Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters. Merlin Holland

      Dear old boy, I wish I could see you again. Ever yours OSCAR

      To the Rev. Matthew Russell SJ

      [?September 1878] Illaunroe Lodge, Connemara

      Dear Father Russell, Thanks for the magazine. With regard to the Newdigate, if you look in the Oxford Calendar you will find the whole account of it. The subject is given out at the June Encaenia and is the same for all. There is besides the

a prize of twenty guineas. It was originally limited to fifty lines, and the subject used to be necessarily taken from some classical subject, either Greek or Latin, and generally a work of art. The metre is heroic couplets, but as you have seen perhaps from my poem, of late years laxity is allowed from the horrid Popeian jingle of regular heroics, and now the subject may be taken from any country or time and there is no limit to the length. I rather think it is very much older than 1841. There is a picture of the Founder hanging in the dining hall of University College, Oxford, which as well as I remember is very old. Besides I have an idea that Ruskin and Dean Stanley got it. You might by looking at the Oxford Calendar get all information and make your article the locus classicus for the History of the Newdigate Prize.

      There was a strange coincidence about my getting it. On the 31st of March 1877 (long before the subject was given out) I entered Ravenna on my way to Greece, and on 31st March 1878 I had to hand my poem in. It is quite the blue ribbon of the Varsity and my college presented me with a marble bust of the ‘young Augustus’ which had been bequeathed by an old Fellow of Magdalen, Dr Daubeny, to the first undergraduate who should get the Newdigate.

      I am resting here in the mountains – great peace and quiet everywhere – and hope to send you a sonnet as the result. Believe me, very truly yours

      OSCAR WILDE

      

      Because Dublin held little in the way of a future for the newly self-styled ‘Professor of Aesthetics’, he bade farewell to his home town and the woman he once described as ‘an exquisitely pretty girl…with the most perfectly beautiful face I ever saw and not a sixpence of money’. To his chagrin Florrie Balcombe had accepted a proposal of marriage from Bram Stoker, who had just been appointed Henry Irving’s manager at the Lyceum Theatre and would later become known as the author of Dracula.

      To Florence Balcombe

      Monday night [?30 September 1878] 1 Merrion Square North

      Dear Florrie, As I shall be going back to England, probably for good, in a few days, I should like to bring with me the little gold cross I gave you one Christmas morning long ago.

      I need hardly say that I would not ask it from you if it was anything you valued, but worthless though the trinket be, to me it serves as a memory of two sweet years – the sweetest of all the years of my youth – and I should like to have it always with me. If you would care to give it to me yourself I could meet you any time on Wednesday, or you might hand it to Phil, whom I am going to meet that afternoon.

      Though you have not thought it worth while to let me know of your marriage, still I cannot leave Ireland without sending you my wishes that you may be happy; whatever happens I at least cannot be indifferent to your welfare: the currents of our lives flowed too long beside one another for that.

      We stand apart now, but the little cross will serve to remind me of the bygone days, and though we shall never meet again, after I leave Ireland, still I shall always remember you at prayer. Adieu and God bless you.

      OSCAR

      To Florence Balcombe

      Thursday [?3 October 1878] 1 Merrion Square North

      Dear Florence, As you expressed a wish to see me I thought that your mother’s house would be the only suitable place, and that we should part where we first met. As for my calling at Harcourt Street, you know, my dear Florence, that such a thing is quite out of the question: it would have been unfair to you, and me, and to the man you are going to marry, had we met anywhere else but under your mother’s roof, and with your mother’s sanction. I am sure that you will see this yourself on reflection; as a man of honour I could not have met you except with the full sanction of your parents and in their house.

      As regards the cross, there is nothing ‘exceptional’ in the trinket except the fact of my name being on it, which of course would have prevented you from wearing it ever, and I am not foolish enough to imagine that you care now for any memento of me. It would have been impossible for you to keep it.

      I am sorry that you should appear to think, from your postscript, that I desired any clandestine ‘meeting: after all, I find you know me very little.

      Goodbye, and believe me yours very truly

      OSCAR WILDE

       Charming London

       “We live in an age of inordinate personal ambition and I am determined that the world shall understand me.’

      After Wilde’s academic triumphs in the summer 0/1878, Magdalen renewed his Demy ship for a further (fifth) year. He was obliged to keep an extra Oxford term in order to pass the Divinity exam, which he had failed two years earlier, and found lodgings for that period at 71 High Street. On 22 November he satisfied the examiners in the Rudiments of Religion and on 28 November took his degree as Bachelor of Arts. It is not known how much of 1879 he spent in Oxford, but like other graduates of the time he seems to have been unable to make the final break with his Alma Mater for a while and made periodic visits to see undergraduate friends still in residence. From the first letter below it is clear that he was already looking for accommodation in London by the end of 1878, and planning to develop his aesthetic tastes and to charm Society with his conversation. However, in his application for a reader’s ticket to the British Museum in February he is unsure whether to give his Oxford college or London address, and George Macmillan’s reply to his letter of 22 March is addressed to Wilde at Oxford. By the time he came to review the opening of the 1879 Grosvenor Gallery exhibition in May, his feet seem to have been firmly planted in the metropolis. At first he appears to have been reluctant to put aside his classical background. He joined the newly founded Hellenic Society, becoming a member of the Council, suggested translations from the Greek to Macmillan (with whom he had travelled to Greece in 1877), applied for an archaeological studentship at Athens and even considered becoming an Inspector of Schoob.

      To George Macmillan

      22 March 1879 St Stephen’s Club, Westminster, London

      Dear Macmillan, I was very glad to get your note and to see that the Society is really to be set on foot: I have every confidence in its success.

      Nothing would please me more than to engage in literary work for your House. I have looked forward to this opportunity for some time.

      Herodotos I should like to translate very much indeed – selections from that is – and I feel sure that the wonderful picturesqueness of his writings, as well as the pathos and tenderness of some of his stories, would command a great many readers. It is a work I should enjoy doing and should engage to have it done by September 1st next.

      I do not know how many Greek plays you intend publishing, but I have been working at Euripides a good deal lately and should of all things wish to edit either the Mad Hercules or the Phoenissae: plays with which I am well acquainted. I think I see what style of editing is required completely.

      I shall be glad to hear from you soon, as well as to see you at Salisbury Street any time you are not busy. Believe me very truly yours

      OSCAR