Yesterday I posted one for Arthur Conan Doyle.
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Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Saturday, March 14, 2015
Humans of London: Bram Stoker
Again, my twist on Humans of New York, but London in the 1890s...
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If you have enjoyed the work that I do, please support my Victorian Dictionary Project!
If you have enjoyed the work that I do, please support my Victorian Dictionary Project!
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
50 Random Things about Bram Stoker
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| Bram Stoker |
2. Stoker was named after his father, a clerk at Dublin castle, who walked miles every day to work for fifty years.
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| George Stoker |
3. Stoker loved libraries. Who doesn’t?
4. Two of Stoker’s brother’s became doctors.
5. His brother, Dr. George Stoker, came to live with him, after travelling through Eastern Europe. Stoker was writing and researching Dracula at the time. George’s stories about his travels and the people he met might have informed the novel.
6. Stoker stole Oscar Wilde’s first girlfriend.
7.Stoker liked to use the word “weird.”
8. At age twenty-two, Stoker fell in love with the poetry of Walt Whitman and wrote Whitman a fan letter that sparked a great literary friendship.
9. Whitman thought of Stoker as a son: “he has always treated me like a best son.”
10. Whitman’s then-controversial and homoerotic Leaves of Grass was Stoker’s first encounter with the poet. He said: “Needless to say that amongst young men the objectionable passages were searched for and more noxious ones expected.”
11. The young Stoker described himself as follows:
“I am six feet two inches high and twelve stone weight naked and used to be forty-one or forty-two inches round the chest. I am ugly but strong and determined and have a large bump over my eyebrows. I have a heavy jaw and a big mouth and thick lips—sensitive nostrils—a snubnose and straight hair. I am equal in temper and cool in disposition and have a large amount of self control and am naturally secretive to the world. I take a delight in letting people I don’t like— people of mean or cruel or sneaking or cowardly disposition—see the worst side of me.”12. Stoker was often nervous having conversations in groups, but could speak easily one on one.
13. Stoker attributed his love of writing to a long illness he had in early childhood, which prevented him from even being able to walk. He said his earliest memories were of being carried from place to place and “I was naturally thoughtful and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years.”
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| Charlotte Matilda Blake Thornley Stoker |
14. Stoker’s mother was a politically active feminist, who told her sickly son gruesome tales.
15. Although Stoker’s writing often comes across as misogynistic, he writes more complex believable female characters than male characters.
16. His female characters usually have names that begin with the letter M, Maggie, Mina, Mimi, Marjory, Margaret...
17. Stoker usually didn’t write more than a page at a time.
18. In spite of this, Stoker wrote most of his stories very quickly, with the exception of Dracula, which was at least seven years in the making.
19. Although there are many theories on who inspired Dracula, Henry Irving is one of my favourite because Stoker asked him to play Dracula in the theatrical version of his novel. Irving, however, refused.
20. Irving liked to make fun of him for his Irish national pride and support for Home Rule.
21. Stoker always took it personally when Irving made fun of him.
22. When Stoker first met Irving, he helped save him from bankruptcy and said: “no artist can properly attend to his own business.”
23. This led to many years of employment and an elevated position in London Society as Irving’s business manager, but Stoker didn’t always feel so secure in this role and faced the competition and ridicule of a young journalist, later employed by Irving as personal secretary, Louis Frederick Austin.
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| Henry Irving |
25. Stoker spent most of his career working on the business end of theatre and believed strongly in government subsidies for the arts.
“The strain of ceaseless debt must always be the portion of any one who endeavours to uphold serious drama in a country where subsidy is not a custom. In the future, the State or the Municipality may find it a duty to support such effort, on the ground of public good. Otherwise the artist must pay with shortened life the price of his high endeavour.”26. Although Stoker wound up devoting most of his time to the theatre, he wanted to move to London to be a writer before he ever met Irving.
27. While living in London, Stoker also managed to earn a law degree.
28. Stoker was a night owl. He enjoyed staying up all night and seeing the dawn break.
29. Stoker always took a bath before going to bed.
30. Stoker liked thinking of himself as large.
31. Stoker preferred home-cooking to eating at restaurants.
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| Irving and Stoker getting into a cab. |
33. Stoker thought brandy was good for your health.
34. Stoker’s son claims his dad got the idea for Dracula from a nightmare he had after eating too much dressed crab.
35. Stoker was interested in mesmerism and the occult sciences. He had strong links to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
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36. Stoker was fascinated by dreams. He studied dream theory, while writing Dracula.
37. Stoker described watching someone high on opium as moving and speaking, “like a man in a dream.”
38. Stoker’s French wasn’t very good.
39. As much as Stoker liked German folklore, he didn’t speak German.
40. Van Helsing was an amalgamation of at least three different characters Stoker wanted to include in the book, including a German professor.
