‘The author appeared with a cigarette.’ Wilde speaks after the premiere of Lady Windermere’s Fan. Image: The Ludgate Monthly, September 1892, 261.
Oscar Wilde’s first society comedy, Lady Windermere’s Fan, opened at the St. James’s Theatre in London on 20 February 1892. The fashionable audience adored the play. As the curtain fell Wilde strode onto the stage, cigarette in hand, to deliver a speech that has gone down in history. ‘I think that you have enjoyed the performance as much as I have,’ he said, ‘and I am pleased to believe that you like the piece almost as much as I do myself.’‘London’s Theatres’, The Stage (London, UK), 25 Feb. 1892, 12
That night was one of the greatest of Wilde’s life – the moment when he finally realised his dream to become a dramatist of note. But, in truth, Wilde had hoped to debut his play elsewhere. An unpublished letter Wilde wrote in February 1891 proves that he wanted the world premiere of Lady Windermere’s Fan to take place not in London but in Paris.
Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis, the editors of The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde (2000), publish a letter from Wilde to the actor Constant-Benoît Coquelin, postmarked 6 November 1891, in which Wilde accepts Coquelin’s invitation to his home on the following morning. Writing in French, Wilde thanks Coquelin for the interest he has shown in ‘cette affair [this matter]’.Merlin Holland & Rupert Hart-Davis (eds., 2000) The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, London: Fourth Estate, 493 Holland and Hart-Davis, in a footnote to the letter, wonder whether the matter in question is the translation of Lady Windermere’s Fan or a staging of Salomé, a tragedy in French that Wilde penned at about the same time as his comedy.
Holland and Hart-Davis put forward these possibilities because of a letter Wilde wrote in October 1891 to the Princess of Monaco. The princess lived in Paris but was away when Wilde attempted to visit her. He wrote:
I have finished my play, and have arranged for its production in London. But I want to have it produced first in Paris. It would be delightful. When you come back we must talk about it; I want your advice.Merlin Holland & Rupert Hart-Davis (eds., 2000) The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, London: Fourth Estate, 491
Holland and Hart-Davis concede that ‘this would appear to refer to Lady Windermere’s Fan but having it “produced first in Paris” makes little sense’. They observe that very few English plays were then produced in Paris, and that, because Lady Windermere’s Fan was scheduled for production in London in February, Wilde would have had only three months to have the play translated, accepted, and rehearsed for a premiere in Paris. The editors therefore speculate that Wilde may be referring to Salomé, and that by October 1891 he may have ‘provisionally arranged for its production the following year’ (a London production of Salomé starring Sarah Bernhardt would be announced for the summer of 1892, but cancelled when it was refused a licence).
The next month Wilde wrote to the princess again, telling her that
Coquelin has recommended me to have my play translated by Delair […] I have had an interview with him, and he is fascinated by the plot, but I don’t know if he understands society-English sufficiently well[.] I am sending him the manuscript tomorrow.Merlin Holland & Rupert Hart-Davis (eds., 2000) The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, London: Fourth Estate, 495
This, Holland and Hart-Davis accept, must be a reference to Lady Windermere’s Fan, as Salomé would not need to be translated into French: Wilde had written it in that language. Does this mean that Wilde had discussed both plays with Coquelin?
Constant-Benoît Coquelin (c. 1885) by Charles Giron. Image: Paris Musées.
Another letter to Coquelin solves the mystery. The letter was sold by Pierre Bergé and associates in 2005 but appears to have escaped the attention of Wilde scholars until now. It precedes the known letter to Coquelin but was probably sent on the same day: 6 November 1891. In it Wilde asks for a meeting at the recipient’s home on the following day to discuss a ‘comedie moderne’ that Wilde had written and that is going to be performed at the St. James’s Theatre. Wilde wishes very much for the play to be performed in Paris and desires Coquelin’s advice and support.Pierre Bergé; Manuscrits, autographes, livres anciens et modernes; 3 Nov. 2005; p. 28; lot 102; view source | WBM (partial transcript; facsimile, last two pages of 3 or 4)
Although Bergé suggests that the ‘modern comedy’ is Salomé, Wilde’s phrase can only describe Lady Windermere’s Fan. This means that, despite Holland and Hart-Davis’s reservations about the plausibility of the play being produced in Paris before London, this must have been Wilde’s plan. The plan would not be realised.
Why would Wilde want to premiere Lady Windermere’s Fan in Paris rather than in London? There may be two reasons.
Firstly, Wilde respected French authors, critics, and actors. Lady Windermere’s Fan, though often seen as a comedy of English manners, was really a melodramatic marriage-problem play – a genre that had long been popular in Paris, where audiences were less prudish than in London.
Secondly, Wilde may have been worried that his play would not be received well in London. His first play, the tragedy Vera; or, The Nihilists, had flopped in New York in 1883. His second, another tragedy, The Duchess of Padua, had run for a few weeks in the same city in January 1891 but Wilde had failed to interest British managers in producing it in London. As the London premiere of Lady Windermere’s Fan approached, Wilde told his mother that he was unsure whether to attend. She wrote to him to change his mind: ‘If you go away it will look as if you feared the result […] So do make up your mind to be present’. Tipper, K. S. A. (Ed.) (2011) Lady Jane Wilde’s Letters to Oscar Wilde, 1875–1895: A Critical Edition, The Edwin Mellen Press, 134–5 Wilde’s friend the artist Louse Jopling was there that night. Contrary to the popular opinion that Wilde had held a lit cigarette on stage as a deliberate insult (it was then considered impolite for men to smoke in the presence of women), Jopling was ‘convinced that it was sheer nervousness that made him hold it whilst he made his first speech to an audience’. Jopling, L. (1925) Twenty Years of My Life: 1867 to 1887, John Lane, 81
Vera may have flopped, but it had flopped a long way from home. Wilde’s London friends had not witnessed the fiasco. Possibly he was nervous that Lady Windermere’s Fan would suffer the same fate, and the prospect of the failure occurring on French soil rather than English was marginally less terrifying.
Fortunately for Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan was an immense hit. It inaugurated a three-year run of success that culminated with Wilde’s most enduring play, The Importance of Being Earnest.
Lady Windermere’s Fan would be produced at the Nouveau Théâtre, Paris, in an adaptation by G. Bertal in 1896, in a double bill with Salomé, during Wilde’s incarceration at Reading Prison.Paull, M. Performance timeline of the European reception of Oscar Wilde, in Evangelista, S. (Ed.) (2010) The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe, Continuum, lxxvii–cv, lxxviii
I thank Wolfgang Maier-Sigrist for informing me of the Bergé sale.