Delphi complete works of.., p.252
Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated), page 252
“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.’
“Frank, they roared with laughter, and, to do Curzon justice, at the end he came up to me and apologised, and was charming. Indeed, they all made much of me and we had a great night.
“I remember we talked all the night through, or rather I talked and everyone else listened, for the great principle of the division of labour is beginning to be understood in English Society. The host gives excellent food, excellent wine, excellent cigarettes, and super-excellent coffee, that’s his part, and all the men listen, that’s theirs: while I talk and the stars twinkle their delight.
“Wyndham was there, too; you know George Wyndham, with his beautiful face and fine figure: he is infinitely cleverer than Curzon but he has not Curzon’s push and force, or perhaps, as you say, he is not in such close touch with the average man as Curzon; he was charming to me.
“In the morning we all trooped out to see the dawn, and some of the young ones, wild with youth and high spirits, Curzon of course among the number, stripped off their clothes and rushed down to the lake and began swimming and diving about like a lot of schoolboys. There is a great deal of the schoolboy in all Englishmen, that is what makes them so lovable. When they came out they ran over the grass to dry themselves, and then began playing lawn tennis, just as they were, stark naked, the future rulers of England. I shall never forget the scene. Wilfred Blunt had gone up to his wife’s apartments and had changed into some fantastic pyjamas; suddenly he opened an upper window and came out and perched himself, cross-legged, on the balcony, looking down at the mad game of lawn tennis, for all the world like a sort of pink and green Buddha, while I strolled about with someone, and ordered fresh coffee and talked till the dawn came with silent silver feet lighting up the beautiful greenery of the park....
“Now George Curzon plays king in India: Wyndham is on the way to power, and I’m hiding in shame and poverty here in Paris, an exile and outcast. Do you wonder that I cannot write, Frank? The awful injustice of life maddens me. After all, what have they done in comparison with what I have done?
“Close the eyes of all of us now and fifty years hence, or a hundred years hence, no one will know anything about Curzon or Wyndham or Blunt: whether they lived or died will be a matter of indifference to everyone; but my comedies and my stories and ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ will be known and read by millions, and even my unhappy fate will call forth world-wide sympathy.”
It was all true enough, and good to keep in mind; but even when Oscar spoke of greater men than himself, he took the same attitude: his self-esteem was extraordinary. He did not compare his work with that of others; was not anxious to find his true place, as even Shakespeare was. From the beginning, from youth on, he was convinced that he was a great man and going to do great things. Many of us have the same belief and are just as persuaded, but the belief is not ever present with us as it was with Oscar, moulding all his actions. For instance, I remarked once that his handwriting was unforgettable and characteristic. “I worked at it,” he said, “as a boy; I wanted a distinctive handwriting; it had to be clear and beautiful and peculiar to me. At length I got it but it took time and patience. I always wanted everything about me to be distinctive,” he added, smiling.
He was proud of his physical appearance, inordinately pleased with his great height, vain of it even. “Height gives distinction,” he declared, and once even went so far as to say, “One can’t picture Napoleon as small; one thinks only of his magnificent head and forgets the little podgy figure; it must have been a great nuisance to him: small men have no dignity.”
All this utterly unconscious of the fact that most tall men have no ever present-sense of their height as an advantage. Yet on the whole one agrees with Montaigne that height is the chief beauty of a man: it gives presence.
Oscar never learned anything from criticism; he had a good deal of personal dignity in spite of his amiability, and when one found fault with his work, he would smile vaguely or change the subject as if it didn’t interest him.
Again and again I played on his self-esteem to get him to write; but always met the same answer.
“Oh, Frank, it’s impossible, impossible for me to work under these disgraceful conditions.”
“But you can have better conditions now and lots of money if you’ll begin to work.”
He shook his head despairingly. Again and again I tried, but failed to move him, even when I dangled money before him. I didn’t then know that he was receiving regularly more than £300 a year. I thought he was completely destitute, dependent on such casual help as friends could give him. I have a letter from him about this time asking me for even £5 as if he were in extremest need.
