 8. Oscar's growth to originality about 1890. The period of growth of any organism is the most interesting and most instructive, and there is no moment of growth in the individual life which can be compared in importance with the moment when a man begins to out-top his age, and to suggest the future evolution of humanity by his own genius. Eventually this final stage is passed in solitude. Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, sich ein Charakter in dem Stromer der Welt. After writing a life of Schiller, which almost anyone might have written, Carlisle retired for some years to Kregen-Pattach, and then brought forth Satorisatus, which was personal and soul-revealing to the verge of eccentricity. In the same way Wagner was a mere continuator of Weber in Lohengrin and Tannhäuser, and first came to his own in the Meisterseger and Tristan, after years of meditation in Switzerland. This period for Oscar Wilde began with his marriage. The freedom from sordid anxieties allowed him to lift up his head and be himself. Kepler, I think it is, who praises poverty as the foster-mother of genius. But Bernard Pallici was nearer the truth when he said, pauvreté empêche bons esprits de parvenir. Poverty hinders fine minds from succeeding. There is no such mortal enemy of genius as poverty except riches. A touch of the spur from time to time does good, but a constant rowling disables. As editor of the Woman's World Oscar had some money of his own to spend. Though his salary was only some six pounds a week, it made him independent, and his editorial work gave him an excuse for not exhausting himself by writing. For some years after marriage, in fact till he lost his editorship, he wrote little and talk to great deal. During this period we were often together. He lunched with me once or twice a week, and I began to know his method of work. Everything came to him in the excitement of talk, epigrams, paradoxes and stories, and when people of great position or title were about him, he generally managed to surpass himself. All social distinctions appealed to him intensely. I chaffed him about this one day, and he admitted the snobbishness gaily. I love even historic names, Frank, as Shakespeare did. Surely everyone prefers Norfolk, Hamilton and Buckingham to Jones or Smith or Robinson. As soon as he lost his editorship, he took to writing for the reviews. His articles were merely the resume of his monologues. After talking for months at this and that lunch and dinner, he had amassed a store of epigrams and humorous paradoxes which he could embody in a paper for the fortnightly review of the nineteenth century. These papers made it manifest that Wilde had at length, as Heiner phrased it, reached the topmost height of the culture of his time, and was now able to say new and interesting things. His leer-yara, or student-time, may be said to have ended with his editorship. The articles which he wrote on the decay of lying, the critic as artist, and pen, pencil and poison, in fact all the papers which in 1891 were gathered together and published in book form under the title of Intentions, had about them the stamp of originality. They achieved a noteworthy success with the best minds, and laid the foundation of his fame. Every paper contained here and there a happy phrase, or epigram, or flirt of humor which made it memorable to the lover of letters. They were all, however, conceived and written from the standpoint of the artist, and the artist alone, who never takes account of ethics but uses right and wrong indifferently as the colours of his palette. The decay of lying seemed to the ordinary matter of fact Englishmen a cynical plea in defence of mendacity. To the majority of readers pen, pencil and poison was hardly more than a shameful attempt to condone cold-blooded murder. The very articles which grounded his fame as a writer helped to injure his standing and repute. In 1889 he published a paper which did him even more damage by appearing to justify the peculiar rumours about his private life. He held the opinion, which was universal at that time, that Shakespeare had been abnormally vicious. He believed, with the majority of critics, that Lord William Herbert was addressed in the first series of sonnets. But his fine sensibility, or if you will, his peculiar temperament, led him to question whether Thorpe's dedication to Mr. W. H. could have been addressed to Lord William Herbert. He preferred the old hypothesis that the dedication was addressed to a young actor named Mr. William Hughes, a supposition which is supported by a well-known sonnet. He set forth this idea with much circumstance and considerable ingenuity in an article which he sent to me for publication in the Fort Knightly Review. The theme was scabrous, but his treatment of it was scrupulously reserved and adroit, and I saw no offence in the paper, and to tell the truth, no great ability in his handling of the subject. He had talked over the article with me while he was writing it, and I told him that I thought the whole theory completely mistaken. Shakespeare was as sensual as one could well be, but there was no evidence of abnormal vice. Indeed, all the evidence seemed to me to be against this universal belief. The assumption that the dedication was addressed to Lord William Herbert I had found difficult to accept at first. The wording of it is not only ambiguous, but familiar. If I assumed that Mr. W. H. was meant for Lord William Herbert, it was only because that seemed the easiest way out of the maze. In fine I pointed out to Oscar that his theory had very little that was new in it, and more that was untrue, and advised him not to publish the paper. My conviction that Shakespeare was not abnormally vicious, and that the first series of sonnets proved snobbishness and toad-ying, and not corrupt passion, seemed to Oscar the very madness of partisanship. He smiled away my arguments, and sent his paper to the fortnightly office when I happened to be abroad. Much to my chagrin, my assistant rejected it rudely, whereupon Oscar sent it to Blackwoods, who published it in their magazine. It set everyone talking and arguing. To judge by the discussion it created, the wind of hatred and of praise it caused, one would have thought that the paper was a masterpiece, though in truth it was nothing out of the common. Had it been written by anybody else it would have passed unnoticed. But already Oscar Wilde had a prodigious notoriety, and all his sayings and doings were eagerly canvassed from one end of society to the other. The portrait of Mr. W. H. did Oscar incalculable injury. It gave his enemies for the first time the very weapon they wanted, and they used it unscrupulously, and untiringly, with the fierce delight of hatred. Oscar seemed to revel in the storm of conflicting opinions which the paper called forth. He understood better than most men that notoriety is often the forerunner of fame, and is always commercially more valuable. He rubbed his hands with delight as the discussion grew bitter, and enjoyed even the sneering of the envious. A wind that blows out a little fire he knew plays bellows to a big one. So long as people talked about him he didn't much care what they said, and they certainly talked interminably about everything he wrote. The inordinate popular success increased his self-confidence, and with time his assurance took on a touch of defiance. The first startling sign of this gradual change was the publication in Lippincott's magazine of the picture of Dorian Gray. It was attacked immediately in the Daily Chronicle, a liberal paper usually distinguished for a certain leaning in favour of artists and men of letters, as a tale spawned from the leperous literature of the French Décadent, a poisonous book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with the mephitic odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction. Oscar, as a matter of course, replied, and the tone of his reply is characteristic of his growth in self-assurance. He no longer dreads the imputation of viciousness, he challenges it. It is poisonous, if you like, but you cannot deny that it is also perfect, and perfect production is what we artists aim at. When Oscar republished the picture of Dorian Gray in book form in April 1891, he sent me a large paper copy, and with the copy he wrote a little note, asking me to tell him what I thought of the book. I got the volume and note early one morning, and read the book until noon. I then sent him a note by hand. Other men, I wrote, have given us wine, some claret, some burgundy, some mozelle. You are the first to give us pure champagne. Much of this book is wittier even than congrieve, and on an equal intellectual level, at length it seems to me you have justified yourself. Seven hours later I was told that Oscar Wilde had called. I went down immediately to see him. He was bubbling over with content. How charming of you, Frank! he cried, to have written me such a divine letter. I have only read a hundred pages of the book, I said, but they are delightful. No one now can deny you a place among the wittiest and most humorous writers in English. How wonderful of you, Frank! What do you like so much? Like all artists he loved praise, and I was enthusiastic, happy to have the opportunity of making up for some earlier doubting that now seemed unworthy. Whatever the envious may say, you are with Burke and Sheridan among