41.Although Stoker supported Home Rule, as an Irish Nationalist, he was also a monarchist, in support of England as a force for good in the world.
42. Stoker was against any form of violent Irish nationalism.
43. Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence that Stoker died of syphilis - only that he suffered from a number of Strokes before he died. It’s possible that he was also suffering from depression toward the end of his life.
44. Stoker didn’t like giving up his career with Irving at the Lyceum. He was upset that Irving sold the theatre without consulting him. This might have caused the onset of depression.
45. Even though Stoker’s wife always wanted to and even tried starting a career as an actress, Stoker considered Ellen Terry the best actress of their time. Terry was the female star of the Lyceum. Stoker said:
“Ellen Terry is a great actress, the greatest of her time; and she will have her niche in history. She is loved by every one who ever knew her. Her presence is a charm, her friendship a delight ; her memory will be a national as well as a personal possession.”46. Stoker’s wife was considered one of the three most beautiful women in England, but their marriage was platonic after the birth of their only child.
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| Florence Stoker (presumably photoshopped, but still cool) |
48. When Stoker died in 1912, Sotheby’s auctioned off his library. Whitman’s lecture on Lincoln, which he bequeathed to Stoker, sold for $25.
49. His wife tried to put a stop to the film: Nosferatu (1922) because, as Stoker’s widow, she owned the rights to Dracula, hadn’t been consulted and hadn’t been paid any royalties. This resulted in a lengthy court case, which she eventually won, while trying to destroy any and all copies of the film. As much as I like her as a historical figure, I’m glad she didn’t succeed.
50. On his 165th birthday, Stoker was honoured with a Google Doodle.
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Wednesday, December 25, 2013
100 Random Things about Oscar Wilde
In honour of this being my 100th post, I’m sharing 100 things you probably didn’t know about Oscar Wilde. If you knew any of this stuff keep track of how many points you get. Your score should be out of 100. Leave your result as a comment. If you have more Wildean wits about you than I did when I started this list, I’ll have your email address and can contact you in the future, if I have any questions! (Just kidding, sort of.)
1. “The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.” At different points in his life, Wilde comes across as pessimistic and optimistic. His writing style, his critique of his contemporaries, and his ability to laugh at the world around him combine to indicate that he was a realist.
2. One of his greatest gifts was the ability to smile at his own misfortune.
3. Wilde was raised Anglican and Catholic. In college, he became infatuated with the Catholic Church, but did not become a convert until the end of his life. I found an interesting Catholic interpretation of his life on CatholicEducation.org
4. “I never change, except in my affections.” Wilde only dreamt of being able to live this way. His writing sympathized with a common longing for eternal youth and the ability to always remain the same. In practice, once you had Wilde's affection, you always had his sympathy. He had many life-long friendships.
5. Wilde lacked musical talent and never appreciated music, even during his Aesthetic period.
6. Wilde once claimed to never travel anywhere without his copy of Studies in the History of the Renaissance by Walter Pater.
7. Wilde visited Egypt, as a child, and was always fascinated by sphinxes.
8. Although the New York Tribune claimed Wilde’s teeth were “superlatively white,” he was embarrassed by his teeth, often spoke with his hand in front of his mouth to cover them, and eventually got dentures.
9. Wilde disliked idle conversation. “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”
10. Wilde was a tremendously sensitive man, quite capable of indulging in self-pity, but usually only when he had genuine reasons to feel bad for himself. Moreover, he was just as affected by the hardships of others.
11. Wilde was clearly outgoing, but enjoyed privacy and was most productive as a writer when he was alone. Wilde got restless quickly, but always seemed to find himself quite entertaining.
12. Wilde’s ability to speed read and remember long passages has been attributed to an eidetic memory.
13. Wilde’s brother was a newspaper writer, so he often pokes fun at them.
14. Wilde was a very superstitious child, whose mother told him stories about macabre beasts. In the children’s books he wrote, as a father, his antagonists were generally friendly.
15. Wilde met Pope Piux IX, as an undergraduate in 1877.
16. Wilde became famous for his personality. After meeting Wilde at the Royal Court Theatre, Helena Modjeska once said, “What has he done, this young man, that one meets him everywhere? Oh yes he talks well, but what has he done? He has written nothing, he does not sing or paint or act - he does nothing but talk. I do not understand.”
17. In an unguarded moment, Wilde once told the 15 year-old daughter of a friend that if she were a boy, he would adore her. Her name was Aimée Lowther.
18. Wilde travelled extensively throughout Africa, Europe, and the United States.
19. Sex tourism was the most likely reason for Wilde's travel to Africa in adulthood.
20. Wilde's plays got mixed reviews from London theatre critics. One of his worst most vocal critics was his own brother.
