Curious Chapbooks & Hysterical Histories

THE LOST ART OF THE LAST WORD

"I cannot conceive anything better for the culture of a country than the presence in it of a body of men whose duty it is to believe in the supernatural. . . ."

--From Oscar Wilde's Intentions

When Victorian England's notorious fallen man of letters, Oscar Wilde, was convicted in 1895 of crimes of immorality, the presiding judge denied him any last words. Upon hearing himself sentenced to two years of hard labor, Oscar addressed the bench: "And I? May I say nothing, my Lord?" But the judge, who had heard quite enough from Wilde already, merely waved him away without comment (Julian 337).

Oscar Wilde's ignominious fall from grace came at the zenith of a stellar literary and social career. When the doomed playwright was locked away in Reading Gaol, he had two hit comedies running in London's West End: One was "The Ideal Husband," about a successful British celebrity whose fame is threatened by blackmail; the other was "The Importance of Being Earnest," about a gentleman who leads a double life. Nevertheless, the literary work that reflected most directly Wilde's own double life and led to his incarceration was his 1891 Gothic novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, whose homoerotic themes were used as evidence in court of Wilde's own crimes of immorality, but whose veiled references to Jack the Ripper reached the British throne. The novel itself is a compendium of arcane lore and bizarre literary theories, particularly its caveat, "Those who go beneath the surface do so at their own peril," a reminder to the author who claimed the only thing to do with advice was to pass it on ("it's never of any use to oneself"). On the surface, the novel about art is actually about a curse. A vain young man makes a wish that miraculously comes true, allowing him to sin without consequence while his aging portrait keeps the secret record of a hideous moral decline. So long as the true picture of himself is kept a secret and remains unconfronted, Dorian Gray is safe from the harsh physical realities of life. Likewise, as long as Oscar Wilde's sexual secret was safe, so was he. British society might have overlooked a private transgression, but having to confront it publicly was the one thing it would never forgive. Oscar passed to his grave utterly ignored by a world which refused to listen to the one truth about himself that he had reached beneath the surface to uncover. Furthermore, there were the officials high in the British courts--both judicial and royal--who made certain that Oscar Wilde would be shunned by all so that other, more damaging secrets would go unrevealed. After two years of hard labor, during which medical experts expected Wilde to die or go mad (Harris 190), and then three more years of utter indigence exiled from England, the disgraced author died in Paris in 1900 under an assumed name. The exalted members of the British establishment could breathe easily, assuming their secrets safe from his exposure. Then came reports of Oscar Wilde from the grave. First was the shock received by Wilde's lifelong friend and champion, Robbie Ross, who exhumed the body in 1909 from the cemetery at Bagneux for reinternment at Pere Lachaise. According to Frank Harris:

The doctors told him to put the body in quicklime like the body of the man in 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol.' The quicklime, they said, would consume the flesh and leave the white bones--the skeleton--intact, which could then be moved easily. To his horror, when the grave was opened, Ross found that the quicklime, instead of destroying the flesh, had preserved it. Oscar's face was recognizable, only his hair and beard had grown long (317).

Then came news from Robert Sherard that the French writer Andre Gide had contacted Wilde by seance. After contact was established from the beyond, Oscar once more began to dominate all conversation. On one hot afternoon in July, the posthumous Wilde dictated more than 700 words in a single sitting for spiritualists on the outskirts of London. In an automatic script written on July 2, 1923, the posthumous Wilde confides: At times it is given me to pierce this strange veil of darkness, and through eyes, from which my secret must be forever hidden, gaze once more on the gracious day. I have found sight in the most curious places. Through the eyes out of the dusky face of a Tamal girl I have looked on the tea fields of Ceylon, and through the eyes of a wandering Kurd I have seen Arafat and the Yezedes, who worship both God and Satan and who love only snakes and peacocks. Once on a pleasure steamer on its way to St. Cloud I saw the green waters of the Seine and the lights of Paris, through the vision of a little girl who clung weeping to her mother and wondered why (18). According to psychic Hester Travers-Smith, who channeled for Wilde in this series of automatic writing sessions, "He is certainly less changed by the 'process of dying' than any other ghost I have come across so far (163)." Oscar Wilde's final return to his reading public came in 1923 when he dictated for the London Sunday Express a drama review for a revival of his comedy "The Importance of Being Earnest." Presumably the posthumous Wilde was able to attend by means of Hester Travers-Smith, who attended the Haymarket Theatre Royal in person so that the ghost of Oscar Wilde might see the Allan Aynesworth revival through her eyes. This production has the distinction of being the last time Wilde's comedy was performed in contemporary dress with Gwendolyn and Cecily as flappers (Hyde's Annotated Wilde, 355). Subsequent productions have placed the setting squarely in Victorian times. The ghost of Oscar Wilde, though delighted to see his play performed, was not particularly impressed. In the dramatic review for the London Daily Express, he wrote: "I do not wish to cavil at the present age, but the Haymarket company and its producer must forgive me if I am surprised rather than enchanted by what they have accomplished (Travers-Smith 173)." As was his custom when alive, the posthumous Wilde reviewed his audience as well: "I could see a slightly contemptuous colour in these minds. They felt that he [the playwright] was a shade demode, but they looked on him as a curio worthy of a dark corner in the drawing-room (170)." Like an Irish bard of old, Oscar Wilde showed England how to have the last word. From the grave, Oscar Wilde shed light on England's theater, popular writers, and even the hypocritical homosexuals of Queen Victoria's court--as well as on the mysterious Cleveland Street Scandal and the motive and identity of Jack the Ripper himself.

TO READ IT ALL, ORDER "THE GHOST of OSCAR WILDE"

WILDE ON THE WEB Oscar Wilde's Martyrdom Oscar Wilde Returns: Excerpts from Beyond the Grave CedarNet: The Oscar Wilde Project The Victorian Web: Oscar Wilde Enter keywords...