Lady Jane Wilde's Letters to Oscar Wilde, 1875-1895: A Critical Edition PDF
Preview Lady Jane Wilde's Letters to Oscar Wilde, 1875-1895: A Critical Edition
LADY JANE WILDE'S LETTERS TO OSCAR WILDE, 1875-1895 A Critical Edition Edited by Karen Sasha Anthony Tipper With a Preface by Bruce Bashford The Edwin Mellen Press Lewiston •Queenston• Lampeter Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wilde, Lady, 1826-1896 [Correspondence. Selections] Lady Jane Wilde's letters to Oscar Wilde, 1875-1895 :a critical edition I [edited by] Karen Sasha Anthony Tipper ; with a preface by Bruce Bashford p .. em. Includes bibliographical references and index .. ISBN-13: 978-0-7734-2543-9 (hardcover) ISBN-10: 0-7734-2543-8 (hardcover) 1. Wilde, Lady, 1826-1896--Correspondence. 2. Poets, Irish--19th century --Correspondence .. 3 .. Women intellectuals--Ireland--Correspondence .. 4 Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900. L Tipper, Karen Sasha Anthony. IL Title. PR5809.Z5A4 2011 828' .. 809--dc23 [B] 2011040070 hors serie A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library Front cover photo: Wretched Moytura Courtesy of Donald Tipper Photo production by Wil Laforte, Marlboro Photo, Marlboro, MA Editor photo: Courtesy of Dr.. Brian Callingham, Queens' College, Cambridge, UK Copyright © 2011 Karen Sasha Anthony Tipper All rights reserved. For information contact The Edwin Mellen Press The Edwin Mellen Press Box450 Box67 Lewiston, New York Queenston, Ontario USA 14092-0450 CANADA LOS lLO The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales UNITED KINGDOM SA48 8LT Printed in the United States of America ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! To Morgan, Avery, Gabriel, Beatrice, and Flyn ! ! Table of Contents ! Preface by Dr. Bruce Bashford i Acknowledgments vi Introduction 1 Letters 1 to 35 1857-1879 from Dublin, Merrion Square 15 Letters 36 to 78 1810-1888 from London, "#$%&'(%!)*+,-.!,%/!0,-1!)'-..' 62 Letters 79 to 132 1888-1895 !!!!!!!!!!!from London, ",12.3!)'-..' 114 Appendix I A Chronology of Lady Jane Wilde’s Life 173 Appendix II Magdalen Walks by Oscar Wilde 177 Bibliography 179 Index 182 ! ! ! List of Illustrations ! ! 1. Cover and frontpiece: “Wretched Moytura.” Moytura House built by Sir William Wilde in Cong, County Mayo, Ireland. Courtesy of Donald Tipper Photo production by Wil Laforte, Marlboro Photo, Marlboro, MA 01752 2. Back cover: Photograph of Karen Sasha Anthony Tipper Courtesy of Dr. Brian Callingham, Queens’ College, Cambridge, UK ! Preface This edition of letters by Lady Jane Wilde–– “Speranza”––as she sometimes referred to herself––continues Karen Sasha Tipper’s effort to help us understand the high regard Lady Wilde’s contemporaries had for her as a poet, essayist, feminist, and, more generally, person of culture. That effort includes two earlier edited volumes of Lady Wilde’s letters, as well as the definitive biography. The letters are grouped here, as in the earlier volumes, because they are all to the same recipient, and that gives this volume a distinct character. Since the recipients of the earlier volumes, John Hilson, a Scottish merchant and man of letters, and Lotten von Kræmer, a Swedish feminist, are unlikely to be familiar to us, as readers we focus almost solely on Lady Wilde. And it’s a focus the volumes reward: since Lady Wilde is writing to persons at a distance––she met Hilson just once and was in von Kræmer’s company only three times though the correspondences spanned decades––she has to render her experience and her thoughts as fully as she can. In the present case, of course, the recipient is familiar, and we inevitably read these letters in the context of our interests in her son. Some brief remarks, then, about how this volume rewards those interests. We follow again the curve of Oscar’s career, his steady rise and, implicitly, his sudden fall. There are letters expressing Lady Wilde’s delight at her son’s academic honors, his tumultuous but successful American tour, and the reception of ! "! ! his artistic works. Following the production of A Woman of No Importance, she tells Oscar, “You are now the great sensation of London––& I am very proud of you–– You have made your name, & taken your place and now hold a distinguished position in the circle of Intellectuals” ([April 1893]). She then gives him this advice, “Take care of yourself & of your health––& keep clear of suppers & late hours, & champagne.” The letters cease around the time of Oscar’s disastrous action against the Marquess of Queensberry and contain no reference to the subsequent trials, but Lady Wilde’s expressions of delight help us feel the force of Oscar’s assertion in De Profundis that she “died broken-hearted because the son of whose genius and art she had been so