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

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

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"That's already provided for, my dear fellow, amply provided for; we
have our public schools and universities to see to that. What we want
are schools for the higher education of men, and schools for the lower
education of women."

Genial persiflage of this sort was his particular _forte_ whether my
imitation of it is good or bad.

His kindliness was ingrained. I never heard him say a gross or even a
vulgar word, hardly even a sharp or unkind thing. Whether in company or
with one person, his mind was all dedicated to genial, kindly,
flattering thoughts. He hated rudeness or discussion or insistence as he
hated ugliness or deformity.

One evening of this summer a trivial incident showed me that he was
sinking deeper in the mud-honey of life.

A new play was about to be given at the Francais and because he
expressed a wish to see it I bought a couple of tickets. We went in and
he made me change places with him in order to be able to talk to me; he
was growing nearly deaf in the bad ear. After the first act we went
outside to smoke a cigarette.

"It's stupid," Oscar began, "fancy us two going in there to listen to
what that foolish Frenchman says about love; he knows nothing about it;
either of us could write much better on the theme. Let's walk up and
down here under the columns and talk."

The people began to go into the theatre again and, as they were
disappearing, I said:

"It seems rather a pity to waste our tickets; so many wish to see the
play."

"We shall find someone to give them to," he said indifferently, stopping
by one of the pillars.

At that very moment as if under his hand appeared a boy of about fifteen
or sixteen, one of the gutter-snipe of Paris. To my amazement, he said:

"Bon soir, Monsieur Wilde."

Oscar turned to him smiling.

"Vous etes Jules, n'est-ce pas?" (you are Jules, aren't you?) he
questioned.

"Oui, M. Wilde."

"Here is the very boy you want," Oscar cried; "let's give him the
tickets, and he'll sell them, and make something out of them," and Oscar
turned and began to explain to the boy how I had given two hundred
francs for the tickets, and how, even now, they should be worth a louis
or two.

"Des jaunets" (yellow boys), cried the youth, his sharp face lighting
up, and in a flash he had vanished with the tickets.

"You see he knows me, Frank," said Oscar, with the childish pleasure of
gratified vanity.

"Yes," I replied drily, "not an acquaintance to be proud of, I should
think."

"I don't agree with you, Frank," he said, resenting my tone, "did you
notice his eyes? He is one of the most beautiful boys I have ever seen;
an exact replica of Emilienne D'Alencon,[24] I call him Jules D'Alencon,
and I tell her he must be her brother. I had them both dining with me
once and the boy is finer than the girl, his skin far more beautiful.

"By the way," he went on, as we were walking up the Avenue de l'Opera,
"why should we not see Emilienne; why should she not sup with us, and
you could compare them? She is playing at Olympia, near the Grand Hotel.
Let's go and compare Aspasia and Agathon, and for once I shall be
Alcibiades, and you the moralist, Socrates."

"I would rather talk to you," I replied.

"We can talk afterwards, Frank, when all the stars come out to listen;
now is the time to live and enjoy."

"As you will," I said, and we went to the Music Hall and got a box, and
he wrote a little note to Emilienne D'Alencon, and she came afterwards
to supper with us. Though her face was pretty she was pre-eminently dull
and uninteresting without two ideas in her bird's head. She was all
greed and vanity, and could talk of nothing but the hope of getting an
engagement in London: could he help her, or would Monsieur, referring to
me, as a journalist get her some good puffs in advance? Oscar promised
everything gravely.

While we were supping inside, Oscar caught sight of the boy passing
along the Boulevard. At once he tapped on the window, loud enough to
attract his attention. Nothing loth, the boy came in, and the four of us
had supper together--a strange quartette.

"Now, Frank," said Oscar, "compare the two faces and you will see the
likeness," and indeed there was in both the same Greek beauty--the same
regularity of feature, the same low brow and large eyes, the same
perfect oval.

"I am telling my friend," said Oscar to Emilienne in French, "how alike
you two are, true brother and sister in beauty and in the finest of
arts, the art of living," and they both laughed.

"The boy is better looking," he went on to me in English. "Her mouth is
coarse and hard; her hands common, while the boy is quite perfect."

"Rather dirty, don't you think?" I could not help remarking.

