Oscar Wilde - Man of Fashion and Letters

       


 While we are not reading Oscar Wilde in this travelling class, my lord we should be.  If only time permitted.  There are some sites in Dublin associated with Wilde, and so he is doubly worth thinking about.

We remember Wilde as a critic, a poet, an essayist, a dramatist, a letter writer, and a novelist who lived his life his way, as an eccentric genius, full of enthusiasm, decadence and flair, which ultimately ended too soon, and indeed most tragically.

If we begin at the beginning, it is easy to see that Oscar Wilde came by his eccentric genius honestly.  Wilde’s mother, whose name was Jane Frances, demanded that everyone refer to her as Francesca Speranza. She felt her poetry (she was a poet) was so infectious that if the public was exposed to it, they would catch her poetic fever, and it would spread through the country like a contagion.   She repeated this so regularly that she became known as Francesca Speranza Influenza Wilde.

The reputation of Wilde’s father, a famous eye and ear doctor in Dublin, in the Merrion Square neighborhood of Dublin (where there is a lovely statue of Oscar Wilde reclining on a rock) was even more widespread that his son. His fame, involving chlorophorm, an ex-lover, and a lengthy trial is too complex to get into here. It does serve to show that the Wilde men do not fare well with litigious lovers.

Take warning, Dear Oscar.

We know very little about Oscar as a child, other than from his mother. She, who seems to be attached to impressive names, dubbed her second son, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde.  A flair for extravagance is rooted early in Oscar as well. An early piece of his writing comes to us as a letter to his mother while at summer camp, age 13. 

Oscar Wilde Statue - Merrion Square Dublin

It starts thus:

“Darling Mama,

The [clothes] hamper came today and I never got such a jolly surprise.  It was more than kind of you to send it, though the flannel shirts you sent are . . . not mine.  Mine, as you may remember, are the one quite scarlet and the other that divine lilac shade . . .”

Not the typical note one might get from a young lad at summer camp, but Oscar Wilde, my friends, was in no way typical. He was certainly a man of fashion.

At Trinity College in Dublin, Wilde became attracted to the Aestheticism movement, and thus he decided to always surround himself with beautiful things, and here is when he decided to make his symbol the lily.  When asked why he chose the lily, he respond by saying “Because it is the most beautiful, and useless thing in the world.”

When Wilde finished his time at Trinity, he also, in essence, finished his time in Ireland, moving to Oxford England to escape the confining and claustrophobic atmosphere of Dublin. James Joyce, his fellow Irishman, who we will hear about in our next reading, would heartily agree with these sentiments.  In Oxford, Wilde did well in his classes, but they did not take up too much of his time, as he spent much of his time furnishing and refurnishing his rooms.  Again, surrounding himself with beauty as well as variety.   After one of his great refurbishings (and there were many), he noted “I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.”

In his 20s Wilde was known mostly for his entertaining wit at parties, his extravagance in dress, and his connection to the aesthetic movement. He had a successful speaking tour in America, where he notoriously presented a lecture to miners (in a mine mind you) in Leadville Colorado, where he spoke about the beauty of ornate silver.  He followed his presentation by drinking whiskey with the men.  He was a huge success.  Even so, he returned to England as a 28-year-old man who was still unsure of what he would do for a career.   

In part because of his well-documented travels in America, Wilde was a favorite topic in the newspapers, and as such, gossip and rumors began to spread about him, particularly that he was spending too much time with young men, and not enough time with young women.  In the Victorian age to be a homosexual, and a public figure even more so, was not tolerated by the ass…… by the puritanical moralists.  Family members and friends encouraged Oscar to find a wife.  Particularly a wealthy one.  He was successful, . . .  successfully marrying the wealthy Constance Lloyd, successfully designing her gown for the wedding, and successfully giving her two sons.  The marriage, though, was not ultimately successful.  Oscar preferred the company of young, intelligent, beautiful men, who shared an interest in the arts.  He was living a double life.

