BOOK: Howard Smith, "Last Train from Berlin"

Howard K. Smith: Last Train from Berlin. London: The Cresset Press, 1942. vii + 266 pp.

Smith was an American journalist who reported from Germany during the first two years of the WW2, while the United States was (in principle) still neutral. He published this book in 1942, after his return to the USA. I found it an interesting read, but I have much the same complaint as with Arvid Fredborg's Behind the Steel Wall, which I read a few years ago: I wish there was more about what it was like to work as a journalist in wartime Germany, and less about how the war was going, what the internal dynamics of the Third Reich were, and the like — I can read these latter things in the work of any number of later historians who are in a much better position to see the whole picture than someone living in the middle of those events had been. The problem, of course, is that the readers in 1942 very reasonably had exactly the opposite preferences than me in these matters, and authors like Smith and Fredborg wrote for them, not for the likes of me. Still, I enjoyed the book a lot; Smith not only observed things, but also thought about them a good deal, and I found something interesting on practically every other page.

*

Smith first visited Germany in 1936; he had just graduated from college and wanted to travel in Europe a bit before settling down, and he went to Germany because it was cheapest (p. 1). But he also wanted to find out how the Nazi system worked in Germany; he was surprised by how heavily militarized everything in Germany had already become by then (pp. 6–7), and it was clear that an enourmous amount of resources were being dedicated to rearmament (while the standards of living of the civilian population had actually declined since the Nazi takeover of power; p. 12). From this, Smith concluded that the regime was inevitably on a course for war.

In 1937–39, he spent two years at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship (pp. 22–8); he was impressed by how keenly the students were involved in political clubs, and he himself seems to have spent more time on activism for the Labour Club than on studying. When war started, he was pleasantly surprised to see that Britain was actually going to stand up to Hitler this time (p. 28), but was disappointed by how uninspired British propaganda was (pp. 31–2). He got himself a job with the United Press and went to Berlin in January 1940 (pp. 28, 30).

There are a couple of odd insults at Hitler's expense that I haven't seen before. I know that his very modest artistic career led some people so mockingly refer to him as a housepainter and the like, but Smith upgrades this to “a second-rate, psychopathic carpenter with a third-rate intellect” (p. 16) and “a wall-paper hanger” (p. 29)!

Interesting factoid of the day: Hitler's half-brother Alois (from their father's second marriage — Adolf was from the third) was running a “little restaurant” in Berlin (pp. 46, 105).

*

Since the war was going well for Germany for the first couple of years, the Nazi regime was bursting with self-confidence and didn't supervise the foreign reporters as closely as later (p. 34). After the first air-raids against Berlin, they were allowed to report freely as the Germans wanted to show how insignificant the damage had been; but as the raids grew more serious, the reporters' access was correspondingly reduced (pp. 43–4).

American reporters were treated particularly well in the first year or so of the war, as Germany still hoped that America would stay neutral; but Smith says that despite these efforts they were not in the least bit favourable to the Nazis (pp. 35–6). But as the U.S. supported Britain more and more, the Nazis became increasingly anti-American; Roosevelt took the place of Churchill as the big bogeyman of their propaganda (p. 153), and American reporters in Germany were increasingly harassed by the Nazi authorities. Some of them (notably Richard Hottelet) were imprisoned for months at a time, without any definite charges being brought against them (pp. 166–7); the offices of the United Press, where Smith worked, were raided by the Gestapo for no real reason other than to intimidate them (pp. 160–6). Despite this pressure, many of them persisted in Berlin, considering that sort of risks to simply be a part of journalism (pp. 169, 172).

To me one of the most interesting things about journalists' memoirs is to see some glimpses of how they work. Smith says he was surprised by the Nazi invasion of Norway, but in hindsight he saw there had been many signs pointing to it (e.g. masses of mountain troops passing through Berlin on the way north), and he resolved to pay more attention next time (pp. 39–40). For example, he tracked the regime's attitude towards Soviet Union by watching anti-Soviet books disappear from the German bookstores in 1939 and then re-emerge in 1941 (pp. 46–7), a hint that the Nazis were planning to make a move against the Soviet Union. Various other signs and rumours soon followed (pp. 48–9).

He had been surprised, and dismayed, by the German military successes of 1940, and in early 1941 he had almost quit his job and left Germany, but then decided to stay when he saw that an attack on Soviet Union seemed to be brewing (pp. 45–6).

There's an interesting chapter about the momentous occasion on October 9, 1941, when Hitler's press chief, Dr. Otto Dietrich, stepped before the gathered reporters and announced that the Soviet Union was as good as defeated (pp. 60, 62–3). He was supposed to announce the successful progress of a new German offensive started a week or so before, but he seems to have got a little carried away, perhaps because he knew that some major good news were sorely needed by the German public, which was getting weary of the war in view of the fact that the Soviet Union wasn't showing any signs of imminent collapse, contrary to many confident predictions made at the start of the German invasion of Russia (p. 71). The American reporters figured that Dietrich's statement was probably true, since a lie of that magnitude would come to light soon enough and cause him enormous embarrassment (p. 63). The German public, too, was tremendously elated (although Goebbels prudently prevented the German press from quoting Dietrich's statements directly, p. 65, and had the triumphalism toned down over the next few days, p. 77), and began dreaming of the prosperity and opportunities that would soon open up in the forthcoming German colonial empire in the East (p. 76). Soon, of course, reality began to set in and the regime's media lost all credibility with the German public (pp. 78–80).

By the way, you've got to love mid-20th-century slang: by attacking the Soviet Union, “[s]heerly on the bases of geography and numbers Hitler had pulled a boner.” (P. 52.)

*

One interesting change that Smith describes as occurring in 1941, after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, was the massive and surprisingly fast decline in the amount and quality of food and consumer goods available to the German population (p. 96). During the times of easy victories in the first couple of years of the war, Germany was able to cover its deficiencies by looting the resources of the occupied countries (p. 85), but these were being looted too quickly (for a time there had actually been a kind of unnatural prosperity in Germany; p. 86), and had been largely exhausted by the time the German invasion of the Soviet Union began.

