But Wilde’s fear of Douglas perhaps masked a fear of himself. The selfish and insensitive Bosie might be recognized as ‘an evil influence’ but he remained a dangerously attractive one. His declarations of undimmed adoration had a certain force, and Wilde soon found himself drawn towards the flame. He was heartened when Douglas wrote – ‘for him nicely’ – about his own, and Wilde’s, artistic plans. It seemed safer ‘to meet on the double peak of Parnassus’.44 He read ‘with great pleasure and interest’ the volume of Douglas’s Poems which had been published in 1896, without the dedication to Wilde.45 Soon they were in almost daily communication, and Wilde was declaring, ‘My dear Boy… Don’t think I don’t love you. Of course I love you more than anyone else… and every day I think of you, and I know you are as poet, and that makes you doubly dear and wonderful.’46
Even the acceptance that they must not meet was soon eroded. Wilde sought to enlist Lady Queensberry’s support for the idea of a rapprochement – although she declined to involve herself in the matter.47 Nevertheless by the middle of June he was arranging for Douglas to come to Berneval, under the conspicuous alias of ‘Jonquil de Vallon’. But, on the eve of the visit, Wilde received a letter from his solicitor, warning him that the plan was known (perhaps through Queensberry’s informers) and, if carried through, would result in serious consequences to Wilde’s income and maybe even to his safety. Although Douglas would have been delighted to defy his father (once again), Wilde was more circumspect and more easily shaken. He forbade Douglas from coming, at least for the moment.48
Douglas took the delay badly, unreasonably blaming Ross for agreeing to the legal constraints that had been put upon Wilde seeing him. But although Wilde defended Ross from Douglas’s intemperate and ill-mannered attacks, the rift between Wilde’s two young friends added a new tension to his life. He wove his sense of divided loyalties and affections into an elegant couplet: ‘Two loves have I: the one of comfort; the other of despair. The one has black; the other golden hair.’49
2
Artistic Work
‘I hope to get back the concentration of will-power that conditions and governs art, and to produce something good again.’
oscar wilde
Wilde was able to find some solace in work. He was full of schemes, as he sought to maintain the creative momentum built up during his last months at Reading. After the success of his letter to the Daily Chronicle he had considered writing a three-part article for the paper on his ‘Prison Life’, from a ‘psychological and introspective’ angle. He would be able to draw on his long letter to Douglas, to provide a section on ‘the lovely subject’ of ‘Christ as the Precursor of the Romantic Movement in Life’. Certainly Wilde felt the need to address his prison experiences in literary form. But – perhaps recalling the hopes of both Viscount Haldane and Warder Martin on this score – he began to wonder whether his approach might, after all, be artistic, rather than merely polemical. Leaving the article unstarted, he took off in a new direction. On 1 June he informed Ross, ‘as you, the poem of my days, are away, [I] am forced to write poetry. I have begun something that I think will be very good.’1
It was a ‘ballad’, recounting, in a heightened but barely fictionalized form, the story of the execution of Trooper Wooldridge for the murder of his wife. Wilde’s approach was, initially, personal. His narrator – a thinly-veiled self-portrait – allies himself with the condemned man as he walks in the exercise yard each day looking wistfully ‘upon that little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky’. The man ‘had killed the thing he loved / And so he had to die.’ But, as the narrator noted, it was the punishment rather than the crime that was exceptional. He himself – along with all the other prisoners – shared the trooper’s guilt: for ‘each man kills the thing he loves’, some with a sword, some by a kiss:
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.