the very ablest Irishmen. Of course I have heard most of the epigrams from you before, but you have put them even better in this book. Do you think so really? he asked, smiling with pleasure. It is worth notice that some of the epigrams in Dorian Gray were bettered again before they appeared in his first play. For example, in Dorian Gray, Lord Henry Wotten, who is peculiarly Oscar's mouthpiece, while telling how he had to bargain for a piece of old brocade in Wardall Street, adds, Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. In Lady Windermere's fan the same epigram is perfected. The cynic is one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Many all the literary productions of our time suffer from haste. One must produce a good deal, especially while one's reputation is in the making in order to live by one's pen. Yet great works take time to form, and fine creations are often disfigured by the stains of hurried parturition. The wild contrived to minimise this disability by talking his works before writing them. The conversation of Lord Henry Wotten with his uncle, and again at lunch, when he wishes to fascinate Dorian Gray, is an excellent reproduction of Oscar's ordinary talk. The uncle wonders why Lord Dartmoor wants to marry an American, and grumbles about her people. Has she got any? Lord Henry shook his head. American girls are as clever at concealing their parents as English women are at concealing their past, he said, rising to go. They are pork-packers, I suppose. I hope so, Uncle George, for Dartmoor's sake. I am told that pork-packing is the most lucrative profession in America after politics. All this seems to me delightful humour. The latter part of the book, however, tails off into insignificance. The first hundred pages held the result of months and months of Oscar's talk. The latter half was written offhand to complete the story. Dorian Gray was the first piece of work which proved that Oscar Wilde had at length found his true vein. A little study of it discovers both his strength and his weakness as a writer. The initial idea of the book is excellent, finer because deeper than the commonplace idea that is the foundation of Balzac's Port de Chagrin, though it would probably never have been written if Balzac had not written his book first. But Balzac's sincerity and earnestness grapple with the theme and ring a blessing out of it, whereas the subtler idea in Oscar's hands dwindles gradually away till one wonders if the book would not have been more effective as a short story. Oscar did not know life well enough or care enough for character to write a profound psychological study. He was at his best in a short story or play. One day about this time Oscar first showed me the aphorisms he had written as an introduction to Dorian Gray. Several of them I thought excellent, but I found that Oscar had often repeated himself. I cut these repetitions out and tried to show him how much better the dozen best were than eighteen of which six were inferior. I added that I should like to publish the best in the fortnightly. He thanked me and said it was very kind of me. Next morning I got a letter from him telling me that he had read over my corrections and thought that the aphorisms I had rejected were the best, but he hoped I'd publish them as he had written them. Finally I replied that the final judgment must rest with him, and I published them at once. The delight I felt in his undoubted genius and success was not shared by others. Friends took occasion to tell me that I should not go about with Oscar Wilde. Why not? I asked. He has a bad name, was the reply. Strange things are said about him. He came down from Oxford with a vile reputation. You have only got to look at the man. Whatever the disease may be, I replied, it's not catching, unfortunately. The pleasure men take in denigration of the gifted is one of the puzzles of life to those who are not envious. Men of letters, even people who ought to have known better, were slow to admit his extraordinary talent. He had risen so quickly, had been puffed into such prominence, that they felt inclined to deny him even the gifts which he undoubtedly possessed. I was surprised once to find a friend of mine taking this attitude. Francis Adams, the poet and writer, chaffed me one day about my liking for Oscar. What on earth can you see in him to admire, he asked? He is not a great writer. He is not even a good writer. His books have no genius in them. His poetry is tenth rate, and his prose is not much better. His talk even is fictitious and extravagant. I could only laugh at him and advise him to read the picture of Dorian Gray. This book, however, gave Oscars puritanic enemies a better weapon against him than even the portrait of Mr. W. H. The subject, they declared, was the same as that of Mr. W. H., and the treatment was simply loathsome. More than one middle-class paper such as today in the hands of Mr. Jerome K. Jerome condemned the book as corrupt and advised its suppression. Freedom of speech in England is more fear than license of action. A speck on the outside of the platter disgusts your puritan, and the inside is never peeped at, much less disgust. Walter Pater praised Dorian Gray in the bookman, but thereby only did himself damage without helping his friend. Oscar, meanwhile, went about boldly, meeting criticism now with smiling contempt. One incident from this time will show how unfairly he was being judged, and how imprudent he was to front defamation with defiance. One day I met a handsome youth in his company, named John Gray, and I could not wonder that Oscar found him interesting, for Gray had not only great personal distinction, but charming manners, and a marked poetic gift, a much greater gift than Oscar possessed. He had besides an eager, curious mind, and, of course, found extraordinary stimulus in Oscar's talk. It seemed to me that intellectual sympathy and the natural admiration which a younger man feels for a brilliant senior formed the obvious bond between them. But no sooner did Oscar republish Dorian Gray than ill-informed and worse-minded persons went about saying that the eponymous hero of the book was John Gray. Though Dorian Gray was written before Oscar had met or heard of John Gray, one cannot help admitting that this was partly Oscar's own fault. In talk he often alluded laughingly to John Gray as his hero, Dorian. It is just an instance of the challenging contempt which he began to use about this time in answer to the inventions of hatred. Late in this year, 1891, he published four stories completely void of offence, calling the collection A House of Pomegranates. He dedicated each of the tales to a lady of distinction, and the book made many friends, but it was handled contemptuously in the press and had no sale. By this time people expected a certain sort of book from Oscar Wilde and wanted nothing else. They hadn't to wait long. Early in 1892 we heard that Oscar had written a drama in French called Salome, and at once it was put about that Sarah Bernhardt was going to produce it in London. Then came dramatic surprise on surprise. While it was being rehearsed, the Lord Chamberlain refused to license it on the ground that it introduced biblical characters. Oscar protested in a brilliant interview against the action of the censor as odious and ridiculous. He pointed out that all the greatest artists, painters and sculptors, musicians and writers had taken many of their best subjects from the Bible, and wanted to know why the dramatist should be prevented from treating the great soul tragedies most proper to his art. When informed that the interdict was to stand, he declared in a pet that he would settle in France and take out letters of naturalization. I am not English, I am Irish, which is quite another thing. Of course the press made all the fun it could of his show of temper. Mr. Robert Ross considers Salome the most powerful and perfect of all Oscars dramas. I find it almost impossible to explain, much less justify its astonishing popularity. When it appeared, the press, both in France and in England, was critical and contemptuous. But by this time Oscar had so captured the public that he could afford to disdain critics and calamity. The play was praised by his admirers as if it had been a masterpiece, and London discussed it the more because it was in French, and not clapperclawed by the vulgar. The indescribable cold lewdness and cruelty of Salome quickened the prejudice and strengthened the dislike of the ordinary English reader for its author. And when the drama was translated into English and published with the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, it was disparaged and condemned by all the leaders of literary opinion. The colossal popularity of the play, which Mr. Robert Ross proves so triumphantly, came from Germany and Russia, and is to be attributed in part to the contempt educated Germans and Russians feel for the hypocritical vagaries of English prudery. The illustrations of Aubrey Beardsley too, it must be admitted, were an additional offence to the ordinary English reader, for they intensified the peculiar atmosphere of the drama. Oscar used to say that he invented Aubrey Beardsley, but the truth is, it was Mr. Robert Ross who first introduced Aubrey to Oscar, and persuaded him to commission the Salome drawings, which gave the English edition its singular value. Strange to