Frank Harris - Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2)

F >> Frank Harris >> Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2)

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"I cannot possibly do that, Oscar," I said, "I do not know all the
relations between you and the myriad bands that unite you: I should only
do harm and not good."

"Frank," he cried, "you do know, you must know that he is responsible
for everything, for my downfall and my ruin. It was he who drove me to
fight with his father. I begged him not to, but he whipped me to it;
asked me what his father could do; pointed out to me contemptuously that
he could prove nothing; said he was the most loathsome, hateful creature
in the world, and that it was my duty to stop him, and that if I did
not, everyone would be laughing at me, and he could never care for a
coward. All his family, his brother and his mother, too, begged me to
attack Queensberry, all promised me their support and afterwards--

"You know, Frank, in the Cafe Royal before the trial how Bosie spoke to
you, when you warned me and implored me to drop the insane suit and go
abroad; how angry he got. You were not a friend of mine, he said. You
know he drove me to ruin in order to revenge himself on his father, and
then left me to suffer.

"And that's not the worst of it, Frank: I came out of prison determined
not to see him any more. I promised my poor wife I would not see him
again. I had forgiven him; but I did not want to see him. I had suffered
too much by him and through him, far too much. And then he wrote and
wrote of his love, crying it to me every hour, begging me to come,
telling me he only wanted me, in order to be happy, me in the whole
world. How could I help believing him, how could I keep away from him?
At last I yielded and went to him, and as soon as the difficulties began
he turned on me in Naples like a wild beast, blaming me and insulting
me.

"I had to fly to Paris, having lost everything through him--wife and
income and self-respect, everything; but I always thought that he was at
least generous as a man of his name should be: I had no idea he could be
stingy and mean; but now he is comparatively rich, he prefers to
squander his money on jockeys and trainers and horses, of which he knows
nothing, instead of lifting me out of my misery. Surely it is not too
much to ask him to give me a tenth when I gave him all? Won't you ask
him?"

"I think he ought to have done what you want, without asking," I
admitted, "but I am certain my speaking would not do any good. He shows
me hatred already whenever I do not agree with him. Hate is nearer to
him always than sympathy: he is his father's son, Oscar, and I can do
nothing. I cannot even speak to him about it."

"Oh, Frank, you ought to," said Oscar.

"But suppose he retorted and said you led him astray, what could I
answer?"

"Led him astray!" cried Oscar, starting up, "you cannot believe that.
You know better than that. It is not true. It is he who always led,
always dominated me; he is as imperious as a Caesar. It was he who began
our intimacy: he who came to me in London when I did not want to see
him, or rather, Frank, I wanted to but I was afraid; at the very
beginning I was afraid of what it would all lead to, and I avoided him;
the desperate aristocratic pride in him, the dreadful bold, imperious
temper in him terrified me. But he came to London and sent for me to
come to him, said he would come to my house if I didn't. I went,
thinking I could reason with him; but it was impossible. When I told him
we must be very careful, for I was afraid of what might happen, he made
fun of my fears, and encouraged me. He knew that they'd never dare to
punish him; he's allied to half the peerage and he did not care what
became of me....

"He led me first to the street, introduced me to the male prostitution
in London. From the beginning to the end he has driven me like the
Oestrum of which the Greeks wrote, which drove the ill-fated to
disaster.

"And now he says he owes me nothing; I have no _claim_, I who gave to
him without counting; he says he needs all his money for himself: he
wants to win races and to write poetry, Frank, the pretty verses which
he thinks poetry.

"He has ruined me, soul and body, and now he puts himself in the balance
against me and declares he outweighs me. Yes, Frank, he does; he told me
the other day I was not a poet, not a true poet, and he was, Alfred
Douglas greater than Oscar Wilde.

"I have not done much in the world," he went on hotly, "I know it better
than anyone, not a quarter of what I should have done, but there are
some things I have done which the world will not forget, can hardly
forget. If all the tribe of Douglas from the beginning and all their
achievements were added together and thrown into the balance, they would
not weigh as dust in comparison. Yet he reviled me, Frank, whipped me,
shamed me.... He has broken me, he has broken me, the man I loved; my
very heart is a cold weight in me," ... and he got up and moved aside
with the tears pouring down his cheeks.

"Don't take it so much to heart," I said in a minute or two, going after
him, "the loss of affection I cannot help, but a hundred or so a year is
not much; I will see that you get that every year."