And so in 1890 Wilde published The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Like much that was produced by Wilde, it created a sensation.  On one level, It is about a dashing young man and his pursuit of sensual pleasures.  Dorian Gray continues to look young and beautiful throughout the novel, even though his actions become more and more unacceptable to society and to himself.   It might be an ingenious commentary on the problem of seeing oneself in art. Indeed, a portrait that Gray keeps hidden in a remote upper room, takes on the physical costs of his actions and becomes hideous to look at.  And while the opening preface suggests that art and morality should remain separate, that art is for art’s sake, there seems to a theme in this novel about the problem of living the double life, or a warning about selfish hedonism.  At the end, mm Gray can no longer bear to look at the rotten image of his inner self that the portrait represents, and so in an eerie and delightful gothic moment, in his attempt to slash the picture, he instead just slashes himself.

Lord Alfred Douglas, a young beautiful man who also was the youngest son of the Marquis of Queensbury, impressed Wilde by saying he had memorized large passages from the work.  Lord Alfred Douglas was charming, and reckless, and he loved vexing his father, the Marquis of Queensbury.  Wilde and Lord Douglass became inseparable.

Now the Marquis of Queensbury, is a towering figure in the sport of Boxing.  If you know anything about boxing…..well you have me there….but I do know this…. there is something called the Queensbury rules.  They are named for him.

Not surprisingly Queensbury wanted his son to graduate from Oxford with a fine reputation, and thus he began tyrannizing his son.  The son used his relationship with Wilde to pester and enrage his father.  And indeed, it was clear to many that Lord Alfred Douglas was doing just that: Using Oscar Wilde.  In a way, we could say that:  Lord Douglas was good looking on the outside, but rotten inside. 

During this time Wilde pumped out may of his greatest works :Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) A Woman of no Importance (1893) and The Importance of Being Earnest a story that is in part about living the double life in (1895).  Like Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Earnest was a sensation.

Indeed, The Importance of Being Earnest is one of the funniest, wittiest, pun-filled (I did say Pun –filled) play you will ever see.  It questions whether marriage is a plague, or just a dull responsibility.  It skewers Victorian prudery and pretensions, and it presents a life of triviality, decadence, and the double-life as a life of liberty.  Both central male characters in the play have secret identities and activities.  Jack is Jack in the country and Earnest in the City.  Algenon is Algey in the City and Earnest in the country.  Neither is exactly Earnest.

In an attempt to cut Wilde down as he came to the height of his fame, Queensbury heightened his attacks on Wilde by leaving a calling card addressed to “Oscar Wilde, posing as a Sodomite” at his club for all the members to see. At least that is what is what was recorded as evidence by the judge.  The national Archives shows the original copy saying  - (either because Queensbury was in a rage, or in a rush, or just … ignorant) “Oscar Wilde Posing Somdomite – or Oscar Wilde posing a Somdomite”  - I’m not sure what either of those means….but it sounds compelling.  Anyway… Even though it created some embarrassment, we are told Wilde would have never done anything about it, but Lord Douglass egged him on demanding that Wilde take out a slander suit on his father, which Wilde finally agreed to do.  The trial did not last long and a second trial did not end in Wilde’s favor, Victorian England and all that rot. 

Ultimately, for his “Gross Indecency” The Judge sentenced Wilde to “Two years Hard Labor.”   This tragic sentence was a disaster for Wilde.  His name was removed from the playbills and he was pressed to sell most all of his beautiful furniture and possessions, including his blue china, to pay lawyer’s fees.  Worst of all, his time in prison weakened his heath immensely.  While he did not die there, he did not live long after his release. 

In a squalid Paris Hotel, Wilde died in poverty, without his beloved beautiful surroundings.  One of the last witticisms Wilde gives us is from this deathbed:

“My Wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death.  One or the other of us has to go!”

But that isn’t the witticism I wish to leave you with.  Instead, let us turn back to the trial, whereas the Marquis of Queensbury leapt up and accused Wilde stating “You are in the gutter and you are dragging my son there too” – Wilde, in his erudite elegance retorted “We are all of us in the gutter, sir, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

 

 

Dog and Bear: Who Wins? (Who Cares?)

