Wilde Thing
Oscar Wilde: I wish I had said that.
James Whistler: You will, Oscar, you will.
A few words on Oscar Wilde and James Whistler are merited. Whistler, of course, is best known for his nearly black-and-white full-length portrait of his mother, in fact titled Arrangement in Gray and Black: Portrait of the Artist’s Mother, but usually referred to as Whistler’s Mother. Whistler was well-known for his biting wit, especially in his exchanges with Wilde. Both were figures in the café society of Paris at the turn of the 20th century.
Wilde certainly was the equal of Whistler when it came to wit. He had few equals when it came to ego and eccentricity. “I never travel without my diary,” he wrote. “One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” It is not surprise that it was Wilde who penned: “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” (from one of the few books that can still, years later, give me the creeps, The Picture of Dorian Gray)
Wilde is considered one of the greatest playwrights of the Victorian era. He wrote nine plays, one of which I both read and saw performed: The Importance of Being Ernest.
The play’s protagonist is Jack Worthington, a pillar of the community and a man of weighty responsibilities. His escape: an imaginary black-sheep brother named Ernest who lives a most scandalous life dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure. Ernest becomes both alibi and excuse. Things get complicated, however, when the object of Jack’s desire, Gwendolen, becomes fixated on the name Ernest, one which apparently inspires absolute confidence. Gwendolen makes it clear that she would not consider marrying a man who was not named Ernest. It is from the tangled web of lies that these gems are found:
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be vary tedious if it were either and modern literature a complete impossibility.”
“I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.”
“Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?”
One final comment on the Wilde/Whistler exchange. The whole event may never have happened at all; some say that Wilde wrote both the initial remark and the riposte. Perhaps the story is apocryphal but, in the end, it doesn’t really matter. Because it works perfectly and, because it does, it endures.
One of my favorite lines in the play is Lady Bracknell’s: “To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
I also always loved Wilde’s supposed last words: “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”
I absolutely love Oscar Wilde.
Another Wildean gem:
“The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.”