say, Oscar always hated the illustrations, and would not have the book in his house. His dislike even extended to the artist, and as Aubrey Beardsley was of easy and agreeable intercourse, the mutual repulsion deserves a word of explanation. Aubrey Beardsley's genius had taken London by storm. At seventeen or eighteen, this Auburn-haired, blue-eyed, fragile-looking youth had reached maturity with his astounding talent, a talent which would have given him position and wealth in any other country. In perfection of line, his drawings were superior to anything we possess. But the curious thing about the boy was that he expressed the passions of pride and lust and cruelty more intensely even than all, more spontaneously than anyone who ever held pencil. Beardsley's precocity was simply marvellous. He seemed to have an intuitive understanding, not only of his own art, but of every art and craft, and it was some time before one realized that he attained this miraculous virtuosity by an absolute disdain for any other form of human endeavour. He knew nothing of the great general, or millionaire, or man of science, and he cared as little for them as for fishermen or bus drivers. The current of his talent ran narrow between stone banks, so to speak. It was the bold assertion of it that interested Oscar. One phase of Beardsley's extraordinary development may be recorded here. When I first met him, his letters and even his talk, sometimes, were curiously youthful and immature, lacking altogether the personal note of his drawings. As soon as this was noticed, he took the bull by the horns and pretended that his style in writing was out of date. He wished us to believe that he hesitated to shock us with his archaic sympathies. Of course, we laughed and challenged him to reveal himself. Shortly afterwards, I got an article from him written with curious felicity of phrase, in modish, polite, eighteenth-century English. He had reached personal expression in a new medium in a month or so, and apparently without effort. It was Beardsley's writing that first won Oscar to recognition of his talent, and for a while he seemed vaguely interested in what he called his orchid-like personality. They were both at lunch one day, when Oscar declared that he could drink nothing but absinthe when Beardsley was present. Absinthe, he said, is to all other drinks what Albrey's drawings are to other pictures. It stands alone. It is like nothing else. It shimmers like southern twilight in opalescent colouring. It has about it the seduction of strange sins. It is stronger than any other spirit, and brings out the subconscious self in man. It is just like your drawings, Albrey. It gets on one's nerves and is cruel. Baudelaire calls his poems fleurs du mal. I shall call your drawings fleurs du péché, flowers of sin. When I have before me one of your drawings I want to drink absinthe, which changes colour like jade in sunlight and makes the senses thrall. And then I can live myself back in Imperial Rome, in the Rome of the later Caesars. Don't forget the simple pleasures of that life, Oscar, said Albrey. Nero set Christians on fire like large tallow candles. The only light Christians have ever been known to give, he added in a languid gentle voice. This talk gave me the key. He seldom expressed his opinion of person, or prejudice boldly. He preferred to hint dislike and disapproval. His insistence on the naked expression of lust and cruelty in Beardsley's drawings showed me that direct frankness displeased him, for he could hardly object to the qualities which were making his own salami world famous. The complete history of the relations between Oscar Wilde and Beardsley, and their mutual dislike merely proves how difficult it is for original artists to appreciate one another. Like mountain peaks they stand alone. Oscar showed a touch of patronage, the superiority of the senior in his intercourse with Beardsley, and often praised him ineptly. Whereas Beardsley to the last spoke of Oscar as a showman, and hoped dryly that he knew more about literature than he did about art. For a moment they worked in concert, and it is important to remember that it was Beardsley who influenced Oscar, and not Oscar who influenced Beardsley. Beardsley's contempt of critics and the public, his artistic boldness and self-assertion, had a certain hardening influence on Oscar. As things turned out, a most unfortunate influence. In spite of Mr. Robert Ross's opinion, I regard Salome as a student work, an outcome of Oscar's admiration for Flaubert and his Erodias, on the one hand, and Les Sept Princesse of Metellink on the other. He has borrowed the colour and oriental cruelty with the banquet scene from the Frenchman, and from the Fleming the simplicity of language and the haunting effect produced by the repetition of significant phrases. Yet Salome is original through the mingling of lust and hatred in the heroine, and by making this extraordinary virgin, the chief and centre of the drama, Oscar has heightened the interest of the story and bettered Flaubert's design. I feel sure he copied Metellink's simplicity of style, because it served to disguise his imperfect knowledge of French, and yet this very artlessness adds to the weird effect of the drama. The lust that inspires the tragedy was characteristic, but the cruelty was foreign to Oscar. Both qualities would have injured him in England, had it not been for two things. First of all, only a few of the best class of English people know French at all well, and for the most part they disdain the sex morality of their race, while the vast mass of the English public regard French as, in itself, an immoral medium, and is inclined to treat anything in that tongue with contemptuous indifference. One can only say that Salome confirmed Oscar's growing reputation for abnormal viciousness. It was in 1892 that some of Oscar's friends struck me for the first time as questionable to say the best of them. I remember giving a little dinner to some men in Rums I had in German Street. I invited Oscar, and he brought a young friend with him. After dinner I noticed that the youth was angry with Oscar and would scarcely speak to him, and that Oscar was making up to him. I heard snatches of pleading from Oscar. I beg of you, it is not true. You have no cause. All the while Oscar was standing apart from the rest of us with an arm on the young man's shoulder. But his coaxing was in vain. The youth turned away with petulant, sullen, ill temper. This is a mere snapshot which remained in my memory, and made me ask myself afterwards how I could have been so slow of understanding. Looking back and taking everything into consideration, his social success, the glare of publicity in which he lived, the buzz of talk and discussion that arose about everything he did and said, the increasing interest and value of his work, and above all the ever-growing boldness of his writing, and the challenge of his conduct, it is not surprising that the black cloud of hate and slander which attended him persistently became more and more threatening. End of chapter 8 Recording by Martin Geeson in Hazelmere Surrey Chapter 9 of Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Martin Geeson Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions by Frank Harris Chapter 9 The Summer of Success Oscar's First Play No season, it is said, is so beautiful as the brief northern summer. Three-fourths of the year is cold and dark, and the ice-bound landscape is swept by snowstorm and blizzard. Summer comes like a goddess, in a twinkling the snow vanishes and nature puts on her robes of tenderest green. The birds arrive in flocks, flowers spring to life on all sides, and the sun shines by night as by day. Such a summer tide, so beautiful and so brief, was accorded to Oscar Wilde before the final desolation. I want to give a picture of him at the top most height of happy hours which will afford some proof of his magical talent of speech besides my own appreciation of it, and fortunately the incident has been given to me. Mr. Ernest Beckett, now Lord Grimthorpe, a lover of all superiorities, who has known the ablest men of the time, takes pleasure in telling a story which shows Oscar Wilde's influence over men who were anything but literary in their tastes. Mr. Beckett had a party of Yorkshire Squires, chiefly fox hunters and lovers of an outdoor life at Kirkstall Grange, when he heard that Oscar Wilde was in the neighbouring town of Leeds. Immediately he asked him to lunch at the Grange, chuckling to himself beforehand at the sensational novelty of the experiment. Next day Mr. Oscar Wilde was announced, and as he came into the room the sportsman forthwith began hiding themselves behind newspapers, or moving together in groups to avoid seeing or being introduced to the notorious writer. Oscar shook hands with his host, as if he had noticed nothing, and began to talk. In five minutes, Grimthorpe declares, all the papers were put down and everyone had gathered round him to listen and laugh. At the end of the meal one Yorkshire man after the other begged the host to follow the lunch with a dinner and invite them to meet the wonder again. When the party broke up in the small hours they all went away delighted with Oscar, vowing that no man ever talked more brilliantly. Grimthorpe cannot remember a single word Oscar said. It was all delightful, he declares, a play of genial humour