0.1 Afterword  (Page 12/25)

As Wilde had feared, the most scathing, clever, and influential review came from the pen of Wilde’s nemesis (and one-time friend) W.E. Henley:

Conceive a largish quartobound in white and gold, and composed of some twenty leaves of fair, rough paper (many of them blank); ten designs by Mr. Charles Ricketts; thirteen initials byMr. Charles Ricketts, all printed in a curious green; and eighty-five couplets by Mr. Oscar Wilde, all printed in small caps and in decent black. Also, thedistribution of these precious eighty-five... for on one page there are as many as nine, and on another there are as few as one, and on another you shall countsome five, and on another yet are four, or six, or two, as providence hath willed. And the reason thereof let no man seek to know; for, if he do, the halfof it shall not be told to him. (Henley, 168)

Henley saw the volume’s self-conscious design in typically personal terms, as a reflection of its author’s transgressive dandyismand homosexual “narcissism,” though as was common among homophobes in his day, Henley imputed such things only indirectly through now-obscure allusions to theshedding of a waistcoat and “gaskins,” to the minor poet’s fondness for Piccadilly, to the predilection for affectionate diminutive names, and to theneed for police to maintain public order:

Not to be remarked is notto live; and we are all Strug-for-Lifers now. If Hughie went forth without his coat, and walked in Piccadilly, Ernie would take off his waistcoat, and dolikewise; and Bobbie and Freddie would each of them go one better than Ernie; till in due course the police must interfere. It is thus with the New Style, orFin-de-Siècle, Minor Poet. His ancestors were modest – after their kind; they wrote and printed, being to the manner born, but all the while they knew that inthe end the Twopenny Box was theirs until crack of doom. Their latest-born is of less abject mould. He may despair of being read; but he will be remarked, or hewill die. So he goes forth into the world, year after year, as MM Ernie and Co., into 'Piccadilly, that immortal street,’ still shedding something – some rag ofstyle, or sentiment, or decent manners – as he goes; and in the end one looks to see him without his gaskins (so to speak)…. Not yet, we haste to add, is thisthe fortune of the learned and enterprising author of The Sphinx . He has discarded certain lendings, it is true; but he has retained enough for Mrs.Grundy and the suburbs, and the fashion of that he has retained is so deliberately frantic, its hues are of so purposeful a violence, that his end isgained, and immediate conspicuousness assured. To put his case in a figure: You mark, in front of you, under a pea-green umbrella, in a magenta chlamys,fleshings of mauve, and a yellow turn, an antic thing, whose first effect is that of a very bedlamitish bookie. You approach the creature with a view tobusiness – when lo! you are aware that it is only Mr. Wilde’s latest avatar, after all. Then you note that he is trading in a novel sort of fancy goods. (Henley, 167-68)