Oscar Wilde? A. H. Cooper-Prichard? Alvin Redman? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: The Irish playwright Oscar Wilde achieved his greatest fame in London. The historically fractured and deadly relationship between Ireland and England has led some intellectuals of the isles to adopt a skeptical attitude toward patriotic fervor. Intense emotions have been inspired by both patriotism and opposition to patriotism. The following remark has been attributed to Wilde:
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
I haven’t been able to find this saying in famous wit’s oeuvre. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: Oscar Wilde died in 1900. The earliest match located by QI appeared in the 1931 book “Conversations with Oscar Wilde” by A. H. Cooper-Prichard. Unfortunately, the conversations reported in this book were fabricated. This has produced considerable confusion because some readers assumed that the book was non-fiction when it was really fiction.
The book included the following invented dialogue between the author and Oscar Wilde. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
“How is it,” I once asked him, “that people who are not possessed of a single other virtue should come out at times as patriots?”
“Exaggerated patriotism,” he answered, “is the most insincere form of self-conceit.” And at another time he said, “Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.”
The fictional nature of Cooper-Prichard’s book was discussed in the January 1997 issue of the journal “The Wildean” which is published by “The Oscar Wilde Society”:2
The book is a tolerably amusing series of quite lengthy verbatim ‘conversations’ between Wilde, Walt Whitman, Whistler, William Morris, Lord Leighton and sundry persons with such names as Lady Flapdoodle, the Rev. Sandbagge, and the Hon. Cholmondeley Danglars.
How could anyone mistake this for a biographical work? In any case Cooper-Prichard signalled his intentions at the end of the first chapter by ‘quoting’ Wilde as saying ‘Imagination is the gift of describing as fact what has not really happened.’
QI believes that the quotation under examination was constructed by A. H. Cooper-Prichard, and it was not spoken or written by Oscar Wilde.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
Cooper-Prichard synthesized another dialogue depicting Oscar Wilde’s attitude toward patriotism, The setting was the early 1890s in a drawing-room in South Kensington, London:3
AN AUNT. Oh, come, let us be patriotic!
OSCAR WILDE. ‘Let us sing unto the Lord a new song!’ and let that song be that to-day the World has become altogether too wide for mere Patriotism, which, after all, now is only the virtue of small minds.
In 1952 “The Epigrams Of Oscar Wilde” edited by Alvin Redman was published. Oscar Wilde’s son, Vyvyan Holland, contributed the introduction. Redman included the remark with a note stating that it had been heard during a conversation:4
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. In Conversation.
In 1954 the statement achieved wider circulation when Redman’s collection was examined in “The Saturday Review”. Here were three items that the journal reprinted from Redman’s volume:5
I SOMETIMES think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated His ability.—”In Conversation.”
PATRIOTISM is the virtue of the vicious.—”In Conversation.”
HE HASN’T a single redeeming vice.—”In Conversation.”
In 1957 “The Book of Unusual Quotations” compiled by Rudolf Flesch included the remark:6
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
Oscar Wilde
In 1964 “The Windsor Star” of Ontario, Canada printed the saying while acknowledging another newspaper:7
Patriotism
[Peterborough Examiner]
The flag controversy brings to mind Oscar Wilde’s comment: “Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.”
In 1995 Davis Coakley published “Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Irish”, and he included the remark together with a citation pointing to the book by Cooper-Prichard:8
He shrank from fanatical patriotism, however, which he described privately as the ‘most insincere form of self-conceit’. On another occasion he spoke of patriotism as ‘a virtue of the vicious’. On the subject of Irish politics, as on other subjects, Wilde managed to adopt a number of positions, often apparently contradictory …
In conclusion, this quotation first appeared in the 1931 book “Conversations with Oscar Wilde” by A. H. Cooper-Prichard, but the book was fictional. Hence, there is no substantive evidence that Oscar Wilde crafted this statement. Instead, QI suggests crediting Cooper-Prichard. Oscar Wilde died in 1900, three decades before the book was published.
Image Notes: Assemblage of flags in a heart shape from GDJ at Pixabay. The image has been cropped to produce a rectangular shape, and the image has been resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Dave Kahn and Jim Cornelius whose discussion and inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Many thanks to researcher John Cooper who told QI that the book by Cooper-Prichard was fictional. Cooper also told QI about the note in “The Wildean”
Update History: On November 21, 2024 the format of the bibliographical notes was updated. Also, the citation for the note in “The Wildean” was added to the article which necessitated a partial rewrite of the article.
- 1931, Conversations with Oscar Wilde by A. H. Cooper-Prichard (Arthur Henry Cooper-Prichard), Chapter 1: My Introduction To Oscar Wilde, Quote Page 20, Philip Allan, London. (Verified with hardcopy) ↩︎
- 1997 January, The Wildean, Number 10, Section: Correspondence, Note Title: A. H. Cooper-Prichard’s ‘Conversations with Oscar Wilde’ Note Author: Peter Elliott, Start Page 74, Quote Page 75, Published by the Oscar Wilde Society. (JSTOR) link ↩︎
- 1931, Conversations with Oscar Wilde by A. H. Cooper-Prichard (Arthur Henry Cooper-Prichard), Chapter 5: Oscar Wilde at Afternoon Tea, Quote Page 99, Philip Allan, London. (Verified with hardcopy) ↩︎
- 1962 (First Printing 1952), The Epigrams Of Oscar Wilde, Edited by Alvin Redman, Chapter 16: Politics, Quote Page 135, Alvin Redman Limited, London, England. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1954 October 16, The Saturday Review, Oscarisms for Today (Quotations reprinted from “The Epigrams of Oscar Wilde” edited by Alvin Redman), Quote Page 23, Column 3, Saturday Review Associates, New York. (Unz) ↩︎
- 1957, The Book of Unusual Quotations, Compiled by Rudolf Flesch, Topic: Patriotism, Quote Page 205, Column 1, Harper & Brothers, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1964 July 11, The Windsor Star, Irish Abolish Rope: Except for Killing Police, Politicians by John Monahan, Quote Page 8, Column 5, Windsor, Ontario, Canada. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1995 (Copyright 1994), Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Irish by Davis Coakley, Chapter 13: A most recalcitrant patriot, Quote Page 195 and 196, Town House, Dublin, Ireland. (Verified with scans) ↩︎