Oscar Wilde was Irish through and through, born of Irish parents, raised and educated in Dublin. His father was Ireland’s pre-eminent eye and ear surgeon and his mother was a fiery Irish nationalist who wrote poems about an independent Ireland under the nom-de-plume of Speranza or ‘Hope’. (In De Profundis Wilde writes that his mother ‘intellectually ranks with Elizabeth Barrett Browning and historically with Madame Roland’, DP p.224). Wilde was raised in an atmosphere sympathetic to anti-British rebels and revolutionaries.
So although he moved to England and, after some struggle, established himself as a writer in London’s competitive literary world, and although he invoked and catered to the English upper classes in all his entertainments, he was consistently, sometimes astonishingly rude about the English, sometimes straightforwardly insulting.
I searched his works for quotes mentioning ‘England’, ‘English’, ‘British’ and ‘this country’ to build up a collage of his opinions.
The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891)
English philistinism:
…the stupidity and hypocrisy and Philistinism of the English…
…the vulgar theatre-going public of English men and women…
English law:
So completely has man’s personality been absorbed by his possessions that the English law has always treated offences against a man’s property with far more severity than offences against his person…
When private property is abolished there will be no necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to exist. Of course, all crimes are not crimes against property, though such are the crimes that the English law, valuing what a man has more than what a man is, punishes with the harshest and most horrible severity…
English charity:
In the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good…
The arts in England:
In England, the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it. The public like to insult poets because they are individual, but once they have insulted them, they leave them alone. In the case of the novel and the drama, arts in which the public do take an interest, the result of the exercise of popular authority has been absolutely ridiculous. No country produces such badly-written fiction, such tedious, common work in the novel form, such silly, vulgar plays as England.
And a really sustained broadside against the stupidity and vulgarity of the English public, he turns to their attitudes to ‘the classics:
This acceptance of the classics does a great deal of harm. The uncritical admiration of the Bible and Shakespeare in England is an instance of what I mean. With regard to the Bible, considerations of ecclesiastical authority enter into the matter, so that I need not dwell upon the point. But in the case of Shakespeare it is quite obvious that the public really see neither the beauties nor the defects of his plays. If they saw the beauties, they would not object to the development of the drama; and if they saw the defects, they would not object to the development of the drama either. The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms. They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist. A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry, and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions – one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this: When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true. The former expression has reference to style; the latter to subject-matter. But they probably use the words very vaguely, as an ordinary mob will use ready-made paving-stones. There is not a single real poet or prose-writer of this century, for instance, on whom the British public have not solemnly conferred diplomas of immorality, and these diplomas practically take the place, with us, of what in France, is the formal recognition of an Academy of Letters, and fortunately make the establishment of such an institution quite unnecessary in England.
You can see how he engineers a position from which he can regard the accusations of ‘immorality’ routinely made against his work, with pride.
The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself. But I can fancy that if an artist produced a work of art in England that immediately on its appearance was recognised by the public, through their medium, which is the public press, as a work that was quite intelligible and highly moral, he would begin to seriously question whether in its creation he had really been himself at all, and consequently whether the work was not quite unworthy of him, and either of a thoroughly second-rate order, or of no artistic value whatsoever.
Therefore:
On the whole, an artist in England gains something by being attacked. His individuality is intensified. He becomes more completely himself. Of course, the attacks are very gross, very impertinent, and very contemptible. But then no artist expects grace from the vulgar mind, or style from the suburban intellect. Vulgarity and stupidity are two very vivid facts in modern life. One regrets them, naturally. But there they are.
And the attempt to be genuinely, unselfishly sympathetic is particularly difficult in that particularly selfish, unsympathetic nation, England:
In the modern stress of competition and struggle for place, such sympathy is naturally rare, and is also very much stifled by the immoral ideal of uniformity of type and conformity to rule which is so prevalent everywhere, and is perhaps most obnoxious in England.
Which explains why her greatest artists had to flee:
Most personalities have been obliged to be rebels. Half their strength has been wasted in friction. Byron’s personality, for instance, was terribly wasted in its battle with the stupidity, and hypocrisy, and Philistinism of the English. Such battles do not always intensify strength: they often exaggerate weakness. Byron was never able to give us what he might have given us. Shelley escaped better. Like Byron, he got out of England as soon as possible. But he was not so well known. If the English had had any idea of what a great poet he really was, they would have fallen on him with tooth and nail, and made his life as unbearable to him as they possibly could. But he was not a remarkable figure in society, and consequently he escaped, to a certain degree. Still, even in Shelley the note of rebellion is sometimes too strong. The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.
The Critic as Artist (1891)
I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering; which, however, is, no doubt, the true explanation of their popularity, as the English public always feels perfectly at its ease when a mediocrity is talking to it.
