 CHAPTER XVI. From his conversation in those days I gathered that he was enlarging his circle of acquaintances, and for the most part amongst Parisian artists. As a friend of Edmund Yates, proprietor and editor of The World, he had brought over to Paris an introduction to that famous Paris correspondent, Theodore Child, who had piloted him to the houses of various of his friends. It was through Child that he came to know several painters, for the most part ignored in those days, but now of European reputation. I remember his describing to me a visit he paid to the great Degas, to reach whose garret studio he had had to make the perilous ascent of a ladder. He thought it necessary to explain Degas' art to me, but I am afraid his disquisition was wasted upon me. I did not understand it then, I do not think that I should understand it now. I never have been able to make up my mind whether Oscar Wilde was indeed qualified to speak as a critic of art, of pictures, that is to say, or whether he postured, as Whistler accused him brutally of doing so, as knowing a subject on which he was no better informed than you or I. What has Oscar in common with art? asks Whistler in a letter addressed to the world for 17th November 1886, accept that he dines at our tables and picks from our platters the plums for the pudding he peddles in the provinces. Oscar, the amiable, irresponsible, is yourient Oscar, with no more sense of a picture than of the fit of a coat as the courage of the opinions of others. It may be remembered that to this Oscar replied in the following note, which appeared in the world for November 1886. From Oscar. Atlus, this is very sad, with our James vulgarity begins at home, and should be allowed to stay there. Avoo, Oscar. This evoked from the spiteful James the following. To whom? A poor thing, Oscar, but for once, I suppose, your own. I have often wondered since why Oscar Wilde, if it be true that he was not qualified to speak on pictures, should have made the pretence to such knowledge. I know that all his life he was interested in art. He was a clever draftsman, in an admirable letter written from Portora School to his mother when he was about fourteen years of age, in which, while asking her for some abstruse quarterly review, for very last thing one would have expected a fourteen-year-old schoolboy to desire, and commenting on the colour of some flannel shirt that his mother had sent him, he sends her a caricature, very skillfully done, representing the werewolf Yee-hampolus boy, while contemplating Oscar and Willie dealing with the contents of a hamper which Lady Wilde had sent them. It is known further that when, just before leaving Oxford, he was asked what profession he intended to follow, he answered, If I followed my inclination, I would go and live in a gathered in Paris and paint beautiful pictures. Some of his original manuscript, as for instance one of the pages of the Sphinx, is enlivened with little caricature sketches, very cleverly done. I do not think that his sense of colour has ever been contested. I should say that possibly he only pretended to a larger knowledge of, and a deeper interest in painting, than he really possessed. I remember that once, having given me a reproduction of one of Pouvis de Chavant's pictures, on which he had written the words, Rien ne vrai que le beau. He made certain suggestions as to how I ought to have the picture framed. The narrow wood border was to be coloured grey, with a fillet of vermilion bisecting it. The effect was decidedly unpleasing, and I have often thought since that he said the first things that came into his head and suggested vermilion because he liked the mouthing of that sonorous and pictorial word. I must quote here from another book of mine, Twenty Years in Paris, a passage in which I endeavoured to explain this foyable of his, and to point out certain consequences which resulted to him from yielding to it. I think that the man who got closest to the truth in his reading of Wilde's character was the author of the review of Dapre Fundus which appeared in the Times, when he refers to his assumption of characteristics and qualities which were not his own, which indeed were alien to his real nature. And I think that one great mistake which Oscar Wilde made in life was to profess knowledge on subjects of which he had been too indolent to study the technique. There are certain things which not the intuition of the greatest genius who ever lived can impart. One has to go to school and start at ABC under the shadow of the rod. There was nothing which he could not have done if he had cared to master essential rules. Seeing that he might have attained, had he chosen to do so, to almost universal knowledge, he allowed himself to assume it. He wrote and spoke on many subjects on which he was not qualified to write or speak, not because the profound comprehension of them was beyond his reach, but because he had neglected the preliminaries essential to this comprehension. I believe that this was the reason why, in Paris, he never enjoyed that admitted mastership which was his in England. The French do not believe in accomplishment by sheer force of intuition. They train their future masters of the arts. They insist upon technical training for even the rarest genius. They send Talmer, Rachel, Sarah Bernhardt, Coquélan, Mounessouli to school. They have the Beaux-Arts and Rome for their painters and sculptors, and Rome and the conservatoire for their musicians and composers. If pretence there were, it was very well sustained and deceived many, not the least intelligent of his contemporaries. We read in Ernest Lagunès's masterly article on Oscar Wilde, written after his death, a tribute to his omniscience. Il savaito wrote Ernest Lagunès. With me, however, he spoke little about pictures. In matters of pictorial art and music he considered me a Philistine, indeed, more than once told me so, but we conversed almost continually on literature, in which my reading was at least as extensive as his own, and more diversified, for he knew neither German nor Italian. He was full in those days of the works of Balzac, as to which he said that they had escaped the usual fate of classics, books about which everybody talks, but which no one reads. I had read no Balzac at all at the time, and it was Oscar Wilde who revealed to me the wonderful humanities of the author of the human comedy. I remember one long noctambulus walk through moonlit Paris, during which he told me the story of Eugénie Grande. He started talking as we were leaving the, not at all, bad little eating-house on the Avenue de l'Opres, and brought the marvellous tale to a conclusion as we lent over the parapet of the Ponnerf and watched the moon silverying the spires of Notre-Dame. When I came to read the story in its original form, it seemed to me, as Balzac told it, not at all equal in pathos to the version as rendered by Wilde. And I remember that years after I suggested to him that he should retell for the English-speaking world all Balzac's stories. He said, I should consider it extremely impertinent on my part to do so. Teophile Gaultier and Flaubert were two other French authors who were great in his mind at that time. I learned most of the amoe camé from hearing him recite them. When he was not talking about literature he used to entertain me with stories of his childhood, which seems to have been a very happy one, and I will remember the pride and enthusiasm with which he used to talk about his mother. Of his father he spoke with reverence, and even detailed his foibles as though they called for admiration. It was from his own lips, another late walking night in Paris, that I listened to the lines requiescat, and heard the story of the little sister Isola dancing like a golden sandbeam about the house, in speaking of whom he draw nearer to sensibility than on any other topic. This little Isola died on 23rd February 1867 at the age of eight, but lived eternally in her brother's memory. Not very long before he died he was speaking to me of her, and he said that it was perhaps well that she had not lived, to see me like this. She was buried at Mostrim. The doctor, to quote from Stuart Mason's wonderful bibliography, quote, who attended Isola in her illness, described her as the most gifted and lovable child he had ever seen. Ozzie was at the time an affectionate, gentle, retiring, dreamy boy of twelve, at Portora School, whose lonely and inconsolable grief sought vent in long and frequent visits to his sister's grave in the village cemetery. This poem has, by many critics, been considered one of the best that Oscar Wilde ever wrote. It was included in a volume entitled Echoes from Cotterbos, published in 1906, edited by Professor R. Y. Tyrell and Sir Edward Sullivan, and was spoken of in various reviews as The Brightest Gem in the Collection, as a lovely dirge, published already in several anthologies, but too good not to bear quoting once more, and, in the Daily News, as The Best Thing in the Book. He had already in those days a liking for the morbid, and was a great reader of Baudelaire, whom he frequently quoted. The Fleur de Mal was a bedside book of his at the Hotel Decay-Voltaire. He delighted in that dreadful poem La Charonne, in which a lover, addressing his fair one, describes how in a country walk he came across the decaying carcass of some animal, details the horrors that he saw in progress, and exclaims, Such will you be, O Queen of Graces! I never gathered whether it was the skill of Baudelaire's technique in this poem, or the macabre horror of its subject, that principally attracted him. For he was perhaps equally enthusiastic about that other beautiful poem, entitled La Musique, which begins, La Musique sous-vends-mais-prend-comme-mere, vers ma pâle étroile, sous un plafond de brume ou tant une vaste éterre, je mets à la voile. Another poem in this book, which he used to quote as a model of style and beauty, was the one called Les Inconnus. A man is sitting outside a boulevard café, a woman dressed in deep morning passes, they exchange glances, the woman passes on, a lightning flash, then the night. The poet asks, will he ever see her again, elsewhere, far from here, too late, never perhaps? Au toit que j'eusse aimer, au toit qui le savait. Note that he had a hankering after the horrible was shown me when, one day, he asked me to dine with him at the Hotel Voltaire with Rolandat, a decadent poet who had recently published a terrible book called The Hand of Tropman, which contained the long poem from which the volume took its name, a poem which described, with every horrid detail, those dreadful murders with which the name of Tropman is associated in eternal infamy. Rolandat, who afterwards rescued himself from his surroundings and became a distinguished musician, to meet eventually, alas, with an end of unspeakable cruelty, was then in his absentee days, and I can remember few more dreadful moments than when, after dinner was over, he treated us to a mimetic recitation of this poem. I was for leaving the room, but was checked by our host, who seemed to be enjoying the ghastly performance intensely. When the poet, foaming at the mouth and shaking all over from nervous exhaustion, had finished and sank back on the couch from which he'd risen to speak his lines, Wild thanked him with the most exaggerated praise, and addressed him as, Master. At the same time he showed an intense delight in worthier verse. He had a farago of quotations from the English