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

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

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"There is before me so much to do that I would regard it as a terrible
tragedy if I died before I was allowed to complete at any rate a little
of it. I see new developments in art and life, each one of which is a
fresh mode of perfection. I long to live so that I can explore what is
no less than a new world to me. Do you want to know what this new world
is? I think you can guess what it is. It is the world in which I have
been living. Sorrow, then, and all that it teaches one, is my new
world....

"I used to live entirely for pleasure. I shunned suffering and sorrow of
every kind. I hated both...."

Through the prison bars Oscar had begun to see how mistaken he had been,
how much greater, and more salutary to the soul, suffering is than
pleasure.

"Out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child
or a star there is pain."

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Cfr. Appendix: "Criticisms by Robert Ross."

[4] I give Oscar's view of the trial just to show how his romantic
imagination turned disagreeable facts into pleasant fiction. Oscar could
only have heard of the trial, and perhaps his mother was his
informant--which adds to the interest of the story.

[5] Permission to visit a dying mother is accorded in France, even to
murderers. The English pretend to be more religious than the French; but
are assuredly less humane.

[6] "De Profundis." What Oscar called "the terrible part" of the
book--the indictment of Lord Alfred Douglas--has since been read out in
Court and will be found in the Appendix to this volume.

CHAPTER XIX

Shortly before he came out of prison, one of Oscar's intimates told me
he was destitute, and begged me to get him some clothes. I took the name
of his tailor and ordered two suits. The tailor refused to take the
order: he was not going to make clothes for Oscar Wilde. I could not
trust myself to talk to the man and therefore sent my assistant editor
and friend, Mr. Blanchamp, to have it out with him. The tradesman soul
yielded to the persuasiveness of cash in advance. I sent Oscar the
clothes and a cheque, and shortly after his release got a letter[7]
thanking me.

A little later I heard on good authority a story which Oscar afterwards
confirmed, that when he left Reading Gaol the correspondent of an
American paper offered him L1,000 for an interview dealing with his
prison life and experiences, but he felt it beneath his dignity to take
his sufferings to market. He thought it better to borrow than to earn.
He is partly to be excused, perhaps, when one remembers that he had
still some pounds left of the large sums given him before his
condemnation, by Miss S----, Ross, More Adey, and others. Still his
refusal of such a sum as that offered by the New York paper shows how
utterly contemptuous he was of money, even at a moment when one would
have thought money would have been his chief preoccupation. He always
lived in the day and rather heedlessly.

As soon as he left prison he crossed with some friends to France, and
went to stay at the Hotel de la Plage at Berneval, a quiet little
village near Dieppe. M. Andre Gide, who called on him there almost as
soon as he arrived, gives a fair mental picture of him at this time. He
tells how delighted he was to find in him the "Oscar Wilde of old," no
longer the sensualist puffed out with pride and good living, but "the
sweet Wilde" of the days before 1891. "I found myself taken back, not
two years," he says, "but four or five. There was the same dreamy look,
the same amused smile, the same voice."

He told M. Gide that prison had completely changed him, had taught him
the meaning of pity. "You know," he went on, "how fond I used to be of
'Madame Bovary,' but Flaubert would not admit pity into his work, and
that is why it has a petty and restrained character about it. It is the
sense of pity by means of which a work gains in expanse, and by which
it opens up a boundless horizon. Do you know, my dear fellow, it was
pity which prevented my killing myself? During the first six months in
prison I was dreadfully unhappy, so utterly miserable that I wanted to
kill myself; but what kept me from doing so was looking at the others,
and seeing that they were as unhappy as I was, and feeling sorry for
them. Oh dear! what a wonderful thing pity is, and I never knew it."

He was speaking in a low voice without any excitement.

"Have you ever learned how wonderful a thing pity is? For my part I
thank God every night, yes, on my knees I thank God for having taught it
to me. I went into prison with a heart of stone, thinking only of my own
pleasure; but now my heart is utterly broken--pity has entered into my
heart. I have learned now that pity is the greatest and the most
beautiful thing in the world. And that is why I cannot bear ill-will
towards those who caused my suffering and those who condemned me; no,
nor to anyone, because without them I should not have known all that.
Alfred Douglas writes me terrible letters. He says he does not
understand me, that he does not understand that I do not wish everyone
ill, and that everyone has been horrid to me. No, he does not understand
me. He cannot understand me any more. But I keep on telling him that in
every letter: we cannot follow the same road. He has his and it is
beautiful--I have mine. His is that of Alcibiades; mine is now that of
St. Francis of Assisi."