Smith describes the various ways in which the Nazis tried to cope with the resulting shortages: for example, first they reduced the meat rations; then, fearing the bad effects on morale of further reductions, they simply supplied less meat to shops and restaurants without officially decreasing the rations (p. 89), resulting in massive queueing as people tried to buy meat before the shops ran out. Various other foodstuffs were replaced by ersatz versions concocted with foul-smelling chemicals of dubious nutritional value (p. 93). The territorial gains made in Russia in the first few months after the invasion didn't really help either, as the Soviets had evacuated all industry to the east before retreating (p. 104).

All this led to an overall air of seediness and a decline in industrial production (pp. 100, 103). “I never thought it was possible for a country to go so universally trashy so quickly.” (P. 116.) The people's health declined, they turned pale, weary and irritable, and resorted widely to drugs and patent medicines in an effort to regain some energy (pp. 119–21). The seediness even extended to government: “the whole Nazi civil government is in a state of unbelievable chaos” (p. 125) because Hitler and the other bigwigs largely lost interest in anything but military affairs.

Smith makes an interesting observation that by late 1941, most Germans weren't supporting the Nazi regime out of any real enthusiasm for it any more, but because they were afraid what would happen to them if Germany lost the war (a fear which Nazi propaganda, of course, was very keen to stoke; p. 123). The only section of the population that still believed zealously in the Nazi system were the children, who had been exposed to its propaganda full-time all their lives (pp. 127–8) and to whom the regime had always taken special care to appeal (p. 225).

There's an interesting chapter on the development of the Nazi anti-Jewish policy. Smith begins with the observation that “when people become discontented, they can get angry at one of two things: at conditions, or at people. The one reaction is generally that of maturity; the other, of immaturity.” (P. 130.) This latter reaction is often deliberately encouraged by the ruling elites to give the people an easy scapegoat for their problems, and Smith points out that this was the basis both of anti-Semitism in Germany as well as of the anti-black activities of the KKK in America (p. 130). Anti-Jewish propaganda and persecution actually slackened a little in the first couple of years of the war, when the German people were pretty content due to the string of easy victories, but it was ramped up again once the campaign against the Soviet Union started to go badly (p. 132). By late 1941 the Jews still remaining in Berlin were being ‘resettled’ to the East (pp. 138–40). Smith's understanding was that they were mostly being taken to occupied Soviet territories to be worked to death building roads and the like (p. 140). Of course we now know that a lot of Jews were killed outright without being put to work, but most of that would have started in 1942 (e.g. the Wannsee Conference was in January 1942), after Smith's departure from Germany.

When the requirement for Jews to wear the star of David on their clothes was introduced in September 1941, it proved unpopular with the German public; and the authorities apparently tried to justify it with the bizarre fake claim that the U.S. authorities had similarly forced German-Americans to wear a swastika on their clothes :S (pp. 146–7). What is also interesting is that apparently the Nazi authorities didn't make this latter claim openly and officially, but had their low-level officials put it into circulation amongst the public as a rumour (p. 147).

It is deplorably popular nowadays amongst libertarians and other such vermin to claim that nazism was a form of socialism — iT's RiGhT tHeRe In ThE nAmE, bRo! — and I was glad to see that Smith doesn't go in for that sort of nonsense in the least. “Too many observers have allowed themselves to be fooled by the fact that, for reasons of expediency, Hitler chose to call his party the National Socialist German Workers Party” (p. 181), but his mass support during the years of his rise to power really came from the small bourgeoisie, the lower middle class, much more than from the proletariat; and if you look at the practical results of Nazi policies, the only class that really benefited from them was the topmost layer of capitalists. “The state is allegedly national ‘Socialist’, but for a socialist state it maintains the finest, fattest crop of unadulterated plutocrats you ever dreamed of.” (P. 125.) “In actual fact, Nazism is the most reactionary and vicious form of capitalism hat has ever existed” (p. 179). The economy was controlled by a system of boards that consisted mostly of the biggest capitalists in their respective branches of the economy, and their profits flourished enormously; meanwhile the workers found their wages and their standards of life decline steadily from year to year; and the petite bourgeoisie — the small business owners, shopkeepers and the like — found themselves squeezed out of the market by big business even harder than before Hitler's rise to power (pp. 182–4, 188). Nazism “is not socialism, but a form of capitalism that is virtually feudalistic in safeguards granted to and preserved for the wealthy, as well as in the total servitude it demands of those who possess nothing but their hands and brains to work with.” (P. 184.) The SA, being the mass organization through which a certain kind of revolutionary aspirations of the lower middle class could perhaps express themselves, was gradually sidelined by Hitler and, in August 1941, as good as shut down for all practical purposes (pp. 190–2). The disappointment of the lower middle class can be summarized in the bitter joke: “What is the difference between Germany and Russia? In Russia the weather is colder.” (P. 195.)

Smith's departure from Germany was not without a touch of excitement. Relations between the U.S. and Germany had been deteriorating for some time and by late 1941 it was almost impossible for journalists like him to work. The German authorities stepped up their pressure and, no longer content merely with censoring them, increasingly tried to pressure them into including actual German propaganda talking-points in their reports and broadcasts (p. 259). At that point Smith decided to quit and return to America, but the Nazi authorities refused to let him leave unless his employer, the CBS, sent a replacement, evidently to function as a hostage to prevent Smith from badmouthing the Nazis after returning to America! (P. 260.) Fortunately the Germans allowed Smith to leave once the CBS promised to send someone, without waiting for that someone to actually arrive. Smith crossed the border into Switzerland in the morning of December 7, 1941 (see pp. 264–5 for a wonderful description of the contrast between the bleak, dreary Berlin and the peaceful and prosperous Switzerland; it was like stepping from a black-and-white movie to a colour one). In the evening of the same day, Pearl Harbor was attacked; had Smith waited but half a day longer, it would have been impossible for him to leave Germany.

