The coach-and-four passed in front of the theatre and began to gather pace. I felt a sense of extraordinary exhilaration. I looked at Gabrielle de la Tourbillon, sitting facing me, her knees touching mine, and marvelled at the intensity of my desire for her. Perhaps she read my thoughts. ‘Is the décolletage too much?’ she whispered. ‘After this afternoon, I wanted to restore your faith.’
‘You are perfection,’ I said softly.
She turned towards Oscar. ‘Are the diamonds too much?’
‘In my experience,’ replied Oscar, tilting his head to one side and narrowing his eyes, ‘when it comes to diamonds and praise and anchovy toast, one can never have too much.’ She laughed. ‘Were they a present?’ Oscar asked.
‘Yes — from Edmond.’ She caught her breath as she spoke his name and leant over and pressed her fingers to my knee. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
I smiled, shaking my head, and said nothing. But I thought, Why should I mind? You, too, are a present from Edmond, are you not?
Nervously she touched the diamonds with her hand and I could see that she was suddenly embarrassed. She looked over to Bernard anxiously. ‘I know it was extravagant of your father. I hope you don’t mind?’
‘What Edmond La Grange does with his money is nothing to me. Why should I care?’
As Bernard spoke, Gabrielle began to blush. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her hands fluttering awkwardly. ‘I—’
‘No,’ Bernard interrupted her. ‘Do not apologise. I should apologise.’ He did not look at her: he gazed steadily out of the carriage window. ‘Forgive me. I am rather confused at present. It is a difficult time.’
I laid a reassuring hand on Gabrielle’s knee as Oscar did his best to clear the air. ‘You will be the belle of the ball, my dear!’
‘Will there be dancing?’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ said Oscar. ‘And fireworks. And fire-eating. And lions and lynx and leopards wandering about the drawing room.
‘I hope there will be food,’ said Gabrielle, rallying. ‘I am so hungry.’
‘There will be food.’ Oscar laughed. ‘And drink.’
‘And laudanum,’ said Bernard quietly. ‘I need laudanum. I must sleep.’
In the event, there were no fireworks at Madame Bernhardt’s soirée and no fire-eating. Apart from her little dog, Hamlet III, there were no four-legged creatures to be seen. There were a dozen penguins on parade in the fountain in the garden and, on the main staircase, a trio of live mermaids. Their long swishing tails glistened and shimmered with scales made of mother-of-pearl; the golden tresses of their hair tumbled over their naked shoulders and bare breasts. ‘They are real,’ insisted Madame Bernhardt. ‘And very expensive. I bought them from a pirate in the Bay of Biscay. I had to pay extra because when they sing they sing in French!’
I had not been to a party like it before. Nor have I been to one like it since. Now that we live permanently in the harsh glare of the electric light, we have forgotten the fairy-tale quality of a world illuminated by flickering flame. Sarah’s house that night was lit only by candles; by tiny candles, thousands of them, candles that dazzled, then spluttered and burnt out, to be replaced by thousands more. Madame Bernhardt had thirty servants to look after her guests during her soirée: six of them were engaged entirely in the business of replacing and lighting candles.
It is worth recollecting that at the turn of the 1880s the theatres of Paris were the most crowded and celebrated in the world. Half a million Parisians went to the theatre once a week; more than a million went once a month. The leading men and women of French theatre were fêted — and employed — from New Orleans to St Petersburg. Sarah Bernhardt and Edmond La Grange were world-famous figures, and fabulously wealthy as a consequence. La Grange was richer than Bernhardt: she earned marginally more than he did, but while he guarded his fortune, she spent hers like a profligate.
That night in rue Fortuny no expense was spared. We were fed on fresh lobster, langoustines and potted shrimps, poached salmon and grilled halibut, Cancale oysters and Persian caviar — the evening had a nautical theme — and plied with every kind of wine and spirit you can imagine. As we arrived, Madame Bernhardt pressed glasses of Vin Mariani upon us.
‘Pope Leo XIII introduced me to this,’ she declared. ‘The combination of herbs, alcohol and cocaine is irresistible. There’s no tonic like it. It’s the most wonderful invigorator of the reproductive organs!’
‘Is that what His Holiness told you?’ asked Oscar.