On one of my visits to Paris after discussing his position, I could not help saying to him:
“The only thing that will make you write, Oscar, is absolute, blank poverty. That’s the sharpest spur after all — necessity.”
“You don’t know me,” he replied sharply. “I would kill myself. I can endure to the end; but to be absolutely destitute would show me suicide as the open door.”
Suddenly his depressed manner changed and his whole face lighted up.
“Isn’t it comic, Frank, the way the English talk of the ‘open door,’ while their doors are always locked, and barred, and bolted, even their church doors? Yet it is not hypocrisy in them; they simply cannot see themselves as they are; they have no imagination.”
A long pause, and he went on gravely:
“Suicide, Frank, is always the temptation of the unfortunate, a great temptation.”
“Suicide is the natural end of the world-weary,” I replied; “but you enjoy life intensely. For you to talk of suicide is ridiculous.”
“Do you know that my wife is dead, Frank?”
“I had heard it,” I said.
“My way back to hope and a new life ends in her grave,” he went on. “Everything I do, Frank, is irrevocable.”
He spoke with a certain grave sincerity.
“The great tragedies of the world are all final and complete; Socrates would not escape death, though Crito opened the prison door for him. I could not avoid prison, though you showed me the way to safety. We are fated to suffer, don’t you think? as an example to humanity— ‘an echo and a light unto eternity.’”
“I think it would be finer, instead of taking the punishment lying down, to trample it under your feet, and make it a rung of the ladder.”
“Oh, Frank, you would turn all the tragedies into triumphs, you are a fighter. My life is done.”
“You love life,” I cried, “as much as ever you did; more than anyone I have ever seen.”
“It is true,” he cried, his face lighting up quickly, “more than anyone, Frank. Life delights me. The people passing on the Boulevards, the play of the sunshine in the trees; the noise, the quick movement of the cabs, the costumes of the cochers and sergents-de-ville; workers and beggars, pimps and prostitutes — all please me to the soul, charm me, and if you would only let me talk instead of bothering me to write I should be quite happy. Why should I write any more? I have done enough for fame.
“I will tell you a story, Frank,” he broke off, and he told me a slight thing about Judas. The little tale was told delightfully, with eloquent inflections of voice and still more eloquent pauses....
“The end of all this is,” I said before going back to London, “that you will not write?”
“No, no, Frank,” he said, “that I cannot write under these conditions. If I had money enough; if I could shake off Paris, and forget those awful rooms of mine and get to the Riviera for the winter and live in some seaside village of the Latins with the blue sea at my feet, and the blue sky above, and God’s sunlight about me and no care for money, then I would write as naturally as a bird sings, because I should be happy and could not help it....
“You write stories taken from the fight of life; you are careless of surroundings, I am a poet and can only sing in the sunshine when I am happy.”
“All right,” I said, snatching at the half-promise. “It is just possible that I may get hold of some money during the next few months, and, if I do, you shall go and winter in the South, and live as you please without care of money. If you can only sing when the cage is beautiful and sunlight floods it, I know the very place for you.”
With this sort of vague understanding we parted for some months.
* * *
CHAPTER XXII
“A GREAT ROMANTIC PASSION”
There is no more difficult problem for the writer, no harder task than to decide how far he should allow himself to go in picturing human weakness. We have all come from the animal and can all without any assistance from books imagine easily enough the effects of unrestrained self-indulgence. Yet it is instructive and pregnant with warning to remark that, as soon as the sheet anchor of high resolve is gone, the frailties of man tend to become master-vices. All our civilisation is artificially built up by effort; all high humanity is the reward of constant striving against natural desires.
In the fall of this year, 1898, I sold The Saturday Review to Lord Hardwicke and his friends, and as soon as the purchase was completed, I think in November, I wired to Oscar that I should be in Paris in a short time, and ready to take him to the South for his holiday. I sent him some money to pave the way.