How much of this is sincere and how much merely imagined and stated in
order to incarnate the new ideal to perfection would be hard to say. The
truth is not so saintly simple as the christianised Oscar would have us
believe. The unpublished portions of "De Profundis" which were read out
in the Douglas-Ransome trial prove, what all his friends know, that
Oscar Wilde found it impossible to forgive or forget what seemed to him
personal ill-treatment. There are beautiful pages in "De Profundis,"
pages of sweetest Christlike resignation and charity and no doubt in a
certain mood Oscar was sincere in writing them. But there was another
mood in him, more vital and more enduring, if not so engaging, a mood in
which he saw himself as one betrayed and sacrificed and abandoned, and
then he attributed his ruin wholly to his friend and did not hesitate to
speak of him as the "Judas" whose shallow selfishness and imperious
ill-temper and unfulfilled promises of monetary help had driven a great
man to disaster.

That unpublished portion of "De Profundis" is in essence, from
beginning to end, one long curse of Lord Alfred Douglas, an indictment
apparently impartial, particularly at first; but in reality a bitter and
merciless accusation, showing in Oscar Wilde a curious want of sympathy
even with the man he said he loved. Those who would know Oscar Wilde as
he really was will read that piece of rhetoric with care enough to
notice that he reiterates the charge of shallow selfishness with such
venom, that he discovers his own colossal egotism and essential hardness
of heart. "Love," we are told, "suffereth long and is kind ... beareth
all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all
things"--that sweet, generous, all-forgiving tenderness of love was not
in the pagan, Oscar Wilde, and therefore even his deepest passion never
won to complete reconciliation and ultimate redemption.

In this same talk with M. Gide, Oscar is reported to have said that he
had known beforehand that a catastrophe was unavoidable; "there was but
one end possible.... That state of things could not last; there had to
be some end to it."

This view I believe is Gide's and not Oscar's. In any case I am sure
that my description of him before the trials as full of insolent
self-assurance is the truer truth. Of course he must have had
forebodings; he was warned as I've related, again and again; but he
took character-colour from his associates and he met Queensberry's first
attempts at attack with utter disdain. He did not realise his danger at
all. Gide reports him more correctly as adding:

"Prison has completely changed me. I was relying on it for that--Douglas
is terrible. He cannot understand that--cannot understand that I am not
taking up the same existence again. He accuses the others of having
changed me."

I may publish here part of a letter of a prison warder which Mr. Stuart
Mason reproduced in his excellent little book on Oscar Wilde. He says:

"No more beautiful life had any man lived, no more beautiful life could
any man live than Oscar Wilde lived during the short period I knew him
in prison. He wore upon his face an eternal smile; sunshine was on his
face, sunshine of some sort must have been in his heart. People say he
was not sincere: he was the very soul of sincerity when I knew him. If
he did not continue that life after he left prison, then the forces of
evil must have been too strong for him. But he tried, he honestly tried,
and in prison he succeeded."

All this seems to me in the main, true. Oscar's gay vivacity would have
astonished any stranger. Besides, the regular hours and scant plain food
of prison had improved his health and the solitude and suffering had
lent him a deeper emotional life. But there was an intense bitterness in
him, a profound underlying sense of injury which came continually to
passionate expression. Yet as soon as the miserable petty persecution of
the prison was lifted from him, all the joyous gaiety and fun of his
nature bubbled up irresistibly. There was no contradiction in this
complexity. A man can hold in himself a hundred conflicting passions and
impulses without confusion. At this time the dominant chord in Oscar was
pity for others.

To my delight the world had evidence of this changed Oscar Wilde in a
very short time. On May 28th, a few days after he left prison, there
appeared in _The Daily Chronicle_ a letter more than two columns in
length, pleading for the kindlier treatment of little children in
English prisons. The letter was written because Warder Martin[8] of
Reading prison had been dismissed by the Commissioners for the dreadful
crime of "having given some sweet biscuits to a little hungry child."...

I must quote a few paragraphs of this letter; because it shows how
prison had deepened Oscar Wilde, how his own suffering had made him, as
Shakespeare says, "pregnant to good pity," and also because it tells us
what life was like in an English prison in our time. Oscar wrote:

"I saw the three children myself on the Monday preceding my release.
They had just been convicted, and were standing in a row in the central
hall in their prison dress carrying their sheets under their arms,
previous to their being sent to the cells allotted to them.... They were
quite small children, the youngest--the one to whom the warder gave the
biscuits--being a tiny chap, for whom they had evidently been unable to
find clothes small enough to fit. I had, of course, seen many children
in prison during the two years during which I was myself confined.
Wandsworth prison, especially, contained always a large number of
children. But the little child I saw on the afternoon of Monday, the
17th, at Reading, was tinier than any one of them. I need not say how
utterly distressed I was to see these children at Reading, for I knew
the treatment in store for them. The cruelty that is practised by day
and night on children in English prisons is incredible except to those
that have witnessed it and are aware of the brutality of the system.

"People nowadays do not understand what cruelty is.... Ordinary cruelty
is simply stupidity.

"The prison treatment of children is terrible, primarily from people not
understanding the peculiar psychology of the child's nature. A child can
understand a punishment inflicted by an individual, such as a parent, or
guardian, and bear it with a certain amount of acquiescence. What it
cannot understand is a punishment inflicted by society. It cannot
realise what society is....

"The terror of a child in prison is quite limitless. I remember once in
Reading, as I was going out to exercise, seeing in the dimly lit cell
opposite mine a small boy. Two warders--not unkindly men--were talking
to him, with some sternness apparently, or perhaps giving him some
useful advice about his conduct. One was in the cell with him, the other
was standing outside. The child's face was like a white wedge of sheer
terror. There was in his eyes the terror of a hunted animal. The next
morning I heard him at breakfast time crying, and calling to be let out.
His cry was for his parents. From time to time I could hear the deep
voice of the warder on duty telling him to keep quiet. Yet he was not
even convicted of whatever little offence he had been charged with. He
was simply on remand. That I knew by his wearing his own clothes, which
seemed neat enough. He was, however, wearing prison socks and shoes.
This showed that he was a very poor boy, whose own shoes, if he had any,
were in a bad state. Justices and magistrates, an entirely ignorant
class as a rule, often remand children for a week, and then perhaps
remit whatever sentence they are entitled to pass. They call this 'not
sending a child to prison.' It is of course a stupid view on their part.
To a little child, whether he is in prison on remand or after conviction
is not a subtlety of position he can comprehend. To him the horrible
thing is to be there at all. In the eyes of humanity it should be a
horrible thing for him to be there at all.

"This terror that seizes and dominates the child, as it seizes the grown
man also, is of course intensified beyond power of expression by the
solitary cellular system of our prisons. Every child is confined to its
cell for twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four. This is the
appalling thing. To shut up a child in a dimly lit cell for twenty-three
hours out of the twenty-four is an example of the cruelty of stupidity.
If an individual, parent or guardian, did this to a child, he would be
severely punished....

"The second thing from which a child suffers in prison is hunger. The
food that is given to it consists of a piece of usually badly baked
prison bread and a tin of water for breakfast at half past seven. At
twelve o'clock it gets dinner, composed of a tin of coarse Indian meal
stirabout, and at half past five it gets a piece of dry bread and a tin
of water for its supper. This diet in the case of a strong man is always
productive of illness of some kind, chiefly, of course, diarrhoea,
with its attendant weakness. In fact, in a big prison, astringent
medicines are served out regularly by the warders as a matter of course.
A child is as a rule incapable of eating the food at all. Anyone who
knows anything about children knows how easily a child's digestion is
upset by a fit of crying, or trouble and mental distress of any kind. A
child who has been crying all day long and perhaps half the night, in a
lonely, dimly lit cell, and is preyed upon by terror, simply cannot eat
food of this coarse, horrible kind. In the case of the little child to
whom Warder Martin gave the biscuits, the child was crying with hunger
on Tuesday morning, and utterly unable to eat the bread and water served
to it for breakfast.

"Martin went out after the breakfast had been served, and bought the few
sweet biscuits for the child rather than see it starving. It was a
beautiful action on his part, and was so recognised by the child, who,
utterly unconscious of the regulation of the Prison Board, told one of
the senior warders how kind this junior warder had been to him. The
result was, of course, a report and a dismissal.[9]

"I know Martin extremely well, and I was under his charge for the last
seven weeks of my imprisonment.... I was struck by the singular kindness
and humanity of the way in which he spoke to me and to the other
prisoners. Kind words are much in prison, and a pleasant 'good-morning'
or 'good-evening' will make one as happy as one can be in prison. He was
always gentle and considerate....

"A great deal has been talked and written lately about the contaminating
influence of prison on young children. What is said is quite true. A
child is utterly contaminated by prison life. But this contaminating
influence is not that of the prisoners. It is that of the whole prison
system--of the governor, the chaplain, the warders, the solitary cell,
the isolation, the revolting food, the rules of the Prison
Commissioners, the mode of discipline, as it is termed, of the life.

"Of course no child under fourteen years of age should be sent to prison
at all. It is an absurdity, and, like many absurdities, of absolutely
tragical results...."

This letter, I am informed, brought about some improvement in the
treatment of young children in British prisons. But in regard to adults
the British prison is still the torture chamber it was in Wilde's time;
prisoners are still treated more brutally there than anywhere else in
the civilised world; the food is the worst in Europe, insufficient
indeed to maintain health; in many cases men are only saved from death
by starvation through being sent to the infirmary. Though these facts
are well known, _Punch_, the pet organ of the British middle-class, was
not ashamed a little while ago to make a mock of some suggested reform,
by publishing a picture of a British convict, with the villainous face
of a Bill Sykes, lying on a sofa in his cell smoking a cigar with
champagne at hand. This is not altogether due to stupidity, as Oscar
tried to believe, but to reasoned selfishness. _Punch_ and the class for
which it caters would like to believe that many convicts are unfit to
live, whereas the truth is that a good many of them are superior in
humanity to the people who punish and slander them.

While waiting for his wife to join him, Oscar rented a little house, the
Chalet Bourgeat, about two hundred yards away from the hotel at
Berneval, and furnished it. Here he spent the whole of the summer
writing, bathing, and talking to the few devoted friends who visited
him from time to time. Never had he been so happy: never in such perfect
health. He was full of literary projects; indeed, no period of his whole
life was so fruitful in good work. He was going to write some Biblical
plays; one entitled "Pharaoh" first, and then one called "Ahab and
Jezebel," which he pronounced Isabelle. Deeper problems, too, were much
in his mind: he was already at work on "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," but
before coming to that let me first show how happy the song-bird was and
how divinely he sang when the dreadful cage was opened and he was
allowed to use his wings in the heavenly sunshine.

Here is a letter from him shortly after his release which is one of the
most delightful things he ever wrote. Fitly enough it was addressed to
his friend of friends, Robert Ross, and I can only say that I am
extremely obliged to Ross for allowing me to publish it:

Hotel de la Plage. Berneval, near Dieppe,
Monday night, May 31st (1897).

My dearest Robbie,

I have decided that the only way in which to get boots properly is to go
to France to receive them. The Douane charged 3 francs. How could you
frighten me as you did? The next time you order boots please come to
Dieppe to get them sent to you. It is the only way and it will be an
excuse for seeing you.

I am going to-morrow on a pilgrimage. I always wanted to be a pilgrim,
and I have decided to start early to-morrow to the shrine of Notre Dame
de Liesse. Do you know what Liesse is? It is an old word for joy. I
suppose the same as Letizia, Laetitia. I just heard to-night of the
shrine or chapel, by chance, as you would say, from the sweet woman of
the auberge, who wants me to live always at Berneval. She says Notre
Dame de Liesse is wonderful, and helps everyone to the secret of joy--I
do not know how long it will take me to get to the shrine, as I must
walk. But, from what she tells me, it will take at least six or seven
minutes to get there, and as many to come back. In fact the chapel of
Notre Dame de Liesse is just fifty yards from the Hotel. Isn't it
extraordinary? I intend to start after I have had my coffee, and then to
bathe. Need I say that this is a miracle? I wanted to go on a
pilgrimage, and I find the little grey stone chapel of Our Lady of Joy
is brought to me. It has probably been waiting for me all these purple
years of pleasure, and now it comes to meet me with Liesse as its
message. I simply don't know what to say. I wish you were not so hard to
poor heretics,[10] and would admit that even for the sheep who has no
shepherd there is a Stella Maris to guide it home. But you and More,
especially More, treat me as a Dissenter. It is very painful and quite
unjust.

