Frank Harris - Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2)
F >>
Frank Harris >> Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2)
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 | 14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18
Had there been nothing in your heart to cry out against so vulgar a
sacrilege, you might at least have remembered the sonnet he wrote who
saw with such sorrow and scorn the letters of John Keats sold by public
auction in London, and have understood at last the real meaning of my
lines:
"... I think they love not art
Who break the crystal of a poet's heart
That small and sickly eyes may glare or gloat."
One cannot always keep an adder in one's breast to feed on one, nor rise
up every night to sow thorns in the garden of one's soul.
I cannot allow you to go through life bearing in your heart the burden
of having ruined a man like me.
Does it ever occur to you what an awful position I would have been in
if, for the last two years, during my appalling sentence, I had been
dependent on you as a friend? Do you ever think of that? Do you ever
feel any gratitude to those who by kindness without stint, devotion
without limit, cheerfulness and joy in giving, have lightened my black
burden for me, have arranged my future life for me, have visited me
again and again, have written to me beautiful and sympathetic letters,
have managed my affairs for me, have stood by me in the teeth of
obloquy, taunt, open sneer or insult even? I thank God every day that he
gave me friends other than you. I owe everything to them. The very books
in my cell are paid for by Robbie out of his pocket money. From the same
source[55] are to come clothes for me when I am released. I am not
ashamed of taking a thing that is given by love and affection. I am
proud of it. But do you ever think of what friends such as More Adey,
Robbie, Robert Sherard, Frank Harris, and Arthur Clifton have been to me
in giving me comfort, help, affection, sympathy and the like?...
I know that your mother, Lady Queensberry, puts the blame on me. I hear
of it, not from people who know you, but from people who do not know
you, and do not desire to know you. I hear of it often. She talks of the
influence of an elder over a younger man, for instance. It is one of her
favourite attitudes towards the question, as it is always a successful
appeal to popular prejudice and ignorance. I need not ask you what
influence I had over you. You know I had none.
It was one of your frequent boasts that I had none, the only one indeed,
that was well founded. What was there, as a mere matter of fact, in you
that I could influence? Your brain? It was undeveloped. Your
imagination? It was dead. Your heart? It was not yet born. Of all the
people who have ever crossed my life, you were the one, and the only
one, I was unable in any way to influence in any direction.
I waited month after month to hear from you. Even if I had not been
waiting but had shut the doors against you, you should have remembered
that no one can possibly shut the doors against love forever. The unjust
judge in the gospels rises up at length to give a just decision because
justice comes daily knocking at his door: and at night time the friend,
in whose heart there is no real friendship, yields at length to his
friend "because of his importunity." There is no prison in any world
into which love cannot force an entrance. If you did not understand
that, you did not understand anything about love at all....
Write to me with full frankness, about yourself: about your life: your
friends: your occupations: your books. Whatever you have to say for
yourself, say it without fear. Don't write what you don't mean: that is
all. If anything in your letter is false or counterfeit I shall detect
it by the ring at once. It is not for nothing, or to no purpose that in
my lifelong cult of literature, I have made myself,
"Miser of sound and syllable, no less
Than Midas of his coinage."
Remember also that I have yet to know you. Perhaps we have yet to know
each other. For myself, I have but this last thing to say. Do not be
afraid of the past. If people tell you that it is irrevocable, do not
believe them. The past, the present and the future are but one moment in
the sight of God, in whose sight we should try to live. Time and space,
succession and extension, are merely accidental conditions of a thought.
The imagination can transcend them and more, in a free sphere of ideal
existences. Things, also, are in their essence what we choose to make
them. A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it. "Where
others," says Blake, "see but the dawn coming over the hill, I see the
sons of God shouting for joy." What seemed to the world and to myself my
future I lost irretrievably when I let myself be taunted into taking the
action against your father, had, I daresay, lost in reality long before
that. What lies before me is the past. I have got to make myself look on
that with different eyes, to make the world look on it with different
eyes, to make God look on it with different eyes. This I cannot do by
ignoring it, or slighting it, or praising it, or denying it. It is only
to be done fully by accepting it as an inevitable part of the evolution
of my life and character: by bowing my head to everything that I have
suffered.
