The July edition of The Wildean, a journal of the Oscar Wilde Society, has just published my article, providing context to a letter, dated May 1887, from Oscar Wilde to Alsager Vian, editor of The Court & Society Review.
The letter, one of five which came up for auction at Bamfords in September 2010, had not previously been published. It is mainly about Lady Colin Campbell and provides further evidence of the animosity between the two writers, who both contributed to The Court & Society Review.
Oscar Wilde and Lady Colin Campbell were not friends. She called him “the great white slug” or “the great white caterpillar.” He said she had “exhausted all her powers of imagination in the witness box” after reading her novel, published in 1889, three years after her notorious divorce trial.
The new letter indicates that Oscar did not know that Lady Colin was already writing for The Court & Society Review. Perhaps the editor, knowing the animosity between the pair, had not told Wilde they were fellow contributors.
Wilde also writes that Walter Herries Pollock, editor of The Saturday Review, was “outraged” at Lady Colin saying at her divorce trial that she wrote for the Saturday, as the title had a policy of anonymity, and said “he won't have any thing to do with her.” One can image Pollock was annoyed, but there is no evidence of a permanent rift, indeed in 1890 W.E. Henley wrote that Pollock had “a grand passion for Lady Colin!” Perhaps Oscar was exaggerating Pollock’s annoyance, due to his dislike of Lady Colin.
The May 1887 letter from Wilde to Vian Alsager is an interesting addition to the evidence of the animosity between these two Irish writers, but unfortunately provides nothing new to help discover the root of their feelings.
For readers who want to find out more, The Wildean published an initial article about the five letters in its January 2011 edition and my article in July 2011. The journal is free to members of the Oscar Wilde Society (UK membership £25 per year).
