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1
OSCAR WILDE
 Epigram Books
By Mr Monkshood

WOMAN AND THE WITS.

THE CYNIC'S POSY.
WIT AND WISDOM OF EDGAR SALTUS.
THE WORLDLING'S WIT.
 frirfiirimiiM I -..

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"Fkrtographed 'by W&1; Downey

Oscar Wilde.
OSCAR WILDE
The Story of\An XJnhaffy Friendship

BY

ROBERT H. SHERARD
Author of
"Emile Zola: A Biography, **

"Alphonse Daudet: A Biography," etc, etc.

. . Nessun maggior dolore

Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria ....

" I have saved the bird

in my bosom."
—Last Words of Sir Hugh Percy.

8EC0ND IMPRESSION

LONDON
GREENING & CO., LTD.
1905
[All rights reserved"]
 oS
ffz.

R.R.

In Remembrance

of His Noble Conduct

Towards The Unhappy Gentleman

Who is The Subject of This Memoir, Whom
In Affliction He Comforted, In Prison He Visited,

and In Poverty He Succoured, Thus Showing

an Elevation of Heart and a Loyalty

of Character

Gbte JSoofc is Dedicated

448045
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
autographed portrait of oscar wilde, 1 892, Frontispiece

PORTRAIT OF OSCAR WILDE WHEN AT OXFORD, ABOUT

1878 To face page 48

PORTRAIT OF OSCAR WILDE, FROM A DRAWING, ABOUT

1882 .... To face page 92

PORTRAIT OF OSCAR WILDE WHEN IN AMERICA, ABOUT

1883 . . . . . To face page 140

PORTRAIT OF OSCAR WILDE IN iESTHETIC DRESS, ABOUT

1884 To face page 184

portrait OF oscar wilde, 1892 To face page 232

 PREFATORY NOTE
TO ORIGINAL EDITION
PRIVATELY PRINTED
The discreet method ofpublication which has been adopted
for this book will, itjs hoped, be accepted as deference to its

opinion by that section of the public who, because in a man

of genius the allied madness once got the upper hand, would
consign him and the works which that genius created to the

eternal night of eternal oblivion. A more weighty con-

sideration still, which dictated this course, was to afford no

opportunity, by causing a public revival of attention to his

name, for those unjust reprisals upon his kinsfolk to

which humanity, in this, as in every similar case, needs but

the pretext of an incitement. My first chapter explains

why the book was written. In this note I wish to point

out that my plea for the fairer consideration of my friend
—one of the brightest geniuses of the last century — is

delivered d huis-clos, so that none but those invited need

listen to it. If any eavesdropper cry " Scandal? he him-

self will be the cause of it.

ROBERT HARBOROUGH SHERARD.

Walcote, Upper Norwood, S.E.,

August ftk, igo2.
 Oscar Wilde

I was not by him in the poor room of the

poor inn where he died, I had not the con-
solation of following to the nameless grave

the lonely hearse which had no flowers on

its pall.

But, as many hundreds of miles away, I

read of his solitary death, and heard of the

supreme abandonment of him by those to

whom also he had always been good, I

determined to say all the things that I knew

of him, to tell people what he really was, so
that my story might help a little to a better

understanding of a man of rare heart and

rarer genius.

In years to come, people reading his works

9
 ;

Oscar Wilde

will want to know more about him than the

evil tradition which his name will evoke
and the student of literature, amazed at the
splendour of his art, may be glad that at

least one of those who were his friends

thought fit to put on record a story which

goes to prove the eternal truths that no man
who is a true artist can be a bad man at
heart, and that an innate love of beauty will

always keep alive in the mysterious recesses

of the soul a hatred for what is base, a
striving for what is noble.

Of the aberration which brought this

fine life to shipwreck so pitiful, I have

nothing to say. I leave to the physiologists
to classify it, to the psychologists to

wrangle with the makers of laws over the

degree of responsibility which it involves.
It is a question altogether in the domains of
pathology, and my task is with the artist

and the friend alone.

I can disregard, in writing of him, the

10
 Oscar Wilde

cruel and devilish madness which, as

people said and to their satisfaction proved,

at times actuated him, with all the greater

ease, that during the sixteen years of our

friendship, by not one word of his, by

not one gesture, by not the fleeting shadow
of one evil thought, did it betray itself to

me in the radiant and splendid gentleman

that he was.

I can say now what, in a letter to Sir

Edward Clarke at the time of his trial,

I offered to say in the Court of the Old

Bailey, that during twenty years of com-
munion with the world, of commerce, by
profession and standing, with men and
women in every rank of life, in many parts
and places, I never met a man more entirely

pure in conversation, nor one more disdainful

of vice in its vulgarity and uncomeliness.

Never there came the faintest suggestion

of an unclean thought from those eloquent

and inspiring lips ; no coarse word ever
ii
 Oscar Wilde

soiled them ; and if behind the wonderful

eyes a demon was indeed crouching, mad-

ness here too allied itself with such

supreme cunning of dissimulation, that for

me, till the very end, he remained the beau

iddal of a gentleman in all that that

word implies of lofty and serene morality.

Men together, after wine, the world
over, hasten with delight in conversation
to a certain class of pleasantry. The
topic is the same over the Turkish
cigarette and the white curagoa as over
the clay pipe and the pint of beer, if the

language differ. In Oscar Wilde's presence

it was understood amongst his friends

that who should so jest would commit an

unpardonable offence.
It was his supreme delicacy of tongue
and manner that won him amongst women
such devoted friendships. It is the misfor-

tune of the writer that it is not possible

to bring evidence of these many friendships,

12
 Oscar Wilde

but the fact remains that his memory will

live long in many a gentle breast as that

of a man most chivalrous, whose gallantry in-

spired him with that profound respect which

is to all women their most grateful tribute.

A great French actress once said to me,

speaking of him, " What me to

attracted

Oscar Wilde was that he showed me from

the very first that his many kindnesses
were not rendered to me for the sake of
establishing a claim on my favour, as is

the case with nearly every man who comes

near us. I found a comrade in him, not a
suitor, and a deep and real friendship was
possible. It is rarely so between a woman
and a man."
These words recurred to me, years later,

when, in a smoking-room in a country

mansion, I heard a certain noble person
who had discovered a copy of Wilde's first

book of poems on our host's shelves cry

out in horror, and ask to be allowed to
13
 ;

Oscar Wilde

throw it into the fire, "as," he said, "most

certainly ought to have been done with the
man himself." He was a noble person in
a tartan smoking-jacket, a man who, high
in royal favour, was eagerly listened to

and during the previous half - hour, in

language of which his pestering pipers

would have been ashamed, he had dis-

cussed the morals of half women

the

of his set, with illustrations from his own

experience of their several frailties.

Oscar Wilde, as I knew him, was the

purest man in word and deed that I have

ever met. I wished to say this aloud to
his judges at a time when it might have
served him. I say it now to other judges.

And I knew him for sixteen years.

In the copy of "A Ballad of Reading

Gaol" which he sent me, he wrote — "In
Memory of an old and noble Friendship."

These words were the incitement to this

book, as they are its justification.

14
 ;

II

As Alphonse Daudet, in telling me a story

of his youth, once said to me, so must I say

in relating the tale of this my friendship.

As in a forest of pine-trees in Southern

France there are great black, burnt-up

patches, so too in my memory. I have no

dates to write by, and of documents only a

very few. I can pretend to no biographical

exactness. I can give no complete picture
only the picture of him as he impressed
himself upon me in the many scenes that
rise up before me.
What year was it in which I first met him ?
I do not know. All I can say is, that it was
some long time before the day on which
Victor Hugo died, and not long after the
IS
 Oscar Wilde

visit of Swinburne to the poet's house. For

I remember that I took Wilde to my friend,

Madame Lockroy, for presentation to her

father-in-law, and was present when the two
met. How long ago! Jeanne Hugo was
then a little girl, who sat on her grandfather's
knee, and the bearded George of to-day was
a blushing boy.

I can recall nothing of this meeting, and

deduce from this that, as usual in his last

days, Victor Hugo, drowsy with incense,

did not otherwise distinguish his visitor, and

that the words exchanged were the exagger-

ated commonplaces familiar to the spot.

For the rest, the peculiar brilliancy of Oscar

Wilde's conversation, as I remarke I on

many an occasion, appealed far less to

Frenchmen of intellect than it did to English

folk ; and the reason of this is, that the richest

wealth of English brilliancy appears to the

Frenchman but the small change of wit. I

never have met an Englishman yet who

16
 Oscar Wilde

could distinguish himself in a Parisian salon.

I have seen many try to do so, and have
noted their failure. Phrases on which they
seemed to count for certain effect passed as

commonplaces, and no one who reads the

French dramatists, from Moliere to Lavedan,
can wonder at this.

Oscar Wilde, who appeared to me the

most wonderful talker that the world had

ever seen, achieved in this respect no
notable success in Paris. Conscious, no
doubt, of the great difficulty of the task, he

forced the note, o'ervaulted himself, and left

an impression of insincerity. Still, when he

talked in Paris of literature or art in England,

he was readily listened to, and with marked

deference. I remember that, that evening

at Victor Hugo's house, an eager group

surrounded him whilst he discoursed on
Swinburne. Vacquerie was most attentive,
and other familiars, amongst whom was a
Russian princess who was translating
17 2
 Oscar Wilde

Swinburne's poems into French, hung on

his lips in a way which may have reminded
him of Mayfair. Victor Hugo, however,
was asleep by the fire.

I can also recall a picture of the radiant

youth in the house of de Nitis, the exquisite

painter of the beauties of the streets of Paris.

I can see him leaning against the tapestried

wall under the flambeaux, talking of pictures

to a number of men, amongst whom were

Degas, Cazin, and the Pizarros. Alphonse
Daudet, with his wife in a group of ladies,

was talking also. I went from one to the

other. Many years later it fell to me in

London again to leave one for the other.

Under what tragic circumstances, I will tell

in its place.

A gross Philistine in those days, I could

not understand nor appreciate the things that
Wilde was saying about pictures to masters

who have painted some of the noblest. Did

I even listen to them ? All that I remember
18
 Oscar Wilde

is with what pleasure I noted from my

friend's face and manner, and the attitude
of the listeners, that he felt that he was
speaking well, and that they were in-

terested.
" I was quite amazing/' he said to me, as

we walked down the Avenue de Villiers

together that night. In different periods

of his life he had different catchwords.

1
Amazing was ' his word in those first days
to describe anybody or anything that pleased
him. For the contrary, he used the word
'
tedious.' '
Rather tedious,' applied to a man
or a thing, was the extreme of his condem-

nation.

If I do not remember the year or the day

on which I first met him, the occasion and
the circumstances are very fresh in my
memory. Before our meeting I felt hostile

towards him, with a petty spirit of trade

jealousy, jalousie de boutique, for which the

only excuses that I can find are that I was

19
 Oscar Wilde

very young and very ambitious. I con-

sidered that his reputation and success had

been won by unworthy artifices, although

in my heart of hearts I longed for the
ingeniousness and the daring to force atten-
tion to myself by similar methods, and fretted

that to the ox is not allowed what to Jupiter

is conceded.
Of this petty and contemptible feeling I

made full confession to my friend in the first

days of our acquaintance. " That was very

wrong of you," he said, with a laugh ; and with
geniality and bonhomie he gave me, by the
things he said, my first lesson in the acquire-

ment of that serenity of tolerance towards

one's fellows without which the life of a man
of letters is one of constant fretfulness. To
delight in the successes of others as a gain

to the commonwealth, to love art for art's

sake, and not for the valuations of the

bourgeois, to console oneself in obscurity

with the radiance of brother-artists — to these

20
 Oscar Wilde

things he pointed as the true viaticum on the

literary way.
Such, however, was my spite at that time

against him, that on receiving an invitation

to dine at a house in the Avenue de Segur

at which he was to be present, my first act

was to cry out " I certainly shall not go."

My second was to write out a telegram of
acceptance.

He had recently returned from America,

and was then in what he described as his

second period. His eccentricities of dress

and coiffure had been discarded in accordance

with the evolution. He delighted in the
elegances of a Lucien de Rubempre, and
modelled the arrangement of his hair after
a bust of Nero in the gallery of the Louvre.
He was then twenty-eight years of age.

His affectation of effeminacy, the keynote of

his first period, had been thrown aside, with

its strange accoutrements. Tall and graceful,

one could imagine the athlete behind the

21
 Oscar Wilde

dandy ; and though in detail his clean-shaven

face was not altogether comely, there was
such beauty in the blazing intelligence of his

fine eyes that if the first impression he pro-

duced was to startle, the second was one of

entire admiration.

When he entered the drawing-room of

that house in the Avenue de Segur and

was addressing to our hostess, a beautiful
Greek artist, the usual compliments, I was
taken with a desire of hysterical and
irrepressible laughter, and crossed to a
corner where John Sargent, the portrait

painter, was in conversation with Paul

Bourget, to seek a necessary diversion.
It was bad form, certainly, and a
gesture from the polished American artist

compelled me to master my nerves.

To-day, when I recall the emotion which

beset me on entering on a friendship

which went nigh to wreck my life, I think

of that hero of Beaumarchais who made

22
 Oscar Wilde

haste to laugh lest he should be forced to

weep. In my case the solace was un-

consciously attained. The tears came later.

We spoke little at dinner. We listened

eagerly. He had been received at many

houses of prominent artists and writers in

Paris, and had delightful things to say.

His conversation was as exhilarating as

wine ; his presence diffused a stimulating

atmosphere ; we felt ourselves exalted by
his joyous enthusiasms.

I had been silent throughout the meal,

but at the close I made a remark, blunt,

surly, and Philistine, which attracted his

attention. He had been speaking of the

Louvre, and describing, with what sincerity
I cannot say, the sheer physical delight

which the Venus of Milo caused him, and

M have never been
I said, I to the Louvre.

When that name is mentioned, I always

think of the Grands Magasins du Louvre,
where I can get the cheapest ties in Paris."

23
 Oscar Wilde
" I like that," said Oscar Wilde ;
" that is

very fine."

It was above all very foolish, and

perhaps not altogether true, but it appeared
that the psychology of the second period
delighted in materialism as opposed to

ideality, and a silly paradox lured one who

was abler than anyone else in the setting

of these snares.

He thus engaged me in conversation,

and attached himself to me for the rest of

the evening. Before he left he invited me

to dine with him on the morrow at the

Hotel Voltaire.
" From your appearance," he afterwards
said to me, "your long hair and so forth,

I fancied you were Herr Schultze on the

violoncello. When you bluntly disclaimed
all artistic interests, I discovered that you
had scientifically thought out a pose that
interested me."

24
 Ill

The hotel where Oscar Wilde was living,

the Hotel Voltaire, on the Quai Voltaire, was

in those days in one of the most charming

spots in Paris. That was before the Govern-
ment had ravaged the quays on the left bank,
felling the trees, and chasing away booksellers
and bookhunters from their open-air market.

"The Quai Voltaire," said Alphonse

Daudet to me, in the last conversation I had
with him, " is the writer's true quarter in
Paris. The happiest hours of my youth were
spent there."
Oscar Wilde had a suite of rooms on the
second floor, with a fine view over the Seine
and of the Louvre.
I remarked upon the beauty of the sight.

25
 Oscar Wilde
" Oh," said he, M that is altogether im-
material, except to the innkeeper, who, of

course, charges it in the bill. A gentle-

man," he added, " never looks out of the

window.''
'*
It was a pity for the Huguenots," I said,

after awhile, pointing to a certain window

in the palace over the water, " that Charles,

ninth of the name, did not remember that."

In the daytime, when he was at work, he

dressed in a white dressing-gown fashioned
after the monkish cowl that Balzac used to

wear at his writing-table. At that time he

was modelling himself on Balzac. Besides
the dressing-gown, he had acquired an ivory

cane with a head of turquoises —turkis-stones

we used to call them — which was a replica

of the famous walking-stick which Honore

de Balzac used to carry when love had
transformed the recluse into a fop, and he
went a- wooing his Polish wife — " La Canne
de Monsieur de Balzac," in short, about which
26
 Oscar Wilde

Delphine Gay was so very pleasant in her

husband's gazette.
But he was not borrowing from the master
these foibles of toilette alone. I think that

at that time he was striving in earnest to

school himself into labour and production.

He was sated with social success, and had

fixed a high ambition to carve out for himself a

great place in English letters, the place which

he surely might have won had adversity

come to him much earlier and in a different
form. He had inspired himself with that
passage in La Cousine Bette in which Bal-
zac declares that constant labour is the law

of art as it is the law of life, for art is

creation idealised, and points to the fact that

all great artists have been unresting workers

such as Voltaire in his study and Canova

in his studio.

Oscar Wilde was making a real effort

to imitate in his industry and devotion to

his art, the great worker whose fopperies he
27
 Oscar Wilde

played with. I do not think, however, that

his resolution maintained itself, for I

remember that, reading La Cousine Bette at

that time, I came across a passage which
follows close on the one in which Balzac lays

down the law of art, which seemed to me

altogether to apply to my new friend —the
passage where Balzac describes those semi-
artists qui passent leur vie a se parler. Yet,
then and in later life, he had the desire of
industry, if not the power of enforcing dis-

cipline of self. He has often said to me

regretfully, after speaking of pleasures and
triumphs, " I ought not to be doing this. I

ought to be putting black upon white —black

upon white." The last time on which he
said this to me was in his study in Tite
Street, where a notable article of furniture

was Carlyle's writing-table. I doubt not

that when he bought it, it was with the hope
that the sight of it, recalling memories of
Titanic labour, might help his wavering
28
 Oscar Wilde

resolution. In the great pathos of his life

and death, I have few remembrances more

pathetic than that of this dressing-gown
and that writing-table, symbols of a self-

confessed weakness, for were they not used as

fetishes against idleness by one who knew
only too well the real fetish to use ?

Amongst the books strewed about the

room on the Quai d'Orsay were biographies
of Balzac, books of the gossipy class, full of

personalia, " Balzac in Slippers," and so

forth —text-books with which to study a part.

On his writing-table, which was decorated

with flowers, was, for an ash-tray, a large

porcelain bowl, for the cigarette never left

him. A pile of sheets of costly paper,

covered with delicate penmanship, showed
that he had been working. On the mantel-
piece was a photogravure of that picture by
Puvis de Chavannes which shows the nude,
meagre, nut-breasted form of a young girl

sitting up on her unravelled shroud, her eyes

29
 Oscar Wilde

wide open in startled wonder, —a village

graveyard indicated on a remote mountain-

side. Hope was it ? —or a Resurrection ?

He gave me this engraving, and on the

mounting wrote a favourite device, a paradox
"
also, Rien nest vrai que le beau!' He
told me in detail how it should be framed,
in grey, with a narrow line of vermilion. I

noticed how he mouthed the word vermilion

'
'

with the keen enjoyment of a man tasting

Imperial Tokay, who rolls the wine on his

tongue, and lingers with delight upon its

perfumed gold. For he always had a very

evident sensuality for coloured and sonorous
words. Also, as is the case with many
artists in letters, there were words which
caused him real physical annoyance — those
neologisms, for instance, which end in 'ette.'

When I think over his life, I feel assured

that the days when I first met him were the

happiest days he lived. He was free from
material care, he was in full physical and
30
 —

Oscar Wilde

mental vigour, and, under the mild discipline

which he had laid upon himself, he was work-
ing at his best. During the time that he
spent at the Hotel Voltaire he finished his
play " The Duchess of Padua," and wrote
those two wonderful poems " The Harlot's

House" and "The Sphynx." I was with

him all the time that they were being
elaborated. I heard him fashion the lines,

often repeating, as we walked abroad,

passages that had pleased him in their

writing. He was agreeably taken with the

sound of the words

"Am I not Duchess here in Padua?"

—from his play, and he often quoted them.

I remember that for "The Sphynx" he
asked me for a rhyme in '
ar ' for a lagging

verse. I can recall the accent with which

he often repeated his request, and chid me
with the question " Why have you brought
me no rhyme from Passy?" It recurred to
3i
 —
Oscar Wilde

me when, after his calamity, first meeting

him, he said in a similar tone and with like
insistance, "Why have you brought me no
poison from Paris? —poison from Paris

poison from Paris?"

On the day when I had found '
nenuphar
'

for the wanting rhyme, I was made as proud

by his thanks as though I had achieved
great things in literature. We may have
been precious and ridiculous on the occasion
but I know that we were very much in

earnest. Neither for him nor for me was

there anything outside of literature. We
had desire for nothing but literary achieve-
ment. It seemed the one thing to be
coveted. He was twenty-eight and I was
twenty-two.
I had dressed for that first dinner to which
he had invited me. He had desired me to

do so, although we were to dine at a

restaurant. He had spent an hour that

evening at a hairdresser's, as was his daily

32
 Oscar Wilde

custom, and I found him curled and resplen-

dent. This delight in beautifying himself
proceeded entirely from the most innocent
joyousness of life. It was a token of
triumph in happy vitality, and in somewise
also the defiance of an artist to the moneyed
bourgeoisie. To show amazingly, was to

impress the Philistines with due respect

for letters, ragged and pitiable no longer,

but curled and scented, and in costly

raiment.

We dined in luxury at Foyot's in the Rue

de Tournon, and at the outset of the dinner we
agreed that one should speak of yellow wine,
not white. What our conversation was I

have no recollection, but I fancy that he

must have launched some paradoxes in

connection with the psychology of the

second period, which found interest, and

hence beauty, in everything, — paradoxes
which aroused my surliness, for I remember
rubbing my cigar-end into the coffee in my
33 3
 Oscar Wilde

saucer, and asking him bluntly if he saw

any beauty in the mess before him.
He said, " Oh, yes. It makes quite an

effective brown," quite pleasantly ; but in his

eyes there was just a glint of ill-humour at
my implied doubt of his sincerity —the
warning, Ne touchez pas a la reine.

For the rest, that was one of the very rare

occasions during the whole course of our
long amity in which even the shadow of a
dissension fell between us. Indeed, I can
remember only one instance when he spoke
to me with irritation, and that was once at

the Cafe Royal in London, when inadvert-

ently I spoiled a story he was telling by

suggesting its denouement.
After the dinner at Foyot's we went to the

cafes of the Latin Quarter, and afterwards we

walked about Paris. Our conversation was
of literature only. At one time in the night

we were standing opposite Notre Dame,

admiring the wonderful sight of the cathedral
34
 Oscar Wilde

under moonlight. The monstrous gargoyles

seemed affrighted by its clearness, and the
symbol suggested such reflections to the poet

that I felt that conscience was very strong

within him.

Again, we were walking past the dis-

mantled palace of the Tuileries, and here he

said too, " There is not there one little

blackened stone which is not to me a chapter

in the Bible of Democracy."
I left him at two o'clock in the morning at

the door of his hotel, and we were loth to

part. It was agreed between us that we

were to be good friends, and we fixed a
meeting for the early morrow.

35
 IV

In the sequence, and during the six weeks

which preceded my departure for London,
my whole time almost was spent in his com-
pany. It was for me a new and joyous life,

an unending feast of the soul, and each day

my admiration for my new friend grew more
enthusiastic. By nature, heredity, and en-
vironment, disposed to melancholy, viewing
mankind and life as Calvin may have viewed
them, this joyous Celt showed me the glad-

ness of things, suggested the possibility of

great and buoyant happiness in the world,

and with his exuberant vitality scattered the

black butterflies that enclouded my spiritual

vision. It was perhaps because we were

altogether so dissimilar that we were from
36
 ;

Oscar Wilde

the very first so attracted one to the other

and I may say that he professed for me the
same friendship, and in some degree also

the same admiration, that I most truly felt

for him. Yet I made as little attempt to

conceal my faults, to tone down the

asperities of my individuality in his pre-

sence, as though, in reputation, gifts and

qualities, we had been altogether equal.

Nor did I ever flatter him in his views and

tendencies, where these were divergent
from mine. It was this quality, perhaps,
that attracted him to me.

I remember saying to him one day,

" Your faults and your weaknesses are so
apparent, that it would almost be more pro-
fitable to be your enemy than your friend.

It would be so easy to attack you, and

could be done to such good purpose."
To-day, when I think of him as he always

was, I wonder what can have been the

foibles which suggested that remark to me,

37
 Oscar Wilde

for I cannot recall a single point in his

character which could inspire or foster

enmity ; and when catastrophe came upon

him, what most of all astounded me was the

volume of the base rancour that in so many

breasts, lying upgathered, then burst forth

upon him. For I cannot conceive that he

excited jealousy. His superiority was so
evident that rivalry could not surely raise

its head on his path ; and the success he

won, as contrasted with what, by his parts,

he might have achieved, was such as to

inspire condolence rather than envy. Yet,

jealousy of the most mean and petty order

can alone have prompted the bitter hate

that when the statue fell blazed up from

beneath its feet. I am speaking, of course,

of those who had known him, who had pre-

tended friendship for him, and to whom his

aberration had been no secret.

