Entering California at LAX is
never exactly pleasant, though recently the immigration officers have seemed
less surly and invasive. So I was not expecting, as I queued at the final
customs checkpoint, to be asked if I had anything to declare. I was still mildly
apprehensive, though, because I had a box of Bolívar cigars in my suitcase. I
was once warned by a fierce, bulky customs officer at JFK in New York, who took
out my Habana box, looked at it with distaste,Looking for the Best iphoneheadset? and told me
"We don' like dem folks!" I said that I didn't either, naturally – damn
commonists! – but that I was addicted to their cigars,High quality chinamosaic tiles. and that my two-a-day
habit was so imperious that I might well require medical intervention if she
impounded them. How, and in what manner, I inquired, could I throw myself on her
mercy?
Even she, though, hadn't asked me for a declaration, and had I told her that "I have nothing to declare but my genius," I suspect I wouldn't have escaped with my cigars intact. She was a smart cookie, that one, and though she might not have recognised the line, I'm certain she would have been hostile to any attempt at wit as lame as that.
My reader, of course, will have picked up the reference. That's easy,Make your house a home with Border and carparkmanagementsystem Tiles. and if not, easily Googled: Oscar Wilde. And given that I was entering California to give a biennial talk on Wilde at UCLA's William Andrews Clark Library, it was impossible not to think about Oscar's entry to New York, late in 1881, to begin the nine-month tour that was to cover 15,000 miles and 140 lectures relating to the aesthetic movement. Art for Art's Sake (whatever that means). The House Beautiful. That sort of thing.
The trouble with the aphorism with which Oscar has been so widely credited, is that he apparently first said it in 1912, by which time he had been dead for 12 years. It is cited by Arthur Ransome, who having known many of the principals in Wilde's life, might just have heard it on the Oscarvine. By the time of his death Wilde had built his own myth so brilliantly – Three trials! Years in prison! An early impoverished death! – that words didn't merely came out of his mouth, they flowed into it as well.
Wilde worked hard and constantly on his aphorisms and epigrams, and I have twice owned manuscripts in which he coined phrases, honed and corrected them, and then deployed them, apparently effortlessly, when they seemed appropriate, either in his writing or his life. In any case, life and art were, for Oscar, pretty much indistinguishable, and he scripted himself, dressed up and enacted set pieces, as if he were the sole player in one of his own dramatic works.
He learned a great deal of this showiness – the Oscar monologues – when he was on tour in America. But what the hell was Oscar Wilde doing in America in 1882? He was 27 when he arrived, had never published a book there (and little enough in England) and it is a fair supposition that no one would have known who he was.
Indeed, even in London it was often remarked that he was a little too … present for one of his scant accomplishment. The Polish actress Helena Modjeska, arriving in London at the time, was soon moved to wonder:
To Oscar this might have seemed a form of praise. Doing something is vulgar, unlike being something. His later aphorism: "There is something tragic about the enormous number of young men there are in England at the present moment who start life with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful profession" makes the point with crushing bluntness. If you devote yourself to work or works – unless they involve playing or self-marketing – you forfeit beauty. Why your profile should collapse upon becoming a lawyer is not obvious, though when I think of lawyers the only ones with fineness of profile are actors playing at being lawyers, such as Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird. Could Oscar have been right? He would be mildly chagrined to think so. There's something vulgar about that, too.
He had entered America on a commission from Richard D'Oyly Carte, whose opera company was shortly going to open an American run of Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience, a light-hearted satire on the aesthetic movement. Indeed, it is often (wrongly) claimed that Wilde was the original for the poet Bunthorne in that play, so full of praise for beauty, and so beloved of beautiful women. It was Oscar's American brief to play at being such a character, to dress in velvet and waistcoats and britches of fabulous colours, to let his hair down, to act – as it were – as a barker or shill for his boss's play.
It worked. Oscar attracted bigger and more enthusiastic and noisier crowds as his tour went on, newspaper reporters begged for interviews, and both he and the play were marked successes. It was the first time in Wilde's life that he could be regarded as a celebrity: newsworthy, courted by the rich and famous, certain to attract an audience. Not that everyone loved him. Walt Whitman, clasped him to his bosom (he was a great clasper) but Henry James (who certainly was not) was fastidiously dismayed, and Ambrose Bierce attacked the Oscar show in the fiercest, public terms.