From a literary point of view Wilde relished the ballad form. He commended it to Douglas. It had the ability to be dramatic, Romantic and popular all at the same time. It had been employed by Lady Wilde for one of her most successful works, and had a rich tradition in English literature: Wilde cited both Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Thomas Hood’s Dream of Eugene Aram as models. It had echoes, too, of rhythms and cadences found in A. E. Housman’s recently published A Shropshire Lad, which Wilde was reading just then with great enjoyment. Section IX of Housman’s poem even dealt with the execution of a man in Shrewsbury gaol.*2
Progress was good, aided by the fact that, towards the end June, Wilde moved from the increasingly crowded and noisy Hôtel de la Plage into the nearby Chalet Bourgeat. He did, however, worry about using such obviously personal subject matter. The poem, he told Laurence Housman (A. E.’s younger brother), is ‘terribly realistic for me, and drawn from actual experience, a sort of denial of my own philosophy of art in many ways. I hope it is good, but every night I hear cocks crowing in Berneval, so I am afraid I may have denied myself, and would weep bitterly, if I had not wept away all my tears’.3 Realism, however, might have its virtues. Wilde thought the topicality of the poem would ensure a ready market. He had – so he claimed – been offered £1,000 by an American newspaper for an account about his prison experiences. And while he was not tempted to accept such a sensation-hunting journalistic proposal, he supposed that an artistic treatment of the same subject might command an only slightly lesser interest. He envisaged publication of his poem in the Daily Chronicle and one of the New York papers for anything between £100 and £300.4
In tandem with his work on the ‘ballad’ Wilde kept in view the possibilities of play-writing. He was toying with several schemes. Although disappointed to learn that Lugné-Poe would not be able to pay anything upfront for a new play, Wilde remained keen to follow up the success of Salomé with another Parisian premiere, even if it had to be with a different producer. He had two ideas for further biblical-Symbolist pieces, to be written (apparently) in French: the first was his story of Pharaoh and Moses, the second a fantastic variation on the tale of Ahab and Jezabel, in which he imagined Bernhardt might take the female lead. Either piece could serve to launch him back into literary world of Paris.5 As an aid to his research, Wilde asked Ross to find him a copy of Adolf Erman’s magisterial Life in Ancient Egypt so that he might know ‘how Pharaoh said to his chief butler, “Pass the cucumbers”’.6 Wilde’s commitment to France and French culture was strengthened by flattering reports that, if it were decided to include foreign authors in the new Académie Goncourt (set up in the wake of Edmond de Goncourt’s death the previous year), the names likely to be put forward were Count Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen and ‘Mr Oscar Wilde’.7
Although England was offering no such distinctions, it was not forgotten. Wilde was very conscious that he remained in financial and moral debt to George Alexander and Charles Wyndham, and he was anxious to atone by writing plays for both men as soon as possible.8 Any work for the London stage would have to appear – in the first instance at least – anonymously. Wilde doubted that the English public was ready to welcome him back quite yet.9 But anonymity need not preclude success. And a popular English-language drama would give Wilde a chance to refill his own coffers. He needed to start making money, and quickly. His existing resources would, he calculated, only last out the summer. And unless Percy Douglas came through with the long-promised £500 ‘debt of honour’, he must rely on his own endeavours.10
As a first step, he planned to complete The Florentine Tragedy. Although Wilde, rather fancifully, suggested that the one-act blank-verse historical drama might command an advance of £500, he seems to have recognized that something with a more obvious commercial appeal would probably also be needed.11 His thoughts appear to have turned to the scenario of the unfaithful husband and less faithful wife that he had first mapped out for George Alexander in the summer of 1894 (as a possible alternati
ve to The Importance of Being Earnest). And although he hesitated to make a start on the script – provisionally entitled ‘Love is Law’ – he did begin gathering aphorisms that might enliven the dialogue. Besides his own quip about everyone nowadays being ‘jealous of everyone else, except, of course, husband and wife’, he also wanted to borrow Reggie Turner’s riposte to the remark that someone had been ‘born with a silver spoon in his mouth’: ‘Yes! But there was somebody else’s crest on it.’12
Charles Wyndham, though, had ideas of his own. On 23 July the actor-manager crossed over to Berneval for the day, with a proposal that Wilde should adapt Scribe’s drama, Le Verre d’eau, a comic intrigue set at the court of Queen Anne. The plan had its attractions for Wilde, not only because it would spare him the trouble of inventing a plot, but also because he hoped that Ross would help him with the task. He urged Robbie to come over, and bring with him a Queen Anne chair ‘just for the style’. ‘If you work hard,’ he joked, ‘I shall have a great success.’13
