The Portrait of Mr. W. H.
by Oscar Wilde

Publication date 2021-08-20
Usage Public Domain Mark 1.0Creative Commons Licensepublicdomain
Topics librivox, audiobooks, Shakespeare, willie hughes
LibriVox recording of The Portrait of Mr. W. H. by Oscar Wilde.
Read in English by Rob Marland
Wilde's short story about an attempt to uncover the identity of Mr. W. H., the dedicatee of Shakespeare's sonnets, was first published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1889. He intended to publish an expanded version of the story as a separate book, a plan that was not realized until after his death. This audiobook is based on the expanded version. - Summary by Rob Marland.
chapter 1 of the portrait of mr wh by oscar wilde this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org read by rob marland the portrait of mr wh as written by oscar wilde sometime after the publication of his essay of the same title and now first printed from the original enlarged manuscript which for 26 years has been lost to the world chapter one i had been dining with erskine in his pretty little house in bird cage walk and we were sitting in the library over our coffee and cigarettes when the question of literary forgeries happened to turn up in conversation i cannot at present remember how it was that we struck upon this somewhat curious topic as it was at that time but i know we had a long discussion about mcpherson ireland and chatterton and that with regard to the last i insisted that his so-called forgeries were merely the result of an artistic desire for perfect representation that we had no right to quarrel with an artist for the conditions under which he chooses to present his work and that all art being to a certain degree a mode of acting an attempt to realize one's own personality on some imaginative plane out of reach of the troubling accidents and limitations of real life to censure an artist for a forgery was to confuse and ethical with an aesthetical problem erskine who was a good deal older than i was and had been listening to me with the amused deference of a man of forty suddenly put his hand upon my shoulder and said to me what would you say about a young man who had a strange theory about a certain work of art believed in his theory and committed a forgery in order to prove it oh that is quite a different matter i answered erskine remained silent for a few moments looking at the thin grey threads of smoke that were rising from his cigarette yes he said after a pause quite different there was something in the tone of his voice a slight touch of bitterness perhaps that excited my curiosity did you ever know anybody who did that i cried yes he answered throwing his cigarette into the fire a great friend of mine cyril graham he was very fascinating and very foolish and very heartless however he left me the only legacy i ever received in my life what was that i exclaimed laughing erskine rose from his seat as going over to a tall inlaid cabinet that stood between the two windows unlocked it and came back to where i was sitting carrying a small panel picture set in an old and somewhat tarnished elizabethan frame it was a full length portrait of a young man in late 16th century costume standing by a table with his right hand resting on an open book he seemed about 17 years of age and was of quite extraordinary personal beauty though evidently somewhat effeminate indeed had it not been for the dress and the closely cropped hair one would have said that the face with its dreamy wistful eyes and its delicate scarlet lips was the face of a girl in manner and especially in the treatment of the hands the figure reminded one of francois klue's later work the black velvet doblet with its fantastically gilded points and the peacock blue background against which it showed up so pleasantly and from which it gained such luminous value of colour were quite in chloe's style and the two masks of tragedy and comedy that hung somewhat formally from the marble pedestal had that hard severity of touch so different from the facile grace of the italians which even at the court of france the great flemish master never completely lost and which in itself has always been a characteristic of the northern temple it is a charming thing i cried but who is this wonderful young man whose beauty art has so happily preserved for us this is the portrait of mr w h said erskine with a sad smile it might have been a chance effect of light but it seems to me that his eyes were swimming with tears mr wh i repeated who was mr wh don't you remember he answered look at the book on which his hand is resting i see there is some writing there but i cannot make it out i replied take this magnifying glass and try said erskine with the same sad smile still playing about his mouth i took the glass and moving the lamp a little nearer i began to spell out the crabbed 16th century handwriting to the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets good heavens i cried is this shakespeare's mr wh cyril graham used to say so muttered her skin but it is not a bit like lord pembroke i rejoined i know the wilton portraits very well i was staying near there a few weeks ago do you really believe then that the sonnets are addressed to lord pembroke he asked i am sure of it i answered pembroke shakespeare and mrs mary fitton are the three personages of the sonnets there is no doubt at all about it well i agree with you said erskine but i did not always think so i used to believe well i suppose i used to believe in cyril graham and his theory and what was that i asked looking at the wonderful portrait which had already begun to have a strange fascination for me it is a long story he murmured taking the picture away from me rather abruptly i thought at the time a very long story but if you care to hear it i will tell it to you i love theories about the sonnets i cried but i don't think i am likely to be converted to any new idea the matter has ceased to be a mystery to anyone indeed i wonder that it ever was a mystery as i don't believe in the theory i am not likely to convert you to it said erskine laughing but it may interest you tell it to me of course i answered if it is half as delightful as the picture i shall be more than satisfied well said erskine lighting a cigarette i must begin by telling you about cyril graham himself he and i were at the same house at eaton i was a year or two older than he was but we were immense friends and did all our work and all our play together there was of course a good deal more play than work but i cannot say that i am sorry for that it is always an advantage not to have received a sound commercial education and what i learned in the playing fields at eaton has been quite as useful to me as anything i was taught at cambridge i shall tell you that cyril's father and mother were both dead they had been drowned in a horrible yachting accident off the isle of wight his father had been in the diplomatic service and had married a daughter the only daughter in fact of old lord credited who became cyril's guardian after the death of his parents i don't think that lord creditum cared very much for cyril he had never really forgiven his daughter for marrying a man who had no title he was an extraordinary old aristocrat who swore like a costa monger and had the manners of a farmer i remember seeing him once on speech day he growled at me gave me a sovereign and told me not to grow up a damned radical like my father cyril had very little affection for him and was only too glad to spend most of his holidays with us in scotland they never really got on together at all cyril thought him a bear and he thought cyril effeminate he was a feminist i suppose in some things though he was a capital rider and a capital fencer in fact he got the foils before he left eaton but he was very languid in his manner and not a little vein of his good looks and had a strong objection to football which he used to say was a game only suitable for the sons of the middle classes the two things that really gave him pleasure were poetry and acting at eaton he was always dressing up and reciting shakespeare and when we went up to trinity he became a member of the adc his first term i remember i was always very jealous of his acting i was absurdly devoted to him i suppose because we were so different in most things i was a rather awkward weakly lad with huge feet and horribly freckled freckles run in scotch families just as gout does in english families cyril used to say that of the two he preferred the gout but he always set an absurdly high value on personal appearance and once read a paper before our debating society to prove that it was better to be good looking than to be good he certainly was wonderfully handsome people who did not like him philistines and college tutors and young men reading for the church used to say that he was merely pretty but there was a great deal more in his face than mere prettiness i think he was the most splendid creature i ever saw and nothing could exceed the grace of his movements the charm of his manner he fascinated everybody who was worth fascinating and a great many people who were not he was often willful and petulant and i used to think him dreadfully insincere it was due i think chiefly to his inordinate desire to please poor cyril i told him once that he was contented with very cheap triumphs but he only tossed his head and smiled he was horribly spoiled all charming people i fancy are spoiled it is the secret of their attraction however i must tell you about cyril's acting you know that no women are allowed to play at the adc at least they were not in my time i don't know how it is now well of course cyril was always cast for the girls parts and when as you like it was produced he played rosalind it was a marvellous performance you will laugh at me but i assure you that cyril gr