In considering him, even in his most

prosperous days, mediocrity could console
38
 Oscar Wilde

itself with the thought that had he chosen

to exert himself, there was, for a man of

his presence, physique, facundity, and brain,

nothing in the field of honour and rewards

to which he might not have aspired. Yet

he satisfied himself with that mere gloire
de salon of which Balzac speaks ; and like

Balzac himself, harassed throughout life by

debt, he never had the fill of his desires.
" I could have become anything," he
said once to me, when we were speaking
of his ambition. And he added, " But have
I not chosen the better part?"
I know that when I first met him his

ambition was a very lofty one. Although

he never defined it to me, he once
described its amplitude. We were speaking
of a whilom friend of his who had thought
fit to turn upon him, because he feared

that the ridicule which Oscar Wilde's

extravagances in the sunflower days excited
amongst those who did not understand his

39
 Oscar Wilde

motives, might extend to him as his friend,

and injure his prospects in life with a

statesman who was his patron.

"What he says," said Oscar Wilde,

referring to the letter in which his friend
closed their relationship, " is like a poor
little linnet's cry by the roadside, along
which my immeasurable ambition is sweep-
ing forward."

I used to feel that he would achieve

wonderful things ; and when I felt world-
weary and tired of life, would say to

myself that life was worth waiting out, if

only to see him realise his splendid destiny.

Well might unexplainable laughter shake
my frame at the moment when I saw him
first!

The man who was afterwards branded

as a corrupter of youth exerted on me,
as a young man, an influence altogether

beneficial. If he had taught me nothing

but the great value and happiness of life,

40
 Oscar Wilde

I should still owe him an unpayable debt,

for my disposition tended to that tcedium

vitce which makes existence pure misery.

In which connection I recall, that telling

him that the idea of suicide often haunted

me, he answered " Suicide is the greatest
compliment that one can pay to society," a
suggestion which should stir even the most
despondent individualism into resistance.

I repeated his own words to him at a time

when he spoke to me of suicide as the only

possible issue from a terrible fate impending,

but I am certain that he never needed any

stimulus to courage.

The example of his purity of life in such

a city as Paris, of his absolute decency of
language, of his conversation, in which never
an improper suggestion intruded, the loftier

ideals that he pursued, the elegance and

refinement which endowed him, would have
compelled even the most perverse and
dissolute to some restraint. The companion-
4i
 Oscar Wilde

ship of Oscar Wilde, in the days in which I

lived in his intimacy, would have made a

gentleman, at least outwardly, of a man of

bad morals and unclean tongue.

But his friendship did more than this.

It taught one what friendship ought to mean,

—a friendship which, going beyond the purse,
is ready to lay down reputation itself. On
more than one occasion had he so sacrificed

himself for friends who afterwards turned

upon him ; and I remember a dramatic story

which he told me of how he had saved a

famous draughtsman (since dead) from penal
servitude, at the risk of the same to himself.

He was goodheartedness embodied. His

money was his friends' money, he had no
heed of it. He would exert himself for a
friend in a way which, had the exertion been

for himself, would have appalled his idleness.

He would find publishers for unknown poets

and managers for aspiring playwrights, even
when he was called upon to stand the risks
42
 Oscar Wilde

himself. Not a few contemptible faces rise

up before me as I write of men who, so

helped by him, were the first to deny him.

A week after we had first met he spent a
whole day walking and driving about Paris
to find a rare little book, Delvau's Life of
Gerard de Nerval, which he wished me to

read. " Literary men in England," he said,

"often talk about Gerard de Nerval, but

nobody really knows anything about him.
He has becc-me a classic, you see, and
classics are what everybody talks about, but

nobody reads. With this little book you

will be able to write an article which will be
welcomed, and which may help your reputa-
tion." And though just that day his purse
was nearly empty, he paid the high price

that was asked for this little book when

he found it.

For we interested ourselves in Gerard de

Nerval, and the children of sorrow who, like

him, trod the path of letters to a very evil

43
 Oscar Wilde

goal — Chatterton, Poe, and Baudelaire ; and

I do not think that a day passed on which
we did not speak, and long, of these un-
happy poets. The very horror of their fates
seemed to heighten for us the splendour of

their genius, to call for our greater admir-

ation and enthusiasm.

We walked about Paris one night trying
to trace the tragic footsteps of Gerard de

Nerval, that hopeless lover of the Queen

of Sheba, on his way to Old Lanthorn
Street, where one early morning he was
found hanging from the iron railing of an
evil house. We were glad when we found
the inn—the sign at least, if not the actual

house — where dainty this aristocrat in letters

used to drink deep with the outcasts of the

halles. And I felt that Oscar Wilde was
sincere in the interest which he professed
for a story most pitiful among the many
pitiful stories of the accursed race of poets.

I think that if our sympathy was so strongly

44
 Oscar Wilde

enlisted, it was because each of us felt a

wonder, mixed with fear, whether, like

Gerard de Nerval, our sightless souls might

not stray to some red hell like his.

And as we walked along, Oscar Wilde

repeated the poet's lines :

" Ou sont nos amoureuses ?

Elles sont au tombeau.

Dans un sejour plus beau,

Elles sont plus heureuses.
Elles sont pres des anges,

Au fond du ciel bleu,

Ou elles chantent les louanges**

De la Mere de Dieu.

The radiant dandy, upon whom people

looked back as he passed, was hastening
to no coarse festival. It was a poet on
a pilgrimage to a ragged poet's place of

death, and on his lips was the poet's

elegy.

The story of Baudelaire's life enthralled

us even as his poetry enchanted. I owe it

altogether to Oscar Wilde that I became

45
 Oscar Wilde

familiar with the most wonderful verse which

was written in France in the nineteenth
century. And though, with ill-masked in-

sincerity, he professed to prefer in Les Fleurs

du Mai, the horrid realisms of The Carcase,
and The Murderers Wine, he taught me to

admire, with some degree of his own

enthusiasm, the organ swell of La Musique,
the stately sweep of the unknown woman in

deep mourning, to love also Diana in gallant

equipage.
The maladive interest which he showed in

Baudelaire's slow self-destruction, on which

an end waited far more appalling than Gerard

de Nerval's short struggle in the strangling

rope, may have proceeded from his inwit of

tendencies with him which might lead him to

the same end. That at least was spared to

him and us.

Yet his imitativeness, one of the marked

traits in his character, prompted him at least

to dally with the poisons that crushed

46
 ;

Oscar Wilde

Baudelaire into an inert, voiceless, if sentient

mass ; and as he had borrowed from Balzac

his monkish cowl, from Victor Hugo the form
of his paper, so from Baudelaire he took

absinthe ; and if he did not take haschish also,

it was because he could procure it nowhere.

But here his refinement saved him. It was
not in his nature to yield to excess, and
having played with poisons, he cast them
aside.

I have spoken of the insincerity of his

admiration for La Charogne. Was he al-

together insincere ? There was at that time

living in Paris the poet Maurice Rollinat,

who in those days was laying hands upon his

perishable body and his immortal soul much
in the same way as Baudelaire did, whose
acknowledged pupil in poetry he was. It

was drugs, drugs with him morning and

night, drugs for food and drugs for sleep

cerebral excitement all the time. The result

as we saw it was a terrible one, and we could

47
 Oscar Wilde

fancy the nerve-wreck of Charles Baudelaire

before the bow snapped, from the ravaged
picture before us. To the possible joy of

the angels and to the certain gain of France,

this exquisite poet and musician, Maurice

Rollinat, went only so far and no further.

He checked himself ere it was too late, and

fled to the remotest countryside, and flung
himself, a shattered and diseased man, at
the feet of Nature, our kindly mother, that
she might help him to undo what poison had
done. And Nature was good to him, for

after some years of silence we could rejoice

in the resurrection of the lost soul. Paris

resounded with the echoes of his muse.

The joy that Oscar Wilde took in the

ravaged personality of the poet, who at that

time seemed to be tottering, like a man on a

tight-rope, between lunacy on one side and
death on the other, seemed to me sincere,

and mingled with admiration rather than

pity. He invited him to dinner at the
48
OSCAR WILDE WHEN AT OXFORD, 1 878.
(J. Guggenheim, Photo', Oxford. J

To face p. 48.
 Oscar Wilde

Hotel Voltaire, and entertained him royally,

and after dinner prayed of him to recite

certain of his verses. Rollinat gave us his

terrible Ballad of Troppmann, a gruesome

and terrifying poem, to which the nervous
excitement of its author, as he repeated it

with wild gestures, lent additional horror.

It was a very revel of the morbid. Poe

would have crossed the ocean to be present.
Oscar Wilde expressed a supreme satisfaction.

On me, that evening produced a feeling of

deep melancholy. I passed a sleepless night,
and I wondered whether my friend had not
felt, in Rollinat's presence and at the aspect of
his state, a prompting to say a word, to hold
out a hand, to offer help. From a man of
his presence, with the authority of his

reputation and position, an attempt at inter-

ference would not have been resented, and

might have helped. His silence, nay, his

approval, before a spectacle of self-destruction

which to my Calvinistic conscience seemed the

49 4
 Oscar Wilde

sin which can never be pardoned, were in my

mind when, next day, as we were crossing
the Pont des Arts, I asked him :

"If you saw a man throw himself into the

"
river here, would you go after him ?

" I should consider it an act of gross

impertinence to do so," he said. " His
suicide would be a perfectly thought-out act,

the definite result of a scientific process, with

which I should have no right whatever to

interfere."

50
There was no selfishness in this assumed
indifference. Oscar Wilde was at once a
supreme egotist and the least selfish of

men, — that is to say, that he combined

complete individualism with a large and
generous altruism. He had not the masked
selfishness of self-sacrifice where his strong

nature rebelled against the victimization of

himself.

He could not go against his nature to

oblige another. He would not have divided
his last shilling with a friend, but, what
is infinitely more rare, he was always
ready to give away his superfluity. This
requires a higher generosity. The bene-
factor of the popular image after all,

5i
 Oscar Wilde

sacrifices a sixpence only. Now, I have

known Oscar Wilde, who never invested
a penny, give away hundreds of pounds.
His comfort had to be assured ; and he
made no pretence, as some do, of philan-
thropy which imposed privation on himself.
And no one who knew him, who had
watched his physical life, could expect it of

him, or blame as selfishness what was only

egotism. In his intense joy of life, asceticism

was impossible to his nature. It was a

pleasure to watch his enjoyment at table,

his delight in comfortable clothes, the

bounding gratitude of all his being for all

the good things of existence. I remember

the childlike glee with which he once put
on a new overcoat. He hugged himself

for pleasure in its comfortable folds and

said, " So nice and warm." It seemed
absolutely the right of this nature to have
all it wanted, and it was a real satisfaction

to see its enjoyment of the sensualities of

 Oscar Wilde

life, —a spectacle which was a most re-

freshing relief in these days of sham

Puritans and the bogus self-denials of the

sorriest Tartuffes. His faults of sensuality,

if they may so be styled, were open and

undisguised. You might watch them as

you might have watched a King of France

at Versailles, for he feasted in public.

But there was nothing coarse or gross

in his sensualism. He was a man of too
much refinement to overstep the line. I

never once saw him drink to excess ; and

that he always held a whiphand over his

habits was shown to me by the ease with

which he adapted himself to the prison
regulations. On hearing of his arrest, I

had fancied that the privation of tobacco

would be torture to him, for he was an
incessant smoker of cigarettes. He used
to order these by the thousand, and I

have seen him in Tite Street carrying with

him, as he moved from one room to

53
 Oscar Wilde

another, a box of cigarettes of the size of

a large biscuit-tin. I remembered that

once in Charles Street, where I was living

in the same house as he, my cigarettes

having given out in the night, I was

driven to get up and go to the sitting-room
where we had spent the evening, to grope
in the fender and fireplace for any cigar-

ette ends which we had thrown away.

Whilst I was so engaged, the door opened
stealthily, and Oscar Wilde came in, with a
look of much concern on his face. He
had, he confessed, come on the same
errand as myself.
Accordingly, I imagined he must be
suffering badly in Hollo way Gaol, and
out of sympathy, laid the penance of

abstinence from tobacco for as long on

myself also. When I met him after his

release on bail, I asked him if the privation

had tortured him as much as many

prisoners of whom one has heard, and he
54
 Oscar Wilde

said, " No. You make up your mind

that you cannot smoke, and you resign
yourself to the inevitable with ease." He
was not the helpless slave to his passions

that he has been represented to be.

He had the sheer horror of physical

ugliness, and avoided the society of those

who appeared to him ill-favoured. This
explains a fatal answer he made in cross-

examination during Lord Queensberry's

trial, an answer on which the worst con-
struction was put This repulsion was an
idiosyncrasy —a part and parcel of his artistic

temperament. It has been observed, with-

out arousing comment, in other prominent
men.
I have heard him refuse to meet people
who were ugly, however sympathetic to

him, because of the real distress which

their appearance caused to him. I have
heard him excuse himself on such occasions
in accents which left no doubt of his

55
 Oscar Wilde

sincerity.
M I cannot do it — I really can-

not."

So it was, that high as was his admira-

tion for Paul Verlaine, his first conversation

with him was the last also. The two poets

met at the Cafe" Francois Premier, where

Verlaine used to go for absinthe, and the
distressful impression which poor Lelian,

of the satyr's face, produced upon Oscar

Wilde, was such that he could not bear
to meet him again. "It was too dreadful,"
he said to me. Poor Lelian, by the way,
carried off from this interview no other
impression than that the English poet had
an abundant stock of superior cigarettes,

whilst he had to content himself with a

penny screw of inferior tobacco. I suppose
that all the brilliant things that Wilde said

were lost upon the simple Verlaine, that child

with the head of a Socrates, whose interests

in life were reduced to their most material
expression.
S6
 Oscar Wilde

He paid no heed to his brother-poet's out-

pourings of eulogy. His little twinkling

eyes leered now at the emptying glass and

now at the silver cigarette-case. His visitor,

in his enthusiasm, forgot for once his natural

hospitality.

Oscar Wilde made no attempt to hide

his antipathy for physical defects.

"Ugliness," he used to say, " I consider

a kind of malady, and illness and suffering
always inspire me with repulsion. A man
with the toothache ought, I know, to have
my sympathy, for it is a terrible pain.

Well, he fills me with nothing but aversion.

He is tedious. He is a bore. I cannot
stand him. I cannot look at him. I must
get away from him."
I once tried to enlist his sympathies on
behalf of a poor old Englishman whom I

had found starving in Paris, and whom I

had befriended for years. I took him

round to the hotel at which Oscar Wilde
57
 Oscar Wilde

was staying, but after a minute's conversa-

tion Wilde pretended a sudden indisposition,

and hurried out of the room.

" How could you bring that man here/'

he said afterwards, " with such a dreadful

complaint?" (my poor friend had some
chronic skin disfigurement). " I could not
bear the sight of him. It made me BL"
And though nothing would induce him to
meet my friend again, he did much to

alleviate his position.

I was surprised, after what he had told

me about his aversion to the ill-favoured,

that he should wish for my society.

" Oh, you are wonderful, Robert," he

said. "It is the head of a Roman emperor
of the decadence —the head of an emperor
who reigned but for one day —a head found
stamped upon a base coin."

He had addressed me almost from the

first by my Christian name, and had
desired me to do the same towards him.
58
 "

Oscar Wilde

I confess I had some difficulty at first in

doing so, and this in spite of the fact that I

had lived much abroad, and notably in

Southern Italy, where friends invariably use

this form of address.
"You mustn't call me Wilde," he said.
" If I am your friend, my name to you is

Oscar. If we are only strangers, am Mr. I

Wilde.
My Anglo-Saxon reserve, however, re-

volted against this Celtic expansiveness, and

it was some time before I could acquiesce

in such familiarity. It was, I know, all

innocence and warmness of heart on his

side towards his friends, and this also I

offered to say in Court when this habit of

his friendship was raised up, in its turn,

into a charge against him.

Although he never said ill things of the

absent, he had an openness of expression

towards his friends which never disguised
anything that displeased him. Much of the
59
 Oscar Wilde

fierce hatred that blazed up round him

when he fell, was fed no doubt by-

rancorous remembrances of lessons in

manners and taste, unhesitatingly delivered,

and at the time accepted with sycophantic

silence and submission. Yet he never spoke
ill of people, even of bitter enemies, who
were not present to hear him. I cannot re-

call any more biting remark from his lips

than a humorous answer he made to me on

the second day of our friendship. Referring
to one of the guests who had been present
at the dinner-party, I mentioned that he
was the son of a famous lady-pianiste.
" Well," said Oscar Wilde, " I am glad
to see that he has managed to survive it."

With regard to his enemies, he had a

serenity, a tolerance in speaking of them
that alone would have sufficed to rank him
in my mind amongst natures of election.
During his career he was often attacked and
ridiculed, but I never heard him speak of
60
 Oscar Wilde

those who had sought to cause him pain

except in condonation. He never had one
bitter word for the many friends who betrayed
him. This admirable quality reached to
heroism in his tragic days. In the abyss
into which he was plunged, never once did a
word of recrimination pass his lips. He
sought to devolve on no one any fragment
of his responsibility, he blamed no one for

the horror of his fate, he essayed in nowise

to lessen the crushing fardel of his infamy, by
shifting on to other shoulders any portion of
its burden.
But if one said or did anything in his

presence that displeased his sense of bien-

sdance, he was not slow to reprove it. Such
reproofs were delivered with so much dignity

and mansuetude, that I cannot fancy natures

base enough to have harboured rancour,
having accepted them at the time. But
circumstances exposed many such pitiful

minds.
61
 Oscar Wilde

I myself was once or twice called to order

by him, and I have no feeling in this connec-
tion but one of gratitude for the lesson. Like
many young men who, while ambitious, are

of insecure position, I sought assurance in

boasting. " Anything approaching self-ag-

grandisation," he said to me on more than

u You must avoid
one occasion, is vulgar.

it."

He never relinquished what he must have

considered the prerogative of his superior
nature ; and in the days after his fall, when
some might fancy he would have been
desirous to conciliate people, he was as
intolerant as ever towards laches of conduct

in his presence. I remember how at Ber-

neval, shortly after his release from prison,

he lectured, in my presence, a very wealthy

Irish poet, who had been brought to his

house by a publisher, on certain points of

good breeding, which he had seemed to

ignore.
62
 VI

Had his influence indeed been for evil, it was

to certain destruction that that meeting in

the house of the Avenue de S6gur would

have doomed me, for I surrendered to it

entirely. The delight that I took in this

friendship proceeded as much from my nature

as from the circumstances under which I was

living when we first met. I had laid a severe

discipline on myself and had been living in

almost absolute solitude in a cottage, sur-

rounded by high walls, in a remote part of

Passy. Here I wrote, with no companionship

but that of my many dogs, and with no visitors

but one strange old woman, a Marquise, who

had been famous for her beauty during the
Second Empire, who professed great admira-
63
 Oscar Wilde

tion for some poor verse of mine, and tried to

prove it by coming to render menial services

in the poet's neglected house. In her old
imperial days a royal admirer had compared

her to the girl in " La Cruche Cassee" of

Greuze, and indeed she resembled her.

Clesinger had hewn her bust in marble.

Yet she delighted to cook for me and to

sweep my house, and I found her once

darning my hose.
To be taken out of this hermit's existence

into the gladdest society was to me like a

draught of strong wine. I let myself drift

on the whirling current of this new life, but

never once did anxiety beset me as to whither

it might bear me. I felt that his friendship

was all for good ; and disastrous as in wounded

sympathy it proved to be, nothing ever came,
from first to last, to belie that feeling.

Except on the occasions when he was

invited out, the whole of our waking hours dur-
ing those days in Paris were spent together
64
 Oscar Wilde

I used to call at the Hotel Voltaire at noon,

and rarely returned to Passy before three
o'clock in the morning. He would not come
out to the wilds of my retreat after one visit.

" Passy," he said, "is a dreadful place to

get to. It is so far off that one's cabman

keeps getting down off his box to ask for
something on account of his pourboire"
I think it was rather my dogs who fright-

ened him away. He had a curious dislike to

animals. " Dogs are so fussy," he said, " that

they become tedious." This badinage con-

cealed a real physical aversion, which I after-

wards found in Alphonse Daudet also.

On the one occasion when he came to my

house, he lunched with me. The poor
Marquise had prepared the dinner, and for

the most part waited on us. But she found

no favour in his eyes in spite of her kind-
ness, and that evening he rated me for

associating with a person whom old age had

so disfigured.
65 5
 Oscar Wilde

We often went to Lavenue's, near the

Gare Montparnasse, a house of call in those
days for artists of the brush and of the pen.
Paul Bourget used to be there, and one day-

John Sargent sketched the three of us into

the wonderful album which was one of the

curiosities of the house. A year or two ago,
happening that way, I entered this cafe, and
asked for the book, hoping to revive for a few
moments the radiant past. But the landlord
of those days was landlord no longer. He had
retired, and had taken his albums with him.
The Caf6 d'Orsay, on the Quai d'Orsay,

often attracted us on our way to the Hdtel

Voltaire, and here we also used to meet
Bourget. He was then in penurious days,
and seemed as depressed and reticent as

Wilde was exuberant and talkative. I think

at times of these two as they then were in the

race, and as they were twelve years later,

Bourget in the palm-embroidered coat of the

Academy, Wilde in the , . •

66
 Oscar Wilde

I was then living too much out of the

world, to be able to say what impression he

produced in Parisian society, or what suc-

cesses he achieved. I fancy, though, that

these were less than at the time I imagined,

and as was reported in London. He seems
to have attracted the attention of de Goncourt,
who refers to the English poet in his diary,

and quotes some of the stories he told of his

experiences in America. I have described
his visits to Victor Hugo and to de Nitis. I

also accompanied him on two occasions to

Sarah Bernhardt, who showed great liking
and admiration for him. On the first occa-

sion we called on her at the Vaudeville

Theatre, during the performance of one of
Sardou's plays, in which she was acting. We
were received in the little salon adjoining

her dressing-room ; and Sarah, who was in

evident deshabille, changing dresses for her

part, put her head out between the dividing
curtains to welcome Oscar Wilde with her
67
 —

Oscar Wilde

most cordial smiles. Jean Richepin and

other men were in the little drawing-room
the author of Les Blasphemes with his arms

folded —and it seemed to me that our visit,

no less than Sarah's evident pleasure in it,

was somewhat resented.

Some days later we went to her house on
the Avenue de Villiers, and on the way
Oscar Wilde purchased from a street hawker
a large heap of wallflowers, which he
presented to her. It was a poor offering, but

she seemed delighted with it. We found

Alexandre Parodi in her studio, who showed
much deference to Oscar Wilde, and called
him "cher maltre." Parodi was the author
of that tragedy Rome Vaincue, in which
Sarah secured her first real stage-triumph at
the Comedie Franchise. I was much grati-

fied by his attitude towards my new friend,

for I knew Parodi's own worth ; but Oscar

Wilde found him rather tedious, and the
fact was that Parodi, who had fallen on evil
68
 Oscar Wilde

days, was very depressing in his conversa-

tion.

Wilde appeared to be sought after by

English people who were visiting Paris, but

he did not very willingly accept their invita-

tions. There was an amusing person staying
at the Hotel du Rhin — I believe she was
a woman of great wealth —with whom he
dined on several occasions. One night he
had appointed me to meet him in the Place

Vendome at ten o'clock, but it was past

eleven before he came out of the Hotel du
Rhin, and I complained of the hundreds of
times I had had to walk round the square
whilst awaiting him. He said, "Good
Heavens, do you think I have been enjoying
myself?" and gave me a little glimpse of the
egotism to which I have referred. He then
spoke of his hostess as a woman who had a
mania for associating the name of any person

she was introducing either with some accom-

plishment, or, in default, with some incident
69
 Oscar Wilde

connected with him which might arouse

interest.