A few days later I crossed and wired to him from Calais to dine with me at Durand’s, and to begin dinner if I happened to be late.
While waiting for dinner, I said:
“I want to stay two or three days in Paris to see some pictures. Would you be ready to start South on Thursday next?” It was then Monday, I think.
“On Thursday?” he repeated. “Yes, Frank, I think so.”
“There is some money for anything you may want to buy,” I said and handed him a cheque I had made payable to self and signed, for he knew where he could cash it.
“How good of you, Frank, I cannot thank you enough. You start on Thursday,” he added, as if considering it.
“If you would rather wait a little,” I said, “say so: I’m quite willing.”
“No, Frank, I think Thursday will do. We are really going to the South for the whole winter. How wonderful; how gorgeous it will be.”
We had a great dinner and talked and talked. He spoke of some of the new Frenchmen, and at great length of Pierre Louÿs, whom he described as a disciple:
“It was I, Frank, who induced him to write his ‘Aphrodite’ in prose.” He spoke, too, of the Grand Guignol Theatre.
“Le Grand Guignol is the first theatre in Paris. It looks like a nonconformist chapel, a barn of a room with a gallery at the back and a little wooden stage. There you see the primitive tragedies of real life. They are as ugly and as fascinating as life itself. You must see it and we will go to Antoine’s as well: you must see Antoine’s new piece; he is doing great work.”
We kept dinner up to an unconscionable hour. I had much to tell of London and much to hear of Paris, and we talked and drank coffee till one o’clock, and when I proposed supper Oscar accepted the idea with enthusiasm.
“I have often lunched with you from two o’clock till nine, Frank, and now I am going to dine with you from nine o’clock till breakfast to-morrow morning.”
“What shall we drink?” I asked.
“The same champagne, Frank, don’t you think?” he said, pulling his jowl; “there is no wine so inspiring as that dry champagne with the exquisite bouquet. You were the first to say my plays were the champagne of literature.”
When we came out it was three o’clock and I was tired and sleepy with my journey, and Oscar had drunk perhaps more than was good for him. Knowing how he hated walking I got a voiture de cercle and told him to take it, and I would walk to my hotel. He thanked me and seemed to hesitate.
“What is it now?” I asked, wanting to get to bed.
“Just a word with you,” he said, and drew me away from the carriage where the chasseur was waiting with the rug. When he got me three or four paces away he said, hesitatingly:
“Frank, could you ... can you let me have a few pounds? I’m very hard up.”
I stared at him; I had given him a cheque at the beginning of the dinner: had he forgotten? Or did he perchance want to keep the hundred pounds intact for some reason? Suddenly it occurred to me that he might be without even enough for the carriage. I took out a hundred franc note and gave it to him.
“Thank you, so much,” he said, thrusting it into his waistcoat pocket, “it’s very kind of you.”
“You will turn up to-morrow at lunch at one?” I said, as I put him into the little brougham.
“Yes, of course, yes,” he cried, and I turned away.
Next day at lunch he seemed to meet me with some embarrassment:
“Frank, I want to ask you something. I’m really confused about last night; we dined most wisely, if too well. This morning I found you had given me a cheque, and I found besides in my waistcoat pocket a note for a hundred francs. Did I ask you for it at the end? ‘Tap’ you, the French call it,” he added, trying to laugh.
I nodded.
“How dreadful!” he cried. “How dreadful poverty is! I had forgotten that you had given me a cheque, and I was so hard up, so afraid you might go away without giving me anything, that I asked you for it. Isn’t poverty dreadful?”
I nodded; I could not say a word: the fact told so much.
The chastened mood of self-condemnation did not last long with him or go deep; soon he was talking as merrily and gaily as ever.
Before parting I said to him:
“You won’t forget that you are going on Thursday night?”
“Oh, really!” he cried, to my surprise, “Thursday is very near; I don’t know whether I shall be able to come.”
“What on earth do you mean?” I asked.
“The truth is, you know, I have debts to pay, and I have not enough.”
