Oscar Wilde’s Stories for All Ages. Stephen Fry
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many-rayed monstrance shone a marvellous and mystical light. He stood there
‘He stood there in the raiment of a king, and the gates of the jewelled shrine flew open, and from the crystal of the many-rayed monstrance shone a marvellous and mystical light.’
in a king’s raiment, and the Glory of God filled the place, and the saints in their carven niches seemed to move. In the fair raiment of a king he stood before them, and the organ pealed out its music, and the trumpeters blew upon their trumpets, and the singing boys sang.
And the people fell upon their knees in awe, and the nobles sheathed their swords and did homage, and the Bishop’s face grew pale, and his hands trembled. ‘A greater than I hath crowned thee,’ he cried, and he knelt before him.
And the young King came down from the high altar, and passed home through the midst of the people. But no man dared look upon his face, for it was like the face of an angel.
I have a great affection for The Selfish Giant. Scenes of Oscar reading it to his sons Cyril and Vyvyan served as a kind of running thread through the narrative frame of the film Wilde, in which I had the impossible pleasure and imponderable honour of playing Oscar.
As with Wilde’s stories The Happy Prince and The Young King, we can discern a religious element in the conclusion to The Selfish Giant; in this case we are treated to the specific revelation that the sobbing boy the giant had handed up into the tree is in fact the Christ Child. Wilde’s famous lines from The Ballad of Reading Gaol—‘each man kills the thing he loves’—are recalled when the child says of his scars, his stigmata, ‘Nay…but these are the wounds of Love.’
Wilde’s obsessions often shuttled between suffering and joy, pain and pleasure, love and death, each seeming to be necessary for the other. In his letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, De Profundis, written in prison, he lays out a theory of suffering and a theory of Christ the Artist both of which repay careful reading, but it is in this sweet and lovely story that those ideas come together most naturally and easily.
Wilde himself could be thought of as a Selfish Giant, of course. He was a very large man in frame—well over six foot in height and surprisingly broad and strong for one whose reputation was that of a velvet-clad dandy whose greatest professed ambition was to be able to live up to his collection of blue and white china. He was a giant in intellect and a giant of his age in talent, fame and brilliance. Did he guiltily feel that his ‘garden’ was barren, that his neglect of his wife and children was not unlike that of the giant in his story? A religious person might note Wilde’s own deathbed conversion to Roman Catholicism and draw strong parallels between this story and Wilde’s life. Happily the story is strong enough to stand without any such knowledge or belief, but there it is for you to consider just the same.
EVERY AFTERNOON, as they were coming from school, the children used to go and play in the Giant’s garden.
It was a large lovely garden, with soft green grass. Here and there over the grass stood beautiful flowers like stars, and there were twelve peach-trees that in the spring-time broke out into delicate blossoms of pink and pearl, and in the autumn bore rich fruit. The birds sat on the trees and sang so sweetly that the children used to stop their games in order to listen to them. ‘How happy we are here!’ they cried to each other.
One day the Giant came back. He had been to visit his friend the Cornish ogre, and had stayed with him for seven years. After the seven years were over he had said all that he had to say, for his conversation was limited, and he determined to return to his own castle. When he arrived he saw the children playing in the garden.
‘What are you doing here?’ he cried in a very gruff voice, and the children ran away.
‘It was a large lovely garden, with soft green grass. Here and there over the grass stood beautiful flowers like stars, and there were twelve peach-trees that in the spring-time broke out into delicate blossoms of pink and pearl, and in the autumn bore rich fruit.’
‘My own garden is my own garden,’ said the Giant; ‘any one can understand that, and I will allow nobody to play in it but myself.’ So he built a high wall all round it, and put up a notice-board.
TRESPASSERS
WILL BE
PROSECUTED
He was a very selfish Giant.
The poor children had now nowhere to play. They tried to play on the road, but the road was very dusty and full of hard stones, and they did not like it. They used to wander round the high wall when their lessons were over, and talk about the beautiful garden inside. ‘How happy we were there,’ they said to each other.
Then the Spring came, and all over the country there were little blossoms and little birds. Only in the garden of the Selfish Giant it was still winter. The birds did not care to sing in it as there were no children, and the trees forgot to blossom. Once a beautiful flower put its head out from the grass, but when it saw the notice-board it was so sorry for the children that it slipped back into the ground again, and went off to sleep. The only people who were pleased were the Snow and the Frost. ‘Spring has forgotten this garden,’ they cried, ‘so we will live here all the year round.’ The Snow covered up the grass with her great white cloak, and the Frost painted all the trees silver. Then they invited the North Wind to stay with them, and he came. He was wrapped in furs, and he roared all day about the garden, and blew the chimney-pots down. ‘This is a delightful spot,’ he said, ‘we must ask the Hail on a visit.’ So the Hail came. Every day for three hours he rattled on the roof of the castle till he broke most of the slates, and then he ran round and round the garden as fast as he could go. He was dressed in grey, and his breath was like ice.
‘I cannot understand why the Spring is so late in coming,’ said the Selfish Giant, as he sat at the window and looked out at his cold white garden; ‘I hope there will be a change in the weather.’
But the Spring never came, nor the Summer. The Autumn gave golden fruit to every garden, but to the Giant’s garden she gave none. ‘He is too selfish,’ she said. So it was always Winter there, and the North Wind, and the Hail, and the Frost, and the Snow danced about through the trees.
One morning the Giant was lying awake in bed when he heard some lovely music. It sounded so sweet to his ears that he thought it must be the King’s musicians passing by. It was really only a little linnet singing outside his window, but it was so long since he had heard a bird sing in his garden that it seemed to him to be the most beautiful music in the world. Then the Hail stopped dancing over his head, and the North Wind ceased roaring, and a delicious perfume came to him through the open casement. ‘I believe the Spring has come at last,’ said the Giant; and he jumped out of bed and looked out.
What did he see?
He saw a most wonderful sight. Through a little hole in the wall the children had crept in, and they were sitting in the branches of the trees. In every tree that he could see there was a little child. And the trees were so glad to have the children back again that they had covered themselves with blossoms, and were waving their arms gently above the children’s heads. The birds were flying about and twittering with delight, and the flowers were looking up through the green grass and laughing. It was a lovely scene, only in