" She introduced a young man to-night as

Mr. John , whose uncle, poor Sir William,

had his legs so shamefully mangled on the

underground railway the other day."
The advances which were made to him by
distinguished people in Parisian society had

been carefully attracted by himself. He was

not disdainful of the indispensable arts for

fostering social advancement. On his arrival

in Paris he had sent copies of his volume of

poems, with letters, to various artists and

authors. At the time of his arrest I saw in

more than one literary salon, laid out as

curios of actuality, the volume, with its

dedication and its accompanying letter,

written twelve years previously. The

shrewdness in the management of his affairs

which this betokened confirmed me in the

opinion that in their final mismanagement he
was never for a moment a responsible man,
70
 Oscar Wilde

and this, as will be seen later, was his wife's

opinion also.

I have said that our conversation was

almost entirely about literature. He talked

to me much of Walter Pater and of Swin-

burne. For these two his admiration was

supreme. But he interested me, perhaps,
more when he spoke of Carlyle's History
of the French Revolution, of which he knew
many passages by heart, and it was wonderful
to hear how beautiful they sounded from his

lips. For at that time I was affecting an

admiration for the sanguinary scoundrels
of the Revolution. I had not then watched
the Republic at work, and the answer of
Enjolras, V Citoyen, ma mere, c'est la

Republique," seemed to me a divine utter-

ance. Also, when Oscar Wilde, writing to

me at Passy, used to address his letters to the

" Citoyen Robert Sherard," I was as pleased
with the envelope as with its contents.

When he talked about himself, it was

7i
 Oscar Wilde

literature also. His sayings always seemed

witty to me, and I used to note down
in an interleaved copy of de la Koche-
foucauld the dons mots I had heard from
him during the day. I think that the saying
of which just then he was most proud was
where he had expressed his disappointment
with the Atlantic to an interviewer in New
York. And he related also, with much
gusto, how in a country-house he had told
his host one evening that he had spent the
day in hard literary work, and that, when
asked what he had done, he had said, " I

was working on the proof of one of my

poems all the morning and took out a
comma." "And in the afternoon?" "In
the afternoon — well, I put it back again."
There was also his remark to a hostess who
reproved him for coming late. "What,
madam, do you think that that little clock
knows of what the great golden sun is

doing?"
72
 Oscar Wilde

He spoke little of his American tour, and

I gathered that it had not been a source of

much satisfaction to him, and that the ugliness
of American cities had distressed him. The
only incident which he related with pleasure
was that he had discovered in Chicago a
young sculptor of Irish extraction, who was
poor, friendless, ignored, and unhappy ; and
that by speaking of him and his work in the

course of one of his lectures in that city, he

had drawn attention to him, with the result

that his position had been greatly improved.

The sculptor afterwards came to Europe, but

I did not see him by Wilde's side when the

catastrophe had come.

Of colours, magenta, of places, Bayswater,
were his horror. At least, so he said. A
Bayswater view of life meant, from his lips,

a severe condemnation for mediocrity. That

staid London district afforded him an attri-

butive of almost universal application. And

the same may be said of the word '
chromo-
73
 Oscar Wilde

lithographic.' With reference to the colour

magenta, he declared that the sight of it gave

him real pain. He was delighted to hear

that a bitter enemy of my youth had been a

boy whom I knew only as " the Magenta
Cad " from a bag he carried, and with whom
I had fought many battles. I remember that

Oscar Wilde composed a verse " to render

the colour impossible." It ran something

like this :

" Put yellow lilies in your hair,

But wear not the magenta zone,
For that would make you out of tone,
I could not love you if you were.*'

I heard little of his school or University

days, but when we spoke together of Oxford

there was enthusiasm on his side. His years

at Magdalen seemed to him at that time to

have been the happiest period of his life. I

always fancied that the fact that I did not

take my degree seemed to him to draw a line

between us. There were certain subjects on

which he would not listen to me and when
;

74
 Oscar Wilde

other graduates were present, a vague feeling

of exclusion from his confidence communicated

itself to me.
He spoke of his parents with high admira-
tion, but I noticed with some misease that,

with reference to his father, he seemed to

have the middle-class contempt for the title

of knighthood. He would refer to it apolo-

getically, yet for more sonorous prefixes he

had a certain admiration. He introduced

me at various times to noblemen, and each

time I noticed with what pleasure he pro-

nounced their names. These things were

the only indications, and those of the very

faintest, that he had risen to a place in society

which was not his milieu by birth.

For Speranza he had a sheer veneration,

and the beauty of his conduct towards her
to the very end, must arrest admiration and
respect from those who most severely

condemn him. In all the bitterness of his

punishment, nothing can have pained his

75
 Oscar Wilde

noble heart more than that he could not be

with her when she died. In France, a con-

demned murderer, his mother lying at death's

door, would be allowed, under escort certainly,

to go to her bedside, but in England the

prison regulations are framed with no such

humanity. During the whole day of February

3rd, 1896, I had the spectacle before my eyes
of the unhappy man in his cell in Reading
Gaol, knowing that each moment might be
his mother's last.

He spoke of her to me often in those

radiant early days, and with such enthusiasm

that for it alone I could not but have admired
him. Her serenity towards life was one of
the points he insisted upon with most pride,

and there was a tragic story he used to tell

of how, when his mother was nursing his

father on his dying bed, each morning there

came into the sick-room the veiled and silent

figure of a woman who sat and watched but

never spoke, and at nightfall went away, to
76
 Oscar Wilde

return next morning. Her serenity was to

stand Lady Wilde in good stead in the last

days ; her resignation spared her much bitter

suffering. When the final verdict was com-

municated to her, and she knew that she

would see him no more, she only turned over
on her side in bed and said, "May it help him!"
He was a good son. When he was in
London, he never let a day pass without
visiting his mother. * In spite of his

extravagance and generosity to his friends,

and the precariousness of his income, he
contributed to her support largely and with
a regularity most meticulous. Nor did he

limit himself to this allowance. On arriving

at the house, his first steps used to carry him

to the rack by the side of the fireplace where
unpaid bills were put, and if he ever went
away without leaving the money to discharge

them, it was because he had bestowed it

elsewhere. And though he might not follow

his mother to her grave, he had at least in

77
 Oscar Wilde

his prison-cell the consolation of the thought

that her sumptuous and honourable funeral
was paid for out of the poor remnant of his
fallen fortune.

He spoke to me also with much affection

and admiration of his brother Willy, and told

me stories of their boyish comradeship which

showed a warm heart here also. And though
in later years the ways of the two brothers
deviated, and a gulf seemed to divide them,

he maintained his admiration for Willy's

brilliant cleverness to the end, and in the

bottom of his heart the old boyish affection

also. I heard him once after Willy's death
scourge a man who had spoken somewhat
slightingly of his brother, as I had never
heard him speak before.
His ingenuousness, his simplicity, showed
themselves in his story of an incident of their
nursery days. " I had given Willy a toy
bear of mine, of which I was very fond," he
said, " and whenever afterwards I got angry
78
 Oscar Wilde

with him, I used to threaten him with an

1
1 shall take back my bear, Willy/ It was a
saying with us till we were men." He
laughed heartily at this remembrance.
When he spoke, as he often did, of the

sister who was dead, his wondrous eyes

softened. " She was like a golden ray of
sunshine dancing about our home." It was
she of whom he wrote in his poems :

" Coffin-board, heavy stone,

Lie on her breast.

I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest."

The beautiful child " who hardly knew

She was a woman,
"
So softly she grew

Yes, under the posturing and the persiflage,

under the scented curls and the cynicism,
under the native sensuality and the assumed
worldliness, there was in my friend the tender

heart of an affectionate little child. Nor did

adversity any more harden it than triumph.

79
 Oscar Wilde

It was so to the last as it had always

been.

All these are the impressions which my

memory recalls, as I think back on the days

in which the friendship dawned. When I

left Paris, he remaining behind, I railed

against the circumstances which were

separating us.

So
 VII

The regret for this separation followed me

to London, and grew so strong that on my
arrival there I determined to abandon a
project, which, if I had carried it out, would
have taken me for years to the East, and
perforce have interrupted a communionship
which had invested life for me with a new
and warm interest.

I wrote to him to tell him so, for he had

long tried to dissuade me from leaving

Europe, where, he said, I could find my

true career.

He shortly afterwards came to London,

and hearing that I had gone to meet the
spring in Westmoreland, he telegraphed to
me at the cottage where I was living to ask

me if I could receive him there. I told him

81 6
 Oscar Wilde

in my answer of the narrow things at home,

and warned him that for all the daffodils

and violets of my hillside he would find

the rough North living intolerable. In the

end he decided not to come, but we main-
tained an active correspondence.

His letters were a constant delight to me,

and I found them so beautiful that, as I

remember, making my will at that time, I

bequeathed my collection of them to the

woman I reverence most of all women in

the world. I will add this, that when that

lady heard that I was writing this story of

my friendship, she wrote to ask me if I had

preserved those beautiful letters which my
friend had written to me in those days.

I mention this because, in letters of his,

similar in tone and style, evil was found, so

true is it that any man can be hanged on
two lines of his writing. I give one of these
letters, written to me in Ambleside, after I

had known him for about three months.

82
 ;:

Oscar Wilde
" Dear Robert, —Your letters are charm-
ing, they are iridescent, and everything you
see or hear seems to become touched with
colour and tinged with joy. I think of you

often wandering in violet valleys with your

honey-coloured hair, and meditating on the

influence of paradoxes on the pastoral mind ;

but you should be here. One can only write

in cities, the country hanging on one's walls
in the grey mists of Corot, or the opal morn-
ings that Daubigny has given us : not that

I have written here — the splendid whirl and

swirl of life in London sweeps me from my

Sphynx. I am hard at work being idle

late midnights and famishing morrows follow

one another. I wish I was back in Paris,

where I did such good work. However,

society must be amazed, and my Neronian
coiffure has amazed it. Nobody recognises

me, and everybody tells me I look young

that is delightful, of course.
" My book you will have next week — it is

83
 Oscar Wilde

a great pleasure to give it to anyone so

sympathetic as you —poet to poet. I give
you my work because your joy in it makes
it more dear to me.
" Who is your young man who likes what
I said of the primrose ?

" My pen is horrid, my ink bad, my

temper worse. — Write soon, and come soon
to London. " Oscar."

If the extravagance of his address had

evoked from me anything but a smile, I

might have gone as far as to cry out, " Quel

blagueur /" I cannot conceive how even
the most perverted mind could find wrong
in such letters. I was willing, and offered,

to bring these early letters of his into Court,

to show that long before suspicion attainted

him, at a time when his sanity could not be

called in question, he used the imagery of his

pen to beautify his letters to all his friends,

seeking similes to flatter and please them.

84
 Oscar Wilde

I do not know what the book was to

which the letter refers, but I think it must

have been the Duchess of Padua, which he
had finished some time before I left Paris.

Indeed, I was with him at the Hotel Vol-

taire on the day when he heard from Mary-
Anderson, to whom he had sent a copy of
the drama which was written for her. He
telegraphed in the morning for her decision,
and whilst we were talking together after

lunch her answer came. It was unfavour-

able ;
yet, though he had founded great
hopes on the production of this play, he
gave no sign of his disappointment. I

can remember his tearing a little piece off

the blue telegraph-form and rolling it up
into a pellet and putting it into his mouth,

as, by a curious habit, he did with every

paper or book that came into his hands.
And all he said, as he passed the telegram

over to me, was, "This, Robert, is rather

tedious."
85
 Oscar Wilde

We met again, a month or two later, by

hazard in a train in London, and he asked
me to come and stay in Charles Street, where
he was living in rooms. The street has since

been transformed, and now goes by the name

of Carlos Street. The house, which was oppo-
site the mews of the Coburg Hotel, has
been pulled down. It was an old house, and
the rooms on the third floor which Oscar
Wilde occupied were panelled in oak, and
there were old engravings in heavy black
frames on the wall.
The house was kept by a retired butler
and his wife, who was a very good cook, and
the service was luxurious. I was accommo-
dated with a bedroom on the ground floor,

and shared Wilde's sitting-room upstairs. It

was a pleasant life, and our breakfasts were

after the fashion of Oxford. We often

invited guests to this first meal, and over

Parascho cigarettes and fine liqueurs dis-

coursed till long after noon. During the

86
 Oscar Wilde

first days of my stay there Oscar Wilde

took me to a reception at his mother's house.

Lady Wilde was living at that time in Park

Street, Grosvenor Square, in a charming
little house which belonged to Willy Wilde.
I was presented as having a volume of poems
in the press, and was graciously received.

Later on, as I was standing talking to Anne

Kingsford, Lady Wilde, holding some prim-
roses in her hand, crossed the drawing-room,

repeating, "Flowers for the poet! Flowers

for the poet I
" It was for me that they were
intended, for she came up to me and
decorated my coat with her posy.

It was a curious existence, this life in

Charles Street, Grosvenor Square, not with-

out humour. The fact was that, in despite of

an address which implied opulence, we were

both very poor. Oscars American lectures

had not been productive, and the Duchess

of Padua had realised nothing. My friend

accordingly was obliged, much against his will,

87
 Oscar Wilde

to accept an engagement from an agency to

lecture in the provinces. It was a real

penance to him, and I could understand this

after I had seen how his lectures were

advertised in the provincial papers. But his

money needs were pressing, and perforce he

had to lend himself to this exploitation of the

notoriety gained in the period which he had

renounced.
I remained on in Charles Street and
continued to write. I do not suppose that
there was a poorer man in London than my-
self ; and whenever chance now takes me to

Grosvenor Square, I recall how for hours I

used to walk round it in those days, trying

to forget my hunger under the suspicious

eyes of powdered footmen. Still I had
hope, for I had just published a novel in

three volumes, and a book of poems was in

the press.

Oscar Wilde returned to town at intervals,

and on more than one occasion pulled out of

88
 Oscar Wilde

the pocket of his fur coat a handful of notes

and gold which he had earned so distastefully

in the provinces, and told me to take what I

needed. " It's as much yours as mine," he

said. "You know I have no sense of

property."

On these occasions of his return to town

we used to dine at the Cafe Royal, and

very often Whistler was a convive. We
used to drink Chateau des Mille-Sdcousses,
a claret Whistler had discovered. We were
blind to the omen of its name. And though
Wilde seemed to be the arbiter at these
dinners, his deference towards Whistler was
very marked. He seemed to take pleasure

in paying him compliments. I remember

his once referring to something Whistler had
done or was to do, with the expression "like

the fine old- Virginian gentleman that you

are." I witnessed also the exchange of

much correspondence between them, repartee

by letter or telegram, in which Whistler's
89
 Oscar Wilde

sayings seemed to delight my friend. I was

with him, by the way, also, when the two
quarrelled, but I never heard Wilde say one
word, either then or later, in resentment.

During my hungry afternoons, when my

friend was away, I often used to look out of

the third-floor window to watch the carriages

of the opulent householders of Mayfair
returning from Oxford Street. There was
usually a pile of volumes by my lady's side,

and I watched and watched if I might recog-

nise the covers of my opus primus. I

watched in vain, and the truth forced itself

upon me at last, in spite of my friend's en-

couragements, that I could not live by the pro-

duction of belles-lettres in Grosvenor Square.

So, as there is no city in the world where

one can starve with less discomfort than
Paris, I determined to return there, to

exchange my panelled sitting-room for a

chambre garnie, and the Parascho cigarettes
for caporal ordinaire.
go
 VIII

It was some time during my stay in

Charles Street that Oscar Wilde told me

that he was engaged to be married. He
had arrived in town early one morning
from Dublin, and he woke me in bed and
gave me the news. I said, " I am very sorry
to hear it," and turned over to resume my

slumbers. He said, "What a brute you are,

Robert," and that was the end of the con-
versation then. I know that I felt he was
not likely to be happy in domestic life, and
still less to make a woman happy.
At breakfast he spoke of his bride, and
seemed much in love, and very joyous.
The parti seemed a good one, for his

wife's dowry would assure a regular and

9i
 ;

Oscar Wilde

substantial income. But I misdoubted the

future, for I could not fancy him in the

part of a householder and man of family. I

did not then know the gentle lady whom

he had elected.
I was living in Paris at the time of his

wedding, but as they crossed to France the

same day, I was introduced on the morrow
to Mrs. Wilde. They were staying in some
very pleasant rooms on one of the higher
stories of the Hotel de Wagram, in the Rue
de Rivoli, and a beautiful pair they made.
The lovely young wife seemed supremely
happy. There was bright sunlight, as one
only sees it in Paris, on the Tuileries with-
out, yet the room where I first met her was
just as gladsome. It was full of flowers and

youth and laughter. I felt that my morose

forebodings at the time that I first heard of
the engagement were more than stultified

and as we walked out together, Oscar Wilde

told me that marriage was indeed wonderful.
92
OSCAR WILDE, FROM A DRAWING, U

To face p. 92.
 "

Oscar Wilde

We were passing through the Marche St.

Honone at the time, and here he stopped and

rifled a flower-stall of its loveliest blossoms,

and sent them, with a word of love on his

card, to the bride whom he had quitted but a

moment before.

We all lunched together, and after dinner

we drove out in an open fiacre. As we were
turning into the Place de la Concorde, I

said, "Would you mind, Oscar, if I threw

my stick away?"
He said, " No, don't. People would see
you, and it would cause a scene. Why do
you want to throw it away ?

I said, " It's a swordstick ; and I don't

know how it is, but for the last minute I

have had a wild desire to pull out the

blade and run it through you. I think it's

because you look too happy. Or it may be

that it would be such a horrible thing to do
to you on the day after your wedding."
"No, no," he said, "don't throw it away.
93
 Oscar Wilde

Don't make a scene." Mrs. Wilde laughed

and took the stick from my hand. " I shall

keep this," she said ; and the common little

cane was for a long time, I know, one of her

curiosities. In a letter which she wrote to

me many years afterwards she added in a

postscript, " I have still got the swordstick."
I do not know if a passing madness had
really put my friend in danger in one of the

happiest moments of his life, but I have

sometimes thought since that here was a
premonition — in what mysterious manner
suggested, I cannot say.
I think that it was during his stay in Paris

at this time that he visited with me the

haunts of the lowest criminals and poorest

outcasts of the city, the show-places of the

Paris — Pere Lunette's and

Inferno, the

Chateau-Rouge, — which everybody who

wishes to know the depths of darkness
which exist in the City of Light goes to

see.

94
 Oscar Wilde

There were several of us. I fancy the

American, Stuart Merrill, a French poet
highly esteemed, was one of the party.

Oscar Wilde had expressed himself delighted

at the prospect of the excursion, for he said,

"The criminal classes have always had a

wonderful attraction for me " ; to which
feeling, by the way, he gave such effective

expression in that masterly essay, " Pen,

Pencil, and Poison," and other papers.

He was dressed that night with his

accustomed elegance, and had some trinkets

on his person ; and knowing the habits of the
customers of these houses, I once or twice
interposed myself between him and some
particularly notorious character, whose inten-

tions were only too apparent to me. Refer-

ring to which afterwards, wher> speaking of

his round of the bas-fonds of Paris, he used

to say, u Robert was splendid, and defended
me at the risk of his life."

I have one scene of the many that that

_ 95
 Oscar Wilde

evening brought forth, always before my

eyes. At the tavern of the Chateau- Rouge

there is a large room upstairs, or was at

that time, where, by paying a halfpenny

to the landlord, homeless vagabonds and
beggars could sleep on the floor till closing-

time at two o'clock in the morning. This

room was known as the Morgue, or the
Salle des Morts> and was the favourite

spectacle of those seeking unhealthy emo-

tions. We had spent some minutes in

the pestilential taprooms downstairs, talking

to thieves and the saddest daughters of joy,

listening to the obscene songs of a frightful

old, noseless hag, and watching a number

of professional beggars in their display of

the tricks by which they feigned infirmities.

As a bonne-bouche, the Salle des Morts was

proposed by the Herculean landlord. Wilde
agreed, and we went upstairs, the landlord

leading the way with a flickering dip.

Stretched out in every posture of pain

96
 !

Oscar Wilde

and discomfort, many in the stupor of drink,

many displaying foul sores, maimed limbs,

or the stigmata of disease, all in filthy and

malodorous rags, the sleepers of the Room
of the Dead, with their white faces, immobile
and sightless, showed indeed like corpses.

I can see my friend's face still, his head just

rising above the floor, for his feet had
refused to carry him to the top of the stair-

case into the pestilential room. Seen under

the flicker of the bully's dip, there was upon
its features the horror of one who looks on
the Medusa : a twinge of pity about the
lips perhaps, but in the main, horror —sheer
horror.

Yet not one of the poor wretches who

lay there stunned by the merciful sleep of

exhaustion, whose most evil fate, compared

to his, was not one to be envied

97
 IX

His marriage did not at first improve

his circumstances, so that he could devote
himself entirely to belles-lettres. It became
necessary for him to earn a regular income.
Mrs. Wilde's fortune was in the bulk to
come to her only after the death of her
grandfather, who, in articulo mortis at the

time of Oscar's engagement, " blossomed out

into fresh life," as he told me, "after he had
joined our hands and given us his parting
blessing."

With the pathetic striving that was

always part of his character, to subject his
wayward nature to discipline, he joyfully
accepted the duties of his new position ; and
the editorship of a ladies' magazine being
98
 Oscar Wilde

offered him, accepted the distasteful employ-

ment. His post obliged him to bureau

activities. He was forced to come to the

City at regular hours on certain days of the

week, and I remember meeting him at times

in the Strand, brisk on his way to his office,

a Pegasus in the plough.

It was one of the rules in the huge literary

factory in which he was employed that no

smoking was allowed anywhere on the

premises, and that, in spite of this restric-

tion, he had accepted the engagement, was a

proof to those who knew him how earnestly

he felt his responsibility in his new state.

When he referred to his bureau life, he used

to speak of the great pleasure that he took
in the society and conversation of a brother-
editor who occupied a high post in the

literary factory, and whom he described as

a man of great scholarship and high refine-

ment.
It seemed to me also that he enjoyed, too,

99
 Oscar Wilde

in some measure the dignity of editorial

authority; and I remember that once in my
rooms in Cecil Street, when we were speak-
ing about the remuneration of contributors,

he said, " I pay a guinea a page, whether

the page is illustrated or not." There was
some pride in his tone, and he seemed to

have his employers' interests at heart. I

recall that conversation all the better because,

a little earlier, he had given me a proof that
his nature really did suffer amid ugly
surroundings, —a proof that his professed

cultus of the beautiful proceeded from an

innate feeling. I had not been able to

receive him the moment he called, and he

had been prayed to wait in the room below
— in the awful room which in that London
lodging-house gave its designation to the
drawing-room floor. He had not been more
than three minutes sequestrated in the
crimson and ormolu horrors of that apart-
ment, with its ugly hangings, bad pictures,
ioo
 Oscar Wilde »» • »

and worse ornaments, before I heard his

voice calling plaintively from the landing
below, " Do let me come up, Robert," he
said, "or I shall have to ask to be allowed
to sit on the steps. If I stay a moment
longer in that drawing-room, I shall become
very ill."

He was living then in his beautiful house

in Tite Street, which was to be his last home.
It was a very temple of lettered ease,

exquisitely decorated and appointed with

solid comfort. A study had been fitted up
for him at the top of the house, but I do not
believe that he ever wrote a line there, and
what writing he did do in Tite Street, was
done on Carlyle's writing-table, in the little

room on the right of the entrance-passage.

It was in reference to his idleness, in spite

of all the inducements that his abode held

out to industry, that he said to me those

words of self-reproach which I have quoted :

" I am not doing what I ought to do ; I ought

IOI
 Oscar Wilde

to be putting black upon white —black upon

white."

This was the period in his life when those

who had envied the splendid notoriety of
his youth, and had been dismayed by the
rapidity and extent of his social success, con-

soled themselves with the thought that his

talents had given the full of their measure,

and that his fortune was on its ebb. Indeed,
but for his occasional contributions to the
reviews, his name was but little heard of
during these first years of his married life.

The editorial engagement had lapsed and

had not been renewed, for Pegasus never
suited ploughman yet. I did not know
it then, but I heard of it afterwards, that

there was in those days often real distress in

the beautiful home in Tite Street. If there

was, it was never apparent ; the marriage

seemed happy and prosperous on the many

occasions when, visiting London from Paris,

I called at the house. His friendliness was

102
 Oscar Wilde

so steadfast towards me, that if my first visit

on arriving in town was not to him, he used

to write me a letter of reproach. One day,

happening to meet me, he asked me why I

had been so long in coming to Tite Street.

" I came over to be married," I said.