Sarah shrieked with laughter. ‘No! That’s what Jules Verne told me. He’s in the orangery, looking at the moon. Do find him, Oscar. You’ll adore him.’ She kissed Oscar fondly on each cheek and then, courteously, ran the back of her hand around my jaw. ‘And Oscar’s friend,’ she murmured. She glanced down and saw that the fingers of my right hand were lightly touching Gabrielle’s gauze skirt. Her eyes widened: she embraced her fellow actress. ‘You are wearing Edmond’s diamonds, Gaby,’ she said. ‘They suit you; you have the neck for them. I was with him when he bought them, you know.’
‘I know,’ said Gabrielle, smiling. ‘Edmond told me.’
‘I assume he’s not coming,’ said Sarah. She turned to Oscar and to me and explained: ‘Edmond is never to be seen at private parties. You have to pay to see the great Edmond La Grange. It’s not a bad ruse.’ She looked about her. ‘Where is Bernard? I saw Bernard with you as you came in.’ She turned full circle and caught sight of him through the crowd, standing in the doorway to the dining room. She laughed. ‘He’s found Maurice and the Chinaman — already! He has a homing instinct for depravity. But he is beautiful. It can’t be denied. A good deal more handsome than his father ever was.
‘He is the finest Hamlet I have seen,’ said Oscar.
‘Really?’ Madame Bernhardt furrowed her brow and finished her glass of Vin Mariani. ‘Can an Indian half-caste play the Prince of Denmark?’
‘Can a woman?’ asked Oscar, smiling.
Sarah shrieked with laughter once more and, raising her arms above her head and swaying her hips from side to side, like Salome dancing for King Herod, backed away from us and disappeared into the crowd. I looked over to the dining-room doorway. Bernard La Grange and Maurice Rollinat were no longer to be seen. The Chinese manservant was now offering a different pair of guests a choice between jade opium pipes and what appeared to be ready-filled syringes of cocaine.
‘Freedom is the only law which genius knows,’ said Oscar, surveying the scene. He was, as ever, the tallest man in the room. ‘I shall seek out Jules Verne. You two should dance. I’m sure Sarah will have a ship’s orchestra secreted somewhere.’
In fact, Madame Bernhardt had engaged the services of a brilliant young Polish piano player whose repertoire appeared to know no bounds. Airs by Offenbach, waltzes by Chopin, ‘Oh, Dem Golden Slippers’ by Oscar’s friend, Jimmy Bland — the wild-haired Paderewski was equal to them all. As he played, we danced and, as I held Gabrielle de la Tourbillon in my arms, I knew that all I wanted from this life was to possess her, not for a night but for eternity!
At about two in the morning, Oscar found us. ‘I think we should go, children — before the mermaids sing!’
‘Where is Bernard?’ asked Gabrielle.
‘You will see him in the hallway,’ said Oscar. ‘You won’t miss him, I promise you.’
Oscar took Gabrielle by the hand and led us both through the throng. Every room was crowded; smoke filled the air; the heat was intense; every face glistened. As we pushed past them, poets talked while muses pretended to listen; actors boasted while actresses laughed; we glimpsed a girl from the chorus of the Opéra Comique (a friend of Gabrielle’s) unbuttoning the trousers of the president of the Académie Française; we saw two Negroes kissing. ‘Life and lust, low cunning and high intelligence, ‘Oscar called over his shoulder. ‘Look around you. Sarah knows them all. Touch the garb of that old gentleman as we pass him, Robert. It’s Ferdinand de Lesseps. You can tell your grandchildren that you were here!’
When we reached the hallway, we left the hubbub behind. Here a hush had fallen. The mermaids were no longer on the staircase. On the stairs, around the perimeter walls, and within the four doorways that opened onto the hall itself, guests stood in silence, side by side, some hand in hand, forming a human ring. Within the improvised arena, two men, stripped to their shirtsleeves, were fighting with rapiers. They were Bernard La Grange, and the pale-faced young artist, Jacques-Emile Blanche.
‘This is madness!’ whispered Gabrielle, squeezing my hand tightly.
‘This is youth!’ breathed Oscar.
Bernard was evidently the stronger fencer of the two. With attack after attack, relentlessly he chased his opponent round in circles. Whenever Blanche, briefly, managed a counter-attack, Bernard parried it effortlessly and followed through with a theatrical riposte.
‘I can’t bear this!’ hissed Gabrielle. ‘Take me away, please.’ As she spoke, her words were drowned by a burst of gasps and cries from the circle of spectators as Jacques-Emile Blanche lunged forward in a sudden frenzy.