Wyndham, even on his fleeting visit, must have been encouraged by Wilde’s readiness to embark on such flights of fancy. The comic sense had clearly not deserted him. Indeed it informed most of his letters and many of his actions over the summer. Wilde, always an admirer of Queen Victoria, embraced her approaching Diamond Jubilee with enthusiasm. He stuck up, in pride of place, a reproduction of William Nicholson’s ‘wonderful’ woodcut of her (‘Every poet should gaze at the portrait of his Queen, all day long,’ he declared). And he proudly told visitors that the three women he most admired were Queen Victoria, Sarah Bernhardt and Lillie Langtry, adding for effect, ‘I would have married any one of them with pleasure.’14† On the day of the Jubilee itself (22 June) he had amazed the inhabitants of Berneval by hosting a splendid tea party in the garden of his villa, for a dozen of the local schoolboys along with their form master. The company was regaled with strawberries and cream, apricots, chocolates, sirop de grenadine and a huge iced cake with ‘Jubilé de la Reine Victoria’ in pink sugar, rosetted with green, and a great wreath of red roses round it all. Each of the children was presented with a musical instrument (selected by lot). ‘They sang the Marseillaise and other songs,’ Wilde reported to Douglas, ‘and danced a ronde, and also played “God save the Queen”: they said it was “God save the Queen,” and I did not like to differ from them. They also all had flags which I gave them. They were most gay and sweet. I gave the health of La Reine d’Angleterre, and they cried, “Vive la Reine d’Angleterre”!!!! Then I gave “La France, mère de tous les artistes,” and finally I gave Le Président de la République. I thought I had better do so. They cried out with one accord “Vivent le Président de la République et Monsieur Melmoth”!!!’15
Although Wilde’s wit could animate a letter, he found it hard to sustain any more concerted literary endeavour. He could only work for an hour at a time.16 But if this made play-writing difficult, it suited well enough the composition of The Ballad of Reading Gaol (as Ross had dubbed his poem.) Throughout the summer Wilde went on adding stanzas to the work in an almost piecemeal fashion. He also took on other short tasks. For a new book of Rothenstein’s clever portrait drawings he composed a barbed but brilliant paragraph on W. E. Henley, ending with the observation, ‘He has fought the good fight, and has had to face every difficulty except popularity.’17 Alas the paragraph was too barbed – or too brilliant – and Rothenstein’s cautious young publisher thought better of using it.18
As the summer season advanced, and Dieppe filled with visitors, there were more distractions. Wilde was at the centre of a riotous gathering of young French writers at the Café Tribunaux in Dieppe, which drew the attention of the town’s sous-préfêt.19 He was introduced, by Dowson, to the irrepressible Leonard Smithers – a publisher, book dealer and sometime pornographer, who, during the years of Wilde’s imprisonment, had emerged as significant figure on the fringes of London’s literary scene.20 While John Lane had joined the general rush to disavow anything remotely connected with decadence, artistic experiment, and ‘the Oscar Wilde tendency’, Smithers had moved in the opposite direction. He offered a haven to the more daring writers and artists of the younger generation. It was his boast that he would ‘publish anything the others were afraid of’. When The Yellow Book ‘turned grey overnight’ with the sacking of Aubrey Beardsley in the wake of Wilde’s arrest, Smithers hastened to set up the Savoy as a rival publication, with Beardsley installed as art editor. He also began publishing volumes of self-consciously decadent verse – by Ernest Dowson, Arthur Symons and Theodore Wratislaw – as well as an edition of Pope’s Rape of the Lock with elaborate illustrations by Beardsley.
Smithers was delighted to meet Wilde. Back in 1888 he had written a ‘charming’ letter of appreciation to the author of The Happy Prince, and received a gracious reply.21 Wilde, for his part, was richly amused by the thirty-five-year-old Yorkshire-born bon viveur, with whom he was soon passing many a bibulous hour in the cafés of Dieppe. ‘I do not know if you know Smithers,’ he asked Turner:
He is usually in a large straw hat, has a blue tie delicately fastened with a diamond brooch of the impurest water – or perhaps wine, as he never touches water: it goes to his head at once. His face, clean-shaven as befits a priest who serves at the altar whose God is Literature, is wasted and pale – not with poetry, but with poets, who, he says, have wrecked his life by insisting on publishing with him. He loves first editions, especially of women: little girls are his passion. He is the most learned erotomaniac in Europe. He is also a delightful companion, and a dear fellow, very kind to me.22
Ernest Dowson was not the only Smithers author in Dieppe that summer. Wilde came to know and (eventually) to like the young American short-story writer Vincent O’Sullivan.23 Beardsley, too, arrived in the town, seeking a healthful climate for his consumptive lungs. Wilde shared an enjoyable lunch with him and Smithers, finding him ‘in good spirits’ and looking surprisingly well.24 Sitting side by side on the casino terrace they discoursed on the ‘incredible history’ of Dieppe – which Beardsley described as running ‘from Brennus to Oscar Wilde’.25 On another occasion Wilde made ‘Aubrey buy a hat more silver than silver’, telling Turner that ‘he is quite wonderful in it’.26 Such meetings, however, were complicated – for Beardsley – by the fact that he was now under the patronage of Wilde’s bête noir, André Raffalovich. By associating with Wilde, Beardsley risked upsetting his patron, and losing his stipend.
