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Fatal Attraction: Meres, Mimesis, and Maternal Woes of “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.”
Ben Barger
Directly we glance at “Meres,” we discern the irony. It is “mere” made monumental by a capital “M.” Francis Meres was an “Elizabethan literary historian whose Palladis Tamia surveyed works from Chaucer’s time to his own” (Dowling’s note, Wilde 318); and it was he who remarked that “the sweet and witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare” (Wilson 11). So perhaps the prestige of that capital “M” is warranted. Granted, proper names are generally capitalized, but in the context of Oscar Wilde’s story “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.”—itself with conspicuous capital initials built into the title—size matters.
Oscar Wilde had a distinct appreciation for the sensuality of words, partly because he continually operated under an aesthetic of cryptically beautiful prose exemplified in Walter Pater’s The Renaissance. Furthermore, Wilde’s exposure to Classics at Oxford brought him into contact with Plato, who utilized the dialogue and which Wilde characteristically appropriated, understanding the two sides to coalesce into a dialectal whole where contrary opinions may be held simultaneously. Wilde himself would eventually utilize the Platonic dialogue by publishing two of his own: The Decay of Lying and The Critic as Artist.
The interim between these two publications, however, was filled by the printing of Wilde’s story, “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.,” in the July 1889 issue of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. The story is ostensibly about the narrator learning that a young man named Cyril Graham developed a hypothesis about the elusive addressee of Shakespeare’s Sonnets identified simply as “Mr. W. H.” This Graham commissioned a fake painting of the purported addressee, attempting to pass it off as authentic, but was eventually found out. The narrator becomes fascinated by the theory nonetheless and investigates it himself (against the advice of his friend, Erskine) and it is this investigation that dominates the remainder of the narrative. By the end, however, the narrator’s labor comes to naught: once he solidifies his argument in a letter and sends it to Erskine, the narrator admits that he had also “given away my capacity for belief in the Willie Hughes theory of the Sonnets” (94). The narrator’s infatuation with the theory of Willie Hughes has led to a fruitless courtship.
Just as Wilde’s two dialogical publications were separated by a short story of equivocal genre—the erudition of “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” might qualify it for an academic work were it not for the presence, apart from the narrator, of actual characters—so too are pairs of characters (Cyril & Erskine and Erskine & the narrator) violated by a third member of equivocal gender: the Willie Hughes portrait. This painting becomes the source of contention—the dialogue—that occurs between each of the pairs, the respective members of which never reach a negotiation regarding Willie Hughes. Similarly, the allusiveness of Wilde’s erudition seems to negotiate between certain characters and the historical literary figures to whom the story alludes, setting a precedent for artistic suicide and artistic authority exemplified by the 18th Century poet Thomas Chatterton and William Shakespeare respectively, to which the characters can never seem to live up.
In this essay, I begin on Willie Hughes’s portrait as an aesthetically autonomous changeling by exploring the etymology of the word “changeling,” and how the stylistic choices of Wilde’s story connote the structure of that word. I gradually widen my focus to argue that “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” unites its fictional characters—Cyril Graham, the narrator, and Erskine—with their non-fictional antecedents, both literary and historical (in effect, how Wilde’s makes his characters the changelings of those antecedents with whom they correspond). I explore this correspondence in its conformity to Elizabethan homosociality and Platonic eros, the former governing Cyril Graham and the latter governing the narrator. In the context of these mimetic ideologies, I examine Erskine’s marginality as inextricable from the Dark Lady’s liminality and proceed to locate their exclusion in the narrator’s anxieties regarding Platonic symmetry. I focus particularly on the symmetrical implications in his punning use of the word “mere” and attempt to link his preoccupation with Shakespeare’s Sonnet sequence to numerological pathology, an obsession I retrace in Cyril Graham’s desire to fulfill the poetry’s implicit prophecy of immortality to the young man it addresses. In my conclusion, I investigate the ability of the portrait, a mimetic product—a “mere” triviality—to provoke a controversy which leads to the confusion (and demise) of Wilde’s fictional characters, but which the portrait manages to survive precisely because its antecedent exists in art, the only medium which can accommodate its contradictions. . . .
