Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture - Ohio University Press & Swallow ...

him of their dealings with “M. Hope,” Millard finally conceded that all of the
manuscripts that had passed through the Dublin and London book dealers’
hands were fakes. As Vyvyan Holland observes, many of these documents, which
at first seduce a practiced eye, could never have come from Wilde’s pen because
his father did not write in the purple ink that covers many of their pages.₁⁰⁹ Yet
while one can see that Millard’s initial enthusiasm may have been the result of
a bibliographic fantasy that spun out of control, the forger could very well have
laid his hands on some genuine manuscripts. In other words, if we choose to
imagine that Dorian Hope was the reinvented persona of Arthur Cravan, then
we might be led to believe that this surrealist litterateur had sufficient contacts
in Paris, such as publisher Charles Carrington (who at one time had held rights
over the authorized edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray), to acquire some authentic
manuscripts upon which he could develop impressive forgeries. These
frauds, as Edwards suggests, are so good that they maintain “a place among the
immortals in the ranks of forgers” (Wilde Goose Chase, 14). Even to this day, forgeries
of similarly high quality come onto the market with sellers hoping—as
they were in the summer of 2007—to command prices as high as £200,000.₁₁⁰
Millard, however, was quick to spot another forgery, which appeared in
Hutchinson’s Magazine in 1921. This is the “Burmese masque” titled For Love of
the King, which he discovered came from the hand of “Mrs. Chan Toon,” who
purported to be the widow of a nephew to the Thai king. (This individual’s legal
name was Mabel Wodehouse Pearse; her second husband died in the war.) Among
the ludicrous claims made by the person who, in 1873, was born Mabel Cosgrove
were that the masque had been received in Burma as a Christmas play in 1894
and that she had at one time been engaged to Willie Wilde. Few reviewers could
believe that this appalling piece was by an author who in the 1920s commanded
considerable respect. Ever intent to press her case, in 1925 Wodehouse Pearse tried
to sell Millard six letters supposedly from Wilde to herself. No sooner had she
turned up at Millard’s home with her constant companion, the parrot Co-Co,
on her shoulder than he realized that everything about her was bogus. At this
point, Millard decided to launch a campaign against Methuen, who in 1922
issued an edition of the masque in a binding that complemented the 1908 Collected
Works. Millard’s letters appeared in the daily press, and he circulated a
provocative pamphlet and poster exposing the fraud.
The moment that Millard accused the publisher, with whom Ross worked so
closely, of “foisting” this book on the public, Lucas at Methuen responded with
34 Joseph Bristow