Oscar Wilde and the Bunburys

Oscar Wilde and the Bunburys WILLIAM GREEN ONE OF THE MOST MEMORABLE non-appearing characters in drama (and in literature in general) is Bunbury, the imaginary invalid of The Importance of Being Earnest. Non-appearing though he may be, Bunbury was very real and important to Oscar Wilde. Constant repetition of Bunbury's name throughout the script helps emphasize his importance. In the opening scene alone, before the entrance of Lady Bracknell, the name is drilled into our ears seventeen times in its various grammatical forms. It functions as a leit-motif, seldom sounded singly, but in ringing clusters extending over several speakers and lines of dialogue at key points in each of the three acts. So strongly did this "convenient chimera" of a character press itself into his consciousness that Wilde even came to refer to the playas Bunbury.! And when, at the insistence of the actor-manager George Alexander , Wilde condensed the script for production from its original fouract text to the commonly known three-act version, Bunbury survived the changes. Other character names were altered- primarily Lady Brancaster to .Lady Bracknell and Algernon Montford to Moncrieff. Two minor characters were eliminated. Scene cutting took place. But the Bunbury allusions remained practically intact.2 Why call this mythic character Bunbury, especially since he does not function as a person, but as a concept? He does not even have a first name. Was Wilde deliberately inventing a new term to satirize the false value system of the Victorian society and cloaking that term in a 67 68 WILLIAM GREEN mellifluous, innocuous name? Was the choice an example of an artist selecting a name he instinctively knew was right? Or may there be other reasons behind the choice? Nothing in Wilde's writings provides a direct answer to these questions. But we do have evidence to establish that character names were more than identifying labels to Wilde. Some idea of what he looked for when choosing names comes from a passage in a letter he wrote to one Aubrey Richardson about 1889. Wilde observes, "What a pretty name you have! it [sic] is worthy of fiction. Would you mind if I wrote a book called The Story of Aubrey Richardson? I won't, but I should like to. There is music in long syllables, and a memory of romance, and a suggestion of wonder. Names fascinate me terribly."3 This last statement is reflected in an anecdote related by Coulson Kernahan, a writer who had known Wilde in the early days of Oscar's London career. While checking the proofs of The Picture of Dorian Grey for certain consistencies of grammar at Wilde's request, Kernahan -who was a reader for Ward Lock & Co. at the time of the book's publication-received a visit from Oscar. Wilde was concerned whether he had named a picture framer in the story Ashton. When Kernahan confirmed that he had, Wilde stated, "Ashton is a gentleman's name ... And I've given it-God forgive me- to a tradesman! It must be changed to Hubbard. Hubbard positively smells of the tradesman!"4 Wilde's fascination with names led him to utilize a variety of nomenclature techniques. These fall into four primary categories: place names, attributive names, the names of people of his own day, and purely fictitious names. All categories appear in The Importance of Being Earnest, and all bear examination before returning to the Bunbury question. Place names particularly appealed to him. Worthing, the seaside town where Wilde lived while writing The Importance of Being Earnest , furnished him with the inspiration for naming his male lead Jack Worthing. Lady Bracknell, the final appellation of that wonderful character, is named after Bracknell, the country residence of Lady Queensberry where Wilde had been a visitor. Frank Harris reports Wilde once told him that "Territorial names have always a cachet of distinction; they fall on the ear full toned with secular dignity. That's how I get all the names of my personages, Frank. I take up a map of the English counties, and there they are. Our English villages have often exquisitely beautiful names. Windermere, for instance, or Hunstanton ."5 (Although much of Harris's...