ERNEST: I have a foolish habit of reading periodicals, and it seems to me that most modern criticism is perfectly valueless.
GILBERT: So is most modern creative work also. Mediocrity weighing mediocrity in the balance, and incompetence applauding its brother — that is the spectacle which the artistic activity of England affords us from time to time.
There is no country in the world so much in need of unpractical people as this country of ours. With us, Thought is degraded by its constant association with practice. Who that moves in the stress and turmoil of actual existence, noisy politician, or brawling social reformer, or poor narrow-minded priest blinded by the sufferings of that unimportant section of the community among whom he has cast his lot, can seriously claim to be able to form a disinterested intellectual judgment about any one thing?
England will never be civilised till she has added Utopia to her dominions.
The real weakness of England lies, not in incomplete armaments or unfortified coasts, not in the poverty that creeps through sunless lanes, or the drunkenness that brawls in loathsome courts, but simply in the fact that her ideals are emotional and not intellectual.
I need hardly say, Ernest, how far we in England have fallen short of this ideal, and I can imagine the smile that would illuminate the glossy face of the Philistine if one ventured to suggest to him that the true aim of education was the love of beauty, and that the methods by which education should work were the development of temperament, the cultivation of taste, and the creation of the critical spirit.
England has done one thing; it has invented and established Public Opinion, which is an attempt to organise the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force. But Wisdom has always been hidden from it. Considered as an instrument of thought, the English mind is coarse and undeveloped. The only thing that can purify it is the growth of the critical instinct.
How little we have of this temper in England, and how much we need it! The English mind is always in a rage. The intellect of the race is wasted in the sordid and stupid quarrels of second-rate politicians or third-rate theologians. It was reserved for a man of science to show us the supreme example of that ‘sweet reasonableness’ of which Arnold spoke so wisely, and, alas! to so little effect. The author of the Origin of Species had, at any rate, the philosophic temper. If one contemplates the ordinary pulpits and platforms of England, one can but feel the contempt of Julian, or the indifference of Montaigne. We are dominated by the fanatic, whose worst vice is his sincerity. Anything approaching to the free play of the mind is practically unknown amongst us. People cry out against the sinner, yet it is not the sinful, but the stupid, who are our shame. There is no sin except stupidity.
The Decay of Lying (1891)
Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching. Our splendid physique as a people is entirely due to our national stupidity. I only hope we shall be able to keep this great historic bulwark of our happiness for many years to come.
Robert Elsmere is of course a masterpiece — a masterpiece of the genre ennuyeux, the one form of literature that the English people seem to thoroughly enjoy. A thoughtful young friend of ours once told us that it reminded him of the sort of conversation that goes on at a meat tea in the house of a serious non-comformist family, and we can quite believe it. Indeed it is only in England that such a book could be produced. England is the home of lost ideas.
In the English Church a man succeeds, not through his capacity for belief but through his capacity for disbelief. Ours is the only Church where the sceptic stands at the altar, and where St. Thomas is regarded as the ideal apostle. Many a worthy clergyman, who passes his life in admirable works of kindly charity, lives and dies unnoticed and unknown; but it is sufficient for some shallow uneducated passman out of either University to get up in his pulpit and express his doubts about Noah’s ark, or Balaam’s ass, or Jonah and the whale, for half of London to flock to hear him, and to sit open-mouthed in rapt admiration at his superb intellect. The growth of common sense in the English Church is a thing very much to be regretted. It is really a degrading concession to a low form of realism.
The dreams of the great middle classes of this country, as recorded in Mr Myers’s two bulky volumes on the subject and in the Transactions of the Psychical Society, are the most depressing things that I have ever read. There is not even a fine nightmare among them. They are commonplace, sordid and tedious.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
Of Lord Henry’s uncle, Lord Fermor:
On succeeding…to the title [he] had set himself to the serious study of the great aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing. He had two large town houses, but preferred to live in chambers as it was less trouble, and took most of his meals at his club. He paid some attention to the management of his collieries in the Midland counties, excusing himself for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of burning wood on his own hearth. In politics he was a Tory, except when the Tories were in office, during which period he roundly abused them for being a pack of Radicals. He was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn. Only England could have produced him, and he always said that the country was going to the dogs
‘There is no literary public in England for anything except newspapers, primers, and encyclopaedias. Of all people in the world the English have the least sense of the beauty of literature.’
LORD HENRY: ‘If one puts forward an idea to a true Englishman — always a rash thing to do — he never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. The only thing he considers of any importance is whether one believes it oneself. Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.’
DORIAN: ‘I know how people chatter in England. The middle classes air their moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with the people they slander. In this country, it is enough for a man to have distinction and brains for every common tongue to wag against him. And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.’
