The Eighteen Nineties by Holbrook Jackson — Read

The singularity of Oscar Wilde has puzzled writers since his death quite as much as it puzzled the public during the startled years of his wonderful visit to these glimpses of Philistia; for after all that has been written about him we are no nearer a convincing interpretation of his character than we were during the great silence which immediately followed his trial and imprisonment. Robert H. Sherard's _Oscar Wilde: The Story of an Unhappy Friendship_, throws the clear light of sincerity and eloquence upon his own and his subject's capacity for friendship, but little more than that; André Gide has created a delightful, literary miniature which must always hang on the line in any gallery of studies of Oscar Wilde, but his work is portraiture rather than interpretation. For the rest, we have to be content with such indications of character as may be obtained from the numerous critical essays which have been published during the last few years, notable among them being Arthur Ransome's fine study, and the always wise commentations of Wilde's literary executor and editor, Robert Ross, and the notes and collectanea of Stuart Mason. But whatever ultimate definition his character may assume in future biography, and however difficult such definition may be, it is not so hard to define Oscar Wilde's position and influence during the last decade of the nineteenth century, and what proved to be as well the last decade of his own life.

In the year 1889 Oscar Wilde might have passed away without creating any further comment than that which is accorded an eccentric poet who has succeeded in drawing attention to himself and his work by certain audacities of costume and opinion. His first phase was over, and he had become an outmoded apostle of an estheticism which had already taken the place of a whimsically remembered fad, a fad which, even then, almost retained its only significance through the medium of Gilbert and Sullivan's satirical opera, _Patience_. He was the man who had evoked merriment by announcing a desire to live up to his blue-and-white china; he was the man who had created a sort of good-humoured indignation by expressing displeasure with the Atlantic Ocean: "I am not exactly pleased with the Atlantic," he had confessed. "It is not so majestic as I expected"; and whose later dissatisfaction with Niagara Falls convinced the United States of America of his flippancy: "I was disappointed with Niagara. Most people must be disappointed with Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest if not the keenest disappointments in American married life. " These sayings were beginning to be remembered dimly, along with the picturesque memories of a plum-coloured velveteen knickerbocker suit and a famous stroll down Bond Street as a form of esthetic propaganda by example. This memory also was aided by W. S. Gilbert: