0.1 Afterword  (Page 3/25)

Wilde duly entered into an agreement with Mathews and Lane in the Summer of 1892 for publication of The Sphinx with decorations by Charles Ricketts. The timing of the agreement is interesting in its own right: Salome and The Yellow Book —the two works on account of which publication of The Sphinx would eventually be delayed, and with which its fate would to some extent be associated upon publication—were not yeton the horizon, at least so far as Mathews and Lane were concerned. Salome had been written in French, and it remained untranslated into English when Wilde committed topublish The Sphinx . At some point in the fall of 1892, Wilde arranged for Salome to be published by the Librairie de L’Art Indépendent, in French, in Paris thefollowing February, paying all printing expenses himself. In November 1892, Wilde agreed verbally that Mathews and Lane could distribute this edition inBritain, in consequence of which their names were added to the title page and the print run increased. In a letter to John Lane dated Feb. 1893, Wildecomplained that he had still received no written agreement from Lane and “the fact of your name being on the title page was an act of pure courtesy andcompliment on my part” ( Complete Letters , 546). The Yellow Book was not conceiveduntil New Year’s Day 1894 (Mix, 68) according to its literary editor, although this date has been questioned by Stetz. See Mix, 66-72 and Stetz, The Yellow Book , 12-17. And in summer 1892 Wilde was, by some accounts, reeling from the actions of England’s LordChamberlain, who in June 1892 had refused to license the first stage production of Salome —with Sarah Bernhardt in the title role, and despite the fact that rehearsals for the production were welladvanced—on the grounds that the play contravened an ancient statute prohibiting the depiction on English stages of Biblical characters. Publicly at least, Wildewas promising to “leave England and settle in France…[unwilling] to call myselfa citizen of a country that shows such narrowness in its artistic judgement” (Mikhail, 1:188). But since Mathews and Lane had done an exemplary job ofpublishing the “Author’s Edition” of Wilde’s Poems, The 220 (230?) copies (Nelson, A Checklist , 35) of the Author’s Edition of Wilde’s Poems , priced at 15/-, sold out within days; and although Elkin Mathews’s contract with Wilde(Nelson The Early Nineties , 96) stipulated a twenty percent commission for the publisher, as well as precise limits for thecost of advertising, design, block-making and binding, it must have earned Wilde a reasonable profit. the first of Wilde’s works to be published “at the sign of the Bodley Head,” in late May of 1892, there is reason to speculatethat it was in large part the prospect of Mathews and Lane publishing his future books that kept Wilde from carrying out his threat to emigrate to Paris, wherehis involvement in the leading literary circles, especially with such writers as Mallarmé, Gide and Louÿs, was considerable.

According to the terms of his contract with Mathews and Lane, Wilde was to receive a ten percent royalty for the poem (Nelson, The Early Nineties , 96-97), though he complained to his publishers that “I did not contemplate assigning to you thecopyright of so important a poem for so small an honorarium,” and he accepted their terms only on condition “that no new edition is to be brought out withoutmy sanction: I mean no such thing as a popular or cheap edition is to be brought out: nor are you to be able to assign the right of publishing the poem to anyother firm” ( Complete Letters , 533-34). Wilde’s concern for the kind of book to be published, as well as his lack offaith in other publishers doing justice to his work, will be clear from these comments. But his agreement with Mathews and Lane is interesting for otherreasons as well: we can detect something of the importance Wilde attached to the poem, as well as the importance of poetry to his own conception of himself, inthe care with which Wilde changed “author” to “poet” throughout the contract, insisting to his publishers upon returning it that “the maker of a poem is a‘poet,’ not an ‘author’: ‘author’ is misleading” ( Complete Letters , 533). More significantly and unusually, the contract was a joint one, co-signed not only by Wilde and hispublishers but also by Charles Ricketts, the book’s designer; and at the same time as it specified the terms upon which Wilde was to receive an author’s (orpoet’s) royalty, it specified the exact terms upon which “the artist” would execute, submit, and be paid for his work. Thus it stipulates that “the artistwill…submit to the publishers for their approval ten designs for decorating, colouring, and fully illustrating the Poem, also specimens of paper and othermaterial and binding” (quoted Nelson, The Early Nineties , 96). At the same time it assigned to Ricketts an unusual degree of responsibility for overseeing the book’s printing and binding: “Theartist will execute and see to the reproduction of the designs…and prepare for and superintend through the press the said work, and will make arrangements forthe supply of all materials and labour for printing, issuing and binding the first and other editions thereof according to his own judgment but at theexpense of the publishers” (quoted Nelson, The Early Nineties , 96). No less than the resulting book itself, the publishing agreement for The Sphinx raises graphic design to the status of “art,” places the book’s designer on a footing parallelto its author (or “poet”), and above all treats art and poetry as interdependent entities, at least so far as commercial and legal considerations areconcerned.