"Dirty, of course, but that's nothing; nothing is so immaterial as
colouring; form is everything, and his form is perfect, as exquisite as
the David of Donatello. That's what he's like, Frank, the David of
Donatello," and he pulled his jowl, delighted to have found the painting
word.

As soon as Emilienne saw that we were talking of the boy, her interest
in the conversation vanished, even more quickly than her appetite. She
had to go, she said suddenly; she was so sorry, and the discontented
curiosity of her look gave place again to the smirk of affected
politeness.

"_Au revoir, n'est-ce pas? a Charing Cross, n'est-ce-pas, Monsieur? Vous
ne m'oublierez pas?..._"

As we turned to walk along the boulevard I noticed that the boy, too,
had disappeared. The moonlight was playing with the leaves and boughs of
the plane trees and throwing them in Japanese shadow-pictures on the
pavement: I was given over to thought; evidently Oscar imagined I was
offended, for he launched out into a panegyric on Paris.

"The most wonderful city in the world, the only civilised capital; the
only place on earth where you find absolute toleration for all human
frailties, with passionate admiration for all human virtues and
capacities.

"Do you remember Verlaine, Frank? His life was nameless and terrible, he
did everything to excess, was drunken, dirty and debauched, and yet
there he would sit in a cafe on the Boul' Mich', and everybody who came
in would bow to him, and call him _maitre_ and be proud of any sign of
recognition from him because he was a great poet.

"In England they would have murdered Verlaine, and men who call
themselves gentlemen would have gone out of their way to insult him in
public. England is still only half-civilised; Englishmen touch life at
one or two points without suspecting its complexity. They are rude and
harsh."

All the while I could not help thinking of Dante and his condemnation of
Florence, and its "hard, malignant people," the people who still had
something in them of "the mountain and rock" of their birthplace:--"_E
tiene ancor del monte e del macigno._"

"You are not offended, Frank, are you, with me, for making you meet two
caryatides of the Parisian temple of pleasure?"

"No, no," I cried, "I was thinking how Dante condemned Florence and its
people, its ungrateful malignant people, and how when his teacher,
Brunetto Latini, and his companions came to him in the underworld, he
felt as if he, too, must throw himself into the pit with them. Nothing
prevented him from carrying out his good intention (_buona voglia_)
except the fear of being himself burned and baked as they were. I was
just thinking that it was his great love for Latini which gave him the
deathless words:

... "Non dispetto, ma doglia
La vostra condizion dentro mi fisse.

"Not contempt but sorrow...."

"Oh, Frank," cried Oscar, "what a beautiful incident! I remember it all.
I read it this last winter in Naples.... Of course Dante was full of
pity as are all great poets, for they know the weakness of human
nature."

But even "the sorrow" of which Dante spoke seemed to carry with it some
hint of condemnation; for after a pause he went on:

"You must not judge me, Frank: you don't know what I have suffered. No
wonder I snatch now at enjoyment with both hands. They did terrible
things to me. Did you know that when I was arrested the police let the
reporters come to the cell and stare at me. Think of it--the degradation
and the shame--as if I had been a monster on show. Oh! you knew! Then
you know, too, how I was really condemned before I was tried; and what a
farce my trial was. That terrible judge with his insults to those he was
sorry he could not send to the scaffold.

"I never told you the worst thing that befell me. When they took me from
Wandsworth to Reading, we had to stop at Clapham Junction. We were
nearly an hour waiting for the train. There we sat on the platform. I
was in the hideous prison clothes, handcuffed between two warders. You
know how the trains come in every minute. Almost at once I was
recognised, and there passed before me a continual stream of men and
boys, and one after the other offered some foul sneer or gibe or scoff.
They stood before me, Frank, calling me names and spitting on the
ground--an eternity of torture."

My heart bled for him.

"I wonder if any punishment will teach humanity to such people, or
understanding of their own baseness?"

After walking a few paces he turned to me:

"Don't reproach me, Frank, even in thought. You have no right to. You
don't know me yet. Some day you will know more and then you will be
sorry, so sorry that there will be no room for any reproach of me. If I
could tell you what I suffered this winter!"

"This winter!" I cried. "In Naples?"

"Yes, in gay, happy Naples. It was last autumn that I really fell to
ruin. I had come out of prison filled with good intentions, with all
good resolutions. My wife had promised to come back to me. I hoped she
would come very soon. If she had come at once, if she only had, it might
all have been different. But she did not come. I have no doubt she was
right from her point of view. She has always been right.

