Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile

by Gyles Brandreth

  Oscar was due to take tea with Sarah Bernhardt that afternoon. I was due back at the theatre. Oscar dropped me off in the boulevard du Temple and told me that he would come on to find me as soon as he was able. ‘I’m not in the mood for the divine Sarah’ he sighed. ‘The demands of divinity are unremitting. But I sent her a wire to tell her I’d be there. I am expected and she is a true friend, so I shall go.’

  He went, and, in retrospect, he was glad that he had done so. He found that Maurice Rollinat and Bernard La Grange were also of the party. Darjeeling tea and Swiss absinthe, cucumber sandwiches and pipes of hashish were served. The quartet — two actors and two poets — talked much of money (as actors and poets do), but also of love and lust, of failure and success, of excess, decadence and murder.

  ‘I want to eat of all the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world,’ Bernard La Grange declared, lying back with his head nestling in Bernhardt’s lap and his left hand gently caressing Rollinat’s thigh. ‘It’s your line, Mr Oscar Wilde. It’s your philosophy. You talk. I act. I want to experience everything. The heights. The depths.’ He glanced towards Oscar and widened his almond eyes. ‘Especially the depths. I feel that I am most alive when I visit the Room of the Dead. Is that not strange?’

  ‘Speak to me of murder,’ said Oscar, sucking on his clay pipe of hashish. He returned Bernard’s gaze. ‘Charles Baudelaire, I seem to recall, encouraged the idea that hashish tempts men to murder.’

  ‘Give me more then!’ cried Bernard, reaching out his hand towards Oscar’s pipe. ‘I must experience everything!’

  ‘Even murder?’ asked Sarah, stroking the beautiful young actor’s silk-soft head of hair.

  ‘Would you kill or be killed?’ asked Rollinat, taking the boy’s hand and putting it once more against his thigh.

  ‘Either,’ said Bernard seriously. ‘It is the experience which counts.’

  Sarah Bernhardt laughed and leant forward and kissed young Hamlet’s forehead. ‘Don’t die too soon,’ she said. ‘You’ve had such lovely notices.’

  Bernard La Grange sat up abruptly. ‘I don’t read reviews, Sarah. They’re meaningless. You must know that.’

  Oscar smiled. ‘Bernard is right, Sarah. You should not read reviews. You are an artist. Why should an artist be troubled by the shrill clamour of criticism? Why should those who cannot create take it upon themselves to estimate the value of creative work? What can they know about art? I despise critics!’ He drew deeply on his pipe and closed his eyes.

  ‘Do you not read the newspapers then, Oscar?’ asked Madame Bernhardt playfully. ‘You are always in them.’

  Oscar looked towards the actress from beneath hooded lids. ‘I will not rise to your bait, dear lady,’ he murmured. ‘I despise all newspapers with their dreary records of politics, police courts and personalities. I have long ago ceased to care what they write about me. My time is all given up to the gods and the Greeks!’

  Bernard La Grange was leaning back against the divine Sarah once more. He turned his head towards Oscar. ‘Have you yet tasted Greek love, Oscar?’ he asked. ‘Have you? Do you dare?’ Oscar made no reply. ‘Maurice and I will take you to the Café Alexandre. It’s near the theatre. There are boys there like Greek gods, with skin as smooth as alabaster and vine-leaves in their hair.’

  ‘Do you not love me then?’ asked Sarah Bernhardt, leaning over the young actor once more and kissing him gently on the temples.

  ‘I love you, Sarah. Of course, I do.’ He put his hand up and stroked her cheek with the back of his long, dark fingers.

  Madame Bernhardt looked down and smiled on him. ‘I am old enough to be your mother. I know that.’

  Bernard La Grange gasped with delight and sat up once again. ‘I shall play Oedipus to your Jocasta!’ he declared excitedly.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ cried Sarah. ‘You shall!’ And then she laughed and took his head between her hands and turned his face towards hers. ‘But tonight you must play Hamlet to Mademoiselle de la Tourbillon’s Gertrude.’

  ‘And to your sister’s Ophelia,’ said Oscar, laying down the pipe and foraging for a cucumber sandwich. ‘I understand Agnès is returning.’

  ‘I prefer the understudy.’ Bernard La Grange laughed, getting to his feet. He stretched out his arms and yawned. He looked about and reached for a glass of absinthe.