*

Smith concludes the book with a couple of chapters discussing how nazism might be defeated. There was some internal opposition, coming from the communists (with whom a lot of German workers still sympathized; p. 203), the catholic church (p. 205), and the traditional Prussian officer class (p. 209); but in Smith's view it was unlikely that any of these would topple the regime from within. Besides, Hitler had protected himself well by building up institutions such as the Gestapo and (as a sort of counterweight to the army) the Waffen-SS, both of which were absolutely loyal to him (pp. 213, 226). Apparently Himmler even suggested setting up an SS air force and navy, but Hitler did not adopt this plan (p. 218).

As for defeating Nazi Germany from outside, Smith says that the situation actually looked fairly promising. As of his writing, probably in early 1942, Germany was clearly getting badly exhausted in her unsuccessful attempts to defeat the Soviet Union, and was meanwhile also facing a lot of resistance in other occupied territories (pp. 230–1). Smith expresses admiration for the tenacity of the Soviet defense (p. 240), and says the democratic Allies should emulate the Soviets' commitment to total war: “there is still too much slack in our war effort” (p. 239). He even finds a good word for the pre-war purges in the Soviet army: “Had Russia not ‘liquidated’ a few thousand officers and bureaucrats, there is little doubt that the Red Army would have collapsed in two months, and left us holding a bag, many times bigger, containing Hitler and all Europe, and most of Asia. Had we liquidated a few, the war might never have happened.” (P. 240).

But his boldest suggestion is to carry out sweeping social and economical reforms in the Allied countries as a way of giving the German public a vision of what a better post-war order might look like (p. 247). Countries like the U.S., Smith says, had mostly achieved “political democracy [. . .] in which each individual possesses one unit of political power”, but they were far from the state of “economic democracy [. . .] in which each individual has approximately one unit of economic power” (p. 250). This inequality in turn leads to political inequality because the rich people can influence the political process far out of proportion to their numbers. He ends with some concrete proposals: nationalize the mines and the arms industry, and give independence to the colonies, immediately where possible, or in at most five years (p. 253).

I was really pleasantly surprised to see such openly leftist ideas, as I wouldn't have expected anyone but dreary boring Marxist doctrinaires advocating such things back then, and it's clear enough that Smith is not one of those — it's obvious from the style of the book if nothing else, for it is the style of your typical hard-boiled, red-blooded 1940s American journalist. Anyway, as we now know, some of his ideas would in fact get implemented, though in a massively watered-down form; there was some nationalization of industries in the first few decades after the war (probably more so in Europe than in the U.S., though), and the colonies did eventually get their independence, though not as quickly or as smoothly as he had suggested. Alas, the forces of capital then rallied again and we now live in a more unequal society than at any point in the last hundred years.

ToRead:

• Stephen Roberts: The House that Hitler Built (1937). [Also an updated edition in 1938.] Mentioned here on p. 123: “as nearly perfect a picture of that strange complicated mechanism [i.e. the Nazi system] as it was in peace time, as it is possible for a human to draw.”
• Jan Valtin: Out of the Night (1940). An autobiographical work of somewhat doubtful authenticity, mentioned here on p. 228.

BOOK: Oscar Wilde, "Journalism"

The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Volume 6: Journalism Part I. Ed. by John Stokes and Mark W. Turner. Oxford University Press, 2013. 019811964X. lxiii + 430 pp.

The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Volume 7: Journalism Part II. Ed. by John Stokes and Mark W. Turner. Oxford University Press, 2013. 0198119631. xii + 622 pp.

Wilde's journalism is that part of his work with which I have until now been more or less completely unfamiliar. I was vaguely aware that he used to do some work of that sort — I read a couple biographies of Wilde, and they mentioned that he used to write various reviews and short essays for magazines, and he even worked as the editor of a women's magazine for a few years. But I never actually read any of his journalism, unless you include essays such as those in Intentions, which are based on things that he initially published in magazines.

Of course, in a way this is hardly surprising; newspaper articles, reviews and the like are usually considered to be very ephemeral things and don't tend to get reprinted much. Judging by the introductory material in this volume, the only previous publication of Wilde's journalism in book form was in Robert Ross's 1908 edition of Wilde's collected works, and even that edition doesn't contain all of the pieces that appear in the present two volumes.

These two volumes contain 168 short pieces, on average about three pages long; most of them are reviews of books and theatre performances, some also of art exhibitions, and the rest are short essays on various other subjects. I've found this to be the sort of stuff that gets boring in large quantities, but can be quite interesting if you read it in small amounts at a time. Wilde's writing here has many of the same qualities that make his fiction such a delight to read, with plenty of witty epigrams and aphorisms, generous amounts of sarcasm, and the like. Occasionally you encounter ideas and expressions that Wilde would later re-use in some bit of fiction, where they became better known (see a few examples below).

Probably my favorite part of the collection were Wilde's book reviews; some of the books he reviewed sound interesting enough that I'm tempted to want to read them myself. Some of his reviews are delightfully sarcastic, but often he also strikes me as being admirably charitable, and makes an effort to point out the good things in a book even if as a whole he didn't like it.

I was also impressed by the editors' comments at the end of the book, which must have taken an enormous amount of effort. For example, Wilde's book reviews often quote short bits of text from the books he reviewed; but just as often, Wilde merely paraphrases something from the book without specifically indicating that he's doing so. The editors seem to have gone very carefully through all the books that Wilde had reviewed, and they mercilessly hunted down all such quotations and paraphrases, and provided page references in their notes at the end of this volume.

Similarly, Wilde's theatrical reviews often mention the names of actors that appeared in that particular performance, and the editors always make an effort to provide some more information about those actors in the notes — at least their year of birth and death, although in some cases they weren't able to find any such information about this or that obscure actor.

It was also interesting to read the notes to Wilde's reviews of art exhibitions. The editors tried to trace the present whereabouts of the paintings that Wilde mentions in his reviews, and sadly it often turns out that some of these paintings have been lost by now, or at least their whereabouts are now unknown.

The editors' introduction contains among other things an interesting discussion on the difficulties of discovering the newspaper contributions of a particular author, since many articles in 19th-century newspapers weren't signed. “[I]t was the custom of Pall Mall editors [. . .] to mark up runs of the paper, identifying contributors of anonymous items in order to indicate payment.” A large archive of this sort of material was preserved until the 1950s, when “this treasure trove had been offered to the Superintendent of the British Library Newspaper Library, who, in his wisdom, had declined the offer”, and the whole archive was promptly sent to the garbage dump. (See vol. 6, p. lvi for more on this sad story.)

