Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 262 pages of information about Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2).

Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 262 pages of information about Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2).

“That’s good,” he cried with a loud unmirthful guffaw. “’Lady Windermere’s Fan’ better than any comedy of Shakespeare!  Ha! ha! ha! ‘more brilliant!’ ho! ho!”

“Yes,” I persisted, angered by his disdain, “wittier, and more humorous than ‘As You Like It,’ or ‘Much Ado.’  Strange to say, too, it is on a higher intellectual level.  I can only compare it to the best of Congreve, and I think it’s better.”  With a grunt of disapproval or rage the great man of the daily press turned away to exchange bleatings with one of his confreres.

The audience was a picked audience of the best heads in London, far superior in brains therefore to the average journalist, and their judgment was that it was a most brilliant and interesting play.  Though the humour was often prepared, the construction showed a rare mastery of stage-effect.  Oscar Wilde had at length come into his kingdom.

At the end the author was called for, and Oscar appeared before the curtain.  The house rose at him and cheered and cheered again.  He was smiling, with a cigarette between his fingers, wholly master of himself and his audience.

“I am so glad, ladies and gentlemen, that you like my play.[10] I feel sure you estimate the merits of it almost as highly as I do myself.”

The house rocked with laughter.  The play and its humour were a seven days’ wonder in London.  People talked of nothing but “Lady Windermere’s Fan.”  The witty words in it ran from lip to lip like a tidbit of scandal.  Some clever Jewesses and, strange to say, one Scotchman were the loudest in applause.  Mr. Archer, the well-known critic of The World, was the first and only journalist to perceive that the play was a classic by virtue of “genuine dramatic qualities.”  Mrs. Leverson turned the humorous sayings into current social coin in Punch, of all places in the world, and from a favourite Oscar Wilde rapidly became the idol of smart London.

The play was an intellectual triumph.  This time Oscar had not only won success but had won also the suffrages of the best.  Nearly all the journalist-critics were against him and made themselves ridiculous by their brainless strictures; Truth and The Times, for example, were poisonously puritanic, but thinking people came over to his side in a body.  The halo of fame was about him, and the incense of it in his nostrils made him more charming, more irresponsibly gay, more genial-witty than ever.  He was as one set upon a pinnacle with the sunshine playing about him, lighting up his radiant eyes.  All the while, however, the foul mists from the underworld were wreathing about him, climbing higher and higher.

FOOTNOTES: 

[10] Cfr.  Appendix:  “Criticisms by Robert Ross.”

CHAPTER X

    Thou hast led me like an heathen sacrifice,
    With music and with fatal pomp of flowers,
    To my eternal ruin.—­Webster’s The White Devil.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.