  ‘You allow yourself to drink before a performance, ‘observed Oscar, tilting his head to one side and studying the handsome young man. ‘You do not follow the example of the great Edmond La Grange.’

  ‘What do I care for him?’ asked Bernard, draining his glass.

  ‘He is your father,’ said Oscar. ‘He is a great actor.’

  ‘He represents a great tradition,’ said Sarah.

  ‘He represents the past,’ said Bernard. ‘He represents the past.’ He repeated the sentence as though it were an exercise in elocution. ‘The past. That’s all over. Gone. Done with. Dead. Buried. I am interested in the present. ‘He kissed Madame Bernhardt on the forehead. ‘And the future.’ He kissed Maurice Rollinat on the lips.

  At the Théâtre La Grange, as usual, I prepared the great man’s wardrobe for the evening performance. His costumes for Claudius were not elaborate, but he required me to polish the leather and the silver on his boots and belts until they gleamed. ‘Claudius is a usurper, he reminded me. ‘The trappings of kingship count with him. He has to look the part because he cannot altogether feel it.’

  When he arrived at his dressing room, just as the clock was striking five, Edmond La Grange appeared at his most mellow. He was humming a tune that Traquair would sometimes whistle: ‘Carry Me Back to Old Virginny’. It was a song by Oscar’s friend, Jimmy Bland.

  ‘How are you, sir?’ I asked awkwardly, avoiding his eye, uncertain what to say.

  ‘How are you, mon petit?’ he replied, standing in the middle of the room, waiting for me to assist him in the removal of his overcoat. He was so accustomed to being dressed and undressed by another that at such moments he simply stood with arms outstretched awaiting the service that he took for granted. ‘Have you been busy?’ he asked. ‘Have you been with Monsieur Wilde?’

  ‘Yes,’ I answered, pulling off his coat.

  ‘You have been searching for Agnès, I think?’ he said, catching my eye in the cheval mirror and raising an eyebrow enquiringly.

  I looked away. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We found her.’

  ‘Ah.’ He laughed softly. ‘I thought so. I thought that it was you who arrived at the clinic just as I was leaving.’

  As I hung up his coat and busied myself laying out and unbuttoning his shirts, Edmond La Grange sat on his swivel stool before his dressing table and, with an insouciance that seemed quite unforced, told his story. He explained that it had been Agnès’s idea to get away for a few days of rest and recuperation. She had told him where she was going: he had approved. He had consulted Dr Ferrand, who had given the plan his blessing. Dr Ferrand was a friend and colleague of Dr Blanche and put great store by him. La Grange had not told anyone else of Agnès’s whereabouts because that was what Agnès had wanted. He apologised for deceiving us: he hoped that I would convey his apology to Oscar. He regretted its necessity. He had felt obliged to respect Agnès’s wishes: he had wanted to protect her privacy. He trusted that we would understand. He was certain that we would. And the good news was that Agnès was now feeling much better. Indeed, she was ready to return to the play. The present plan — agreed with Agnès and Dr Blanche that very afternoon, only minutes before our carriages had passed one another beneath the entrance gates to l’Hôtel Lamballe — was that Agnès would spend her days at Passy, resting, and then, so long as her strength permitted, drive into town each evening for her performance. La Grange asked me to call the entire company on stage forty-five minutes before the performance and he would explain the position to everybody then.

  I listened to his narrative without interruption. As he finished it, he flashed a brilliant smile at me and inclined his head as though
taking a modest bow. He turned back to his dressing table. ‘I must sleep now,’ he whispered. He pulled open the right-hand drawer of the dressing table and began rummaging about in it, searching for his eye mask. As he pulled open the drawer, his Colt revolver slid forward. I watched him as he touched it fondly. Over his shoulder he murmured to me, teasingly, ‘No more duelling now.’

  He found the velvet eye mask and got to his feet. ‘Mon petit,’ he said, reaching into his trouser pocket. ‘Here is the key to rue de la Pierre Levée. Use the place tonight. It’s yours. Enjoy. I think — I hope — you will find Mademoiselle de la Tourbillon in the right frame of mind. I know she’s free. Garstrang is joining me for cards.’

  He sat down on the edge of the Molière chaise longue and pushed forward his feet for me to pull off his shoes.

