Ada Leverson, part 2: Friendship with Oscar Wilde

Ada Esther Beddington Leverson (née Moses) by Elliott & Fry, albumen carte-de-visite, late 1880s. NPG x76184. Image source: National Portrait Gallery, London

A continuation of Ada Leverson, part 1: Edith and Bruce, the Little Ottleys.

I. Meeting Oscar Wilde

The photograph at the head of this post was taken when Ada Leverson was in her mid-20s and thoroughly disillusioned in her marriage. A few years later she began to write short occasional pieces, reviews, sketches and parodies. Much of this work was printed anonymously, and so not all of the pieces have been positively identified.

One would have a lasting effect on her life, however. "An Afternoon Party," published in Punch on 15 July 1893, parodied Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), Salomé (1893), and A Woman of No Importance (1893). Wilde was delighted with the piece; he would later write Leverson, "Your sketch is brilliant, as your work always is. It is quite tragic for me to think how completely Dorian Gray has been understood on all sides!" [1]

Here is a small taste of "An Afternoon Party":

. . ."The room is full of celebrities. Do you see that tall woman in black, talking to the little old lady? That is Mrs. ARBUTHNOT—a woman of some importance—and the other is CHARLEY'S Aunt. The sporting-looking young man is Captain CODDINGTON, who is 'in town' for the season."

"And who are the two men, exactly alike, tall and dark, who are smoking gold-tipped cigarettes, and talking epigrams?" I asked. I like to know who people are, and the person in the silver domino seemed well-informed.

"Those are Lord ILLINGWORTH, and Lord HENRY WOTTON. They always say exactly the same things. They are awfully clever, and cynical.". . .

"Princess SALOMÉ!" announced the servant. A little murmur of surprise seemed to go round the room as the lovely Princess entered.

"What has she got on?" asked PORTIA.

"Oh, it's nothing," replied Mr. WALKER, London.

"I thought she was not received in English society," said Lady WINDERMERE, puritanically.

"I can assure you, my dears, that she would not be tolerated in Brazil, where the nuts come from," exclaimed CHARLEY'S Aunt.

"There's no harm in her. She's only a little peculiar. She is particularly fond of boar's head. It's nothing," said Mr. WALKER.

"The uninvitable in pursuit of the indigestible," murmured Lord ILLINGWORTH, as he lighted a cigarette. [2]

(For a key to the references in the parody, see note 2.)

Illustration of "An Afternoon Party" from Punch. Image source: Internet Archive

According to Osbert Sitwell, Ada's close friend in the final decade of her life, it was "An Afternoon Party" that brought about her introduction to Wilde:

[Ada] had first met Wilde, she told me, through an anonymous parody she had written of Dorian Gray. This skit had attracted his attention, and had amused him. He had written to the author, who had suggested a meeting, and when this took place Wilde had been amazed to find it was a woman who entered the room. [3]

Ada's daughter Violet Wyndham offers a different version of their first meeting:

It was in the year 1892 that Ada Leverson met Oscar Wilde for the first time; the occasion was a party given by the first Mrs. Oswald Crawfurd, whose husband, a diplomat, was an important literary figure of the day. [4]

The occasion of the Crawfurd's party may have been to celebrate the opening of Wilde's play Lady Windermere's Fan. If so, and if Ada attended the party and met Wilde there, it would place their first meeting in February 1892 rather than in 1893.

Both stories, of course, derive from Ada Leverson herself, and both are plausible. By 1891 Ada was engaged in a flirtatious correspondence with the Irish writer George Moore, although it appears she had not yet published anything. She asked Moore's advice about a "little story" she had written: ". . .you must tell me whether you think it very stupid. . .You cannot imagine how anxious I am about it, to see it in print, I believe I would give several years of my life. I don't care about money, it is only for the pleasure that I wish it so much." [5]

The Leverson's invitation to the Crawfurd's literary party in early 1892 might have come through their acquaintance with Moore. Supporting Sitwell's version of the meeting in 1893 is that the earliest published messages from Wilde to Ada are from that year or later. [6]

Whether they first met in 1892 or 1893, Ada's wit won her Wilde's enduring admiration and friendship. She went on to write at least three more Wilde parodies for Punch, including "The Minx.—A Poem in Prose," a parody of his poem The Sphinx (1894). [7]

Wilde took to calling her "Sphinx," perhaps a reference not to his rather lurid poem, but to Lord Henry's description of women in The Picture of Dorian Gray as "Sphinxes without secrets" (an echo of Wilde's short story "The Sphinx Without a Secret"). [8]

Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas, by Gillman & Co, gelatin silver print, May 1893. NPG P1122. Image source: National Portrat Gallery

II. Wilde's trials and their aftermath

In the winter of 1895 Oscar Wilde was at the peak of his fame. He had two smash hits running in the West End at the same time. An Ideal Husband had opened on 3 January at the Haymarket Theatre, and would run for 124 performances. Just over a month later, on 14 February, The Importance of Being Earnest opened at St. James's Theatre. Despite a blinding snowstorm and a bitterly cold and windy night, the theater was packed.