" Oh, I see," he answered. " Now I under-

stand why you have not been to see me."
His attitude and bearing towards his wife

were at all times most courteous and

deferential, and he affected a humorous
solicitude to observe his social duties as her
husband. " Cest le jour de ma femme" he
used to say, in the words of poor Risler
aine\ in refusing an invitation on the days

when his wife received. I was once or twice

present at these receptions, and admired the

pains he took to entertain her visitors,

although I knew how terribly bored he was

under his genial exterior. On one of these
afternoons the baby was brought in to be
admired by a noble dame, and I remember
103
 Oscar Wilde

that he said something to me, as he touched

his little son's cheek with his fat finger, that

had a ring of sadness in it —words of fore-

boding that the child's destiny would not be

a happy one —words of commiseration for

the sleeping innocent.

An act of his which about this time

brought his name again before the public,
and which evoked some malevolent comment
in the papers, was an act of pure kindness,

prompted, I think, by his friendship for me.

My poor friend, John Barlas, a poet, who

had been my comrade at New, had fallen

into the hands of the police. His brain

having given way under the stress of

misery, and excited by reading Anarchist

literature, he had rushed out one morning
from the awful kennel in which he was
living in the Lambeth Road, and making
his way to Westminster Bridge, had fired off

a revolver at the House of Commons, "to

mark," as he explained at the police-station,
104
 Oscar Wilde

"my contempt for the institution of Parlia-

ment." He was remanded for inquiries,

and under the circumstances the prospect

was a bad one. I heard of his arrest in
Paris, and being unable to come over to

bestir myself on his behalf, I wrote a long

letter to the Pall Mall Gazette, headed
" John Barlas, Poet," in which I told all the

good things I knew of the poor fellow, and

gently suggested that a few doses of

bromide of potassium would be the best

prescription that the honourable magistrate

could ordain. Then Oscar Wilde came
forward and offered himself as surety for
the poet's future good behaviour ; and in

the end, John Barlas was bound over to

keep the peace for a period of six months,

under a penalty of ^50, on Wildes
recognisance. It was a generous act on
Oscar Wilde's part, for poor Barks' s nervous
state was such that
s
there was every
probability that he might be called on to
105
 Oscar Wilde

forfeit a sum which at that time he could

very ill have afforded to lose. He was much
pleased by the deference shown to him in

Court. He was invited to sit next to the

magistrate. But what I most often think of
when I recall his account of that incident
is his description of the atmosphere of the
regions below the police-court — the region
of the cells. The cordiality between the
constables and the prisoners, the pervading

joviality, the large spirit of tolerance, of

comprehension of human weakness, which
seemed to actuate gaolers and policemen,
surprised and delighted him. I told him
that the explanation was that policemen
and prisoners are men of the people
together, as distinct from the bourgeoisie
represented by the magistrate and his text-
books, and that when an unfortunate man
of the upper classes fell into those depths,

he might look in vain for that cordiality

and generous tolerance. Oscar Wilde said
1 06
 Oscar Wilde

that I was an abominable cynic, but I

know that in the event he found that I

was in the right. There was so little

humanity shown to him, that on the night of

his arrest the reporters calling at Bow Street

police-station were admitted to look into his

cell and to feast their eyes on the spectacle

of his agony.

107
 X
In the first month of 1891 I saw much of

him in London. I had returned, under

different circumstances, to my old rooms
in Charles Street, and he used to come,
to lend the glamour of his presence and
of his conversation, to the gatherings of
poets who used to spend the evenings
with me. I remember that on one occasion
John Barlas came, accompanied by an extra-
ordinary young female, who, to show the
ardour of her Anarchist convictions, was
dressed in red. Oscar Wilde was civil to

her, but Barlas seemed to think that he did

not show sufficient deference to the comrade ;

and as we were walking through Berkeley

Square, he indignantly separated from us.
108
 ;

Oscar Wilde

He said something to the effect that Wilde

ought to have given the lady —the poet's

comrade — his arm, which, I admit, would

have afforded a strange spectacle. It was
a sign of Wilde's urbanity that he showed
neither annoyance nor resentment at the poor

fellow's extraordinary conduct, yet nobody

hated scenes in public more than he did
and again, it was hardly grateful of Barlas,

after the way in which, as a stranger, he

had befriended him.
During the same year we frequently met
in Paris, where he had now begun to be
counted, and seriously, amongst European
celebrities. In December he was much feted

in the best houses, and leading litterateurs

and artists crowded to his hotel. The

Princess of Monaco, sending him her
portrait at that time, wrote upon it " Au
vrai Art —a Oscar Wilde."
I was able then to do something towards
imposing him on the attention of Paris,
109
 —

Oscar Wilde

which gave him great pleasure. I con-

tributed a long article about him and his

work to Le Gaulois, the leading Con-

servative and Royalist paper in France.

It was printed on the first page, and made

him the topic of the day m Paris.*

I had invited him to lunch with me at

Paillard's, to meet Coquelin cadet, and as

we walked down the boulevard we looked
at the people sitting outside the cafes, and

when we saw anyone reading the Gaulois

we both pretended to be very proud.
Coquelin cadet was not greatly impressed
by my friend, and I imagine that, as a
general rule, Oscar Wilde did not have
much success with actors. These may
have thought his affectation, harmless as it

was, an infringement on their own rights

a trespass on their domain.

A pleasanter dejeuner was one at the

Cafe Riche, to which I invited Jean Moreas

* I have reprinted this article at the end of this book.
HO
 Oscar Wilde

and Stephane Mallarme" to meet him. It

was very cordial, and I think Oscar Wilde

succeeded in amazing the two poets. He

had been anxious to meet Mallarme, and
until we saw him come into the room we
did not know whether he was coming.
The telegram which he had sent me in

answer to my invitation, like every piece

of prose he wrote, was worded in so
intricate and obscure a manner that

neither Wilde nor myself had been able

to get at its meaning, though we had spent

the whole period of the apdritif puzzling
over it.

A few months later, Oscar Wilde rendered

me a service for which I felt very grateful.
On the eve of fighting a duel, under severe

conditions, I had written to a relation of

mine in London about certain arrangements

in the event of my mischance. The good

fellow, in true friendship to me, was greatly
alarmed, and was for informing the police,
in
 Oscar Wilde

so that the duel, with what he deemed " its

suicidal conditions," should be stopped.

However, before doing so, he went to

Tite Street to consult Oscar Wilde, who,

I am glad to say, was able to dissuade him
from an act which would have put me under
taboo in Paris for the rest of my days. And
after the business was over, I received a
letter from Wilde, which was a great comfort
to me in a moment of very sore distress.

He knew the circumstances, and he wrote

to approve of my conduct. I do not think
that any of his letters ever gave me so much
pleasure.

This was, however, I think, to be the last

joy to me of our friendship — in pleasure, at

least. I saw little of him during the next

three years, which were the years of his
splendour and success, for most of the time I

was wandering about in the South of France

and Spain, and I think that the only time
when I visited London was when I accom-
112
 Oscar Wilde

panied Zola there on his conquest of the

English. We met once or twice in Paris,

but he did not appear to me the same man.

I did not think that prosperity had changed

him, but the excitement of his success seemed

to have intoxicated him, and he was alto-

gether different. Renunciations of him by

mutual friends began to occur, distressing
me greatly, for I refused, on the strength of
my long knowledge of him, to believe the
evil rumours which prompted these partings.
I know that in 1894, that is to say, a year

before the catastrophe, he expressed the

most violent anger, in my presence and that
of another man, at a letter breaking off

acquaintance, which a young French poet

had written him. This young man, who
since has stepped into the very first rank of

French authors, was an intimate friend of

mine, and he told me that though he had

never seen in Wilde's conduct the slightest

thing to justify the rumour that was spread-
113 8
 Oscar Wilde

ing from London in connection with his

name, this rumour was getting such a hold
on society in Paris that, for his own dignity,

he was obliged to cease a friendship which

he should always regret. I remember
Wilde's saying, M How I wish that I knew
the use of arms, so that I could punish these
fellows as they deserve." And I believe to

this day that his anger was sincere, not

feigned for the circumstance. I felt this

quarrel very much, and I had begged my

French friend not to countenance a rumour
which he disbelieved by deserting Wilde, but
he had answered that he was ambitious, and
could not compromise himself. His action
was prompted in the first place by something
that had been said by Leon Daudet, which
had been misunderstood. All that Leon
Daudet had said was, that he did not like

Oscar Wilde's way of dressing. And there

is no doubt that what militated from the

first against my friend's success in Paris was
114
 Oscar Wilde

his disregard of French taste in this matter.

For instance, he was fond of wearing gor-

geous fur coats. Now, in Paris, gentlemen
never wear fur coats ; they are the distinctive
garb of dentists and opera-singers, people
with whom men of the world in France do

not care to associate. He cultivated, to his

detriment as far as his social success went,

an air of rastaquoudrisme, which gave the
gossips a weapon against him.
I fancy that in his splendour our friendship
relaxed. Possibly it was because we so
rarely met. There was a feeling on my
side of having been cast off, although there
was little to warrant it. I can only remem-
ber that on one occasion, meeting him as he
came out of the Varietes Theatre in company
with a very distinguished person, he would
not talk a minute, and brusquely departed. I

received no letters from him during this

period.

It was at Christmas that I met him last,

115
 Oscar Wilde

before the catastrophe of 1895, and my

impression was altogether a painful one. He
was not the friend I had known and admired
for so many years. I dined with him at
Tite Street : for once there was no pleasure,
but distress rather, in the occasion. He
looked bloated. His face seemed to have
lost its spiritual beauty, and was oozing with
material prosperity. And his conversation

also was not agreeable. I concluded that too

much good living and too great success had
momentarily affected him both morally and
physically. There is an American slang-
phrase which exactly describes the impression
which he produced upon me. He seemed to

be suffering from a swollen head ! That I

could understand. After the stress of years

and a long period of heart-gnawing insecur-

ity of position, he had caught the tide of

unbounded prosperity. His income then

exceeded ^8000, and there was every pros-

pect of a future of unrivalled brilliance.
116
 Oscar Wilde

Very few men can maintain their serenity in

the intoxication of sudden fortune, eagerly

desired, but long delayed. But what grieved

me was that he should deem it necessary to

let me feel that under the new circumstances

there was a distance between us. There
was a certain aggressiveness in his tone, and
in one remark he actually wounded me. He
had been telling me in detail the circumstan-

ces under which The Green Carnation had

been written ; how the author of that book,

which really raised the hue and cry, had

introduced himself to Lord Alfred Douglas
in Cairo ; how he had won his way into their

intimacy, and had collected his materials.

He concluded by saying, "Now this, Robert,

is not for publication." It was not a nice
thing to say, and on his lips it had a peculiar
significance, for he always professed the
greatest contempt for journalists, and his

manner implied that the remark was

addressed to me in that capacity. He had
117
 Oscar Wilde

been speaking in the early part of the dinner

of his horror for people of that profession,

and had mimicked the eagerness of a

reporter who, calling at a house where a
murder has been committed, begs to be
allowed to examine the carpet to see if he
can find blood stains.

I know that I felt indignant, and of a mind

to leave the house, which I would have done
but for the presence of Mrs. Wilde and other
guests. And as I walked home that night, I

grieved to think that the end was coming of

a friendship which had for many years been
the joy and the pride of my life.

118
 XI

He afterwards told me how he regretted that

during the days that followed upon that last

meeting of ours, which had seemed a final

parting to both of us, he had not turned to

me. "You have authority with me/' he

said. " I should have listened to you."
And certainly it would have been, I think,

in my power to prevent him from that act of

folly in laying an information against Lord

Queensberry, to which he was incited by the
desire of another for private vengeance.
It would have sufficed to remind him that in

France, whose ethics he so admired that

at one time he wished to naturalise himself
a Frenchman, gentlemen settle such matters
between themselves, and never call in the
119
 Oscar Wilde

police to adjust an offence. I know that he

was quite reckless at the time. " I had
come to think," he said, " that I could do
anything I chose." But he would not have
been insensible, had it been pointed out to
him, to the ugliness of compassing another's
ruin. I should have said to him, " It will

be a fine feather in your cap if Lord

Queensberry gets the seven years' penal
servitude which his enemies wish for him,

through your prosecution ! You will not

know an hour's happiness from the moment
of his conviction."
I could have dissuaded him — at least so

he told me —and should have tried my best

to do so. I admit it would have been a hard

task, in view of the evil influence that was
at work, and the obvious fact that he had
seized on this opportunity to silence the

hundred tongues that were wagging against

him.
There was a high stake to play for —his
1 20
 Oscar Wilde

entire rehabilitation ; but eagerly as he must

have desired this, after the repeated slights

to which he had been subjected, I think

he could have been brought to see that it

would be too dearly purchased at the cost of

disgrace and suffering to an unfortunate

man, not entirely responsible, to whom life

and the world had not been too clement.

But in the whirling excitement of his life

at the time, the fiend alcohol beating time,

the friend in Paris with his plain-speaking

was forgotten, if not purposely discarded.
In the blaze of his notoriety as a man long-

suffering and long-slandered, who was at last

about to crush calumny to the earth, he

passed twice through Paris without giving

me a sign of his presence.

I followed his movements, with growing
wonder and regret, in the papers, — regret,

because it was only too easy to gather what

a bad impression he created in the role of
prosecutor. A hotel-keeper at Monte Carlo
121
 Oscar Wilde

had refused to receive him and his companion.

I wanted to write to him, but I feared that

my letter would be of no effect ; that he

would resent it, and write to me in such a

way that I should be forced to separate my-
self from him. And I had the intuition that

catastrophe was approaching, so that to have

quarrelled with him then —having that

presentiment — would have appeared to me

tantamount to a desertion.
This intuition grew into a certainty after I

had read in the papers the account of his

cross-examination in the Queensberry trial,

and that night I broke the silence of months

by sending him a telegram to tell him that

should he ever need me he would find me.

I was with an English journalist the

following evening when Le Temps, the Paris

evening-paper, arrived. He looked at the

back page, where the latest telegrams are
printed, and with a cry of exultation pushed it

over to me. It contained the report of the

122
 Oscar Wilde

collapse of the prosecution, the withdrawal

of Sir Edward Clarke, and the ominous

declarations of Mr. Carson.

The Englishman laughed with pleasure,

his harboured spite and envy bubbling from

his churning lips. What do you
" say of
your friendship now?" he asked.
M That it begins," I said.

At that moment my friend with some

companions was sitting in a private room
in the Cadogan Arms, smoking cigarettes,

drinking whisky-and-soda, and waiting.

What for waiting, not one of them could

have said. They had set fire to a mine, and
were trying to stupefy themselves into the

belief and hope that it would not explode

beneath them. It was reported to me that

when, after an intentional delay of many

hours, unable to wait any longer, the police
at last moved, and a knock came at the door
of that sitting-room in the Cadogan Arms,
they all blanched as if under the shock of a
123
 Oscar Wilde

sudden surprise. Not one of his friends had

had the sense to explain to Wilde what was

the true meaning of the warning his counsel

had given at the close of his cross-examina-

tion, or to force him to realise that, if only as

a matter of public policy, he should leave
the country at once. As a matter of fact the
warrant for his arrest was not signed until
after the last day-train for Dover, carefully
watched, had been seen to leave without
him, and it was impossible to delay action

any longer.
When I think back upon the days that

followed, a numb pain at my heart reminds

me of all that I suffered. The shame, the

sorrow, the pity, the horror were all the more

hard to bear that I could not find one single
soul in all Paris who had any sympathy with

me. A shout of exultation rose up around

me, as of the demons rejoicing at the irre-

vocable ruin of a human soul. Those who

knew how proud I had been of his friendship
124
 :

Oscar Wilde

were careful to tax me with it in public

places. I never had any prompting to deny

it. On the contrary, I maintained it ; and
until the day of his final conviction, I refused

to allow anyone in my presenre to charge

him with infamy. It was a battle against a

big world, but I am glad to think I never

flinched, though insulted, traduced, and even
assaulted on many occasions.

I wrote to him at once on hearing of his

arrest, and endeavoured to console him, and
again each succeeding day. I forget what
I said, but I know that my letters were of
some comfort to him, for in the course of

that dreadful week I received from London

a letter from one of his friends, from which I

take the following extract

" I saw Oscar yesterday in a private room
at the police court, and he gave me your
three letters, and asked me to write and tell

you how deeply, deeply touched he was by

your kindness and sympathy and loyalty to
125
 Oscar Wilde

him in his terrible and undeserved trouble.

He himself is so ill and unhappy that he has

not sufficient strength and energy to write,
and all his time has to be devoted to

preparing lis defence against a diabolical

conspiracy, which seems almost unlimited in

its size and strength. I will not add to your

sorrow by telling you of the privations and
sufferings he has to endure. I have seen
him three times since his arrest, once through

a horrible kind of barred cage, separated

from him by a space of one yard, and in

almost complete darkness, with twenty other

people talking at the same time. This is the

ordinary way, and one visit a day of a quarter

of an hour is all he is allowed. After that,

I managed to get an order from the Home

Secretary to see him in a private room for

three-quarters of an hour. And yesterday

I contrived to have a fairly long interview

with him at the police court. In spite of all

the brutal and cowardly clamour of our

126
 Oscar Wilde

disgusting newspapers, I think the sympathy

of all decent men is with him, and that he

will ultimately triumph, but he has much to

go through first. I have determined to

remain here and do what I possibly can,

though I am warned on all hands that my

own risk is not inconsiderable, and my family

implore me to go away. I do not say this to

try and gain credit for myself, for I should be

a base coward if I did anything else, con-

sidering all I owe to him, and that I am in

many ways the innocent cause of this horrible

calamity."

It was indeed a horrible time, to be

remembered by me not without a shudder
for all my days. A wave of terror swept
over the Channel, and the city of Calais
witnessed a strange invasion. From the
arcana of London a thousand guilty

consciences, startled into action by the

threat of imminent requitals, came fleeing

South. Every outgoing steamer numbered

127
 :

Oscar Wilde

amongst its passengers such nightmare

faces as in quiet times one cannot fancy
to exist outside the regions of disordered

dreams.
My loyalty in friendship lent to misinter-

pretation. I saw those nightmare faces

gathering around me, watching with pale

eyes for sympathy, where I had nothing but

revolt and horror to give. And though,
from my knowledge of him, I could hold

my friend guiltless, I had yet in face of

all that came to light, to seek for some

justification of my conduct, even to myself,

and so I wrote out in large letters and

pasted on the wall of my study in my
Paris home, the following axiom from the
works of the great Belgian philosopher and
legislator, Quetelet
w
La socidtJ renferme en elle les germes
de tous les crimes qui vont se commettre,

Cest elle, en quelque sorte, qui les prepare, et

le coupable riest que rinstrument qui les

128
 Oscar Wilde

execute. Tout Mat social suppose un certain

nombre et un certain ordre de crimes qui

resultent comme consequences ndcessaires de son

organisation."

My recollections of public school and

'Varsity morality in England, enabled me,
by the light of the Belgian philosopher, to

see a victim rather than a culprit.

For the rest, I was to experience in my

own person how such prosecutions are

established and carried out. Amongst the

people who, because of my well-known

friendship with the prisoner in London,
insulted me publicly in Paris, was a man
who, by his standing in the English
colony, was a person of too much impor-
tance to be treated merely with contempt.
I dragged him before the French Courts,
and there, although he recanted piteously,
he was sentenced to the highest money
penalty allowed of by the French law.

The case was maliciously reported in

129 9
 Oscar Wilde

London, and it became necessary for me, in

self-protection, to take action here also. A

serious effort was made on behalf of the
defendants to justify the abominable innu-
endo. My portrait was hawked round in all

the London hell-holes, and every legitimate

effort was made by a respectable detective
to associate me with any incident which
might warrant the wicked suggestion which
had been made to my detriment, because I

had not chosen to abandon an unhappy

friend, abandoned by all. Legitimate effort

having failed, we had an indication that

other means were to be tried. I attach in

no way blame for this, either to the honour-

able defendants or to their solicitors. I

always supposed that the infernal manoeuvre

was the work of some infamous firm of

detectives, who had taken up the in-

quiry on speculation, after it had been

abandoned by the respectable agents of

the defence ; and if I record what was

130
 Oscar Wilde

attempted, it is because it shows how such

cases, leading to lifelong ruin and dishonour,
are got up in London town. Some time
before the trial of this action, I was preparing
a series of articles on London by Night,
and visited a number of disreputable night-

clubs. To a typical one in a street off the

Tottenham Court Road, I paid frequent

visits. One night the barmaid at this

house spoke to my solicitor, who had once

or twice accompanied me on these curious

journeys of exploration. She said, " Tell

your friend to be very careful what he

does here, and above all not to take any
liquor. Last night I heard a man, who is

a stranger to me, offer a girl five pounds if

she could get your friend intoxicated and

drugged to the point of stupefaction, and
induce him to leave the club in her
company." The intention towards me was
only too apparent. No use was made by
us of this incident when the action came
131
 Oscar Wilde

for trial, for in bringing it I had no other

motive than to justify the friendship of

years, and to clear, in this association, the

unhappy friend also who was then in

prison.

132
 XII

On his arrest, almost immediate ruin

followed. His sources of income dried up

in one hour ; his books were withdrawn
from sale ; the managers suspended the

performance of his plays. His creditors

clamoured for payment, judgments were

obtained against him, and an execution was
put into the house in Tite Street. From
affluence he passed suddenly to dire poverty
at a time when money was needed for

his defence, when the utter lack of resources

seemed to hold out the menace that he would
be left to face the terrible charges which were
being accumulated against him without the
means to fee counsel or to prepare evidence.

Towards the beginning of April of that

133
 /
£

Oscar Wilde

year, I received from him in Holloway

Gaol a letter in which he described how
his want of means aggravated his terrible

condition, and asked me if I would help

him to realise what, in the wreck of his

fortune, seemed to be the only asset left.

It will be remembered that Madame

Sarah Bernhardt had some time previously
accepted his Biblical play, Salomd, which
he had written in French. It was entirely

his own work, for I saw him write it, though

the French was revised by M. Marcel
Schwob. Licence to produce the play

in London had been refused by the Lord

Chamberlain's office, on the ground that it

was inadvisable to dramatise religious

episodes, and this counter to the fact that

it is from such dramatisations that the

whole, glorious, English drama sprung. In

his indignation at this overthrow of very

high hopes, Oscar Wilde had declared his
intention of leaving England and of applying
134
 Oscar Wilde

for letters of naturalisation as a French citizen.

Had he carried this intention into effect, he

might be living a happy man to-day, and a
terrible scandal would have been avoided.
Sarah Bernhardt had brought the play back
to Paris with her, and had promised him to
produce it at her own theatre of the Porte St.

Martin, as soon as opportunity should permit.

In his letter, accordingly, Wilde asked

me to go and see Sarah, to explain his

pressing need of money, and to ask her to

pay him a sum down for the acting rights of

Salom^ instead of the royalties which would

afterwards accrue to him. He suggested
a sum of three or four hundred pounds, as
necessary for the purposes of his defence.
I have often wondered since, where I

found the nerve and the assurance necessary

to execute this commission, which under
ordinary circumstances, given my tempera-
ment, would have been a physical im-
possibility. I suppose it was thanks to
135
 Oscar Wilde

my entire devotion to my poor friend, that

I never hesitated for a, moment, and that

the minute after I had read his letter I

was driving in a cab to the Boulevard

Pereire. Perhaps if I had stopped to

reflect on the errand, I should have come

to the conclusion, from my knowledge of
theatrical folk in general, and of the lady in

question in particular, that it would be a useless

one, resulting only in humiliation to myself.

I was delighted at the reception that

Madame Bernhardt gave me and at the

kind way in which she spoke of '

her
good friend,' and deplored the calamity
which had befallen him. She wrung her
hands, and her wonderful eyes moistened
with real emotion.
As to the business on which I had come,
she put me at my ease at once by the
calm way in which, in a commercial spirit,

she approached the question. It was a

matter of extreme delicacy, this veiled
136
 Oscar Wilde

appeal to her purse ; and by her manner of

treating it as a simple and natural piece of
business, she promptly relieved me of a
very uncomfortable feeling.
She declared at once that under existing
circumstances it would be impossible for

her to produce Salomt, and that therefore

she would not purchase the play. " But,"

she added, " I am so sorry for the poor

man, and should be so glad to do every-
thing in my power to assist him, that I'll

see what money I can give him, as a loan

between good friends. Does he say what
"
sum he requires ?

" He mentions a sum of from seven to

ten thousand francs," I said, passing her
the prison letter.
11
1 don't know," she said, " what I can do ?

I must see what money there is at the

box-office first, and have a talk with my

manager. The season has not been a good
one, and you know that I am not a provident
137
 Oscar Wilde

person. Well, we'll see. What I can do I

will —the utmost— out of friendship for a great

artist, who is also a man of good heart, and

who, I am sure, is suffering most unjustly."

