Читать книгу Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters - Оскар Уайльд, Merlin Holland, F. H. Cornish - Страница 32

22 March 1879 St Stephen’s Club, Westminster, London

Dear Macmillan, I was very glad to get your note and to see that the Society is really to be set on foot: I have every confidence in its success.

Nothing would please me more than to engage in literary work for your House. I have looked forward to this opportunity for some time.

Herodotos I should like to translate very much indeed – selections from that is – and I feel sure that the wonderful picturesqueness of his writings, as well as the pathos and tenderness of some of his stories, would command a great many readers. It is a work I should enjoy doing and should engage to have it done by September 1st next.

I do not know how many Greek plays you intend publishing, but I have been working at Euripides a good deal lately and should of all things wish to edit either the Mad Hercules or the Phoenissae: plays with which I am well acquainted. I think I see what style of editing is required completely.

I shall be glad to hear from you soon, as well as to see you at Salisbury Street any time you are not busy. Believe me very truly yours

OSCAR WILDE

Once in London, Oscar set up house with his friend Frank Miles in Salisbury Street just off the Strand, moving in the summer of 1880 to 1 Tite Street, Chebea, which Wilde quickly renamed ‘Keats House’. Frank was well connected through his work as an artist and introduced Oscar to Lillie Langtry, ‘Professional Beauty’ and mistress of the Prince of Wales, who in turn opened the door to London Society. He consolidated a friendship with the Cambridge don, Oscar Browning, and flattered the most prominent actresses of the day with sonnets, among them Sarah Bernhardt and Ellen Terry. That summer of 1879 Bernhardt was making the first of many visits to London with the Comedie Française and Wilde was said to have met her off the Channel ferry with an armful of lilies.