"Oh, Frank, it is not the money; it is his denial, his insults, his hate
that kills me; the fact that I have ruined myself for someone who cares
nothing; who puts a little money before me; it is as if I were choked
with mud....

"Once I thought myself master of my life; lord of my fate, who could do
what I pleased and would always succeed. I was as a crowned king till I
met him, and now I am an exile and outcast and despised.

"I have lost my way in life; the passers-by all scorn me and the man
whom I loved whips me with foul insults and contempt. There is no
example in history of such a betrayal, no parallel. I am finished. It is
all over with me now--all! I hope the end will come quickly," and he
moved away to the window, his tears falling heavily.

FOOTNOTES:

[33] The rest of this story concerns me chiefly and I have therefore
relegated it to the Appendix for those who care to read it.

[34] Oscar was already getting L300 a year from his wife and Robert
Ross, to say nothing of the hundreds given to him from time to time by
other friends.

[35] The truth about this I have already stated.

[36] Though I have reported this conversation as faithfully as I can and
have indeed softened the impression Lord Alfred Douglas made upon me at
the time; still I am conscious that I may be doing him some injustice. I
have never really been in sympathy with him and it may well be that in
reporting him here faithfully I am showing him at his worst. I am aware
that the incident does not reveal him at his best. He has proved since
in his writings and notably in some superb sonnets that he had a real
affection and admiration for Oscar Wilde. If I have been in any degree
unfair to him I can best correct it, I think, by reproducing here the
noble sonnet he wrote on Oscar after his death: in sheer beauty and
sincerity of feeling it ranks with Shelley's lament for Keats:

_The Dead Poet_[37]

I dreamed of him last night, I saw his face All radiant and unshadowed
of distress, And as of old, in music measureless, I heard his golden
voice and marked him trace Under the common thing the hidden grace, And
conjure wonder out of emptiness, Till mean things put on beauty like a
dress And all the world was an enchanted place.

And then methought outside a fast locked gate I mourned the loss of
unrecorded words, Forgotten tales and mysteries half said Wonders that
might have been articulate, And voiceless thoughts like murdered singing
birds And so I woke and knew that he was dead.

[37] In the Appendix I have published the first sketch of this fine
sonnet: lovers of poetry will like to compare them.

CHAPTER XXVI

In a day or two, however, the clouds lifted and the sun shone as
brilliantly as ever. Oscar's spirits could not be depressed for long: he
took a child's joy in living and in every incident of life. When I left
him in Paris a week or so later, in midsummer, he was full of gaiety and
humour, talking as delightfully as ever with a touch of cynicism that
added piquancy to his wit. Shortly after I arrived in London he wrote
saying he was ill, and that I really ought to send him some money. I had
already paid him more than the amount we had agreed upon at first for
his scenario, and I was hard up and anything but well. I had chronic
bronchitis which prostrated me time and again that autumn. Having heard
from mutual friends that Oscar's illness did not hinder him from dining
out and enjoying himself, I received his plaints and requests with a
certain impatience, and replied to him curtly. His illness appeared to
me to be merely a pretext. When my play was accepted his demands became
as insistent as they were extravagant.

Finally I went back to Paris in September to see him, persuaded that I
could settle everything amicably in five minutes' talk: he must remember
our agreement.

I found him well in health, but childishly annoyed that my play was
going to be produced and resolved to get all the money he could from me
by hook or by crook. I never met such persistence in demands. I could
only settle with him decently by paying him a further sum, which I did.

In the course of this bargaining and begging I realised that contrary to
my previous opinion he was not gifted as a friend, and did not attribute
any importance to friendship. His affection for Bosie Douglas even had
given place to hatred: indeed his liking for him had never been founded
on understanding or admiration; it was almost wholly snobbish: he loved
the title, the romantic name--Lord Alfred Douglas. Robert Ross was the
only friend of whom he always spoke with liking and appreciation: "One
of the wittiest of men," he used to call him and would jest at his
handwriting, which was peculiarly bad, but always good-naturedly; "a
letter merely shows that Bobbie has something to conceal"; but he would
add, "how kind he is, how good," as if Ross's devotion surprised him, as
in fact it did. Ross has since told me that Oscar never cared much for
him. Indeed Oscar cared so little for anyone that an unselfish affection
astonished him beyond measure: he could find in himself no explanation
of it. His vanity was always more active than his gratitude, as indeed
it is with most of us. Now and then when Ross played mentor or took him
to task, he became prickly at once and would retort: "Really, Bobbie,
you ride the high horse so well, and so willingly, it seems a pity that
you never tried Pegasus"--not a sneer exactly, but a rap on the knuckles
to call his monitor to order. Like most men of charming manners, Oscar
was selfish and self-centred, too convinced of his own importance to
spend much thought on others; yet generous to the needy and kind to all.