over every topic that came up, like sunshine dancing on waves. The extraordinary thing about Oscar's talent was that he did not monopolise the conversation. He took the ball of talk wherever it happened to be at the moment, and played with it so humorously that everyone was soon smiling delightedly. The famous talkers of the past, Coleridge, Macaulay, Carlyle and the others, were all lecturers. Talk to them was a discourse on a favourite theme, and in ordinary life they were generally regarded as boars. But at his best Oscar Wilde never dropped the tone of good society. He could afford to give place to others. He was equipped at all points. No subject came amiss to him. He saw everything from a humorous angle, and dazzled one, now with word-wit, now with the very stuff of merriment. Though he was the life and soul of every social gathering, and in constant demand, he still read omnivorously, and his mind naturally occupied itself with high themes. For some years the story of Jesus fascinated him and tinged all his thought. We were talking about Renan's life one day. A wonderful book, he called it, one of the three great biographies of the world. Plato's dialogues with Socrates as hero, and Boswell's life of Johnson being the other two. It was strange, he thought, that the greatest man had written the worst biography. Plato made of Socrates a mere phonograph, into which he talked his own theories. Renan did better work, and Boswell, the humble, loving friend, the least talented of the three, did better still, though being English, he had to keep to the surface of things, and leave the depths to be divined. Oscar evidently expected Plato and Renan to have surpassed comparison. It seemed to me, however, that the illiterate Galilean fishermen had proved themselves still more consummate painters than Boswell, though they too left a great deal too much to the imagination. Love is the best of artists. The puddle of rain in the road can reflect a piece of sky marvelously. The gospel story had a personal interest for Oscar. He was always weaving little fables about himself as the master. In spite of my ignorance of Hebrew, the story of Jesus had always had the strongest attraction for me, and so we often talked about him, though from opposite poles. Renan, I felt, had missed Jesus at his highest. He was far below the sincerity, the tenderness, and sweet-thoughted wisdom of that divine spirit. Frenchman-like, he stumbled over the miracles and came to grief. Klaus Sluter's head of Jesus in the Museum of Dijon is a finer portrait, and so is the imaginative picture of Fra Angelico. It seemed to me possible to do a sketch from the gospels themselves which should show the growth of the soul of Jesus, and so impose itself as a true portrait. Oscar's interest in the theme was different. He put himself frankly in the place of his model, and appeared to enjoy the jarring antinomy which resulted. One or two of his stories were surprising in ironical suggestion, surprising too because they showed his convinced paganism. Here is one which reveals his exact position. When Joseph of Arimathea came down in the evening from Mount Calvary, where Jesus had died, he saw on a white stone a young man seated, weeping. And Joseph went near him and said, I understand how great thy grief must be, for certainly that man was a just man. But the young man made answer, oh it is not for that I am weeping. I am weeping because I too have wrought miracles. I also have given sight to the blind, I have healed the palsid, and I have raised the dead. I too have caused the barren fig tree to wither away, and I have turned water into wine. And yet they have not crucified me. At the time this apologue amused me. In the light of later events it assumed a tragic significance. Oscar Wilde ought to have known that in this world every real superiority is pursued with hatred, and every worker of miracles is sure to be persecuted. But he had no inkling that the gospel story is symbolic, the life story of genius for all time, eternally true. He never looked outside himself, and as the fruits of success were now sweet in his mouth, a pursuing fate seemed to him the most mythical of myths. His childlike self-confidence was pathetic. The laws that govern human affairs had little interest for the man who was always a law unto himself. Yet by some extraordinary prescience, some inexplicable presentiment, the approaching catastrophe cast its shadow over his mind, and he felt vaguely that the life journey of genius would be incomplete and farcical without the final tragedy. Whoever lives for the highest must be crucified. It seems memorable to me that in this brief summer of his life Oscar Wilde should have concerned himself especially with the life story of the man of sorrows who had sounded all the depths of suffering. Just when he himself was about to enter the dark valley, Jesus was often in his thoughts, and he always spoke of him with admiration. But after all, how could he help it, even Deca saw as far as that? The best of men that air war earth about him. This was the deeper strain in Oscar Wilde's nature, though he was always disinclined to show it. Habitually he lived in humorous talk, in the epithets and epigrams he struck out in the desire to please, and he was about to try a new experiment and break into a new field. He took up the word lose at the table, I remember. We lose our chances, he said, laughing. We lose our figures. We even lose our characters. But we must never lose our temper. That is our duty to our neighbour, Frank, but sometimes we mislay it, don't we? Is that going in a book, Oscar? I asked, smiling, or in an article. You have written nothing lately. I have a play in my mind, he replied gravely. Tomorrow I am going to shut myself up in my room, and stay there until it is written. George Alexander has been bothering me to write a play for some time, and I've got an idea I rather like. I wonder, can I do it in a week, or will it take three? It ought not to take long to beat the Pineros and the Joneses. It always annoyed Oscar when any other name but his came into men's mouths. His vanity was extraordinarily alert. Naturally enough he minimised Mr Alexander's initiative. The well-known actor had bothered Oscar by advancing him a hundred pounds before the scenario was even outlined. A couple of months later he told me that Alexander had accepted his comedy and was going to produce Lady Windermere's fan. I thought the title excellent. Territorial names, Oscar explained gravely, 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 Hun Stanton, and he rolled the syllables over his tongue with a soft sensual pleasure. I had a box the first night, and thinking it might do Oscar some good, I took with me Arthur Walter of the Times. The first scene of the first act was as old as the hills, but the treatment gave charm to it, if not freshness. The delightful unexpected humour set off the commonplace incident, but it was only the convention that Arthur Walter would see. The play was poor, he thought, which brought me to wonder. After the first act I went downstairs to the foyer and found the critics in much the same mind. There was an enormous gentleman called Joseph Knight who cried out, the humour is mechanical, unreal. Seeing that I did not respond he challenged me. What do you think of it? That is for you critics to answer, I replied. I might say, he laughed, in Oscar's own peculiar way, little promise and less performance. That's the exact opposite to Oscar's way, I retorted. It is the listeners who laugh at his humour. Can't thou really, cried Knight, you cannot think much of the play. For the first time in my life I began to realise that nine critics out of ten are incapable of judging original work. They seem to live in a sort of fog, waiting for someone to give them the lead, and accordingly they love to discuss every new play right and left. I have not seen the whole play, I answered, I was not at any of the rehearsals, but so far it is surely the best comedy in English, the most brilliant, isn't it? The big man started back and stared at me, then burst out laughing. That's good! he cried with a loud, unmerthful guffaw. Lady Windermere's fan better than any comedy of Shakespeare. More brilliant! Yes, I persisted, angered by his disdain, wittier and more humorous than as you like it, or much ado. Strange to say, too, it is on a higher intellectual level. I can only compare it to the best of congrief, and I think it's better. With a grunt of disapproval or rage, the great man of the daily press turned away to exchange bleatings with one of his cool frayers. The audience was a picked audience of the best heads in London, far superior in brains, therefore, to the average journalist, and their judgment was that it was a most brilliant and interesting play. Though the humour was often prepared, the construction showed a rare mastery of stage effect. Oscar Wilde had at length come into his kingdom. At the end the author was called for, and Oscar appeared before the curtain. The house rolls at him and cheered and cheered again. He was smiling with a cigarette between his fingers, holy master of himself and his audience. I am so glad, ladies and gentlemen, that you like my play. I feel sure you estimate the merits of it almost as highly as I do myself. The house rocked with laughter. The play and its humour were a seven-days wonder in London. People