21. Wilde feared nothing more than he feared God. The thought of eternal punishment was the one thing that prevented him from committing suicide, during his darkest moments, he told Vincent O’Sullivan.
22. The last gift Wilde gave to his two sons was a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.
23. Biographer, Neil McKenna says that Wilde wasn’t good at making a first impression and quotes Bosie, in The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde:
25. Wilde wasn’t good at horseback riding.
26. Wilde loved dirty French novels. His love of them almost ruined a British publication.
27. Some say Wilde is the most quotable author of all time, but he once drew a blank when someone asked him what his motto was.
28. Wilde kept a vase of flowers on his writing desk to neutralize the smell of his ashtray.
29. The only time Wilde wasn’t self-conscious about his appearance was when he was playing with his children.
30. Wilde was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin, which is now the home of the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College.
31. When Wilde published the Happy Prince and Other Tales in May 1888, the Anthaeum compared him to Hans Christian Anderson, which was a far cry from the reputation he had carefully crafted for himself.
32. If you met him and he liked you, Wilde would probably give you a cigarette case.
33. Growing up, Wilde had three pet names: “Ossie” with his family, “Grey Crow” at school, and “Hosky” at Oxford.
34. Wilde had a hard time saying no when asked for money.
35. Wilde’s favourite drinks were brandy and absinthe.
36. The Wildes had servants to cook and clean, but usually ate meals on credit at the hotel.
37. Wilde had five siblings: William 'Willie' Charles Kingsbury Wilde; Isola Francesca Emily Wilde, who died as a child and broke Wilde’s heart; his half-sisters - Emily and Mary Wilde; and his half-brother, Henry Wilson.
38. Early biographers look at the above childhood photo of Wilde dressed in frills and suggest that his mother wanted him to be a girl, thus arousing Wilde’s interest in men, but this was not true in anyway. In mid-nineteenth century Ireland, boys were traditionally dressed as girls to protect them from the dred due, a kind of blood-thirsty fairy, who abducted little boys, but ignored little girls. Wilde’s mother adored old Irish myths and legends, almost as much as she adored her little boys.
39. Wilde had as many female friends as he did male friends and, in fact, was an important contact for female writers in the 1880s.
40. For Christmas 1877, Wilde gave his girlfriend, Florence Balcombe, a small gold cross.
41. The executor for the estate of Oscar Wilde was a Canadian, Robert Ross.
42. Ross is also responsible for bring Wilde back into popularity with his 1908 edition of Wilde’s collected works.
43. Ross worked tirelessly to protect Wilde’s work, after Wilde was gone. This included fighting the rampant black market trade in erotica that was published falsely under Wilde’s name.
44. Wilde often claimed to be two years younger than he was and even lied about his age on his marriage certificate.
45. Wilde never enjoyed competitive sports, but he liked athletes.
46. Wilde tested out his clever maxims in conversations before putting them in his writing.
47. Wilde frequently suffered from writer’s block.
48. Wilde enjoyed sentimental friendships more than romances.
49. After he finished school, Wilde made money lecturing on aesthetics.
50. Wilde’s American tour was funded by Gilbert and Sullivan.
51. One of Wilde’s first impressions of America was that American men “seem to get a hold on life much ealier than we do.”
52. The hardest decision Wilde ever made was probably the decision not to flee to Paris before his trials were over. Even the judge expected him to do it. His family talked him out of it, specifically his mother and brother.
53. Wilde began writing the Sphinx in 1874 and spent many years working on it. He finally published it in 1894.
54. In the beginning, Wilde was uncertain how to go about publishing his poetry, so he wrote to the PM and asked for help, assuming, correctly, that an Oxford boy would not be ignored. “I am little more than a boy,” Wilde wrote and Gladstone wrote back, suggesting his send his poetry to the Spectator. Wilde followed this advice and was met with success!
55. Wilde’s father was a polymath.
56. Wilde spent money as fast as he got it.
57. Before and after they were married, Wilde borrowed money from his wife’s brother.
58. Wilde’s wife, Constance was a writer in her own right and had her own income.
59. In the 1880s, Wilde and Constance held seances at their house on Tite Street.
60. Their home on Tite Street was called “House Beautiful.”
61. After Wilde’s release from prison, when he had moved to Paris, his wife wrote to him that, if she ever saw him again, she would forgive anything.
62. In the Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde based the character, Algernon, on his brother, during a time when they were trying to get along better.
63. Wilde hated his brother, Willie, but often gave him money.
64. While he was in jail, Wilde’s brother pawned or sold most of his favourite things, including his famous fur coat.
65. His parents probably met through a book review. His mother wrote one for his father’s book, The Beauties of Boyne and Blackwater.
