Chamblee54

“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.” The gem, blamed on Oscar Wide, turned up on a data mining site. A quick search indicates that the quote in genuine, and is found in The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (1889.) Searching for context in a Wilde story can yield more than you bargained for.
PMWH is a tacky short story, with an eyeroll-inducing ending. SPOILER ALERT: This ending will be discussed today. PMWH is the story of an unnamed correspondent (UC), who is having a conversation with Erkskine. The players are Englishmen of a certain class, who all seem to have servants. The conversation gets onto forgery in the arts. UC felt that “to censure an artist for a forgery was to confuse an ethical with an aesthetical problem.” To which Erkskine replied, ‘What would you say about a young man who had a strange theory about a certain work of art, believed in his theory, and committed a forgery in order to prove it?’
Erkskine’s friend was Cyril Graham. “He was very fascinating, and very foolish, and very heartless.” Cyril developed some theories about the identity of Mr. W.H. … “A person known only by his initials, to whom the first edition of William Shakespeare’s sonnets (1609) was dedicated”… “To the onlie begetter of, These insuing sonnets, Mr. W.H. all happinesse … ” Cyril thought that W.H. was Willie Hughes, an androgynous young man of great beauty. “He felt, as indeed I think we all must feel, that the Sonnets are addressed to an individual, – to a particular young man whose personality for some reason seems to have filled the soul of Shakespeare with terrible joy and no less terrible despair.”
Erkskine thought that these ideas were foolish, and said so to Cyril. Soon after, Cyril produced a painting, that he found under strange circumstances. Allegedly, it was a portrait of Willie Hughes. Erkskine thought this a bit odd, but played along … until he stumbled onto evidence that the painting was a forgery. “I went off at once to Cyril’s chambers, waited there for three hours before he came in, with that horrid lie staring me in the face, and told him I had discovered his forgery. He grew very pale and said – “I did it purely for your sake. You would not be convinced in any other way. It does not affect the truth of the theory.
“The truth of the theory!” I exclaimed; “the less we talk about that the better. You never even believed in it yourself. If you had, you would not have committed a forgery to prove it.” High words passed between us; we had a fearful quarrel. I daresay I was unjust. The next morning he was dead.'”
“… he shot himself with a revolver. … By the time I arrived – his servant lad sent for me at once – the police were already there. He had left a letter for me, evidently written in the greatest agitation and distress of mind. … he believed absolutely in Willie Hughes; that the forgery of the picture had been done simply as a concession to me, and did not in the slightest degree invalidate the truth of the theory; and that in order to show me how firm and flawless his faith in the whole thing was, he was going to offer his life as a sacrifice to the secret of the Sonnets. It was a foolish, mad letter. I remember he ended by saying that he entrusted to me the Willie Hughes theory, and that it was for me to present it to the world, and to unlock the secret of Shakespeare’s heart.’ “
UC is convinced that the Willie Hughes story is real. “Erskine looked at me in amazement. ‘You are carried away by the sentiment of the whole story,’ he said. ‘You forget that a thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. ” UC leaves, and tries to prove the Willie Hughes hypothesis to be true. This goes on for a while, until UC talks himself out of it. By this time, however, Erkskine has changed his mind, and is a Willie Hughes true believer. If this is getting complicated and confusing, you can read the story. Oscar’s prose is entertaining, if a bit archaic to the modern reader.
Erkskine is dismayed by UC’s lack of belief. He sent UC a letter. “The concluding words of the letter were these: ‘I still believe in Willie Hughes; and by the time you receive this, I shall have died by my own hand for Willie Hughes’s sake: for his sake, and for the sake of Cyril Graham, whom I drove to his death by my shallow skepticism and ignorant lack of faith. The truth was once revealed to you, and you rejected it. It comes to you now stained with the blood of two lives, – do not turn away from it.'”
“It was a horrible moment. I felt sick with misery. … To die for one’s theological beliefs is the worst use a man can make of his life, but to die for a literary theory! It seemed impossible.”
SPOILER ALERT: Fret not, gentle reader. When UC caught up with the Erkskine’s family, he heard a different story. “I turned to the doctor and said, ‘What a dreadful shock it must have been to Lady Erskine! I wonder that she bears it as well as she does.’ ‘Oh, she knew for months past that it was coming,’ … if a mother knows that her son is going to commit suicide’ … ‘Suicide! Poor Erskine did not commit suicide. He died of consumption. He came here to die. The moment I saw him I knew that there was no hope. … At that moment Lady Erskine entered the room with the fatal picture of Willie Hughes in her hand. ‘When George was dying he begged me to give you this,’ she said. As I took it from her, her tears fell on my hand.”

“It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.” The Portrait of Mr. W. H., by Oscar Wilde, has many zesty quotes not included above. The one about advice stands out. It is similar to well known Oscarism. “A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. ” The line about sincerity is found in The Critic as Artist. In this episode, Gilbert and Ernest are exchanging clever thoughts.
Gilbert: Ernest, you are quite delightful, but your views are terribly unsound. I am afraid that you have been listening to the conversation of some one older than yourself. That is always a dangerous thing to do, and if you allow it to degenerate into a habit you will find it absolutely fatal to any intellectual development. As for modern journalism, it is not my business to defend it. It justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest. …
Ernest: But what is the difference between literature and journalism?
Gilbert: Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read. … How appalling is that ignorance which is the inevitable result of the fatal habit of imparting opinions! …
Ernest: The true critic will be rational, at any rate, will he not?
Gilbert: There are two ways of disliking art. One is to dislike it. The other, to like it rationally. …
Ernest: Well, at least, the critic will be sincere.
Gilbert: A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Gilbert also says “Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.” This is a rather sexist counterpoint to that bumper sticker classic, “Well behaved women rarely make history.” The latter was penned by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, in a scholarly article. “1976 Spring, American Quarterly, Volume 28, Number 1, “Vertuous Women Found: New England Ministerial Literature, 1668-1735” by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Johns Hopkins University Press” The seminal quote said seldom, rather than rarely. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.

