Who will inherit the mantle of Richard Ellmann? Oscar Wilde: A Certain Genius is Barbara Belford's bid. Ellmann's biography of Oscar Wilde (1987) towered over its predecessors and over most of the studies of Wilde that have appeared since. It was the first treatment of Wilde by a major writer schooled in literary biography, but much has changed in 13 years, both in fashion in biographical technique and in information about Oscar Wilde's life. Ellmann's effort has been chipped at, of course, and his standing has not been helped by the insistence of his publishers on reprinting without corrections. Ellmann, who tended to be uncritical of his sources and let through the occasional "howler", is therefore looking less and less dominating. Publication of The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde edited by the late Rupert Hart-Davis and Wilde's grandson, Merlin Holland, will finally make it necessary to replace Ellmann, rather than just supplement him.
Where does this leave Barbara Belford? Her work on Bram Stoker, the creator of Dracula, gave her an esteemed place among biographers of the late Victorian period. In that book, Wilde played a part as the would be fiance of the woman who eventually became Stoker's wife, Florence Balcombe. Now Belford moves on to what may be termed a three-quarter scale biography. As all the world knows, Wilde said that he had put his genius into life and only his talent into his work, which has licensed the division between biographers tackling the former, and literary historians tackling the latter. (Few address Wilde's rider: "That is my tragedy. ") Was Wilde "a comedian in the hands of those who understood nothing but tragedy," as Yeats called him, or was Wilde's tragedy that he fell among comedians, those who continue to fail to give him full, serious, measure?
I am not sure that Belford has answered this question, and the ambiguity of her title suggests an uneasiness with the formula. Is she taking Wilde at his own valuation by asserting that he was certainly a genius, or is she hesitantly suggesting Wilde only had a certain genius? This irresolution crops up in various forms in this book: her odd Irish orthography Osin, Niamh Cinn oOir Tir na nog; her quotation from The Picture of Dorian Gray attributed to Lord Henry rather than to Basil Hallward; her notion that Wilde's play, Vera, is set in the 18th century rather than some time after 1856. Even her statement that on their honeymoon in Paris in 1884 the Wildes' hotel room overlooked the Tuileries suggests less than adequate research, for the Tuileries had been burned in 1871 and their ruins demolished in 1883. Other small errors follow, some of them taken over from Ellmann himself, such as calling the Norwegian painter Frits Thaulow, Wilde's Dieppe acquaintance, Fritz von Thaulow.
The other problem that confronts a biographer of Wilde is the vast number of supporting characters. In his edition of Wilde's letters, Sir Rupert Hart-Davis did amazing work in identifying these, and Merlin Holland is keeping this up. To do this is not, evidently, Barbara Belford's task, but when for example, she identifies one of Wilde's friends, Mrs Helen Carew, as the mother of Sir Coleridge Kennard, is she advancing our knowledge? There was more to Helen Carew than this (not least the fact that her husband had been a Dublin M.P.), while I am not sure whether Roy Kennard's name is to-day so familiar a name as to be a useful referent.
Nor, be it said, does Belford write with the humanity and warmth that informed Ellmann's book. What she does provide is a reasonably cool look at Wilde, not depriving him of any of his plumes, but removing a few foisted upon him by others for their own purposes. Belford is aware of the dangers of her position. Wilde frequently lied about himself, she writes. To advance his myth-making he encouraged his friends to lie also. As a result his life became a tale of beautiful lies. It was exactly what he wanted to be: a mystery in plain sight. This is a complex position, and Belford does well to state it, but to unpack its meanings and implications calls for a different sort of biography than this straightforward, competent but slightly pedestrian account.
D.C. Rose is currently teaching at Goldsmith's College, University of London