I thanked her warmly, and I thought
that pity and kindness had made even more
wonderful the wonderful beauty of her eyes,
even more enchanting, the exquisite sound of
her golden voice. I could have gone down
on my knees to kiss the hem of her gown.

For weeks past my friendship had exposed

me to insult. On every side I had heard
my friend's name coupled with terms of

loathing and execration, and here, before

me, was a queen among women, a woman

semi-divine in genius and physique, who
spoke to me of him with tears in the eyes

which have illuminated, and emotion in the

voice which has charmed the universe.

I said, " I will telegraph to the prison,

for the news of your loyalty to him, even

if your hopes cannot be realised, will surely

138
 "

Oscar Wilde

comfort him. And as to the money,

perhaps your secretary would send it to his

solicitors, whose address I will give you."

" No, no," she cried. " I want to have
nothing to do with solicitors. The money
must pass through you. Let me see ? To-
day is Saturday. Will you call on Monday
about this time, and I will have ready for
you whatever I am able to spare so gladly
for the poor man !

As soon as I had left the house on the

Boulevard Pereire, I drove to the nearest
telegraph office and sent off a long telegram
to my friend in Holloway Gaol, promising
him funds for the following week, and
describing the sympathy and affection with
which the great French actress had spoken
of him. For the first time for many days I

felt in some way reassured, and not without

hope for the future.

On Monday, at the hour appointed, I called

on Madame Bernhardt. In the meanwhile I
139
 Oscar Wilde

had received from London instructions by

telegraph as to how I was to remit the
money which I was about to receive. A
disappointment, however, awaited me, for

Madame's little black page, who answered

the door, told me that his mistress had gone
out, and would not return that afternoon.

No message had been left for me.

I returned on the Tuesday, and again the
black page informed me that Madame was
absent, nor expected to return until late at

night. He grinned as he spoke, and, antici-

pating my question, added "and nothing
has been left for you."

I felt like a detected begging impostor as

I walked away. However, my own feelings

had not to be consulted in the matter. I had

to remember the dreadful plight in which
my poor friend found himself, and all that

might depend on his obtaining the promised

assistance. Accordingly, on the morrow I

returned to the Boulevard Pereire. Madame

140
OSCAR WILDE WHEN IN AMERICA, 1 883.

To face p. 140.
 Oscar Wilde

was again out, and no suggestion could be

offered me as to where I was likely to find

her. It occurred to me, however, that she

very probably had gone to the Vernissage of
the Salon, and I at once drove off there. I

heard here that she was visiting the exhibi-

tion, and I spent a good hour in tracking her.
I remember that M. Zola was one of the
people of whom I asked my oft-repeated

question, Have you seen Sarah Bern-

"

hardt ? Where is Sarah Bernhardt ? "

At last I came up with her, and found her
discoursing on an exhibition of pottery to a

group of friends, who, in their turn, were sur-

rounded by a large crowd of admiring

onlookers. With the persistence of a dun,
or process-server, I elbowed my way into

the front rank of the crowd of which she

was the centre, and as soon as she had

turned in my direction I raised my hat.

She smiled very graciously, and addressing

me by my name said, " I think I asked you
to call on me on Monday."
141
 Oscar Wilde

I answered in the affirmative, and added,

"
" May I present myself to-morrow ?

She said, " Let me see ? No, don't come

to-morrow, but come on Friday."
I thanked her, and hurried off to send a
fresh telegram to London.
On Friday I was told that Madame was
engaged with her daughter-in-law, and was
begged to return on the morrow. I returned

on Saturday, and this time the answer given

at the door was, that Madame was working
at her sculpture with a model and could not
be disturbed, and that I need not call again,

as she would write to me.

I waited several days for the promised

letter, but as nothing came, I wrote to her
to say that I quite understood that circum-

stances might have arisen to prevent her

from giving effect to her kind promises and
generous offer, but that as the unhappy man
in Hollo way had been lured by my telegrams
into false hopes, she would render me a
142
 Oscar Wilde

signal service by causing her secretary to

send me a few lines, which would serve as

my discharge towards our mutual friend.
My own pen having invariably been at her
service for many years, and under circum-
stances where she had not been sorry to find

a champion, I fully expected an answer

which I could have sent to Wilde, so as to

show him that I had not neglected his

service in his general abandonment. I never
received any reply to my letter. It was
what one might have expected, as the world
goes, but it me deeply.
grieved I began
to realise how deep my friend had fallen.

I explained all the circumstances in a long

letter to him, in which I also related how I

was being harassed. He wrote me in reply

the following letter. I may be charged with

a want of modesty in printing it, but my

personality is of no account in this narrative,

the story of an unhappy friendship.

143
 !

Oscar Wilde

L.P.
C.4
From lVilde %

H. M. Prison,
Holloway,
B. 2-4 i 6-4-1 895.
3-5 6 -

My Dear Robert, —You good, daring

reckless friend ! I was delighted to get
your letter, with all its wonderful news. For
myself, I am ill — apathetic. Slowly life

creeps out of me. Nothing but Alfred

Douglas' daily visits quicken me into life,

and even him I only see under humiliating

and tragic conditions.

Don't fight more than 6 duels a week

I suppose Sarah is hopeless ; but your
chivalrous friendship —your fine, chivalrous
friendship — is worth more than all the money
in the world. —Yours, Oscar.

I have related in detail this incident

because it is typical of what I had to under-

go in humiliation during those dreadful

144
 Oscar Wilde

days. For the rest, I could find consolation

nowhere. By everybody who approached

me, the man against whom at that time
there was not the shadow of a proof was
already convicted and condemned to eternal
ignominy. The papers in Paris, prejudg-

ing the case, according to their invariable

custom, were filled with denunciations of

him. The English residents seemed to take
special delight in spreading the scandal,

which was really far more a discredit to

their nation than to the unhappy individual

who at that time might be considered an

innocent man. I found not a single country-
man to back me up in the demand which
I repeatedly made, both in public and in

private, that until after his trial my friends

guilt should not be affirmed. I was al-

together alone ; and though I suffered cruelly

at the injustice of the world, I had at heart

a secret pleasure in feeling that never once,

at the bidding of social or professional
145 10
 Oscar Wilde

interest, had I denied my friend. My

championship of him may have been in

some degree indiscreet ; but in the whirl of

the tragedy which enveloped me, I had lost

the just perception of things.

146
 XIII

I shall always remember, as one of the

most painful episodes of my life, the
afternoon of the day on which Oscar
Wilde's first trial closed.

Dreading what news the evening might

bring, I had made no arrangement to be
informed of it from London, and had
determined to spend those fateful hours
in silence, retirement, prayer, and hope.
However, soon after midday an Englishman
came to my house to tell me that a telegram

was expected from the Old Bailey in the

course of the afternoon at an English bar
in the St. Honore Quarter, and suggested
that we should go there and w ait
T
for the

news.
H7
 Oscar Wilde

There are times, when one takes a perverse

delight in going to meet distress of mind,

possibly because one flatters oneself that

he has abundant resources of courage and

resistance with which to face it. I went
accordingly, and, amidst pothouse surround-

ings, waited with the anxiety of one, the life

of whose dearest friend is at stake.

A coarse crowd of Englishmen, journalists,

bookmakers and racing-touts surrounded the
bar, which, in the exhilaration and excitement
of the hour, did excellent trade. Bets as to
the verdict were freely made, though, from

the odds offered, there seemed to be but

little doubt of a conviction. An in-

comprehensible hostility animated the con-

versation against the prisoner, yet almost
without exception those who so discoursed

were past - masters in every form of vice.

The lewd faces, flushed with alcohol,

mouthing imprecations against the unhappy

man, at that moment in such dire straits,

148
 Oscar Wilde

suggested a picture such as Goya might

have painted of a dream of the corridors of

Hell. Filthy jests were bandied over the

clinking tumblers. There was more de-

liberate vice engendered in that hour than

many an unconscious madman crowds into

his whole, irresponsible career.

At last the blue envelope was handed over

the bar-counter —the eagerly expected tele-

gram from the Old Bailey. It was torn

open, perused with gloating eyes, and flung

down with an oath of bitter disappointment.

The trial was over, the jury had disagreed,
and the presumption was that a soul had
been snatched from perdition. In the odious

clamour of baulked cruelty that arose, hope

within me began to lift its head, and I

hastened off to communicate with my friend,

leaving the rest to discuss the chance that

a fresh trial would be ordered, and that the

man might yet be crushed.

It was not till the following night that I

149
 Oscar Wilde

received news from him —a telegram — brief

and ominous, " Still in Holloway. Oscar."

which seemed to confirm what I had heard
in the course of the day, namely, that by
the pique of the Treasury counsel, at a hasty

word from the defence in the flush of its

partial success, a new trial was to be pro-

ceeded with, and a fresh period of torture
had opened before us.

Yet, in consolation, there was the rumour

that the prison gates would soon be opened,

and that, though substantial bail would be
exacted, so that appearances might be safe-

guarded and popular clamour appeased, it

would be fixed at a sum which could easily

be raised by the prisoner's friends, —which
implied that the authorities, though obliged
to continue the prosecution, were anxious to
give the prisoner a chance to end the
scandal and ensure his own safety by fleeing

the country. And indeed there never has

been a doubt in my mind, that if he had left

150
 Oscar Wilde

England when he had the occasion to do so,

he would have won the gratitude of every

official, from the Home Secretary downwards.
And I am not speaking on supposition only.
The subsequent vindictiveness with which
he was treated, was the reparation officially

exacted from him for an attitude which was a

credit to himself and an honour to his friends.

As soon as it was known in Paris that he

had been released on bail, the nightmare

faces which had become familiar on the
boulevards were seen to peep and peer.

But he gave no sign, and all one knew of his

doings was from the reports in the papers,

which one day placed him here, and next day
showed him there. From the mendacious
tales we read, a poignant feeling grew upon
me that his dubious triumph had turned his

head, that he was flaunting his notoriety with

display, defying public opinion with an

unconsciousness which was inconceivable to
those who knew his real character.

w
 Oscar Wilde

And then, late one night, I was aroused

by the arrival of a telegram from some
friends of his, asking me to come to London
to take him into the country. I confess that

it occurred to me that another service was

required of —
me that one preposition had
been purposely substituted for another. But
I did not pause to reflect. I threw a few
things into a bag, and leaving my home and
my occupations to console themselves for my
absence in the best way they could devise,

I took the early train to London. I was at

the Gare du Nord fully an hour before the

train started, and never did a journey appear
longer to me.
I was met at Victoria, by one of the friends
who had telegraphed to me, and learned from
him that the message meant just what it said.

Oscar Wilde was in London, and in such a

state of neurosis that it was thought it would

be good for him to go into the country,

pending the day on which he would have

152
 !

Oscar Wilde

to surrender. A companion being necessary,

I had been thought of. It was suggested
we should go up the river together.

It was in Chelsea again, that I met my

friend, whom I had last seen, superb in

prosperity and luxury, in that same quarter.

But how changed, and under conditions how

different

I do not know of many incidents in the

lives of distinguished men more tragic than

those which occurred during the first hours

of Oscar Wilde's regained liberty. I was
deeply impressed by their horror, and I

afterwards spoke of them to two friends,

Hall Caine and Edmond de Goncourt. The

English novelist found the story so horrible
that I think one finds an echo of it in his

account of the martyrdom of John Storm.

M. de Goncourt transferred it to his diary,

Le Journal des Goncourt, but added certain

comments and details for which I disclaim

all responsibility.

153
 Oscar Wilde

On leaving the prison after his bail had

been accepted, he had driven to an hotel.

It was late in the evening. Two rooms were

engaged for him and dinner was ordered.
Just as he had sat down to table, the
manager roughly entered the room and said,

" You are Oscar Wilde, I believe." Then

he added, " You must leave the house at
once."

From this hotel he drove to another in a

distant part of London, where he was not
known nor recognised. He had sunk down
exhausted on the bed of the room he had
engaged when the landlord appeared. He
had been followed from his last refuge by a
band of men, prize-fighters, and had been
denounced in the hall below. The landlord
expressed his regret, but insisted on his leav-
ing. " The men say they will sack the
house and raise the street if you stay here
a moment longer."

At last, long past midnight, Willy Wilde, in

154
 —

Oscar Wilde

his mother's house in Oakley Street, heard

a feeble rap at the front door. Opening it,

he saw his brother, who, white as death,

reeled forward into the passage. " Give me
shelter, Willy," he cried. " Let me lie on
the floor, or I shall die in the streets."

"He came like a hunted stag," said poor

Willy, "and fell down on the threshold."

He had been there ever since — there, where

he should be, with his own people, who loved
him. Whilst the lying papers were inventing
a Fool's Progress for him in fashionable
resorts, he was waiting in utter prostration

just waiting. That awful night of the cruel

chase from the prison gates to his mother's

humble roof had revealed the true aspect of
his position to him. I think he never hopes

again.

My friend was in bed, when I reached

Oakley Street, and after awhile I was shown
up to his room. It was a poorly furnished
room, in great disorder. He was lying on a
155
 —

Oscar Wilde

small camp-bedstead in a corner between

the fireplace and the wall, and in a glass on

a mantelpiece was an arum lily, sere and

yellow, which drooped lamentably down over
his head. His face was flushed and swollen,
his voice was broken, he was a man
altogether collapsed. I sat down on the bed

and took his hand in mine and tried to

comfort him. I remember that I made him

laugh by speaking of " Die Wilde Jagd,"
a stupid play of words, no doubt, which
however effected its purpose of bringing
some life into the apathetic face. And in

reference to this German poem, I asked him

if he remembered how he had beguiled the
tedium of the journeys during his lecturing
tour in England, by studying that language

with a copy of the Reise-Bilder and a little

pocket dictionary. And I added, " Has

not a new Reise-Bild been suggested to

you?"
He made no answer, only a gesture that
156
 Oscar Wilde

he was too exhausted to do anything but lie

inert, and after awhile he asked me, "Oh,

why have you brought me no poison from
?
Paris " He frequently repeated this question,
not only that evening but on many following

days — not, I am sure, because he had really

ever any wish to commit suicide, but because
the alliteration of the phrase pleased his ear.

It irritated mine, under the circumstances,

for I did not think the time opportune for

insincerity and posturings, and one day I

said, "It is very easy to make prussic acid

if you really wish to kill yourself. I had a

friend in Paris who distilled a mash of bitter

almonds, which you can procure at any

grocer's, over a spirit-lamp, with a little retort

affixed. Whilst the stuff was brewing he lay

on his bed and smoked cigarettes. We found

the stumps of eight or nine when we broke
into the room. He was dead, on the floor.

However," I added, "prussic acid is by no

means always so rapid in its effect as is

157
 Oscar Wilde

generally believed. I looked the subject up

on your behalf this afternoon at the club, and
I find there have been cases where death has
only ensued forty minutes after the absorption
of this poison — forty minutes of indescribable

agony."
I visited him every day, and stayed with
him almost all the time. When the subject

of flight was discussed, I declared that in

my opinion it was the best thing that he

could do, not only in his own interests, but in
those of the public also ; and I offered to take

the whole care and responsibility of the

evasion on my shoulders, with all the odium

that would afterwards attach to me. '"If I

were accused, said Montaigne,' I quoted,

4
of stealing the towers of Notre Dame
Cathedral, the very first thing I should do

would be to cross the frontier.' You have

stood one trial, and the fact that you have
been released on bail shows that they want
you to go."
158
 Oscar Wilde

As a matter of fact, he was at no time

under observation, of which by various

counter-police manoeuvres I was able to

convince myself, and could have left England

in open day at any time up to the last day
of his second trial.

When, to-day, I read in the fashionable

gazettes of the movements of people who,
involved in the same scandal, were wise
enough to leave the country, or see in

Piccadilly, radiant now and serene, those

awful faces that flecked the boulevards then
with patches of pale terror, and think of
what he endured, and to what an end his

endurance brought him, I do not regret

that I urged upon him to avoid a second
trial and to flee the country, which was
mutely beseeching him to go. Yet I cannot
deny that here also my egotism betrayed
itself. I could not bear to face the prospect
of his conviction, for I felt assured that the
disgrace and the suffering of imprisonment
159
 Oscar Wilde

would kill a friend who in his misfortune had

become dearer than ever to me.

But, imitative of great men in their whims

and fancies, he refused to imitate the base in

acts which he deemed cowardly. I do not

think he ever seriously considered the

question of leaving the country, and this in

spite of the fact that the gentleman who was
responsible for almost the whole amount of
the bail had said, " It will practically ruin me
if I lose all that money at the present

moment, but if there is a chance even of

conviction, in God's name let him go."

This young man was one of the beautiful

figures in the Walpurgis-night crowd that

comes up before one's eyes when one thinks
of those days. I saw him last standing by

the dock in the Old Bailey whilst sentence

was being passed, and there were tears in

his eyes. He had been in no way involved

in the wretched business ; he had only had a
casual acquaintance with the prisoner, but
160
 Oscar Wilde

there were reasons for which his high sense

of honour prompted him to come to his side

and to help him to the utmost of his power.

A great name, a wife and children, and a

meagre competence —he risked them all from
a feeling of duty. He is in stature a little

man, but he has a great heart ; and at a time

when humanity filled one with nausea, he
showed how good, how sweet, how beautiful

a man can be.

It may have been to some extent out of
consideration for him that Oscar Wilde
refused to forfeit his bail, but the main
impulse, unless it were unconsciousness of
guilt, such as characterises a number of
cerebral disorders of the epileptiform variety,

was self-respect or pride. " I could not bear

life," he said, "if I were to flee. I cannot
see myself slinking about the Continent, a
fugitive from justice."

His brother Willy took up the same

attitude on the question. "Oscar will not
161 ii
 Oscar Wilde

run away," he said. "He is an Irish gentle-

man, and he will stay to face the music."

In Oakley Street there were great hopes

of an acquittal, based on the result of the
first trial. It was not then known that on
that occasion one juryman alone had stood
out against his eleven colleagues, who, with-

out discussion, wished to convict. This

juror, it appears, had once previously sat

on a jury which had convicted an innocent

man on such evidence as was brought
against Wilde, and he had vowed that he
never would convict upon such evidence
again.

For myself, I could form no opinion. If

I was able to convince myself, by what I

heard on every side, that never had public

hatred blazed fiercer against any man, and
that it was humanly impossible to expect
to find twelve men in London who would
come to sit on the jury with unbiassed minds,
or with the moral courage necessary to resist
162
 Oscar Wilde

the pressure of public opinion, I felt on the

other hand so incredulous of my friend's

guilt —an incredulity greatly strengthened

by my fresh association with him —that it

seemed to me that he must produce the same

impression on everybody else who saw and
heard him, and that, on his trial, the jury

would be incredulous also.

As to him, he never referred to the past

in my presence ; and the only words he said

which might have been construed into an

admission were these, " Fortune had so
turned my head that I fancied I could do

whatever I chose."

163
 XIV

It was indeed a Walpurgis-night's crowd

that flitted in and out and around of that
dull Chelsea Road in the days of which
I am writing. Strange faces pried at

corners, and after nightfall phantom forms

drifted past with the river mists. Lombroso
would have exulted after a week in that
London spring, and not Lombroso only,

but all who are curious as to what is

abnormal, and weird, and asymmetrical in

mankind. There was one face which

often rises up before me, a face full of
the intentness of the fixed idea, the face

of a man who was always hurrying from

place to place with a spirit-lamp and
matches in his pocket, with no other
164
 Oscar Wilde

thought nor preoccupation in life than

to rout out letters and to burn and burn.
He was the unhumorous Wemmick of a
tragic situation, a man whom the horror
of the time had scared into a monomania
of destroying documents by fire. There
was another face which was always rippling
with such laughter as one hears in Bedlam.
There were long, gaunt, Calvinistic faces,

with a strange glint in the eyes and uneasy

movements of the lips. There were anxious,
busy faces, with greedy eyes peering for

spoil —the faces of the wreckers, who hoped

in the eddy where the great ship had sunk
to harpoon and draw to themselves some
valuable flotsam — one an unpublished manu-
script, the other a scenario, another a market-

able idea. And baser plunderers yet ! One

would have, in the event, no use for a fur
coat, and any jewellery would be a pleasing
souvenir.

I do not say that these people frequented

165
 Oscar Wilde

the house in Oakley Street —indeed, my

friend's isolation was almost complete — but
these were they who dodged in and out of
the gloom which had settled down upon us.

I have often thought that this period was

in his mind when he wrote those lines in

his " Ballad of Reading Gaol," in which he

describes the night that preceded the

trooper's execution.

Very few of his former friends came to

see him. Possibly, to many it was not

known that he had remained in London,
or where he was to be found. I can only
remember one call during that period.

There may have been others, but I re-

member this one only.

The caller was a well known litterateur

and journalist, a man in an excellent position,

who then and afterwards warmly befriended
Oscar Wilde, for whom he had a deep
admiration. It was he who, after his release

from prison, offered to take him for a

1 66
 Oscar Wilde

coaching tour through France, an offer

which was unfortunately refused.

He came into the room in a bright, brisk
u
way and said, I have come to take you
out, Oscar. You mustn't mope here all

day."
n
" Where do you think of taking him to ?

asked Willy.
" To the Cafe Royal, if he'll come."
I cried out, " That's fine of you, ."

But Oscar Wilde shook his head. " It

wouldn't be seemly," he said, " for me to defy

public opinion."

I do not think that the courage was

lacking him to protest by an appearance in

a public place against the unfair prejudice

which condemned him, untried and uncon-
victed. It seemed rather to him a question
of taste and delicacy. But I know that I

felt a great admiration for his friend who had

offered to affront this prejudice, so as to show
London that he did not share it.

167
 Oscar Wilde

I brought one visitor myself to Oakley

Street, whom Oscar Wilde was very pleased
to see. This was poor Ernest Dowson, the
poet, who died under tragic conditions in

1900, in a poor cottage to which I had

brought him, ragged, starving, and aban-
doned. He spent an hour or two at Oakley
Street, and managed to comfort our friend by
his mere presence. Dowson was a scholar

and a master of English prose, and, as such,

was greatly admired by Oscar Wilde.
I had thought that letters of abuse would
be showered upon him, but most of his

would-be correspondents no doubt ignored

his address, and he was saved this annoyance
at least. Not that any letter of abuse would
have affected him much, for he seemed in-

different to all things. I remember an in-

cident which occurred on the night which

preceded the first day of his trial. Had I

been in his position it would have gladdened

me. We were sitting in the front room of
168
 Oscar Wilde

the house in Oakley Street when we heard a

cab drive up, and then there came a knock at

the door.- I went out to answer it, and
having opened the door, saw the tall figure

of a lady whose face was veiled. She thrust

a packet into my hand and said, " For Mr.

Oscar Wilde," and hurried down the steps.

It was a horseshoe with a bouquet of violets

attached, and on a piece of paper were the

words " For Luck." He said nothing, but

laid the guerdon aside, with a gesture of

complete indifference. Nor was he in the

least amused by a long letter which he re-

ceived from Madrid, and which he asked me

to translate to him. I think, under other cir-

cumstances, it would have made him smile.

It was from the Spanish prisoner with whose

missives most of us whose names figure in

the papers are familiar, but in this instance

the appeal for funds was based, not on the

imaginary treasure, but on the community
of misfortune. If I remember rightly, the
169
 Oscar Wilde

knave endeavoured to establish some degree

of blood-relationship between himself and
Wilde. I did not finish the letter, for after

listening to the first few passages he waved

it aside.

It was pitiful to me to watch his moral

agony. I sat with him sometimes for more
than an hour without speaking. Now and
then the oppression on his breast would re-
lieve itself in a sigh. I could imagine the
workings of that fine brain and the horrors
that his fancy evoked. Hope conflicting with

doubt, the awful prospect before him, the

wild regret of his folly, were like so many

demons that unceasingly harried him. He
suffered all the tortures of brain-fever without

its merciful coma. For the rest, he was in

high fever all the time, as was shown by his

devouring thirst. He consumed gallons of

liquid daily, and I was running out time and
time again to fetch lemonade and soda-water
and claret from the grocery at the end of the
170
 '

Oscar Wilde

street, — in connection with which errands I

may record as a psychological fact, that I

had great delight in doing menial work for

my poor friend who had been so humbled.