As a last resort, one can try carefully reading unsigned articles to see if they have any stylistic similarities with a particular author, such as Wilde. A few articles discovered in this way, which might be by Wilde on the basis of style, are included at the end of Vol. 7 as “dubia”; the editors included very interesting notes pointing out exactly which passages include typically Wildean stylistic constructs.

Snark, glorious snark

“Dr. Donaldson's article on Byzantine Literature is as interesting as any account of a literature written entirely by mediocrities could be” (vol. 6, p. 23).

On Whistler: “For that he is indeed one of the very greatest masters of painting, is my opinion. And I may add that in this opinion Mr. Whistler himself entirely concurs.” (Vol. 6, p. 36.) And from a later article: “Mr. Whistler always spelt art, and we believe still spells it, with a capital ‘I.’ ” (Vol. 7, p. 156.)

“The nineteenth century may be a prosaic age, but we fear that, if we are to judge by the general run of novels, it is not an age of prose.” (Vol. 6, p. 61.)

“Mr. Armstrong also carefully observes the rules of decorum, and, as he promises his readers in a preface, keeps quite clear of ‘the seas of sensual art.’ In fact, an elderly maiden lady could read this volume without a blush, a thrill, or even an emotion.” (Vol. 6, p. 67.)

“Doctor Goodchild seems to be an ardent disciple of Mr. Browning, and though he may not be able to reproduce the virtues of his master, at least he can echo his defects very cleverly.” (Vol. 6, p. 68.)

“Mr. E. O. Pleydell-Bouverie has endowed the novel-writing fraternity with a new formula for the composition of titles. After ‘J. S.; or Trivialities,’ there is no reason why we should not have ‘A. B.; or Platitudes,’ ‘M. N.; or Sentimentalisms,’ ‘Y. Z.; or Inanities.’ There are many books which these simple titles would characterize much more aptly than any high-flown phrases—as aptly, in fact, as Mr. Bouverie's title characterizes the volume before us.” (Vol. 6, p. 70.)

“The book can be read without any trouble, and was probably written without any trouble also. The style is prattling and pleasing.” (Vol. 6, p. 87.)

From the review of a volume of poems written by two tramps: “we are sorry to see that that disregard of the rights of property which always characterizes the able-bodied vagrant is extended by our tramps from the defensible pilfering from hen roosts to the indefensible pilfering from poets. [. . .] we feel that bad as poultry-snatching is, plagiarism is worse. [. . .] From highway robbery and crimes of violence one sinks gradually to literary petty larceny” (vol. 6, p. 96).

“Mr. Quilter is the apostle of the middle classes, and we are glad to welcome his gospel. After having listened so long to the Don Quixotes of art, to listen once to Sancho Panza is both salutary and refreshing.” (Vol. 6, p. 108.) Later in the same review: “How valuable also in connection with house decoration is Sententia No. 351: ‘There is nothing furnishes a room like a book-case, and plenty of books in it’! How cultivated the mind that thus raises literature to the position of upholstery, and puts thought on a level with the antimacassar! [. . .] Mr. Quilter is quite earnest in his endeavours to elevate art to the dignity of manual labour.” (P. 110.)

“There are two ways of misunderstanding a poem. One is to misunderstand it, and the other is to praise it for qualities that it does not possess. The latter is Mr. Noel's method” (vol. 6, p. 113). By the way, a similar and more widely known epigram attributed to Wilde is: “There are two ways to dislike poetry: one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.” This one appears widely on the web, but I couldn't find out where exactly it's from; according to this article from Notes and Queries, it's from a letter (p. 482 in the 1962 ed. of Wilde's letters).

“Still it is a thoroughly well-intentioned book and eminently suitable for invalids. (Vol. 6, p. 129.)

“They [i.e. remarks on the Greek Drama] show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study.” (Vol. 6, p. 141.)

“We are sorry too to find an English dramatic critic misquoting Shakespeare, as we had always been of opinion that this was a privilege reserved specially for our English actors.” (Vol. 6, p. 148.)

“Mr. Campbell leads off by apostrophizing the Muses as—// These cultured sprites/ Who occupied, of yore, Olympus' heights,// and they do not seem to have been propitiated by this novel form of address.” (Vol. 6, p. 164.)

“Such novels as Scamp are possibly more easy to write than they are to read.” (Vol. 6, p. 183.)

“Dull as Tiff is—and its dulness is quite remarkable—it does not deserve so detestable a binding.” (Vol. 6, p. 184.)

“In discussing this important question of conversation, he has not merely followed the scientific method of Aristotle, which is perhaps, excusable, but he has adopted the literary style of Aristotle, for which no excuse is possible.” (Vol. 7, p. 35.)

Wilde quotes the following passage from Bella Duffy's Life of Madame de Staël, about Staël's novel Corinne: “It is extremely moral, deeply sentimental, and of a deadly earnestness — three characteristics which could not fail to recommend it to a dreary and ponderous generation, the most deficient in taste that ever trod the earth.” (Vol. 7, p. 61.)

“ ‘The Chronicle of Mites’ is a mock-heroic poem about the inhabitants of a decaying cheese [. . .] This cheese-epic is a rather unsavory production, and the style is, at times, so monstrous and so realistic that the author should be called the Gorgon-Zola of literature.” (Vol. 7, p. 68.)

“It is a curious fact that the worst work is always done with the best intentions, and that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves very seriously.” (Vol. 7, p. 81.)

“ ‘Andiadorocté’ is the title of a volume of poems by the Rev. Clarence Walworth, of Albany, N.Y. It is a word borrowed from the Indians, and should, we think, be returned to them as soon as possible.” (Vol. 7, p. 102.)

“Dr. Cockle tells us that Müllner's ‘Guilt’ and the ‘Ancestress’ of Grillparzer are the masterpieces of German Fate-tragedy. His translation of the first of these two masterpieces does not make us long for any further acquaintance with the school.” (Vol. 7, p. 193. This is from article No. 123, in which Wilde reviews 9 volumes of more or less bad poetry by various authors, and in fact the entire article is delightfully sarcastic.)

