The source of Oscar Wilde’s pun on Ernest/Earnest
In an earlier article I attempted to show that in John Gambril Nicholson’s verse Of Boys’ Names (Wilde’s putative source of the Ernest/Earnest pun) there are other boys’ names with Wildean parallels.
Research now leads me to a further connection.
In a back issue of the publication The Book Collector (Summer, 1978), there is chapter about Nicholson’s 1892 Love in Earnest: Sonnets, Ballades, and Lyrics—i.e. the anthology that includes the verse in question.
The reason for interest in John Gambril Nicholson among bibliophiles in 1978 was that The Book Collector made some intriguing revelations about Nicholson’s own copy of the book which had just come to light in a Cambridge (UK) bookshop.
First, we learn there was a third issue of the only edition of Love in Earnest: the first being rare and the second being the known version (viewable in full here). But this third issue, possibly unique, was Nicholson’s own copy—a hybrid version of both previous issues.
Apart from textual changes and corrections, Nicholson’s copy was extensively annotated with manuscript notes include minutiae about the date, place and often the time of day of composition, together with other symbols and emendations. One of these annotations relates to the poem Of Boys’ Names which I examined in this article as it contains references to both of Wilde’s two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan. Intriguingly in a textual alteration, possibly in a hand other than Nicholson’s, the wording “Cyril is lordly” is replaced by the wording “Basil is kingly” This is another obviously Wildean name: that of Basil Hallward, the painter in Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray published a year earlier.
2) in Nicholson’s copy, tipped in1 to face the title page there is a photograph, taken in Llandudno, of Nicholson together with William Ernest Mather2—the mysterious “W.E.M.” to whom the poem Of Boys’ Names is dedicated. The existence of the photograph of the two in Nicholson’s personal copy reinforces Mather as the Ernest of the poem, and a source for the Earnest in Wilde’s play.3
Wordsmiths will no doubt recognize that “Basil is kingly” is a literal allusion: the word Basil in Greek (basileus) meaning royal. Accordingly, most of the other names in the poem (reprinted here) are etymologically chosen.
© John Cooper, 2015.
Footnotes:
- tipped in: in the book trade, a tipped-in page or, if it is an illustration, tipped-in plate or simply plate, is a page that is attached to, but not integral to, the binding of the book. ↩︎
- the photograph of Nicholson with Mather tipped into the book is reproduced in the issue of The Book Collector (p. 220) but is otherwise quite rare, e.g. no example has been found online. ↩︎
- In addition to the dedication “W.E.M.” in the printed edition, Nicholson makes frequent manuscript references, in his copy, not only to “W.E.M.”, but also to “E.S”, identified in another manuscript note as Ernest Stanley. Presumably he is the second Ernest that Nicholson references in his semi-autobiographical but innocuous novel “The Romance of a Choir-boy” (1916) in which he describes photographs of two boys called Ernest. ↩︎
Oscar Wilde Blog 
Ah, in the (Harvard) Gay&Lesbian Review there is much attention to “Oscar Wilde Tours” but they have told me it is not you! Do they get on your last nerve? Best wishes, Garland Oakland
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There is an organization called Oscar Wilde Tours that arranges gay-related tours of various world cities such as Dublin, London and Paris. I am not affiliated with them although I was consulted by the founder, Andrew Lear, in connection with their latest offering New York. Their tours are high-end, usually multi-day, and do not focus solely, and often not at all, on Oscar Wilde.
Not to be confused with my walking tour Oscar Wilde In New York which does focus solely on Wilde and is 2-3 hour guided walking tour in New York:
http://www.oscarwildeinnewyork.com
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