The money allowed Wilde to visit Mellor again. Having struggled all year to free himself from the persistent sense of ill health and melancholia, Wilde was pleased to report that the ‘Mellor cure’ – though ‘dull’ – had been effective.23 Back in Paris his spirits flared briefly. At the Calisaya one evening he ran through almost his whole repertoire of fables for Ernest La Jeunesse.24 He even told Aimée Lowther that his story of ‘The Poet’ in hell would be appearing in a French magazine, although there is no sign that it ever did.25
His ever-deferred plans for writing ‘Love is Law’ were forestalled, when – towards the middle of September – Harris arrived in Paris with a completed script (retitled Mr and Mrs Daventry). Having grown tired of waiting for Wilde’s version of the first act, he had written it himself. Wilde professed to be annoyed, but rapidly accepted the fait accompli. His suggested terms were that Harris buy the ‘plot and scenario’ for ‘£200 down’, £500-worth of shares in Harris’s hotel venture, and a quarter-share of Harris’s profits from the play.26 Harris accepted, anxious to get the play into production.
This should have been exciting news. But Wilde’s pleasure in it was rather undercut by a recurrence of his chronic ear trouble. He had been suffering from increasingly painful headaches over the summer as part of his general malaise.27 Now the problem asserted itself with a concerted force. On 24 September Wilde was examined by a new doctor, Maurice A’Court Tucker, a thirty-two-year-old physician with a growing practice among the expatriate British colony.28 Although a ‘kind, excellent man’ with a real admiration for Wilde’s literary gifts, Tucker was – in Robbie Ross’s estimate – also rather ‘silly’.29 His initial diagnosis seems not to have recognized the true nature of Wilde’s condition.30 And certainly whatever course of treatment he prescribed produced no ameliorating effect. The ear continued to suppurate. In the second week of October Tucker felt it necessary to call in ‘a well-known’ otologist for an expert opinion.31
The specialist was alarmed at his findings. The infection in Wilde’s middle ear appeared to have extended into the surrounding mastoid (the hard honeycomb-like structure around the ear), and there was a danger that it might spread further. As Wilde reported, ‘the surgeon felt it his duty to inform me that unless I was operated on immediately it would be too late, and that the consequence of delay would probably be fatal’. It seems probable that the procedure proposed was a radical mastoidectomy, to eradicate the diseased tissue and prevent any extension of the disease to the brain and its enveloping meninges.32
The operation was carried out under anaesthetic in Wilde’s hotel room on 10 October. Wilde described the ordeal – which almost certainly involved the exteriorizing of the middle ear and the mastoid cavity – as ‘most terrible’.33 Part of the horror, though, was the expense. The surgeon initially presented a bill for 1,500 francs (£60), although this was eventually halved at the prompting of Dr Tucker. Nevertheless the surgery appeared to have been successful. And Wilde was well looked after; the extensive post-operative regime of dressings and pain relief involved the daily attendance of both ‘a hospital male nurse’ and Dr Tucker, as well as the nightly presence of another doctor. Wilde’s chemist’s bill was soon ‘about £20’.34 Wanting support and companionship, he telegraphed to Ross, begging him to come ‘as soon as possible’.35 He felt suddenly overwhelmed with cares.
Adding to the stress of the moment was the arrival in Paris of Louis Nethersole. Perhaps hearing news of Harris’s planned play production, he ‘intruded’ himself ‘almost daily’ at the Hôtel d’Alsace in the days before Wilde’s operation, insisting that he held the rights to the ‘Love is Law’ scenario.36 Wilde, despite his debilitated state, managed to get Nethersole ‘to see that he had no right to use or produce [the] scenario’. The victory, however, was only partial. Nethersole subsequently approached Frank Harris, claiming that he had the right to use the play script in New York.37 Nor was this the only issue that Harris was having to face. From the outset of their ‘collaboration’ Wilde had pointed out that Mrs Brown-Potter (with Kyrle Bellew) owned the rights to the scenario, and that Harris would have to come to some arrangement with them. Harris, having taken legal counsel, thought that he might get away without making any such deal, there being ‘no copyright in a plot’.38 But it seems that he found it hard to maintain this position, and he subsequently paid £125 to Bellew and Brown-Potter.39 But even this was not all.
As the play went into production in early October, Harris was also approached by the recently bankrupted Leonard Smithers, who had still received nothing of the £160 that Wilde had promised to pay back to him. Ignoring Wilde’s vigorous objections, Harris felt obliged to buy Smithers off too for a further £100.40 These were large and unlooked-for expenses. And, having paid them, Harris was only able – or only willing – to send Wilde £25 rather than the £175 stipulated in their letter of agreement. Wilde, weak and vexed by doctors’ bills, was incensed. From his sickbed he dispatched a long letter filled with self-justification and reiterated demands for his missing money.