 

Near the end of Waverly, after Edward and Rose are married, they agree to “spend a few days at an estate which Colonel Talbot had been tempted to purchase in Scotland as a very great bargain” (367). It seems after the old Scottish estates were ransacked by the English, they could acquire them at a great discount.  Clever Brits.  It reminds me of the white flight – slum lord – urban decay - gentrification schemes we have seen (and are seeing) in the States. Anyway, after Colonel Talbot partially restores Tully-Veolan, and the Baron of Bradwardine is being shown his former ancestral home, there is an interesting exchange between Colonel Talbot and the Baron of Bradwardine.  As the Baron surveys the grounds, and sees the two great bears that previously adorned the gates returned to their rightful place, he exclaims, “While I acknowledge my obligation to you for the restoration of these images of bears as being the ancient badge of our family, I cannot but marvel that you have no where established your own crest, Colone Talbot, whilk is, I believe, a mastiff, anciently called a talbot” (369).  After a bit of poetry, Talbot assents that his crest would include a dog, and follows with “if crests were to dispute precedence, I should be apt to let them, as the proverb says, ‘fight dog, fight bear’”(369).  I found that a bit odd, or hard to make sense of, and even stranger that our editors didn’t include a footnote to help explain. While bears are not found in Scotland (at least not in modern times) there are some family crests that include the rampart bear or the bear’s head.  The dog image for Talbot makes me think of an English bulldog.  The bear could be symbolic for Scotland in a similar manner, but it isn’t as obvious to me.  That leaves us with the quote” fight dog, fight bear.” It seems there is an old Scottish proverb “Fight dog, fight bear; wha wins, deil care.”  I think that means who cares which wins.  Deil, I’m guessing, means the devil.  The devil may care, or nobody cares.  In a few pages we find out that Talbot has been restoring the estate for Waverly, who has purchased it to restore to the Baron, and who [Waverly] will inherit it as he has married the Baron’s daughter, Rose.  Who cares?  It’s all good.  No harm done. All the loose ends are tied up, and the Baron even has his old drinking vessel in the shape of a bear restored to him.  A toast is made to “The prosperity of the united houses of Waverly-Honour and Bradwardine” (374), and likewise the jacobite lays downs with the English.  The fight is over, and it seems who won doesn’t matter. The Devil may care.

The Bonnie Prince of Waverly

Charles Edward Stuart
(Bonnie Prince Charlie)
Painted by Allan Ramsay

In Waverly, our hero Edward is taken captive by English forces. His family name, family history, association with known Jacobites, some papers he has on his person, and his outraged demeanor all work against him. He is put on trial for treason and is hustled away towards Stirling Castle. This is where things get interesting. Edward will need to pick sides between the English loyalists and the Jacobites. His newly found Scottish friends, like Mac Ivor and even Donald Bean Lean are certainly behind the ambush of the English troops that secures Edward’s freedom. They bring Edward to Holyrood in Edinburgh (where we will be) which was acting as the center of Jacobite military and political power and the court (illegitimate court the English would say) of Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie). Bonnie Prince Charlie has recently joined the cause, coming from France undercover to help lead the forces to restore the Stuart royal line. When Mc Ivor, who meets Edward at Holyrood, introduces Edward to the “bonnie” prince, Edward is taken with him.
    Bonnie Prince Charlie, born in Rome, and educated in French courts, is a model of aristocratic manners and refinement. Scott describes him in Waverly as “A young man, wearing his own fair hair, distinguished by the dignity of his mien and noble expression of his well-formed and regular features” (213). The prince is likewise taken with Edward, noting that there would be “no master of ceremonies necessary to present a Waverly to a Stuart” (213). It seems the prince is familiar with Waverly’s family history, and so when the prince asks Edward to join the Jacobite cause, he quickly agrees. In his “Review Essay: Sir Walter Scott,” (Romanticism 16.1, 2010 page 94-99) Christopher MacLachlan states: “Scott’s story, of how the sensitive but naive young Englishman Edward Waverley finds himself caught up in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 and carried by a mixture of personal affections and political manipulation to Edinburgh, a meeting with Bonnie Prince Charlie, and participation in Jacobite victory at the battle of Prestonpans, . . . is told with a sureness and vitality that lifted the novel as a form to a new height. . . . . His perception that history can be told through characters and personal relationships transformed the idea of the past and opened it up to Romantic understanding. Edward Waverley himself is like a time-traveller, a proto-Wordsworthian avid for nature and the sublime, mediating between the reader and the period of the novel at the same time as he assures us that a new sensibility will triumph over the divisiveness of the past” (99). Like Waverly, we are seduced by Bonnie Prince Charlie, but Scott may also be telling the reader that his aristocratic ideas, like the divine right of kings, are archaic. Scott suggests it is time to look at these old divisions between the Stuart and Hanover line with reason, after all (as we are continually reminded) it has been “sixty years since.” 

