 CHAPTER XXVI. For a refuge and an abode, Wilde could have chosen no better place than where, after his downfall, he ended his days. Paris is of cities the most clement. Paris has the shortest of memories for men's misdeeds. He judges by the present, not by the past, and religiously observes the law of prescription. In England, if a man has once fallen, he is not to rise again. There is no amnesty on our side of the channel. It is a fact that all the insults that were put upon Wilde during his life in Paris were inflicted by his fellow countrymen. From the French, he never suffered even a slight, except possibly as agents for English people, as when a maître d'hôtel begs him to leave a café, because de clientres sérieux object to his presence there. And even then, the enjoinder is delivered with apologies and an appeal to the comprehension of the exigencies of business. It is an Englishman who refuses to occupy the same chair at a hairdresser's which Wilde has just vacated, and blusters out his objection and his reason for it, so that all the shop may hear. It is a party of Anglo-Saxons who in loud voices ask Madame de Bremont to point out to them Oscar Wilde, who was present in some place of entertainment, quote, as they were curious to see what sort of a monster he really was, unquote. Madame de Bremont, by the way, may be quoted here to give a picture of Wilde as he was in that last year of his life. Quote, he was greatly changed, had grown very stout, and the rich waves of hair had given place to a close-cut coiffure that seemed to accentuate the coarseness of his face. A small white hat added to the grotesque outline of his once beautiful head. He was clad in a suit of grey tweed, the short coat increasing the heavy lines of his figure, and giving an impression of overweight to the upper part of his body. Every vestige of the dandy had disappeared. His eyes were heavy, and the pallor of the skin added to the look of ill health, despite his robust figure. Quote, I cannot say that I ever saw him like that. I met him at times in Paris after his return from Naples. He was no longer as friendly as he had been formerly, for he seemed to bear some sort of resentment against me, because I had blamed him for going to Naples, which I considered an impolitic act of public defiance. But that he was embittered one could not but see. There was the continual irritation of impecuniosity, for in despite of the fixed income, and Douglas's boundless charities, there were many occasions on which, as he told Gide one night at a café, he was absolutely sans resource. Monsieur de Poirier told me that he found wild once, sans domicile, with his baggage held in porn at the Hotel Marsolier, and advanced the money to release it, while offering wild the hospitality of his roof. He writes the Stuart Merrill for a small loan to enable him to finish the week. Douglas states that he composed many ingenious begging letters, but gives no proof of the assertion, nor has ever any such letter come to light. Such a condition, combined with that paralysis of the brain, which was so horrid not of me, but to me, and prevented him from earning money, was enough to embitter him. I think that the only occasion on which he ever spoke with real irritation to me was in Paris shortly after his brother's death. I had condoled with him, and I had added, I hope something will come to you from his affairs. I used the word affairs in the French sense, and referred to the small, entailed estate which Willie Wilde had held, and which I supposed had reverted to his brother on his death. He snapped at the word affairs. What do you mean by affairs? He asked, quite angrily, and though I could see that he was offended, I could not for the world imagine why. On another occasion I was in the Calaisier café, and looking round, saw Wilde seated some way off at a table with smithers by his side. The picture was not a pleasing one. There was absinthe in front of the two men, but what was more disturbing was the attitude and expression of smithers. He was proposing something to Wilde, which Wilde did not seem inclined to favour, and the picture was a very sordid one of temptation. I knew the kind of proposals that smithers used to make to needy artists, and I suppose my face expressed some anxiety and some distress. Smithers noticed me looking at them, and whispered something to Wilde, and then they both jumped up and moved to seats outside the café on the boulevard. At my last meeting with him, however, Wilde was his old self. Not long after Ernest Dowson's death I was in Paris, and I went to the Hotel d'Alsace, because I thought Wilde would like to hear about it, as he had always had a regard and high esteem for Ernest Dowson. I also remembered how, on a previous occasion, he had written to me to blame me for not going to see him. I am glad you are so busy," he wrote, but sorry that you are too busy to come and see me. It was the injustice of a peeved soul. It pleased me to see with what deference I was received at the Hotel d'Alsace as a caller on M. Melmouth. Access to the great man was, however, not a matter of course. I will send up and see if M. Melmoss receives," said the landlord, and a waiter was dispatched. When the man returned, and with a thousand regrets, informed me that M. was très fatigué, far too tired to receive anybody, I wrote a message on a card and sent it up. I was then asked to montez. When I reached Oscar's door I found him waiting for me. He caught hold of my two hands and drew me into his room. I really am too tired to speak to anybody today," he said, but I don't like to send you away. The room was a small and gloomy bedroom which opened out, however, onto a larger chamber where there was the sun. Oscar was in a dressing-gown, and reminded me of himself, seventeen years previously, at the Hotel d'Caye Voltaire. Before again the table was littered with papers, the bowl containing segratins and ashes was not wanting. Some books were heaped up in disorder in a corner. On the mantelpiece was a pile of letters. I hope you weren't offended," he said, because I had first refused to see you. I am never any good in the mornings. I wasn't offended at all. I said, Mr. Champhlorie either receives or does not receive. This reference to a famous French Louvet d'Hérédoc brought us at once to literary matters. I see you have here the Émoe Camé, I said, picking up a book, and there, I added, pointing to a bottle of Pernot absence that stood on the wash-hand-stand, is the