  ‘May I ask you something, sir?’ I said.

  ‘Of course, mon petit. Anything.’ He lay back on the chaise longue as I adjusted a cushion behind his head.

  ‘Is this really the couch on which Molière died in 1673?’

  He laughed quietly and closed his eyes. ‘I doubt it very much.’ He pulled the velvet mask over his eyelids. ‘It’s a story told by actors and, as you should know by now, stories told by actors are rarely to be trusted.’

  As Edmond La Grange slept, I went around the theatre conveying his instructions to the company. At 7.15 p.m., as required, the La Grange troops gathered on stage. Bernard La Grange was the last to arrive. He had no foreknowledge of the meeting. He came in with Oscar: they had travelled together from Sarah Bernhardt’s. They stood side by side at the edge of the crowd, behind Maman who was seated on a small chair being attended to by Eddie Garstrang. ‘I am dying,’ the old woman cried, ‘and nobody listens. Nobody cares.’

  Edmond La Grange addressed the company from the front of the stage. He was not a tall man; he stood on top of a small flight of wooden steps (part of the ramparts of Elsinore Castle) put in position by the stage manager. Richard Marais, the company’s business manager, stood on the stage at his side. La Grange made a good speech: it was (as he told me it would be) a rallying cry. He saluted his company — the company that had created ‘the perfect Hamlet’. He thanked them for their loyalty and for pulling together during the past few difficult days. He had happy news, he announced. ‘Our Ophelia is herself again!’ She had not gone missing; she had been unwell; she had been resting. However, she was returning to the theatre tonight and, if the gods willed it, would play her part as advertised for the rest of the run.

  As La Grange concluded his address, Agnès, with timing worthy of her calling, appeared by the footlights at the front of the stage. We all applauded.

  The speech done, the cast and company returned to their stations. Richard Marais took charge of Liselotte La Grange. ‘At least he can’t hear her squawking,’ observed Eddie Garstrang. Garstrang and Oscar went into the auditorium, to the circle bar to find a drink. They then watched the performance from one of the stage boxes. Oscar was intrigued that Garstrang — an American from the Rocky Mountains, a professional gambler whose command of French was no more than adequate — appeared utterly transfixed by the play. Oscar reflected that the two men had not been so comfortable in each other’s company since that breakfast in Leadville, Colorado, nearly a year before.

  I watched the performance standing in the downstage wings, as was my custom. That night it was not a perfect Hamlet: there were uncertain moments: Agnès appeared more fragile than ever and in her scene with old Polonius twice lost her way; but the ovation at the end suggested that the audience was well satisfied.

  Afterwards, La Grange gave me a scribbled note to take up to Agnès’s dressing room. I read the note. Perhaps I should not have done so, but, momentarily, I found myself alone by a lighted gas lamp on the stairwell leading to the first-floor dressing rooms, and I did. The note said simply:

  You were wonderful.

  Your future is certain.

  I love you. ELG.

  When I reached Agnès’s dressing room, I found Gabrielle de la Tourbillon standing outside the door. ‘She’s not there,’ she said, leaning forward and kissing me gently on the mouth. ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘She takes off her make-up as soon as she’s been drowned. When she comes on for the curtain-call she’s all ready to leave.’ She looked back at the dressing-room door. ‘I wanted to tell her how well she’d done, but she’s gone. Exhausted, I imagine.’ Gabrielle stepped towards me and let her peignoir fall open to reveal her breasts. She laughed. ‘I still have to dress. Are we having supper?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I have the key.’

  ‘I won’t be long.’

  I returned at once to La Grange and gave him the news. He shrugged and took back his note, folded it over and slipped it into his dressing-table drawer.

  Fifteen minutes later, I found Oscar, alone, waiting by the stage door. He was leaning against the wall, underneath the lamplight, smoking. ‘Look what Garstrang gave me,’ he said elatedly. ‘A Lucky Strike!’

  I told my friend that I could not have a late supper with him, after all. ‘Will you forgive me?’ I said. ‘I am going to have supper with Gabrielle.’

  He smiled. ‘Do you have the key?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered.

  ‘I’m glad. Enjoy. And go easy on the laudanum. I’ll go back to my hotel. I have plenty to think about.’