Outside, a frost, inside, the very breath of success; perfumed atmosphere of gaiety, fashion, and, apparently, everlasting popularity. The author of the play was fertile, inventive, brilliant; and with such encouragement how could one realise that the gaiety was not to last, that his life was to become dark, cold, sinister as the atmosphere outside?. . .People as a rule do not object to a man deserving success, only to his getting it. [9]

That night the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde's lover Lord Alfred Douglas, attempted to enter the theater to disrupt the play. On being refused entry, he had left at the box office the bunch of vegetables he'd intended to throw at the stage. Four days later the Marquess went to Wilde's club and left his calling card, on which he'd scrawled "For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite" [sodomite].

Exhibit A in Wilde's libel trial against the Marquess of Queensberry. Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Wilde unwisely decided to prosecute Queensberry for libel. That case failed, and evidence and witnesses produced by Queensberry's defense led swiftly to Wilde's own arrest and prosecutions for "gross indecency." Wilde's belongings were seized and auctioned to pay Queensberry's court costs, and he was left bankrupt. Now a ruined man, he had been the toast of London just a few weeks earlier.

During Wilde's trials in the spring of 1895 Ada and her husband remained his steadfast supporters. While Wilde, penniless and homeless, was out on bail awaiting his final trial in May, the Leversons invited him to stay in their house:

. . .I showed him his rooms, the nursery floor, which was almost a flat in itself, two big rooms, one small one, and a bathroom. My little boy was in the country at the time.

I asked him if he would like me to take away the toys in the room. "Please leave them," he said. So, in the presence of a rocking-horse, dolls' houses, golliwogs, a blue and white nursery dado with rabbits and other animals on it, the most serious and tragic matters were discussed. The poet leant his elbow on the American cloth of the nursery table, and talked over the coming trial with his solicitor.

While all our friends as well as the whole public were discussing Oscar, no one had any idea that he was under our roof. . .

He made certain rules in order to avoid any embarrassment for us. He never left the nursery floor till six o'clock. He had breakfast, luncheon and tea up there, and received all his loyal friends there. He never would discuss his troubles before me; such exaggerated delicacy seems to-day almost incredible. But every day at six he would come down dressed for dinner, and talk to me for a couple of hours in the drawing-room. [10]

At his final trial he was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labor.

On Wilde's release from prison on 19 May 1897, Ada and Ernest were among the small group of friends who met him in London as he was on his way to the coast to sail for France. 

Very early one very cold May morning my husband, I and several other friends drove from our house in Deanery Street to meet Oscar at the house in Bloomsbury of the Rev. Stuart [Stewart] Headlam. The drawing-room was full of Burne-Jones and Rossetti pictures, Morris wallpaper and curtains, in fact an example of the decoration of the early 'eighties, very beautiful in its way, and very like the aesthetic rooms Oscar had once loved.

We all felt intensely nervous and embarrassed. We had the English fear of showing our feelings, and at the same time the human fear of not showing our feelings.

He came in, and at once he put us at our ease. He came in with the dignity of a king returning from exile. He came in talking, laughing, smoking a cigarette, with waved hair and a flower in his button-hole, and he looked markedly better, slighter, and younger than he had two years previously. His first words were, "Sphinx, how marvellous of you to know exactly the right hat to wear at seven o'clock in the morning to meet a friend who has been away!" [11]

The next day Wilde wrote her from his hotel in Dieppe:

Dear Sphinx,

I was so charmed with seeing you yesterday morning that I must write a line to tell you how sweet and good it was of you to be of the very first to greet me. When I think that Sphinxes are minions of the moon and that you got up early before dawn, I am filled with wonder and joy.

I often thought of you in the long black days and nights of my prison-life, and to find you just as wonderful and dear as ever was no surprise. The beautiful are always beautiful. [12]

A year later Ada visited Wilde in Paris, without Ernest, and she continued to correspond with him until his premature death in 1900. Ada memorialized their friendship in her second Ottley novel, Tenterhooks (1912), which features a character, Vincy, who is modelled on Wilde.