66. Wilde wrote reviews for books by lesser known authors. These were published in the Gazette.
67. Wilde’s favourite occupation was reading his own sonnets.
68. They say that people often criticize the character traits that they see as most problematic in themselves. Wilde despised “Vanity, self-esteem, [and] conceit,” but admired the “Power of attracting friends.”
69. Wilde enjoyed writing letters to the editor.
70. Wilde’s favourite actor was Henry Irving.
71. “Ivory” was one of Wilde’s favourite words.
72. “Quite charming” was one of his favourite phrases.
73. Bathing was Wilde’s favourite ritual.
74. If you made it this far, you probably know that Wilde’s favourite colour was green, but might not know that he hated mauve and magenta.
75.. In the Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde bases the character of Basil on his real-life artist friend and rival, James Whistler.
76. Max Beerbohm characterized Wilde with this list of words:
78. Wilde was bisexual.
79. With men, Wilde was a top.
80. Not only did Wilde love women, he liked women too. He enjoyed them socially and found them both attractive and intelligent.
81. Wilde adopted the name Sebastion Melmoth, after prison. Sebation was a martyr. Melmoth is from Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), a novel by his great-uncle that bears some similarities to the Picture of Dorian Gray.
82. Wilde often ate seafood for breakfast, but that was a common upper-class Victorian habit. Victorians were weird.
83. Wilde was 6’3” and got his height from his mother, who was approximately six feet tall.
84. A lot of people considered him fat. Laura Troubridge wrote in her diary in 1883: “Went to a tea party at Cressie's to meet the great Oscar Wilde. He is grown enormously fat with a huge face and tight curls all over his head - not at all the aesthetic he used to look.” And Adrian Hope wrote in 1887: “O.W. was at the Lyric Club, fat and greasy as ever and looking particularly revolting in huge white kid gloves.”
85. Later in life, Wilde considered his aestheticism to have been something of a phase.
86. He spoke the way he wrote. William Butler Yeats couldn’t believe it: “My first meeting with Oscar Wilde was an astonishment. I never before heard a man talking with perfect sentences, as if he had written them all overnight with labor and yet all spontaneous.”
87. When the Savoy Hotel introduced hot and cold running water, Wilde wasn’t pleased. He was happier having someone bring him his water.
88. Wilde called white wine yellow because his friend Robert Sherard once pointed out to him that white wine really isn’t white at all.
89. Wilde was once infatuated with the actress Lillie Langtry, but denied buying a lily daily and walking it over to her home as a gift.
90. Much like the contemporary sociologist, Zygmunt Bauman, Wilde thought that jealousy in a marriage was “closely bound up with our conceptions of property” and “an extraordinary source of crime in modern life.”
91. In 1880, Wilde proposed to Charlotte Montefiore. When she refused, he wrote: “Charlotte, I am so sorry about your decision. With your money and my brain we could have gone far.”
92. Wilde slept with a female prostitute in Paris in 1883. His friend, Robert Sherard wrote about it. Afterwards, Wilde remarked: “What animals we are, Robert!”
93. Wilde almost certainly never had syphilis.
94. Wilde’s first kiss was from a boy he went to school with at Portura. They were saying good-bye at a railway station. He was sixteen years-old.
95. Wilde lied about his early school years in an interview with a journal called Biograph, when he was 26 years old. Nobody is sure why. Portura was a good school.
96. Wilde first described his future wife in a letter to Waldo Story as “quite young, very grave and mystical, with wonderful eyes, and dark brown coils of hair.... We are, of course, desperately in love.” Proof that at least one British postman was able to find Waldo!
97. Though Wilde didn’t see his wife again, after he left prison, they never got divorced.
98. Fatherhood inspired much of Wilde’s work. He took the job as editor of Woman’s World because he had a family to support. He wrote children’s stories because he had children to tell them to. Wilde loved being a father.
99. Wilde wrote in ink and edited in pencil.
100. There’s no evidence that Oscar Wilde ever said: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
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1. “The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.” At different points in his life, Wilde comes across as pessimistic and optimistic. His writing style, his critique of his contemporaries, and his ability to laugh at the world around him combine to indicate that he was a realist.
2. One of his greatest gifts was the ability to smile at his own misfortune.
3. Wilde was raised Anglican and Catholic. In college, he became infatuated with the Catholic Church, but did not become a convert until the end of his life. I found an interesting Catholic interpretation of his life on CatholicEducation.org
4. “I never change, except in my affections.” Wilde only dreamt of being able to live this way. His writing sympathized with a common longing for eternal youth and the ability to always remain the same. In practice, once you had Wilde's affection, you always had his sympathy. He had many life-long friendships.
5. Wilde lacked musical talent and never appreciated music, even during his Aesthetic period.
6. Wilde once claimed to never travel anywhere without his copy of Studies in the History of the Renaissance by Walter Pater.