Yesterday I attended Mass at 10 o'clock and afterwards bathed. So I went
into the water without being a pagan. The consequence was that I was not
tempted by either sirens or mermaidens, or any of the green-haired
following of Glaucus. I really think that this is a remarkable thing. In
my Pagan days the sea was always full of Tritons blowing conchs, and
other unpleasant things. Now it is quite different. And yet you treat me
as the President of Mansfield College; and after I had canonised you
too.

Dear boy, I wish you would tell me if your religion makes you happy. You
conceal your religion from me in a monstrous way. You treat it like
writing in the _Saturday Review_ for Pollock, or dining in Wardour
Street off the fascinating dish that is served with tomatoes and makes
men mad.[11] I know it is useless asking you, so don't tell me.

I felt an outcast in Chapel yesterday--not really, but a little in
exile. I met a dear farmer in a corn field and he gave me a seat on his
banc in church: so I was quite comfortable. He now visits me twice a
day, and as he has no children, and is rich, I have made him promise to
adopt _three_--two boys and a girl. I told him that if he wanted them,
he would find them. He said he was afraid that they would turn out
badly. I told him everyone did that. He really has promised to adopt
three orphans. He is now filled with enthusiasm at the idea. He is to go
to the _Cure_ and talk to him. He told me that his own father had fallen
down in a fit one day as they were talking together, and that he had
caught him in his arms, and put him to bed, where he died, and that he
himself had often thought how dreadful it was that if he had a fit there
was no one to catch him in his arms. It is quite clear that he must
adopt orphans, is it not?

I feel that Berneval is to be my home. I really do. Notre Dame de Liesse
will be sweet to me, if I go on my knees to her, and she will advise me.
It is extraordinary being brought here by a white horse that was a
native of the place, and knew the road, and wanted to see its parents,
now of advanced years. It is also extraordinary that I knew Berneval
existed and was arranged for me.

M. Bonnet[12] wants to build me a Chalet, 1,000 metres of ground (I
don't know how much that is--but I suppose about 100 miles) and a Chalet
with a studio, a balcony, a salle-a-manger, a huge kitchen, and three
bedrooms--a view of the sea, and trees--all for 12,000 francs--L480. If
I can write a play I am going to have it begun. Fancy one's own lovely
house and grounds in France for L480. No rent of any kind. Pray consider
this, and approve, if you think well. Of course, not till I have done my
play.

An old gentleman lives here in the hotel. He dines alone in his room,
and then sits in the sun. He came here for two days and has stayed two
years. His sole sorrow is that there is no theatre. Monsieur Bonnet is a
little heartless about this, and says that as the old gentleman goes to
bed at 8 o'clock a theatre would be of no use to him. The old gentleman
says he only goes to bed at 8 o'clock because there is no theatre. They
argued the point yesterday for an hour. I sided with the old gentleman,
but Logic sides with Monsieur Bonnet, I believe.

I had a sweet letter from the Sphinx.[13] She gives me a delightful
account of Ernest[14] subscribing to Romeike while his divorce suit was
running, and not being pleased with some of the notices. Considering the
growing appreciation of Ibsen I must say that I am surprised the notices
were not better, but nowadays everybody is jealous of everyone else,
except, of course, husband and wife. I think I shall keep this last
remark of mine for my play.

Have you got my silver spoon[15] from Reggie? You got my silver brushes
out of Humphreys,[16] who is bald, so you might easily get my spoon out
of Reggie, who has so many, or used to have. You know my crest is on it.
It is a bit of Irish silver, and I don't want to lose it. There is an
excellent substitute called Britannia metal, very much liked at the
Adelphi and elsewhere. Wilson Barrett writes, "I prefer it to silver."
It would suit dear Reggie admirably. Walter Besant writes, "I use none
other." Mr. Beerbohm Tree also writes, "Since I have tried it I am a
different actor; my friends hardly recognise me." So there is obviously
a demand for it.

I am going to write a Political Economy in my heavier moments. The first
law I lay down is, "Whenever there exists a demand, there is _no_
supply." This is the only law that explains the extraordinary contrast
between the soul of man and man's surroundings. Civilisations continue
because people hate them. A modern city is the exact opposite of what
everyone wants. Nineteenth-century dress is the result of our horror of
the style. The tall hat will last as long as people dislike it.

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