Once in London, Oscar set up house with his friend Frank Miles in Salisbury Street just off the Strand, moving in the summer of 1880 to 1 Tite Street, Chebea, which Wilde quickly renamed ‘Keats House’. Frank was well connected through his work as an artist and introduced Oscar to Lillie Langtry, ‘Professional Beauty’ and mistress of the Prince of Wales, who in turn opened the door to London Society. He consolidated a friendship with the Cambridge don, Oscar Browning, and flattered the most prominent actresses of the day with sonnets, among them Sarah Bernhardt and Ellen Terry. That summer of 1879 Bernhardt was making the first of many visits to London with the Comedie Française and Wilde was said to have met her off the Channel ferry with an armful of lilies.
To Oscar Browning
[3 June 1879] St Stephen’s Club
My dear Browning, Your bible and prayer book only exists in a bookseller’s Utopia! There is no such thing: I ransacked all Paternoster Row on this wretched rainy day and found nothing that would suit you. I told however the Bible Society to send you down a small paragraph Bible 10/- plainly rather uglily bound. The only thing I could find.
I am afraid you will have to take refuge in an Edition de Luxe of Keble’s Christian Year if you want something nice. I am so sorry my search is so unsuccessful.
I wish so much you could have been with me last night. Sarah Bernhardt’s Phedre was the most splendid creation I ever witnessed. The scene only lasted 10 minutes yet she worked the audience to a strained pitch of excitement such as I never saw. It seems so foolish to call French Tragedy stilted: the scene last night was not a bit ‘εχ δσυóς χαι πετσης’ [out of oak and stone] but the most impassioned human nature.
About Tuesday 17th I fear I must be in Oxford. I could not say definitely if I could come with you or not; it’s so far off and life is so intricate. I had a charming time at Cambridge for which accept my best thanks. Truly yours
OSCAR WILDE
Please remember me to your charming friend Stokes whom I like so much.
To Ellen Terry
[Early July 1879] 13 Salisbury Street, London
Dear Miss Ellen Terry, Will you accept from me a poem which I have written to you in your character of Henrietta Maria as a small proof of my great and loyal admiration for your splendid artistic powers, and the noble tenderness and pathos of your acting.
No actress has ever affected me as you have. What I have said to you in my sonnet to you expresses quite inadequately the great effect your acting has had on me.
You will have many more triumphs but I do not think you will ever have a more sincere and impassioned admirer than I am.
I look forward to your winning new laurels in new parts, and remain most sincerely yours
OSCAR WILDE
To Reginald Harding
[28 November 1879] St Stephen’s Club
Dear Reggie, I was only in Cambridge for the night with Oscar Browning (I wish he was not called Oscar) and left the next morning for the Hicks-Beachs’ in Hampshire, to kill time and pheasants and the ennui of not having set the world quite on fire as yet.
I will come some day and stay with you, though your letters are rather what boys call ‘Philippic’.
I am going to night with Ruskin to see Irving as Shylock, and afterwards to the Millais Ball. How odd it is. Dear Reg, ever yours
OSCAR
Remember me to Tom Peyton.
Important though Society contacts were, Wilde was also anxious to be seen in literary and artistic circles. The Forbes-Robertsons (Norman, Ian, Johnston, Eric and Frankie) were predominantly an acting family with whom he remained friendly for many years, Frankie being especially kind to him after his imprisonment (see p. 346). Margaret Hunt was a successful popular novelist married to the landscape painter Alfred Hunt. Wilde toyed briefly with the idea of marrying her daughter Violet.
To Norman Forbes-Robertson
[?Circa 16 March 1880] St Stephen’s Club
My dear Norman, I suppose you are engaged for Saturday and that there is no chance of our going to the Boat Race together? If you have any time do come and see me soon.
I don’t know if I bored you the other night with my life and its troubles. There seems something so sympathetic and gentle about your nature, and you have been so charming whenever I have seen you, that I felt somehow that although I knew you only a short time, yet that still I could talk to you about things, which I only talk of to people whom I like – to those whom I count my friends.
If you will let me count you as one of my friends, it would give a new pleasure to my life.
I hope so much to see you again. Till I do, ever yours
OSCAR WILDE
To Mrs Alfred Hunt
25 August [1880] 1 Tite Street, Chelsea, London
Dear Mrs Hunt, It was so good of you to take the trouble of sending me such a long account of your little village. I have been hoping to go every week, but have had so many engagements that it has been out of my power; which, believe me, is no small disappointment. I should like so much to be with you all.
And now I am trying to settle a new house, where Mr Miles and I are going to live. The address is horrid but the house very pretty. It is much nearer you than my old house, so I hope we shall often, if you let me, have ‘dishes of tea’ at one another’s houses.
I have broken a promise shamefully to Miss Violet about a poem I promised to send her. My only excuse is that nowadays the selection of colours and furniture has quite taken the place of the cases of conscience of the middle ages, and usually involves quite as much remorse. However I send her one I have just published. I hope she will see some beauty in it, and that your wonderful husband’s wonderful radicalism will be appeased by my first attempt at political prophecy, which occurs in the last verse. If she will send me a little line to say what she thinks of it, it will give me such pleasure.
I hope she has been writing herself. After all, the Muses are as often to be met with in our English fields as they ever were by Castaly, or Helicon, though I have always in my heart thought that the simultaneous appearance of nine (unmarried) sisters at a time must have been a little embarrassing.
Please remember me most kindly to your husband, and all yours, and believe me very truly yours
OSCAR WILDE
Wilde by this time had spent the best part of a year and a half in London making himself seen and talked about, regularly caricatured by du Maurier in Punch. He now needed to show that he was capable of more than a few sonnets to actresses and accordingly wrote and published privately his first play, Vera; or, the Nihilists, a drama set in mid-nineteenth-century Russia. He sent copies to leading theatrical figures, among them two Americans, Clara Morris and Hermann Vezin (who later gave him voice coaching before his lecture tour of America), but received no offer to produce it.
To Clara Morris
[Circa September 1880] Keats House, Tite Street
Dear Madam, Permit me to send you a copy of a new and original drama I have written: the character of the heroine is drawn in all those varying moods and notes of passion which you can so well touch. Your great fame, which has long ago passed over here, and