After my return to London he kept on begging for money by almost every
post. As soon as my play was advertised I found myself dunned and
persecuted by a horde of people who declared that Oscar had sold them
the scenario he afterwards sold to me.[38] Several of them threatened to
get injunctions to prevent me staging my play, "Mr. and Mrs. Daventry,"
if I did not first settle with them. Naturally, I wrote rather sharply
to Oscar for having led me into this hornets' nest.

It was in the midst of all this unpleasantness that I heard from Turner,
in October, I believe, that Oscar was seriously ill, and that if I owed
him money, as he asserted, it would be a kindness to send it, as he was
in great need. The letter found me in bed. I could not say now whether I
answered it or not: it made me impatient; his friends must have known
that I owed Oscar nothing; but later I received a telegram from Ross
saying that Oscar was not expected to live. I was ill and unable to
move, or I should have gone at once to Paris. As it was I sent for my
friend, Bell, gave him some money and a cheque, and begged him to go
across and let me know if Oscar were really in danger, which I could
hardly believe. As luck would have it, the next afternoon, when I hoped
Bell had started, his wife came to tell me that he had had a severe
asthmatic attack, but would cross as soon as he dared.

I was too hard up myself to wire money that might not be needed, and
Oscar had cried "wolf" about his health too often to be a credible
witness. Yet I was dissatisfied with myself and anxious for Bell to
start.

Day after day passed in troubled doubts and fears; but it was not long
when a period was put to all my anxiety. A telegram came telling me he
was dead. I could hardly believe my eyes: it seemed incredible--the
fount of joy and gaiety; the delightful source of intellectual vivacity
and interest stilled forever. The world went greyer to me because of
Oscar Wilde's death.

Months afterwards Robert Ross gave me the particulars of his last
illness.

Ross went to Paris in October: as soon as he saw Oscar, he was shocked
by the change in his appearance: he insisted on taking him to a doctor;
but to his surprise the doctor saw no ground for immediate alarm: if
Oscar would only stop drinking wine and _a fortiori_ spirits, he might
live for years: absinthe was absolutely forbidden. But Oscar paid no
heed to the warning and Ross could only take him for drives whenever the
weather permitted and seek to amuse him harmlessly.

The will to live had almost left Oscar: so long as he could live
pleasantly and without effort he was content; but as soon as ill-health
came, or pain, or even discomfort, he grew impatient for deliverance.

But to the last he kept his joyous humour and charming gaiety. His
disease brought with it a certain irritation of the skin, annoying
rather than painful. Meeting Ross one morning after a day's separation
he apologised for scratching himself:

"Really," he exclaimed, "I'm more like a great ape than ever; but I hope
you'll give me a lunch, Bobbie, and not a nut."

On one of the last drives with this friend he asked for champagne and
when it was brought declared that he was dying as he had lived, "beyond
his means"--his happy humour lighting up even his last hours.

Early in November Ross left Paris to go down to the Riviera with his
mother: for Reggie Turner had undertaken to stay with Oscar. Reggie
Turner describes how he grew gradually feebler and feebler, though to
the end flashes of the old humour would astonish his attendants. He
persisted in saying that Reggie, with his perpetual prohibitions, was
qualifying for a doctor. "When you can refuse bread to the hungry,
Reggie," he would say, "and drink to the thirsty, you can apply for your
diploma."

Towards the end of November Reggie wired for Ross and Ross left
everything and reached Paris next day.

When all was over he wrote to a friend giving him a very complete
account of the last hours of Oscar Wilde; that account he generously
allows me to reproduce and it will be found word for word in the
Appendix; it is too long and too detailed to be used here.

Ross's letter should be read by the student; but several touches in it
are too timid; certain experiences that should be put in high relief are
slurred over: in conversation with me he told more and told it better.

