Apr

8

Writers Gone Wilde.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

April 8, 2008 |

Is the ultimate apotheosis for an author that they become a brand, a trademark that can be slapped on just about anything? Author Gyles Brandreth doesn’t even question it in a recent article in The Times about Oscar Wilde; he just says, “like Shakespeare and Coca-Cola - he is a brand, with brand values we respond to.” With all due respect, I think Mr. Brandreth needs to watch how he’s slinging those “we’s” around. Wilde has been appropriated, with good reason, as a gay icon; he was persecuted for his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas and, after serving two years in Reading Gaol, went to France and died three years later. The author of very funny plays full of clever dialogue, the other thing Wilde is best known for is saying witty things, usually on the spur of the moment. Supposedly–I’ve never actually been able to confirm this–his last hours were spent complaining about the wallpaper in the Paris hospital where he lay dying. His last words, according to this story, were, “Either the wallpaper goes or I do.”

This story probably is fiction, and, while it’s funny, it also demonstrates the danger of turning a writer–or any person–into a brand. His name lends legitimacy to anything applied to it, but he is an empty vessel. Anything can be poured into him. In July 2000 a picture of Wilde as Salome made the rounds. It was proved to be a fake, but it was big news because it was, after all, Oscar Wilde. Other old photos have gone up in value because there’s someone who looks like–but may not be–Wilde in the crowd. In his short summary Brandreth does acknowledge that Wilde was a complex, often tormented man, the author of deeply personal poems, such as E Tenebris, which begins:

Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach Thy hand,
For I am drowning in a stormier sea
Than Simon on Thy lake of Galilee…

And yet I think Brandreth is off the mark when he says, “[Wilde] was a pioneer of celebrity culture…Ours is the age of the misery memoir. The greater your trauma - the more disturbing your childhood - the faster you climb the bestseller list. In 2008, Oscar would have made a packet.” This is mocking Wilde’s talent and accomplishments, and the fact that such a comparison could be made–and made as a compliment–doesn’t speak well for contemporary culture either. Maybe Brandreth, who’s about to publish the second book in his series of Victorian murder mysteries with Wilde as the detective (the first was Oscar Wilde And A Death Of No Importance), is right, though. Maybe we shouldn’t argue about whether Wilde is “one of us”, a man who was way ahead of his time and not just a product of it. I’ll take a line from Wilde himself who sad, “Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing. “

Here’s a poem by Sir John Betjeman:

The Arrest of Oscar Wilde At The Cadogan Hotel

He sipped at a weak hock and seltzer
As he gazed at the London skies
Through the Nottingham lace of the curtains
Or was it his bees-winged eyes?

To the right and before him Pont Street
Did tower in her new built red,
As hard as the morning gaslight
That shone on his unmade bed,

“I want some more hock in my seltzer,
And Robbie, please give me your hand –
Is this the end or beginning?
How can I understand?

“So you’ve brought me the latest Yellow Book:
And Buchan has got in it now:
Approval of what is approved of
Is as false as a well-kept vow.

“More hock, Robbie – where is the seltzer?
Dear boy, pull again at the bell!
They are all little better than cretins,
Though this is the Cadogan Hotel.

“One astrakhan coat is at Willis’s –
Another one’s at the Savoy:
Do fetch my morocco portmanteau,
And bring them on later, dear boy.”

A thump, and a murmur of voices –
(“Oh why must they make such a din?”)
As the door of the bedroom swung open
And TWO PLAIN CLOTHES POLICEMEN came in:

“Mr. Woilde, we ‘ave come for tew take yew
Where felons and criminals dwell:
We must ask yew tew leave with us quoietly
For this is the Cadogan Hotel.”

He rose, and he put down The Yellow Book.
He staggered – and, terrible-eyed,
He brushed past the plants on the staircase
And was helped to a hansom outside.


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