‘A hit!’ cried Bernard La Grange, spinning round on the spot. ‘A palpable hit!’ He fell for a moment against a group of guests standing by the dining-room door and sprang back at once into the ring, holding his arms out wide to reveal his shirt torn and crimson.
‘My God!’ cried Gabrielle, letting go my hand. Around the room women screamed and men cheered.
‘It’s wine!’ hissed Oscar. ‘Red wine — the boy’s an actor. Remember who his father is.’
One of the guests by the dining-room door held up his empty glass to prove Oscar’s point as Bernard La Grange returned to the fight. Now, beneath his breath, we heard him spitting out the moves as he made them:
‘Attack, attack, croisé, coulé, cut. Attack, attack, parry, prise de fer.’
‘Come,’ said Oscar, pulling us around the perimeter of the ring, ‘let’s get you home.’
‘Will he be all right?’ asked Gabrielle, as Oscar helped her up into our waiting carriage.
Oscar laughed. ‘I think the heroin will see him through.’
It was gone three when we reached the side street by the boulevard du Temple once more. The night air was cold though the yellow moon was bright. Gabrielle shivered as we stood together by the coach-and-four at the end of the alley leading to theatre’s stage door. ‘What now, my dears?’ asked Oscar, smiling as he looked between us.
‘Goodnight, Oscar,’ said Gabrielle holding up her face to be kissed. ‘Thank you for a memorable evening.’ She put her arm through mine and held me close.
Oscar chuckled. He was quite drunk. ‘I think a Lucky Strike is called for, don’t you, Robert? I’ll take a stroll up the street while you two decide what your sleeping arrangements are going to be.’ He walked away from us, up the cobbled roadway. I heard a match strike and saw the burst of flame as he lit his cigarette. He turned the corner into the boulevard. I pressed my lips against Gabrielle’s. She opened her mouth and her tongue met mine. It was at that moment that we heard what sounded like a desperate cry for help.
I broke at once from Gabrielle’s embrace and ran up the roadway, followed by our coachman. As I rounded the corner to the front of the theatre, I saw a figure lying splayed on his back in the gutter, beside the horses’ water-trough. It was Oscar. His head and torso were drenched with water, his white silk shirt was besmirched and torn. Kneeling down beside him, I took him up in my arms.
‘Thank you, Robert,’ he croaked, gazing down at his ruined apparel with half-shut eyes. ‘With this style, I believe the mouth is worn slightly open.
I did not take Gabrielle to my room that night. I let her return to La Grange’s apartment at the theatre while I helped Oscar into the coach-and-four and accompanied him back to his hotel on the quai Voltaire.
He was badly bruised and severely shaken, but not seriously hurt. His account of what had occurred was lucid and to the point. As he stood in front of the theatre, enjoying his cigarette, examining the poster for the forthcoming production of Hamlet and trying to discover his own name by moonlight, he had heard a sudden rush of footsteps behind him. Before he had had the opportunity to turn, a man with gloved hands — he was sure that it was a man — had taken a vice-like grip on his neck and pulled him back towards the horse-trough, twisting him round and forcing his head and shoulders forward into the icy water. Had he been held there he would have drowned. He struggled; he managed to pull his head free; he called out; and suddenly he was released and fell back onto the ground as the footsteps ran away. He thought that he had heard a voice cry ‘Non!’ He had a feeling that the voice was familiar, but he could not be sure. It might have been my voice. I had certainly shouted out as I had come running around the building to his aid.
As I helped my friend to undress, I did my best to calm him. But he would not be pacified. ‘My mind is in turmoil, Robert. I have questions, but no answers. What is going on? Who is trying to kill me? And why? And are they, in truth, trying to kill me? Or are they simply trying to frighten me? And these brutal assaults on my unhappy person — are they connected in some way with poor Traquair’s mysterious death? And what about that wretched dog found dead and buried in my luggage on board the SS Bothnia? Is the unlamented Marie Antoinette linked in some way to what has taken place tonight?’
I had no answers to offer him. Eventually, giving him a cup of whisky and warm water, I persuaded him to climb into bed. I left him there, exhausted, sipping his drink, smoking the last of his Lucky Strikes, and reading the Life of St Porphyry by candlelight. I took the carriage back to my room on the rue de Beauce and lay on my bed, fully clothed, imagining myself, naked, in the arms of Gabrielle de la Tourbillon.
