The weather is charming, Florrie more lovely than ever, and I am going to give two lectures on Greece to the Alexandra College girls here, so I am rapidly forgetting the Boeotian αυαισθησια [insensibility] of Allen and the wretched time-serving of that old woman in petticoats, the Dean.
As I expected, all my friends here refuse to believe my story, and my brother who is down at Moytura at present writes me a letter marked ‘Private’ to ask ‘what it really is all about and why have I been rusticated’, treating my explanations as mere child’s play.
I hope you will write and tell me all about the College, who is desecrating my rooms and what is the latest scandal.
When Dunskie comes tell him to write to me and remember me to Dick and Gussy and little Dunlop and everyone you like or I like. Ever yours
OSCAR
I am going down I hope for my May fishing soon, but I am overwhelmed with business of all kinds.
Get Aurora Leigh by Mrs Browning and read it carefully.
To Lord Houghton
[Circa 17 May 1877] 1 Merrion Square North
Dear Lord Houghton, Knowing your love and admiration for John Keats I venture to send you a sonnet which I wrote lately at Rome on him: and should be very glad to know if you see any beauty or stuff in it.
Someway standing by his grave I felt that he too was a Martyr, and worthy to lie in the City of Martyrs. I thought of him as a Priest of Beauty slain before his time, a lovely Sebastian killed by the arrows of a lying and unjust tongue.
Hence – my sonnet. But I really have other views in writing to you than merely to gain your criticism of a boyish poem.
I don’t know if you have visited Keats’s grave since a marble tablet in his memory was put up on the wall close to the tomb. There are some fairly good lines of poetry on it, but what is really objectionable in it is the bas-relief of Keats’s head – or rather a medallion profile, which is extremely ugly, exaggerates his facial angle so as almost to give him a hatchet-face and instead of the finely cut nostril, and Greek sensuous delicate lips that he had, gives him thick almost negro lips and nose.
Keats we know was lovely as Hyakinthos, or Apollo, to look at, and this medallion is a very terrible lie and misrepresentation. I wish it could be removed and a tinted bust of Keats put in its place, like the beautiful coloured bust of the Rajah of Koolapoor at Florence. Keats’s delicate features and rich colour could not be conveyed I think in plain white marble.
In any case I do not think this very ugly thing ought to be allowed to remain: I am sure a photograph of it could easily be got, and you would see how horrid it is.
Your influence and great name could achieve anything and everything in the matter, and I think a really beautiful memorial might be erected to him. Surely if everyone who loves to read Keats gave even half-a-crown, a great sum of money could be got for it.
I know you always are engaged in Politics and Poetry, but I feel sure that with your name at the head of the list, a great deal of money would be got: in any case the ugly libel of Keats could be taken down.
I should be very glad to hear a line from you about it, and feel sure that you will pardon my writing to you on the subject. For you are fitted above all others to do anything for Keats’s memory.
I hope we will see you again in Ireland: I have very pleasant memories of some delightful evenings passed in your society. Believe me yours truly
OSCAR WILDE
Oscar turned the spare time on his hands to good account. Apart from writing to Lord Houghton about Keats (which gained him a valuable letter of introduction when he went to America four years later) he penned his first piece of art criticism on the Grosvenor Gallery and had it published by the Dublin University Magazine. If the pleasure he took in this was somewhat soured by the death that summer of his ‘cousin’, Henry Wilson (actually one of Sir William’s three illegitimate children), it was later increased by the notice which Walter Pater took of the copy of the review which Wilde had calculatingly sent him.
To Keningale Cook
[May-June 1877] 1 Merrion Square North
I return proof. What I meant by two proofs was one with your marginal corrections for my guide, the other plain, but of course both from the same type. Naturally, one of the great sorrows of youthful artists is that they always ‘expurgate’ bits of their articles, the very bits that they think best. However, I am glad to get the article published in your July number before the Gallery closes. Please have all my corrections attended to. Some of them are merely ‘style’ corrections, which, for an Oxford man, must be always attended to. As regards the additions, they are absolutely necessary, and as I intend to take up the critic’s life, I would not wish the article published without them. I would sooner pay for the proof and publish elsewhere.
(I) I and Lord Ronald Gower and Mr Ruskin, and all artists of my acquaintance, hold that Alma-Tadema’s drawing of men and women is disgraceful. I could not let an article signed with my name state he was a powerful drawer.
(2) I always say I and not ‘we’. We belongs to the days of anonymous articles, not to signed articles like mine. To say ‘we have seen at Argos’ either implies that I am a Royal Personage, or that the whole staff of the DUM visited Argos. And I always say clearly what I know to be true, such as that the revival of culture is due to Mr Ruskin, or that Mr Richmond has not read Aeschylus’s Choephoroe. To say ‘perhaps’ spoils the remark.
(3) I have been obliged to explain what I mean by imaginative colour, and what Mr Pater means by it. We mean thought expressed by colour such as the sleep of Merlin being implied and expressed in the colour. I do not mean odd, unnatural colouring. I mean ‘thought in colour’.
(4) I think Mr Legros’s landscape very smudgy and the worst French style. I cannot say it is bold or original – and I wish my full remarks on Mr Whistler to be put in (as per margin). I know he will take them in good part, and besides they are really clever and amusing. I am sorry you left out my quotation from Pater at the end. However, I shall be glad to get a second proof before you go to press with my corrections. I am afraid you would find my account of our ride through Greece too enthusiastic and too full of metaphor for the DUM.
When I receive the second proof I am going to have small notes of the article appearing in DUM by me sent to the Oxford booksellers. I know it would have a good sale there and also here if properly advertised, but for the past year the articles have been so terribly dull in the DUM that people require to be told beforehand what they are to get for 2/6.
I hope we will come to terms about this article – and others. Believe me I am most anxious to continue my father’s connection with the DUM which, I am sure, under your brilliant guidance will regain its lost laurels. Yours truly
OSCAR WILDE
To Reginald Harding
[Circa 16 June 1877] 1 Merrion Square North
My dear Kitten, Many thanks for your delightful letter. I am glad you are in the midst of beautiful scenery and Aurora Leigh.
I am very much down in spirits and depressed. A cousin of ours to whom we were all very much attached has just died – quite suddenly from some chill caught riding. I dined with him on Saturday and he was dead on Wednesday. My brother and I were