsy', in Wilde,
Ancient Cures, Charms, and Usages of Ireland
, pp. 169–79.

15.
Letter to Charles Gavan Duffy, National Library of Ireland.

16.
Moyle,
Constance
, p. 157.

17.
Letter to Charles Gavan Duffy, National Library of Ireland.