“An eminent Oxford theologian once remarked that his only objection to modern progress was that it progressed forward instead of backward” (vol. 7, p. 237).

“But I must not allow this brief notice of Mr. Pater's new volume to degenerate into an autobiography. I remember being told in America that whenever Margaret Fuller wrote an essay upon Emerson the printers had always to send out to borrow some additional capital ‘I's,’ and I feel it right to accept this transatlantic warning.” (Vol. 7, p. 244.)

“ ‘A World in White, and other Poems,’ are eminently respectable products of the clerical school of versifying. They are doubtless much esteemed in the author's parish.” (Vol. 7, pp. 304–5.)

“Many literary sins have been committed in the name of elocution, but none deadlier than Mr. F. G. Webb's ‘Original Ballads.’ ” (Vol. 7, pp. 305.)

Miscellaneous interesting things in vol. 6

In an 1884 article, Wilde writes: “beauty, as some one finely said, is the purgation of all superfluities” (vol. 6, p. 32). The editors' note on p. 233 says this idea is from Michelangelo, though Wilde probably got it via Emerson. Perhaps this was also the inspiration for an even more famous quote from Saint-Exupéry: “perfection is attained, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away”.

A nice aphorism from Baudelaire, quoted by Wilde in vol. 6, p. 39: “A man can live for three days without bread, but no man can live for one day without poetry”. He reused it in a later review as well (vol. 7, p. 51).

There's an 1885 article with an interesting discussion of Shakespeare's views of stage-scenery: “it is impossible to read him without seeing that he is constantly protesting against the two special limitations of the Elizabethan stage, the lack of suitable scenery, and the fashion of men playing women's parts” (vol. 6, p. 42). One way of dealing with that was to include more picturesque descriptions of the scene into the text of the play itself, and Wilde suggests that we might count ourselves lucky that he didn't have access to better stage machinery, or we would now be deprived of such picturesque passages in his plays (vol. 6, p. 43).

I guess this whole thing should be understood as part of a discussion on how Shakespeare's plays should be performed in the modern day. Wilde concludes: “let those critics, who hold up for our admiration the simplicity of the Elizabethan stage, remember that they are lauding a condition of things against which Shakespeare himself [. . .] always strongly protested” (vol. 6, p. 44).

There's an interesting phrase on p. 49, in a description of over-acting: “unless he has sawn the air with his hand, mouthed his lines, torn his passion to tatters, and out-Heroded Herod”. I haven't heard of ‘sawing the air’ before, but it sounds wonderfully evocative. I guess it's something similar to what tvtropes nowadays calls ‘milking the giant cow’.

A delightfully aesthetic passage from a theatrical review: “Through an alley of white hawthorn and gold laburnum we passed into the green pavilion that served as the theatre, the air sweet with the odour of the lilac and with the blackbird's song;” (vol. 6, p. 57). This almost sounds like something from the beginning of Dorian Gray. It's a nice example of how Wilde's style in the reviews prefigures that of his later literary work.

A wonderful phrase for taking out of context: “nothing that one can learn is ever worth learning” (vol. 6, p. 62). Taken in context, it's a bit less delightfully outrageous: “the appreciation of literature is a question of temperament not of teaching, to Parnassus there is no primer, and nothing that one can learn is ever worth learning”. Wilde would later write similarly in his review of Chuang Tsǔ, summarizing some of the ideas of that philosopher as: “true wisdom can neither be learnt nor taught”. And it reminds me a little of Lord Fermor's line in chapter 3 of Dorian Gray: “If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.”

An interesting explanation of art for art's sake, in a review of the letters of George Sand: “Perhaps she valued good intentions in art a little too much, and she hardly understood that art for art's sake is not meant to express the final cause of art but is merely a formula of creation” (vol. 6, p. 65).

There's an interesting review of a performance of Shelley's The Cenci in 1886 (No. 32, vol. 6, pp. 77–8). The incest-themed subject matter of the play clashed with various anti-obscenity laws, so the organizers had to make use of a loophole: the Shelley Society organized the performance as a private event for their own members, and thus it didn't count as a public performance for the purposes of the law (see vol. 5, p. 34). But Wilde's review is a bit lazy, as more than half of the review consists of quotations from Shelley.

From an 1886 review: “A steady course of Balzac reduces our living friends to shadows, and our acquaintances to the shadows of shades. Who would care to go out to an evening party to meet Tomkins, the friend of one's boyhood, when one can sit at home with Lucien de Rubempré?” (Vol. 6, p. 89.) He would later reuse this in The Decay of Lying (see vol. 6, p. 295; and vol. 4, p. 375).

From the review of an anthology which had apparently been badly mauled by numerous misprints: “A poet can survive everything but a misprint.” (Vol. 6, p. 99.)

There's a very interesting discussion of nihilism in an 1887 review (vol. 6, p. 159). Similar ideas can later be found in The Decay of Lying (see vol. 6, p. 271.)

An editorial comment in vol. 6, p. 248 mentions that “W[ilde]'s most famous comment on Raffalovich is that ‘he came to London to found a salon and succeeded only in founding a saloon’ (H & H-D, 255–6)”. He seems to have reused the same idea in chapter 1 of Dorian Gray, where Lord Henry says: “My dear fellow, she tried to found a salon, and only succeeded in opening a restaurant.”

There's a very funny poem by E. W. Bowling, quoted in the editorial comments (vol. 6, p. 247–8) to Wilde's review of Bowling's book Sagittulae. In the poem, a very Aesthetic young woman addresses her wanna-be suitor: “ Art thou soulful? Art thou tuneful? Can'st thou weep o'er nature's woes?/ Art thou redolent of Ruskin? Dost thou love a yellow rose?/ Hast thou bathed in emanations from the canvass of Burne Jones?/ As thou gazest at a Whistler, doth it whistle wistful tones?” etc. :)

On dress reform

Some of the early articles in this collection are on the subject of fashion and “dress reform”, which was apparently of much interest to Wilde and even more to his wife Constance, who was active in the Rational Dress Society (see vol. 6, pp. 228–9). Much of what he writes seems surprisingly sensible. His main ideas are that clothing should be comfortable, that it should pose no undue constraints on the wearer's motion, and that it should be designed with an understanding of the inherent beauty of the human figure.