proud, and whom she had regarded always as a worthy continuer of a distinguished name, had been condemned to the treadmill for two years.” We recognize how ominously apt her advice is as we recall Oscar’s berating himself at length in the prison letter for allowing Bosie Douglas to keep him from following such a regimen. And we hear a similarly ominous note in Lady Wilde’s pleas on Constance’s behalf: “Do not leave her alone” ([1892]). These letters also, I believe, provide more evidence of the contemporary response to Oscar’s works. Admittedly, it sounds initially dubious that a mother effusively praising her son could provide such evidence in useful form. Several letters, however, show Lady Wilde capable of responding to her son’s work from the more disinterested perspective of a fellow craftsman, and her response to the parody of Oscar in Robert Hitchins’s The Green Carnation, which might well have given offense, is eminently fair-minded: “Very clever & not ill- natured” ([Sept. 1894]). Thus her remark that The Picture of Dorian Gray is “the most wonderful history in all the fiction of ! ""! ! the day” ([1890]) is noteworthy. The function of the novel’s plot is an important issue in the commentary: some critics claiming the book’s considerable power derives from the plot, with others dismissing the plot as the merest occasion for the exploration of ideas. Lady Wilde’s use of “history” suggests she’s responding to the novel as plot-driven (as in The History of Tom Jones), and so her response is an early example of the first critical camp: as she continues, “The story is tremendous! I nearly fainted at the last scene.” Other letters call to mind critical interests too. Josephine Guy and Ian Small argue in Oscar Wilde’s Profession (2000) that Oscar the writer was motivated primarily by the need to earn a living. One can think, as I do, that they at times overstate their case, while still admiring their scholarship. Their claim that Oscar had before him the example of Lady Wilde’s career as a popular journalist is strengthened by several letters, including her request that Oscar retrieve a manuscript from one journal because “I want to send it to the Lady’s Pictorial––& to make money!––” ([1883]). And to mention a second interest, in Oscar Wilde’s Plagiarism (2008), Florina Tufescu defends Wilde’s poetry against the charge in her title by arguing that he composed according to an “imitative” poetic tradition that had a flexible notion of intellectual property, of what belongs to whom. She might find this notion humorously echoed when Lady Wilde, having finished an ode, reports, “I put in your two lines––for which of course, you should be handsomely remunerated–– Why not make a little money by giving me delicious lines with a glowing word & a classical allusion” ([Aug. 1876]). Previously these letters have been available only in ! """! ! research libraries or special collections. Professor Tipper has done us a great service by deciphering Lady Wilde’s difficult handwriting (the cover of the von Kræmer volume provides a daunting sample), as well as reliably annotating the letters. Several scholars writing about Lady Wilde and Oscar have reproduced excerpts from Jane’s letters in the course of tracing the influence of mother on son. Having the letters in their entirety now allows us to evaluate and to extend these claims. Let me attempt the latter in a thoroughly conjectural manner. In Oscar Wilde (1988), Richard Ellmann reproduces several sentences from a March 1894 letter in which Lady Wilde urges Oscar to make up with his brother Willie, who in various ways had so annoyed Oscar that he didn’t attend Willie’s second wedding. The excerpt certainly contributes to Ellmann’s biographical narrative, but having the present collection, we can see that Lady Wilde made the same plea at greater length in an earlier letter unlike anything else in the volume. The normally controlled Jane repeats herself obsessively; she accuses and orders: “[Willie] feels your coldness most bitterly. Now do try another plan if you want to help me & make my life happier. Come here, hold out your hand to Willie, & say, Let us be friends as brothers should” ([Oct. 9, 1893]). This reader wonders if this letter might be part of the life experience Oscar transformed into a comic key in The Importance of Being Earnest. In Act II, Jack appears in mourning dress as part of his effort to dispose of his troublesome, imaginary brother Bunbury. Told that his brother is actually in the dining room waiting to meet him, he exclaims “What nonsense? I haven’t got a brother.” This provokes Cecily’s plea for reconciliation, “Oh don’t say that. However badly he may have behaved to you in the past he is still your ! "#!
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