Oscar loved it. He was being noticed. And like many high quality one-man-show performers,Source plasticmould Products at Other Truck Parts. he learned how to deal with heckling and abuse. He could turn criticism against its wielder, and do so in a way that caused merriment rather than offence. When he spoke at Harvard, undergraduates flocked to the lecture dressed flamboyantly and bearing sunflowers. Knowing they were about to do so, Wilde showed up in banker's drab garb, announcing that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery. They loved him for it.
By the time he returned to England he was a more polished and finished version of himself, and had acquired habits of showmanship and repartee that were to serve him both well, and dreadfully badly. In 1895, he was ill-advised enough to sue the Marquis of Queensbury for sending him that card labelling him a "posing somdomite". Having lost the case, he was subsequently to endure two trials for gross indecency, during which he comported himself brilliantly, using the witness stand as if it were centre stage in a theatre, bristling with wit, irresistible.
What a damn fool, you may think. But tragic heroes are often damn fools – think of Macbeth or Othello – and their errors of judgment ("tragic flaw" is a mistranslation) lead them directly, as Aristotle put it, from a state of happiness to one of misery. Various compromising letters from Wilde to a number of rent boys were read out in court. Had he kissed the 16-year-old Walter Grainger? asked the prosecuting attorney.We maintain a full inventory of all lanyard we manufacture. Certainly not, said Oscar, defending himself stoutly. "Oh dear no! He was a peculiarly plain boy. He was, unfortunately, extremely ugly."
According to contemporary accounts, the courtroom audience laughed, and the jury scowled. Disgrace and prison beckoned. He went resolutely to Wandsworth Prison, and the foolishness and bravery of it make one both cry and laugh in that single sentence. Three years later, destitute and forlorn, he died in Paris, survived by the ugly wallpaper with which he'd had his final quarrel.
No amount of retelling – the story is constantly revisited and reinvented in new films, plays, television adaptations, novels, stories, and biographies – can diminish the pathos of Wilde's final years. If there is, finally, something thin and not entirely satisfying about his oeuvre, the story of the life is rich, tragic and moving. But there is nothing, quite, cathartic in one's response: nothing balancing and satisfying in contemplating, yet again, Oscar's fall. It leaves one feeling itchy, restless and frustrated, angry and dissatisfied. Character is destiny? What a shame, what a damn shame.
Even she, though, hadn't asked me for a declaration, and had I told her that "I have nothing to declare but my genius," I suspect I wouldn't have escaped with my cigars intact. She was a smart cookie, that one, and though she might not have recognised the line, I'm certain she would have been hostile to any attempt at wit as lame as that.
My reader, of course, will have picked up the reference. That's easy,Make your house a home with Border and carparkmanagementsystem Tiles. and if not, easily Googled: Oscar Wilde. And given that I was entering California to give a biennial talk on Wilde at UCLA's William Andrews Clark Library, it was impossible not to think about Oscar's entry to New York, late in 1881, to begin the nine-month tour that was to cover 15,000 miles and 140 lectures relating to the aesthetic movement. Art for Art's Sake (whatever that means). The House Beautiful. That sort of thing.
The trouble with the aphorism with which Oscar has been so widely credited, is that he apparently first said it in 1912, by which time he had been dead for 12 years. It is cited by Arthur Ransome, who having known many of the principals in Wilde's life, might just have heard it on the Oscarvine. By the time of his death Wilde had built his own myth so brilliantly – Three trials! Years in prison! An early impoverished death! – that words didn't merely came out of his mouth, they flowed into it as well.
Wilde worked hard and constantly on his aphorisms and epigrams, and I have twice owned manuscripts in which he coined phrases, honed and corrected them, and then deployed them, apparently effortlessly, when they seemed appropriate, either in his writing or his life. In any case, life and art were, for Oscar, pretty much indistinguishable, and he scripted himself, dressed up and enacted set pieces, as if he were the sole player in one of his own dramatic works.