 Scott, Sir Walter. Waverly; Or, ‘Tis Sixty Years Since. Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2015.

Remembering the Olde Cheese

 

I’m thinking back on the last time I travelled with students in London.  We were in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, an old pub (a bit touristy, but an old pub) with an interesting literary history.  Dickens supposedly wrote there, and the story goes that Oliver Goldsmith and James Boswell frequented the place. (But then, what place didn’t they frequent, one wonders.)  Anyway, in the pub was a group of seven or eight male orderlies from the nearby hospital.  They were talking a break after work. Big, burly, middle-aged men in their scrubs.  They could tell we were Americans, of course, and so they struck up a conversation.  When they found out we were studying literature they began to question us.  “What are you reading?” and more to the point “what do you know?” What they wanted to know, really, was what could we recite.  One of them stood up with his pint in hand and began reciting Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.”  The students were stunned.  Another man began on Milton’s “Lycidas” and another did some Wordsworth, of course.  Then they turned to us.  “What have you got.”  I was able to recite some T. S. Eliot, but it was rough going. These working-class men knew their poetry, and we did not.  It was an interesting lesson and part of the reason for travel.   In my African-American Literature class this term we are reading James Baldwin.  In his introduction to Nobody Knows My Name, 

he writes: “A European writer considers himself to be part of an old and honorable tradition – of intellectual activity, of letters – and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends.  But this tradition does not exist in America” (6-7).  Baldwin suggests that we feel differently about writers and writing in America.  We think differently about the arts and about vocations.  He leaves the U.S.A. for Paris at one point in his career to learn about himself.  He learns as much about his own country as he does about himself.  He says “The writer is meeting in Europe people who are not American, whose sense of reality is entirely different from his own. They may love or hate or admire or fear or envy this country [the U.S.A.] – they see it, in any case, from another point of view, and this forces the writer to reconsider many things he had always taken for granted. This reassessment, which can be very painful, is also very valuable” (9). I think that is one of the great values of study abroad.  We can learn much about other cultures, but we can learn just as much about our own culture, and indeed, about ourselves. I can’t wait to learn more about myself this time across the pond. Studying abroad is a transformational and enlightening experience.

Old Blog - New Name - (A Resurrection of Sorts)

 

Ah.  Here it is. Wakey wakey old blog. I’m going to resurrect you.  Rise up and come forth old friend - it has been a few years. Sorry dear reader, but this old fellow traveler (a blog once called Irish Hurst), that at one point seemed vibrant and significant, was buried and hidden away.  Indeed, I thought it was lost forever.  And yet here it is. What once was lost is now found.  And by golly, I am here as well.  Now, is it possible that we can be made ready to continue our travels together?  Well, as you, dear reader, can see on your screen, the evidence is unrefutably clear.  It...is...alive!  Amazing....... And, as this blog is reborn, I will christen it anew with a new name: Reed Roams.  And now that the blog is named and set, and now that I've got this silly intro done, let me re-introduce myself:

I’m Dr. Brian Reed. I’m the chair of the Department of English at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania. I’ve been at Mercyhurst for 22 years.  I’m currently teaching a class on African-American literature, a section of British Classics, a film class called Literary Hitchcock, and this class called Fiction of Capital Cities: Edinburgh, London, and Dublin. It is this class that has inspired me to blog again.  I do wish we had just called this class Capital Fictions because I think there is some wordplay in that title, as in “by golly, these novels are capital!”  I hope this blog is "capital." 

This blog will reflect on a study abroad experience with students to the capital cities of Dublin, Edinburgh, and London.  I’m delighted to be going on this trip.  There is much to look forward to. Here, I'll reflect on some of the reading we are doing for class and ponder what we might experience across the pond. 
 

