Читать книгу Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters - Оскар Уайльд, Merlin Holland, F. H. Cornish - Страница 23

[May-June 1877] 1 Merrion Square North

I return proof. What I meant by two proofs was one with your marginal corrections for my guide, the other plain, but of course both from the same type. Naturally, one of the great sorrows of youthful artists is that they always ‘expurgate’ bits of their articles, the very bits that they think best. However, I am glad to get the article published in your July number before the Gallery closes. Please have all my corrections attended to. Some of them are merely ‘style’ corrections, which, for an Oxford man, must be always attended to. As regards the additions, they are absolutely necessary, and as I intend to take up the critic’s life, I would not wish the article published without them. I would sooner pay for the proof and publish elsewhere.

(I) I and Lord Ronald Gower and Mr Ruskin, and all artists of my acquaintance, hold that Alma-Tadema’s drawing of men and women is disgraceful. I could not let an article signed with my name state he was a powerful drawer.

(2) I always say I and not ‘we’. We belongs to the days of anonymous articles, not to signed articles like mine. To say ‘we have seen at Argos’ either implies that I am a Royal Personage, or that the whole staff of the DUM visited Argos. And I always say clearly what I know to be true, such as that the revival of culture is due to Mr Ruskin, or that Mr Richmond has not read Aeschylus’s Choephoroe. To say ‘perhaps’ spoils the remark.

(3) I have been obliged to explain what I mean by imaginative colour, and what Mr Pater means by it. We mean thought expressed by colour such as the sleep of Merlin being implied and expressed in the colour. I do not mean odd, unnatural colouring. I mean ‘thought in colour’.

(4) I think Mr Legros’s landscape very smudgy and the worst French style. I cannot say it is bold or original – and I wish my full remarks on Mr Whistler to be put in (as per margin). I know he will take them in good part, and besides they are really clever and amusing. I am sorry you left out my quotation from Pater at the end. However, I shall be glad to get a second proof before you go to press with my corrections. I am afraid you would find my account of our ride through Greece too enthusiastic and too full of metaphor for the DUM.

When I receive the second proof I am going to have small notes of the article appearing in DUM by me sent to the Oxford booksellers. I know it would have a good sale there and also here if properly advertised, but for the past year the articles have been so terribly dull in the DUM that people require to be told beforehand what they are to get for 2/6.

I hope we will come to terms about this article – and others. Believe me I am most anxious to continue my father’s connection with the DUM which, I am sure, under your brilliant guidance will regain its lost laurels. Yours truly

OSCAR WILDE