7. Wilde visited Egypt, as a child, and was always fascinated by sphinxes.
8. Although the New York Tribune claimed Wilde’s teeth were “superlatively white,” he was embarrassed by his teeth, often spoke with his hand in front of his mouth to cover them, and eventually got dentures.
9. Wilde disliked idle conversation. “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”
10. Wilde was a tremendously sensitive man, quite capable of indulging in self-pity, but usually only when he had genuine reasons to feel bad for himself. Moreover, he was just as affected by the hardships of others.
11. Wilde was clearly outgoing, but enjoyed privacy and was most productive as a writer when he was alone. Wilde got restless quickly, but always seemed to find himself quite entertaining.
12. Wilde’s ability to speed read and remember long passages has been attributed to an eidetic memory.
13. Wilde’s brother was a newspaper writer, so he often pokes fun at them.
14. Wilde was a very superstitious child, whose mother told him stories about macabre beasts. In the children’s books he wrote, as a father, his antagonists were generally friendly.
15. Wilde met Pope Piux IX, as an undergraduate in 1877.
16. Wilde became famous for his personality. After meeting Wilde at the Royal Court Theatre, Helena Modjeska once said, “What has he done, this young man, that one meets him everywhere? Oh yes he talks well, but what has he done? He has written nothing, he does not sing or paint or act - he does nothing but talk. I do not understand.”
17. In an unguarded moment, Wilde once told the 15 year-old daughter of a friend that if she were a boy, he would adore her. Her name was Aimée Lowther.
18. Wilde travelled extensively throughout Africa, Europe, and the United States.
19. Sex tourism was the most likely reason for Wilde's travel to Africa in adulthood.
20. Wilde's plays got mixed reviews from London theatre critics. One of his worst most vocal critics was his own brother.
21. Wilde feared nothing more than he feared God. The thought of eternal punishment was the one thing that prevented him from committing suicide, during his darkest moments, he told Vincent O’Sullivan.
22. The last gift Wilde gave to his two sons was a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.
23. Biographer, Neil McKenna says that Wilde wasn’t good at making a first impression and quotes Bosie, in The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde:
There is no charm in his elephantine body, tightly stuffed into his clothes - no charm in his great face and head of unselect Bohemian cast - save the urbanity he can adopt or the intelligence with which he can vitalise his ponderousness.24. On holiday, Wilde enjoyed days spent paddling about in a “Canadian canoe.”
25. Wilde wasn’t good at horseback riding.
26. Wilde loved dirty French novels. His love of them almost ruined a British publication.
27. Some say Wilde is the most quotable author of all time, but he once drew a blank when someone asked him what his motto was.
28. Wilde kept a vase of flowers on his writing desk to neutralize the smell of his ashtray.
29. The only time Wilde wasn’t self-conscious about his appearance was when he was playing with his children.
30. Wilde was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin, which is now the home of the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College.
31. When Wilde published the Happy Prince and Other Tales in May 1888, the Anthaeum compared him to Hans Christian Anderson, which was a far cry from the reputation he had carefully crafted for himself.
32. If you met him and he liked you, Wilde would probably give you a cigarette case.
33. Growing up, Wilde had three pet names: “Ossie” with his family, “Grey Crow” at school, and “Hosky” at Oxford.
34. Wilde had a hard time saying no when asked for money.
35. Wilde’s favourite drinks were brandy and absinthe.
36. The Wildes had servants to cook and clean, but usually ate meals on credit at the hotel.
37. Wilde had five siblings: William 'Willie' Charles Kingsbury Wilde; Isola Francesca Emily Wilde, who died as a child and broke Wilde’s heart; his half-sisters - Emily and Mary Wilde; and his half-brother, Henry Wilson.
38. Early biographers look at the above childhood photo of Wilde dressed in frills and suggest that his mother wanted him to be a girl, thus arousing Wilde’s interest in men, but this was not true in anyway. In mid-nineteenth century Ireland, boys were traditionally dressed as girls to protect them from the dred due, a kind of blood-thirsty fairy, who abducted little boys, but ignored little girls. Wilde’s mother adored old Irish myths and legends, almost as much as she adored her little boys.
39. Wilde had as many female friends as he did male friends and, in fact, was an important contact for female writers in the 1880s.
40. For Christmas 1877, Wilde gave his girlfriend, Florence Balcombe, a small gold cross.
41. The executor for the estate of Oscar Wilde was a Canadian, Robert Ross.
42. Ross is also responsible for bring Wilde back into popularity with his 1908 edition of Wilde’s collected works.
43. Ross worked tirelessly to protect Wilde’s work, after Wilde was gone. This included fighting the rampant black market trade in erotica that was published falsely under Wilde’s name.
