Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions — Volume 1 — John Shaqi
Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions — Volume 1Harris, Frank
History
Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions — Volume 1
Harris, Frank
Authors, Irish -- 19th century -- Biography; Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900
No new profession has been organized in England since the Middle Ages. In the
meantime we have invented new arts, new sciences and new letters; when will
these be organized and regimented in new and living professions, so that young
ingenuous souls may find suitable fields for their powers and may not be forced
willy-nilly to grub for pignuts when it would be more profitable for them and
for us to use their nobler faculties? Not only are the poor poorer and more
numerous in England than elsewhere; but there is less provision made for the
"intellectuals" too, consequently the organism is suffering at both extremities.
It is high time that both maladies were taken in hand, for by universal consent
England is now about the worst organized of all modern States, the furthest
from the ideal.
Something too should be done with the existing professions to make them worthy
of honourable ambition. One of them, the Church, is a noble body without a
soul; the soul, our nostrils tell us, died some time ago, while the medical
profession has got a noble spirit with a wretched half-organized body. It says
much for the inherent integrity and piety of human nature that our doctors
persist in trying to cure diseases when it is clearly to their self-interest to
keep their patients ailing--an anarchic world, this English one, and stupefied
with self-praise. What will this professor of aesthetics make of it?
Here he is, the flower of English University training, a winner of some of the
chief academic prizes without any worthy means of earning a livelihood, save
perchance by journalism. And journalism in England suffers from the prevailing
anarchy. In France, Italy, and Germany journalism is a career in which an
eloquent and cultured youth may honourably win his spurs. In many countries
this way of earning one's 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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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