When we did speak, it was, as usual, on
matters of literature, but with what deep
distress I observed that he spoke as a man
to whom all these things, in which he had

once rejoiced, were dead. I thought of a

passage in Dostoievski. One evening he
was bright. He had a volume of Words-
worth, and had been reading some of the
sonnets with me. We came upon one in

which my 'illustrious ancestor,' as Oscar

Wilde used to call him, had rhymed shove '

to Move'; and " Robert, Robert," he said,

in a tone of mock reproach, " what does this

mean ?
" And he laughed in his old joyous,

boyish way. But a few minutes later he

relapsed into the awful silence that was so
eloquent to me, the silence which now and
again was broken by a heavy sigh.
171
 Oscar Wilde

Yet, my admiration for the nobility of

character which he displayed, helped me to
bear the tragedy, long drawn out, of those
cruel days. Not one word of recrimination
ever passed his lips. He attached blame to
no one. He sought to involve no one. He
had no thought of vengeance, or even of
resentment, against those who had encom-
passed his so formidable ruin. He bent his
broad shoulders, and essayed with his sole
strength to bear the crushing burden of
infamy and fate. He never showed himself
to me more fine than in the days when the
whole world was shouting out that he was of
men the vilest.

He was prepared for his punishment,

although hope lingered to the last ; but he
flattered himself that, under the various
circumstances of the case, some leniency
would be shown him. " I think," he said,

"that I could live through one year's im-

prisonment."
172
 Oscar Wilde

I told him that it was folly to count on

leniency in the state of public opinion ; and
added, that if he decided to face his second
trial, he must make up his mind to undergo
two years' hard labour. He said, " I couldn't

do it. Not two years —not two years."

I made it as clear as I could to him that

there would and could be no other issue to

his second trial, and I fancy that I convinced

him. But not once, I feel sure, did he seri-

ously think of flight. His courage here

must be remembered by those who judge
him.

*73
 XV
I had looked forward to the spring of that

year for a visit to London under very differ-

ent circumstances — for a time of real happi-

ness.

For Alphonse Daudet, who had admitted

me to his friendship, had long previously
invited me to accompany him and his family

on their first visit to England, — "a journey,''

he said, " which I must make before I pass

my musket to my left shoulder." I could

fancy for myself no more delightful holiday

than one spent in such company, were it only

to receive at first-hand the impressions

which my native town and my countrymen

might make on an observer so shrewd, from
the moment of landing. But it was not to be.

174
 Oscar Wilde

In the turmoil of my trouble, I had alto-

gether forgotten what had been arranged

between us. I had not even written to my
friend when I left Paris, and it was only by
the announcement of his arrival in town in

the papers that I was recalled to the remem-

brance of the pleasures anticipated. On
reading this announcement, my first impulse
was to avoid his presence ; for, strongly

attached to him as I was, not only by his

unvarying kindness to me, but also by his

flattering appreciation of my work, I was
more attached still to the friend of my youth,

and felt strong resentment against those who

could not sympathise with him in his awful
fall. Now, I knew that in Daudet I should
find no sympathy at all. He had expressed
himself very strongly to me on the subject of
the accusation against Wilde, and one of the

things which, I remember, he repeated to me

was, " You see, Sherard, you are not a
father. If you were, you would share my
175
 Oscar Wilde

horror and indignation." And then, here

was offered me the choice between the rising

and the setting sun, between London's lion

and the scapegoat of England, and my faith,

my nature prompted me to prefer ord and

shard to wreaths and incense. It was Oscar
Wilde himself who urged me to go to Dover
Street, and one day, that he had gone out
with a friend, I followed his advice.

I am afraid that I did not contribute to

Daudet's enjoyment of his visit to London.

I had the fixed idea of my friend's disaster

ever in my mind. I was restless when away

from Oakley Street, and at all times re-

proached myself when the joy of that bright

assembly in Brown's Hotel overlapped the
sombre melancholy of my sympathising soul.

There were the glad Alphonse Daudet, filling

the grey atmosphere of a London room with

ripples of Southern sunshine ; his beautiful

wife, and the fairy daughter, Edm6e, de

Goncourt's godchild ; the handsome sons,
176
 a

Oscar Wilde

George Hugo, with his exquisite wife —

bright, elegant triumph crowd, moving in a
frame of luxury amidst the homages of the
elect of London. The rooms overflowed
with floral tributes, the great names of
England rang out in the corridors. All here

was pleasure and satisfaction and success. I

met here for the first time many of the fore-

most writers in London, to whom I was

presented by Alphonse Daudet in terms
which illuminated my obscurity. I was
included, as his friend, in many invitations

which would have opened the best houses in

London to me. The ball was at my feet.

Yes, the ball was at my feet, but it was a

ball chained to my ankle —such a ball as
unhappy men used to drag after them in the

bagnios of Brest and Toulon. And my

bagnio was the poor home in Oakley Street.

I was never happy when I was away from

it, and I know that I took more pleasure
in fetching and carrying for my poor
177 12
 Oscar Wilde

friend's needs than in parading Piccadilly on

mundane errands with the elegant courtiers

of the man who was just then the talk of

London.
I had been unjust to Daudet. He did
sympathise, and deeply, not only with me in
my distress, but in the awful case of Oscar
Wilde. When we were alone together in

his room in the hotel, I pacing the room

feverishly, with the ill-disguised longing to

hurry away, he, sitting on the sofa, both with

cigarettes lighted, his beautiful face used to

light up under the grey shadow of his

constant pain ; and, "Now, my son/' he would

say, " speak to me of your friend." Ah, then
the time seemed to drag no longer. Yet
he always reverted to the fact that I had no
comprehension of the evil, and this I ad-

mitted ; and I once told him that the very

wickedest man in the world, in conversation

with me, had displayed the same ignorance of

horrors with which the smallest elf of the
 Oscar Wilde

London gutter seemed to be familiar. He

was deeply interested in my accounts of my
friend's moral state from day to day, and once,
I remember, he expressed great satisfaction

at something that Oscar Wilde had said.

What it was I forget, but a day or two later,

when I had recorded some flippancy, he burst

out angrily, "Oh, voila. The other day,

when disaster was imminent, he aroused

himself. Now that he thinks he has
weathered the rocks, he becomes un imbecile
once more.'*
I longed to bring the two together, but I

did not dare to suggest it to Daudet, because

the only possible place for the meeting would

have been Daudet's rooms. He was too ill

to go out, and could not have borne the

fatigue of a drive to Chelsea. And he would
never have consented to receive Wilde
where his children might have met him.
Had he been able to go to Chelsea, I think

I could have prevailed on him to come and

179
 Oscar Wilde

bring to the stricken soul the sunny comfort

of his words. Alphonse Daudet was a
worldly man, but his knowledge of the

world, united to the great tenderness of his

large heart, made him as a father-confessor

to those in stress of circumstance or of

conscience.

I used to speak of him in Oakley Street

at first, but I soon saw that it distressed my
friend. Perhaps it suggested to him what
part he would have played under other

circumstances in the social reception of the

great French novelist. Perhaps it reminded
him of the things in which he had once
rejoiced, and which now were dead to

him.
I have said that Daudet pitied my distress,
and this is the proof he gave me of this.
One day he said to me, " I cannot go out
much with the others, and you, my friend,
seem to be losing your taste for work. Let
us do a book together."
1 80
 Oscar Wilde
"
" A collaboration with Alphonse Daudet ?
I cried.

" Yes. In a way it will be a collabora-

tion," he said. " I will tell you a story of
my youth, and you will take notes, and you
will ask me questions, and the book will be a

kind of rowan-interview — something quite

novel. We will divide whatever it brings,

as I did with Hugues Leroux with the book

we wrote together, and later on I will write

it over again for myself in French."

At any other time such an offer, coming
from such a man, would have filled me with

joy and pride. Coming then, it came when I

felt that nothing could console me. How-

ever, I accepted it, with expressions of grati-
tude.

When I mentioned the suggestion that

Daudet had made to me, in Oakley Street
that night, Wilde exclaimed, "What a dis-

contented fellow you are, Robert! A high

honour has been done to you, and you speak
181
 Oscar Wilde

of it almost with regret." And I :

" Yes,

Oscar. If things were all right with you,

this would have made me happier than any-
thing that has happened to me in my career.
"
But as it is

Daudet and I began the book, My First

Voyage. My First Lie, the next day. I

wish that I still possessed the manuscript of

that first day's work. It was in the shape of
notes on the hotel paper, and it would recall

to me to-day my state of mind at the time.

I had no pleasure in it. It barely diverted

my thoughts. The notes were like those

hieroglyphics which a man distraught pencils

with an unconscious brain. My alter was

elsewhere; yet when, many months later, I

came to write the book, every detail of the

sitting, every word that Daudet had said,

indeed almost his every gesture, unperceived

at the time, came vividly back to me.

182
 XVI

The day of the trial dawned as a day of

relief to all of us in Oakley Street, but to

none more so than to my unhappy friend. It

had never entered my mind to be present at

the Old Bailey, where he was to be exposed

to such humiliations. We breakfasted to-

gether, and afterwards one of the men who

had found his bail came to escort him to

surrender. This man was bright and

cheerful. " I have a nice carriage to drive
there in," he said, "and I have retained a
nice room near the Old Bailey, to which he
can retire during the intervals."
I remember saying, "You would have
done much better to retain a nice room for

him on the Calle del Sol in Madrid." I

183
 Oscar Wilde

never hoped for a moment that the trial would

be otherwise than fatal to him.

I have no recollection of the impressions

of those days, save that they were days of

shifting hopes and fears. The town was

placarded with his name ; and one night,

alluding to this, I said, " Well, you have got

your name before the public at last." He

laughed and said, " Nobody can pretend
now not to have heard of it."

I did not read the papers, and all I knew

of the progress of the trial was what I

gathered from the announcements on the

posters and what little was said in Oakley
Street when the accused returned home.

But there was nothing to encourage me, and

what I dreaded most was the effect he would
produce when placed in person in the

witness-box. I feared his bent for flippancy

and paradox would dispose the jury against

him ; but what disturbed me most was, that

he was obviously in no state of health to

184
OSCAR WILDE, AESTHETIC PERIOD, ABOUT 1 884.

(R. W. Thmpp, Photo 1 ',

Birmingham.)

To face p. 184.
 Oscar Wilde

defend himself effectively. His nerve was

all gone, and I feared that his physical

collapse would be construed as a sign of the

consciousness of guilt. He himself dreaded

this ordeal. " I shall break down," he said,

the evening before. " I know that I shall

break down." I understood, however, from

those that were present, that he acquitted

himself with courage and dignity.
There was one evening when everybody
was glad, and when I was pointed at as a

prophet of evil and a foolish counsellor. It

was the evening of the day on which the

judge had contemptuously pitchforked back
on to the dungheap, from which it had
exuded, a certain part of the Evidence.
On the eve of the fatal last day, however,
everybody seemed resigned for the worst.

He was very fine, and I admired him greatly.

His old serenity had come back to him.

His face was calm ; all traces of nervousness

had gone ; there was a manliness in his

185
 Oscar Wilde

bearing which years of self-indulgence had

masked till then. He spent his last evening
in arranging for his mother's needs in the
event of a forced separation, and disposed of
the few trinkets of which he had not been

plundered, as souvenirs to his friends. He

retired early, taking leave of those assembled
in turn. I put my arms round his neck and
embraced him, and I said, " God bless you,

Oscar," for I thought that I should never see

him again. Apart from my conduct, which
was prompted by my great sorrow and a
weakness of nerve which bordered on
hysteria, that farewell-taking was not lack-

ing in dignity. And the cruelty of it was,

that but for the charge against him, his

attitude that night in the face of imminent

danger would have authorised his friends
to proclaim the man a hero.
I had thought that I should never see him
again. But as that dreadful Saturday
dragged on, the impulse grew stronger and
1 86
 Oscar Wilde

stronger within me to go to him, so as to be

with him at the end. In the afternoon then,

meeting Ernest Dowson, I asked him to

accompany me to the Old Bailey. We
drove there, and as we alighted in front of

the court-house, a shout arose from the

rabble that thronged the street, " Here are

some more aristocrats! Here are some

"
more of them !

I said to Dowson, as we passed through

the doorway which leads into the little yard
between the court-house and Newgate,
"That shout explains that much of the

popular execration of our friend proceeds

from class hatred. He represents the

aristocrat, poor fellow, to them, and they are

exulting in the downfall of an aristocrat."

We found a few friends in the passage

from which judge and barristers by one
staircase, and witnesses by another, reach
the court-room, and I heard that after a
deadly summing-up the jury had retired,
187
 a

Oscar Wilde

There could be no hope of a favourable

verdict. I was fully prepared for this news,
but none the less it came as a shock. A
friend diverted my thoughts by pointing to
something on the other side of the yard —
something that was seated on a bench, —
multiple something that was giggling and
chatting and smoking cigarettes. It was The
Evidence. After awhile, a friend came out
of the Court and told me that if I cared to
come in, there was a place for me. I

entered, and found the room by no means

as crowded as I had expected, and amongst
those present very few faces that I recog-

nised. My friend was sitting in the dock,

covering a sheet of paper with innumerable

Deltas. I saluted him, but he only acknow-
ledged my greeting with the faintest incli-

nation of the head. I sat down on the bench

behind the counsel for the Crown, and next

to a barrister who was a friend of mine.
He whispered to me that all chance was
1 88
 Oscar Wilde

gone. Still, the jury were a long time in

discussion, and each minute strengthened

hope. After a long while we heard a bell,

an usher came bustling in, and a great silence

fell upon the buzzing Court. It was the

silence of a beast of prey which, to seize its

victim, opens a yawning mouth, and perforce

suspends its roar. But it was a false alarm.

The jury had sent a question to the judge.

" That means an acquittal," said the

Treasury counsel.
11
No, no, no," said Sir Edward, shaking
his head.

"Thus do they compliment each other,"

I whispered to my neighbour. The Treasury

counsel overheard my whisper, and turned

round, with a mighty face suffused with

joviality. It was like a sudden sun in a very

evil mist, and it quite cheered me to see that

my friend's adversary was such a pleasant

gentleman. And still the minutes went by.

"There may be another disagreement," said

189
 Oscar Wilde

my friend. But whilst he yet spoke the die

had been cast.

I noticed that the judge s hand shook as in

a palsy as he arranged his papers on the desk.

As to the jury, a glance at their faces was
sufficient. Six questions had been put to
them, and " Guilty " was the answer to each.

Such was the foreman's enthusiasm of convic-

tion, that to the question " Is that the verdict

of you all ? " he answered with another

" Guilty/' —a piece of overweight —a bonus
to public opinion. I had laid my head down
on my arms at the first " Guilty " and
groaned, and each fresh condemnation, like a
lash on my back, drew from me an exclama-
tion of pain.

I could not look at my friend. Amongst

all those eyes turned on him in that moment,

he should not notice mine. But I looked at

him when the judge was passing sentence, and
the face is one I shall never forget. It was
flushed purple, the eyes protruded, and over
190
 Oscar Wilde

all was an expression of extreme horror.

When the judge had finished speaking, and

whilst a whirr of satisfaction buzzed through

the Court, Wilde, who had recovered him-

self, said, "And I? May I say nothing,
my lord ? " But the judge made no answer
—only an impatient sign with his hand to

the warders. I jumped up, to do what or

say what I cannot fancy, but was pulled
down by my friend the barrister. " You'll do
no good," he said, "and you'll be sent to
Holloway."
Warders touched my poor friend on the
shoulder. He shuddered and gave one
wild look round the Court Then he
turned and lumbered forward to the

head of the stairs which led to the bottom-

less pit. He was swept down and dis-

appeared.
As I staggered down the steps to leave

the court-house, I dimly heard the cries of

exultation which those crowding down with
191
 Oscar Wilde

me were uttering. But this fiendish joy in

the ruin of a life was to be impressed upon me
still more vividly. For when the verdict and
the sentence on '
the aristocrat reached the
rabble in Old Bailey, men and women joined
hands and danced an ungainly farandole,
where ragged petticoats and yawning boots
flung up the London mud in feu de joie, and
the hideous faces were distorted with savage

triumph. I stood and watched this dance of

death for a few minutes, regretting that

Veretschagin was not by my side ; and whilst

I was standing there, I saw The Evidence,
still laughing and smoking cigarettes, being
driven off in cabs. And I said to Dowson,
" This is a trial in which, out of nine people
incriminated, eight have been admitted to

act as Queen's Evidence." Then we walked

on — I as in a dream.

That evening I went to see Daudet. He

said, " This is a fine country. I admire a
country where justice is administered as it is

192
 Oscar Wilde

here, as is shown by to-day's verdict and

sentence."

I said nothing, for there was nothing to

say, and there was nothing to do but to bend

under the inevitable. I dined with the

Daudets and a Lord Somebody that night,

and the dinner was a luxurious one. But

every mouthful I took had a strange savour,
for I was thinking of what poor Wilde might at
that moment be scooping out of a greasy pan-

nikin with a wooden spoon, and the thought

flavoured all the sauces of that dinner.

I know little of his prison life, for I never

spoke to him on the subject after his release,

and what I do know is from hearsay only,

but it appears that that first evening in
Wandsworth Gaol was to him one of terrible

suffering —indeed, that he revolted when

he was told to enter a filthy bath in which
other prisoners had preceded him. But his

experiences cannot have been worse than I

pictured them.
i93 13
 ;

Oscar Wilde

Daudet was very kind to me all the even-

ing ; and when I was leaving, he invited me

to come early on the morrow, so that we
might have a long time at our book
u For," he said, "it is in work only that you
will find consolation."

"Ah, yes," I answered; "but when the

mainspring is broken and one can work no
"
longer
It was on the following day, I think, that

I said to him, " I want to write a story,

maitre, which I shall call "The Misan-

thrope by Philanthropy," —the story of a
man who becomes a hermit because he has a
tender and a susceptible heart, and wishes
to escape the certain suffering which would
fall to his lot, if he lived in the world, and
formed attachments and grew fond of

friends."

194
 XVII

After my friend's definite ruin had been

consummated, it seemed to me, though still

a young man in the full tide of success, that

my life was finished. I had received from

fate one of those crushing blows, under the
first impact of which one hopes not to
recover. My mental and moral condition

resembled those of the unhappy youth in

that pitiful story of poor Guy de Maupassant,

" Garc^on ! Un Bock." I had no heart for

my work, although at last, after years of

struggle, I had descended from the seventh

floor garret in the Rue de Castiglione, where
my literary carrer commenced, to the opul-

ence of a boulevard deuxieme, with a

country-house for relaxation, and an income
195
 Oscar Wilde

much exceeding the figure that Sir Walter

Besant fixed as the tangible proof of pro-

fessional success.

I could live in Paris no longer. I felt

that I ought to be in the country where

my friend was, so as to be near him, and

able to do anything on his behalf that
might present itself to be done. So, after

completing with Alphonse Daudet the out-

line of our book, I abandoned my engage-
ments in Paris, and returned to England,
making a temporary home in a suburb
where I was within easy distance of

Wandsworth Gaol, where Oscar Wilde was

confined. And here, in a dazed condition,
I waited for the first opportunity of visiting
him. This occurred in August, when he
became entitled to his first quarterly visit.

The ticket which was sent me from the

prison would have admitted another visitor,

but though I wrote to different friends of

his, I could find nobody to accompany me.
196
 ;

Oscar Wilde

Everybody was unfortunately engaged, but

I was charged with many kind messages.
I have no distinct recollection of that pain-

ful interview, except of the nerve-shock that

the rattle of the warders' keys and the

clang of iron doors produced upon me

and for the subject on which we talked, I

have to refer to an evening paper published

at the time, whose reporter accosted me as
I was leaving the prison. "The convict

appeared well," runs this report, "and was

in fair spirits, and stated that he was now
entitled to read, but was only allowed one
book a week, which, for an omnivorous
reader, was insufficient. He had lately been
reading Pater and Newman. Mr. Sherard
added, with regard to Wilde, *
I was
much struck by his courage and resignation,

though his punishment weighs terribly upon

him.'" It appears, then, that our conver-
sation went at once to literature, the one
subject of our common interest. We were
197
 Oscar Wilde

in a vaulted room which was like the prison

of a transpontine melodrama, and we were
separated by a double row of stout iron bars.

In the passage between stood a warder, who

kept his eyes fixed on a noisy clock which
hurried the spare allowance of minutes along.
We both clung to the iron bars, and both
for support. I noticed that his hands were

disfigured, and that his nails were broken and

bleeding ; also that his head and face were
untidy with growth of hair. And that

is all that I noticed, for I looked at his

face all the time, and if he was in some
hideous uniform I did not see it. He was
greatly depressed, and at one time had
tears in his eyes. I affected a cheerfulness

which I was far from feeling, and I fancy

that I managed to comfort him a little,

for I remember that I won a laugh from

him in the end. And just then the busy

clock hiccoughed out my cong6, and I had

to stagger away. The visiting-room is so
198
 Oscar Wilde

badly constructed that many things said

in it between prisoners and their friends

remain inaudible. I could not help thinking

of what must be the feelings of people who

pay a farewell visit in that room to a man
under sentence of death, and who after-

wards recall the fact — that he said many

things which they could not hear and may
now never know.
My visit took place on August 26th,

1895, and my papers I find a letter

in

from the Home Office, which shows me

that I was busying myself, in my coma, on

his behalf.
" Home Office,
Whitehall, S.W.,
\oth Sept. 1895.
" Dear Sir, — I am desired by Sir Matthew
Ridley, with reference to your letter to

Mr. requesting permission to visit

Mr. Oscar Wilde, to inform you that if Mr.

Wilde is due for a visit and desires to see
you an order would be sent. If, however,
199
 Oscar Wilde

you wish for one exceptional visit, it would

be advisable for you to write here, stating
the nature of the '
matters of most urgent
importance ' which you say you wish to

communicate to him."

The matters, as I wrote to the Home

Secretary, were the conditions under which

a reconciliation could be effected between

him and his poor wife. Divorce proceedings
were then being urged upon her, and I felt

that if she abandoned him, his ruin would

indeed be complete. I had written to her
repeatedly, and in the end had induced her
to pardon him, and to promise to visit him in

prison. It had been a matter of great

difficulty, but all the trouble I had taken

was amply rewarded by the following note,

received some days after I had secured a

fresh order to visit the gaol.

Dear Mr. Sherard, —Your letter has

only this moment reached me, but I came
200
 1

Oscar Wilde

over to London last evening in the hope of

getting the permission to go to Wandsworth,
and found it waiting here for me. I have
written to the Governor, and I expect to see
Oscar some time to-morrow, so I hope you
will see him on Monday.
" I am not seeing anyone at all ; but if

you cared to come here on Tuesday and

climb many flights of stairs, should be very
glad to see you. —Very sincerely yours,
" Constance Wilde."
" I don't want anyone to know that I am
in London."

On the following day I received a second

letter from her. It showed me that I had
not mistaken the poor girl's beautiful

heart.

"My Dear Mr. Sherard, — It was indeed

awful, more so than I had any conception
it could be. I could not see him and I could
not touch him, and I scarcely spoke. Come
20
 Oscar Wilde

and see me before you go to him on

Monday. At any time after two I can see
you. When I go again, I am to get at the

Home Secretary through Mr. and try

and get a room to see him in and touch him

again. He has been mad the last three years,
and he says that if he saw he would
kill him. So he had better keep away, and
be satisfied with having marred a fine life.

Few people can boast of so much.

" I thank you for your kindness to a fallen

friend ;
you are kind and gentle to him, and
you are, I think, the only person he can bear
to see. —Yours most truly,

" Constance Wilde."

I hurried to see her, and from the long

conversation I had with her, I learned that
her heart was altogether with him still, and
that once his punishment was over, he would
find a home with her and his children. I

was much affected as I left. She showed

202
 Oscar Wilde

like an angel —an angel of beauty and of

goodness — in the horrid night that hemmed
me in. I was never to see her again ; and as
it came to pass, all my effort for his happiness

and hers was to remain sterile.

My order from the Home Office entitled

me to a long interview in one of the prison

offices. I heard many uncomplimentary
remarks about myself from the warders
outside the waiting-room at the gate, — the
gist of which was that people ought not to
interest themselves in prisoners, but devise

means for keeping their own persons out of

gaol.

We had a long and pleasant talk together,

though a warder sat with his eyes glued on

my hands, lest I should pass aught of
contraband. I found my friend greatly
cheered by his wife's visit, and the prospect
of the new life after his release. We stayed
together an hour, and naturally drifted on to
literature, but this topic seemed subversive
203
 Oscar Wilde

to the warder, and he interrupted the

conversation by saying that if we had
finished discussing "business," the interview

must be held to be terminated. Whereupon

to his great horror, I my arms round my
put
friend and pressed him to my bosom, and so
departed.

