Editorial Journal of John Cooper on Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde’s play, The Importance Of Being Earnest begins with two memorable scenes. The first is Algernon’s and Jack’s discussion about Bunbury, which they conduct while carelessly eating the sandwiches and bread & butter intended for Lady Bracknell and her daughter Gwendolen. The second is Lady Bracknell’s famous “handbag” interview with Jack who wishes to marry Gwendolen.
The question is: does Act I take place in the morning or in the afternoon?
Continue reading “The Long Good Morning”
The recent flurry of fictitious Basils would not be complete without mention of one more: a certain Basil Gray.
And as with the previous Basils, who begin here, the name clearly alludes to the character of Basil Hallward in Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.
So where does this Basil fit into the Wilde story?
Curiously, Basil Gray, or to give him his title, Captain Basil Gray, appears in the Wilde story as an amusing aside to an otherwise solemn occasion at Père Lachaise Cemetery.
Continue reading “Basil Gray”
If you are new to the myth of Basil Ward see my previous articles:
Basil Hallward and Faulty Basil
So far in our investigation of Basil Ward we have reached A. R. Keller & Co. and its uniform collection The Writings of Oscar Wilde (1907).
This is where the Basil Ward story first appeared in book form. It seemed fair to pause at that point because previous biographers could reasonably have looked in Keller for his existence—although none did.
But the researcher’s mantra is to keep digging and the question remained: where did A. R. Keller & Co. get the story from?
Continue reading “Basil Ward”
My recent article Basil Hallward showed how Charterhouse Press in the era of unauthorized publications added a preposterous preface to their 1904 edition of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture Of Dorian Gray.
To summarize: their idea with this so-called “Artist’s Preface” was to pass off the novel’s fictional painter, Basil Hallward, as a real person who in 1884 had known Wilde and a Radiant Youth—a “Dorian” prototype—and this meeting was supposedly the origin of Wilde’s novel released six years later.
The problem with the preface, apart from its implausibility, was that it would be slightly more plausible had it been written by someone other than the fictitional Basil Hallward.
Continue reading “Faulty Basil”
In Chapter XIII of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray the painter, Basil Hallward, is brutally murdered by the still innocent-looking Dorian Gray whose “gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art”1 eighteen years earlier.
But Basil, creator as he was of Dorian’s parallel life, was a resourceful fellow, and he was not about to let the mere fact of a frenzied knife attack, fatal though it was, prevent him from conducting his own secondary existence.
And so it was that Basil Hallward reappeared in 1904. His mission? To write the preface to a new edition of the very book in which he had died.
Continue reading “Basil Hallward”
In my last blog post about a picture that was Not Oscar, I related the story of how an image purporting to show a young Wilde in an assembly of pupils at Portora Royal School, had to be withdrawn from an auction at Bonhams in 1998.
Merlin Holland explained the reasons for the removal in his recent book After Oscar (pp. 576-578), also confirming that the withdrawal was made immediately prior to the sale.
On account of this last fact, I was asked whether the late decision had left Bonhams time to amend the offering of the withdrawn items, or had the catalogue already been printed?
Continue reading “Bonhams”
In his recent retrospective After Oscar, Merlin Holland recalls how he was often called upon to verify ostensible photographs of Oscar Wilde.
One such photograph purported to show a young Oscar in an assembly of pupils at Portora Royal School.
Continue reading “Not Oscar”
As noted in my recent article Last Rites, Oscar Wilde died in the Hôtel d’Alsace on the Rue des Beaux Arts in Paris, on November 30, 1900. One of the few people present on that occasion was Robert Ross.
Continue reading “Robert Ross”
—Feasting With The Greeks—
The pathways of the poets are often traversed by dreamers destined to wake up one day to the dangers of the real world.
One such idealist in Victorian London was Oscar Wilde who, in the homophobic 1890s, was often to be found obliviously “feasting with panthers”1 in fashionable restaurants such as Kettner’s.
Continue reading “Dream World”
“It is not in my system to moralize, [or] to abandon a friend.”
Le Havre is a French port city on the English Channel at the estuary of the river Seine in Normandy—which is where one might expect it to be located given that Le Havre means “the harbor”.
What might also be self-evident is that when Alfred Douglas visited this pleasant coastal resort, in August 1895, it was not long before he became combative with the local press.
Continue reading “The Friend of Oscar Wilde”