poets in his head, and most elighted in Keats and Shelley. I think that of all that Keats wrote, he chiefly admired the Ode to a Grecian Urn, the Superior Ode to a Nightingale I never heard him mention. In the Grecian Urn, the lines he seemed fondest of, by reason, as he explained of their pathos, were those beginning, What little town by river or seashore? The poor little town, he said, emptied of its folk, poor little town. What was pathetic and expressed in simple language seemed to make a special appeal to him. The quotation from Shelley, which I most frequently heard from him, were those towards the end of the Chenchi, where Beatrice, going out to execution, begs her mother to tie up my hair in any simple knot. Witnessing the real delight he took in the simple and pathetic, I could not but feel that his professed admiration for the horrors of Bolaire and Rodinat was but opposed, as much opposed as his professed liking for Absanth, when he first took to drinking that poison as an aperitif. In later years he used frequently to recommend the reading and study of Chatterton to people who wrote to him for advice on literary study. I never once heard him refer to this poet in those days when we ranged together the whole of the English Parnassus, and cannot even now understand what it was in Chatterton that particularly appealed to him. He was, by the way, always ready to assist those who came to him for advice. I append a copy of a letter which he wrote from Tite Street to a young man who would written to him, sending him a manuscript, and asking him for guidance to literary success. I have been laid up with a severe attack of asthma, he wrote, and have been unable to answer your letter before this. I return you your manuscript, as you desire, and would advise you to prune it down a little, and send it to either Time or Longman's. It is better than many magazine articles, though, if you will allow me to say so, it is rather belligerent in tone. As regards your prospects in literature, believe me that it is impossible to live by literature. By journalism a man may make an income, but rarely by pure literary work. I would strongly advise you to try and make some profession, such as that of a tutor, the basis and mainstay of your life, and to keep literature for your finest, rarest moments. The best work in literature is always done by those who do not depend upon it for their daily bread, and the highest form of literature, poetry, brings no wealth to the singer. For producing your best work also you will require some leisure and freedom from sordid care. It is always a difficult thing to give advice, but as you are younger than I am, I venture to do so. Make some sacrifice for your art, and you will be repaid, but ask of art to sacrifice herself for you, and a bitter disappointment may come to you. I hope it will not, but there is always a terrible chance. With your education you should have no difficulty in getting some post which should enable you to live without anxiety, and to keep for literature your most felicitous moods. To attain this end you should be ready to give up some of your natural pride, but loving literature as you do, I cannot think that you would not do so. Finally, remember that London is full of young men working for literary success, and that you must carve your way to fame. Laurels don't come for the asking. Yours Oscar Wilde. With letters like these, and often by direct exertion, he helped scores of men and women. I remember one prominent dramatist, to whom he opened his successful career by guaranteeing the expenses of a trial matinee of his first play. If the play had failed, Oscar Wilde would have been two or three hundred pounds out of pocket. It succeeded, and the young author was launched. Like nearly everyone whom Wilde had helped with counsel or direct assistance of person or purse, he was one of those who spoke most bitterly against him when the debacle came. He was heard to say that he trusted the wretch would get twenty years' penal servitude. Poor Oscar Wilde had a capacity for making enemies because, when there was a bon mot to be turned, he did not stop to consider how the person against whom it was directed would appreciate or condone its sting. From the very first days of my acquaintance I noticed this habit of his, of saying bitter things about people, just, perhaps, witty always, but such as his victims would remember rankerously. There had been, at the dinner at which I first met him, the son of a famous pianist, and when I mentioned this fact to him, he remarked, Well, I am glad to see that he has managed to survive it. And this is only one of the remarks of that nature which I heard him utter. CHAPTER XVII I never understood how Oscar Wilde kept up his scholarship and lived in touch with the literary progress of his time. I hardly ever saw him read anything beyond a newspaper. Newspapers he disposed of very quickly. The paper would be snatched up, glanced over, rapidly mastered, and thrown to the ground after a tiny strip had been torn off an edge, rolled into a pellet, and put into his mouth. I have seen Le Figaro, thus disposed of in two minutes, less than the Tom de Foumé une cigarette. The bulky of British papers might take a little longer, but not much. Yet there was nothing in any paper that had thus passed through his hands which had escaped his attention. Nothing of any importance, that is to say, and curiously enough, even when he was in jail, he seemed quite au courant with what was going on outside. On one occasion when I visited him, with a special order from the home secretary at Wandsworth Prison, I mentioned that that morning the news had been made public that Mrs. Langtree's jewels had been stolen from some bank. He knew all about it, and was commenting on the matter when the warder interrupted and said that we were to restrict our conversation to business. How he acquired his information at Wandsworth I do not know, for I never spoke with him about his prison life. At Redding Jail, as we now know, he was regularly supplied by one of the warders with a morning paper daily, and with a certain number of literary weeklies also. During the last two or three months of his stay in Redding Jail, Oscar Wilde read his daily chronicle regularly, but the manner of his reading was not that of the old days. He read slowly, holding the paper up to the light, and standing up to do so. He read every line in the paper, and I am not sure that he did not peruse the advertisements too. One day, Horesco reference, when he was absorbed in his daily chronicle, he heard steps outside his door. He had barely had the time to fold the newspaper up into some sort of small packet, and to thrust it behind him on the little trestle table at which he worked, when a key snarled in the lock of the door of his cell. It was thrown open, and Major Nelson entered on one of his frequent visits to his distinguished prisoner. Oscar Wilde, drawn up at attention, stood masking with his body the table on which lay the folded paper. His anxiety must have been tremendous, for here was a grave offence on his part, and on the part of the person who had supplied him with the paper, not for pay, but from friendship, a far graver one, as serious a breach of prison regulations as can well be conceived. For Oscar Wilde, discovery meant the loss of Major Nelson's confidence, and of all the little privileges which had been granted him. For the purveyor it meant ruin and possibly imprisonment. The interview was a longer one than usual, the Major's solicitude for his prisoner prompting him to ask him several kindly questions, heaping as many coals of fire on Oscar Wilde's head. And all the while the chronicle was there in full view, had the Governor happen to glance at the little table on which day profundus was being written. Fortune, however, favoured the audacious, and Major Nelson eventually retired without having detected the gross breach of prison regulations which had been committed. Nor did this narrow escape teach the accomplices anything, for the one kept bringing and the other kept reading the morning paper, every day, until Wilde left prison. To give him the chronicle to read, said the purveyor, was easy enough, as I had it delivered to me at the prison, but what gave me a lot of trouble was getting him the weeklies that he wanted, because I could not have those sent to the prison, as that would have attracted attention. Prison warders don't read spectators and Saturday reviews. I had to go out into the town to fetch them, and was often anxious lest my absence might be noticed, and then there was always the risk of my being questioned as to what I'd been to fetch, and what it was for. He had few, if any, books with him in Paris. He seemed to know his favourite authors by heart. Meredith, for instance, he had a great admiration for, who has forgotten his curious criticism of Meredith, which he puts into the mouth of Vivian in his essay, The Decay of Lying, as to which criticism the layman may well be excused if he remain ignorant whether it is intended to be favourable or the reverse. Ah, Meredith, who can define him? His style is chaos, illuminated by flashes of lightning. As a writer, he has mastered everything except language. As a novelist, he can do everything except tell a story. As an artist, he is everything except articulate. Somebody in Shakespeare, touchstone, I think, talks about a man who is always breaking his shins over his own wit, and it seems to me that this might serve as a basis for a criticism of Meredith's method. But whatever he is, he is not a realist, or rather I would say that he is a child of realism, who is not on speaking terms with his father. By deliberate choice he has made himself a romanticist. He has refused to bow the knee to Baal, and, after all, even if the man's fine spirit did not revolt against the noisy assertions of realism, his style would be quite sufficient of itself to keep life at a respectful distance. He frequently quoted Meredith to me. I think one of his favourite passages was one in The Egoist, where someone sees himself mirrored in someone else's eyes, sees his own reflection, and hugs it. He quoted Meredith to me frequently, and I gather that he considered him the foremost British novelist, but I never saw a volume of Meredith in his hands nor any copies of the novelist's works in any house where he lived. Meredith, I think, did not largely reciprocate Wilde's admiration. I met him for the first time just after Wilde's conviction, and, in company with Henry James, had a long drive with him. He was monologuing most of the time, and mainly about Wilde. He seemed to be sorry for his fate, but expressed, as far as I remember, no particular sympathy with him, and certainly said nothing to indicate that the cutting short of Oscar Wilde's career was a cruel blow to British literature. He had found the words, carnal insanity, to explain Wilde's aberration, and seemed to like the expression, for he frequently repeated it. It was useless to attempt to lead him to say this or that, for he had a convenient deafness which enabled him to ignore any questions and to monopolise the conversation with a soliloquial exposition of his own views. Swinburne was another writer, for whom Oscar Wilde had a very great admiration, and who had none at all for Oscar Wilde. When I first met Oscar Wilde in Paris, he was always talking about Swinburne, and he told me that it was the fact that, as a young undergraduate at Oxford, Swinburne had had