This is a repost from 2023. Jordan Peterson is coming to State Farm Arena for the We Who Wrestle With God Tour on March 15. … @jordanbpeterson “And the immature impulsive hedonism continue, unabated: possession by basic biological drive elevated into object of unconscious worship. The worst of an emergent polytheistic paganism. With all the requisite pseudo-intellectual jargon.” @trogmignon I can think of few people less qualified to speak on this matter than JBP.”
Dr. Peterson has a way with words. The author of the seminal piece, @MichelleLhooq, replied “The worst of an emergent polytheistic paganism” is definitely the most based epithet anyone has ever blessed me with, and for that I will be forever grateful to fellow pseudo-intellectual JP.”
We need to talk about chemsex is the feature at the amphetaminated heart of this kerfluffle. Before pasting purple party prose, a note on usage is in order. I have long been aware of gay men using drugs to speed up the process. The phrase I always hear is pnp, or party and play. (When you see pnp in a profile, you can assume two things. They take drugs, and you are buying.) In none of these profiles do you see “chemsex.” Maybe chemsex is an LA thing.
The article that triggered Dr. Benzos was not your traditional pearl-clutching. The author, Michelle Lhooq (Pronounced Michelle Luke) is the author of the RaveNewWorld.Substack and Weed: Everything You Want to Know But Are Always Too Stoned to Ask. Lady Lhooq was up to the task, and had receipts. One especially lurid link was “Critical chemsex studies: Interrogating cultures of sexualized drug use beyond risk paradigm.”
“What was remarkable was the diversity of not just age, gender, and racial identities in the room, but the breadth of psychoactive experiences across the sober-using spectrum — from former heroin junkies to professionals who’ve never touched a drug, devout AA members to party-loving recreational ravers, underground psychedelic healers to sober-curious skaters. …
“AA’s dogma of total drug abstinence does not appeal to everybody, and many are hungry for alternatives. New groups such as The Infernal Grove now cater to those seeking more sustainable relationships to substance use beyond the established orthodoxy of traditional sobriety paradigms. Despite the necessity of these alternative paths, I had been afraid that the chemsex discussion would be seen as problematic or triggering. Conversations about drugs usually play out as a moral drama of extremes: the anti-drug abstinence of AA vs the drug-positive enthusiasm of recreational settings. It is still so rare to enter a thought space where sobriety is discussed as more of a spectrum, where the ambiguous zones of druggie disinhibition can be untangled by people from all over the drug-sober continuum. It felt like the future.”
“The movement to destigmatise chemsex is … still in its infancy. As a woman, I am also not the traditional demographic that is typically “allowed” to even discuss this concept … In fact, Stuart has accused folks who use this term but do not identify as gay men of cultural appropriation … It could also help us to understand how this practice reflects the historical and social contexts from which they emerge — including the pharmaceuticalisation of sexuality, contemporary culture of endless self-enhancement, and crisis of intimacy under neoliberal individualism.”
“THE WORST OF AN EMERGENT POLYTHEISTIC PAGANISM” “How my essay on druggy orgies triggered Jordan Peterson/FOX News’ latest satanic spiral.” After @jordanbpeterson scored a few FOX points, Lady Lhooq published a reply at her Substack, RaveNewWorld. “When an editor from UnHerd reached out to me in December asking if I could turn my latest RaveNewWorld post on chemsex into an essay for their site, my main concern was whether I’d be able to squeeze the assignment in between building a pussy portal for my shroom rave.”
“The reply-guys seemed to fall into three camps: people who think chemsex should stay stigmatized (white Christians and dudes with lots of numbers in their usernames); people who couldn’t believe that “drug journalist” was a real beat (mostly meme shitposters); and homophobic monkeypox truthers slinging incel slurs about my fuckability (my personal fave). … That this assignment for an outlet that claims to be post-partisan turned out to be the ultimate trigger for satanic-slaying conservative cucks was the ultimate irony.”
michellelhooq “SO MUSH LOVE 2 MY 2 SURROGATE MOMS Ophelia and Teresa for building @enter.the.mushwomb’s beautiful pussy portal!!! Incredible to have two mothers with Hollywood film backgrounds working on this together; I just told them “I don’t want this to be a perfect porn pussy and I DEFINITELY want it to be hairy” and they took it from there – even adding a magical clit (now you really have no excuse not to find it 😂) Plus, since these are moms who always think about safety, they also made sure the portal didn’t block the exit in case there was an emergency. T+O YALL ARE MY SOUL MODELS TYSM FOR THIS PERFECT PUSSY!!!”
The pictures today are from The Library of Congress. These details are from picture #06666, documenting “First Internation[al] Pageant of Pulchritude & Seventh Annual Bathing Girl Review at Galveston, Texas.” It was taken in 1926.