12 September 1900

 

I was this morning looking through my edition of Landor's Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, for reasons which now escape me, and there, in the chapter devoted to Porson and Southey, I discovered some of my newspaper cuttings.  It is not my custom to keep such things but I may have placed them there as an addition to Landor's collection.  Most of them were of no account, but something from the San Francisco Tribune pleased me:

 

HE HAS COME: OSCAR WILDE, THE FAMOUS AESTHETE, arrived on the Pioneer Train yesterday morning.  The notorious poet and sunflower addict has come to spread the gospel of BEAUTY through our benighted community.  He is six feet and two inches tall, has a large head and man-size hands.  When asked if he could acquit himself in man-to-man combat he replied he was ready for the noble art as long as our men did not play by Queensberry rules.  When asked his age, he said twenty-seven or thereabouts but he had no memory for unimportant dates.  He told your reporter that he has come to lecture on the HOUSE BEAUTIFUL.  When asked about the MINE BEAUTIFUL, he replied what is Mine is yours, treating us to a specimen of that wit for which he has become famous all over our country ...

 

I cannot go on although, alas, the reporter did.  Here is another cutting, from the Pall Mall Gazette of 1893:

 

Mr Oscar Wilde tells us that he is about to write a new play.  When asked what the subject might be, he replied that it would be a drama of modern married life.  Mr Wilde has changed with the years.  He is no longer the dashing aesthete of former times.  When asked about his present life, he talked about his wife and sons with the utmost gravity.  We are pleased to see this change in Mr Wilde, who has disproved reports that he is a genius mal entendu and has now condescended to grace the English stage with more fruits from his pen ...

 

It is extraordinary the number of clichés which can be hurled into one sentence.  I have found something from the Woman's Age of the same year:

 

We were privileged to be granted an interview with Mr Wilde before the opening night of his new play, A Woman of No Importance.  Mr Wilde entered the smoking room of his charming house in Chelsea and greeted us warmly.  He is a tall, broad man with a large and clean-shaven face.  He has a heavy jaw and thick lips, but his hair is carefully waved and his eyes are deep and expressive.  He was fashionably dressed, wearing a black frock-coat, light-coloured trousers, a brightly flowered waistcoat and a white silk cravat which was fastened with an amethyst pin.  'I would have brought my cane,' he told us, 'but my son has hidden it.  He has a great respect for what is beautiful.'  Mr Wilde has a curious manner of talking, a kind of sing-song voice in which he accentuates the wrong syllables in the sentence....

 

It is wonderful how journalists have an eye only for the obvious.  To bring my life quite 'up to date', here is something from the Gazette of 1895:

 

Oscar Wilde, the so-called gentleman, is to bring a case against the Marquess of Queensberry for defaming his character.  We do not presume to judge of this affair before its culmination in the courts, but suffice it to be said that Wilde's conduct, no doubt befitting of a so-called artist, has given rise to scandalous rumours which it will be in his interest to dispel.  We are not of the party which seeks to find the worst wherever they look, but it is time that modern morals were placed in the light of public gaze and judged for what they are....

 

An interesting collection.