The OED tells us that the word "changeling" is a combination of the verb "change" and the diminutive suffix "-ling," and the word had particular significance in English folklore as "a child (usually stupid or ugly) supposed to have been left by fairies in exchange for one stolen." In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Oberon applies the term "changeling" to the human son of "a votress of [Titania's] order" received by Titania at her devotee's death (and therefore not stolen), rather than the unattractive substitution that might have been left in its place (II.i.123). (Considering that Titania inherited the boy upon her devotee's death, no substitution would have been necessary, nor does Titania reference any such substitution.) This changeling boy is the source of a discord between the fairy king and queen, from which Titania traces an itinerary of natural disturbances:
The spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which.
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension; (II.i.111-6)
The relevance here of their discord resides in the way in which the presence of the changeling boy disrupts the relationship between male and female, or, rather, how the presence of a third person disrupts the relationship of an already established pairing: as king and queen of the fairies, Titania and Oberon, while respective persons, constitute a unified government (a monarchy).
Another aspect of a changeling is that it ends with a diminutive suffix. As soon as one reads “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” ones eyes fall upon a diminution: “I had been dining with Erskine in his pretty little house in Birdcage Walk” (33). “Little” is lodged between “pretty,” which evokes something “attractive and pleasing in appearance; good-looking, esp. in a delicate or diminutive way,” and “house,” which indicates a structure enclosing something smaller than itself (OED). “Little,” then, is a microscopic adjective enclosed—or housed—between “pretty” and “house,” almost in the manner of a birdcage, which is also a house for something pretty and little. Somewhat appropriately, Erskine’s miniature residence is located in Birdcage Walk.
In tandem with our first understanding of "changeling," the OED provides an alternate definition: "one given to change." Such a changeling is to be found in the twentieth sonnet of Shakespeare's Sonnets: a uniquely unisexed being whom the poet addresses as "the master mistress of my passion" (20.2). The poet praises the addressee for his ambiguous appearance--"A woman's face with nature's own hand painted"(20.1)--while praising this master-mistress for his ignorance of duplicity--"A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted /With shifting change as is false women's fashion" (20.3-4). The paradox of this creature who "steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth," is that he, an individual, possesses the dualistic aspects of the male/female binary, but manages to avoid the "shifting change" of moral character which the poet contributes to women alone (20.7). This master-mistress, as Stephen Greenblatt points out in his biography of Shakespeare, Will in the World, is being encouraged by the poet to marry in order that his exceptional appearance will be duplicated through sexual reproduction. Greenblatt then indicates a shift in the poet's argument by citing the end couplet of Shakespearean Sonnet 15 and examining its final clause: "'I engraft you new'--the reproductive power in question here is the power of poetry. . . . the poet's labor, not the woman's, will bring forth the young man's enduring image" (237-8). The poetry itself then becomes a changeling, claiming that it shall be the substitute for the master-mistress's absent heir. This interaction in Sonnets 1-126 is limited to the poet and the young man, but from Sonnet 127 and onward, the symmetry of poet/young man is intercepted by a woman as the pairing develops into a love triangle of sorts. At that point, the symmetry is disturbed, much like the harmony between Titania and Oberon is dissipated by the appearance of the little changeling boy.
Willie Hughes is the changeling whom Cyril Graham substitutes for the mysterious male identified in the equivocal dedication of Shakespeare's Sonnets:
"TO.THE.ONLIE.BEGETTER.OF.
THESE.INSVING.SONNETS.
Mr.W.H.ALL.HAPPINESSE.
AND.THAT.ETERNITIE.
PROMISED.
BY.
OVR.EVER-LIVING.POET."(1-7)
Cyril draws a link between the dedicatee and the young man addressed in the Sonnets: Mr. W. H. is described as "the only begetter" of the Sonnets and the speaker of the Sonnets continually implores the young man to beget children to preserve his image. The dedication explicitly grants Mr. W. H. "that eternity promised by our ever-living poet," and, as Greenblatt posits, the speaker of the Sonnets declares to the young man that his poetry is a "far more secure way of preserving perfect beauty intact and carrying it forward to succeeding generations" than sexual relations with a woman (Greenblatt 237-8). Cyril's final proof for the link between the dedicatee and the young man lies in punning: the congruence between the second initial, "H," and the capitalized word, "Hews" in the twentieth sonnet "showed clearly that a play on words was intended" (Wilde 42), from which Cyril derives the surname of "Hughes." As for Mr. W. H.'s first name, Cyril locates a similar congruence between the initial "W" and Sonnet 135's overabundant use of the word "Will," which occurs at least once in ten of the verses.