the run of Moncton Mellon's library, and had dipped deeply into the arcana of that gentleman's collection that had set his mind on the subjects which so shocked the Poet Laureate. He also told me a story of a banquet at this nobleman's country house, where the lampaderies were female and nude, and he asserted that Swinburne's concupiscence was purely cerebral, and for the very excellent reason that a riding accident had put the Poet out of any lists but those of fancy. Two or three years after Oscar Wilde's death I received a letter, apropos of what I forget, from the Pines Putney from Watts-Dunton. All I knew about the writer was that he was an author and that he lived with Swinburne, for whom I had then, as I have now, an intense admiration, amounting almost to worship. I was accordingly delighted when, after an exchange of several letters with Lenome Watts-Dunton, the latter informed me that Swinburne meant to do himself the pleasure of writing to me in person. I was vastly pleased at the honour and distinction which were to be bestowed upon me, and in answering Watts-Dunton's letter I told him how proud a letter from Swinburne would make me. I mentioned, among other things, that it was Oscar Wilde who would first draw my attention to the wonderful beauties of his friend's poetry, and I added that I was even then engaged on a small book relating the story of my friendship with Oscar Wilde. And that letter closed hermetically the correspondence between the Pines Putney Hill and the Villa Blanc at Parramay. As I received no answer from Watts-Dunton, nor the promised letter from Swinburne I wrote again, but never a word came across the sea. In the end it dawned upon me that my statement that Wilde had been my friend, and that his memory was still cherished by me, had horrified the virtuous and liberal-minded academe of Putney Hill, so that I was to be cut off from all communion with them. I was rather amused, because, from the point of view of Mrs. Grundy, Swinburne ranks as a poet of the most corrupting influence. I remember losing the entree to a good house in the West End, because I mentioned casually at dinner there that I was a great admirer of Swinburne, and certainly many of Swinburne's poems are not what one would like one's sons and daughters to read. And again it could not be because Wilde had outraged the secular law, or was supposed to have done so, that Swinburne had such abhorrence for him, for one of the strong appeals that Swinburne always made to, as youth, was that he was an anarchist, living in defiance of the law, secular or define. I was sorry not to get Swinburne's letter, but by that time I had grown accustomed to all kinds of slights, snubs, setbacks, losses, and so forth, because of my friendship for Wilde, and because I never concealed it. I do not care toughence one way or the other about it, and as for public opinion, having spent most of my life in manufacturing it, I have that contempt for it, which most manufacturers have for the goods they turn out. The fact remains that, because in the year of Wilde's downfall, I did not care to repudiate him, but came over to London to be near him, just at the time when Alfred Douglas was going abroad to be away from him, my professional income diminished by 50%, and really never recovered. And the amusing thing is that now that the work has been done, and that thanks to Robert Ross, myself, and Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde has come back into his own, the very people who used to revile me in the old days for sticking to my friend, forcing me even to legal action to defend my attitude, now that it is an honour and a distinction to have been Wilde's friend, say and write that in speaking of my friendship for Wilde, I am arrogating to myself what never existed except in my imagination. Not many months ago, in a publication called The Tatler, Eratum, for The Tatler read The Bystander, I apologise to the former for my laps in memory. End Eratum. There was a reference to my well-pretending friendship with Wilde in an article written, no doubt, by one of those persons in Fleet Street, who, after Ernest Dawson's death in my cottage, predicted the rumour that I had done very well out of Ernest Dawson. Just to nail that particular lie, with reference to my friendship with Wilde, to the counter, and to give the persons referred to no further excuse for the exercise of their spleen, I reproduce in these pages two facsimiles, one being the title page of the copy of the Ballad of Reading Jail, which Oscar Wilde sent me, and the other a letter from Mrs. Oscar Wilde, in which she says that I am the only friend that her husband cared to see in jail. It may be remarked, en passant, that if our efforts to bring Oscar Wilde back to repute and honour had failed, these very people, like the writer of the article above referred to, would never have missed an opportunity of charging me with having been Wilde's friend. In doing this I should have considered that they were conferring upon me an honour and a tribute, but such would not have been their intention. From the very first day of our meeting in Paris, Wilde said that we must become great friends, and he certainly behaved towards me in the friendliest way. He gave up much of his time to be in my company, in which he seemed to take pleasure, and, neglected, on my behalf, many acquaintances which might have been useful to him. He was glad to take me anywhere, and to introduce me to anybody that he knew, and it was by him that I was first presented to Sarah Bernhardt. It was also by him, or rather, through him, that I saw Sarah Bernhardt for the last time in this world, unless hazard should ever bring me into her presence again. Wilde introduced me to her at the vaudeville theatre, and the first sight I got of, Phaedra, was bare-footed and in her chemise, peeping out from her dressing-room into the little parlour which formed part of her loge. She spoke in a very friendly way to my cher Oscar, and seemed as delighted to see him, as Jean Richepin, who was in the parlour referred to, and who, with folded arms and the scowl of an othello, appeared horribly jealous of any male that approached the divine Sarah, most emphatically did not. Wilde afterwards told me that the reason Sarah and he were such good friends, was that when she first came to London he was able to render her various little services in Stageland, and in the press, and, you see, Robert, I never may love to her. As a matter of fact, at that time I was dreadfully in love with another and more beautiful actress. Sarah often said that what had so pleased her about Oscar Wilde, was that he had not courted her, who hated being courted, had no use for enamoured men, even of the highest rank, and liked for once in a while to meet a man who treated her as a fellow artist, as a comrade, which was what Oscar Wilde had done. In my little book, The Story of an Unhappy Friendship, I have related at length how Sarah Bernhardt behaved to Wilde, and, to myself, when he was in prison, how I went, at his bidding, to offer to sell her the copyright of Salome for four hundred pounds, how she wept and wrung her hands, how she finally promised to see what she could do, and thereafter spent her time in avoiding me, who enthusiastically had telegraphed to Wilde, who was in Holloway and who was in desperate straits for money, wherewith to provide for his defence, that Sarah was coming to the rescue. She kept me on the run for several days, having me put off with various excuses day after day. Finally she sent me word that she would write me, and, though that is twenty years ago, I am still waiting for her communication. It occurred to me afterwards that if I had only kept my eyes open during that first interview with her on the subject, I could have spared Oscar Wilde a great disappointment, and, myself, a number of very humiliating calls at the house in the Boulevard Perair. I had been, as usual, received by Sarah in her studio, which was lined with cages of animals and birds, and, just behind Sarah, as she sat by my side, wringing her hands and dabbing her eyes over the sad fate of Secher Oscar Sibon Sidoux, a large, obscene ape with a multicoloured posterior was disporting itself, as I thought, after its kind. Since then, and thinking the matter over, I have come to the conclusion that that friendly ape was trying by its gestures and grimaces to warn me against believing anything that the actress was telling me, to disbelieve her expressions of sorrow and sympathy for my friend, and to place no reliance whatever on her promises. The Beast certainly did everything he could to cast ridicule on the pathetic scene which was being enacted by Sarah for my special benefit. He stuck out his tongue, he winked a deliberate eye, he smacked his posterior as he turned it upon us, as though to draw my attention to its many iridescent hues. As the Americans say, he was trying to wise me, and I dare say, if he could have spoken, he would have said, well, if you think that Madame will risk a santime of her money on a friend who was fallen into hopeless ruin and disgrace, you must be a bigger fool than you look. I did not understand this simian warning, and the result was a great deal of annoyance, and, no doubt to Oscar, a very bitter experience in a life which thereafter was to be a bitter one, to paraphrase a subsequent remark of his, quoted by Arthur Ransom. I say, no doubt, because beyond the remark, Sarah is hopeless, I fear, in the letter he wrote to me from Holloway, he never once referred to the matter afterwards. He never said a word in reproach of her conduct, but took it as philosophically as he took all the blows that fate levelled at him. As things have turned out, it was, of course, extremely fortunate for the wild estate and family that Sarah, after giving me her formal promise, did not keep her word. She would have acquired, for three or four hundred pounds, a piece of literary and dramatic property worth, Obama, two hundred times either amount, and with that tremendous profit the satisfactory feeling of having done the kind action. I do not know whether Oscar Wilde ever saw Sarah again after his return to Paris, for he never mentioned her name. I doubt it, however. He was very sensitive about his disgrace, and would not go counter to any possibility of a slight. After the duchess of Padua had been dispatched on her luckless journey to California, Oscar Wilde turned to the writing of The Sphinx. When I first fixed the date when he wrote this poem, Wilde Scholiastes contested my accuracy, and tried to establish that it was composed many years previously, namely during his years at Oxford, 1874 to 1878, and that because it contained certain lines transferred from the Newtigate Prize poem Revenna. I have scarcely seen some twenty summers cast their green for autumn's gaudy liveries. I do not deny that it is quite possible that Oscar Wilde may at Oxford have commenced some poem, parts of which he may have used when he came to write The Sphinx in Paris, but he certainly never told me so, and gave me the impression that it was a fresh opus on which he was engaged. And there is no doubt that what originally suggested this poem to him was a poem by one of the French writers, Baudelaire, I think it was, whom he had particularly studied during his Parisian days in 1883. This poem begins with some lines describing how in the poet's apartment, as in his heart, a monstrous cat se promen. Was Oscar Wilde reading Baudelaire at Oxford? I