ABSTRACT
Mr. Oscar Wilde has been good enough to explain, since the publication of his book that it was intended neither for the ‘British Child’ nor for the ‘British Public’, but for the cultured few who can appreciate its subtle charms. The same exiguous but admiring band will doubtless comprehend why a volume of allegories should be described as A House of Pomegranates, which we must confess is not apparent to our perverse and blunted intellect. It consists of four storeys (we mean stories), ‘The Young King’, ‘The Birthday of the Infanta’, ‘The Fisherman and his Soul’, and ‘The Star-Child’, each dedicated to a lady of Mr. Wilde’s acquaintance, and all characterized by the peculiar faults and virtues of his highly artificial style. The allegory, as we have had occasion to remark on former occasions, when discussing the work of Lady Dilke and Miss Olive Schreiner in this particular field, is one of the most difficult of literary forms. In Mr. Wilde’s House of Pomegranates there is too much straining after effect and too many wordy descriptions; but at the same time there is a good deal of forcible and poetic writing scattered through its pages, and its scenes have more colour and consistence than those which we criticized in ‘Dreams’ and ‘The Shrine of Love’. Mr. Wilde resembles the modern manager who crowds his stage with aesthetic upholstery and bric-à-brac until the characters have scarcely room to walk about. Take this inventory of the contents of a chamber in the young king’s palace, which reads for all the world like an extract from a catalogue at Christie’s:—
After some time he rose from his seat, and leaning against the carved penthouse of the chimney looked round at the dimly-lit room. The walls were hung with rich tapestries representing the Triumph of Beauty. A large press, inlaid with agate and lapis-lazuli, filled one corner, and facing the window stood a curiously wrought cabinet with lacquer panels of powdered and mosaiced gold, on which were placed some delicate goblets of Venetian glass and a cup of dark-veinedonyx. Pale poppies were broidered on the silk coverlet of the bed, as though they had fallen from the tired hands of Sleep, and tall reeds of fluted ivory bare up the velvet canopy, from which great tufts of ostrich plumes sprang, like white foam, to the pallid silver of the fretted ceiling. A laughing Narcissus in green bronze held a polished mirror above its head. On the table stood a flat bowl of amethyst.