How far I am away from the true temper of soul, this letter in its
changing, uncertain moods, its scorn and bitterness, its aspirations and
its failures to realise those aspirations shows you quite clearly. But
do not forget in what a terrible school I am setting at my task. And
incomplete, imperfect, as I am, yet from me you may have still much to
gain. You came to me to learn the pleasure of life and the pleasure of
art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful, the
meaning of sorrow and its beauty.
Your affectionate friend,
OSCAR WILDE.
This letter of Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas is curiously
self-revealing and characteristic. While reading it one should recall
Oscar's provocation. Lord Alfred Douglas had driven him to the
prosecution, and then deserted him and left him in prison without using
his influence to mitigate his friend's suffering or his pen to console
and encourage him. The abandonment was heartless and complete. The
letter, however, is vindictive: in spite of its intimate revelations
Oscar took care that his indictment should be made public. The flagrant
self-deceptions of the plea show its sincerity: Oscar even accuses young
Alfred Douglas of having induced him to eat and drink too much.
The tap-root of the letter is a colossal vanity; the bitterness of it,
wounded egotism; the falseness of it, a self-righteous pose of ineffable
superiority as of a superman. Oscar denies to Alfred Douglas
imagination, scholarship, or even a knowledge of poetry: he tells him in
so many words:--he is without brain or heart. Then why did he allow
himself to be hag-ridden to his ruin by such a creature?
Yet how human the letter is, how pathetic!
OSCAR WILDE'S KINDNESS OF HEART
Here is a note which Oscar Wilde wrote to Warder Martin towards the end
of his imprisonment in Reading Gaol. Warder Martin, it will be
remembered, was dismissed from his post for having given some sweet
biscuits, bought with his own money, to some hungry little children
confined in the prison.
Wilde happened to see the children and immediately wrote this note on a
scrap of paper and slipped it under his door so that it should catch
Warder Martin's eye as he patrolled the corridor.
Please find out for me the name of A.2.11. Also, the names of
the children who are in for the rabbits, and the amount of the
fine.
Can I pay this and get them out? If so I will get them out
tomorrow. Please, dear friend, do this for me. I must get them
out.
Think what a thing for me it would be to be able to help three
little children. I would be delighted beyond words: if I can
do this by paying the fine tell the children that they are to
be released tomorrow by a friend, and ask them to be happy and
not to tell anyone.
Here is a second note which shows Oscar's peculiar sensitiveness; what
is ugly and terrible cannot, he thinks, furnish even the subject of art;
he shrinks from whatever gives pain.
I hope to write about prison-life and to try and change it for
others, but it is too terrible and ugly to make a work of art
of. I have suffered too much in it to write plays about it.
A third note simply thanks Warder Martin for all his kindness. It ends
with the words:
... Everyone tells me I am looking better and happier.
This is because I have a good friend who gives me _The
Chronicle_ and PROMISES me ginger biscuits. O.W.
MY COLDNESS TOWARDS OSCAR IN 1897
(See page 408)
When I talked with Oscar in Reading Gaol, he told me that the only
reason he didn't write was that no one would accept his work. I assured
him that I would publish it in _The Saturday Review_ and would pay for
it not only at the rate I paid Bernard Shaw but also if it increased the
sale of the journal I'd try to compute its value to the paper and give
him that besides. He told me that was too liberal; he would be quite
content with what I paid Shaw: he feared that no one else in England
would ever publish his work again.
He promised to send me the book "De Profundis" as soon as it was
finished. Just before his release his friend, Mr. More Adey, called upon
me and wanted to know whether I would publish Oscar's work. I said I
would. He then asked me what I would give for it. I told him I didn't
want to make anything out of Oscar and would give him as much as I
could, rehearsing the proposal I had made to Oscar. Thereupon he told me
Oscar would prefer a fixed price. I thought the answer extraordinary and
the gentle, urbane manner of Mr. More Adey, whom I hardly knew at that
time and misunderstood, got on my nerves. I replied curtly that before I
could state a price, I'd have to see the work, adding at the same time
that I had wished to do Oscar a good turn, but, if he could find another
publisher, I'd be delighted. Mr. More Adey assured me that there was
nothing in the book to which any prude even could object, no _arriere
pensee_ of any kind, and so forth and so on. I answered with a jest, a
wretched play on his French phrase.
