Chapter 7
section seven a house of palm granites by oscar wilde letter one speaker december fifth eighteen ninety one sir i have just purchased at a price that for any other english six-penny paper i would have considered exorbitant a copy of the speaker at one of the charming kiosks that decorate paris institutions by the way that i think we should at once introduce into london the kiosk is a delightful object and when illuminated at night from within as lovely as a fantastic chinese lantern especially when the transparent advertisements are from the clever pencil of m chret in london we have merely the ill-clad newsvender whose voice in spite of the admirable efforts of the royal college of music to make england a really musical nation is always out of tune and whose rags badly designed and badly worn merely emphasise a painful note of uncomely misery without conveying that impression of picturesqueness which is the only thing that makes the poverty of others at all bearable it is not however about the establishment of kiosks in london that i wish to write to you
though i am of opinion that it is a thing that the county council should at once take at hand the object of my letter is to correct a statement made in a paragraph of your interesting paper the writer of the paragraph in question states that the decorative designs that make lovely my book a house of pomegranates are by the hand of mr shannon while the delicate dreams that separate and herald each story are by mr ricketts the contrary is the case mr shannon is the drawer of the dreams and mr ricketts is the subtle and fantastic decorator indeed it is to mr ricketts that the entire decorative design of the book is due from the selection of the type and the placing of the ornamentation to the completely beautiful cover that encloses the whole the writer of the paragraph goes on to state that he does not like the cover this is no doubt to be regretted though it is not a matter of much importance
as there are only two people in the world whom it is absolutely necessary that the cover should please one is mr ricketts who designed it the other is myself whose book it binds we both admire it immensely the reason however that your critic gives for his failure to gain from the cover any impression of beauty seems to me to show a lack of artistic instinct on his part which i beg you will allow me to try to correct he complains that a portion of the design on the left hand side of the cover reminds him of an indian club with a housepeters brush on top of it while a portion of the design on the right hand side suggests to him the idea of a chimney-the-house a chimney-pot hat with a sponge in it now i do not for a moment dispute that these are the real impressions your critic received it is the spectator and the mind of the spectator as i pointed out in the preface to the picture of dorian gray that art really mirrors
what i want to indicate is this the artistic beauty of the cover of my book resides in the delicate tracing arabesques and massing of many coral red lines on a ground of white ivory the color effect culminating in certain high gilt notes and being made still more pleasurable by the overlapping band of moss-green cloth that holds the book together what the gilt notes suggest what imitative parallel may be found to them in that chaos that is termed nature is a matter of no importance they may suggest as they do sometimes to me peacocks and pomegranates and splashing fountains of gold water or as they do to your critic sponges and indian clubs and chimney-pot hats such suggestions and evocations have nothing whatsoever to do with the aesthetic quality and value of the design a thing in nature becomes much lovelier if it reminds us of a thing in art
but a thing in art gains no real beauty through reminding us of a thing in nature the primary aesthetic impression of a work of art borrows nothing from recognition or resemblance these belong to a later and less perfect stage of apprehension properly speaking they are no part of the real aesthetic impression at all and the constant preoccupation with subject matter that characterizes nearly all our english art criticism is what makes our art criticisms especially as regards literature so sterile so profitless so much beside the mark and of such curiously little account i remain sir your obedient servant oscar wilde boulevard des capucines paris letter number two paulmont gazette december eleventh eighteen ninety one to the editor of the paulmont gazette sir i have just had sent me from london a copy of the paulmont gazette containing a review of my book a house of pomegranates
the writer of this review makes a certain suggestion which i beg you will allow me to correct at once he starts by asking an extremely silly question and that is whether or not i have written this book for the purpose of giving pleasure to the british child having expressed grave doubts on this subject a subject a subject on which i cannot conceive any fairly educated person having any doubts at all he proceeds apparently quite seriously to make the extremely limited vocabulary at the disposal of the british child the standard by which the prose of an artist is to be judged now in building this house of pomegranates i had about as much intention of pleasing the british child as i had of pleasing the british public mamilius is as entirely delightful as caliban is entirely detestable but neither the standard of mamilius nor the standard of caliban is my standard no artist recognizes any standard of beauty but that which is suggested by his own temperament
the artist seeks to realize in a certain material his immaterial idea of beauty and thus to transform an idea into an ideal that is the way an artist makes things that is why an artist makes things the artist has no other object in making things does your reviewer imagine that mr shannon for instance whose delicate and lovely illustrations he confesses himself quite unable to see draws for the purpose of giving information to the blind i remain sir your obedient servant oscar wilde boulevard de capucine paris end of section seven
