Proofed and corrected from the original edition for enjoyable reading. (Worth every penny spent!)
***
The life and death of Oscar Wilde, poet, playwright, poseur and convict, can only fittingly be summarized as a tragedy. Every misspent life is a tragedy more or less; but how much more tragic appear the elements of despair and disaster when the victim to his own vices is a man of genius exercising a considerable influence upon the thought and culture of his day, and possessing every advantage which birth, education, talent and station can bestow? Oscar Wilde was more than a clever and original thinker. He was the inventor of a certain literary style, and, though his methods, showy and eccentric as they were, lent themselves readily to imitation, none of his followers could approach their "Master " in the particular mode which he had made his own.
There can be two opinions as to the merits of his plays. There can be only one judgment as to their daring and audacious originality. Of the ordinary and the commonplace Wilde had a horror, which with him was almost a religion, He was unmercifully chaffed throughout America when he appeared in public in a light green suit adorned with a large sunflower; but he did not don this outrageous costume because he preferred such startling clothing. He adopted the dress in order to be original and assumed it because no other living man was likely to be so garbed. He was consumed, in fact, with overpowering vanity. He was possessed of a veritable demon of self-esteem. He ate strange foods, and drank unusual liquors in order to be unlike any of his contemporaries. His eccentricities of dress continued to the end. On the first night of one of his plays—it was a brilliant triumph—he was called upon by an enthusiastic audience for the customary speech. He was much exercised in his mind as to what he could say that would be unconventional and sensational. "
No mere platitudes or banalities for the author of " Lady Windermere's Fan, " who made a god of the spirit of Epigram and almost canonized the art of Repartee. He said, "Ladies and Gentlemen: I am glad you like my play. I like it very much myself too," which, if candid, was hardly the remark of a modest and retiring author. The leopard cannot change his spots and neither can the lion his skin. Even in his beautiful book, "De Profundis "—surely the most extraordinary volume of recent years—the man's character is writ so plainly that he who runs may read. Man of letters, man of fashion, man of hideous vices, Oscar Wilde remained to the last moment of his murdered life, a self-conscious egotist. "Gentlemen," he gasped on his death-bed, hearing the doctors express misgivings as to their fees, " it would appear that I am dying beyond my means!" It was a brilliant sally and one can picture the startled faces of the medical attendants. A genius lay a-dying and a genius he remained till the breath of life departed.
