''The Green Carnation'' is a novel by
Robert Hichens that was first published anonymously in 1894. A satire on contemporary champions of the
Aesthetic Movement
Aestheticism (also the Aesthetic movement) was an art movement in the late 19th century which privileged the aesthetic value of literature, music and the arts over their socio-political functions. According to Aestheticism, art should be prod ...
, it was withdrawn briefly after the scandal of the
Oscar Wilde trial in the following year. Later printings followed and it has remained popular for its depiction of the witty personalities of the time.
Background
Robert Hichens, a writer on the fringes of the circle about Oscar Wilde, published ''The Green Carnation'' with
Heinemann Heinemann may refer to:
* Heinemann (surname)
* Heinemann (publisher), a publishing company
* Heinemann Park, a.k.a. Pelican Stadium in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
See also
* Heineman
* Jamie Hyneman
James Franklin Hyneman (born Se ...
in 1894 in the UK and with
D. Appleton & Company in the US. First editions were published anonymously on the advice of
the English publisher in order to arouse greater interest, although his authorship was acknowledged later. According to the introduction that Hichens wrote for the Unicorn Press reprint in 1949, the book had been withdrawn from publication following the scandal of the
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
trial in 1895. However, a Heinemann edition of 1901 lists an 1896 reissue following the first four editions of 1894-5 and claims 12,000 copies as having been printed in all.
The novel is a
Roman à clef
''Roman à clef'' (, anglicised as ), French for ''novel with a key'', is a novel about real-life events that is overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship ...
and a gentle parody of aestheticism whose main characters, Esmé Amarinth and Lord Reginald Hastings, are based upon Oscar Wilde and his disciple,
Lord Alfred Douglas
Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (22 October 1870 – 20 March 1945), also known as Bosie Douglas, was an English poet and journalist, and a lover of Oscar Wilde. At Oxford he edited an undergraduate journal, ''The Spirit Lamp'', that carried a homoer ...
. It has also been suggested that their hostess, Mrs Windsor, portrays Wilde's faithful friend,
Ada Leverson
Ada Esther Leverson (née Beddington; 10 October 1862 – 30 August 1933) was a British writer who is known for her friendship with Oscar Wilde and for her work as a witty novelist of the fin-de-siècle.
Family
Leverson was born into a Jewish ...
. For most of the time they converse "brilliantly" in the Wildean manner, championing artifice over Nature and defying middle-class orthodoxy in the name of artistic individuality.
Wilde had at first been amused by ''The Green Carnation'' and had written to Ada Leverson that "I did not think
ichenscapable of anything so clever". But when the review of the book in the ''
Pall Mall Gazette
''The Pall Mall Gazette'' was an evening newspaper founded in London on 7 February 1865 by George Murray Smith; its first editor was Frederick Greenwood. In 1921, '' The Globe'' merged into ''The Pall Mall Gazette'', which itself was absorbed int ...
'' suggested that Wilde himself could be the author, on the grounds that "A man may certainly burlesque himself if he like; in fact, it would be a clever thing to do", he immediately denied the fact: "I invented that magnificent flower. But with the middle-class and mediocre book that usurps its strangely beautiful name I have, I need hardly say, nothing whatsoever to do. The flower is a work of art. The book is not."
There are conflicting accounts of how the flower came to be associated with Wilde. Dyed flowers had already been in existence in England for a decade before he adopted it, and green carnations went on to be worn in the US by the Irish to celebrate
St Patrick's Day
Saint Patrick's Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick ( ga, Lá Fhéile Pádraig, lit=the Day of the Festival of Patrick), is a cultural and religious celebration held on 17 March, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick (), the foremost patr ...
. It is believed that Wilde and some of his supporters wore the flower to the first night of his play ''
Lady Windermere's Fan
''Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman'' is a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first performed on Saturday, 20 February 1892, at the St James's Theatre in London.
The story concerns Lady Windermere, who suspects that her husband i ...
'' in 1892, most probably to gain attention – a gesture similar to the decision to omit the author's name from Hichens's subsequent novel. The story that it was to identify wearers as homosexual is an unsubstantiated later invention.
Plot
In the opening scene, Lord Reggie Hastings slips a green carnation into his evening coat before attending a dinner party at Mrs Windsor's house in
Belgrave Square
Belgrave Square is a large 19th-century garden square in London. It is the centrepiece of Belgravia, and its architecture resembles the original scheme of property contractor Thomas Cubitt who engaged George Basevi for all of the terraces for t ...
. He converses there with Esmé Amarinth, a married playwright; and Lady Locke (cousin to Mrs Windsor), a young widow who has only recently returned to England after a ten-year absence.