“[T]he beauty of a dress depends entirely and absolutely on the loveliness it shields, and on the freedom and motion that it does not impede./ From this it follows that there can be no beauty of national costume until there is a national knowledge of the proportions of the human form. To Greek and Roman such knowledge came naturally from the gymnasium and the palæstra, from the dance inthe meadow and the race by the stream. We must acquire it by the employment of art in education.” (Vol. 7, p. 584.)

“And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. From the point of view of science, it not unfrequently violates every law of health, every principle of hygiene.” (From an 1887 article; vol. 7, p. 10.) Wilde reused this idea several times; apparently it originated in his 1884 lecture on dress (see the editors' note in vol. 7, p. 333). See also this very interesting website which points out that Wilde's first use of this quip in print occurred in an 1885 article; It was recently published in John Cooper's book Oscar Wilde on Dress, CSM Press, 2013, and it's also included in Vol. 7 as Appendix II.

On lumpy flowers

In the editors' notes in vol. 6, pp. 249–50 there's a very funny exchange of letters concerning the pronunciation of the word “tuberose”. This is the name of a flower and appeared in the title of a book of poems, Tuberose and Meadowsweet, by André Raffalovich. Wilde reviewed it (p. 46) and complained about the fact that Raffalovich used the word as if it had three syllables, rather than two. Raffalovich replied with a letter pointing out that it does in fact have three syllables, since the name comes “from the Latin tuberosus, the lumpy flower” (p. 259) and has nothing to do with tubes or roses. He even cites a passage from Shelley's poem The Woodman and the Nightingale where it's used as trisyllabic. This view was supported by letters to the editor from several other readers.

Wilde replied in his characteristic style: “I am deeply distressed to hear that tuberose is so called from its being a ‘lumpy flower.’ It is not at all lumpy, and, even if it were, no poet should be heartless enough to say so. Henceforth, there really must be two derivations for every word, one for the poet, and one for the scientist. [. . .] [The poet will] leave to the man of science horrid allusions to its supposed lumpiness, and indiscreet revelations of its private life below ground. On the roots of verbs Philology may be allowed to speak, but on the roots of flowers she must keep silence. We cannot allow her to dig up Parnassus.” (P. 250.)

Wilde even cites another poem by Shelley (The Sensitive Plant), where he says the word is used as a disyllabic one. But from reading this second poem by Shelley, it isn't obvious to me that you can really say anything definite about the number of syllables in that word. This poem doesn't seem to have such a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables; there are four stressed syllables per line, but there are variously one or two unstressed syllables before each stressed syllable, in no definite pattern. In fact this poem strikes me as more suitable for singing than reading. You could easily read “tuberose” there as either two- or three-syllabic, it's just that in the trisyllabic version you'd have to pronounce the first two syllables a bit faster.

Miscellaneous interesting things in vol. 7

From an 1888 review: “As for George Meredith, who could hope to reproduce him? His style is chaos illumined by brilliant flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything, except language; as a novelist he can do everything, except tell a story; as an artist he is everything, except articulate.” (Vol. 7, p. 47. Wilde later reused this in The Decay of Lying; see also the editors' note on p. 369.)

There's a very funny short article called “London Models” (No. 111, from 1889) about people who make a living by being hired by painters to pose as models for their paintings. “Every country now has its own models, except America. In New York, and even in Boston, a good model is so great a rarity that most of the artists are reduced to painting Niagara and millionaires.” (Vol. 7, p. 133.) And: “ ‘What do you sit for?’ said a young artist to a model who had sent him in her card (all models by the way have cards and a small black bag). ‘Oh, for anything you like sir,’ said the girl, ‘landscape if necessary!’ (Vol. 7, p. 134.)

There's an interesting article about the Chinese philosopher Chuang Tsǔ; Wilde reviewed a translation of his works into English (vol. 7, pp. 237–43) and includes a summary of his ideas. Tsu seems to be quite an unusual thinker. “He sought to destroy society, as we know it, as the middle classes know it; and the sad thing is that he combines with the passionate eloquence of a Rousseau the scientific reasoning of a Herbert Spencer” (p. 238); Tsu objected to government, philantropy, education, etc. The way he's described here strikes me as a weird sort of anarcho-libertarian :S

There's a very pretty love-sonnet by Laurence Binyon, quoted in its entirety by Wilde in his review of Primavera, a book of poems by Binyon and three other authors (vol. 7, p. 251).

After Tennyson's death in 1892, it apparently took several years to appoint a new Poet Laureate. Wilde wrote in 1895 (No. 137): “Mr. Swinburne is already the Poet Laureate of England. The fact that his appointment to this high post has not been degraded by official confirmation renders his position all the more unassailable. He whom all poets love is the Poet Laureate always.” (Vol. 7, p. 252.) According to the Wikipedia, the appointment was eventually given to Alfred Austin in 1896.

There's a curious review of Wilfrid Blunt's In Vinculis, a book of poems written in prison. “Prison has had an admirable effect on Mr. Wilfrid Blunt as a poet. [. . .] To him, certainly, it has been a mode of purification.” (Vol. 7, p. 149.) And in fact Blunt himself writes in the preface of his book: “Imprisonment is a reality of discipline most useful to the modern soul, lapped as it is in physical sloth and self-indulgence. Like a sickness or a spiritual retreat is purifies and ennobles; and the soul emerges from it stronger and more self-contained.” I wonder how Wilde felt about these things later when he went to prison himself. Alas, his soul, far from emerging stronger, in fact emerged from prison completely broken.

There are quite a lot of reviews of works by Russian realist writers (Turgenyev, Tolstoi, Dostoievsky); see Nos. 34, 69, and several more in the ‘dubia’ section, meaning that they are probably but not certainly by Wilde (Nos. 151, 153, 154, 157, 158). Wilde's reviews of them tend to be fairly positive, although there's the inevitable occasional jab against realism, as e.g. in this passage from No. 151 (a review of Tolstoy's “War and Peace”, in the dubia section): “It is not a highly organic story; for the author is a realist, and, in the opinion of realists, inability to construct a plot is the strongest proof of creative genius.” (Vol. 7, p. 283.)