Although Wilde constantly looked for the return of either Ross or Turner, neither of them was able to come during the long days of July and early August. Arrangements were made, and then deferred. He received, instead, a visit from their young friend John Fothergill. The twenty-one-year-old dilettante (who, having embarked on a course at the London College of Architecture, was dubbed ‘the architect of the moon’) arrived, bringing with him Erman’s Life in Ancient Egypt. A ‘sextette of suns’ was passed in talk – and drinking. Fothergill was slightly alarmed by Wilde’s insistence that it was the accepted thing, when leaving a French country inn, to kiss the servant.27 Behind the almost ceaseless flow of sparkling chat, Fothergill thought that he detected a sadness and loneliness in his host. But he was also touched by Wilde’s humanity. On one evening they went to a ‘three-penny show’ in the village schoolroom; as the ‘poor little reciter shouted and screamed and squealed and sweated at his work’ Fothergill noted Wilde, ‘rapt and absorbed’ in the performance, his face alive with ‘pity, pathos, care, patience and understanding’ and ‘on his big cheek a tear ran’.28
Smithers was a frequent visitor during the days of Fothergill’s stay. And the impecunious Dowson was actually installed at the Chalet Bourgeat, having been ‘rescued’ by Wilde ‘from a position of great embarrassment at the inn at Arques’.29 The presence of both men encouraged Wilde’s absinthe drinking; Fothergill described Smithers as having turned ‘green’ through his devotion to the spirit. At a dinner chez Thaulow Wilde defended the absent Dowson from the charge – made by one of the
other guests – that he drank too much. ‘If he didn’t drink,’ Wilde replied, ‘he would be somebody else. Il faut accepter la personalité comme elle est. Il ne faut jamais regretter qu’un poète est soûl, il faut regretter que les soûls ne soient pas toujours poètes.’‡ Wilde went on to claim (in jest) that he was at work on an essay entitled ‘A Defence of Drunkenness’, claiming that ‘the soul is never liberated except by drunkenness in one form or another’. At Dieppe, beside the sea, one might become intoxicated with nature: the soul could ‘listen to the words and harmonies and behold the colours of the Great Silence’. But elsewhere it might be necessary to resort to absinthe: ‘A waiter with a tray will always find [the Great Silence] for you. Knock; and the door will always open, the door of le paradis artificiel.’
Amid the drinking and the summer fun, there were not infrequent snubs. On at least one occasion Wilde was discreetly asked to leave a Dieppe restaurant following objections to his presence from fellow diners.30 On another afternoon he was rescued by Mrs Stannard, who, seeing him being snubbed by a group of English visitors, heroically crossed the road, took his arm, and declared loudly, ‘Oscar, take me to tea.’31 Even at Berneval there was a shift in mood, as the true identity of ‘Monsieur Melmoth’ became more widely known to the villagers. And if there was no open hostility, there was a new note of guarded suspicion.32 In Dieppe he became conscious of being avoided by old friends such as Jacques-Emile Blanche and Walter Sickert.33 And when Beardsley failed to turn up for a proposed dinner, he was hurt. ‘It was lâche of Aubrey,’ he later remarked. ‘If it had been one of my own class I might perhaps have understood… But a boy like that, whom I made! No, it was too lâche of Aubrey.’34 The jibe at Beardsley’s ‘class’ was as inappropriate as the claim that Wilde had ‘made’ the artist. Both assertions, though, revealed the real hurt caused by such rebuffs. Every social encounter had become tinged with uncertainty: Wilde could not be sure how – or if – his presence would be received. And while it was uncomfortable to be ‘cut’, any hint of condescending sympathy was equally irksome. Ross registered that it ‘galled’ Wilde ‘to have to appear grateful to those whom he did not, or would not have regarded [either intellectually or socially] before his downfall’.35
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