He learned a great deal of this showiness – the Oscar monologues – when he was on tour in America. But what the hell was Oscar Wilde doing in America in 1882? He was 27 when he arrived, had never published a book there (and little enough in England) and it is a fair supposition that no one would have known who he was.
Indeed, even in London it was often remarked that he was a little too … present for one of his scant accomplishment. The Polish actress Helena Modjeska, arriving in London at the time, was soon moved to wonder:
To Oscar this might have seemed a form of praise. Doing something is vulgar, unlike being something. His later aphorism: "There is something tragic about the enormous number of young men there are in England at the present moment who start life with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful profession" makes the point with crushing bluntness. If you devote yourself to work or works – unless they involve playing or self-marketing – you forfeit beauty. Why your profile should collapse upon becoming a lawyer is not obvious, though when I think of lawyers the only ones with fineness of profile are actors playing at being lawyers, such as Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird. Could Oscar have been right? He would be mildly chagrined to think so. There's something vulgar about that, too.
He had entered America on a commission from Richard D'Oyly Carte, whose opera company was shortly going to open an American run of Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience, a light-hearted satire on the aesthetic movement. Indeed, it is often (wrongly) claimed that Wilde was the original for the poet Bunthorne in that play, so full of praise for beauty, and so beloved of beautiful women. It was Oscar's American brief to play at being such a character, to dress in velvet and waistcoats and britches of fabulous colours, to let his hair down, to act – as it were – as a barker or shill for his boss's play.
It worked. Oscar attracted bigger and more enthusiastic and noisier crowds as his tour went on, newspaper reporters begged for interviews, and both he and the play were marked successes. It was the first time in Wilde's life that he could be regarded as a celebrity: newsworthy, courted by the rich and famous, certain to attract an audience. Not that everyone loved him. Walt Whitman, clasped him to his bosom (he was a great clasper) but Henry James (who certainly was not) was fastidiously dismayed, and Ambrose Bierce attacked the Oscar show in the fiercest, public terms.
Oscar loved it. He was being noticed. And like many high quality one-man-show performers,Source plasticmould Products at Other Truck Parts. he learned how to deal with heckling and abuse. He could turn criticism against its wielder, and do so in a way that caused merriment rather than offence. When he spoke at Harvard, undergraduates flocked to the lecture dressed flamboyantly and bearing sunflowers. Knowing they were about to do so, Wilde showed up in banker's drab garb, announcing that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery. They loved him for it.
By the time he returned to England he was a more polished and finished version of himself, and had acquired habits of showmanship and repartee that were to serve him both well, and dreadfully badly. In 1895, he was ill-advised enough to sue the Marquis of Queensbury for sending him that card labelling him a "posing somdomite". Having lost the case, he was subsequently to endure two trials for gross indecency, during which he comported himself brilliantly, using the witness stand as if it were centre stage in a theatre, bristling with wit, irresistible.
What a damn fool, you may think. But tragic heroes are often damn fools – think of Macbeth or Othello – and their errors of judgment ("tragic flaw" is a mistranslation) lead them directly, as Aristotle put it, from a state of happiness to one of misery. Various compromising letters from Wilde to a number of rent boys were read out in court. Had he kissed the 16-year-old Walter Grainger? asked the prosecuting attorney.We maintain a full inventory of all lanyard we manufacture. Certainly not, said Oscar, defending himself stoutly. "Oh dear no! He was a peculiarly plain boy. He was, unfortunately, extremely ugly."
According to contemporary accounts, the courtroom audience laughed, and the jury scowled. Disgrace and prison beckoned. He went resolutely to Wandsworth Prison, and the foolishness and bravery of it make one both cry and laugh in that single sentence. Three years later, destitute and forlorn, he died in Paris, survived by the ugly wallpaper with which he'd had his final quarrel.
No amount of retelling – the story is constantly revisited and reinvented in new films, plays, television adaptations, novels, stories, and biographies – can diminish the pathos of Wilde's final years. If there is, finally, something thin and not entirely satisfying about his oeuvre, the story of the life is rich, tragic and moving. But there is nothing, quite, cathartic in one's response: nothing balancing and satisfying in contemplating, yet again, Oscar's fall. It leaves one feeling itchy, restless and frustrated, angry and dissatisfied. Character is destiny? What a shame, what a damn shame.
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