don't think so, and it certainly was Baudelaire who suggested The Sphinx. Anyhow, I saw and heard him composing the poem, and as I have related elsewhere to the amusement of Alfred Douglas, I helped Wilde with a rhyme or two which he used in it. Stuart Mason, in his admirable bibliography, a book indispensable to Wilde students, gives, on page 396, a reduced facsimile of a page of the manuscript of The Sphinx, which he thinks seems to bear out the fact that portions of this poem were written as early as the author's Oxford days, and that because this page was one on which Wilde, exercising his talents as a caricaturist, had drawn a couple of comic dons. The verse written on this page, however, begins, follow some roving lion's spore, and the word I have italicised, spore, was not in Wilde's Oxford days one that was known or used in England. It is a Dutch word which came to us, with many other Boer words, much later, and with regard to dons, who are usually comic, they lend themselves the caricature anywhere and at any time. However, thanks to Mr Ross, my version of The History of The Sphinx is the one on permanent record at the British Museum. In 1909, Robert Ross presented the manuscript of this poem, which had been given to him by C Ricketts to the British Museum, where, according to Stuart Mason, it is catalogued amongst the additional manuscripts as 37942 The Sphinx, a poem written at Paris in 1883, Charade, Life of Oscar Wilde, 1906, page 238. An incomplete manuscript of this poem, and a type written draft of the same, with manuscript corrections by the author, was sold at Sotheby's on 27 July 1911, for £143 to Bernard Quaritch. On several pages of the above manuscript there are notes for rhymes, which reminds me to put on record that Wilde, much to my astonishment, told me that he considered a rhyming dictionary a very useful accessory to the liar. I had thought that true poets never used such a book, but then I was young at the time. End of Chapter 17 Chapter 18 of The Real Oscar Wilde by Robert Charade. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Oscar Wilde then, whom I first met in Paris in 1883, was a marvellous young man, enthusiastic, ambitious, kindly, generous, brilliantly clever, devoted to the arts, hardworking and conscientious at his craft, a delightful conversation list, liberal-minded, benign, a thorough good sport, and an aristocrat in every fibre of him. And what particularly delighted me in him, apart from his entire lack of affectation of any kind, was his exceeding and exuberant joy of life, his labours-glader, as Ibsen calls it. Though he appeared to take pleasure in reading morbid and pessimistic authors, he himself simply hugged the enjoyments of life, and I ever think of the stimulating picture that dear Oscar used to present, when, dinner or a course being over, he would pull out his silver cigarette-case, slap it down on the table, and prepare for the first inter- or post-Prandial smoke. He was tolerant and without rancour, as witnessed his behaviour when he was disappointed by Mary Anderson. And that he was generous and reckless of his money where his friends were concerned, I have already shown, by relating how he came to my rescue with a profit loan of money, when it was urgent for me to leave for London. Apart from that, I remember that, being very interested in the life of Gérard de Nerval, he surprised me one day with the presence of a very rare little brochure about this melancholy poet, the Delvau brochure, if I'm not mistaken, for which he had hunted all the bookshops on the K-Voltaire, and for which, the Dutchess having turned him down at that time, he paid far more than he could afford. That he was very hard up when he came back to London, and before he secured his engagement to lecture in the provinces, was shown me by the fact that, I being at Ambleside at the time, he wrote me asking if I could receive him as a guest for some weeks. I remember also that at this time, being anxious to get some ties of the colours that Oscar Wilde affected, or had been used to affect, ties of the so-called aesthetic shades, I wrote to Liberties asking for a selection to be sent me to choose from. To obtain such a consignment it was necessary, by the rules of the firm, to give a London reference, and having mentioned Oscar Wilde's name, he being the Godesar of Liberties aesthetic truck, I had every reason to expect the goods to be sent. I received neither selection of ties nor any explanation as to the reason for their not being dispatched, and I could only conclude that my reference was not considered a satisfactory one. After I left the lakes I went to London, and one day, by hazard, met my friend again at, of all places, Clapham Junction, that railway station which, some years later, was to be the scene of the hideous outrage to which he was there subjected, while waiting, manacled and in prison and garb, for the train by which he was to be conveyed to Reading Jail, and which he describes in the following passage in Day Profundice. Everything about my tragedy has been hideous, mean, repellent, lacking in style. Our very dress makes us grotesque. We are the zanies of sorrow. We are the clowns whose hearts are broken. We are specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour. In November 13th, 1895, I was brought down here from London. From two o'clock till half-past two that day, I had to stand on the centre-platform of Clapham Junction, in convict dress and handcuffed, for the world to look at. I had been taken out of the hospital ward without a moment's notice being given to me. Of all possible objects I was the most grotesque. When people saw me, they laughed. Each train as it came up swelled the audience. Nothing could exceed their amusement. That was, of course, before they knew who I was. As soon as they had been informed, they laughed still more. For half an hour I stood there in the grey November rain surrounded by a jeering mob. For a year after that was done to me, I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time. I had heard of this outrage shortly after it happened, and was informed, indeed, that the occurrence was even worse than what Wilde relates. I was told that the man who first recognised the prisoner shouted, by God, that's Oscar Wilde, and spat on him. I published the story in the hopes that some of those who were present might read my comments. The fact was denied then, but de profundis confirmed it. I have more than once in England witnessed the delight of the Anglo-Saxon plebs in contemplating the shame and humiliation of prisoners pilloried by our clumsy prison arrangements in public places, and attribute it less to ignorance than to a kind of bloodthirstiness which is characteristic of our race, our Lechivier de Sangue, which perhaps alone the Marquis de Sard could have explained. However, that morning in 1883, we were very far from anticipating to what a shameful tragedy the platform where we met, by chance, was within twelve years to be the stage. He was in high spirits, asked me to lunch with him, and rode up to town with me in a third-class carriage, a condition of travelling to which he was certainly not accustomed. I mentioned to him, apropos of this, that a great Belgian nobleman, the Duke de Linea, and we asked why he travelled third-class, answered, because there are no fourth-classes in Belgium. This led to a reference to our common impacuniosity, and to the murderer L'Asenaire's horror of the empty pocket. If I remember rightly, my position at that time was a very bad one. I was to leave the house where I had been staying as a guest on the morrow, and hardly knew where to go, for my only tangible asset was the manuscript of a translation from Torghenev. When Oscar heard this, he had once invited me to come and share rooms with him at his lodgings in Charles Street, Grosvenor Square. He had signed a contract, he told me, for a lecturing tour in London and the provinces, and could at least give me shelter until I had found something to do. Wild's rooms in Charles Street, Grosvenor Square, were in a house on the right-hand side as one goes towards the square and opposite the Coburg Muse. The street has been renamed, and is now Carlos Street. The house, which was an old-fashioned one, has now been pulled down, and a modern building stands in its place. The lodgings, which were for single gentlemen of distinction, were kept by a minister and Mrs. Davis. They were most excellent people, the kind of landlord and landlady that one so very rarely meets in the dreary Sahara of London, Lodgingdom. Mr. Davis had been a butler in good families, his wife had been a cook, and a real cordon bleu she was. Mr. Davis used to go out to banquets in the city to superintend the waiting, and had a standing arrangement with the governors of the Bank of England. They were both devoted to Oscar Wilde, though he was often in their debt, and could not speak too highly of his cleverness, kindness, and consideration. And Beard remarked, en passant, that anybody who was ever in Wilde's service, either directly or indirectly, had this same feeling for him. Bless his sweet face, he was the kindest gentleman that ever lived, as the recorded remark of a woman who was, for some long time, cook at his house in Type Street. In his case, as in that of most men, his kindness was misinterpreted by some as a sign of weakness, by others as being dictated by some base motive. I remember how pathetically Oscar Wilde, at the time of his trial, having told me that he had seen in the perlues of the court a number of the wretched lads who gave evidence against him exclaimed to me, and they have nothing against me, Robert, except that I was kind to them. Oscar's rooms were on the top floor, an oak-paneled sitting-room, with a small bedroom opening out of it. When Oscar was at home, I used to sleep in a bedroom on the ground floor. When he was on voyage, I was allowed to use his bedroom. I remember that the bed was no ciberitic couch. It was a particularly hard camp bedstead, and reminded me of those we had at Oxford. There was no bathroom in the house, an inconvenience which troubled Oscar Wilde, but little. He was not addicted to the daily bath. At the same time he had a veritable cultus for his body, and took great pride in his personal appearance. Douglas relates how much time he used to spend every day in brushing his beautiful hair. On his arrival in Paris, his first visit was always chez le coiffure. I do not think he ever shaved himself, at least I never saw him do so, yet I never saw him as a free man, the least untidy about the face, so I suppose that in London he visited the barber daily, for, like his brother, he had a strong growth of face hair. I remember once seeing him with a beard and whiskers, which the poor fellow tried to hide from me by holding his Czech blue and white handkerchief before his face. That was on one of the occasions on which I visited him in Reading Jail. His custom of having his hair curled dated from his adoption of a neuronian coiffure. As a matter of fact, the curls were at once combed out, an agreeable waviness alone remaining. He was fond of his body. He used a stroke and pet himself. When he was reading he was usually seen to be caressing his nose or gently pulling his ear. Sometimes with his nail he would scrape off some piece of dead skin, which he would roll up, afterwards contemplating the pellet, which had been part of himself, with admiring interest. I remember how once, when a new overcoat