For example, when talking of his drives with Oscar, he mentions
casually that Oscar "insisted on drinking absinthe," and leaves it at
that. The truth is that Oscar stopped the victoria at almost the first
cafe, got down and had an absinthe. Two or three hundred yards further
on, he stopped the carriage again to have another absinthe: at the next
stoppage a few minutes later Ross ventured to remonstrate:

"You'll kill yourself, Oscar," he cried, "you know the doctors said
absinthe was poison to you!"

Oscar stopped on the sidewalk:

"And what have I to live for, Bobbie?" he asked gravely. And Ross
looking at him and noting the wreck--the symptoms of old age and broken
health--could only bow his head and walk on with him in silence. What
indeed had he to live for who had abandoned all the fair uses of life?

The second scene is horrible: but is, so to speak, the inevitable
resultant of the first, and has its own awful moral. Ross tells how he
came one morning to Oscar's death-bed and found him practically
insensible: he describes the dreadful loud death-rattle of his breath,
and says: "terrible offices had to be carried out."

The truth is still more appalling. Oscar had eaten too much and drunk
too much almost habitually ever since the catastrophe in Naples. The
dreadful disease from which he was suffering, or from the after effects
of which he was suffering, weakens all the tissues of the body, and this
weakness is aggravated by drinking wine and still more by drinking
spirits. Suddenly, as the two friends sat by the bedside in sorrowful
anxiety, there was a loud explosion: mucus poured out of Oscar's mouth
and nose, and--

Even the bedding had to be burned.

If it is true that all those who draw the sword shall perish by the
sword, it is no less certain that all those who live for the body shall
perish by the body, and there is no death more degrading.

* * * * *

One more scene, and this the last, and I shall have done.

When Robert Ross was arranging to bury Oscar at Bagneux he had already
made up his mind as soon as he could to transfer his body to Pere
Lachaise and erect over his remains some worthy memorial. It became the
purpose of his life to pay his friend's debts, annul his bankruptcy, and
publish his books in suitable manner; in fine to clear Oscar's memory
from obloquy while leaving to his lovable spirit the shining raiment of
immortality. In a few years he had accomplished all but one part of his
high task. He had not only paid off all Oscar Wilde's debts; but he had
managed to remit thousands of pounds yearly to his children, and had
established his popularity on the widest and surest foundation.

He crossed to Paris with Oscar's son, Vyvyan, to render the last service
to his friend. When preparing the body for the grave years before Ross
had taken medical advice as to what should be done to make his purpose
possible. The doctors told him to put Wilde's body in quicklime, like
the body of the man in "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." The quicklime, they
said, would consume the flesh and leave the white bones--the
skeleton--intact, which could then be moved easily.

To his horror, when the grave was opened, Ross found that the quicklime,
instead of destroying the flesh, had preserved it. Oscar's face was
recognisable, only his hair and beard had grown long. At once Ross sent
the son away, and when the sextons were about to use their shovels, he
ordered them to desist, and descending into the grave, moved the body
with his own hands into the new coffin in loving reverence.

Those who hold our mortal vesture in respect for the sake of the spirit
will know how to thank Robert Ross for the supreme devotion he showed to
his friend's remains: in his case at least love was stronger than
death.

One can be sure, too, that the man who won such fervid self-denying
tenderness, had deserved it, called it forth by charm of companionship,
or magic of loving intercourse.

FOOTNOTES:

[38] See Appendix: p. 589 and especially p. 592.

CHAPTER XXVII

It was the inhumanity of the prison doctor and the English prison system
that killed Oscar Wilde. The sore place in his ear caused by the fall
when he fainted that Sunday morning in Wandsworth Prison chapel formed
into an abscess and was the final cause of his death. The "operation"
Ross speaks of in his letter was the excision of this tumour. The
imprisonment and starvation, and above all the cruelty of his gaolers,
had done their work.

The local malady was inflamed, as I have already said, by a more general
and more terrible disease. The doctors attributed the red flush Oscar
complained of on his chest and back, which he declared was due to eating
mussels, to another and graver cause. They warned him at once to stop
drinking and smoking and to live with the greatest abstemiousness, for
they recognised in him the tertiary symptoms of that dreadful disease
which the brainless prudery in England allows to decimate the flower of
English manhood unchecked.