Whilst I had been working to bring the

unhappy husband and wife together, I had

also been busy in another direction on his

behalf. I had heard from Paris that one of

his friends had written an article on the

subject of his aberration, which, I understood,
was to be an apology for, and a glorification

of, "The Greek movement." I knew that

the publication of such an article would be

disastrous to his interests, and that one

immediate result would be that his wife's

new-won amity would be irrevocably

alienated. I accordingly used the influence

I possessed in literary circles in Paris to

prevent the publication of the article. My

204
 —

Oscar Wilde

friends acted energetically, and the article,

which was already in type, was withdrawn.

A few days later I received from Naples,
from the author, a letter, from which I extract

the following passage :

"The enclosed letter explains itself. I

have written withdrawing the article. You

no doubt mean what you do for the best,
and you were quite justified in writing to

me personally to ask me not to publish the

article, though you might have worded

your letter differently and less violently,

with equal effect. You will allow that,

immediately on receiving your letter, I

wrote by return of post telling you that,

as you thought what you did, I should

withdraw the article. This fact should, I

think, convince you that you ought not to

have written as you apparently did to the

editor of the Review, asking him to suppress

my article. Such conduct on your part

was exceedingly impertinent and in the

205
 Oscar Wilde

worst possible taste. As to the wisdom

of my originally intended course, I still

adhere to my own opinion, and Oscar shall

decide the matter when he comes out and

reads the MS. I will now make one
request of you, and that is, to say nothing

whatever about this matter to Oscar. I

have consented, at your request, to withdraw

my article, and in return you can do this

for me. No possible good can be done by

worrying Oscar about it, and you are

certainly not in a position to give any true

and impartial account of the real scope

and purport of my article."

The same friend wrote to me later, when

it had become apparent that my efforts were
tending to reconcile Oscar Wilde definitely
to his wife, and insomuch to separate him

from former associates, to say that if by

any words of mine Wildes friendship were
to be lost to him in the future, he would
shoot me " like a dog."

206
 Oscar Wilde

In the meanwhile, other friends had

been busy in endeavouring to secure his

financial position, and when he "became

due " for a visit in November, the ticket

was sent to them, so that they might discuss

business matters with him. But in com-
pensation he obtained special permission
from the Governor to write me a long
letter. It was a great consolation to me,
for its tone proved that he was coming
well through his terrible ordeal.

207
 XVIII

If I had been of the Catholic faith, the

Trappe would then, in the state of my entire

discouragement with life, have seemed to

me the only refuge for my wounded spirit.

Daudet, than whom no better counsellor in

this world's things ever lived, kept writing

to me to find in work the dictame that I

lacked. But my newspapers I had

abandoned ; for the rest, I imagine they
were not grieved thus to determine their
relations with one who had pitted his

private opinion against the opinion of the

public ; and as to fiction, which in the past

had been the source of not inconsiderable

income to me, my disgust at the cowardice

of these, the hypocrisy of those, and the

208
 Oscar Wilde

many other detestable qualities of my con-

temporaries which this catastrophe had

revealed to a nature by composition opti-

mistic, would have disposed me rather to

write about the uncleaner denizens of the

Zoological Gardens than about men and
women. And in this, Buffon and others
had preceded me.
My notes for the Daudet book were with

me, and now, when I turn over the printed

pages of My First Voyage, I recall the

many heavy hours during which I gazed,

horn-eyed, at these papers, waiting for the

impulse to take my pen in hand and fulfil

the obligations of a sincere friendship — an

impulse which only came many months after

the time of which I am writing.

Whilst nursing my melancholy in a little

cottage on the Westmoreland hills, I

received a letter from the proprietor of a

London magazine inviting my collaboration,

whilst leaving me free to select my own

209 14
 Oscar Wilde

subjects. It occurred to me then that in

visiting, in various parts of England, the

most unhappy Pariahs amongst the workers

of the Kingdom, in taking up their cause

against Society which oppressed them, my

Calvinistic conscience might find some of
that blessed relief which by other forms of

penance the Church of Rome provides for

her children. The suggestion was made
and accepted, and in this way my book
The White Slaves of England came to be
written. The Inferno into which I now
plunged, afforded me the opportunity to

assure myself that the material existence of

an English prisoner compares favourably

with that led by many hundreds of thou-

sands of free men and women, whose liberty,

chained as they are, for a daily average of

eighteen hours, these to the nailmaker's

anvil, those to the slipper - last, these to

the sweater's sewing-machine, has pinions

more closely clipped than those of men and
210
 Oscar Wilde

women in durance. These at least have

time for exercise, some pause for recreation,
and the assurance of sufficient sleep. And
each sad sight, whilst it distressed, comforted

me also, when I thought that the prisoner,

whose sufferings never ceased to occupy my
mind, was a happy, unshackled, and comfort-
able man, as compared to the people whose
lives were now laid bare before me.
It was during this subterranean journey
that I heard he had been moved to Read-
ing Gaol, which, it appears, is a healthier
prison than Wandsworth. I felt sorry to

reflect on the reminiscences of his sunny

youth, and the glorious and triumphant days

of Oxford, which must have filled his mind

when the chain-gang alighted at Reading,
but I had no conception of the cruel outrage

which had lent the bitterness of death to

that journey. It appears that whilst the
gang of prisoners to whom he was chained
were waiting for their train at Wandsworth
211
 Oscar Wilde

Road station, exposed in their ignominy on

the general platform —the Prison Authorities

feel that they owe an occasional spectacle to

the ratepayers —a British elector, who had

been feasting his eyes on the faces, garb,
and chains of the shivering crew, recognised
among the prisoners one to whom all Eng-
land owed a little gaiety, cried out, proud
of his superior knowledge, and for the

benefit of the other lookers-on, " By God,

!

that's Oscar Wilde " and spat in his face.

And my friend's chains and gyves held him

inert and passive under outrage so sangui-
nary.

I visited him for the third time in Reading

Gaol, and though I could congratulate him
on the fact that then merciful Time had
gnawed away half of the load of heavy

hours that had been laid upon him, I found

him altogether crushed down. It was
a painful interview in a degrading setting.

He was in a kind of rabbit-hutch, over which

212
 Oscar Wilde

wire-grating was nailed, as though for the

caging of an animal — noxious certainly, but

of small force, and little to be feared — stoat,

weasel, or such. The heavy iron bars of

the visiting-room of Wandsworth Gaol,

melodramatic as they seemed, invested the

interview with a sense of danger, and
wrapped the man beyond the bars in a kind
of awful dignity —the dignity of the caged

carnivorous monster.

The hutch was almost in complete dark-

ness, and of my friend's presence I perceived

little beyond his hesitating and husky voice.

I think this darkness was one of the rare

mercies of the prison managers, and was

designed to spare to friends and prisoners
the humiliation of these, the pitying pain

of those. I am sure that Wilde was glad

of it, for, further to hide his face from my

eyes, he put a blue handkerchief over his

mouth and cheeks. No doubt disfiguring

growths of hair were thus masked. I found

213
 Oscar Wilde

him well informed of current events.

Dumas, a common friend, had died two

days before, and he knew it. I told him I

should look to him for the world's news,

and I heard a laugh in the dark depths of
the wire cage. I had a private communica-
tion to make to him, and I began to speak
in French, but was brusquely interrupted by
the warder with a " Stow that, now ! No
foreign tongues allowed here." But I

conveyed the information all the same in a

roundabout way — the name which Mrs.

Wilde had adopted. It interested me, as a

point of psychology, to observe with what

anxiety he asked what the new name was.

In his prisoner's dress, in a shameful cage,

his pride remained such that he was keenly
desirous to be assured that his people had
not assumed a name plebeian or ill-sounding.

He approved, when I had conveyed to him

what the name was.
After leaving the prison, very heavy at
214
 Oscar Wilde

heart, for his depression had seemed to me

such that I began to fear for his sanity, and
the dreary hours of waiting before I could
take a train to London were the longest,

I think, through which I have ever lived,

to kill time I entered an hotel, and though

the gaol air had destroyed all appetite, I

allowed myself to be served with the tedious

refreshments of a provincial English coffee-
room. Opposite the table at which I sat

was hung upon the wall the mighty carapace

of the edible turtle, and on this was affixed a

silver plate on which was engraved the

inscription that, on such and such a date,

"I" (the turtle) "had the honour of being

killed and enjoyed in the form of delicious
soup at a banquet of the local Conservatives,

presided over by H.G. the Marquess of

Salisbury, K.G." And I consoled myself
with the thought that to those who desire

immortality, the form it assumes should

matter little.

215
 Oscar Wilde

I visited my friend twice more in Read-

ing, and on both occasions in company. On
the last occasion, which was three months
before his release, he seemed to find the
prospect before him more terrible than, for

instance, he had done on my first visit, when

it was one of twenty-one months of imprison-
ment to serve. I experienced the feeling
myself later on when crossing the Atlantic
in the steerage, for the purpose of my book,
At the Closed Door. I found the last twenty-
four hours in the devil's hole of '
La Cham-
pagne's '
steerage-hold far harder to bear,
far slower in their dragging horror, than the
seven previous days and nights.
On this occasion he asked me to absent

myself for a few moments, whilst he talked

to the gentleman who had come with me.
And in the grey gloom of the prison corridor
where I waited till this conference, from
which I was excluded, was over, it dawned
upon me that my long friendship, fruitful as
216
 "

Oscar Wilde

it had been in sorrow, might reserve for the

future another sorrow, and the disappoint-

ment of a wasted effort.

As I walked out of the gaol, having

given my friend rendezvous under the sky

of Liberty, I was accosted by a person

who offered me a meat-tea, prayer, consol-
ation, and the promise of a complete set of

tools. He was the official of some Prisoners'

Rescue Society, and had taken me for a

released prisoner to be befriended.

I did not disturb his illusion, but whilst

declining the proffered refreshment, with

thanks, I said, " I am a writer, and the
only tool I need is a pen."
As an after-thought I added, "and a
little charity.

"Oh," said he, "we have no funds at

our disposal for charity. We make no cash
gifts."

But that was not what I had meant.

217
 !

XIX
The charity for which I asked was what was
so entirely refused to Oscar Wilde after his

release. In other countries, once a man has

paid his debt to Society, as the formula is, he
is held quits. Whoever in France brought
up against Paul Verlaine that he had suffered
imprisonment in Belgium for offences against

the criminal law ? — Paul Verlaine, who was

publicly received and feted in England by
the very people who clamoured most loudly
that Oscar Wilde was dead to Society and to

literature, and might never be resuscitated

In England, if a man fall, he falls never to
rise again. There are in the British a
certain bloodthirstiness and a certain in-

stinctive cruelty, which not centuries of

218
 Oscar Wilde

Protestant practice have been able to

moderate. These qualities of the nation

account for the facts that not only is

our penal legislation the severest in the

world, but that a conviction entails immed-

iate and irreparable social death on the

offender.

My remarks to the Rescue officer meant,

that having paid my debt to Society, I only
required that Society should have sufficient
charity to allow me to ply my trade, to earn

my living, — in other words, without remem-

bering against me that I had been in prison,

that it should judge my writings on their

merits and market value alone, without

prejudice as without favour. Oscar Wilde
had all the more right to expect this of

Society, that his past literary career, at least,

was one of the purest of which English

literature has record. I do not think that his

bitterest enemies can find in any of his

writings a single line which contains a
219
 Oscar Wilde

coarse suggestion. He was as moral in his

writing as he was moral in his speech.

It would have been all gain to England,

and a great gain, if after his release he had
found encouragement to write. He had
been through the furnace, he had drunk of
the waters of death, and a great spiritual

mission might have been his. I know that

he left prison with a lofty ideal before him

and a firm purpose. There were discharged
on that morning together with him a dozen
other prisoners, labourers and artisans. For
these Society found tools and employment.
On the man of genius, who could have

added to her intellectual treasure-house

incomparable wealth, Society turned her

back.

He was put outside Wandsworth Gaol in

his fumigated and frayed finery, with half-a

sovereign —representing the earnings of two

years' hard labour — in his hand, with no

prospect before him but one of constant out-

220
 Oscar Wilde

rage, and the knowledge that his great

talents could never serve him again. The

bricklayer who had come out of the prison

with him would be making bricks on the

morrow and earning a sufficient living, whilst

he was condemned to inactivity, to a moral

starvation, more cruel to a man of his

temperament than the actual privation which

his circumstances threatened.

What an opportunity was lost here by

some man of wealth, and therefore influence,

with the true love of Christ in his heart, to

save for great good a stricken and hesi-
tating soul! But only the mists chasing

each other over the grey common showed

themselves to his searching eyes. Between
him and his utter bankruptcy was the little

gold coin that he held in his hand.

I was in some remote part at the time, and

could not meet him. Other friends, however,

were more fortunate, and welcomed him back
to liberty. Also there was at once paid over
221
 Oscar Wilde

to him the slender balance of a sum of one

thousand pounds, which had been deposited
on his behalf, after his conviction, by a lady
who had sympathy with him. The rest had
been spent during his confinement, much on
behalf of his mother. He might have had
in addition to this a large sum, easily earned,
if, in spite of all, his high self-respect had not
remained to him. On the day before his

removal, for discharge, from Reading Gaol,

two American journalists had waited upon
the Governor, and had asked him to make
the following proposal to Oscar Wilde : In

return for an hour s conversation with him,

in which he should relate his prison ex-

periences, they would pay him a large sum.

I have heard that the amount promised was
one thousand pounds, but I imagine that it

was much less. Whatever the figure of the

offer may have been, his prospective needs

were such that it might have tempted an-

other man. His answer, however, to the
222
 Oscar Wilde

Governor was a characteristic one :

" I can-

not understand, Sir, that such proposals

should be made to a gentleman."

It has often occurred to me, that much of

the bitterness manifested against him in the

press, was caused by his contemptuous and

unfair remarks about the profession of

journalism. These were all the less excus-

able on his part that he knew Paris well,

and had a great admiration for French

litterateurs, and knew that there is not, and
has not been, a single French writer of any
eminence who has not passed through
journalism, and always to his great advan-

tage. I was always sorry to hear his

utterances on this subject, not indeed because

the profession is one I have followed, and

hold can so be exercised as to be one of
the noblest in the world, but because it

seemed to me unworthy of him to share a

prejudice, essentially English and vulgar,

which arises from the fact that most

223
 Oscar Wilde

journalists in England, ill-paid and anony-

mous, are in a humble position in life, with
no footing in that sphere of Society which
he, first of all, should have despised. A
saying of his went the rounds of Paris a
year or two before his death, in which he
formulated his utter disdain for journalists.
An English newspaper-correspondent having
for money acted in a public matter in a way
which made him the object of the contempt
of every decent man and woman in Paris,

Wilde explained that the reason why he

personally was not disgusted with the man's

abject and treacherous conduct was that

"journalists in England are never gentlemen

and nobody, consequently, expects them to

act as such, or to possess any sense of

honour."
In the case of the prying American
journalists, who desired to purchase the
materials for an unsavoury sensation, I

think that he acted very well. For the rest,

224
 Oscar Wilde

he never cared to speak, even to his friends,

on the subject of his prison life. I never

approached it except on one occasion, for
I always acted towards him as if those two
years had never existed ; but if I had had
any curiosity, he would not have satisfied

me. " Now, Robert, don't be morbid,"

he said to me, at one of our first meetings
after his release, when something I said

seemed to invite the confidences of the

prison-house.

From stray remarks which he let fall

from time to time, one gathered that the

system had been applied to him in all its

rigour, that he had sometimes been

punished, and that the warders both at

Wandsworth and at Reading had been well

disposed toward him. There was one at

Reading who used to smuggle pieces of

cake into his cell. He described graphically
how, after it was eaten, he used to grope
about on all fours hunting for stray
225 15
 Oscar Wilde

crumbs, which might betray the awful breach

of regulations of a starvation system, and
bring punishment on him and on his accom-
plice. He seems to have ingratiated

himself with the warders by helping them

to solve puzzles in a competition started by a
popular weekly; and the story went that,

thanks to him, one of the prison officials had

won a grand piano. He was always ailing,

and often so ill that he had to be moved

to the infirmary. Here he was ever a
favourite. His conversation and wit de-
lighted the poor prisoners, and he, on his
side, was pleased to have an audience, even
such an audience\ At such times the colour

came back to his cheeks, and his whole

person revived, and, seen then, he gave the
illusion of being in good health and spirits.

And such he appeared to two officials who

were sent down from the Home Office, in

consequence of a petition for his release on

the ground of his ill-health, and who,
226
 Oscar Wilde

unknown to him, watched him through a

spy-hole in the infirmary for half-an-hour.

He was sitting on his bed and discoursing,

and all the patients were in high delight.
In consequence, the two gentlemen returned
to London, and reported that C. 33 was in

enviable physical and mental condition.

For the rest, he himself has related, in

that wonderful article in the Daily Chronicle

which appeared a few weeks after his release,

and in which he pleaded that child-prisoners

might be treated with some semblance of

humanity, all the impressions of his prison

life that anyone needs to know.

The two years of suffering and degrada-
tion left on him externally no trace, except
a little nervous trick he had of arranging
things symmetrically, if in disorder, before

him. " I had to keep everything in my

cell in its exact place," he said, "and if I

neglected this even in the slightest, I was

punished, and the punishment was so horrible
227
 Oscar Wilde

to me that I often started up in my sleep

to feel if each thing was where the regulations

would have it, and not an inch either to the

right or to the left. And the terror haunts

me still, and involuntarily my fingers make
order where anything is disarranged."

He was fond of relating an incident of a

dramatic nature connected with his stay in
Reading. One day, whilst tramping his

round in the prison-yard at exercise, he

heard the man behind him say, " A strange
place in which to meet Lord Henry." He
turned round at the first opportunity and
recognised in the speaker, an old tramp, to
whom a year or two previously, during a
country walk, he had given a half-crown.
It was not explained how the old beggar
had acquired his knowledge of " The
Portrait of Dorian Gray."

I have said that on one occasion only did

I refer to his prison life. It was once in

Paris, where he had piqued me by charging

228
 Oscar Wilde

me with egotism and seeking always my

own pleasure. I said, " Were those dreadful

journeys to Reading and Wandsworth

pleasant ? * " My God, Robert, " he cried,

"and do you think it was pleasant for me

to be in those places?"
The naive egotism of his retort disarmed

me, and I burst into a laugh.

229
 XX
On his release from Wandsworth, he
was met by friends, and in their company
on the same day crossed to Dieppe. After
lodging in the town for some time, having
frequently suffered affront from Englishmen

who recognised him, he moved into the

country, close by, and leased a villa at a
seaside place called Le Petit Berneval,
about nine miles from Dieppe. Here he
lived under his new name, Sebastian
Melmoth, a name which soon became very
popular in the Berneval district, where
I found it to be synonymous for lavish

generosity, and also for great kindness.

It was noted by the peasants that Mr.

Sebastian Melmoth was particularly kind
to little children.
230
 Oscar Wilde

The hiring of an expensive villa was of

course a reckless act, but it was a quite

comprehensible one, after the two years of

humiliation and suffering he had passed.

For the rest, as long as the balance of the

thousand pounds lasted, he lived so

extravagantly that the various tradespeople
of Berneval, from the livery-stable keeper
to the hotel landlord, used to say that with

only two other such customers as Monsieur

Sebastian Melmoth they would have a very

good summer season. This also I perfectly

well understood. The only pity was that

the few hundred pounds should have been

so few. As long as they lasted he invited
all his friends to enjoy his hospitality, and
amongst others gave shelter for a long period

to a young novelist who was temporarily

penniless, and whom he had rescued from

the clutches of an hotel harpy under cir-

cumstances similar to those in which Dr.

Johnson befriended Goldsmith.

231
 Oscar Wilde

It was from Berneval that he first wrote to

me, asking me to come and visit him, and as
soon as it was possible I crossed to Dieppe.

I found him sitting with a number of

friends outside the Cafe Suisse. He wore

a kind of Tarn o' Shanter cap, the Basque
bdret, which did not suit him at all, and
which must have attracted unnecessary at-

tention. He was very cheerful and in

high spirits, and his friends were boisterous.

I heard that a few days previously a dele-
gation of young poets from Montmartre
had come down from Paris to present their

homages to the master on his release, and

that he had entertained them at a luxurious

banquet at the Cafe des Tribunaux. I also

heard that the Sub- Prefect of Dieppe had

conveyed to him that if his presence caused
the least scandal he would immediately
expel him from France — an unnecessary
and insulting menace.
The discipline and alimentary regime of
232
 OSCAR WILDE, 1 892.

(Photo by Ellis 6 s
Watery. J
To face p. 232.
 Oscar Wilde

prison life seemed to have benefited him

considerably. I was particularly struck

with this on the morning after my arrival

at the villa at Berneval, when I accom-

panied him down to the beach where he
was to take his morning swim. The
fact that he took a swim in the sea every

day was decidedly a cheerful one. For

the purpose of undressing he had had a
small cabin built for him on the beach, and

that morning the door and the shutters had

got stuck and refused to open. In the old
days he would have said, "This is very
tedious," and he would have sent for some-
body to force the door. As it was, it was a
pleasant and refreshing sight to see how
Oscar Wilde, reputed an effete voluptuary,

'went for' that cabin — I can find no other

word to describe his action — how brisk and
vigorous he was with his hands, and with what
promptitude his muscles mastered the opposi-
tion. He showed me that, from a physical
233
 Oscar Wilde

point of view, his imprisonment had bene-

fited him. It had made him physically more
manly. As a matter of fact, he had all the
makings of an athlete in him, and this

never impressed itself more strongly upon me

than on the morning of which I am speaking,
whilst I was watching him breasting the
waves, a strong and skilful swimmer.
u would
I like a photograph of him now,"
I said to a friend who was standing with me,
"to show people in England that there's

a man in him."

The life at the villa was agreeable. We

used to walk out into the country and visit

villages, the aspect of which has not changed

since the Norman Conquest. One day, as

we were on a country road, I pointed to

an official notice that was painted up on a
sign-post, " Mendicity is forbidden in this

Commune," and I said, " Do you know,

Oscar, I never see one of those notices
without a frisson, as though it applied to
234
 Oscar Wilde

me —as though it could apply to me." " It

has exactly the same effect upon me," he

said. We burst out laughing as we looked
from the sign-board to our comfortable and
elegant attire and discussed the fears, mis-
trust and anxiety that the artistic tempera-
ment carries with it, —a sense of insecurity

and danger that haunts the artist even in the

hours of greatest prosperity and brightest

prospect, —an eternal fear of the corregidor,

such as haunts the wandering gitano. In

which connection I asked him whether in

former days he had not had a presentiment

of the terrible things that were to come
upon him, and he answered in the affirma-

tive. A feeling of approaching disaster had

haunted him all his life. It was nothing
else, I said, than that feeling we have
just discussed, —the feeling that makes you
and me shudder at the sight of that warning
to beggars. We know that we are hope-
lessly improvident, and we know also the
235
 Oscar Wilde

risk that improvidence brings with it, and

we can easily fancy ourselves in a situation

—only temporary, no doubt — where that

notice might directly apply to us."

I remember that on the walk home that

evening I described a dinner-party I had
attended in Christiania, at which Bjoernstein
Bjornsen and the Ibsens had been present,
and I mentioned a custom they have at

dinner-parties in Norway which had struck

me. On rising from table the hostess

stands at the door of the dining-room, and

each guest, as he passes out into the draw-
ing-room, shakes her hand and says, " Tak
for Mand ,"— " Thanks for the Meal." Wilde
said nothing at the time, but later on in
the evening, in the presence of numerous
visitors to the villa, he denounced me for
speaking ill of people. "He told me this
afternoon," he said, "that he had been at a

dinner-party in Christiania, and was greatly

surprised, and almost shocked, that on tak-
236
 Oscar Wilde

ing leave of his hostess he was expected by

a weird Norwegian custom to shake hands

with her and to say that he had passed a
pleasant evening." This was the first sign

I had had that his humiliation and suffering

had embittered him. It indicated what
great moral and mental injury had been
done him by the torture he had undergone.
A delightful study, full of books, pictures,

and flowers, had been prepared on the

ground-floor of the villa, but it was never

used for work. He told me that his brain

had been idle so long that he felt as if he

could never work again. Yet, I believe,

remunerative offers had been made to him

after his release, and one of the leading

London managers had come over to Dieppe

specially to see him and to propose him
some work. It was the adaptation of some
French play —hack-work, in short ; and I

could quite understand how difficult it was

for him to bend himself to such employment.
237
 Oscar Wilde

Like all artists, the money consideration was

to him only secondary ; the prime reward

for labour that he looked for was the reputa-

tion, the increase of fame, that it could

bring. In anonymous writing, to which

thenceforward, as the British public would
have it, he was constrained, all stimulus to

endeavour, as far as he was concerned, was

wanting. He simply could not produce
under conditions to which excitement was
lacking. For that his former triumphs had
spoiled him, and long past were the days
when he used at regular hours on regular
days to plod up the Strand to his city

office.