BASIL: ‘England is bad enough I know, and English society is all wrong.’
LORD HENRY: ‘Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues. You, as a good Tory, must not underrate them. Beer, the Bible, and the seven deadly virtues have made our England what she is.’
Mr. Chapman began to talk in a loud voice about the situation in the House of Commons. He guffawed at his adversaries. The word doctrinaire — word full of terror to the British mind — reappeared from time to time between his explosions. An alliterative prefix served as an ornament of oratory. He hoisted the Union Jack on the pinnacles of thought. The inherited stupidity of the race — sound English common sense he jovially termed it — was shown to be the proper bulwark for society.
‘The inherited stupidity of the race’. Did Wilde actually hate the English?
Lady Alice Chapman, his hostess’s daughter, a dowdy dull girl, with one of those characteristic British faces that, once seen, are never remembered; and her husband, a red-cheeked, white-whiskered creature who, like so many of his class, was under the impression that inordinate joviality can atone for an entire lack of ideas.
Some of this is just wit and banter, but still…
‘You don’t like your country, then?’ she asked.
‘I live in it.’
‘That you may censure it the better.’
‘Would you have me take the verdict of Europe on it?’ he inquired.
‘What do they say of us?’
‘That Tartuffe has emigrated to England and opened a shop.’
‘Is that yours, Harry?’
‘I give it to you.’
‘I could not use it. It is too true.’
‘You need not be afraid. Our countrymen never recognize a description.’
‘They are practical.’
‘They are more cunning than practical. When they make up their ledger, they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy.’
‘Still, we have done great things.’
‘Great things have been thrust on us.’
‘We have carried their burden.’
‘Only as far as the Stock Exchange.’
She shook her head. ‘I believe in the race,’ she cried.
‘It represents the survival of the pushing.’
Obviously the word ‘burden’ rings bells for anyone familiar with Kipling’s 1899 poem, The White Man’s Burden, and is a kind of pre-emptive mockery of it.
‘My dear boy, they have only been talking about it [Basil Hallward’s mysterious disappearance] for six weeks, and the British public are really not equal to the mental strain of having more than one topic every three months.’
‘By the way, what has become of that wonderful portrait he did of you?…Oh! I remember your telling me years ago that you had sent it down to Selby, and that it had got mislaid or stolen on the way…What a pity! it was really a masterpiece. I remember I wanted to buy it…It belonged to Basil’s best period. Since then, his work was that curious mixture of bad painting and good intentions that always entitles a man to be called a representative British artist.’
De Profundis
(Page references are to the 1979 Oxford University Press paperback edition of The Selected Letters of Oscar Wilde edited by Rupert Hart-Davis.)
Writing about Jesus, Wilde says:
His chief war was against the Philistines. That is the war every child of light has to wage. Philistinism was the note of the age and community in which he lived. In their heavy inaccessibility to ideas, their dull respectability, their tedious orthodoxy, their worship of vulgar success, their entire preoccupation with the gross materialistic side of life, and their ridiculous estimate of themselves and their importance, the Jews of Jerusalem in Christ’s day were the exact counterpart of the British Philistine of our own.
Christ mocked at the ‘whited sepulchre’ of respectability, and fixed that phrase for ever. He treated worldly success as a thing absolutely to be despised. He saw nothing in it at all. He looked on wealth as an encumbrance to a man. He would not hear of life being sacrificed to any system of thought or morals. He pointed out that forms and ceremonies were made for man, not man for forms and ceremonies. He took sabbatarianism as a type of the things that should be set at nought. The cold philanthropies, the ostentatious public charities, the tedious formalisms so dear to the middle-class mind, he exposed with utter and relentless scorn…
In a completely different vein, Wilde execrates Lord Alfred Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, and his motives for bringing the court case against Wilde, namely to get his name in the papers.
To pose as a champion of purity, as it is termed, is, in the present condition of the British public, the surest way of becoming for the nonce a heroic figure. Of this public I said in one of my plays that if it is Caliban for one half of the year, it is Tartuffe for the other… (p.226)
And on the same subject:
The fact that your father loathed you and you loathed your father was not a matter of any interest to the English public. Such feelings are very common in English domestic life and should be confined to the place they characterise: the home. (p.232)
No great conclusions to make. Just awe at the sustained animus and occasional real vitriol of Wilde’s attacks which are easy to overlook in the broader contexts of the essays and plays. And helps you understand the widespread support for his prosecution which came from a public he had been bating and insulting for years. On Clapham Junction station, standing chained in prison clothes, the crowd jeered and spat at him. It was an appalling experience but was he really all that surprised?
Books & Boots 