XIII

A WORD IN MEMORY

To have been born and lived all his life in Philadelphia, yet to be best known in London and New York; to have been the eldest son of a rich man and the eldest grandson of one of the richest men in America, yet of so quiet and retiring a disposition as to excite remark; to have been but a few years out of college, yet to have achieved distinction in a field which is commonly supposed to be the browsing-place of age; to have been relatively unknown in his life and to be immortal in his death such are the brief out

lines of the career of Harry Elkins Widener.

It is a curious commentary upon human nature that the death of one person well known to us affects us more than the deaths of hundreds or thousands not known to us at all. It is for this reason, perhaps, at a time when the papers bring us daily their record of human suffering and misery from the war in Europe, that I can forget the news of yesterday and live over again the anxious hours which followed the brief announcement that the Titanic, on her maiden voyage, the largest, finest, and fastest ship afloat, had struck an iceberg in mid-ocean, and that there were grave fears for the safety of her passengers and crew. There the first news ceased.

without looking what book should and what should not bear the governmental stamp, "Guaranteed to be pure and wholesome under the food and drugs act.' Few, I think, would put this label on "Dorian Gray." Wilde's own criticism was that the book was inartistic because it has a moral. It has, but it is likely to be overlooked in its general nastiness. In "Dorian Gray" he betrays for the first and perhaps the only time the decadence which was subsequently to be the cause of his undoing.

I have great admiration for what is called, and frequently ridiculed as, the artistic temperament, but I am a believer also in the sanity of true genius, especially when it is united, as it was in the case of Charles Lamb, with a fine, manly, honest bearing toward the world and the things in it; but alone it may lead us to yearn with Wilde

To drift with every passion till my soul

Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play.

It has been suggested on good authority that it is very unpleasant to wear one's heart upon one's sleeve. To expose one's soul to the elements, however interesting in theory, must be very painful in practice: Wilde was destined to find it so.

Why the story escaped success at the hands of the adapter for the stage, I never could understand. The clever talk of the characters in the novel should be much more acceptable in the quick give-and-take of a society play than it is in a narrative of several hundred pages; moreover, it abounds in situations which

Seccombe speaks of. But he affected idleness. A story is told of his spending a week-end at a country house. Pleading the necessity of working while the humor was on, he begged to be excused from joining the other guests. In the evening at dinner his hostess asked him what he had accomplished, and his reply is famous. "This morning," he said, "I put a comma in one of my poems." "Surprised and amused, the lady inquired whether the afternoon's work had been equally exhausting. "Yes," said Wilde, passing his hand wearily over his brow, "this afternoon I took it out again."

Just about the time that London had made up its mind that Wilde was nothing but a clever man about town, welcome as a guest because of the amusement he afforded, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism appeared in the "Fortnightly Magazine" for February, 1891. London was at once challenged and amazed. This essay opens with a characteristic statement, one of those peculiarly inverted paradoxes for which Wilde was shortly to become famous. "Socialism," he says, "would relieve us from the sordid necessity of living for others"; and what follows is Wilde at his very best.

What is it all about? I am not sure that I know: it seems to be a plea for the individual, perhaps it is a defense of the poor; it is said to have been translated into the languages of the downtrodden, the Jew, the Pole, the Russian, and to be a comfort to them; I hope it is. Do such outpourings do any good, do

they change conditions, is the millennium brought nearer thereby? I hope so. But if it is comforting for the downtrodden, whose wants are ill supplied, it is a sheer delight for the downtreader who, free from anxiety, sits in his easy-chair and enjoys its technical excellence.

I know nothing like it: it is as fresh as paint, and like fresh paint it sticks to one; in its brilliant, serious, and unexpected array of fancies and theories, in truths inverted and distorted, in witticisms which are in turn tender and hard as flint, one is delighted and bewildered. Wilde has only himself to blame if this, a serious and beautiful essay, was not taken seriously. "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" is the work of a consummate artist who, taking his ideas, disguises and distorts them, polishing them the while until they shine like jewels in a rare and unusual setting. Naturally, almost every other line in such a work is quotable: it seems to be a mass of quotations which one is surprised not to have heard before.

Interesting as Wilde's other essays are, I will not speak of them; with the exception of "Pen, Pencil and Poison," a study of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, the poisoner, they will inevitably be forgotten.

Of Wilde's poems I am not competent to speak: they are full of Arcady and Eros; nor am I of those who believe that "every poet is the spokesman of God." A book-agent once called on Abraham Lincoln and sought to sell him a book for which the President had no use. Failing, he asked Lincoln if he would not