The importance of being Wilde

by L. Umagiliya

Oscar Wilde, had he been alive today would be 160 years old on October 16. But, as ill luck would have it, Wilde died quite young at an age when many begin life. He was a victim of the society which bore him, worshipped him and then censured him.

Wilde talked brilliantly of the family (can we forget Mrs. Cheveley in ‘An Ideal Husband?’ but he himself was no family person. Indeed he and his wife knew it three years after their marriage. This is of course not to say that he did not love his wife or family. He idolised children (himself having two of

his own). He adored pretty women (Constance Wilde was exquisitely pretty) but Wilde never loved women, at least, not in any physical sense.

Charming

There lives a charming story of Wilde’s visit to a Dieppe brothel soon after he was released from the confines of Reading gaol. Typical of the man was the reply when asked of the experience. “It was the first in these ten years, and it will be the last. It was like cold mutton”. Wilde remained homosexual in his habits for the rest of his life.

Oscar Wilde was born in Ireland on October 16, 1854. His father, William Wilde was in many ways the greatest of English – speaking ear surgeons.

It has been said that Oscar Wilde’s mother, anxious to have a daughter was so deeply depressed when a second son was born, that she dressed Oscar as a girl long after the age when the clothes of male and female children became distinctive.

And that, in some funny way known to psychology but obscure to commonsense, this fashion gravely affected his sexual nature. Oscar’s sister was born three years after him and presumably his mother’s desire for a daughter was appeased before Oscar was of an impressionable dressing age.

Gold medal

In October 1871, at 17 Wilde received a scholarship from Portora and won an entrance scholarship to Trinity College, Dublin which he freely acknowledged were the happiest years of his life ‘thus far’. Here he was to win the Berkely gold medal for Greek. It proved to be his most useful and expensive academic distinction, for he often pawned it when hard up. Academic honours are normally won by grinding or a good memory, not by genius and young Wilde was no different. He was a monstrously lazy student who hated hard work but possessed a prodigious memory and could not help remembering every word he read.

In October 1874, Wilde went to Oxford. His life there was unimpressive apart from his winning in his field every conceivable prize on offer. Occasionally working, he took a first class in Modern Classics in the Honours school, and in 1878, a first in the Honours Finals, and both were regarded by his examiners as the most brilliant of their respective years.

His dislike for sports, in fact for anything outdoor cricket, rowing – overrode his dislike for students. He took no part in physical exercise, or could he work up the least interest in games, then or thereafter. Never did Oxford University throw up a less typical Oxonian than Oscar Wilde.

Prowess

Wilde was an enormous man – well over six feet and his hatred for sports was more the pity, for well could he hold his own against almost anybody.

There lives a story of Oscar’s prowess and strength which went round Oxford like wildfire. Wilde was afraid of no man physically or intellectually.

But even in those days at Oxford, there was something odd about this young man’s formal appearance – his long, rich brown hair, big colourless face, full thick sensuous lips, magnificent eyes and bold, checked suits.

Though not effeminate, people found something distinctly strange about Wilde. A further tale went something like this. The Junior Common room of Magdalen decided one day that the time had come to beat up this odd fellow – this insipid poseur.

An advance guard of four heroes burst into Wilde’s room. The first intruder flew outside with the aid of Wilde’s boot, the second got a punch that doubled him up, the third made his return journey through the air and the fourth, a beefy fellow of Wilde’s height and weight was carried by Wilde to his room (as a nurse carries a baby) and buried beneath a pile of clothes. That was the first and last attempt to rag Wilde. Wilde’s basic nature was to be generous. He was the kindest of souls and he was generous to a fault. There were many friends who sponged on him.

Any hard luck story would find him groping in his pocket and generally not for loose change. He lived by his thoughts.

“Those who have much are always greedy, those who have little always share”. His own impulse whether rich or poor (and often he was both) was always to share. His natural kindness and his love for others made him many friends at Oxford.

Young Wilde

Oxford life pleasant though it may have been for the young Wilde, we must swiftly leave. And we return, to find Oscar, rehearsing another kind of role. For Wilde always was the actor, playing the part of life to its utmost.

The rules were his and no one else could convince him of any other. Half of Wilde – the emotional half – never developed beyong adolescence, while the other half – the intellectual half – was well developed.

Thus we shall always see him as an exceptionally brilliant undergraduate, halfboy, half genius, the boy in Oscar showing his constant need for showing off while the man in him was sometimes amused and often bored.

And this we see well in “to get into the best society nowadays” he was to say “one has either to feed people, amuse people or shock people – That is all”, and once again - “to be in society is a bore, but to be out of it is a tragedy.”

Wilde was never happy unless acting a part or dressing – up or startling people by some form of attire or shocking behaviour. And through the parts he played, his love of acting and masquerading, he irritated the hypocritical moral turpitude of Victorian society to which he had the distinct misfortune to be born into.

Court case

But perhaps what we mostly remember Wilde for is his sordid court case (contrary to popular belief it was for procuring he was found guilty, and was acquitted of the charge of debauching youth and corrupting innocence) to one observer in court that day.

Intellectually speaking Wilde stood head and shoulders above the judge who tried him and the counsel who prosecuted him. “While another likened him” to a wounded lion being worried by a pack of nangrei dogs. Every civilised being now agrees that the environment of the day made a grave error in prosecuting Oscar Wilde at all.

It was a witch hunt and Victoria’s Government went after its pound of flesh with a vengeance. For Wilde lived at a time when virtue and hypocrisy walked the land. The Victorians knew better than any previous age how to “Compound sins they were inclined to...” or “By damming those they had no mind to...”

Pound of flesh

And so as the Victorians collected their pounds of flesh it was the end of Oscar two years in prison had nearly finished him. He went into obscurity to Paris and to the arms of the too few friends he now had. He wrote nothing of worth, perhaps only the masterful ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’ relating his experiences in prison. It was moving and it was profound as only Wilde could tell...

‘I walked with other souls in pain, within another ring’.
And was wondering if the man had done,’
A great or little thing, When a voice behind me whisperd low’
That fellow’s got to swing,’
Yet each man kills the thing he loves,’
By each let this be heard,’
Some with a flattering word the coward does it with a kiss,’
The brave man with a sword “For each man kills the thing he loves”.

Wilde died in Paris in 1900 in an obscure tardy little hotel sprawled on a dirty little bed watched over by the innkeeper who had befriended him in his final hour.

Oscar Wilde was born too early and too young for a society which saw in this brilliant young man nothing but ridicule.