That night I happened to dine with Whistler and telling him of what had
occurred called forth a most stinging gibe at Oscar's expense.
Whistler's _mot_ cannot be published.
A week or two later Oscar asked me to get him some clothes, which I did
and on his release sent them to him, and received in reply a letter
thanking me which I reproduce on page 583.
In that same talk with Oscar in Reading Gaol, I was so desirous of
helping him that I proposed a driving tour through France. I told him of
one I had made a couple of years before which was full of delightful
episodes--an entrancing holiday. He jumped at the idea, said nothing
would please him better, he would feel safe with me, and so forth. In
order to carry out the idea in the best way I ordered an American mail
phaeton so that a pair of horses would find the load, even with luggage,
ridiculously light. I asked Mr. More Adey whether Oscar had spoken to
him of this proposed trip: he told me he had heard nothing of it.
In one letter to me Oscar asked me to postpone the tour; afterwards he
never mentioned it. I thought I had been treated rather cavalierly. As I
had gone to some expense in getting everything ready and making myself
free, I, no doubt, expressed some amazement at Oscar's silence on the
matter. At any rate the idea got about that I was angry with him, and
Oscar believed it. Nothing could have been further from the truth. What
I had done and proposed was simply in his interest: I expected no
benefit of any kind and therefore could not be cross; but the belief
that I was angry drew this sincere and touching letter from Oscar, which
I think shows him almost as perfectly as that still more beautiful
letter to Robert Ross which I have inserted in Chapter XIX.
From
M. Sebastian Melmoth,
Hotel de la Plage,
Bernavol-sur-Mer,
Dieppe.
June 13, '97
MY DEAR FRANK:
I know you do not like writing letters, but still I think you might have
written me a line in answer, or acknowledgment of my letter[56] to you
from Dieppe. I am thinking of a story to be called "The Silence of Frank
Harris."
I have, however, heard during the last few days that you do not speak of
me in the friendly manner I would like. This distresses me very much.
I am told that you are hurt with me because my letter of thanks to you
was not sufficiently elaborated in expression. This I can hardly credit.
It seems so unworthy of a big strong nature like yours, that knows the
realities of life. I told you I was grateful to you for your kindness to
me. Words, _now_, to me signify things, actualities, real emotions,
realised thoughts. I learnt in prison to be grateful. I used to think
gratitude a burden. Now I know that it is something that makes life
lighter as well as lovelier for one. I am grateful for a thousand
things, from my good friends down to the sun and the sea. But I cannot
say more than that I am grateful. I cannot make phrases about it. For
_me_ to use such a word shows an enormous development in my nature. Two
years ago I did not know the feeling the word denotes. Now I know it,
and I am thankful that I have learnt that much, at any rate, by having
been in prison. But I must say again that I no longer make _roulades_ of
phrases about the deep things I feel. When I write directly to you, I
speak directly: violin variations don't interest me. I am grateful to
you. If that does not content you, then you do not understand, what you
of all men should understand, how sincerity of feeling expresses itself.
But I dare say the story told of you is untrue. It comes from so many
quarters that it probably is.
I am told also that you are hurt[57] because I did not go on the
driving-tour with you. You should understand, that in telling you that
it was impossible for me to do so, I was thinking as much of _you_ as of
myself. To think of the feelings and happiness of others is not an
entirely new emotion in my nature. I would be unjust to myself and my
friends, if I said it was. But I think of those things far more than I
used to do. If I had gone with you, you would not have been happy, nor
enjoyed yourself. Nor would I. You must try to realise what two years
cellular confinement is, and what two years of absolute silence means
to a man of my intellectual power. To have survived at all--to have come
out sane in mind and sound of body--is a thing so marvellous to me, that
it seems to me sometimes, not that the age of miracles is over, but that
it is just beginning; that there are powers in God, and powers in man,
of which the world has up to the present known little. But while I am
cheerful, happy, and have sustained to the full that passionate interest
in life and art that was the dominant chord of my nature, and made all
modes of existence and all forms of expression utterly fascinating to me
always--still I need rest, quiet, and often complete solitude. Friends
have come to see me here for a day, and have been delighted to find me
like my old self, in all intellectual energy and sensitiveness to the
play of life, but it has always proved afterwards to have been a strain
upon a nervous force, much of which has been destroyed. I have now no
_storage_[58] of nervous force. When I expend what I have, in an
afternoon, nothing remains. I look to quiet, to a simple mode of
existence, to nature in all the infinite meanings of an infinite word,
to charge the cells for me. Every day, if I meet a friend, or write a
letter longer than a few lines, or even read a book that makes, as all
fine books do, a direct claim on me, a direct appeal, an intellectual
challenge of any kind, I am utterly exhausted in the evening, and often
sleep badly. And yet it is three whole weeks since I was released.