talked of nothing but Lady Windermere's fan. The witty words in it ran from lip to lip like a tidbit of scandal. Some clever duesses, and, strange to say, one scotchman, were the loudest in applause. Mr. Archer, the well-known critic of the world, was the first and only journalist to perceive that the play was a classic by virtue of genuine dramatic qualities. Mrs. Leveson turned the humorous sayings into current social coin in punch of all places in the world, and from a favourite Oscar Wilde rapidly became the idol of smart London. The play was an intellectual triumph. This time Oscar had not only won success, but had won also the suffrages of the best. Nearly all the journalist critics were against him and made themselves ridiculous by their brainless strictures. Truth and the times, for example, were poisonously puritanic, but thinking people came over to his side in a body. The halo of fame was about him, and the incense of it in his nostrils made him more charming, more irresponsibly gay, more genial witty than ever. He was as one set upon a pinnacle with the sunshine playing about him, lighting up his radiant eyes. All the while, however, the foul mists from the underworld were wreathing about him, climbing higher and higher. End of chapter 9 10 The first meeting with Lord Alfred Douglas Thou hast led me like a heathen sacrifice, with music and with fatal pomp of flowers, to my eternal ruin. Webster's The White Devil Lady Windermere's fan was a success in every sense of the word, and during its run London was at Oscar's feet. There were always a few doors closed to him, but he could afford now to treat his critics with laughter, call them fogies and old-fashioned, and explain that they had not a decalogue, but a millilogue of sins forbidden and persons tabooed, because it was easier to condemn than to understand. I remember a lunch once when he talked most brilliantly, and finished up by telling the story now published in his works as a Florentine tragedy. He told it superbly, making it appear far more effective than in its written form. A well-known actor, peaked at being compelled to play listener, made himself ridiculous by half turning his back on the narrator. But after lunch Willie Grenfell, now Lord Desperer, a model English athlete, gifted with peculiar intellectual fairness, came round to me. Oscar is most surprising, most charming, a wonderful talker. At the same moment Mr. K. H. came over to us. He was a man who went everywhere and knew everyone. He had quiet, ingratiating manners, always spoke in a gentle, smiling way, and had a good word to say for everyone, especially for women. He was a bachelor too, and wholly unattached. He surprised me by taking up Grenfell's praise and breaking into a lyric. The best talker who ever lived, he said, most extraordinary. I am so infinitely obliged to you for asking me to meet him. A new delight. He brings a supanel air into life. I am in truth indebted to you. All this in an affected, purring tone. I noticed for the first time that there was a touch of rouge on his face. Grenfell turned away from us rather abruptly, I thought. At this first rosy at dawn of complete success and universal applause, new qualities came to view in Oscar. Praise gave him the Philip needed in order to make him surpass himself. His talk took on a sort of autumnal richness of colour, and assumed a new width of range. He now used pathos as well as humour, and generally brought in a story or apologue to lend variety to the entertainment. His little weaknesses too began to show themselves, and they grew rankly in the sunshine. He always wanted to do himself well, as the phrase goes, but now he began to eat and drink more freely than before. His vanity became defiant. I noticed one day that he had signed himself Oscar Oflaherty Wilde. I think under some verses which he had contributed years before to his college magazine. I asked him jokingly what the Oflaherty stood for. To my astonishment he answered me gravely. The Oflaherty's were kings in Ireland, and I have a right to the name. I am descended from them. I could not help it. I burst out laughing. What are you laughing at, Frank? He asked with a touch of annoyance. It seems humorous to me, I explained, that Oscar Wilde should want to be an Oflaherty, and as I spoke, a picture of the greatest of the Oflaherty's, with bushy head and dirty rags, warming enormous hairy legs before a smoking peat fire flashed before me. I think something of the sort must have occurred to Oscar too, for in spite of his attempt to be grave, he could not help laughing. It's unkind of you, Frank. He said the Irish were civilised and Christians, when the English kept themselves warm with tattooings. He could not help telling one in familiar talk of clumber, or some other great house where he had been visiting. He was intoxicated with his own popularity. A little surprised, perhaps, to find that he had won fame so easily, and on the primrose path. But one could forgive him everything, for he talked more delightfully than ever. It is almost inexplicable, but nevertheless true, that life tries all of us. Tests every weak point to breaking, and sets off and exaggerates our powers. Burns saw this when he wrote, Hoid does the utmost that he can, while whiles do mere. And the obverse is true. Whoever yields to a weakness habitually, someday goes further than he ever intended, and comes to worse grief than he deserved. The old prayer, lead us not into temptation, is perhaps a half-conscious recognition of this fact. But we moderns are inclined to walk heedlessly, no longer believing in pitfalls, or in the danger of gratified desires. And Oscar Wilde was not only an unbeliever, but he had all the heedless confidence of the artist who has won worldwide popularity, and has the halo of fame on his brow. With high heart and smiling eyes, he went to his fate unsuspecting. It was in the autumn of 1891 that he first met Lord Alfred Douglas. He was thirty-six, and Lord Alfred Douglas a handsome, slim youth of twenty-one, with large blue eyes and golden, fair hair. His mother, the Dowager Lady Queensbury, preserves a photograph of him taken a few years before, when he was still at Winchester, a boy of sixteen, with an expression which might well be called angelic. When I met him, he was still girlishly pretty, with the beauty of youth, colouring and fair skin, though his features were merely ordinary. It was Lionel Johnson, the writer, a friend and intimate of Douglas at Winchester, who brought him to tea at Oscar's house in Tite Street. Their mutual attraction had countless hooks. Oscar was drawn by the lad's personal beauty, and enormously affected besides by Lord Alfred Douglas's name and position. He was a snob, as only an English artist can be a snob. He loved titular distinctions, and Douglas is one of the few great names in British history with the gilding of romance about it. No doubt Oscar talked better than his best, because he was talking to Lord Alfred Douglas. To the last, the mere name rolled on his tongue gave him extraordinary pleasure. Besides, the boy admired him, hung upon his lips with his soul in his eyes, showed too rare intelligence in his appreciation, confessed that he himself wrote verses and loved letters passionately. Could more be desire than perfection perfected? And Alfred Douglas on his side was almost as powerfully attracted. He had inherited from his mother all her literary tastes, and more. He was already a master poet with a singing faculty worthy to be compared with the greatest. What wonder if he took this magical talker with the luminous eyes and charming voice, and arranged and play of thought beyond his imagining for a world's miracle, one of the immortals? Before he had listened long, I have been told, the youth declared his admiration passionately. They were an extraordinary pair, and were complementary in a hundred ways, not only in mind, but in character. Oscar had reached originality of thought, and possessed the culture of scholarship, while Alfred Douglas had youth and rank and beauty, besides being as articulate as a woman with an unsurpassable gift of expression. Curiously enough, Oscar was as yielding and amiable in character as the boy was self-willed, reckless, obstinate, and imperious. Years later Oscar told me that from the first he dreaded Alfred Douglas's aristocratic, insolent boldness. He frightened me, Frank, as much as he attracted me, and I held away from him. But he wouldn't have it. He sought me out again and again, and I couldn't resist him. That is my only fault. That's what ruined me. He increased my expenses so that I could not meet them. Over and over again I tried to free myself from him, but he came back, and I yielded. Alas! Though this is Oscar's later gloss on what actually happened, it is fairly accurate. He was never able to realize how his meeting with Lord Alfred Douglas had changed the world to him, and him to the world. The effect on the harder fiber of the boy was chiefly mental. To Alfred Douglas Oscar was merely a quickening, inspiring intellectual influence, but the boy's effect on Oscar was of character and induced imitation. Lord Alfred Douglas's boldness gave Oscar utter quidance, an insolent arrogance, artistlike he tried to outdo his model in aristocratic disdain. Without knowing the cause, the change in Oscar astonished me again and again, and in the course of this narrative I shall have