44. Wilde often claimed to be two years younger than he was and even lied about his age on his marriage certificate.
45. Wilde never enjoyed competitive sports, but he liked athletes.
46. Wilde tested out his clever maxims in conversations before putting them in his writing.
47. Wilde frequently suffered from writer’s block.
48. Wilde enjoyed sentimental friendships more than romances.
49. After he finished school, Wilde made money lecturing on aesthetics.
50. Wilde’s American tour was funded by Gilbert and Sullivan.
51. One of Wilde’s first impressions of America was that American men “seem to get a hold on life much ealier than we do.”
52. The hardest decision Wilde ever made was probably the decision not to flee to Paris before his trials were over. Even the judge expected him to do it. His family talked him out of it, specifically his mother and brother.
53. Wilde began writing the Sphinx in 1874 and spent many years working on it. He finally published it in 1894.
54. In the beginning, Wilde was uncertain how to go about publishing his poetry, so he wrote to the PM and asked for help, assuming, correctly, that an Oxford boy would not be ignored. “I am little more than a boy,” Wilde wrote and Gladstone wrote back, suggesting his send his poetry to the Spectator. Wilde followed this advice and was met with success!
55. Wilde’s father was a polymath.
56. Wilde spent money as fast as he got it.
57. Before and after they were married, Wilde borrowed money from his wife’s brother.
58. Wilde’s wife, Constance was a writer in her own right and had her own income.
59. In the 1880s, Wilde and Constance held seances at their house on Tite Street.
60. Their home on Tite Street was called “House Beautiful.”
61. After Wilde’s release from prison, when he had moved to Paris, his wife wrote to him that, if she ever saw him again, she would forgive anything.
62. In the Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde based the character, Algernon, on his brother, during a time when they were trying to get along better.
63. Wilde hated his brother, Willie, but often gave him money.
64. While he was in jail, Wilde’s brother pawned or sold most of his favourite things, including his famous fur coat.
65. His parents probably met through a book review. His mother wrote one for his father’s book, The Beauties of Boyne and Blackwater.
66. Wilde wrote reviews for books by lesser known authors. These were published in the Gazette.
67. Wilde’s favourite occupation was reading his own sonnets.
68. They say that people often criticize the character traits that they see as most problematic in themselves. Wilde despised “Vanity, self-esteem, [and] conceit,” but admired the “Power of attracting friends.”
69. Wilde enjoyed writing letters to the editor.
70. Wilde’s favourite actor was Henry Irving.
71. “Ivory” was one of Wilde’s favourite words.
72. “Quite charming” was one of his favourite phrases.
73. Bathing was Wilde’s favourite ritual.
74. If you made it this far, you probably know that Wilde’s favourite colour was green, but might not know that he hated mauve and magenta.
75.. In the Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde bases the character of Basil on his real-life artist friend and rival, James Whistler.
76. Max Beerbohm characterized Wilde with this list of words:
Luxury - gold-tipped matches - hair curled - Assyrian-wax statue - huge rings - fat white hands - not soignée - feather bed - pointed fingers - ample scarf - Louis Quinze cane - vast Malmaison - cat-like tread - heavy shoulders - enormous dowager - or schoolboy - way of laughing with hand over mouth - stroking chin - looking up sideways - jollity overdone - But real vitality…Effeminate, but vitality of twenty men, magnetism - authority. Deeper than repute or wit, Hypnotic.77. Wilde probably had sex with Walt Whitman once, but preferred beardless men.
78. Wilde was bisexual.
79. With men, Wilde was a top.
80. Not only did Wilde love women, he liked women too. He enjoyed them socially and found them both attractive and intelligent.
81. Wilde adopted the name Sebastion Melmoth, after prison. Sebation was a martyr. Melmoth is from Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), a novel by his great-uncle that bears some similarities to the Picture of Dorian Gray.
82. Wilde often ate seafood for breakfast, but that was a common upper-class Victorian habit. Victorians were weird.
83. Wilde was 6’3” and got his height from his mother, who was approximately six feet tall.
84. A lot of people considered him fat. Laura Troubridge wrote in her diary in 1883: “Went to a tea party at Cressie's to meet the great Oscar Wilde. He is grown enormously fat with a huge face and tight curls all over his head - not at all the aesthetic he used to look.” And Adrian Hope wrote in 1887: “O.W. was at the Lyric Club, fat and greasy as ever and looking particularly revolting in huge white kid gloves.”
85. Later in life, Wilde considered his aestheticism to have been something of a phase.
86. He spoke the way he wrote. William Butler Yeats couldn’t believe it: “My first meeting with Oscar Wilde was an astonishment. I never before heard a man talking with perfect sentences, as if he had written them all overnight with labor and yet all spontaneous.”
87. When the Savoy Hotel introduced hot and cold running water, Wilde wasn’t pleased. He was happier having someone bring him his water.