Also from the dubia section (No. 157), here's a curious review of a short story by Tolstoy: “ ‘The Romance of a Horse,’ otherwise a somewhat revolting sketch, is remarkable for the writer's marvellously complete knowledge of horseflesh.” (Vol. 7, p. 297.)

In a review of J. M. W. Schwartz's “The Morning of a Love, and other Poems” (1885) that is probably but not certainly by Wilde (No. 142), the reviewer cites from one of the poems: “I cast my songs upon the world,/ I know now that the world will say;/ Enough for me that I have hurled/ This burden from my heart away” and remarks: “The world will probably say very little, for it has had so many poets' heart-burdens hurled at it that it has come to regard such missiles with comparative indifference.” (Vol. 7, p. 262.)

And a later passage in the same article (now reviewing “A Book of Verses” by W. Gershom Collingwood): “There are many other echoes in the book — Wordsworthian, Tennysonian, Rossettian — and if Mr. Collingswood fails to make his mark as a poet, he may, with diligence, achieve distinction as a parodist.” (Vol. 7, p. 263.)

Another extremely funny review from the dubia section is No. 159, mercilessly mocking the style of George Saintsbury's “A History of Elizabethan Literature” (1887). “Even when Mr. Sainsbury supposes himself to be writing English he is afflicted every now and then with an odd ‘xenomania,’ to use a word he much affects. (He talks in one place of ‘a judicious xenomania’—surely a strange phenomeon.) The Elizabethan miscellanies, he tells us, ‘were literary only by paregon.’ He assures us that ‘constant catena’ of authority attributes ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’ in part to Shakespeare. He speaks of ‘a jaculative genius,’ an ‘unnovercal’ stepmother, ‘variety of tentative,’ ‘ostentatious usherment and harbingery.’ Worst of all, perhaps, is his allusion to the qualities which ‘give “The Faërie Queene” its unique unicity, if such a conceit may be pardoned.’ Such a ‘conceit’—to use no harsher term—may not be pardoned.” (Vol. 7, p. 301.)

The obligatory whine section

The number of typos and similar mistakes seems to be on the rise again, but I didn't bother keeping track of them this time. A very funny typo occurs in vol. 7, p. 478, where Ferdowsi is misspelled as “Ferdowski”. There's got to be a Soviet Russia joke in there somewhere :P In vol. 6, p. 262, Chatrian is once misspelled as Chatrain.

There's also an interesting one on p. 351: “See lines 000 above” where they apparently forgot to replace the placeholder by the correct line number.

The word “Lethaen” appears in vol. 6, p. 16; I suppose it's a typo for “Lethean”; but since it occurs again in the note on p. 217, I guess that it might be a quirk in the original newspaper from which that particular article was taken.

There's “I'Enéide” in vol. 6, p. 72; I wonder how an “l” gets mistaken for an “I” unless some sort of scanning and OCR was involved at some point; well, maybe it was.

I'm similarly confused about the appearance of “xaîpe” in the text of one of Wilde's reviews in vol. 6, p. 190, and also in the corresponding editorial comment on p. 393. Surely this cannot be meant as a Latin transliteration of the Greek word, for in that case x and p would not be appropriate; I guess they simply forgot to switch to the correct font that would display something like χαιρε in Greek.

There's an odd editorial comment in vol. 6, p. 351, where “United States Minister” is glossed as “i.e. a minister of the church.” But the context of this phrase is a discussion of the presence of Americans in British high society (vol. 6, pp. 141–2): “as far as society is concerned, the American invasion has been purely female in character. With the exception of the United States Minister, always a welcome personage wherever he goes, and an occasional lion from Boston or the Far West, no American man has any social existence in London.” Surely the minister in question is a diplomatic representative, not a clergyman. (On the other hand, admittedly the U.S. representative in Britain would probably have been an ambassador and not a mere minister.)

In deciding which words to gloss, the editors sometimes seem to err on the side of generosity. Is it really necessary to explain what “entourage” is? (Vol. 6, p. 221.)

There's a very curious typographical oddity in vol. 7, page 54, line 97. The line is “2ND. SEMI-CHORUS” and is set in all-caps. Now, this book normally uses old-style figures (which is good), but an old-style 2 is the same size as a lower-case letter and thus doesn't look so well in a line of all-caps text. The obvious solution would be to use a modern-style figure instead, which would be the same size as an upper-case letter. But what they did in this particular case was to simply enlarge an old-style 2 to the size of a capital letter, while keeping all its proportions intact — with the unsurprising result that several parts of the figure are much too thick and the whole thing looks simply bizarre. People sometimes come up with “poor-man's small caps” by simply shrinking normal caps, but this is the first time I've encountered the reverse form of this process.

Also on the subject of typographical oddities, there are some very odd quotation marks in Nos. 139 and 140, which according to the editors' note (vol. 7, p. 527) have been “preserved from the original publication” (in the Vanity Fair magazine, 1887). Basically there are superfluous opening quotation marks inside a quotation, resulting in things like “Arabian “Nights” and “Make “me a willow cabin at your gate,” (both from vol. 7, p. 256). I wonder what this looked like in the original newspaper publication; perhaps they tried to resurrect the quaint old custom of starting each line of quoted text with an opening quotation mark. But by 1887, this custom had been obsolete for probably more than a century, perhaps two.

The extreme aversion to illustrations, which I already mentioned in my post about vol. 5, continues here. For example, one of Wilde's reviews in the Pall Mall Gazette was “accompanied by sketches of four of the sculptures in question” and these were reprinted in Ross's edition of Wilde's works (vol. 6, p. 392), but not here in the OET edition.