"But I was alone there in Berneval, and Bosie kept on calling me,
calling, and as you know I went to him. At first it was all wonderful.
The bruised leaves began to unfold in the light and warmth of
affection; the sore feeling began to die out of me.

"But at once my allowance from my wife was stopped. Yes, Frank," he
said, with a touch of the old humour, "they took it away when they
should have doubled it. I did not care. When I had money I gave it to
him without counting, so when I could not pay I thought Bosie would pay,
and I was content. But at once I discovered that he expected me to find
the money. I did what I could; but when my means were exhausted, the
evil days began. He expected me to write plays and get money for us both
as in the past; but I couldn't; I simply could not. When we were dunned
his temper went to pieces. He has never known what it is to want really.
You have no conception of the wretchedness of it all. He has a terrible,
imperious, irritable temper."

"He's the son of his father," I interjected.

"Yes," said Oscar, "I am afraid that's the truth, Frank; he is the son
of his father; violent, and irritable, with a tongue like a lash. As
soon as the means of life were straitened, he became sullen and began
reproaching me; why didn't I write? Why didn't I earn money? What was
the good of me? As if I could write under such conditions. No man,
Frank, has ever suffered worse shame and humiliation.

"At last there was a washing bill to be paid; Bosie was dunned for it,
and when I came in, he raged and whipped me with his tongue. It was
appalling; I had done everything for him, given him everything, lost
everything, and now I could only stand and see love turned to hate: the
strength of love's wine making the bitter more venomous. Then he left
me, Frank, and now there is no hope for me. I am lost, finished, a
derelict floating at the mercy of the stream, without plan or
purpose.... And the worst of it is, I know, if men have treated me
badly, I have treated myself worse; it is our sins against ourselves we
can never forgive.... Do you wonder that I snatch at any pleasure?"

He turned and looked at me all shaken; I saw the tears pouring down his
cheeks.

"I cannot talk any more, Frank," he said in a broken voice, "I must go."

I called a cab. My heart was so heavy within me, so sore, that I said
nothing to stop him. He lifted his hand to me in sign of farewell, and I
turned again to walk home alone, understanding, for the first time in my
life, the full significance of the marvellous line in which Shakespeare
summed up his impeachment of the world and his own justification: the
only justification of any of us mortals:

"A man more sinn'd against than sinning."

FOOTNOTES:

[22] This was the sum promised by the whole Queensberry family and by
Lord Alfred Douglas in particular to Oscar to defray the costs of that
first action for libel which they persuaded him to bring against Lord
Queensberry. Ross has since stated in court that it was never paid. The
history of the monies promised and supplied to Oscar at that time is so
extraordinary and so characteristic of the age that it might well
furnish a chapter to itself. Here it is enough just to say that those
who ought to have supplied him with money evaded the obligation, while
others upon whom he had no claim, helped him liberally; but even large
sums slipped through his careless fingers like water.

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

[24] One of the prettiest daughters of the game to be found in Paris at
the time.

CHAPTER XXI

The more I considered the matter, the more clearly I saw, or thought I
saw, that the only chance of salvation for Oscar was to get him to work,
to give him some purpose in life, and the reader should remember here
that at this time I had not read "De Profundis" and did not know that
Oscar in prison had himself recognised this necessity. After all, I said
to myself, nothing is lost if he will only begin to write. A man should
be able to whistle happiness and hope down the wind and take despair to
his bed and heart, and win courage from his harsh companion. Happiness
is not essential to the artist: happiness never creates anything but
memories. If Oscar would work and not brood over the past and study
himself like an Indian Fakir, he might yet come to soul-health and
achievement. He could win back everything; his own respect, and the
respect of his fellows, if indeed that were worth winning. An artist, I
knew, must have at least the self-abnegation of the hero, and heroic
resolution to strive and strive, or he will never bring it far even in
his art. If I could only get Oscar to work, it seemed to me everything
might yet come right. I spent a week with him, lunching and dining and
putting all this before him, in every way.

I noticed that he enjoyed the good eating and the good drinking as
intensely as ever. He was even drinking too much I thought, was
beginning to get stout and flabby again, but the good living was a
necessity to him, and it certainly did not prevent him from talking
charmingly. But as soon as I pressed him to write he would shake his
head:

"Oh, Frank, I cannot, you know my rooms; how could I write there? A
horrid bedroom like a closet, and a little sitting room without any
outlook. Books everywhere; and no place to write; to tell you the truth
I cannot even read in it. I can do nothing in such miserable poverty."

