bread can still be turned into an art by the gifted and high-minded;
but in England thanks in the main to the anonymity of the press
cunningly contrived by the capitalist, the journalist or modern
preacher is turned into a venal voice, a soulless Cheapjack paid to
puff his master's wares. Clearly our "Professor of AEsthetics and
Critic of Art" is likely to have a doleful time of it in nineteenth
century London.
Oscar had already dipped into his little patrimony, as we have seen,
and he could not conceal from himself that he would soon have to live
on what he could earn--a few pounds a week. But then he was a poet and
had boundless confidence in his own ability. To the artist nature the
present is everything; just for to-day he resolved that he would live
as he had always lived; so he travelled first class to London and
bought all the books and papers that could distract him on the way:
"Give me the luxuries," he used to say, "and anyone can have the
necessaries."
In the background of his mind there were serious misgivings. Long
afterwards he told me that his father's death and the smallness of his
patrimony had been a heavy blow to him. He encouraged himself,
however, at the moment by dwelling on his brother's comparative
success and waved aside fears and doubts as unworthy.
It is to his credit that at first he tried to cut down expenses and
live laborious days. He took a couple of furnished rooms in Salisbury
Street off the Strand, a very Grub Street for a man of fashion, and
began to work at journalism while getting together a book of poems for
publication. His journalism at first was anything but successful. It
was his misfortune to appeal only to the best heads and good heads are
not numerous anywhere. His appeal, too, was still academic and
laboured. His brother Willie with his commoner sympathies appeared to
be better equipped for this work. But Oscar had from the first a
certain social success.
As soon as he reached London he stepped boldly into the limelight,
|