One annoying thing about these two books is how thick they are. Volumes 5–7 seem to have been printed on much thicker paper than volumes 1–4. Volume 6 here has just around 500 pages, but it's noticeably thicker than volume 4, which has 700 pages. Vol. 7 with 630 pages is thicker still. I'm a bit disappointed by this move towards excessively thick paper. Perhaps their idea is that it will make the books more durable, but I wonder if that's really necessary. I have several volumes that were printed by Oxford University Press at the beginning of the 20th century on what they called “India paper” — wonderfully thin, and the books are still in good shape despite being more than a hundred years old.

Interesting books reviewed by Wilde

• Dinner and Dishes by ‘Wanderer’ (London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1885). Reviewed by Wilde in vol. 6, pp. 39–40.
• W. G. Wills: Melchior (London: Macmillan and Co., 1885). Seems to be a narrative poem in Browning's style. Reviewed approvingly by Wilde in vol. 6, pp. 40–2.
• Greek Lays, Idylls, Legends, &c. Translated by Miss E. M. Edmonds. (London, Trübner and Co., 1885.) Translations of *modern* Greek poems, reviewed approvingly by Wilde in vol. 6, pp. 53–4.
• Sir Thomas Lauder: The Wolfe of Badenoch: a Historical Romance of the Fourteenth Century (1827). An 1886 reprint was reviewed by Wilde in vol. 6, p. 86. He points out that the book was popular in Sir Walter Scott's day, but Wilde and his contemporaries were turned off by its self-conscious antiquarianism.
• Hugh Stutfield: El Magreb: Twelve Hundred Miles' Ride through Morocco. London, 1886. See Wilde's delightful and approving review in vol. 6, pp. 97–8.
• Ernst Eckstein: Aphrodite, tr. from the German by Mary J. Safford (NY and London, 1886). A historical novel; “Eckstein is a sort of literary Tadema, and cares more for his backgrounds than he does for his figures, still he can tell a story very well” (vol. 6, p. 102).
• Willam Morris's translation of the Odyssey (two vols., London, 1887). Glowingly reviewed by Wilde, vol. 6, pp. 154–6 (“a true work of art, a rendering not merely of language into language, but of poetry into poetry”). The style is more like something you'd expect in ancient English poetry: “But therewith unto the handmaids goodly Odysseus spake:/ ‘Stand off I bid you, damsels, while the work in hand I take,” etc.
• Walter Pater: Imaginary Portraits. Reviewed by Wilde in vol. 6, pp. 178–80.
• Stephen Coleridge: Demetrius (London, 1887). A historical novel set in Russia around the time of Ivan the Terrible. Reviewed approvingly by Wilde in vol. 6, pp. 181–2.
• Caroline Fitzgerald: Venetia Vistrix (1889). A volume of poems in the style of Robert Browning. See Wilde's positive review in vol. 7, pp. 207–10.
• [Mrs.] Graham R. Thomson: The Bird-Bride (1889). “[A] collection of romantic ballads, delicate sonnets, and metrical studies in foreign fanciful forms” (from Wilde's review, vol. 7, pp. 221–4). Includes a few imitations of border ballads.
• Norman Macleoud: A Dutchman's Difficulties with the English Language. Mentioned in vol. 7, p. 262.
• J. M. W. Schwartz: The Morning of a Love, and other poems (1885). Reviewed by Wilde in vol. 7, p. 262 (“as for his matter, it is rather monotonously erotic and melancholic”).
• William Morris: A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and all the Kindreds of the Mark (1889). "[I]t is written in blended prose and verse [. . .] and tells the tale of the House of the Wolfings in their struggles against the legionaries of Rome then advancing into northern Germany” (from Wilde's review of it in vol. 7, pp. 185–7).

ToRead:

• Karl Beckson: London in the 1890s: A Cultural History (NY and London, 1992). Vol. 6, p. 524.
• Davis Coakley: Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Irish (Dublin, 1994). Vol. 6, p. 203.
• John Cooper: Oscar Wilde on Dress (CSM Press, 2013). See Vol. 7, pp. 10, 333; includes an article by Wilde that is missing from vols. 6 and 7. See also the book's website and amazon page.
• Regenia Gagnier: Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public (Aldershot, 1986). Vol. 7, p. 366 (“W[ilde] was particularly astute in presenting an image for consumption by the media”).
• Charlotte Gere with Lesley Hoskins: The House Beautiful: Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetic Interior (London, 2000). Vol. 6, p. 199; vol. 7, p. 429.
• Merlin Holland: The Wilde Album (London, 1997). Vol. 6, p. 232.
• Joy Melville: Mother of Oscar: The Life of Jane Francesca Wilde (London, 1994). Vol. 6, p. 339.
• Kevin O'Brien: Oscar Wilde in Canada (Toronto: Personal Library, 1982). Vol. 7, p. 553.
• Richard Pine: The Thief of Reason: Oscar Wilde and Modern Ireland (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1995). Vol. 7, p. xiv.
• Annabel Robinson: The Life and Work of Jane Ellen Harrison (Oxford, 2002). Nothing to do with Wilde really, but a separate subject of interest to me. Harrison is however mentioned in Wilde's review of a production of Alcestis in Oxford, in which Harrison also appeared in the titular role (vol. 7, p. 382).
• Sir James Rennell Rodd: Rose Leaf and Apple Leaf (Philadelphia, 1882). He was Wilde's friend at Oxford; Wilde wrote a preface for this book of poems by Rodd (vol. 7, p. 399).
• Edgar Saltus: Oscar Wilde: An Idler's Impression (Chicago, 1917). Wilde met Saltus during his American tour and they remained in contact (vol. 6, p. 297).
• Tomoko Sato and Lionel Lambourne (eds): The Wilde Years: Oscar Wilde and the Art of his Time (London, 2000). Vol. 6, p. 197.
• T. de Vere White: The Parents of Oscar Wilde (London, 1967). Vol. 6, p. 339.
• Oscar Wilde: Irish Poets and Poetry of the Nineteenth Century: A lecture delivered in Platt's Hall, San Francisco on Wednesday, April Fifth, 1882, ed. Robert D. Pepper (San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1972). Vol. 7, p. xiv.
• Oscar Wilde: The Women of Homer, ed. Thomas Wright and Donald Mead (London, 2008). Seems to be an essay written by Wilde as a student (vol. 6, p. 209).