Oscar Wilde English
Oscar Wilde
1854~1900. An Irish writer. He is famous as a representative writer in the fin de siècle England and his representative works are Salome(1892, tragedy), The Picture of Dorian Gray(1891, novel), The Importance of Being Earnest(1895, comedy) and others. He was a homosexual and was charged for that and put into prison.
Vernon Lee visited England in 1881 when she met Wilde for the first time. Lee wrote on Wilde as follows: "the wonderful Oscar Wilde! He talked a sort of lyrico-sarcastic maudlin cultschah for half an hour. But I think the creature is clever, and that a good half of his absurdities are mere laughing at people." Sondeep Kandola writes: ”Lee also felt a particular, if unspoken affinity, with Oscar Wilde." When Wilde worked as an editor of The Woman's World, Lee gave hand to Wilde.
When Lee met Wilde at a breakfast party, Wilde called his wife Constance "tender and surrender," and told that he took her virginity. (Neil McKenna, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, P.74.)
They met at Piccadilly in July, 1894. Wilde asked her about her invalid elder brother Eugene. Lee answered: "I think he is quite kind, whatever else he may be."
Though being an English, Vernon Lee was brought up in the continental Europe. Oscar Wilde was an Irishman. Lee seemed to feel sympathy for Wilde’s nature of non-Englishness. Also, both of them were under strong influence of Walter Pater, and both of them are homosexual.
Wilde thought that Walter Hamlin in Miss Brown was modelled after himself and felt offended. And Mr. Posthlethwaite in the same novel is said to be modelled after Wilde. Vernon Lee enjoyed Patience, an operetta which satirizes aesthetes, and she created Posthlethwaite inspired by Bunthorne, an aesthetic character in the operetta. In her former career, Lee also expressed the aesthetic idea on art and she was under some influence of Wilde or Walter Pater.
Vernon Lee’s short story ‘Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady’ was carried on The Yellow Book, on which Wilde’s works were carried, so she was influenced by Wilde through this magazine. For example, the Snake Lady is killed at the end, which is similar to the last scene of Salomé where Salomé is killed in the similar way as the Snake Lady. Other than this, influences from Wilde’s fairy tales can be found in the short story. Some critics assert that Lee wrote this short story because she wanted to defend the style Wilde created when Wilde was put into prison. For further information, make reference to Margaret Stetz’s 'The Snake Lady and the Bruised Bodley Head: Vernon Lee and Oscar Wilde in the Yellow Book' (Vernon Lee: Decadence, Ethics, Aesthetics).
Wilde, on the other side, referred to Vernon Lee as “distinguished writer” in "Pen, Pencil, and Poison."
