BEYOND Ernest/Earnest
In an earlier article I noted that John Gambril Nicholson’s 1892 collection Love in Earnest: Sonnets, Ballades, and Lyrics (Elliot Stock, 1892) is a probable source of Wilde’s Earnest/Ernest wordplay.
And I showed how in one poem, Of Boys’ Names, there are other names with Wildean parallels, including the names of Oscar’s own sons: Cyril and Vyvyan.
Research now leads me to a further connections in a back issue of the publication The Book Collector (Summer, 1978).
Nicholson‘S own copy
In 1978 Nicholson’s own copy of his book of poems was discovered in a Cambridge (UK) bookshop.
And the reason for interest among bibliophiles was that the periodical The Book Collector made some intriguing revelations about it.
The first is that Nicholson’s copy was not the rare first issue of the book; nor was it the better known second issue (viewable in full here). It was possibly a unique hybrid version of both previous issues.
The second revelation is that Nicholson’s copy was extensively annotated with manuscript notes include minutiae about the date, place and often the time of day of composition, together with other symbols and emendations.
One of these annotations relates to the poem in question Of Boys’ Names. Intriguingly in a textual alteration, possibly in a hand other than Nicholson’s, the wording “Cyril is lordly” is replaced by the wording “Basil is kingly.”
This is another obviously Wildean name: that of Basil Hallward, the painter in Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray published a year earlier.
Finally, in Nicholson’s copy tipped in1 to face the title page is a photograph, taken in Llandudno, of Nicholson together with William Ernest Mather2—the mysterious “W.E.M.” to whom the poem Of Boys’ Names is dedicated. The existence of the photograph reinforces Mather as the Ernest of the poem, and a source for the Earnest in Wilde’s play.3
© John Cooper, 2015.
Footnotes:
- tipped in: in the book trade, a tipped-in page or, if it is an illustration, tipped-in plate or simply plate, is a page that is attached to, but not integral to, the binding of the book. ↩︎
- the photograph of Nicholson with Mather tipped into the book is reproduced in the issue of The Book Collector (p. 220) but is otherwise quite rare, e.g. no example has been found online. ↩︎
- In addition to the dedication “W.E.M.” in the printed edition, Nicholson makes frequent manuscript references, in his copy, not only to “W.E.M.”, but also to “E.S”, identified in another manuscript note as Ernest Stanley. Presumably he is the second Ernest that Nicholson references in his semi-autobiographical but innocuous novel “The Romance of a Choir-boy” (1916) in which he describes photographs of two boys called Ernest. ↩︎
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Ah, in the (Harvard) Gay&Lesbian Review there is much attention to “Oscar Wilde Tours” but they have told me it is not you! Do they get on your last nerve? Best wishes, Garland Oakland
There is an organization called Oscar Wilde Tours that arranges gay-related tours of various world cities such as Dublin, London and Paris. I am not affiliated with them although I was consulted by the founder, Andrew Lear, in connection with their latest offering New York. Their tours are high-end, usually multi-day, and do not focus solely, and often not at all, on Oscar Wilde.
Not to be confused with my walking tour Oscar Wilde In New York which does focus solely on Wilde and is 2-3 hour guided walking tour in New York:
http://www.oscarwildeinnewyork.com