to notice many instances of it. One other effect the friendship had of far-reaching influence. Oscar always enjoyed good living, but for years he had had to earn his bread. He knew the value of money. He didn't like to throw it away. He was accustomed to lunch or dine at a cheap Italian restaurant for a few shillings. But to Lord Alfred Douglas money was only a counter and the most luxurious living a necessity. As soon as Oscar Wilde began to entertain him he was led to the dearest hotels and restaurants. His expenses became formidable, and soon outran his large earnings. For the first time since I had known him he borrowed heedlessly, right and left, and had therefore to bring forth play after play, with scant time for thought. Lord Alfred Douglas has declared recently, I spent much more in entertaining Oscar Wilde than he did in entertaining me. But this is preposterous self-deception, an earlier confession of his was much nearer the truth. It was a sweet humiliation to me to let Oscar Wilde pay for everything, and to ask him for money. There can be no doubt that Lord Alfred Douglas's habitual extravagance kept Oscar Wilde hard up, and drove him to write without intermission. There were other and worse results of the intimacy which need not be exposed here in so many words, though they must be indicated, for they derived of necessity from that increased self-assurance which has already been recorded. As Oscar devoted himself to Lord Alfred Douglas, and went about with him continually, he came to know his friends and his familiars, and went less into society, so called. Again and again Lord Alfred Douglas flaunted acquaintance with youths of the lowest class, but no one knew him or paid much attention to him. Oscar Wilde, on the other hand, was already a famous personage whose every movement provoked comment. From this time on the rumours about Oscar took definite form, and shaped themselves in specific accusations. His enemies began triumphantly to predict his ruin and disgrace. Everything is known in London society, like water on sand, the truth spreads wider and wider as it gradually filters lower. The smart set in London has almost as keen a love of scandal as a cathedral town. About this time, one heard of a dinner which Oscar Wilde had given at a restaurant in Soho, which was said to have degenerated into a sort of Roman orgy. I was told of a man who tried to get money by blackmailing him in his own house. I shrugged my shoulders at all these scandals, and asked the tale-bearers what had been said about Shakespeare to make him rave as he raved again and again against back-wounding calamity. And when they persisted in their malicious stories, I could do nothing but show disbelief. Though I saw but little of Oscar during the first year or so of his intimacy with Lord Alfred Douglas, one scene from this time filled me with suspicion and an undefined dread. I was in a corner of the Café Royal one night, downstairs, playing chess, and while waiting for my opponent to move, I went out just to stretch my legs. When I returned, I found Oscar, thrown in the very corner between two youths. Even to my short-sighted eyes, they appeared quite common. In fact, they looked like grooms. In spite of their vulgar appearance, however, one was nice looking in a fresh boyish way. The other seemed merely depraved. Oscar greeted me as usual, though he seemed slightly embarrassed. I resumed my seat, which was almost opposite him, and pretended to be absorbed in the game. To my astonishment, he was talking as well as if he had had a picked audience, talking, if you please, about the Olympic Games, telling how the youths wrestled and were scraped with striguli, and threw the discus and ran races, and won the Myrtle Wreath. His impassioned eloquence brought the sun-bathed polystra before one with a magic of representement. Suddenly the younger of the boys asked, Did you say that he was naked? Of course, Oscar replied, nude, clothed only in sunshine and beauty. Ah, who am I? giggled the lad in his unspeakable cockney way. I could not stand it. I am in an impossible position, I said to my opponent, who was the amateur chess player Montague Gatti. Come along and let us have some dinner. With a nod to Oscar, I left the place. On the way out, Gatti said to me, So that's the famous Oscar Wilde. Yes, I replied, that's Oscar, but I never saw him in such company before. Didn't you? remarked Gatti quietly. He was well known at Oxford. I was at diversity with him. His reputation was always rather high, shall we call it. I wanted to forget the scene and blot it out of my memory, and remember my friend as I knew him at his best. But that cockney boy would not be banned. He leered there with rosy cheeks, hair plastered down in a love-lock on his forehead, and low, cunning eyes. I felt uncomfortable, I would not think of it. I recalled the fact that in all our talks I had never heard Oscar use a gross word. His mind, I said to myself, is like Spencers, vowed away from coarseness and vulgarity. He is the most perfect intellectual companion in the world. He may have wanted to talk to the boys, just to see what effect his talk would have on them. His vanity is greedy enough to desire even such applause as theirs. Of course that was the explanation. Vanity. My affection for him, tormented by doubt, had found at length a satisfactory solution. It was the artist in him, I said to myself, that wanted a model. But why not boys of his own class? The answer suggested itself boys of his own class could teach him nothing. His own boyhood would supply him with all the necessary information about well-bred youth. But if he wanted a gutter snipe in one of his plays, he would have to find a gutter lad and paint him from life. That was probably the truth, I concluded. So satisfied was I with my discovery that I developed it to Gatti. But he would not hear of it. Gatti has nothing of the artist in him, I decided, and therefore cannot understand. And I went on arguing, if Gatti were right, why two boys? It seemed evident to me that my reading of the riddle was the only plausible one. Besides it left my affection unaffected and free. Still the giggle, the plastered oily hair, and the venal, leering eyes, came back to me again and again, in spite of myself. End of chapter 10, chapter 11 of Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Martin Giesen. Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions, by Frank Harris. Chapter 11 The Threatening Cloud Draws Nearer There is a secret apprehension in man, counselling sobriety and moderation, a fear born of expediency, distinct from conscience which is ethical, though it seems to be closely connected with conscience, acting as it does by warnings and prohibitions. The story of polycrities and his ring is a symbol of the instinctive feeling that extraordinary good fortune is perilous and cannot endure. A year or so after the first meeting between Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, I heard that they were being pestered on account of some amorous letters which had been stolen from them. There was talk of blackmail and hints of an interesting exposure. Towards the end of the year it was announced that Lord Alfred Douglas had gone to Egypt. But this flight into Egypt, as it was wittily called, was gilded by the fact that a little later he was appointed an honorary attaché to Lord Croma. I regarded his absence as a piece of good fortune, for when he was in London Oscar had no time to himself and was seen in public with associates he would have done better to avoid. Time and again he had praised Lord Alfred Douglas to me as a charming person, a poet, and had grown lyrical about his violet eyes and honey-coloured hair. I knew nothing of Lord Alfred Douglas and had no inkling of his poetic talent. I did not like several of Oscar's particular friends, and I had a special dislike for the father of Lord Alfred Douglas. I knew Queensbury rather well. I was a member of the old Pelican club, and I used to go there frequently for a talk with Tom, Dick or Harry about athletics, or for a game of chess with George Edwards. Queensbury was there almost every night, and someone introduced me to him. I was eager to know him because he had surprised me. At some play I think it was The Promise of May by Tennyson, produced at the Globe, in which atheists were condemned. He had got up in his box and denounced the play, proclaiming himself an atheist. I wanted to know the Englishman who could be so contemptuous of convention. Had he acted out of aristocratic insolence, or was he by any possibility high-minded? To one who knew the man, the mere question must seem ridiculous. Queensbury was perhaps five feet nine or ten in height, with a plain, heavy, rather sullen face and quick, hot eyes. He was a mass of self-conceit, all bristling with suspicion, and in regard to money prudent to meanness. He cared nothing for books, but liked outdoor sports, and under a rather abrupt, but not discourteous manner hid an irritable, violent temper. He was combative and courageous, as very nervous people sometimes are, when they happen to be strong-willed. The sort of man who, just because he was afraid of a bull, and had pictured the dreadful wound it could give, would therefore seize it by the horns. The insane temper of the man got him into rouse at the Pelican more than once. I remember one evening he insulted a man whom I liked