The Advertiser - Friday, May 10, 1895

AN ERRATIC GENIUS.

The serious charge brought against a person so well known by repute on both sides of the world as Oscar Wilde must have been a severe shock to many, both in London and Paris, who had admitted him to their friendship. From the time when he failed to clear his character in the action brought by him against the Marquis of Queensberry, his name and reputation were covered in the public mind with doubt that could hardly in any case be "lived down." We have already given some details of his career, but there was a certain personal significance about the man hardly capable of being suggested by a mere biographical record. An Irishman by birth, with the wit that seems natural to students of "Trinity, Dublin," an Oxford graduate, and winner of the Newdigate prize for English verse, a traveller experienced in the methods of life more peculiar to Southern Europe, and a French scholar capable of holding his own in any phase of Parisian existence, he was a true cosmopolitan. It was probably the feeling that there was something "un-English" about him that assisted to make him as unpopular as he undoubtedly was with the greater number of his fellow countrymen. He is honored by a special reference in the remarkable work of Dr. Max Nordau on "Degeneracy," lately published; being classed as an "egomaniac," a special variety of the decadent school that has sprung up at the end of the century, "a man who cultivates the moi-même, whose ideal of life is inactivity, and who glorifies art for art's sake." It is possible, however, that the Teutonic pessimist had his views tinged by incorrect information, for he seriously tells us that Wilde has been known to "walk down Pall Mall dressed in doublet and breeches, with a picturesque biretta on his head and a sunflower in his hand, the quasi-heraldic symbol of the Æsthetes." Now, this is about the most extreme step suggested even by Mr. Gilbert's Bunthorne —

Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostle
In the high æsthetic hand,
If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily
In your mediæval hand.

Oscar Wilde was a very young man when he migrated from Oxford to London in 1879, and founded the school now known as "æsthetic" — a good word which has acquired in the mind of the general public a sneering significance which it will probably never lose. The satirists were quick to see their chance. Du Maurier filled the pages of Punch with pictures of Postlethwaite and Maudle, their cheap affectations, their mutual admiration. "The Colonel," a play dealing with the exposure of a humbug of this kind, had a successful run. Finally Gilbert and Sullivan set the whole thing to music, and the æsthetic school, as such, collapsed in a tumult of inextinguishable laughter. None the less, its influence on the artistic side of every-day life has been immense, more particularly in so far as the great middle class is concerned. The sunflower and the peacock's feather have lost their power to please, after being overworked for a long period. But in the matter of furniture and the decoration of the home generally, in appreciation of art at large, the advance from the early and middle Victorian period is something amazing, and to the man now fallen so low much of the credit is due. He was heard of but little for some time after the collapse we have spoken of, though his volume of poems had the distinction of being rejected from their libraries by the Union Societies of both Oxford and Cambridge. It was frankly immoral, no doubt, but not more so than other works which pass muster in these modern days. And then the man who had been so mercilessly satirised asserted himself, and made an entirely new reputation as a satirist, showing an almost unequalled neatness in turning a phrase. It was not likely that he would escape retaliation. The Disraelian method is again becoming popular, and "The Green Carnation" described his friendship with Lord Alfred Douglas under transparent disguise of names. It came out in evidence the other day that one of the most improbable incidents in the book was an actual fact - that the young nobleman on receiving a letter of remonstrance and advice from his father merely replied by telegraph - "What a funny little man you are!"

As to the plays latterly produced by this erratic genius, the instinctive antipathy to the man, almost universal among such as speak with authority, must be borne in mind whenever any critical estimate of his work is considered. His fondness for epigram and brilliant dialogue is well known, and to these accessories his plays owe much of the success which they have in turn achieved. But this is how the matter appears to Mr. Clement Scott, a critic ordinarily sane and sober enough: - "Mr. Wilde has draped the most conventional and commonplace of tales with frippery and furbelows, and opines he is an artist for doing so. As well call a modern house-wife an artist for covering cheap furniture over with Liberty rags and plastering penny-a-yard paper over with French-made Japanese fans and calling it Art." It is true that epigrams have, more especially of late, tended to show a machine-made style, consisting in the mere turning inside-out of some accepted phrase. It is easy enough to say that the old-fashioned respect for the young is dying out, that divorces are made in heaven, that it is always painful to part from people we have only known a short time; but such sayings, though they may sparkle for a moment by reason of the surprise that each gives, will not bear investigation. Far otherwise is it with his really thoughtful epigrams, that require some study before their depth is apparent. The following appeared recently in the Saturday Review. They were not signed, but there can be no doubt of their authorship: - "The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a Truth becomes a Fact it loses all its intellectual value." "The only thing that the artist cannot see is the obvious. The only thing that the public can see is the obvious. The result is the Criticism of the Journalist." "The criminal classes are so close to us that even the policeman can see them. They are so far away from us that only the poet can understand them." "Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." On the other hand, a competition recently promoted by Truth for the production of "Oscarisms" evoked some very creditable imitations by all and sundry of this style of thing. And now the very name of the man is erased from the bills of his own plays. Whatever may be the result of the criminal proceedings pending it is to be feared that the London public has made up its mind, and that a remarkable career has to be considered as closed.