Had I gone with you on the driving tour, where we would have of
necessity been in immediate contact with each other from dawn to sunset,
I would have certainly broken off the tour the third day, probably
broken down the second. You would have then found yourself in a pitiable
position: your tour would have been arrested at its outset: your
companion would have been ill without doubt: perhaps might have needed
care and attendance, in some little remote French village. You would
have given it to me, I know. But I felt it would have been wrong,
stupid, and thoughtless of me to have started an expedition doomed to
swift failure, and perhaps fraught with disaster and distress. You are a
man of dominant personality: your intellect is exigent, more so than
that of any man I ever knew: your demands on life are enormous: you
require response, or you annihilate: the pleasure of being with you is
in the clash of personality, the intellectual battle, the war of ideas.
To survive you, one must have a strong brain, an assertive ego, a
dynamic character. In your luncheon parties, in the old days, the
remains of the guests were taken away with the _debris_ of the feast. I
have often lunched with you in Park Lane and found myself the only
survivor. I might have driven on the white roads, or through the leafy
lanes, of France, with a fool, or with the wisest of all things, a
child: with you, it would have been impossible. You should thank me
sincerely for having saved you from an experience that each of us would
have always regretted.
Will you ask me why then, when I was in prison, I accepted with grateful
thanks your offer? My dear Frank, I don't think you will ask so
thoughtless a question. The prisoner looks to liberty as an immediate
return to all his ancient energy, quickened into more vital forces by
long disuse. When he goes out, he finds he has still to suffer: his
punishment, as far as its effects go, lasts intellectually and
physically just as it lasts socially: he has still to pay: one gets no
receipt for the past when one walks out into the beautiful air....
I have now spent the whole of my Sunday afternoon--the first real day of
summer we have had--in writing to you this long letter of explanation.
I have written directly and simply: I need not tell the author of "Elder
Conklin" that sweetness and simplicity of expression take more out of
one than fiddling harmonics on one string. I felt it my duty to write,
but it has been a distressing one. It would have been _better_ for me to
have lain in the brown grass on the cliff, or to have walked slowly by
the sea. It would have been kinder of you to have written to me directly
about whatever harsh or hurt feelings you may have about me. It would
have saved me an afternoon of strain, and tension.
But I have something more to say. It is pleasanter to me, now, to write
about others, than about myself.
The enclosed is from a brother prisoner of mine: released June 4th: pray
read it: you will see his age, offence, and aim in life.
If you can give him a trial, do so. If you see your way to this kind
action, and write to him to come and see you, kindly state in your
letter that it is about a situation. He may think otherwise that it is
about the flogging of A.2.11., a thing that does not interest _you_,
and about which _he_ is a little afraid to talk.
If the result of this long letter will be that you will help this fellow
prisoner of mine to a place in your service, I shall consider my
afternoon better spent than any afternoon for the last two years, and
three weeks.
In any case I have now written to you fully on all things as reported to
me.
I again assure you of my gratitude for your kindness to me during my
imprisonment, and on my release.
And am always
Your sincere friend and admirer
OSCAR WILDE.
_With regard to Lawley_
All soldiers are neat, and smart, and make capital servants. He would be
a good _groom_: he is, I believe, a 3rd Hussars man--he was a quiet,
well-conducted chap in Reading always.
Naturally I replied to this letter at once, saying that he had been
misinformed, that I was not angry and if I could do anything for him I
should be delighted: I did my best, too, for Lawley.
Here is his letter of thanks to me for helping him when he came out of
prison.
Sandwich Hotel,
Dieppe.
MY DEAR FRANK:
Just a line to thank you for your great kindness to me--for the lovely
clothes, and for the generous cheque.
You have been a real good friend to me--and I shall never forget your
kindness: to remember such a debt as mine to you--a debt of kind
fellowship--is a pleasure.
