Second paragraph of third chapter:
The circumstances of [David] Hunter Blair’s conversion were spectacular. During the winter term of 1875 he obtained leave to study music in Leipzig and from Leipzig proceeded to Rome in time to attend the ceremony at which [Henry] Manning was created a cardinal, on 15 March 1875. Manning was a special hero because of his stern espousal of the doctrine of papal infallibility, which he had recently defended against Gladstone’s charge that it ‘equally repudiated modern thought and ancient history’. Swept away by enthusiasm, Hunter Blair, ten days after the Manning ceremony, was himself received into the Church. He was a notable convert: Archbishop (later Cardinal) [Edward] Howard confirmed him, Pius IX himself blessed him and conferred on him the honorary post of papal chamberlain.
When I was nine years old, the final edition of Burke’s genealogies of noted Irish families was published. The Whytes qualified for entry not for being famous, as we weren’t (apart from one or two notable ancestors in the 16th and 17th centuries) but because we happen to have a genealogy that goes back to the twelfth century, though I suspect that the earliest parts are fake. I noted with very slight interest that the family listed immediately after us in Burke’s had changed their name at some point, and vaguely wondered why. Eventually I found out.
(And, good heavens, they published people’s private addresses back in those days! Merlin Holland, Oscar Wilde’s only grandchild, is still alive aged 80, but has lived in France for many years now.)
Richard Ellmann’s Pulitzer-winning biography of Wilde is pretty comprehensive. It starts with his parents, noted surgeon Sir William Wilde and the revolutionary poet and writer born Jane Elgee but known as Speranza. (Oscar was born at 1 Merrion Square.) 550 heavily footnoted pages take us through the 46 years of Oscar’s life, though it’s clear that there is a lot more to say about him (and some of it has been said).
It’s a story that combines many elements. While still a student at Oxford, Wilde rapidly became famous for being famous, to the point that D’Oyly Carte sent him on a (very enjoyable) lecture tour of America before launching their opera about him, Patience. But he was a genuinely good writer as well; Ellmann goes into some of his work, but I think more could also be said about the extent to which it echoed his life.
Wilde was a posh boy who made a career out of being a posh boy, but intellectually he was genuinely a supporter of socialism, Irish nationalism and revolution. This is what gives the drawing-room comedies their vicious edge; he is echoing back to his English hosts what he actually heard them saying behind the polite niceties.
He very courageously chose martyrdom because of his sexuality. He could have escaped to France, Italy and/or the USA and avoided prosecution. But he chose to stay and face his fate in the courts, though he knew it would probably kill him.
Nancy Mitford (born four years after he died) has a telling observation on his legacy in The Pursuit of Love, in an exchange that would have fitted well into one of Wilde’s own plays:
Linda and I were very much preoccupied with sin, and our great hero was Oscar Wilde.
‘But what did he do?’
‘I asked Fa once and he roared at me – goodness, it was terrifying. He said: “If you mention that sewer’s name again in this house I’ll thrash you, do you hear, damn you?” So I asked Sadie and she looked awfully vague and said: “Oh, duck, I never really quite knew, but whatever it was was worse than murder, fearfully bad. And, darling, don’t talk about him at meals, will you?”’
‘We must find out.’
‘Bob says he will, when he goes to Eton.’
Wilde was witty but not wise; he spent his way through both money and relationships extravagantly. Even the grand love affair with Bosie Douglas, which brought him down, seems to have brought him as much pain as pleasure. He genuinely loved Constance and his sons, but accepted that the consequences of his own choices had parted him from them.
It’s a really interesting book and I recommend it, though I know that scholarship in the last four decades may have advanced our knowledge of Wilde a bit further. You can get it here.
This was my top unread non-fiction book. Next on that pile is H is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald.
We watched the National Theatre production of The Importance of Being Earnest, starring Ncuti Gatwa as Algernon, a few weeks back. I didn’t feel that the stage production transferred to the screen all that well – obviously in live theatre, a lot of the experience is bound up in the audience dynamic with the actors. But Ncuti Gatwa is, as ever, completely magnetic, and Sharon Clarke (who was Grace O’Brien, Graham’s wife / Ryan’s grandmother, in Doctor Who) steals the scene as a very West Indian Lady Bracknell.
Note also Richard Cant, Brian Cant’s son, as Canon Chasuble. The staging more than hints at intense relations between Algernon/Jack on the one hand and Gwendolen/Cecily on the other, and livens it up with music long postdating the original 1895 production. I think the only production of the play that I had seen before was a 1988 BBC version with Joan Plowright and Paul McGann. (But can that be right? I feel it was a bit earlier.)
Anyway, the play itself is very entertaining if just a bit implausible, and although the good lines are front-loaded in the first half, the whole thing is fun.