was delivered to him in Paris and he had put it on, he manifested quite a childish pleasure in the comfort it gave him. So warm, Robert, he said, folding his hands across his breast like a child. The arrangements at the lodgings in Charles Street were distinguished and comfortable. Our newspapers were invariably aired before they were brought with the early cup of tea to our bedsides. The valeting was what one is accustomed to in the best houses. As to the catering, it was incomparably the best I have ever met with in any lodgings. We used to déjeuner in the French fashion about eleven o'clock, and it was as good a breakfast lunch as any that could be got anywhere in London. The Davises had some excellent claret, and the coffee that Mrs. Davis made reminded one of the café noir that used to be served at the not at all bad little place in the Avenue de la Obre, where we used to dine with the Duchess. Apropos of whom I remember that very shortly after I came to live at Charles Street, I, one morning, found Oscar Wilde talking with Johnston Forbes Robertson, now Sir Johnston, and I heard the actor, who was holding a roll of manuscript in his hand, say, Very well, Oscar, I will take it round to the printers at once. This was the manuscript of the Duchess of Padua. I imagine that it was then that the twenty copies privately printed as manuscript, to which reference has been made, and which were marked Opus II were produced. We generally dined en vile. Oscar was usually invited out. I dined where I could, not infrequently, with Duke Humphrey. Sometimes we went to the café Royal, and on more than one occasion Whistler was with us. He was not very prosperous in those days, and used to order the very cheapest claret to take with his frugal grill. Oscar Wilde showed him the greatest deference. Like the grand Virginian gentleman that you are, he sometimes said to him, Whistler seemed to me always to be nurturing a grievance, either against some individual or against the social collectivity. I remember once saying to Oscar that the pre-Prandial conversation with Whistler was an excellent substitute for bitters, as an aperitif, and so indeed it was. His remarks were the cascara sagrada of conversation. I was promptly snubbed by Oscar for my observation. One does not criticise a James McNeill Whistler, he said, though later on he himself was to criticise him, and not without a serbity. There were some days on which I might have signed myself, like Dr. Johnson, in Francis. And there was at least one day when, if he had not had an invitation to dine out, Wilde might have done the same. I shall not forget with what an air of self-reproach, and even of guilt, the good fellow, knowing my position, hurried out of the room that night. In those days he was making use of pawn-shops, the bankers of the poor, and once he asked me to accompany him to Marlborough Street Police Court, where he was to swear an affidavit regarding a pawn-ticket which he'd lost. I believe the pledge in question was the gold medal, the Barkley gold medal, which he'd won at Trinity College Dublin. This medal seems to have lain with the pawnbrokers most of the time, for it was in pledge when he died, and the amount of the loan being a considerable one, and more than Ross, with all the other charges on him, could afford to pay, it was not redeemed, and doubtless as long since gone into the melting-pot. I was present at the first lecture that Oscar Wilde gave in London at the Prince's Hall. The attendance was a fair one, and most of his points were appreciated. His manner was supremely easy, he dominated his audience. He seemed to realise that what he was saying was both new and interesting, and that it was for his listeners to appreciate that fact, and feel pleased and proud at being lectured to by him. His attitude was that of the Roman actor, who at the end of the play used suddenly to realise the existence of an audience, addressed them directly, and, with a peremptory WASP laudite, leave the stage. I understood that he had been carefully coached in his stage manner and deportment, and that by no less an actor than Mr Hermann Vesin. Vesin used to elate that one day, shortly before the lecture tour, Oscar Wilde called on him, and, Vesin, he said, I am to go lecturing in England. I want you to help me. I want a natural style, with a touch of affectation. Well, answered Vesin, and haven't you got that, Oscar? Vesin added that Oscar did not like that remark of his, and seemed to think that he was making fun of him. Wilde had had a very high opinion of Vesin's quality as an actor, which is shown in the following letter which he wrote him, and of which I reproduce the facsimile in these pages. Vesin, who gave this letter to the lady who has lent it to me for the purposes of this book, penciled upon it the approximate date of its reception, 4th of October, 1880. It is dated from Tight Street, where Wilde was then sharing rooms with an artist friend. This is the letter. Tight Street, Chelsea. My dear Vesin, I send you a copy of my drama. Footnote. A copy of the first edition of Vera. End footnote. Which you are kind enough to hear me read some months ago. Any suggestion about situations or dialogue I should be so glad to get from such an experienced artist as yourself. I have just found out what a difficult craft playwriting is. Will you let me tell you what immense pleasure your Iago gave me. It seems to me the most perfect example I have seen of that right realism, which is founded on consummate art and sustained by consummate genius. The man Iago walked and talked before us. Two points particularly delighted me. The enormous character you gave to otherwise trivial details, a rare and splendid art, to make all common things symbolic of the leading idea, as Albert Durer loved to do in his drawings. The other is your delivery of asides, notably in Act II. I never knew how they ought to be quite before, but perhaps you are saying in an aside now, Oha jam setis. So, believe me, your friend and admirer, Oscar Wilde. Vesin had a strong affection for Wilde. The last time I saw this fine actor, to whom his contemporaries never did full justice, was at Lady Wilde's house in Oakley Street, during the last trial. Oscar was too ill and tired to come downstairs, where a number of his friends had collected that evening to wish him luck. I do not know that Vesin, with whom that night I had a long conversation about our friend, ever saw him again. When he talked about Oscar he used to relate how fascinated a niece of his, a young girl of seventeen, over from America, had been with the poet, who had sat next to her at a dinner party. She was simply delighted with him, he used to say. He sat next to her and all through dinner devoted himself to her amusement. He told her stories, he made jokes, he was amiable and kind, and the girl went away in enthusiasm for him. Oscar had the special gift of making himself beloved by young people, and especially girls, and there are many stories on record in this connection. That he ever tried to score off a girl with a caustic saying, I disbelieve, and I never credited the story that keeps cropping up about him and a Miss Smith. I can remember your name very well, he is alleged to have said to this young lady, who had claimed a previous acquaintance with him, but I certainly cannot recall your face. That is the very thing that Oscar Wilde would never have said, for his nature was free from vulgarity, and he hated to hurt a person's feelings. He certainly was caustic in remarks he made about people when discussing them out of their hearing, but I do not think that I ever heard him say an unkind thing to anybody. As to ridiculing a person's name, as he is alleged to have done in this Smith anecdote, it is the very last thing he would have done. I once heard him rebuke a man who had told him that, having been done by a solicitor of the name of Cheese, he had written to him to say that any kind of conduct might be expected from a man with such a cognomen. That was a very vulgar thing to do, said Oscar, a man cannot help his name. One frequently reads stories about Wilde, which to those who knew him are obviously neither true, nor cleverly invented. I have always disbelieved the following two anecdotes, which appear now and again in the press, and are probably quoted by someone who thinks that they do credit to Oscar Wilde's wit and power of repartee. These are the anecdotes. One episode in connection with Wilde I remember well. He was chatting after lunch in a circle of both sexes, and a very beautiful and fascinating woman, whose name is a household word, kept nagging at him on the question of original sin, a subject she might well have thought shy of, considering her own Poppeian record. Sin began with Adam and came down to you, Oscar, she said, and he turned upon her like a greyhound on a hair. No, he murmured in his silkiest tones. Sin commenced with Eve. Cleopatra carried it on, and, my dear Blank, the future of sin may, I think, be safely left in your hands. She never forgave him. On another occasion a bishop dining at the same table said, in a blustering, overbearing manner to Oscar Wilde, Sir, I can't think. I really can't think as you do. So, sorry, my lord, drawled Wilde, but why not ask the creator to rectify his errors and give you something to think with? Then the bishop asked someone to pass him the nuts. As I've said, nobody who knew Oscar Wilde will believe either of these stories. He had no silky tones. He never drawled, and he certainly never was rude. But the strangest stories are current about him. I remember hearing a remarkably vulgar but wealthy woman, once abusing Wilde, and she related that it was his habit in society to shout everybody else down, and that another disagreeable characteristic of his was that if anybody said anything real smart, he used to note it down on his cuff, so as to record it for his own use on a future occasion. Which reminds me that the man who had occupied Wilde's rooms in Charles Street before he went there to live was Pellegrini, the ape of Vanity Fair, whose notable caricature of Oscar Wilde, never before republished, I am able to reproduce here. Mr. Davis used to talk about him and relate that all Pellegrini's notes on a subject used to be penciled on his shirt cuff. And every morning when I came in to take his clothes, said Davis, Mr. Pellegrini would shout out, On your life, Davis, leave my shirt alone. There's twenty pounds worth of stuff on it. The only instance I can remember where Wilde made play with a characteristic as to which the person in question might possibly have been sensitive, and, accordingly, where deliberately he might have hurt a man's feelings, was when he changed to Mr. Hopper the name of one of his characters in Lady Windermere's Fan. He did this because the actor who had been selected to play the part in question had a peculiar walk, a kind of hop, so that the new name chosen described his mannerism. The brother of this actor was present, by the way, when Oscar Wilde read his play to the company at the St. James Theatre and relates, quote, He had just crossed from Ireland that morning. His silk hat was ruffled, and as he stepped onto the stage he stumbled. He put a large box of cigarettes on the table in front of him, and saying, May I smoke? lit one and began to read. The company was not prepared to be impressed, but, after the first sentences, all listened in breathless silence to the clothes. UNQUOTE END OF CHAPTER 18 CHAPTER 19 OF THE