immensely. Hazeltine was a stockbroker, I think, a big, fair, handsome fellow who took Queensbury's insults for some time with cheerful contempt. Again and again he turned Queensbury's wrath aside with a fair word, but Queensbury went on working himself into a passion, and at last made a rush at him. Hazeltine watched him coming and hit out in the nick of time. He caught Queensbury full in the face and literally knocked him heels overhead. Queensbury got up in a sad mess. He had a swollen nose and black eye, and his shirt was all stained with blood, spread about by hasty wiping. Any other man would have continued the fight or else have left the club on the spot. Queensbury took a seat at a table, and there sat for hours, silent. I could only explain it to myself by saying that his impulse to fly at once from the scene of his disgrace was very acute, and therefore he resisted it, made up his mind not to budge, and so he sat there, the butt of the derisive glances and whispered talk of everyone who came into the club in the next two or three hours. He was just the sort of person a wiseman would avoid, and a clever one would use, a dangerous, sharp, ill-handled tool. Disliking his father, I did not care to meet Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar's newest friend. I saw Oscar less frequently after the success of his first play. He no longer needed my editorial services, and was, besides, busily engaged. But I have one good tray to record of him. Some time before I had lent him fifty pounds. So long as he was hard up I said nothing about it, but after the success of his second play I wrote to him saying that the fifty pounds would be useful to me if he could spare it. He sent me a check at once with a charming letter. He was now continually about again with Lord Alfred Douglas, who it appeared had had a disagreement with Lord Cromer, and returned to London. Almost immediately scandalous stories came into circulation concerning them. Have you heard the latest about Lord Alfred and Oscar? I'm told they're being watched by the police. And so forth, and so on, interminably. One day a story came to me with such a wealth of weird detail that it was manifestly at least founded on fact. Oscar was said to have written extraordinary letters to Lord Alfred Douglas. A youth called Alfred Wood had stolen the letters from Lord Alfred Douglas's rooms in Oxford, and had tried to blackmail Oscar with them. The facts were so peculiar and so precise that I asked Oscar about it. He met the accusation at once, and very fairly, I thought, and told me the whole story. It puts the triumphant power and address of the man in a strong light, and so I will tell it as he told it to me. When I was rehearsing A Woman of No Importance at the Haymarket, he began, Beoboam Tree showed me a letter I had written a year or so before to Alfred Douglas. He seemed to think it dangerous, but I laughed at him and read the letter with him, and of course he came to understand it properly. A little later a man called Wood told me he had found some letters which I had written to Lord Alfred Douglas, in a suit of clothes which Lord Alfred had given to him. He gave me back some of the letters, and I gave him a little money, but the letter, a copy of which had been sent to Beoboam Tree, was not amongst them. Some time afterwards a man named Allen called upon me one night in Tite Street, and said he had got a letter of mine which I ought to have. The man's manner told me that he was the real enemy. I suppose you mean that beautiful letter of mine to Lord Alfred Douglas, I said. If you had not been so foolish as to send a copy of it to Mr. Beoboam Tree, I should have been glad to have paid you a large sum for it, as I think it is one of the best I ever wrote. Allen looked at me with sulky, cunning eyes, and said a curious construction could be put upon that letter. No doubt, no doubt, I replied lightly, art is not intelligible to the criminal classes. He looked me in the face defiantly, and said, a man has offered me sixty pounds for it. You should take the offer, I said gravely. Sixty pounds is a great price. I myself have never received such a large sum for any prose work of that length. But I am glad to find that there is someone in England who will pay such a large sum for a letter of mine. I don't know why you come to me, I added, rising. You should sell the letter at once. Of course, Frank, as I spoke my body seemed empty with fear. The letter could be misunderstood, and I have so many envious enemies. But I felt that there was nothing else for it but bluff. As I went to the door, Allen rose too, and said that the man who had offered him the money was out of town. I turned to him and said, he will no doubt return, and I don't care for the letter at all. At this Allen changed his manner, said he was very poor. He hadn't a penny in the world, and had spent a lot trying to find me and tell me about the letter. I told him I did not mind relieving his distress, and gave him half a sovereign, assuring him at the same time that the letter would shortly be published as a sonnet in a delightful magazine. I went to the door with him, and he walked away. I closed the door, but didn't shut it at once, for suddenly I heard a policeman's step coming softly towards my house, pad, pad. A dreadful moment. Then he passed by. I went into the room again, all shaken, wondering whether I had done right, whether Allen would hawk the letter about. The thousand vague apprehensions. Suddenly a knock at the street door. My heart was in my mouth, still I went and opened it. A man named Clyburn was there. I have come to you with the letter of Allen's. I cannot be bothered any more, I cried, about that letter. I don't care toughence about it. Let him do what he likes with it. To my astonishment, Clyburn said, Allen has asked me to give it back to you, and he produced it. Why does he give it back to me? I asked carelessly. He says you were kind to him, and that it is no use trying to rent you. You only laugh at us. I looked at the letter. It was very dirty, and I said, I think it is unpardonable that better care should not have been taken of a manuscript of mine. He said he was sorry, but it had been in many hands. I took the letter up casually. Well, I will accept the letter back. You can thank Mr. Allen for me. I gave Clyburn half a sovereign for his trouble, and said to him, I am afraid you are leading a desperately wicked life. There's good and bad in every one of us, he replied. I said something about his being a philosopher, and he went away. That's the whole story, Frank. But the letter, I questioned. The letter is nothing, Oscar replied, a prose poem. I will give you a copy of it. Here is the letter. My own boy, your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvel that those red rose leaf lips of yours should be made no less with a madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing. Your slim guilt soul walks between passion and poetry. No higher synths followed love so madly as you in Greek days. Why are you alone in London, and when do you go to Salisbury? Do go there, and cool your hands in the grey twilight of Gothic things. Come here whenever you like. It is a lovely place, and only lacks you. Do go to Salisbury first. Always with undying love. Yours, Oscar. This letter startled me. Slim guilt and the madness of kissing were calculated to give one pause. But after all I thought it may be merely an artist's letter, half-pose, half-passionate admiration. Another thought struck me. But how did such a letter, I cried, ever get into the hands of a blackmailer? I don't know, he replied, shrugging his shoulders. Lord Alfred Douglas is very careless and inconceivably bowed. You should know him, Frank. He's a delightful poet. But how did he come to know a creature like Wood, I persisted. How can I tell, Frank? he answered a little shortly, and I let the matter drop, though it left me in a certain doubt, an uncomfortable suspicion. The scandal grew from hour to hour, and the tide of hatred rose in surges. One day I was lunching at the Savoy, and while talking to the head waiter, César, who afterwards managed the Elyse Palace Hotel in Paris, I thought I saw Oscar and Douglas go out together. Being a little short-sighted, I asked, isn't that Mr. Oscar Wilde? Yes, said César, and Lord Alfred Douglas, we wish they would not come here, it does us a lot of harm. How do you mean? I asked sharply. Some people don't like them, the quick Italian answered immediately. Oscar Wilde, I remarked casually, is a great friend of mine. But the super-subtle Italian was already warned. A clever writer, I believe, smiling in bland acquiescence. This incident gave me warning, strengthened again in me the exact apprehension and suspicion which the Douglas letter had bred. Oscar, I knew, was too self-centered, went about to continually with admire us, to have any understanding of popular feeling. He would be the last man to realize how fiercely hate, malice, and envy were raging against him. I wanted to warn him, but hardly knew how to do it effectively and without offence. I made up my mind to keep my eyes open and watch for an opportunity. A little later, I gave a dinner at the Savoy and asked him to come. He was delightful, his vivacious gaiety as exhilarating as wine. But he was more like a Roman emperor than ever. He had grown fat, he ate and drank too much. Not that