About our tour--later on let us think about it. My friends have been so
kind to me here that I am feeling happy already.
Yours,
OSCAR WILDE.
If you write to me please do so under cover to R.B. Ross, who is here
with me.
In the next letter of his which I have kept Oscar is perfectly friendly
again; he tells me that he is "entirely without money, having received
nothing from his Trustees for months," and asks me for even L5, adding,
"I drift in ridiculous impecuniosity without a sou."
THE MYSTERY OF PERSONALITY
I transcribe here another letter of Oscar to me from the second year
after his release to show his interest in all intellectual things and
for a flash of characteristic humour at the expense of the Paris police.
The envelope is dated October 13, 1898:--
From
M. Sebastian Melmoth,
Hotel d'Alsace,
Rue des Beaux-arts,
Paris.
MY DEAR FRANK:
How are you? I read your appreciation of Rodin's "Balzac" with intensest
pleasure, and I am looking forward to more Shakespeare--you will of
course put all your Shakespearean essays into a book, and, equally of
course, I must have a copy. It is a great era in Shakespearean
criticism--the first time that one has looked in the plays not for
philosophy, for there is none, but for the wonder of a great
personality--something far better, and far more mysterious than any
philosophy--it is a great thing that you have done. I remember writing
once in "Intentions" that the more objective a work of art is in form,
the more subjective it really is in matter--and that it is only when you
give the poet a mask that he can tell you the truth. But you have shown
it fully in the case of the one artist whose personality was supposed to
be a mystery of deep seas, a secret as impenetrable as the secret of the
moon.
Paris is terrible in its heat. I walk in streets of brass, and there is
no one here. Even the criminal classes have gone to the seaside, and the
gendarmes yawn and regret their enforced idleness. Giving wrong
directions to the English tourists is the only thing that consoles them.
You were most kind and generous last month in letting me have a
cheque--it gives me just the margin to live on and to live by. May I
have it again this month? or has gold flown away from you?
Ever yours,
OSCAR.
THE DEDICATION OF "AN IDEAL HUSBAND"
I received the following letter from Oscar early in 1899 I imagine. It
was written in the spring after the winter we spent in La Napoule.
From M. Sebastian Melmoth,
Gland,
Canton Vaud,
Switzerland.
MY DEAR FRANK:
I am, as you see from above, in Switzerland with M----: a rather
dreadful combination: the villa is pretty, and on the borders of the
lake with pretty pines about: on the other side are the mountains of
Savoy and Mont Blanc: we are an hour, by a slow train, from Geneva. But
M----is tedious, and lacks conversation: also he gives me Swiss wine to
drink: it is horrible: he occupies himself with small economies, and
mean domestic interests, so I suffer very much. _Ennui_ is the enemy.
I want to know if you will allow me to dedicate to you my next play,
"The Ideal Husband"--which Smithers is bringing out for me in the same
form as the others, of which I hope you received your copy. I should so
much like to write your name and a few words on the dedicatory page.
I look back with joy and regret to the lovely sunlight of the Riviera,
and the charming winter you so generously and kindly gave me: it was
most good of you: how can it ever be forgotten by me.
Next week a petroleum launch is to arrive here, so that will console me
a little, as I love to be on the water: and the Savoy side is starred
with pretty villages and green valleys.
Of course we won our bet--the phrase on Shelley is in Arnold's preface
to Byron: but M---- won't pay me! He suffers agony over a franc. It is
very annoying as I have had no money since my arrival here. However I
regard the place as a Swiss Pension--where there is no weekly bill....
Ever yours,
OSCAR.
I believe I answered; but am not sure. I was naturally delighted to have
just "An Ideal Husband" dedicated to me, because I had suggested the
plot of it to Oscar--not that the plot was in any true sense mine. An
interesting and clever American in Cairo, a Mr. Cope Whitehouse, had
given it to me as I tell in this book. The story Whitehouse told may not
be true; but my mind jumped at once to the thought of a story where an
English Minister would be confronted with some early sin of that sort. I
had hardly bettered the story given to me when I related it to Oscar who
used it almost immediately with great effect. Dedicatory words are
usually as flattering as epitaphs; those of "An Ideal Husband" run:
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 | 14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18