Somewhat eerily, the publishing history of Wilde's story reveals its similarity to the changeling upon which it's narrative is focused. When it was originally published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1889, the story was divided into three parts and was titled: "The Portrait of Mr. W. H." In Oscar Wilde's Profession, a comphrensive materialist study of Wilde's works, Josephine Guy and Ian Small write that Wilde intended to follow up the magazine publication of "Mr. W. H." by releasing an expanded edition of the story in a single volume. The Bodley Head was contracted to publish it under "the slightly revised title of The incomparable history of Mr. W. H.", a shift which has been interpreted by "[m]odern critics . . . as an attempt to change its identity from a work of fiction--a short story--into literary criticism" (Guy & Small 171-2; their italics). This view of Mr. W. H. as a fictional essay is, I think, a fair assessment. The deaths of both Cyril Graham and Erskine lack pathos as Wilde seems to privilege intellectual depth over emotional sincerity. On the other hand, the Blackwood's edition of “Mr. W. H.” already exhibits a tendency towards literary criticism in the narrator's investigation of Shakespeare's Sonnets (not necessarily a page-turner in terms of plot).
The two significant differences between the Blackwood's edition and the expanded edition (which, it transpired, the Bodley Head never published) are the two additional sections concerned with the decidedly academic subjects of "Neoplatonism, the Dark Lady and Elizabethan boy actors" and the new title, which advertises the story as an "incomparable history" (Dowling 317). By adding two new sections to an already triplicate story, Wilde (or, rather, the unnamed first person narrator), brought the total number of subdivisions to five, a number which mirrors the number of acts one always finds in a Shakespeare play. Additionally, Wilde's label of "incomparable history" finds its artistic antecedent in certain Shakespeare plays, such as "The most excellent History of the Merchant of Venice," a conflicting title as the play is categorized as a comedy, although scholars continue to debate the problem of confining any of Shakespeare's plays to their respective categories. Moreover, Wilde's revised title and additional sections pose the same problems of categorization for “Mr. W. H.” as for Shakespeare's Histories. The plays involve a certain amount of erudition: Shakespeare transposes actual persons from English history (Richard of Gloucester, etc.), maintaining fidelity insofar as the Histories correspond chronologically to the succession of English monarchs up to the ascension of Elizabeth I. But the historical accuracy ends there as, for the purposes of drama, artistic liberty is necessary. In the same way, Wilde makes use of the real-life academic controversy of the identity of Mr. W. H. by referencing both Elizabethan and contemporary authorities, such as the literary historian Francis Meres and distinguished Victorian Hellenists as John Addington Symonds and Walter Pater (Wilde 67-8). Indeed, with so many similarities between the structure of Wilde's story and Shakespeare's plays, it is as though Wilde is suggesting that Shakespeare authored "The incomparable history of Mr. W. H.," more evidence of an obsession with pairing, an obsession with which the narrator is also pre-occupied.