At a little after ten o’clock the following morning I collected Oscar from his hotel. We were both expected at the Théâtre La Grange for the second Hamlet dress rehearsal. Oscar cannot have slept for more than five hours, but he appeared quite refreshed and positively proud of his bruises. When I arrived, I found him in the hotel foyer, dressed and groomed, standing by the looking-glass, appraising the purple and orange abrasions on his cheeks. He had already been out to find a matching chrysanthemum for his buttonhole.
He greeted me, not with a ‘good morning’ or with a word of thanks for my endeavours of the night before, but with a question about The Murders in the rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe. ‘You’ve read the story, haven’t you, Robert? Does Poe have his detective ponder the mystery of the apparently motiveless crime? I don’t believe that he does. It seems my hero missed a trick.’
I looked at my friend in bafflement. I could not think what to say. He had his preoccupations and I — having failed to spend the night with Gabrielle — had mine. Together, in silence, we took a cab to the theatre and there, at Oscar’s insistence, before the start of the dress rehearsal, sought what he called ‘a brief formal audience ‘with Edmond La Grange.
It was eleven o’clock. The actor was in his dressing room preparing himself for Claudius. He did not reprove me for my late arrival. He welcomed Oscar cordially. He did not at first notice Oscar’s bruises. ‘Come in, sit down, cher collaborateur. Yesterday we concentrated on the costumes and the scenery. Today our chief concern will be the text.’
‘But first,’ said Oscar, ‘I have concerns of a non-literary nature to share with you. May I?’
‘Of course,’ said La Grange, swivelling round on his stool, turning his back on his dressing table, folding his arms comfortably across his chest and giving Oscar his full attention. ‘We are friends as well as colleagues. Speak.’
Oscar spoke. He spoke well, concisely, without hyperbole. He shared his concerns with La Grange just as the night before he had shared them with me. And when he had finished speaking, La Grange responded, with equal economy and ease of manner, taking each of Oscar’s questions in turn and dismissing it without ceremony. The weight that fell from the fly gallery was an accident — as simple as that. The assault on Oscar in the boulevard du Temple was the work of mara
uding footpads — Paris was thick with them, alas. Poor Traquair had either died by chance — escaping gas fumes killed hundreds of innocent men, women and children every year — or, yes, possibly he had taken his own life because he was lonely so far from home. And as for the business of Maman’s wretched poodle discovered dead and buried in Oscar’s shipboard trunk — it was obviously a joke in the poorest taste perpetrated by one or more of the sailors of the SS Bothnia: La Grange had warned Oscar of the dangers of fraternising with the crew.
The second dress rehearsal of Hamlet was due to begin at twelve noon. At 11.30 a.m. the stage manager reported that Ophelia was still missing: Agnès La Grange had not yet arrived at the theatre. Maman had looked for her in her bedroom in the apartment: she was not there. La Grange appeared exasperated rather than concerned by the news: he gave instructions that Ophelia’s understudy should ready herself. At twelve noon, however, just as the dress rehearsal was set to start, Agnès slipped in through the stage door. She came into the wings, smiling, blew a kiss of apology to her father and ran to her dressing room to change.
At the end of the dress rehearsal, after La Grange had given his notes to the cast and company, Oscar announced that he was leaving Paris that evening. He had now seen two dress rehearsals: the performances were outstanding, the production powerful, there was nothing further he could do to help. With La Grange and Shakespeare at work, there really was no need for Oscar Wilde.
He did not linger. He bade a brief private farewell to La Grange in his dressing room; and to Eddie Garstrang, Carlos Branco and Gabrielle de la Tourbillon, whom he chanced to see in the wings; he had a final word with Richard Marais about his financial arrangements; and then asked me to come with him to the Gare du Nord.
Oscar had decided that he was not welcome in Paris. Whatever the teaching of St Porphyry in the matter of ignoring ill omens, Oscar had seen the gathering clouds: the gods were against him remaining in France. He was going home — well, not quite home — he was not going to Dublin but to England, to London, to the home counties, to spend some time with the dull and the settled: it’s what his nerves required. Besides, he had a rendezvous arranged with a lunatic would-be assassin and he was anxious to fulfil his social obligations. Would I go to his hotel on the quai Voltaire and settle up for him and send on his things? And would I be sure to keep in touch, to let him know what his Paris friends were up to?
Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile Page 18