Piarian spring that inspired them. The Pernodian spring, you mean," he said with a laugh. But you are quite wrong, for it was de Moussé who used absinthe, and these exquisite poems are by Théopheil Gauthier. It came as quick as lightning, this correction of my mistake, for indeed at the moment I had thought of Alfred de Moussé as the author of the poems. Synth and poetry brought me to Ernest Dawson, but Wilde did not seem to care to hear about him. It is all so sad," he said. Ernest was an enfant roue au noir. Then he added, much of what he has written will remain. You are working too, I see, I said, pointing to the letter on his table. He answered, One has to do something. I have no taste for it now, it is a penance to me, but, as was said of torture, it always helps one to pass an hour or two. I then said, If you never wrote another line, Oscar, you have done enough to ensure your immortality, and when I said that I knew nothing about de Profundis. He seemed really pleased, and brightened. But then his face went all grey again, and I saw him glance towards the stimulant, and I was reminded of poor Alphonse Daudet in the moments just before the morphine syringe was produced, and the injection taken. He went and threw himself on the bed, exhausted it seemed, and I rose. Come and see me again, he said, Though I hardly like to ask people to see me in this room. He was referring to the poverty of our surroundings. Why, I had never noticed it, I said. What does the mise en scène matter? Qu'en pour le verre, pour vous connaît l'évresse, he said. You have become reconciled to sully prude harm, then, I said. I think now that the word «évresse» was the last word that I heard Oscar Wilde say. I said «Abiento» as I left the room, but did not hear any answer. I felt sad as I went downstairs in the gloomy and malodeurous staircase, with the maculated paper hanging from the wall, and through a dirty glazed door into the bureau. I had expected to find the landlord here, and wanted to ask him about my friend, but the office was empty. In the passage outside was a rack where the keys and the candlesticks of the lodgers were placed, and near this was pasted against the wall those rules of the establishment, which one sees in all Parisian hotels of this class. All rents are payable in advance. In devolt of payment, a locataire may be immediately sent away. Oscar Wilde would see these sordid regulations every time that he lighted his dim candle on his lumbering ascent to the dingy room where I left him. But familiar myself with all the phases of the life of which this was the usual mise en scène, I fancy my sadness must have proceeded from an instinctive feeling that I was to see my friend's face no more. Such an idea did not present itself to me at the time, and as I walked away up the Rue des Beaux-Arts, and was, a frequent pastime, endeavouring to analyse my feelings, I determined that I was sad because I reproached myself for the flippancy of our interview. We had bantered and chaffed when, perhaps. But after all, had we not done well to hasten to laughter, so as not to be forced to weep? On my way home I passed the Hotel Voltaire and looked up at the first floor windows, the windows of the suite which Oscar Wilde had occupied in those radiant days, seventeen years previously, in the days when we used to dine with the Duchess, and I was told to bring rhymes from Passey. Far away, at the end of the key, I caught sight of the statue of Voltaire, who seemed to be looking at me with a sardonic grin, the same grin with which, day by day and night by night, he would watch poor Oscar's exits and his entrances. There was some comfort in the wicked old man's cynicism, and I turned away hoping that my friend might find it also. It was a grin which ridiculed all illusions, all sentimentality, all beliefs and all hopes, which taught that the only true philosophy is to live as he, Arue, lived, trusting no one, expecting nothing from God or man, and taking out of life all that one could get by fair means or foul, a philosophy which conducted the sage of Ferney along comfortable and opulent lines to an extreme old age. During the short time that I remained in Paris on that occasion, I took the opportunity of asking people, who were likely to be informed, about Wilde. I certainly did not gather that he had acquired a bad reputation. I heard from Ari Bauer that he had been for a long time under close police surveillance, and that the police had stated that on any relapse on his part he would be immediately expelled from France, par ordre administratif, which gives the person to whom it is addressed, just twenty-four hours in which to leave the territory of the Republic, and vouchsafes no reason for the injunction. As Wilde was living peacefully in his hotel, where he was evidently liked and respected by the landlord and servants, who would daily come into contact with the emissaries of the prefecture, for a detective calls every day of the year at every hotel and lodging house in Paris, I gathered that there was nothing whatever in his conduct to call for blame or to excite suspicion. At certain cafes I was told that M. Melmouth, Le Grand-Écrivant, was a frequent, even regular, client, a fact of which the waiters and Géran seemed proud rather than otherwise. Despite literary people there was a decided feeling of sympathy towards him, only everybody wondered why he chose to live at such a bad address, and why on earth he did not make use of his talents. One great writer, since dead, quoted Balzac to me and said, Il passi servia sipalea. At an important newspaper office I was told that he had been invited to collaborate regularly, a weekly chronique at 300 francs the article. I left Paris fairly reassured about him, and was able emphatically to contradict in London many slanders that were current about his life in Paris. I told people that he was as strong as ever, and that they might be prepared to see him in a new phase, a reincarnation. He is only gathering fresh strength, I said. I did expect that something would come from his pen, that would set the whole world speaking again of him as Oscar Wilde, C-33, being forever forgotten. That was indeed to be, but alas, years after his death, the news of which came to me as a shock and a surprise some months later. The ivresse of living was over and done, the locataire had received his congé, not in default of payment, but for having paid too much. End of Chapter 26. End of The Real Oscar Wilde by Robert Charade