Cyril Graham’s hypothesis for Willie Hughes is the catalyst for this series of Shakespearean switching. Cyril himself was an actor who “was always cast for the girls’ parts” in Shakespeare’s plays at Cambridge. Cyril’s willing transvestitism indirectly instills in him maternal and paternal qualities while excluding him from the procreative rights sanctioned by hetero-normalcy. Cyril seeks to overcome this reproductive barrier via a circuitous route—literary theory—by assigning to Mr. W. H. (the elusive addressee of Shakespeare’s Sonnets) the prestige of having been Shakespeare’s muse based on “internal evidence” of the Sonnets (37). This forging of hetero-normative proliferation—male/female sexual intercourse—becomes coherent if we situate Cyril Graham and Erskine (his friend from Cambridge) in the narrative as Wilde’s consummation of Elizabethan sexuality and Oxford Hellenism. Both ideologies are problematic in their treatment of homosocial interactions. The former encouraged intimacy between males but condemned any sexual expression of that intimacy, a complication of Elizabethan male sexuality which Greenblatt corroborates:
Elizabethans acknowledged the existence of same-sex desire; indeed, it was in a
certain sense easier for them to justify than heterosexual desire. That men were
inherently superior to women was widely preached; why then wouldn’t men naturally be
drawn to other men? Sodomy was strictly prohibited by religious teaching and the law,
but that prohibition aside, it was perfectly understandable that men would love and desire
men. (253)
The latter promoted the intellectual fulfillment Plato ascribed to intense male friendships, yet barred the physical consummation Plato attributed to that friendship. Vicki Mahaffey identifies this contradictory Platonism in her book States of Desire as “the traditional Victorian desire to dissolve sexuality into the spiritual” (37). Wilde makes Cyril and Erskine’s own relationship suggestive enough to imply a romantic inclination, but he leaves their interactions open to speculation. Nevertheless, of the two Erskine occupies a definitively masculine role next to the gender-shifting Cyril, whose reaction to the possibility that Shakespeare addressed his Sonnets to an Elizabethan boy-actor resembles a woman learning of her pregnancy. Erskine describes “him in a state of great excitement . . . He was perfectly wild with delight, and for a long time would not tell me his theory.” Cyril’s theory does take on the likeness of a pregnancy, gestating in time with his efforts to convince Erskine of its legitimacy Sonnet by Sonnet. Cyril’s efforts are effective—he claims that his theory stems from “working purely by internal evidence” and proceeds to locate punning examples in the Sonnets which reveal the name of Mr. W. H. as well as Mr. W. H.’s profession as an actor—until Erskine demands “independent evidence” so that “there could be no possible doubt about [Willie Hughes’] identity” (37-43). Erskine’s insistence puts Cyril “in a dreadful state” because Cyril has effectively created a false pregnancy in the theory without a site for conception or delivery.
Cyril seeks to remedy the crisis of authenticity by creating an elaborate genealogy for Willie Hughes. In order to substantiate the origins of his miraculous progeny, Cyril parodies the mechanisms of hetero-normative sexual exchange by pretending “he had discovered [the portrait] by the merest chance nailed to the [in]side of an old chest . . . which was a very fine example of Elizabethan work” (44). Cyril replaces the organic receptacle—the womb—with a surrogate vessel in which the conception (and subsequent delivery) of a child may be artificially enacted, simulating a symbolic insemination that plants a textual seed in a crafted womb by carving the initials “Mr. W. H.” onto its lid, initials whose antecedent lies in the dedication of the Sonnets. His description of divesting the chest of the portrait is vivid in its birthing imagery when, “[o]n taking [the portrait] out . . .he managed to clean it, and, to his great joy, saw [it was] the one thing for which he had been looking” (44); in a characteristic gender-shift, Cyril plays the midwife to the chest
Alternatively the chest, while a site of procreation, acts as a premature coffin: Erskine soon chances upon Edward Merton, the artist employed by Cyril to paint the false picture of Willie Hughes. Merton, “a pale and interesting young man,” is partnered “with a rather common-looking wife,” but the text does not specify if they have any children (45). Nevertheless, he is a prolific artist—“we were looking over a portfolio, full of really very lovely things,” Erskine tells the narrator—and Merton’s proclivity towards artistic representation reiterates the story’s tendency to link male friendships by an aesthetic bond at the expense of any attention to the female, hence Erskine’s dismissive descriptor of Merton’s wife. Merton’s wife’s exclamation at Erskine’s discovery of a sketch of the portrait of Willie Hughes sounds like that of an overburdened mother grateful to have another child off her hands: “[I]f this gentlemen wishes to buy [the drawing], let him have it” (46). Additionally, she betrays resentment of her husband’s sexual neglect in favor of art. Mrs. Merton’s pragmatism regarding her husbands work is excusable in light of the pair’s poverty, Merton being “as poor as a church mouse” (45). Yet her willingness to part with her husband’s artistic offspring to alleviate degrading physical conditions indicates an augmented preoccupation with commerce over aesthetic integrity, in addition to a lack of maternal instinct. Such treatment is typical of the only other females in the narrative: Erskine’s mother who, in spite of displaying her fair share of maternal woe, is single, and the Dark Lady, with whom the narrator does not link maternity at all.