Again and again he came back to this. He harped upon his destitution, so
that I could not but see purpose in it. He was already cunning in the
art of getting money without asking for it. My heart ached for him; one
goes down hill with such fatal speed and ease, and the mire at the
bottom is so loathsome. I hastened to say:

"I can let you have a little money; but you ought to work, Oscar. After
all why should anyone help you, if you will not help yourself? If I
cannot aid you to save yourself, I am only doing you harm."

"A base sophism, Frank, mere sophistry, as you know: a good lunch is
better than a bad one for any living man."

I smiled, "Don't do yourself injustice: you could easily gain thousands
and live like a prince again. Why not make the effort?"

"If I had pleasant, sunny rooms I'd try.... It's harder than you think."

"Nonsense, it's easy for you. Your punishment has made your name known
in every country in the world. A book of yours would sell like wildfire;
a play of yours would draw in any capital. You might live here like a
prince. Shakespeare lost love and friendship, hope and health to
boot--everything, and yet forced himself to write 'The Tempest.' Why
can't you?"

"I'll try, Frank, I'll try."

I may just mention here that any praise of another man, even of
Shakespeare, was sure to move Oscar to emulation. He acknowledged no
superior. In some articles in _The Saturday Review_ I had said that no
one had ever given completer record of himself than Shakespeare. "We
know him better than we know any of our contemporaries," I went on, "and
he is better worth knowing." At once Oscar wrote to me objecting to this
phrase. "Surely, Frank, you have forgotten me. Surely, I am better
worth knowing than Shakespeare?"

The question astonished me so that I could not make up my mind at once;
but when he pressed me later I had to tell him that Shakespeare had
reached higher heights of thought and feeling than any modern, though I
was probably wrong in saying that I knew him better than I knew a living
man.

I had to go back to England and some little time elapsed before I could
return to Paris; but I crossed again early in the summer, and found he
had written nothing.

I often talked with him about it; but now he changed his ground a
little.

"I can't write, Frank. When I take up my pen all the past comes back: I
cannot bear the thoughts ... regret and remorse, like twin dogs, wait to
seize me at any idle moment. I must go out and watch life, amuse,
interest myself, or I should go mad. You don't know how sore it is about
my heart, as soon as I am alone. I am face to face with my own soul; the
Oscar of four years ago, with his beautiful secure life, and his
glorious easy triumphs, comes up before me, and I cannot stand the
contrast.... My eyes burn with tears. If you care for me, Frank, you
will not ask me to write."

"You promised to try," I said somewhat harshly, "and I want you to try.
You haven't suffered more than Dante suffered in exile and poverty; yet
you know if he had suffered ten times as much, he would have written it
all down. Tears, indeed! the fire in his eyes would have dried the
tears."

"True enough, Frank, but Dante was all of one piece whereas I am drawn
in two different directions. I was born to sing the joy and pride of
life, the pleasure of living, the delight in everything beautiful in
this most beautiful world, and they took me and tortured me till I
learned pity and sorrow. Now I cannot sing the joy, heartily, because I
know the suffering, and I was never made to sing of suffering. I hate
it, and I want to sing the love songs of joy and pleasure. It is joy
alone which appeals to my soul; the joy of life and beauty and love--I
could sing the song of Apollo the Sun-God, and they try to force me to
sing the song of the tortured Marsyas."

This to me was his true and final confession. His second fall after
leaving prison had put him "at war with himself." This is, I think, the
very heart of truth about his soul; the song of sorrow, of pity and
renunciation was not his song, and the experience of suffering prevented
him from singing the delight of life and the joy he took in beauty. It
never seemed to occur to him that he could reach a faith which should
include both self-indulgence and renunciation in a larger acceptance of
life.

In spite of his sunny nature he had a certain amount of jealousy and
envy in him which was always brought to light by the popular success of
those whom he had known and measured. I remember his telling me once
that he wrote his first play because he was annoyed at the way Pinero
was being praised--"Pinero, who can't write at all: he is a
stage-carpenter and nothing else. His characters are made of dough; and
never was there such a worthless style, or rather such a complete
absence of style: he writes like a grocer's assistant."