REAL OSCAR WILD by Robert Charade This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. I spent some weeks at the lodgings in Charles Street, during which time Oscar Wilde was mostly away lecturing in the provinces. He seemed to dislike the work, and rarely spoke about his experiences in the country. I fancy he felt rather humiliated by the necessity to do such work, for it was obvious, from the announcements of the lecture agents, that his personality and its notoriety, rather than the value or the interest of his discourses, were considered the attraction to the public. But money was very short, and he just had to lend himself to the business. When he was resting at home, he seemed generally rather tired, wrote nothing, and read very little. But his brain was working all the time, and his conversation was as brilliant as ever. I have heard him, cigarette in hand, lying in bed, suggest to his brother Willie Wilde the ideas for half a dozen stories for the world, to which Willie was a frequent contributor, all in the space of half an hour. In those days, Wilde was great friends with Edmund Yates, the editor and proprietor of the world. Yates had a considerable admiration for Wilde, and, cynical man of the world though he was, a real personal liking. He could contributed very largely by his constant references to Oscar Wilde in his greatly read paper, to stimulate and maintain public curiosity and interest in the young Irishmen of letters, and was, in short, Wilde's most effective advertising agent. He was more than this, he was Wilde's defender against Henry Laboucher, who had a grudge against Oscar, who was falsely reported to have said something derogatory about Henrietta Hodson in Chicago. Laboucher was constantly attacking Wilde in truth, and just after he had left Paris in 1883, brought out in that periodical a very offensive article, entitled Exit Oscar. Yates answered this attack in the next issue of the world, and said that if exit there were, it was at least a very brilliant one, proceeding to relate Wilde's triumphs in America, and his social successes in Paris. For many years the world might be considered Wilde's official organ in London, and so continued until, in the year 1890, Wilde unfortunately quarreled with Yates, who, being gouty and irritable, took offence at a note that Wilde had written him, and sent him the following communication, which began with Dear Oscar. I had not noticed the paragraph until you drew my attention to it, and now that I have read it, I confess I do not think the statement deserves the harsh words you apply to it, or that I, in such dealings as we have had, have ever laid myself open to your excessively impertinent and offensive suggestions about reminiscences. However, to prevent any further annoying intrusion, I have given orders that your name shall never again appear in the world. The trouble was about a paragraph describing a party in which the words occurred, the two Oscars, Wilde and Browning, vied with one another in retailing well-known anecdotes. It was a pity that Oscar quarrelled with Yates, who was a man of very considerable influence, and who, in the early days of Oscar's journalistic struggles, had put a good deal of remunerative work in his way. Wilde had at least the satisfaction of remembering, when the split took place, that it was Yates and not he who had initiated their acquaintance. In his bibliography, Stuart Mason quotes a letter written by Yates on 30 January 1879 to Willey Wilde, in which he says, I wish you would put me on rapport with your brother, the nudigate man, of whom I hear so much and so favourably. In the midst of his trial, over the success of Lady Windermere's fan, Wilde may have remembered Yates' caustic note, and the editor's attempt to condemn his name to oblivion. It must have been pleasant for him to reflect that the world would now be forced to open its columns again to a discussion of his work, and that Yates was to be taught that the nudigate man had been able to push his way to the front, in spite of his desertion. Yates lived long enough to see his former protégé the most successful man of letters of his day, yet at the same time can have had no boding of the great height of universal recognition he was some years later, per Warios Carces, per tot discriminer rarum, to reach. It was characteristic of Wilde that he never once spoke of his disagreement with Yates, never referred to the matter at all, never spoke bitterly of his former friend. He was the most discreet of men, yet at times, as his trial showed, the least so. Possibly in his heart of hearts he despised Yates, the journalist and inferior novelist, with his silly pretensions to represent the auton of London, his dubious galasisms, and utter want of scholarship. At about that time there was an attempt made in the London papers to organise against Wilde a conspiracy of silence. I remember being severely criticised in vanity fare for my constant references to Wilde in my newspaper contributions. The hope was expressed that at least I was being paid for these writings in meal or malt. But such conspiracy naturally collapsed, though a few years later the conspirators, that is to say, after Wilde's disgrace, thought that it could be triumphantly revived and for perpetuity, wherein they again deluded themselves as events have shown. Apropos of conspiracies of silence, there is a frequently told anecdote that the poet Louis Morris, having complained to Oscar that there was a conspiracy of silence against him, was promptly advised to join it. I never believed that Oscar Wilde would have said such a thing to a brother poet, because I never knew him willfully to hurt anybody's feelings, and for another thing, this particular poet was an eminently well-meaning, eftidious personage, insufficiently popular to excite anybody's hostility. Then I was right in doubting the accuracy of this story, was proved to me by the following statement made by Mr Augustine Birrell, the present secretary for Ireland, in the course of a conversation he had with Mr Herbert Vivian, who was writing a series of interviews, or studies in personality, for the Palmael magazine. Birrell had been talking about a conversation he had had with Winston Churchill, and remarked that, in answer to something that Winston had said, I scarcely knew what to say to him, but I was profoundly impressed by his manner and earnestness. Hereupon Vivian said, I should not think that you often found yourself at a loss for an answer. To this, Birrell answered with a smile, that reminds me of a certain poet who came to me once upon a time and complained that his works were neglected. He said there was a conspiracy of silence. Of course, I felt very sorry for him, but I was really puzzled what to say. I mentioned this to a well-known wit, who exclaimed quite angrily, you did not know what to say. Do you really mean to tell me that you did not know what to say? No, upon my word I did not. Of course, you should have said, a conspiracy of silence. My dear fellow, join it at once. Oscar seems here to have been quick in repartee. I think that for the most part the good things he said were elaborated after the event. He was eminently endowed with that form of wit, which the French call esprit d'escalier, the clever things that come to one as one is going downstairs after an interview, the clever things one ought to have said in the moment. He used carefully to prepare the flashes which came suddenly and as impromptues. Sheridan had this habit also. In this respect Wilde differed from his one-time friend, Whistler, who indeed had the gift of instant repartee. Oscar was slower and more ponderous, and would ever be restrained by his great good nature, so that even if he had a smart impromptu to launch, he would hesitate for fear of wounding, and so lose the opportunity of making a conversational score. Whistler was small, alert, and waspish, and liked to sting. I have often listened to the two men sparring with their tongues, and that was the impression I derived. For the rest they were both wonderful in their way, and it was, though, perhaps at the time I did not realize it, a high privilege for me to be present at their discussions. Today I am inclined to echo Ellen Terry's words about them. In the fascinating story of my life, she remarks, The most remarkable men I have known were, without a doubt, Whistler and Oscar Wilde. She adds, This does not imply that I liked them better, or admired them more than the others, but there was something about both of them more instantaneously individual and audacious than it is possible to describe. Ellen Terry has ever kept a warm place in her heart for poor Oscar. He had pleased her greatly with the sonnet he wrote about her impersonation of Queen Henrietta Maria in his cousin Will's play, King Charles, the sonnet beginning, In the lone tent, waiting for victory, she stands with eyes marred by the mists of pain, like some one lily overdrenched with rain. I was proud of my scene in the camp in the third act, she says, When I found that it had inspired Oscar Wilde to write me this lovely sonnet, that phrase, one lily, represented perfectly what I had tried to convey, not only in this part, but in Ophelia. I hope that I thanked Oscar enough at the time. Now he is dead, and I cannot thank him any more. I shall always remember how kindly Ellen Terry spoke of my poor friend to me. It was on the first occasion on which I had the honour of speaking with her. I was introduced to her behind the scenes at the Prince of Wales's Theatre at Birmingham, in her dressing room. After the usual remarks, I left her alone with my friends, who, after my departure, mentioned to her that I was the person who had written the story of my friendship with Wilde, adding, as Dr Keefer says in his preface to his translation of Salome, published in Reclam's Universal Bibliotech, that I was one of the few of his friends, etc., and that my book had certainly done not a little to remove the false judgments which had been passed on the poet, whereupon Ellen Terry dashed out of her loge and, after me, across the stage, calling me back to talk of Wilde and to say many beautiful and kind things about him. To think of a smart but unkind thing and not to say it for fear of hurting the feelings of the person addressed, is, according to Laveter, a sign of the possession of the highest self-control and is the most self-sacrificing thing to do. Unfortunately, Wilde did not mind saying such things about people when they were not there, and so has not only got a reputation for biting repartee, but raised up to himself many enemies. If you tell A. a smart thing about B, there is every chance that A will repeat it, either directly to B, or in such a way that it gets round to B's ears, and usually with clumsy additions which in venom the sting and strip the wit of its grace and lightness. It was while I was living in Charles Street that Wilde began the study of German. He used to carry a volume of Heiner and a small pocket German dictionary with him on his travels, and very seriously worked at this language, having a great desire to know the wonderful German poets in the original. He was rather proud of the fact that he was known in Germany, and I remember the delight with which he told me that he had been written to by the publisher of some German biographical dictionary to supply details about his life and works. He had little reason at that time to anticipate that a day would come when the Germans would