To Marie Prescott
[?March-April 1883] [?Paris]
My dear Miss Prescott, I have received the American papers and thank you for sending them. I think we must remember that no amount of advertising will make a bad play succeed, if it is not a good play well acted. I mean that one might patrol the streets of New York with a procession of vermilion caravans twice a day for six months to announce that Vera was a great play, but if on the first night of its production the play was not a strong play, well acted, well mounted, all the advertisements in the world would avail nothing. My name signed to a play will excite some interests in London and America. Your name as the heroine carries great weight with it. What we want to do is to have all the real conditions of success in our hands. Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result. Art is the mathematical result of the emotional desire for beauty. If it is not thought out, it is nothing.
As regards dialogue, you can produce tragic effects by introducing comedy. A laugh in an audience does not destroy terror, but, by relieving it, aids it. Never be afraid that by raising a laugh you destroy tragedy. On the contrary, you intensify it. The canons of each art depend on what they appeal to. Painting appeals to the eye, and is founded on the science of optics. Music appeals to the ear and is founded on the science of acoustics. The drama appeals to human nature, and must have as its ultimate basis the science of psychology and physiology. Now, one of the facts of physiology is the desire of any very intensified emotion to be relieved by some emotion that is its opposite. Nature’s example of dramatic effect is the laughter of hysteria or the tears of joy. So I cannot cut out my comedy lines. Besides, the essence of good dialogue is interruption. All good dialogue should give the effect of its being made by the reaction of the personages on one another. It should never seem to be ready made by the author, and interruptions have not only their artistic effect but their physical value. They give the actors time to breathe and get new breath power. I remain, dear Miss Prescott, your sincere friend
OSCAR WILDE
To Jacques-Emile Blanche
5 April [1883] Hotel Voltaire
Cher Monsieur Blanche, Je vous remercie beaucoup pour ces trois charmants souvenirs de votre art. Quant à la petite fille qui lit mes poèmes, je l’adore déjà, mais hélas! elle ne veut pas lever ses yeux de mon livre, même pour un instant. Traître, vous l’avez fait preferer le poète à l’amant, et les vers aux baisers!
Cependant c’est interessant de trouver une femme comme ça, car elle n’existe pas. A Dimanche prochain, votre bien devoué
OSCAR WILDE
To Edmond de Goncourt
[?April 1883] Hotel Voltaire, Paris
Monsieur, Daignez recevoir mes poèmes, témoignage de mon admiration infinie pour l’auteur de La Fanstin.
Je serai bien content de penser qu’il y aura une place, peut-être, pour mes premières fleurs de poésies, près de vos Watteau, et de vos Boucher, et de ce trésor de laque, d’ivoire, et de bronze, que dans votre Maison d’un Artiste vous avez pour toujours immortalisé.
Acceptez, Monsieur, l’assurance de mes compliments les plus distingués.
OSCAR WILDE
Back in London about the beginning of May, Wilde’s American resources were fast dwindling, and since his somewhat tenuous new asset was his reputation as a lecturer, he decided to make the most of it. Apart from bringing him money and experience, his transatlantic year had given him a lifelong supply of gentle jibes at the Americans and to his existing lectures, ‘The Decorative Arts’ and “The House Beautiful’ he now added ‘Personal Impressions of America’ which he first gave in London on 11 July.
To R. H. Sherard
[Postmark 17 May 1883] 8 Mount Street, Grosvenor Square, London
Dear Robert, Your letter was as loveable as yourself, and this is my first moment after channel-crossings, train-catchings, and my natural rage at the charges for extra luggage from Paris, for sitting down to tell you what pleasure it gave me, and what memories of moonlit meanderings, and sunset strolls, the mere sight of your handwriting brought.
As for the dedication of your poems, I accept it: how could I refuse a gift so musical in its beauty, and fashioned by one whom I love so much as I love you?
To me the mirror of perfect friendship can never be dulled by any treachery, however mean, or disloyalty, however base. Individuals come and go like shadows but the ideal remains untarnished always: the ideal of lives linked together not by affection merely, or the pleasantness of companionship, but by the capacity of being stirred by the same noble things in art and song. For we might bow before the same marble goddess, and with hymns not dissimilar fill the reeds of her flutes: the gold of the night-time, and the silver of the dawn, should pass into perfection for us: and from each string that is touched by the fingers of the player, from each bird that is rapturous in brake or covert, from each hill-flower that blossoms on the hill, we might draw into our hearts the same sense of beauty, and in the House of Beauty meet and join hands.
That is what I think true friendship should be, like that men could make their lives: but friendship is a fire where what is not flawless shrinks into grey ashes, and where what is imperfect is not purified but consumed. There may be much about which we may differ, you and I, more perhaps than we fancy, but in our desire for beauty in all things we are one, and one in our search for that little city of gold where the flute-player never wearies, and the spring never fades, and the oracle is not silent, that little city which is the house of art, and where, with all the music of the spheres, and the laughter of the gods, Art waits for her worshippers. For we at least have not gone out into the desert to seek a reed shaken by the wind, or a dweller in kings’ houses, but to a land of sweet waters, and to the well of life; for the nightingale has sung to both of us, and the moon been glad of us, and not to Pallas, or to Hera, have we given the prize, but to her who from the marble of the quarry and the stone of the mine can give us pillared Parthenon and glyptic gem, to her who is the spirit of Beauty, and who has come forth from her hollow hill into the chill evening of this old world, and walks among us visible.
That is, I think, what we are seeking, and that you should seek it with me, you who are yourself so dear to me, gives me faith in our futures, confidence in our love.
OSCAR
To Euphemia Millais
[Circa 3 June 1883] 9 Charles Street, Grosvenor Square
Dear Mrs Millais, Here are the Lily’s views on American women. Very sweetly expressed, I think they are, and a lesson in courtesy to a nation which has been discourteous to her. I hope they will interest you. They are really very clever, but then all beautiful women are more or less verbally inspired. Believe me most truly yours
OSCAR WILDE
“Violet Fane’ was the pseudonym of the poet and novelist Mary Singleton, whose acquaintance Wilde had probably made through Lillie Langtry in 1880. She later became one of his favourite contributors when he edited the Woman’s World magazine. The Love Sonnets of Proteus by Wilfrid Blunt had been published anonymously in 1881.
To Violet Fane
[?July 1883] 9 Charles Street
Of course I am coming! How could one refuse an invitation from one who is a poem and a poet in one, an exquisite combination of perfection and personality, which are the keynotes of modern art.
It was horrid of me not to answer before, but a nice letter is like a sunbeam and should not be treated as an epistle needing