88. Wilde called white wine yellow because his friend Robert Sherard once pointed out to him that white wine really isn’t white at all.
89. Wilde was once infatuated with the actress Lillie Langtry, but denied buying a lily daily and walking it over to her home as a gift.
90. Much like the contemporary sociologist, Zygmunt Bauman, Wilde thought that jealousy in a marriage was “closely bound up with our conceptions of property” and “an extraordinary source of crime in modern life.”
91. In 1880, Wilde proposed to Charlotte Montefiore. When she refused, he wrote: “Charlotte, I am so sorry about your decision. With your money and my brain we could have gone far.”
92. Wilde slept with a female prostitute in Paris in 1883. His friend, Robert Sherard wrote about it. Afterwards, Wilde remarked: “What animals we are, Robert!”
93. Wilde almost certainly never had syphilis.
94. Wilde’s first kiss was from a boy he went to school with at Portura. They were saying good-bye at a railway station. He was sixteen years-old.
95. Wilde lied about his early school years in an interview with a journal called Biograph, when he was 26 years old. Nobody is sure why. Portura was a good school.
96. Wilde first described his future wife in a letter to Waldo Story as “quite young, very grave and mystical, with wonderful eyes, and dark brown coils of hair.... We are, of course, desperately in love.” Proof that at least one British postman was able to find Waldo!
97. Though Wilde didn’t see his wife again, after he left prison, they never got divorced.
98. Fatherhood inspired much of Wilde’s work. He took the job as editor of Woman’s World because he had a family to support. He wrote children’s stories because he had children to tell them to. Wilde loved being a father.
99. Wilde wrote in ink and edited in pencil.
100. There’s no evidence that Oscar Wilde ever said: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
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Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Top Ten Reasons Oscar Wilde Hated His Brother
Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else. - The Picture of Dorian Gray
If you think your brother is a jerk, you should meet Oscar Wilde’s brother. After spending some time with William “Willie” Wilde, Herbert Beerbohm Tree wrote:
"...did I tell you that I saw a good deal of [Oscar's] brother Willie at Broadstairs? Quel monstre! Dark, oily, suspect yet awfully like Oscar: he has Oscar's coy, carnal smile & fatuous giggle & not a little of Oscar's esprit. But he is awful - a veritable tragedy of family-likeness"If you have ever quarreled with a sibling, you probably appreciate the phrase “a veritable tragedy of family-likeness.” You might even be trying to commit it to memory for future use.
Oscar would have appreciated it as well because his relationship with Willie was turbulent, to say the least. He actually based Algernon, in The Importance of Being Earnest, on his brother Willie, during a time when the two were trying to reconcile their differences. Sadly, the time when things appeared to be easiest between the two of them was the time Willie inflicted the most damage on Oscar’s life, the time when Oscar needed his family most. The two would never speak again.
There’s so much I could say about what made Willie a “monstre” of a brother, as Willie provides the subject of a novel that I’m currently writing, but, because this is the internet, I’m going to try to limit it to the ten reasons Oscar Wilde’s brother was worse than yours, after which you should go give your brother a hug!
1. Willie publicly mocked Oscar’s life and work.
Oscar would read about Willie’s behaviour in a paper that reported on one of Willie’s nights at the Lotos Club, where he had...
...hilariously entertained the club members by impersonating Oscar’s voice, parodying his poetry and immitating his aesthetic mannerisms. - Ashley RobinsWillie’s opinions were unpopular and probably reflected insecurities about himself, for, after six months of marriage, his rich wife returned him to London and filed for divorce. She was unhappy in the marriage because Willie drank so much he could not satisfy her sexually and he didn’t do any work or writing.
To be fair, Willie didn’t keep his intentions for his time in New York a secret from Leslie, his motto at the time was:
What America needs is a leisure class and I am determined to introduce one.2. His drinking made Willie a public spectacle.
My sister Constance came home one day and summoned my mother and me; she was quivering to tell us what had happened. She knew in advance it was the sort of thing my mother would adore. Well, Constance had been walking along the street and met Willie Wilde – Oscar’s brother. In one hand, he was carrying a huge leg of mutton by the narrow part; with his free hand he swept off his hat and bent over double in a grand, ceremonial bow. There was something so grotesquely funny in the way he did it, conveying both the mutton and the bow. We decided it was a first class thing.3. Willie took money from old people and babies.
Drink would eventually kill Willie Wilde, but first it would render him unable to support himself, so that he sponged money off of his mother and angrily stamped his foot at her, when she refused to give it to her. Even when Oscar was bankrupt and going to jail, his family, including Willie’s pregnant wife, depended on him for the financial support that Willie was unable to provide.