rank him with Shakespeare, and indeed show a preference for his works over those of our national poet. Footnote. It is not in Germany alone that Wilde's name is frequently associated with that of Shakespeare. Apropos of this, here is a true story. After the outbreak of the present war, a high Japanese military official was in consultation with some Russian generals. He apologised for not being able to speak their own beautiful language, but added, at least I am able to address you in the language of Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde. End footnote. And here I have to protest vigorously against the statement made by Austin Harrison in his powerful book, The Kaiser's War, which I will quote here. After describing in the chapter headed Intelligent Brutality, the Ulenberg Scandals, and referring to Krupp's suicide for charges brought against him by the Vorwärts for his conduct at Capri, Mr. Harrison says, The point to be noted, however, is not the scandal so much as the widespread and morbid interest that they provoked in Germany. In this connection the sympathy extended to Oscar Wilde exceeded all limits of literary enthusiasm and became an intellectual cult employed as a popular excuse for homosexuality. Oscar Wilde became, in fact, what Shakespeare was to Germans in Schlagel's time. People flocked to see Salome, which ran for years, to talk psychology and physiology as if Wilde had been a new saviour of society. I am not criticising, but simply stating a well-known fact when I say that homosexuality became rampant in Berlin as the result of the Wilde boom, became, as it were, the smart thing. I am afraid that this is not a correct statement. Possibly in Berlin this may have taken place, and we know, unfortunately, that a very bad state of things did and does exist there, but Berlin was interested in that kind of aberration long before Wilde became popular there, and books exist comparing Berlin to one of the cities of the plain. But Berlin is not the Vaterland. It is not even the capital of the empire, in the usual sense of the word. What affects Berlin leaves Dresden cold, and has no influence on Munchen. And Wilde's popularity was universal in Germany, in Catholic and conservative Dresden, as well as in Protestant and cosmopolitan Berlin, or commercial Hamburg, or artistic Munchen, or the 101 other German cities which are as distinct and different from each other as though there were thousands instead of hundreds or scores of miles apart. No, I think Wilde's fame in Germany and his popularity there rest on a due critical appreciation by German culture of the excellence of his work. There was a little while ago a shore boom, and that was preceded by a craze perbearsly, and as to either of these artists. If Berlin had needed to set up some literary idol to excuse certain horrors of immorality, there was no need for the Berliners to go abroad for their model. The Fatherland could have supplied them, as revelations have established. One of the men who did most to initiate, foster and maintain what Mr. Harrison calls the Wilde boom in Germany, was Dr. Max Mayerfeld, whom I know very well and who used to be a friend of mine. It was he who translated the Duchess of Padua and produced it in Germany. It was he who first gave, in a German translation, de profundis to the world. He has written many articles about Wilde in the most important German and Austrian reviews. Dr. Mayerfeld is one of the leading writers on the notorious Frankfurter Zeitung, and knowing England well, too well, perhaps, may be responsible for a great deal that we have recently read about our country in that organ. Well, in the days before this horrible war was dreamed about, that is to say about nineteen years ago, Mayerfeld, then a young man, being anxious to study England and the English, came to London. I only had a small allowance, he relates. I am quoting from a conversation which took place at a house where I used to live and where he was a guest. And lived in modest lodgings, but I had brought over some introductions and used to get invitations to good houses. One evening in my lodgings, being anxious to find something to read, I explored a cupboard and discovered a small volume entitled, Poems in Pros, by an author of whom I had never heard. Footnote. The doctor must have been mistaken in his description of the book, for Poems in Pros was never published in volume form, certainly not as early as 1895. He probably picked up an old number of the fortnightly. End footnote. I began to read these Poems in Pros, and was absolutely fascinated by the beauty of the style and the brilliance of the author's philosophy. I read the whole book through, and then I read it through again. The next evening I was dining out, and being seated at table next to a lady who seemed more than usually intelligent, and who obviously was well informed on English literature, I said to her, Can you tell me anything about a writer called Oscar Wilde? I had never heard of him before, but yesterday, and here, he continued, I found that I had, as you say, put my foot in it, for the lady gave me an angry look, turned her shoulder on me, and did not speak to me once again during the whole of dinner. The next morning I received a note from my host, asking me to come round to his house, and when I saw him he said to me, What do you mean, Mayerfeld, by insulting a lady at my table? I said I was not aware that I had insulted one of his guests, and he replied that my neighbour at dinner had complained to him that I had actually wanted to discuss Oscar Wilde with her at table. I said that I had never heard of Oscar Wilde before, but that I had been greatly impressed by the book of his which I had read on the previous evening, and was anxious to know something about the author. And then my host told me that Oscar Wilde was in prison, and that it was a great social offence to mention his name, which had been consigned by the British public to eternal oblivion. I was sorry that I had hurt the good woman's feelings, but that did not diminish my interest in Wilde as a writer. I procured everything that he had written, and returned to Germany full of enthusiasm for this great man, and fully determined to reveal him to my countrymen. Not very long ago a friend of mine, being an undergraduate at Oxford, was speaking of Oscar Wilde to a German. But, said the German, surely that great writer is one of us. A German, I mean. Herr Wilde, of course. He's a German. We have always been taught so. Dr. Benz relates that for years he has used Wilde's works as textbooks, and adds that they are so used in many schools in Sweden. With regard to his literary standing in Germany, he adds, As for the Germans, it is well known that, in accordance with their free spirit of intellectual hospitality, they were practically the first to recognise Wilde's genius, his writings finding generous acceptance amongst them, and this at a time when in his own country few ventured to manifest an interest in his works. On the other hand, the Germans would, perhaps, seem temperamentally not over-well-capacitated for a rarely intimate and subtle valuation of a writer of such an extravagant type. Most German books or pamphlets on Wilde will, in fact, be found deficient in the finer shades of sympathy and intuition. I think that this evidence is enough to dispose of Mr. Harrison's statements that Wilde is popular in Germany because of the sins attributed to him, though possibly the Wilde cultus amongst certain lunatics in Berlin may have had its origin in the scandals connected with his name. Another thing to be remembered is that there are in Berlin a number of doctors and social reformers, to mention Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, for instance, who, for various reasons, physiological and legal, wish to induce the Reichstag to abolish Article 175 of the German Penal Code, a clause corresponding, though with much less severity, to one of the clauses in our Criminal Law Amendment Act. One may add that Dr. Richard Strauss, the composer of Salome, might well feel aggrieved that it should be stated that he used a libretto the popularity of which arose from the fact that its author was the hero of an unspeakable scandal. He had such a high opinion of the artistic value of the book that, as may have been noticed, he altered nothing in Wilde's text. To the regret that Oscar Wilde, who would only have been 60 today, did not live to see his literary reputation established all over the world, and to enjoy the harvest that he sowed in years of drab and mediocre life, must be added one's feelings of sorrow that this, bon paire de famille, who was prepared for any sacrifice on behalf of his two sons, was never to have the pride and joy of seeing these lads as they are now. One, more à l'ennemi, forever on England's role of honour. The other, part of the living rampart which protects against the Chewton Hoards, their father's beloved France. I have always held that Oscar was, au fort, a man of action. I am sure that he would have been intensely proud of the commissions held by his two sons, and that he would have followed their progress during the war with as keen an interest as the most ordinary individual amongst British fathers. One cannot help feeling also that England, during the present crisis, is the loser by the death of a master poet who felt, or at least was able to show, a fervent patriotism. He had the art of writing verse that stirred the martial spirit. There is no finer patriotic poem in the English language, in the opinion of many, than his Ahway Imperatrix, that magnificent ode which begins, set in this stormy northern sea, queen of these restless fields of tide, England, what shall men say of thee, before whose feet the world's divide? A poem full today of the strongest appeal, a long utterance compared with which most of the poetry that the war has evoked is, oh, how pale! It was written in 1880, and appeared in the world for 25th August 1880. Oscar Wilde destined it originally for a magazine called Time, which was also edited by Edmund Yates, but that shrewd judge of good work preferred to give it to the wider publicity that his weekly journal afforded, and there is, in Stuart Mason's bibliography, a copy of the letter that the editor wrote to the poet announcing his decision. One feels that, were Wilde living today, the Germans, who have such a high esteem for his works, and so much respect for his opinion, might have shown a little more decency in their actions, a little more regard for public feeling in England. One knows what Wilde would have thought and would have said about Louvain and Rams, and one knows what effect his condemnation would have had upon the culture-gentry. As things are, the only British writer for whose opinion they care a red hella is another Irishman, who, unfortunately, instead of flagelating them, has rather condoned their unspeakable offences. The Germans hold that from an intellectual point of view, there is nobody in England about whose opinion they need care, and so on avant. I sincerely believe that the presence of such a man as Wilde, whose intellect and authority they recognised, would have acted as some sort of check on their conduct. It is, in this connection, noteworthy that the decadence with which Wilde's name was associated in England, and so hugely advertised by the English in their mania for genius-baiting, has never been used as a weapon in Germany with which to attack England, at a time when every kind of