He was seething upon the subject when Ross, having made haste, arrived in Paris on 17 October, the day after Wilde’s forty-sixth birthday. Ross rather sympathized with Harris, pointing out that Wilde was now in ‘a much better position’ than he had been, because Harris, by producing the play, would not only pay off all the people who had advanced money to Wilde, but would be able to remit Wilde a share of any resulting royalties. To this Wilde replied in his ‘characteristic way’ that Harris had deprived him of his ‘only source of income by taking a play on which I could always have raised £100’.41 The humour was comforting. Indeed Ross had been heartened to find Wilde in remarkably ‘good spirits’. As he reported to More Adey, ‘though he assured me his sufferings were dreadful, at the same time he shouted with laughter and told many stories against the doctors and himself’. He was entertaining a steady succession of friends.42
Although the nurse who was in daily attendance was concerned that Dr Tucker did not fully realize the seriousness of Wilde’s condition, the immediate signs of recovery were promising.43 Wilde was cheered by the arrival of Reggie Turner; he and Ross called every day, sometimes twice. Often they lunched or dined together with Wilde in his room. Food was brought in from a neighbouring restaurant, and ‘too much champagne’ was invariable drunk. Wilde, though he looked ill, remained ‘always very talkative’ and full of fun. When his irritating skin rash returned, and Ross arrived to find him scratching himself, Wilde remarked: ‘Really, I’m more like a great ape than ever, but I hope you’ll give me a lunch, Bobbie, and not a nut.’44
There was a particularly jolly gathering on 25 October when Ross’s brother, Aleck, also called, along with Willie’s widow and her new husband, Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.45 Wilde, in sparkling form, repeated his line about the English not being able to stand it if he outlived the century. He also claimed that the French would not stand it either, as they held him personally ‘responsible for the failure of the Exhibition’, the English having deserted it ‘when they saw him there so well-dressed and happy’. And, alluding to his mounting medical bills, or his taste for champagne, he remarked that he was ‘dying above his means’.46
The witticism obscured Wilde’s real anxiety about his debts, the large amounts that he owed – to his doctors, to Ada Rehan, to Dal Young, and, especially, to Dupoirier, the ever-patient and ever-generous patron of the Hôtel d’Alsace. Wilde calculated the total at ‘something over more than £400’ – of which almost a quarter was his hotel bill. So often insouciant on the subject, he was now suffering ‘remorse about some of his creditors’.47 Indeed Dr Tucker thought anxiety on the score of his hotel bill might be impeding Wilde’s recovery. Ross and Turner, with very limited resources of their own, were unable to offer assistance. Ross, though, wrote to Douglas alerting him to Wilde’s condition, and emphasizing the concern that he felt over his debts.48* Harris’s failure to send the outstanding £150 continued to rankle. It became an idée fixe. Wilde
, though he wrote nothing else, produced a weekly letter of prolix recrimination, always ending with a plea for Harris to send the money ‘that you owe’.49 †
Despite the promptings of Dr Tucker, Wilde had been reluctant to rise from his bed since the operation. On 29 October, however, he not only got up but actually proposed going out. Ross took him for an evening stroll to a nearby café. Although Wilde walked with ‘some difficulty’ he seemed ‘fairly well’. Ignoring the doctor’s command to avoid strong liquor, he ‘insisted on drinking absinthe’.50 Perhaps unsurprisingly he was confined to bed the following day. But only the day after that, wanting to enjoy the autumn sunshine, he felt up to going for a drive in the Bois du Boulogne.51 The expedition, made with Ross, was punctuated by several café stops, during which Wilde again ordered absinthe. When Ross remonstrated with him, he replied gravely, ‘And what have I to live for, Robbie?’52
‘Death’ was joining ‘Frank Harris’ as one of Wilde’s recurrent topics. He dreamed one night that he had been ‘supping with the dead’. On hearing this, Turner – much to Wilde’s delight – commented, ‘My dear Oscar, you were probably the life and soul of the party.’53 When Ross returned from an expedition to the Père Lachaise cemetery, Wilde asked whether he had selected a place for his tomb, and then began discussing – ‘in a perfectly light-hearted way’ – what his epitaph should be.54 He hoped that Ross might be buried nearby: and ‘When the last trumpet sounds and we are couched in our porphyry tombs, I will turn and say, “Robbie, Robbie, let us pretend we do not hear!”’55
More orthodox ideas flitted, too, across his mind. To a journalist from the Daily Chronicle who tracked him to his sickroom, Wilde (having unburdened himself about the perfidy of Frank Harris) discoursed on the consolations of religion. ‘Much of my moral obliquity,’ he declared, ‘is due to the fact that my father would not allow me to become a Catholic. There is an artistic side to the church, and the fragrance of its teaching would have curbed my degeneracies. I intend to be received into it before long.’56 Ross remained unconvinced, though he promised to fetch a priest if Wilde were really dying.57 That moment, however, seemed not yet to have arrived.