This had been going on for years, as before Willie married that woman, he was reported to have stolen the piggy bank from the children of another woman he was hoping to marry.
Much of the surviving correspondence between Willie and Oscar has to do with Oscar giving Willie money - see my post on American Cigarettes.
4. Willie’s friend stole Oscar’s girlfriend.
Oscar wouldn’t hold a grudge and became friends with Stoker, but he always had a place in his heart for Florrie and she would always refer to Oscar as “Poor O.”
5. Willie was the Wilde family favourite.
Why do so many people love a villain? No matter how he mistreated their mother, Speranza always favoured Willie over Oscar. She always made excuses for Willie and even, at times, seemed jealous of Oscar’s success. In her letters, Speranza always blames Oscar, when the two brother’s aren’t getting along: “Why didn’t you come to your brother’s wedding?” “Why won’t you accept your brother’s apology?” And so on.
As the first-born, Willie inherited more than Oscar, when their father died. When their half-brother, Henry Wilson died, he left £8,000 to charity, £2,000 to Willie and only £100 to Oscar.
Oscar standing on left, Willie sitting far right.
As the first-born, Willie inherited more than Oscar, when their father died. When their half-brother, Henry Wilson died, he left £8,000 to charity, £2,000 to Willie and only £100 to Oscar.
6. Willie published a bad review of Lady Windermere’s Fan. Granted the review in the Daily Telegraph, where Willie worked, is only presumed to by written by Willie, it is a negative one and typical of their relationship. Also typical, their mother continued to pester Oscar to offer Willie praise for his writing.
7. Willie gave Oscar bad advice.
During his trials, everyone, including the judge, expected and encouraged Wilde to flee to Paris. Oscar’s friends were ready to escort him there.
Willie (and his mother) wouldn’t hear of it and threatened to disown him, if he left.
8. Willie found self-righteous joy in Oscar’s troubles.
You would think that this would be the worst part of having Willie Wilde as a brother. As Oscar put it: Willie makes such a merit of giving me shelter,” when it was really their mother’s house and Oscar had been helping them financially for many years.
Following Oscar's arrest and first trial in April 1895, Willie claimed that he gave his brother shelter when he was unable to find rooms in London. Willie told anyone that would listen that Oscar "fell down on my threshold like a wounded stag.” As if standing by his brother, Willie wrote to Stoker:
Bram, my friend, poor Oscar was not as bad as people thought him. He was led astray by his Vanity - & conceit, & he was so 'got at' that he was weak enough to be guilty – of indiscretions and follies - that is all.... I believe this thing will help to purify him body & soul.Yet, self-righteous joy and gloating was nothing compared to what Willie still had up his sleeve.
9. Willie blackmailed his brother.
While Oscar was going to court and staying with Willie on Oakley Street, Willie got a hold of some incriminating letters and used them to control Oscar for a while.
You can’t, however, get blood from a stone. Oscar didn’t have much money left to pay. He may have borrowed some to pay Willie from his friends, since Beebohm Tree and others knew about this situation. Willie eventually sold the letters to Travers Humphreys.
10. Willie sold Oscar’s things.
Oscar, as we all know, went to prison. Before that he had been living at his mother’s house, where his brother pretended to host him. He left a trunk of clothing behind, which Willie proceeded to pawn or sell - though his wife, Lily, saved Oscar’s shirts.
Oscar was so upset by the loss of his beloved fur coat that he could no longer refer to Willie and Lily by name. He wrote to Robert Ross on the subject:
Also, I would take it as a great favour if More [Adey] would write to the people who pawned or sold my fur coat since my imprisonment, and ask from me whether they would be kind enough to state where it was sold or pawned as I am anxious to trace it, and if possible get it back. I have had it for twelve years, it was all over America with me, it was at all my first nights, it knows me perfectly, and I really want it. The letter should be quite courteous, addressed first to the man: if he doesn't answer, to the woman. As it was the wife who pressed me to leave it in her charge, it might be mentioned that I am surprised and distressed, particularly as 1 paid out of my own pocket since my imprisonment all the expenses of her confinement, to the extent of £50 conveyed through Leverson. This might be stated as a reason for my being distressed.By this point, Willie and Lily were no longer Oscar’s brother and sister-in-law. He refers to them only as “the people,” “the man,” “the woman,” “the wife,” but never by name.
One might try to argue that Willie and Oscar didn’t get along because Willie was an alcoholic, but their personalities clashed, since childhood. Oscar once clapped his hands when Willie’s night gown caught fire in their nursery, then sulked because their governess managed to put the fire out.
After Oscar went to prison, the two would never see or speak to each other again - except of course through third parties, like those Oscar sent to track down his belongings. Willie never even bothered to write to Oscar in prison and said that “For many reasons [Oscar] would not want to see me.” We don’t have to wonder why.
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