Oscar took no heed of their advice. He had little to live for. The
pleasures of eating and drinking in good company were almost the only
pleasures left to him. Why should he deny himself the immediate
enjoyment for a very vague and questionable future benefit?

He never believed in any form of asceticism or self-denial, and towards
the end, feeling that life had nothing more to offer him, the pagan
spirit in him refused to prolong an existence that was no longer joyous.
"I have lived," he would have said with profound truth.

Much has been made of the fact that Oscar was buried in an
out-of-the-way cemetery at Bagneux under depressing circumstances. It
rained the day of the funeral, it appears, and a cold wind blew: the way
was muddy and long, and only a half-a-dozen friends accompanied the
coffin to its resting-place. But after all, such accidents, depressing
as they are at the moment, are unimportant. The dead clay knows nothing
of our feelings, and whether it is borne to the grave in pompous
procession and laid to rest in a great abbey amid the mourning of a
nation or tossed as dust to the wind, is a matter of utter indifference.

Heine's verse holds the supreme consolation:

Immerhin mich wird umgeben
Gotteshimmel dort wie hier
Und wie Todtenlampen schweben
Nachts die Sterne ueber mir.

Oscar Wilde's work was over, his gift to the world completed years
before. Even the friends who loved him and delighted in the charm of his
talk, in his light-hearted gaiety and humour, would scarcely have kept
him longer in the pillory, exposed to the loathing and contempt of this
all-hating world.

The good he did lives after him, and is immortal, the evil is buried in
his grave. Who would deny to-day that he was a quickening and liberating
influence? If his life was given overmuch to self-indulgence, it must be
remembered that his writings and conversation were singularly kindly,
singularly amiable, singularly pure. No harsh or coarse or bitter word
ever passed those eloquent laughing lips. If he served beauty in her
myriad forms, he only showed in his works the beauty that was amiable
and of good report. If only half-a-dozen men mourned for him, their
sorrow was unaffected and intense, and perhaps the greatest of men have
not found in their lifetime even half-a-dozen devoted admirers and
lovers. It is well with our friend, we say: at any rate, he was not
forced to drink the bitter lees of a suffering and dishonourable old
age: Death was merciful to him.

My task is finished. I don't think anyone will doubt that I have done
it in a reverent spirit, telling the truth as I see it, from the
beginning to the end, and hiding or omitting as little as might be of
what ought to be told. Yet when I come to the parting I am painfully
conscious that I have not done Oscar Wilde justice; that some fault or
other in me has led me to dwell too much on his faults and failings and
grudged praise to his soul-subduing charm and the incomparable sweetness
and gaiety of his nature.

Let me now make amends. When to the sessions of sad memory I summon up
the spirits of those whom I have met in the world and loved, men famous
and men of unfulfilled renown, I miss no one so much as I miss Oscar
Wilde. I would rather spend an evening with him than with Renan or
Carlyle, or Verlaine or Dick Burton or Davidson. I would rather have him
back now than almost anyone I have ever met. I have known more heroic
souls and some deeper souls; souls much more keenly alive to ideas of
duty and generosity; but I have known no more charming, no more
quickening, no more delightful spirit.

This may be my shortcoming; it may be that I prize humour and
good-humour and eloquent or poetic speech, the artist qualities, more
than goodness or loyalty or manliness, and so over-estimate things
amiable. But the lovable and joyous things are to me the priceless
things, and the most charming man I have ever met was assuredly Oscar
Wilde. I do not believe that in all the realms of death there is a more
fascinating or delightful companion.

One last word on Oscar Wilde's place in English literature. In the
course of this narrative I have indicated sufficiently, I think, the
value and importance of his work; he will live with Congreve and with
Sheridan as the wittiest and most humorous of all our playwrights. "The
Importance of Being Earnest" has its own place among the best of English
comedies. But Oscar Wilde has done better work than Congreve or
Sheridan: he is a master not only of the smiles, but of the tears of
men. "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" is the best ballad in English; it is
more, it is the noblest utterance that has yet reached us from a modern
prison, the only high utterance indeed that has ever come from that
underworld of man's hatred and man's inhumanity. In it, and by the
spirit of Jesus which breathes through it, Oscar Wilde has done much,
not only to reform English prisons, but to abolish them altogether, for
they are as degrading to the intelligence as they are harmful to the
soul. What gaoler and what gaol could do anything but evil to the
author of such a verse as this:

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