he was intoxicated, but he became flushed, and in spite of his gay and genial talk, he affected me a little unpleasantly. He was gross and puffed up. But he gave one or two splendid snapshots of actors and their egregious vanity. It seemed to him a great pity that actors should be taught to read and write. They should learn their pieces from the lips of the poet. Just as work is the curse of the drinking classes of this country, he said, laughing, so education is the curse of the acting classes. Yet even when making fun of the mummers, there was a new tone in him of arrogance and disdain. He used all was to be genial and kindly, even to those he laughed at. Now he was openly contemptuous. The truth is that his extraordinarily receptive mind went with an even more abnormal receptivity of character. Unlike most men of marked ability, he took colour from his associates. In this, as in love of courtesies and dislike of coarse words, he was curiously feminine. Intercourse with Beardsley, for example, had backed his humorous gentleness with a sort of challenging courage. His new intimacy with Lord Alfred Douglas, coming on the top of his triumph as a playwright, was lending him aggressive self-confidence. There was in him that hubris, insolent self-assurance which the Greek feared, the pride which goeth before destruction. I regretted the change in him and was nervously apprehensive. After dinner we all went out by the door which gives on the embankment, for it was after twelve-thirty. One of the party proposed that we should walk for a minute or two, at least as far as the Strand before driving home. Oscar objected. He hated walking. It was a form of penal servitude to the animal in man, he declared. But he consented, nevertheless, under protest, laughing. When we were going up the steps to the Strand, he again objected, and quoted Dante's famous lines. Readers' translation You will discover how salty taste another's bread, and how steep it is trailing up and down another's staircase. The impression made by Oscar that evening was not only of self-indulgence, but of over-confidence. I could not imagine what had given him this insolent self-complacence. I wanted to get by myself and think. Prosperity was certainly doing him no good. All the while the opposition to him I felt was growing in force. How could I verify this impression, I asked myself, so as to warn him effectually. I decided to give a lunch to him, and on purpose I put on the invitations to meet Mr. Oscar Wilde and hear a new story. Out of a dozen invitations sent out to men, seven or eight were refused, three or four telling me in all kindness that they would rather not meet Oscar Wilde. This confirmed my worst fears. When Englishmen speak out in this way, the dislike must be near revolt. I gave the lunch and saw plainly enough that my forebodings were justified. Oscar was more self-confident, more contemptuous of criticism, more gross of body than ever. But his talk did not suffer. Indeed, it seemed to improve. At this lunch he told the charming fable of Narcissus, which is certainly one of his most characteristic short stories. When Narcissus died, the flowers of the field were plunged in grief, and asked the river for drops of water that they might mourn for him. Oh! replied the river, if only my drops of water were tears, I should not have enough to weep for Narcissus myself. I loved him. How could you help loving Narcissus? said the flowers. So beautiful was he. Was he beautiful? asked the river. Who should know that better than you? said the flowers, for every day lying on your bank he would mirror his beauty in your waters. Oscar paused here, and then went on. If I loved him, replied the river, it is because when he hung over me I saw the reflection of my own loveliness in his eyes. After lunch I took him aside and tried to warn him, told him that unpleasant stories were being put about against him. But he paid no heed to me. All envy, frank and malice, what do I care? I go to clumber this summer. Besides, I'm doing another play which I rather like. I always knew that playwriting was my province. As a youth I tried to write plays in verse. That was my mistake. Now I know better, I'm sure of myself, and of success. Somehow or other, in spite of his apparent assurance, I felt he was in danger, and I doubted his quality as a fighter. But after all it was not my business. Willful man must have his way. It seems to me now that my mistrust dated from the Second Paper War with Whistler, wherein to the astonishment of everyone, Oscar did not come off victorious. As soon as he met with opposition, his power of repartee seemed to desert him, and Whistler, using mere rudeness and man of the world sharpness, held the field. Oscar was evidently not a born fighter. I asked him once how it was he let Whistler off so lightly. He shrugged his shoulders and showed some irritation. What could I say, Frank? Why should I belabor the beaten? The man is a wasp, and delights in using his sting. I have done more perhaps than any one to make him famous. I had no wish to hurt him. Was it magnanimity or weakness, or as I think a constitutional, a feminine shrinking from struggle and strife? Whatever the cause, it was clear that Oscar was what Shakespeare called himself an unhurtful opposite. It is quite possible that if he had been attacked face to face, Oscar would have given a better account of himself. At Mrs. Grenfels, now Lady Desbra, he crossed swords once with the Prime Minister, and came off victorious. Mr. Asquith began by bantering him in appearance lightly, in reality seriously, for putting many of his sentences in italics. The man who uses italics, said the politician, is like the man who raises his voice in conversation and talks loudly in order to make himself heard. It was the well-known objection which Emerson had taken to Carlisle's over-ought style, pointed probably by dislike of the way Oscar monopolised conversation. Oscar met the stereotyped attack with smiling good humour. How delightful of you, Mr. Asquith, to have noticed that! The brilliant phrase, like good wine, needs no bush. But just as the orator marks his good things by a dramatic pause, or by raising or lowering his voice, or by gesture, so the writer marks his epigrams with italics, setting the little gem, so to speak, like a jeweler. An excusable love of one's art, not all mere vanity, I like to think. All this with the most pleasant smile and manner. In measure as I distrusted Oscar's fighting power, and admired his sweetness of nature, I took sides with him, and wanted to help him. One day I heard some talk at the Pelican Club, which filled me with fear for him, and quickened my resolve to put him on his guard. I was going in just as Queensbury was coming out, with two or three of his special cronies. I'll do it! I heard him cry. I'll teach the fellow to leave my son alone. I'll not have their names coupled together. I caught a glimpse of the thrust out, combative face, and the hot, grey eyes. What's it all about? I asked. Only Queensbury said someone swearing he'll stop Oscar Wilde going about with that son of his, Alfred Douglas. Suddenly my fears took form. As in a flash I saw Oscar heedless and smiling, walking along with his head in the air, and that violent, combative, insane creature pouncing on him. I sat down at once, and wrote begging Oscar to lunch with me the next day alone, as I had something important to say to him. He turned up in Park Lane, manifestly anxious, a little frightened, I think. What is it, Frank? I told him very seriously what I had heard, and gave besides my impression of Queensbury's character, and his insane pugnacity. What can I do, Frank? said Oscar, showing distress and apprehension. It's all boozy. Who is boozy? I asked. That is Lord Alfred Douglas' pet name. It's all boozy's fault. He has quarrelled with his father. Or rather, his father has quarrelled with him. He quarrels with everyone, with Lady Queensbury, with Percy Douglas, with boozy, everyone. He's impossible. What can I do? Avoid him, I said. Don't go about with Lord Alfred Douglas. Give Queensbury his triumph. You could make a friend of him as easily as possible, if you wished. Write him a conciliatory letter. But he wants me to drop boozy, and stop seeing Lady Queensbury, and I like them all. They are charming to me. Why should I cringe to this madman? Because he is a madman. Oh, Frank, I can't! he cried. Boozy wouldn't let me. Wouldn't let you, I repeated angrily. How absurd! That Queensbury man will go to violence to any extremity. Don't you fight other people's quarrels. You may have enough of your own someday. You're not sympathetic, Frank, he chided weakly. I know you mean it kindly, but it's impossible for me to do as you advise. I cannot give up my friend. I really cannot let Lord Queensbury choose my friends for me. It's too absurd. But it's wise, I replied. There's a very bad verse in one of Hugo's plays. It always amused me. He likens poverty to a low door, and declares that when we have to pass through it, the man whose stoop's lowest is the wisest. So when you meet a madman, the wisest thing to do is to avoid him, and not quarrel with him. It's very hard, Frank. Of course I'll think over what you say, but really Queensbury ought to be in a madhouse. He's too absurd. And in that spirit he left me outwardly self-confident. He might have remembered Chaucer's words. It is no dread.