The Pot-Luck of the Irish

Front Entrance to Mercyhurst Dungarvan

I’m in my last days in Dungarvan for this spring, as I’m only here for the first part of the trip. As the students go to Dublin to head out for Berlin, I’ll be going to Dublin to head home to Erie. They will be pleased to be done with my class; it has made for long days for many of them. Indeed, many of them are in class from 8:30 to 4:00 on Monday , Wednesday, and Friday. On Tuesday nights, they are not done until after 8:00 in the evening. My class is being taught in just 5 weeks, so the contact hours are high. A good number of students are taking 4 classes in Ireland, so they have been working diligently to keep up. With all that being said, come this afternoon (when they take the final for my class) they will get some relief. I’m sure they will be pleased about that. I do think we have all enjoyed the class though, regardless of the struggle to stay on task on the longer days. Of course I think that even when things got a bit silly, there was good learning happening. In fact, many have said they loved the class, maybe because how comfortable we all seem to be together. Though maybe it’s because reading Irish Literature in Ireland is easy to love. This is a culture that has always celebrated the story, and I think the class was able to get a sense of that in the short time we had.

      One of the real benefits of these study abroad trips is the time outside of class that we, as teachers, spend with students. Travelling the country, going to sporting events, having meals together, or meeting for coffee all makes the experience worth it for everyone. The “contact hours” go way beyond the traditional classroom setting. At a churchyard cemetery with headstones and trees covered in moss, students talked about how they could understand why Yeats believed in fairies. Watching schoolboys with their hurlies, they connected to the unnamed narrators in Joyce’s Dubliners. Scaffolding in Youghal made them reflect on Heaney’s poem “Scaffolding,” and of course, the bog bodies in Dublin helped immensely with our reading of the later Heaney poetry. The students could find connections to the readings everywhere. Tom Keith recited lines from “The Stolen Child” by Yeats, and their Irish Culture teacher from WIT, Seamus, recited Heaney’s “Mid-term Break” from memory. A student who was touring the west with her parents understood a reference to “The Fiddler of Dooney” at Bunratty Castle. It’s nice to see the connections made.

      This is a talented group of students, and so they easily apply what they learn in the classroom to the outside world. In fact, they are applying what they learn in one class to other classes. That’s what it’s all about my friends. It makes what I do easy and rewarding. Last night, as a way to prepare for the final, and to finish up the memorization exercise I had them do, we all gathered together for a pot-luck supper and recitation. As a way of expanding the Irish theme, I made “Bubble and Squeak” (cabbage, onions, potato, meat, and butter) and “Mushy Peas.” Students brought salad, homemade pizza, grilled cheese, dip, chicken nuggets, cookies, breads, and cake. It was quite a feast. The last few students who needed to recite their poems did so in front of the group. We heard “Scaffolding,” “Dream,” “No Man’s Land,” “Mother of the Groom,” and “Limbo” from Heaney, and “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” “To an Isle in the Water,” and “The Young Man’s Song” from Yeats. Every student in the class of 17 recited a poem, in front of others, and did so professionally. There was a recitation on a bus, in a pub, in the classroom, in small groups, and of course, during the pot-luck gathering. It couldn’t have gone better.  While there were a lot of nerves and reservations about doing this assignment, they all finished without fail. I am proud of them.
      Well, I wasn’t sure what I was going to write this morning, but it seems I had no problem writing it. I haven’t even finished my brown bread and coffee (boy, I’m gonna miss the Irish bread). So as I finish up this post as well as my breakfast, I look forward to seeing and reading how well the students synthesize the course materials on the final exam. Their work so far makes me confident that they will do quite well. This class has been a pleasure to teach, and all the students on this trip have been a pleasure to get to know better. They represent Mercyhurst well.

Eat First and Recite Later

The Aftermath

Getting Ready to Recite

One of the Mercyhurst Dungarvan Classrooms

Lismore, Ardmore, and more....





  Seamus Heaney’s “In Gallarus Oratory” is one of my favorite poems in the collection we are reading. The last stanza is a follows:

Founded there like heroes in a barrow

Gallarus Oratory on Dingle



They sought themselves in the eye of their King

Under the black weight of their own breathing.