Some days later, Lord Reggie, Mr Amarinth and Lady Locke (together with her nine-year-old son Tommy), are guests at Mrs. Windsor's countryside cottage near
Dorking
Dorking () is a market town in Surrey in South East England, about south of London. It is in Mole Valley District and the council headquarters are to the east of the centre. The High Street runs roughly east–west, parallel to the Pipp Br ...
. An additional guest is the mysterious Madame Valtesi whose one good action, she claims, was to marry the only man not in love with her when young. Lady Locke is initially attracted by Lord Reggie, but becomes increasingly disturbed by his wearing of the green carnation and what it symbolises about his flippant attitude to life. Lord Reggie tells her that Esmé invented the flower, and that it is only worn by a few people who are followers of "the higher philosophy".
During their stay in the village of Chenecote, Lord Reggie composes an anthem on a passage from the
Song of Songs. Together with Mr Amarinth, he flatters the
High church
The term ''high church'' refers to beliefs and practices of Christian ecclesiology, liturgy, and theology that emphasize formality and resistance to modernisation. Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term originate ...
curate Mr Smith into allowing him to coach the village choir in singing it at Sunday service and directing them from the church's organ. At the village fete on Monday, held in Mrs Windsor's garden, Mr Amarinth assembles the local schoolchildren and addresses them incomprehensibly in a lecture on "The art of folly", to the outrage of their
National school teachers.
Though Lord Reggie has no inclination to marry, he has been advised by Mr Amarinth that the good natured and wealthy Lady Locke would make him a useful wife. She is fond of him, yet has realised by now how under the influence of Mr Amarinth Lord Reggie remains, as well as the incompatibility between him and herself and the destabilising influence Reggie is on the hero-worshipping Tommy. At the end of the novel, therefore, she firmly rejects his proposal, telling Lord Reggie that, as well as knowing it would only be a marriage of convenience to him, she could never accept a man whose whole behaviour and conversation is only an imitative pose.
Lady Locke then decides to take Tommy to the seaside, while Mr Amarinth and the disgruntled Lord Reggie cut short their week in the country and return together by train to London.
Reception
Reviews of the novel were generally appreciative of its style but had mixed feelings about its effect. For ''
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
'', "The book is a classic of its kind", and in the opinion of ''
The World
In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...
'', it is "brimful of good things, and exceedingly clever". ''
The Literary Worlds reviewer thought that "A more telling satire on 'modernity' and the ''decadent'' could not easily be written", but in the eyes of the ''
Glasgow Herald
''The Herald'' is a Scottish broadsheet newspaper founded in 1783. ''The Herald'' is the longest running national newspaper in the world and is the eighth oldest daily paper in the world. The title was simplified from ''The Glasgow Herald'' in ...
'' that might be a disadvantage: "This book is so terribly actual and up to date that in six months it will be old-fashioned."
Others take exception to the general tone of the discourse. It is, according to ''
The Academy'', "an affectation of life and literature, of an abnormality, a worship of abstract and 'scarlet sin'", while ''
The Saturday Review'' is humorously dismissive: "It was, no doubt, necessary to the author to have a stone wall (represented by Lady Locke) from which the football of his epigrams would rebound with renewed agility; otherwise Lady Locke would have left the gathering of wits by the next train."
Allusions and adaptations
A poem titled "Morbidezza" in the October 1894 number of ''
Punch
Punch commonly refers to:
* Punch (combat), a strike made using the hand closed into a fist
* Punch (drink), a wide assortment of drinks, non-alcoholic or alcoholic, generally containing fruit or fruit juice
Punch may also refer to:
Places
* Pun ...
'' saw in the novel's device more artificiality than perversion:
::Caught in Sham's sepulchral mesh
:::Art now raves of ''Green'' carnations.
A year later,
Marc-André Raffalovich
Marc-André Raffalovich (11 September 1864 – 14 February 1934) was a French poet and writer on homosexuality, best known today for his patronage of the arts and for his lifelong relationship with the English poet John Gray.
Early life
Raffal ...
, a sympathetic friend of homosexuals though not of Wilde, followed with his sonnet "The Green Carnation", finding in the novel a vulgarisation of homoerotic aestheticism:
::Never in his chaste or poisonous posies
::Can love allow this milliner’s creation,
::This shilling shocker, once a white carnation.
In the new century,
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and ...
wrote his operetta ''
Bitter Sweet'' (1929) as a parody of the dandy's life style and drives the 1890s allusion home with the song "We all wear a green carnation", performed by a quartet of artistic types. It was not until 2013, however, that Frank J. Morlock based a play on Hichens's novel.
Google Books
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References
External links
Project Gutenberg edition
Wilde's letter to the ''Pall Mall Gazette''
denying authorship of ''The Green Carnation''.
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Green Carnation, The
1894 British novels
British LGBT novels
English novels
British satirical novels
Cultural depictions of Oscar Wilde
Roman à clef novels
1890s LGBT novels
Works published anonymously
Novels by Robert Hichens