I noticed now that this trait of jealousy was stronger in him than ever.
One day I showed him an English illustrated paper which I had bought on
my way to lunch. It contained a picture of George Curzon (I beg his
pardon, Lord Curzon) as Viceroy of India. He was photographed in a
carriage with his wife by his side: the gorgeous state carriage drawn by
four horses, with outriders, and escorted by cavalry and cheering
crowds--all the paraphernalia and pomp of imperial power.

"Do you see that?" cried Oscar angrily; "fancy George Curzon being
treated like that. I know him well; a more perfect example of plodding
mediocrity was never seen in the world. He had never a thought or phrase
above the common."

"I know him pretty well, too," I replied. "His incurable commonness is
the secret of his success. He 'voices,' as he would say himself, the
opinion of the average man on every subject. He might be a leader-writer
on the _Mail_ or _Times_. What do you know of the average man or of his
opinions? But the man in the street, as he is called to-day, can only
learn from the man who is just one step above himself, and so the George
Curzons come to success in life. That, too, is the secret of the
popularity of this or that writer. Hall Caine is an even larger George
Curzon, a better endowed mediocrity."

"But why should he have fame and state and power?" Oscar cried
indignantly.

"State and power, because he is George Curzon, but fame he never will
have, and I suspect if the truth were known, in the moments when he too
comes face to face with his own soul, as you say, he would give a good
deal of his state and power for a very little of your fame."

"That is probably true, Frank," cried Oscar, "that is almost certainly
the crumpled rose-leaf of his couch, but how grossly he is
over-estimated and over-rewarded.... Do you know Wilfred Blunt?"

"I have met him," I replied, "but don't know him. We met once and he
bragged preposterously about his Arab ponies. I was at that time editor
of _The Evening News_: and Mr. Blunt tried hard to talk down to my
level."

"He is by way of being a poet, and he has a very real love of
literature."

"I know," I said; "I really know his work and a good deal about him and
have nothing but praise for the way he championed the Egyptians, and for
his poetry when he has anything to say."

"Well, Frank, he had a sort of club at Crabbett Park, a club for poets,
to which only poets were invited, and he was a most admirable and
perfect host. Lady Blunt could never make out what he was up to. He used
to get us all down to Crabbett, and the poet who was received last had
to make a speech about the new poet--a speech in which he was supposed
to tell the truth about the new-comer. Blunt took the idea, no doubt,
from the custom of the French Academy. Well, he asked me down to
Crabbett Park, and George Curzon, if you please, was the poet picked to
make the speech about me."

"Good God," I cried, "Curzon a poet. It's like Kitchener being taken for
a great captain, or Salisbury for a statesman."

"He writes verses, Frank, but of course there is not a line of poetry in
him: his verses are good enough though, well-turned, I mean, and sharp,
if not witty. Well, Curzon had to make this speech about me after
dinner. We had a delightful dinner, quite perfect, and then Curzon got
up. He had evidently prepared his speech carefully, it was bristling
with innuendoes; sneering side-hits at strange sins. Everyone looked at
his fellow and thought the speech the height of bad taste.

"Mediocrity always detests ability, and loathes genius; Curzon wanted to
prove to himself that at any rate in the moralities he was my superior.

"When he sat down I had to answer him. That was the programme. Of course
I had not prepared a speech, had not thought about Curzon, or what he
might say, but I got up, Frank, and told the kindliest truth about him,
and everyone took it for the bitterest sarcasm, and cheered and cheered
me, though what I said was merely the truth. I told how difficult it was
for Curzon to work and study at Oxford. Everyone wanted to know him
because of his position, because he was going into Parliament, and
certain to make a great figure there; and everyone tried to make up to
him, but he knew that he must not yield to such seduction, so he sat in
his room with a wet towel about his head, and worked and worked without
ceasing.

"In the earlier examinations, which demand only memory, he won first
honours. But even success could not induce him to relax his efforts; he
lived laborious days and took every college examination seriously; he
made out dates in red ink, and hung them on his wall, and learnt pages
of uninteresting events and put them in blue ink in his memory, and at
last came out of the 'Final Schools' with second honours. And now, I
concluded, 'this model youth is going into life, and he is certain to
treat it seriously, certain to win at any rate second honours in it, and
have a great and praiseworthy career.'

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