abuse is being levelled against us. This war would have been most highly approved of by Oscar Wilde. One can fancy his indignation with the Germans for their desire to cripple France, his beloved France, and to sack Paris. England would have had no warmer patriot, the allies no more ardent supporter. The aims of the Germans would have filled him with anger and disgust, and I can hear him, as I once did, regretting that he was precluded from the use of weapons. I remember his showing me the picture of himself in punch, where he was represented as a French pew-pew, which was published just after he had announced that he was thinking of going to France to live there permanently, and to become a naturalised Frenchman. This was after his great disappointment when the Lord Chamberlain forbade the performance of Salome. The suggestion was that if he did become a naturalised Frenchman, he would be obliged to submit to the law of conscription. Well, and why not? he said. Though I did not think that he was speaking seriously, because I knew his natural indolence, though I was also well aware that he was not lacking in personal courage. He had a great admiration for the heroic and admired Lord Byron mainly for his active partisanship of Greece. It was during my stay at Charles Street that Oscar Wilde became engaged to Constance Lloyd. I remember his waking me up one morning, he had just returned from Ireland, to tell me the news. I said, I am very sorry to hear it, because I did not think he was the kind of man who had settled down to a domestic life. And there was something about hostages to fortune in my mind. Wilde said, What a brute you are! But I am quite sure that when the debacle came he regretted bitterly having associated others with his catastrophe. I understood that the lady had expectations of a good income from her grandfather, but as Oscar afterwards related, not without humour, no sooner had the old gentleman joined our hands, and from his deathbed given us his blessing, than he blossomed forth into fresh and vigorous health. He never spoke to me after that first day about his fiancee, or his prospective marriage, nor did I meet his wife until the day after the wedding when he came over to Paris with her for the honeymoon. He seemed then very much in love, and said that marriage was a wonderful thing. He seemed radiantly happy, and used to send notes and flowers to his bride whenever he left her alone at the hotel. She, on her side, seemed greatly attached to him, and the union had every promise of being felicitous. Wild in the old days had been wont to speak cynically about married life. I remember his saying to me that no husband who discovered that his wife was unfaithful to him or to make a scene. A far better thing for him to do, and a far better revenge for him to take, would be to pretend that he knew nothing about what was going on, but to give the accomplices no chance of being together. He would sit the lover out, and, having retired with his wife to the Thalamose, would exultingly wave his hand in friendly greeting to the unhappy swain, sighing his heart out in the street, outside his house. He had a great deal of worldly wisdom about marriages. There was a young man who had eloped from Paris with a girl, and was anxious to marry her in London. It was as foolish a scheme as could be conceived, and appeared so at once to Oscar Wild, who was a friend of the would-be bridegroom. Oscar went to see them at the hotel where they were staying, waiting for the three weeks to elapse before they could be married, and, act dishonorably, my friend, act dishonorably, you may be sure that that is what she is doing, was the advice that he gave. After my own marriage, when I told him what I had done, he said, ah, now I understand why you have never been to see me. He was very indignant about his brother Welley's marriage to Mrs. Frank Leslie, who, after her divorce from Willie, blossomed out into the Baron de Bazus, and said that Willie had acted very foolishly in not insisting on a settlement before he married the rich American woman. She will tire of him, of course, in time, and then she will know how to get rid of him. Which is exactly what happened. It was a most disastrous marriage for poor Willie, for whom, however, a second marriage reserved in great happiness some compensation. Many years after Willie's death, I met this Baron de Bazus, and could not help wondering what had attracted Willie to her. That she was a femme à homme, it needed but a short acquaintance with her to observe. I had been sent to take her to some function to which the lady who was then my wife had asked her. I remember saying that we ought to make haste, and she said that my wife ought not to have sent such a messenger if she expected the tête-à-tête to be a short one. I wasn't particularly flattered because I could see that that is what the Baron would have said to any man. She made me sit down on the sofa beside her, and gave me the benefit of her senile cockatries. I was, however, able to lead the conversation round to her former husband, and I was pleased to hear that she spoke very kindly of Willie Wilde, and seemed to regret her treatment of him. She told me that she had made a point on her arrival in England of trying to find where he was buried, as she had wished to place a wreath on his grave, but had been unable to trace it. I told her that Willie had been very ill for a long time before he died, and had been unable to follow his profession, and so had died very poor. And I told her that there were very many great literary men in England, William Blake and Chatterton, for instance, who, like him, had no memorials except in the hearts of their countrymen. She said that if he had cared to work in her office, she would have given him a good place on her payroll. I said that Willie's talents hardly lay in the direction of editorial work on such publications as Leslie's Weekly. She said that he would do nothing but spend his time at the Century Club, and inform people that what New York lacked was a leisured class, and that he, Willie Wilde, was determined to introduce such a class. So she concluded, one day I decided that I was through, and called the reporters together and told them that I had decided to divorce Mr. Wilde, and he was of no use to me either by day or by night. She added that, though she had been married several times, she had not yet given up the hope of being happily married in the end. Unfortunately, most of the men who seemed likely were already married. She had been told that I was to fetch her in our electric broom. But this had broken down, and I had nothing for her conveyance but an ordinary taxi. When she saw this vehicle, she cried out, What's that? I don't like riding in public conveyances. And she showed her displeasure, for which I was truly thankful, during the whole of the drive in a prolonged sulk. I afterwards saw her several times in London, and each time my wonder grew how Willie Wilde could ever have married her, a love-match on his side, for he had nothing to look to from except a place on her payroll. I do not think that he derived any pecuniary advantage whatever from his ill-starred alliance with her. She was not a liberal woman. I remember her telling me of the large fortune she'd amassed. As a matter of fact, she left over four hundred thousand pounds at her death, and bequeathed all to the American suffragette cause, and how everybody was at her for loans, and so on. But I have a good way of getting out of that, she told me. I tell them I'd just love to oblige, only that I am kept from it by a death-bed oath which I took when Frank Leslie was handing in his checks. I tell them I swore at Frank Leslie's request that I would never lend a scent to any man or woman in this world, so that the poor fellow died happy, and I have never done so. It was indeed a disastrous marriage for Willie. He went out to America a fine, brilliantly clever man, quite one of the ablest writers on the press. He was a man who could have reached his three or four thousand a year easily. The Baron de Bazouce sent him back to England a nervous wreck, with an exhausted brain and a debilitated frame. This did not show itself at first, but it soon became apparent that his power for sustained effort was gone. His fate was in some ways as pathetic as that of his brother, and a more lingering tragedy was his. For though he had domestic happiness, and was never exposed to real want, he suffered bitterly from his loss of powers. He had been robbed of his golden years, and seemed to me like some unhappy Samson deprived of his sight. But just like his brother, he was gallant, and never once laid the blame of his unfortunate downfall where he might justly have done so. But at any rate, the Christine to his monaldeshi did not pursue him with malice and hatred, and after she had ridden herself of him, seems to have tried only to think well of him. In some women, not unlike Nero in this respect, gross cruelty arises as the aftermath of unbridled passion. In as much as it may help to understand Oscar, I would like to quote some passages about Willie Wilde from Mr. Leonard Cresswell Ingleby's book on Oscar Wilde. Oscar, he writes, himself always paid a tribute to his brother's brilliant cleverness, and I am not at all certain that, of the two, William Wilde's was not the greater intelligence. Though he certainly never approached his brother from any artistic point of view, Willie performed the most astonishing feats of writing. He was able to sum up a situation, political or social, in a single moment. Willie Wilde was also a most delightful talker. When he had talked to you for an hour or two, you always went away chuckling with pleasure, rather than stumbling in mental amazement. He told good stories in his inimitable way, and they were always kindly. He said kind things of every one, and if he referred to a friend or acquaintance, it was always with an excuse for the failings of that friend or acquaintance. His voice was one of those soft Irish voices, full of cadence and not innocent of blarney. He was a typical Irishman, kindly, casual, and generous, and all his outlook upon life was sweet and tolerant. Into his own marriage, Oscar Wilde imported nothing of the cynicism with which he spoke of marriage in general. He became what the French call un bombard de famille, was a kind husband and an excellent father. His distinguished sons remembered him with deep affection, but he was not made for family life, and long before the debacle the marriage had proved itself a failure. I frequently met Constance at her house and admired her very much. She was beautiful and gracious, kind-hearted, and devoted to her husband, for whose great cleverness she had the highest admiration. In the awful tragedy which befell the house in Tite Street, it was for her that one felt the deepest sorrow. I was glad that I was able to be of some service to her in those days, though the hope that I had entertained, that in the end things might yet be adjusted between them, proved itself a vain one. Certainly on the last occasion on which I saw this gentle and beautiful woman, she was full of love and sorrow for her husband, and told me that when he came out of prison he would find a home with her. This was not to be, and the two never came together again, because when Oscar came out of prison his wife was already sickening of the melody of which she died a few months later. He was released in May 1897, she died in April 1898.