  They found her in the morning. It was one of the stagehands who made the discovery. He was sweeping the floor: it was the first task of the day, done as soon as the theatre opened up at 10 a.m. Agnès La Grange was found right at the back of the stage, behind the black velvet drapes, in the scenery dock, floating face down in the shallow tank of water used in the play to simulate the pool in the stream in which Ophelia drowns herself.

  The police doctor reckoned that she must have died at around midnight.

  22

  ‘It’s in the Blood’

  La Grange had summoned the police at once.

  By the time that Oscar and I arrived at the theatre, soon after two o’clock, the body of Agnès La Grange had already been removed from the building, and the police, under the brisk direction of one Brigadier Malthus, were concluding a series of preliminary interviews with those whom Malthus described as ‘essential witnesses.

  ‘You fall into that category, gentlemen,’ Malthus said to us pleasantly, as we presented ourselves at Edmond La Grange’s dressing-room door. ‘At least, I think you do.’

  The dressing room was crowded with people, yet quiet as the grave. Malthus, two younger policemen in uniform, and eight senior members of the La Grange company were standing, side by side, shoulders touching, ranged around the walls, like mourners at the graveside. Dr Emile Blanche was also there. He had arrived from his clinic an hour before, not because he had heard the news, but because he was concerned that Agnès had not returned to Passy the night before as he and his staff had expected. Dr Blanche was perched on the edge of the Molière chaise longue, next to Liselotte La Grange. He held the old woman’s hand in his. (Not knowing her well, he instinctively offered her the comfort that those close to her no longer could.) Carlos Branco stood, slumped against the back of the dressing-room door, his head lolling forward, his eyes open, gazing blankly at the ground. He wore a brightly coloured striped dressing gown, put on before he had heard the news.

  The great La Grange sat in the midst of this throng, almost invisible, bent over his dressing table, his arms folded, his eyes closed, his head tilted at a curious angle, as if he were still in the act of flinching away from unseen horror. Brigadier Malthus stood at his side. Occasionally, the police officer placed a reassuring hand on the old actor’s shoulder. The two men were friends. They were of an age. Edmond La Grange, Pierre Ferrand and Félix Malthus had been at school together.

  Brigadier Malthus was not an Englishman’s idea of a French policeman. He was impressively tall, cadaverously thin, yet upright and youthful-looking for his ag
e, clean-shaven and silver-haired, with high, prominent cheekbones and a large aquiline nose. He was dressed in a well-cut, dark blue serge suit. On his lapel he wore the distinctive ribbon of a commandant of the Légion d’Honneur. He had the appearance of a lawyer or a banker, combined with the surprising, gentle, slightly teasing manner of a mildly eccentric university professor.

  ‘You have heard the dreadful news?’ he asked, once he had confirmed that we were indeed who he had taken us to be.

  ‘A moment ago,’ said Oscar. ‘From the stage doorkeeper, as we came in.’

  Brigadier Malthus sighed and let his tongue loll momentarily over his lower lip, like a lizard feeling for food. ‘It is very distressing,’ he said. (His voice was not the voice of a Paris policeman, either. It was cultivated, refined.)

  ‘Most terrible,’ said Oscar. ‘Tragic.’ Tears pricked his eyes.

  ‘I am just trying to establish who might have seen Mademoiselle La Grange last,’ Malthus continued lightly. ‘To assess her state of mind. You understand?’ Oscar nodded. ‘Everyone saw her take her curtain-call, of course. But nobody seems to have seen her since.’ The policeman looked around the assembled company and smiled. He had pale blue eyes. Slowly, he turned them in my direction. ‘Monsieur Sherard,’ he said amiably, ‘you are Monsieur La Grange’s dresser, as I understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Monsieur La Grange tells me that he gave you a note to take to Mademoiselle La Grange at the end of last night’s performance.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But you brought back the note because Mademoiselle La Grange was not in her dressing room.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Her room was empty.’

  ‘I can vouch for that,’ said Gabrielle de la Tourbillon. She was standing at the back of the room, in the far corner by the sideboard, half hidden behind Eddie Garstrang and Dr Ferrand. I had not noticed her presence in the room before. I had not seen her that morning. After our night together in the rue de la Pierre Levée, I had woken at dawn to find her gone. Seeing her suddenly, hearing her speak, I blushed.