A Child's Wilde

`I never said I knew him," answered the Rocket. "I dare say that if I knew him I should not be his friend at all. It is a very dangerous thing to know one's friends."

It is vintage Oscar Wilde - the supercilious tone, the languid delivery, the devastating and immaculately-timed punchline. And it is this aspect of Oscar Wilde's children's stories which initially impresses the adult reader; the Wilde wit, sharp as ever, and certainly not watered down or simplified in any way for a young audience. The line quoted above is taken from The Remarkable Rocket, a story crammed with delightfully vicious attacks on the ludicrous social conventions of the royal palace in which the story opens. When a page makes what the King considers to be a clever remark concerning the young princess who has been chosen to marry the prince, the King orders his salary to be doubled. "As he received no salary at all this was not of much use to him," is the narrator's acerbic comment, "but it was considered a great honour and was duly published in the Court Gazette." There are, needless to say, plenty more broadsides where those came from, aimed at a wide variety of targets but always hitting the mark. "How well you talk!" said the Miller's Wife, pouring herself out a large glass of warm ale; "really I feel quite drowsy. It is just like being in church." (The De- voted Friend). "After the seven years were over he had said all that he had to say, for his conversation was limited . . . " (The Selfish Giant). "Ugh!" snarled the Wolf, as he limped through the brushwood with his tail between his legs, "this is perfectly monstrous weather. Why doesn't the Government look to it?" (The Star-Child).

The nine stories which we now generally refer to as "Oscar Wilde's children's stories", were, of course, written before there was such a genre as "children's literature". The first five - The Happy Prince, The Nightingale and the Rose, The Selfish Giant, The Devoted Friend and The Remarkable Rocket - were published as The Happy Prince in 1888, when Wilde's sons Cyril and Vyvyan were aged three and two respectively. The remaining four - The Young King, The Birthday of the Infanta, The Fisherman and his Soul and The Star- Child - were published three years later, in the same year that Wilde produced The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lady Windermere's Fan and Salome. In his introduction to my tattered and yellowing copy of Wilde's Complete Works, Vyvyan Holland comments that "The stories in The Happy Prince are really poems in prose more than fairy tales for children; and yet the remarkable thing is that they appeal equally to children and adults . . . " With regard to A House of Pomegranates, he says "This book completely puzzled the critics, who thought that the stories were meant for children and protested, quite rightly, that no child could understand them."

In a year when dozens of column inches have been devoted to the rediscovery of Wilde, with the release of the feature film Wilde, starring Stephen Fry, Thomas Kilroy's controversial play The Secret Life of Constance Wilde and at least one new biography, it seems odd - to say the least - that no one has attempted a reassessment of these extraordinary pieces of writing. It is undoubtedly true that the stories in A House of Pomegranates make tough going for all but the most determined reader-aloud; even so, their quasi-Biblical language and elaborately exotic locations make them endlessly fascinating, and there is much for a child to identify with in the twin images of the tough little Infanta, forced to celebrate her birthday without her father, who has been prostrate with grief since her mother's death, and the vulnerable, innocent Dwarf who is brought to entertain her and who dies himself when he stumbles on a mirror in the palace and is confronted by his own ugliness.

AS for the young king who is so upset by his discovery of his subjects' poverty, and the fisherman who drowns rather than abandon his beloved mermaid, it would be a hard heart indeed which would not be moved by their respective predicaments; and no child could fail to respond to the notion of abandonment in the forest, and the subsequent reunion with a set of lost but loving parents, which is so eloquently worked out in The Star-Child. The five stories in The Happy Prince, meanwhile, can be recommended without reservation - particularly the first three, of which The Selfish Giant is a flawless example of its kind, with its straightforward message of share-and-share-alike conveyed in short sentences and images of stark simplicity; winter versus spring, icy cold versus balmy sunshine. The Happy Prince - who, by a typical stroke of Wildean irony, is anything but - and The Nightingale and the Rose are starker still, though the almost unbearable sadness of the deaths of the two birds in the stories, shocking in the context of today's invariably sanitised children's literature, is balanced by the sharp satire of The Devoted Friend and The Remarkable Rocket. Moral points are made, but lightly; there is no preaching or talking down, just the sure hand of a master story-teller at work. It is probably too much to hope for; that one day Oscar Wilde might be remembered, not as the brilliant socialite or the pathetic victim of the Bosie debacle who has been celebrated this year, but as the author of these dazzling little miniatures. In the meantime - as long as laughter, and a large box of tissues, are not far away - they can be read and reread, by children of all ages, with infinite pleasure.

Illustrations from The Fairy Tales Of Oscar Wilde, illustrated by Michael Hague (Michael O'Mara Books Ltd, £14.99 in UK)