Violet Wyndham writes of the importance to Ada of Wilde's friendship,

He had been the catalyst necessary to the full development of her personality. With him she had known exciting fulfillment in the realm of the mind. Who was there to sparkle back at him better than herself? His appreciation was a gift that she treasured for a lifetime. It had polished the precious stone of her own talent. Perhaps, had she never known Wilde's admiration, she would not have had the confidence necessary for the writing of her novels. [13]

Next time: Ada Leverson, part 3: Love's Shadow
Last time: Ada Leverson, part 1: Edith and Bruce, the little Ottleys

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1. Ada Leverson, Letters to the Sphinx from Oscar Wilde, with Reminiscences of the Author, Duckworth, 1930, p. 52.
2. [Ada Leverson,] "An Afternoon Party," Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 105, 15 July 1893, p. 13. A key to the references in the parody:
   
   • "Mrs. Arbuthnot—a woman of some importance": the main character in Wilde's play A Woman of No Importance (premiered 19 April 1893). https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/854
   • Charley's Aunt: the title character in the long-running farce by Brandon Thomas (London premiere 21 December 1892). https://archive.org/details/brandon-thomas-charleys-aunt
   • "Captain Coddington, who is 'in town' for the season": the main character in the musical In Town, book by James T. Tanner, music by F. Osmond Carr, lyrics by Adrian Ross (premiered 15 October 1892).
   • "the person in the silver domino" [mask]: a reference to the anonymously published volume of gossip and satire, The Silver Domino, or Side Whispers, Social and Literary (Lamley and Co., 1892), later revealed to have been written by Marie Corelli; it quickly went through multiple editions. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/63446/63446-h/63446-h.htm
   • Lord Illingworth: the former lover of Mrs. Arbuthnot in A Woman of No Importance.
   • Lord Henry Wotton: the sybaritic aristocrat in Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (published April 1891). https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/174
   • Princess Salomé: the title character of Wilde's play Salomé (published 1893). https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/42704
   • Portia: a character in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice played by Ellen Terry in the June 1893 London production starring Henry Irving as Shylock. https://shakespeare.emory.edu/the-merchant-of-venice/. Wilde wrote a poem entitled "Portia" dedicated to Terry about her performance in the role. http://victorian-era.org/portia.html
   • "What has she got on?" / "Oh, it's nothing": a reference to Salomé's Dance of the Seven Veils.
   • Mr. Walker, London: a reference to J.M. Barrie's "farcical comedy" Walker, London (premiered 25 February 1892). "It's nothing" is the tag line of the character Jasper Phipps, played by the noted comic actor J.L. Toole. https://archive.org/details/walkerlondonafa00barrgoog
   • Lady Windermere: the main character of Wilde's play Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman (premiered 20 February 1892). https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/790
   • "Brazil, where the nuts come from": a line spoken by the title character in Charley's Aunt.
   • "fond of boar's head": that is, "bore's head"—that of Jokanaan (John the Baptist), which Salomé demands on a platter.
     Return
3. Osbert Sitwell, Noble Essences: A Book of Characters (Little, Brown, 1950), pp. 154-155. If Wilde wrote to the anonymous author, it must have been through Punch.
   
4. Violet Wyndham, The Sphinx and her Circle: A Biographical Sketch of Ada Leverson, 1862-1933, (André Deutsch, 1963), p. 24.
5. Violet Wyndham, The Sphinx and her Circle, p. 22.
6. Ada Leverson, Letters to the Sphinx, p. 50.
7. "The Minx.—A Poem in Prose," Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 107, 21 July 1894, p. 33; a parody of Oscar Wilde's The Sphinx (published 11 June 1894). https://archive.org/details/sim_punch_1894-07-21_107_2767/page/n10/mode/1up
   The other two parodies:
   
   • "Overheard Fragment of A Dialogue," Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 108, 12 January 1895, p. 24; a parody of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband (premiered 3 January 1895). https://archive.org/details/sim_punch_1895-01-12_108_2792/page/n13/mode/1up
   • "The Advisability of Not Being Brought up in a Handbag: A Trivial Tragedy for Wonderful People (Fragment found between the St. James's and Haymarket Theatres)," Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 108, 2 March 1895, p. 107; a parody of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People (premiered 14 February 1895). https://archive.org/details/sim_punch_1895-03-02_108_2799/page/107/mode/1up
     
     This parody contains a passage that daringly seems to refer to homosexuality:
     
     
     • Dorian. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really mediæval one should have no cigarettes. To be really Greek——
     • [The Duke of Berwick rises in a marked manner, and leaves the garden.
     • Cicely (writes in her diary, and then reads aloud dreamily). "The Duke of Berwick rose in a marked manner, and left the garden. The weather continues charming.". . . .
8. "Sphinxes without secrets": Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Ward Lock & Co., 1891), Ch. XVII. "The Sphinx Without a Secret": published in Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories (James R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., 1891).
9. Ada Leverson, Letters to the Sphinx, pp. 26 & 29.
10. Ada Leverson, Letters to the Sphinx, pp. 37-38. Golliwogs, I've just learned, were rag dolls based on the character Golliwogg in the children's books of Florence Kate Upton; today this character is seen as embodying racist stereotypes. A dado, according to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, is a protective moulding around the lower part of an interior wall. American cloth is what Americans call oilcloth.
11. Ada Leverson, Letters to the Sphinx, pp. 44-45.
12. Violet Wyndham, The Sphinx and her Circle, p. 59.
13. Violet Wyndham, The Sphinx and her Circle, p. 61.