And how he smiled on them as out they came,

The sea a censer, and the grass a flame.

Gallarus Oratory is magical place really. It’s the kind of place that Dr. Owoc would call “thin.” Or maybe I should say, it is built on a “thin” place. It is a high place, surrounded by rock, sea, and open sky; the kind of place that welcomes transcendent thoughts. The Oratory is made of heavy, thick stone, and it only has one thin, small window, and a short passage for a door. Inside is a dark place of seclusion. In one of his writings from Preoccupations, Heaney remarks “[inside] I felt the weight of Christianity in all its revoking aspects, its calls to self-denial and self-abnegation, its humbling of the proud flesh and indolent spirit. But coming out . . . into the sunlight . . . I felt my heart surge toward happiness. “ I think that is represented well in the passage from the poem above. It makes me think about the relationship between the two experiences that Heaney has. I also wonder if we need the darkness to feel the light, if we need seclusion to feel connected, or in another sense, if we need the inside to appreciate the outside, the unconscious and the conscious, the “deep heart’s core” and the “seat of reason.”

St. Mary's Collegiate Church Youghal

This past weekend we were able to visit a number of other religious sites as well as another “thin” place. Each place was unique and inspiring. We saw the Collegiate Church of Saint Mary where Sir Walter Raleigh regularly attended in Youghal, which also was the church where Cromwell spoke, and where Jonathan Swift was baptized. The original baptismal fount, as well as the box Cromwell stood on, and the place where Raleigh hung his sword remain intact. There also are Viking burial tombs inside the church and the whole place is surrounded by the old town walls that were built to keep the Norman invaders at bay. The church incorporates an old tower that must have been part of the defense system; it looked to me like a Norman tower. The history alone makes the place quite moving, but what really made this place a special visit was the musical rehearsal that was occurring inside the church as we visited. Traditional Irish music, tin whistle, guitar, and voice accompanied us as we looked at the windows and monuments inside the church. With Tom Keith telling us about the amazing history of Cromwell’s march to Dungarvan, the Butler family, and the battles of Youghal, it is hard to imagine a more rich historical and cultural experience.

St. Declan's Retreat and Ardmore Bay

We had earlier seen Mount Melleray monastery, Lismore castle, and another old church (Anglican) that I will need to find the name of. It was a beautiful early church with an impressive old cemetery loaded with Irish saints. The ancient trees and headstones drew my attention most of the time here. Finally, at the end of the trip we made it to Ardmore, a coastal town with a wide beach and high surf that is a popular tourist destination for Europeans from the continent in the summer. I’ve been here before on two occasions, once with Tom Keith to look at St. Declan’s retreat, and once with Joe O’Flaherty, Gertie, Jim Breckenridge, Bob Hiebel, Damien Geoghegan, and Jim Snyder for an amazing dinner at the Cliffs Hotel overlooking Ardmore Bay. This was the first time, though, that I was able to get close to Ardmore’s famous round tower. At 1,000 years old, it is an exceptionally impressive architectural achievement. It is in remarkable shape and is the only tower with rings that I am aware of. The highlight for many was the final place we visited in Ardmore, and our last stop before returning to the Park Hotel. It certainly is the most meaningful place for Tom Keith, and it can’t be questioned that the setting is remarkable in itself. This place that I’m referring to is St. Declan’s Retreat, and it is situated up a steep hill (exciting for all of us including our talented bus driver).  From as far as the bus can make it, there is journey down a short path. The retreat includes a ruined church, the remains of an altar, and a holy well. It is surrounded by crashing sea and rocky cliffs. It’s another “thin” space for sure, and yet it is quite different than Gallarus Oratory. In its ruined state, the church is open, allowing into view the sky, grass, and sea. It is a place that Heaney’s King would surely smile down upon.

Today we are all getting ready to head for a Hurling match in Waterford. From the sacred to the profane, some might say. It is something that the Irish have no problem blending together. I’m sure many a prayer will be said over the course of play. And the right team may win, God willing.

Dingle Coastline near Gallarus Oratory



 

Lismore Castle

Ancient Trees and Burial Grounds of Irish Saints

Looks Norman to me







In Ardmore with Tom Keith







St. Declan's Retreat