At the same time, anxiety as to his future

was harassing him at every moment.

Beyond the few hundreds which had come
to him after his release, he had no resources
whatever. The persistent efforts of his

wife's family to alienate her from him had

been so far successful, that a humiliating
238
 Oscar Wilde

period of probation had been imposed upon

him. She would wait to see how he con-

ducted himself before giving effect to the

reconciliation which had taken place across

the double row of iron bars in Wandsworth
Gaol. At the same time, he was being plied
with letters and telegrams by the one of his

former friends whom it was most fatal for

him to remember. These letters, these

telegrams, petulantly clamoured for a meet-

ing. Wilde knew that if he granted this

meeting all chance of a moral rehabilitation

would be lost, his wife and children definitely

divorced from him, and his traducers of the

past justified almost in the eyes of his very

friends. During my short stay at Berneval

there came from this source several tele-

grams, which kept my poor host in a

constant tremor of irritation and perplexity.

He wished for a new life, and yet there

seemed no other prospect open to him but
to fall back into the old associations which
239
 Oscar Wilde

had ruined him. Society had closed every

door upon him, wherever British influence

extended. Thus it was not an infrequent
occurrence that he was insulted in Dieppe by
being refused admittance to houses of enter-
tainment which were visited by English
people, and at the request of these. On
one occasion he was invited to dinner by a
well known artist. There were two other
guests. The artist took his three friends to
the best restaurant in Dieppe. They sat

down at a table and called for the waiter.

The proprietor of the establishment pre-

sented himself in his place. " I much

regret," he said, "but I have dinner only for

three. There is dinner enough for three,

but not for four." It appeared that certain

English people residing in Dieppe had told
the landlord that if Oscar Wilde were ever
served at his establishment they would with-
draw their custom. And this is only one
instance of the cruel insult to which this
240
 Oscar Wilde

unhappy and forsaken man was exposed at

the hands of his countrymen.

His money was fast running out. At the
time when I visited Berneval, he had come
almost to the end of the few hundreds. I

know that he used to complain of the

carriage he had to pay on the telegrams

from his friend, for Berneval is a long way
from a telegraph office, and on each of these
idiotic and childish messages three or four
shillings had to be paid. That Oscar Wilde
should have made a remark on this expense
proved to me that his anxiety as to his
financial position, if concealed, was very
keen.

His nature revolted against the work

that offered itself for him to do. " I would
rather continue stitching sacks," he said.

For the rest, dizzy with his new-gained

liberty, and striving to forget in pleasure
and excitement and a temporary luxury the
suffering and privations of the past, the
241 16
 Oscar Wilde

constant humiliations of the present, and the

awful preoccupation of the future, he was in
no state of mind for literary production.

And it was to literary production alone that

he could look for any income.

But for his natural dignity and a strange
respect for Society, to which, although he
had spent his life deriding it, he felt a
deference and an obligation' which his

supreme delicacy could alone explain, he

could have exploited to great material

advantage the notoriety of his name, and

the universal and considerable sympathy
which in tolerant Paris the story of his

terrible sufferings had won for him. In

Paris he was looked upon as the victim of

British hypocrisy. Culpability, even where
it was admitted, was discussed with a smile,

and the punishment inflicted seemed, accord-

ing to French views, so enormous, that in

the eyes of the Parisians a very halo of

martyrdom surrounded his head.

242
 Oscar Wilde

Had he cared to do so, he could have

earned large sums of money by contributing,
in his real name, to leading French news-
papers and reviews. Thus, during my stay

at Berneval, he was invited by Monsieur

Xau, the editor of Le Journal, to contribute
a weekly chronique, for which at least three
hundred francs would have been paid.

But no. On the one hand, he was too

proud, his self-respect was too great, to

exploit for his profit a notoriety which

haunted his every waking moment with a
burning shame ; and on the other hand, he
felt that he owed it to Society, to British

Society, to do nothing to keep alive a scandal

by which that virtuous and dignified section of

humanity had suffered so much in its lofty

pride and spotless reputation. He would

raise out of the slough into which he had been
cast no beckoning hand. He had wrapped
himself in a shroud as in a cloak ; and though
tingling with life in every fibre, contented
243
 Oscar Wilde

himself to play the dead. No individual ever

manifested a higher, a more unselfish concep-

tion of his duty towards the collectivity. He
had been branded a moral leper ; and
although none better than himself knew how
cruelly unjust was this stigmatisation, he
bowed to the verdict of his countrymen, and
of his own free will withdrew to the lepers'

island — to the awful lazzaretto where all was

silence and night. And what recognition

has ever been granted to him for this

astounding sacrifice of self to the reputation

of a country of which neither by descent, nor

temperament, nor character was he a citizen ?

None. Prison had failed to degrade this

prisoner. He left Reading Gaol improved,

refined and exalted in all the qualities that

distinguish the true gentleman.

During the whole time that he was in

Dieppe and at Berneval, he was subjected

to the espionage of private detectives in the

pay of the lather of the friend who was

244
 Oscar Wilde

pestering him with applications that he

should fix a meeting. A mysterious in-

dividual was ever to be seen hanging about

the villa, an evident victim to nostalgia and
depression. One wet evening, observing
this unfortunate person from the study
window, and taking pity on his draggled,

muddy and abject condition, I suggested to

my host that we should invite him indoors
and give him a cup of tea. But such a
proceeding appeared irregular to Oscar
Wilde. "It would look like vulgar bra-

vado," he said, and the detective was left

to amuse himself as best as he could under

the dripping hedge in a very muddy lane.

It would have interested me to read the

report that he sent next day to his employer,

and what account he gave of the orgies in

which the abandoned men who were under

his observation had so shamelessly indulged.
As a matter of fact, after a long discus-

sion on literature, we had amused ourselves

245
 Oscar Wilde

for hours with a game which consisted in

finding the names of celebrated people which

begin with a given initial. There were three

of us, and we took immense pleasure in this

mnemonic tourney. Oscar beat us both by

many points, and so excited were we that
long after we had retired to our rooms
our minds were occupied with the contest.
Towards midnight the door of my bedroom
opened and Oscar Wilde appeared in his

dressing-gown.
M Xerxes," he said, and retired triumph-
antly.

I jumped out of bed and ran on to the

landing and shouted,

"
" What about Xenophon ?

I was re-entering my room, when from

afar a muffled laugh pronounced the words,
" Xavier de Mont6pin."
Although, as I saw him, he was always
simple and unaffected, never by a single

word or gesture recalling the Oscar Wilde

246
 Oscar Wilde

who had irritated Alphonse Daudet, there

were, it appears, times during this period when
his old fondness for posturing, for " startling

the bourgeois," as Baudelaire put it, returned

to him. I was staying last year at a hotel

in Arques-la-Bataille, where, whilst he was
at Berneval, he had frequently visited

Ernest Dowson, the poet, and Conder, the

most exquisite of modern artists, and the
most vivid souvenir that the landlord had
of Mr. Sebastian Melmoth was that one
night, when he had slept there, he had
aroused the household in the early morning,
and had demanded imperatively the im-
mediate slaughter of all the cocks in the
poultry-yard.

He said, " All these cocks must be killed

at once. They are terrible bores, and they

prevent me from sleeping."

I said that I presumed it was a joke on
the part of Mr. Sebastian Melmoth, but the

landlord insisted that he was altogether

247
 Oscar Wilde

serious, and seemed to bear a grudge

against him on this account.

But as I have said, I saw nothing of this

side of his character ; and when I left Dieppe,

after a few delightful and most happy days,
if my anxiety for his material future was dis-
quieting, my joy was very great that degrada-
tion had not degraded but exalted him, that
suffering had not greatly embittered him, and
that both physically and mentally my friend

had never seemed to me more alert, more

capable, more serene, with the serenity of

perfect power.

I did not know then what I see now, that

the blow which had struck him down was

a fatal one, and that his long agony had
then already commenced.

248
 XXI

An appeal which he made to his wife to

shorten the period of his probation, and to
allow him to return to her and to his children,

was met by her advisers with a refusal,

slightingly worded. The poor girl, I

know, was never even consulted, and all that

she heard of her husband's movements were

the echoes of the stories by which the

detectives at Dieppe justified their main-

tenance. At the same time, an offer of £$ a
week was made to him by these people.
His funds had all run out, he had nowhere to
go to, and all the while his friend was plead-

ing, fretting, menacing. This young man

was in receipt of a considerable allowance
from his family, and in his letters he placed
249
 Oscar Wilde

his house, a delightful villa at Posilippo, and

his purse at Wilde's disposal.

And so in the end the meeting came about.

It took place in a hotel in Rouen.
The consequence was the natural one, and
a few days later it became known that

Oscar Wilde had resumed the friendship

which had brought disaster and ruin upon him.

I heard of it in London, one afternoon
when I was in the smoking-room of a liter-

ary club. With no other purpose than to

distress me, two men, who were both the

worse for liquor, called on me there and
triumphantly announced that Oscar Wilde
had gone to the Villa G , and had there
taken up his permanent abode.
I said it was a great and an unfortunate
mistake on his part ; that his action would
everywhere be misconstrued ; that his tradu-

cers and enemies would be justified in the

eyes of the world, and many sympathies

would be alienated.
250
 Oscar Wilde

A lying account of my words was immed-

iately transmitted to Naples, and some days
later I received from my friend a letter which

distressed me greatly, for it showed me in

what an unhappy state of mind he was.

" When you wish to talk morality — always
an amusement," he wrote, — " and to attack

me behind my back, don't, like a good fellow,

talk so loud, as the reverberation reaches
from the Club to Naples ; also, it is easy
— far too easy — for you to find an audience
that does not contain any friends of mine ;

before them, play Tartuffe in the style of

termagant to your heart's content ; but when

you do it in the presence of friends of mine,
you expose yourself to rebuke and contempt,
and of course I hear all about it."

There were four pages in this style, which

was so strange, coming from Oscar Wilde to

me, that I presumed things must be going

very badly with him at the Villa G .

And though I wrote him an exact account of

251
 Oscar Wilde

what I had said, and insisted on the fact that

nobody was present when I had spoken, he

did not withdraw what was unkind and un-

just in a letter of which I have not printed

the most aggressive passages.

My presumption was the right one.

Things were very bad indeed at the Villa

G . The English in Naples made the

two friends feel that the past was not for-

gotten, and I heard sad stories of how Oscar

Wilde was slighted and insulted whenever
he showed himself where English people
were. More than this, after the first few
weeks his host's family decided to starve the

young man into abandoning his friend. His

allowance was stopped. On his side, Oscar
Wilde, was quite penniless. By selling their

jewels, and even pawning their clothes, the

two friends managed to prolong their re-

sistance for a few weeks. I have heard

accounts of this period, when every morning
the excitable Italian chef used to clamour
252
 Oscar Wilde

hysterically for the materials for his art,

which would be humorous were not the

whole story so sad.
Short as were the days of luxury that
Wilde enjoyed at Posilippo, they were the
last that he was to know. Thenceforward
his existence was to be the squalid and
hazardous life of the impecunious Bohemian
of letters in Paris. After leaving Naples he
came to Paris and took a room in the fourth-

rate hotel in an obscure street in the Latin

Quarter, where he died. It was from this

address that he sent me a copy of his

V Ballad of Reading Gaol." It was accom-

panied by a peevish letter, which showed an
unhappy state of chronic irritation — one of

the symptoms of the brain trouble of which

he died.
" I am sending you a copy of my Ballad

— first edition —which I hope you will accept

in memory of our long friendship. I had
hoped to give it to you personally, but I

253
 Oscar Wilde

know you are very busy, tho' I am sorry you

are too busy to come and see me, or to let me
know where you are to be seen."

I could reproach myself with no neglect of

him. There was, however, for me an own
battle to fight. I had gone down with him.
My best years had been lost —the question
of mere existence now presented itself. At
the time he wrote this letter I was hundreds
of miles away from Paris.

On my return I went to see him, and

heard of the wretchedness of his life. There

were times when he suffered actual want ; and
on more than one occasion, his landlord having
refused him admittance to his room until

his bill was paid, he was actually without

shelter in Paris, and but for the hospitality

of friends, would have passed the night in

the streets. Yet he never complained, he

never accused fate or Society, or those who
compassed his downfall, and to the very end
his dignity maintained itself.

254
 Oscar Wilde

His last years were supremely unhappy.

Poor, lonely, abandoned, he had little com-
pany but of those who hoped to prey upon
his brain. Towards me he became more
and more distant ; the verminous parasites
that clung to him fostered his wrong idea
that, sitting in judgment upon him, I had
condemned him. In melancholy and solitary
peregrinations on the boulevards, which
fifteen years previously we had trod so

triumphantly, we sometimes passed each

other in silence, with only a faint wave of
the hand — like two wrecked ships that pass
in the night. At such times on my side

there was no other feeling but one of intense

regret that, allowing myself to be cast down

utterly at the time of the catastrophe, I had
abandoned the arms with which then I

could have served him best. I ought to

have been wise as the world is wise, and
then he would have had at least one friend
who could have helped him.
255
 !

Oscar Wilde

I do not know what his resources were,

but there were intermittent and brief periods

of splendour, when I could hope to look up
at him out of the depths, in the position to

which everything entitled him. I believe

he constrained himself to anonymous work,

and I know for a fact that at least two
plays which were produced during this

period in London, and which were great

successes, were almost entirely written by
him. Also the last work he did before he
died was a translation of Barbey d'Aurevilly's

Ce Qui Ne Meurt Pas, The cruel irony

of things ! The dying man in the poor room

of the poor inn writing of what never dies

The whilom apostle of Beauty constrained,

as the hack of an obscure publisher, to

paraphrase paradoxes on Beauty !

Of the circumstances of his death I know

no more than what appeared in the papers :

on the- one hand, that it came mercifully, as

to a child in its sleep ; on the other, that of

256
 Oscar Wilde

all the thousands who were indebted to him

for delight, or kindness, for the royal

largesse of his royal head and heart, there

was but one man with him when he died.

fi
Also that un cortege nomhreux ne suivit

pas son deuil'." I heard of his end by a

hazard whilst in the squalid surroundings
of a London slum, in the midst of the work
which I took up first, as a mental relief,

when he was in prison. The news came to

me as a great grief, but also as a great joy.

The very weariest river had wound safe to

sea!

THE END.

257 17
 APPENDIX
[From the Gaulois of Dec. 17th, 1891]

Translated by Henry Blanchamp

The day before yesterday M. Maurice Barres

had invited some friends to a dinner at

Voisin's, in honour of the English poet,

Oscar Wilde.
A very great French Society leader, who
recently sent her portrait to the poet Oscar

Wilde, wrote, in the form of a dedication,

beneath the photograph of her stately person,
the words :
" To true art — To Oscar Wilde."
This French lady's tribute, in which ap-
pears the highest expression of refinement,
will not seem at all exaggerated to those
who know the fortunate being to whom the
258
 Oscar Wilde

words were addressed, or who enjoy the

advantage of being familiar with his work.
Mr Oscar Wilde, who is leaving Paris

to-day, where he had come for rest after the

fatigues of the London season, represents

the most perfect type of the Celtic artistic

temperament, to which Great Britain has

owed its best writers, its greatest poets.

An Irishman born, he is the son of Lady

Wilde, whose salon is one of the most famous
in London, and who, under the name of
" Speranza," has accomplished for Ireland,

by means of her wonderful poetry, what

Krasinski and Mickiewicz tried to do for

Poland.
Through her he is the grand-nephew of
Charles Mathurin, the author of strange

romances, and the friend of Goethe, Byron,

and Walter Scott. He wrote Melmotk,
the romance which Balzac so much liked,

which brought a frisson to Baudelaire, him-

self a master of frissons, and was not without
259
 Oscar Wilde

weight in the French romantic movement

of 1830.

His father, Sir William Wilde, was a

celebrated archaeologist and distinguished

man of letters.

Mr Wilde, after a brilliant course of study

at Dublin, went to Oxford, where he carried
everything before him.
It was from Magdalen College that he
directed the aesthetic movement, which first

drew public attention to him, of a rather

contemptuous kind. It was, in point of fact,

nothing but the protest of an essentially

artistic soul against the ugliness of English

life, of its deplorable accessories, and its

worse than deplorable taste in everything

relating to art.

A splendidly brilliant talker, witty sayings

fly from his mouth, just as the jewels, which

were deliberately ill-attached to Bucking-
260
 Oscar Wilde

ham's glittering doublet, were scattered about

him in the Court of France. And if you
knew how difficult it is to be witty in

English ! There are people who reproach

him for talking overmuch, and compare him
to Wencelas, whom Balzac ranked among
the demi-artists who are satisfied with a kind

of salon celebrity. Some want him to work

more ; they go out of their way to remind
him that " continual work is the law of art,"

and that Canova used to live in his atelier

like Voltaire in his study. Englishmen, in

particular, reckon talent by the weight, and
the number of pages, i.e. words, in an
English novel contributes greatly to the

measure of its success. In fact, a writer is

judged there more by the quantity than the

quality of his production, the fact being that

either one is a grocer, or one is not.

But although Oscar Wilde is better aware

than anyone of this national weakness of

his fellow-countrymen, he has never dreamt
261
 Oscar Wilde

of reaching commercial popularity by a

ladder of piled-up volumes. The only criti-

cism that ever hurt him —and no English

writer has been more virulently attacked by
English critics — was a recent one in which

he was termed a prolific writer. He is con

scious of being far too much of a grasshopper

to envy the halo of a laborious ant.

His work is among the most limited in

quantity. He began with a volume of

poems, six editions of which were taken up
in three weeks. Such a success would have
been noteworthy in Paris. It was simply
marvellous in London, where there is so little

demand for poetry that poets have to pass

through the workhouse to arrive at West-
minster Abbey. It was the more astonishing
because the book, which was published in
luxurious style, cost as much as a cartload

of beef-steaks, whilst its contents, which were

distinguished by a rare loftiness of thought,

were far beyond the understanding of the

262
 Oscar Wilde

vulgar, materialistic mob that inhabits the

West End of London. The critics gave

vent to those gross stupidities by which they
affect to despise what they cannot understand.
They asserted that Oscar Wilde's book, like

the poems of all young men of average

ability, revealed the unconscious plagiarism
of a writer who would never have written if

he had never read. In one passage they

pointed out the influence of Swinburne, in
another, a reminiscence of Shelley, and,

partisanlike, shut their eyes to everything

original in the volume, both the brilliant

colouring of the style, and its lofty thoughts

and profoundly generous and noble feelings.

It might be said that the young poet was

disheartened by this exhibition of malevo-
lence on the one hand, and of despised
popularity on the other. He was silent for

many years, and produced nothing but a

263
 Oscar Wilde

few complimentary prefaces and some review

articles. He married and went to live at
Chelsea, that small corner devoted to the
arts in the huge town devoted to bank-notes,

and his house became the rendezvous of the

few remarkable minds in contemporary Eng-
land. He came to be considered in London
as the supreme arbiter in all questions of

art and elegance. Whilst duchesses were

consulting him about the furnishing of their

castles, and Bond Street tailors sought in-

spiration from him as from a new Count

d'Orsay, poets, actors, and painters learnt to
look upon him as the leader of the new
artistic movement. You would meet at his

house the dlite of the artistic world. He

was urged on all sides to break the disdain-

ful silence he had imposed on himself. The

arguments of his friends luckily prevailed,

and Oscar Wilde again faced the English

public and critics with his novel, The
Portrait of Dorian Gray, It embodies a
264
 Oscar Wilde

harmony of psychology and romanticism.

It is a study on Pleasure —a study, subtly

delicate as the strength of a flower (to para-

phrase Shakespeare), of the path by which

it goes and the place to which it leads. It

is a demonstration of the slow, graduated fall

of a lofty soul, which the perversity of an

artistic temperament devotes to the enjoy-

ments it demands. It is a poignant satire

on the unhappy condition of human life,

through which an artist is ruined by means

of the very things that make life endurable
to him. In Dorian Gray there is a little of

G6rard de Nerval, a little of Poe, and a

good deal of Nero.

The publication of the book was like the

explosion of a bombshell in a sleeping town.

English hypocrisy, which seeks any pretext
for working itself into a passion, raised

shrieks of despair. Fancy! In the very

fatherland of cant, a book was being sold
on the stalls in which that abominable, that
265
 Oscar Wilde

damnable thing called Pleasure was analysed

in all its phases. The spirit of the Puritans,
who once forbade dancing and flogged
actresses, is still quite flourishing in England,

and that spirit was mortally offended by

the book. Despairingly and terribly moral
though it is, that book, which might be
recommended for perusal to those very
Puritans in place of innumerable tracts, was
denounced as immoral, the all-conquering
epithet by which English imbecility exiled
Byron and Shelley, besmudged Swinburne,
and murdered Keats.
Happily for art in England, the public has
for a considerable time showed itself some-
what rebellious against the odious tyranny
of cant, and the Puritans of the Press shouted

their condemnation of Dorian Gray to ears

which were deafened by their inarticulate

clamourings. The book has now taken its

place in the first rank of English novels,

both for its incomparable mastery of style and
266
 ;

Oscar Wilde

for its powerful and profound psychology.

To those for whom, like M. fimile Zola,

a novel is the most perfect expression of

literature, The Portrait of Dorian Gray is,

and will be, an absolute masterpiece.

You must be familiar with contemporary
English novels in order to appreciate at its

true worth a volume which marks the dawn

of the era of emancipation from that finical

and insipid literature of amorous school-girls

or governesses, of Anglican priests who,

after having had tea and chattered through
two volumes, in the third and last volume of
the English novel conceive doubts about some
point in their tedious faith ; emancipation,
in fact, from all the dull, mystical, brutalising,

or bloodthirsty literature which flatters the

worst qualities of the Anglo-Saxon people.

The poems, the novel, a volume of stories,

and a collection of philosophical essays

constitute the whole work of our "prolific"

writer. For British grocerdom, it is very little

267
 Oscar Wilde

for art it would be enough, were it not that

he who has produced those masterpieces will

be able to produce more. And our literature

greatly needs masterpieces if it is to keep the
place and retain the respect it has won (with

what difficulty, too !) in the world. For

which reason everybody who has this object

at heart will follow the progress of Oscar

Wilde with the deepest interest.

And now for a few words about the man.

Like all good Irishmen, he worships France.
He is never so happy as when he succeeds
in escaping from London, and is able to spend

a few days in Paris. Everything here is

sympathetic to him. He loves your poets,

your painters, and your actors, and counts

his best friends among French artists. Con-
demned as he is to clubs, he adores cafds.

If you want to see a happy man, you should

see him seated in some corner of some great
268
 —

Oscar Wilde

boulevard restaurant, dining in French fashion

and talking about French things with those
who love France.

Exceedingly distinguished in appearance,

he has a real cult for elegance, and passes for

one of the best-dressed men in London, that

capital of the Rubempres. At one time he
even indulged in some trifling eccentricities

in this connection for which his adversaries

for he cannot have any enemies —are pleased
to rebuke him. He is a confirmed, out-and-
out smoker, and at his house in London
always has a box of five hundred cigarettes
on his desk, which is that on which Carlyle
wrote his History of the French Revolution.
Oscar Wilde would not be happy with
less than five hundred. Perhaps that is

the only case in which he limits himself at all,

for he is as lavish with his money as with his

witticisms, spending royally, and generous to

excess. He loves Society, and Society loves

him, and runs after him.

269
 Oscar Wilde

To have Oscar Wilde as a guest at dinner

or in a country house means an assured

success for a London hostess. The English
aristocracy, who hardly talk at all, are glad

to listen to him. They struggle to secure his

company, and, as a man of the world who is

fond of elegance and refinement, he likes to

associate with them. But he is especially

fond of artists, and likes to say that the only

people who interest him are those who are

beautiful and those who make beautiful

things. It is true he sometimes adds to

these a third class, namely, criminals. But
that is no doubt " to startle the fools,"

as Baudelaire, his favourite poet, replied

to a prefect of police. And Oscar Wilde

cultivates paradox.

ROBERT H. SHERARD.

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