Although Wilde himself might proclaim that he was advancing rapidly towards his end, there was – as ever – much self-dramatization in the pose. There were times when he very probably did feel that he had ‘only a short time to live’.58 But at other moments he began to make schemes for the future.59 Dr Tucker remained optimistic. It was his belief that even if Wilde did not ‘pull himself up’ – and renounce drink altogether – he would still live for at least another ‘five years’.60
Heartened by this prognosis, Ross continued with his own plans to meet up with his mother in Nice for the winter. Wilde, similarly encouraged, hoped to follow them south in due course. But in the second week of November – a few days before Ross was due to leave – the pain in Wilde’s ear increased sharply. There had been a relapse of the infection. When Ross called, on the eve of his departure, he found Wilde slurring his words, although whether this was due to his illness, to the injections of morphine, or to the intake of champagne, was uncertain.61 They had a distressing interview. Wilde sent Turner and the attending nurse out of the room, and begged Ross to remain in Paris; ‘a great change’, he insisted, had come over him in ‘the last few days’. Breaking down in tears, he said that he feared he would never see Ross again. Ross, however, considered all this as no more than histrionics. He refused to be moved. And, indeed, Wilde presently retrieved his equilibrium. They talked of other things. His parting shot was that Ross should ‘look out for some little cup in the hills near Nice’ where he could go when he was ‘better’ – and ‘where you can come and see me often’.62
In Ross’s absence Turner took on the duties of care, aided by a succession of nurses, by Dupoirier, and occasionally by Maurice Gilbert. Dr Tucker attended daily. Wilde was moved from his ground-floor room by the courtyard to room 13 on the first floor.63 He was a reluctant patient – often ‘very difficult and rude’. He refused to let the nurse put mustard plasters on his legs.64 But the regular morphine injections – often administered by Dupoirier – assuaged the pain, and he was able to get up occasionally. Turner even took him out for several drives.65
Friends continued to call; poets from the quartier and the Calisaya. There were bouts of talk and laughter. It was to the writer Claire de Pratz that Wilde remarked, ‘My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has to go.’66 Plans for travelling to the South of France remained a constant topic. But Wilde now grew easily tired. He slept more and more.67 When the exiled Romanian poet Hélène Vacaresco called, she found him lying in bed, his face to the wall. Leaving a bottle of champagne and some other ‘comforts’ on the table, she slipped away. ‘Merci, inconnue,’ Wilde murmured without turning.68
A fragile equilibrium was maintained for over a week. But on the night of 24 November Wilde’s condition deteriorated. He became ‘suddenly light headed’ and delirious. He was unable to rise from his bed the following day. Tucker, alarmed at the turn of events, sought a second opinion from the ‘brain specialist’ Dr Paul Claisse. It was clear that the suppurating middle-ear infection was now affecting Wilde’s brain. This was the dreaded development. There was now very little hope of recovery. Turner wrote at once to Ross informing him of Wilde’s parlous state.69
On 27 November Tucker and Claisse, noting a worsening of the symptoms, issued a joint medical certificate. The diagnosis of ‘meningoencephalitis’ could be made without doubt. With both his brain and the surrounding meninges inflamed, no surgical intervention was possible. The patient’s condition could only be alleviated by drugs and other palliative treatments.70
Wilde drifted in and out of sleep. Ice packs were held to his head to ease the pressure.71 Often delirious, he seemed to be talking ‘nonsense the whole while in English and French’. But there were abrupt flashes of lucidity. He announced that Turner ought to have been a doctor because he ‘always wanted people to do what they didn’t want’ (this was after Turner had begged him not to smoke).72 On another occasion, after Turner had been holding an ice bag to his head for three-quarters of an hour, Wilde remarked, ‘You dear little Jew, don’t you think that’s enough?’73 He had previously observed, ‘Jews have no broad philosophy of life, but they are sympathique.’74 Words sometimes eluded him. He asked for a ‘paraphine’ – when he wanted to see a copy of the Patrie,75 and requested that Turner get a ‘Munster to cook for him?’ – adding ‘one steamboat [is] very like another’. The chain of association may have been drawing him back Ireland and his youth: the SS Munster was one of the packet boats that ran from Kingstown to Holyhead.76
On the morning of Thursday 29 November Ross arrived back in Paris. After receiving Turner’s letter he had set off at once, taking the overnight train. He was distressed to find Wilde lying gaunt and thin, his flesh livid, his breathing heavy. The hair on his head had been partially shaved so that leeches might be applied. Though he seemed conscious of Ross’s presence he was unable to speak. Tucker and Claisse were in attendance. They confirmed that Wilde could not live for more than two days. Recalling his promise, Ross asked if he should fetch a priest. Wilde raised his hand in mute acquiescence.77
Ross returned at about four in the afternoon with Fr Cuthbert Dunne, a young Passionist priest attached to St Joseph’s Church on the avenue Hoche (close to the Arc de Triomphe). On their arrival Wilde, drifting into consciousness, tried to speak, but was unable to articulate a word. Nevertheless when Fr Dunne explained that he had come to receive Wilde into the Catholic Church and administer the sacrament of the sick, Wilde’s ‘signs’ and ‘attempted words’ were sufficient to convince the priest that he gave his consent. Wilde was duly baptized, Fr Dunne ignoring two leeches attached above the candidate’s forehead. Leaning close, the priest spoke into Wilde’s good ear ‘the Acts of Faith, Hope, Charity and Contrition’ together with ‘the words to express resignation to the Divine Will’. And Wilde – it s
eemed – attempted to repeat the phrases.78
Having assisted in this performance, Ross went off to send telegrams to Douglas and Frank Harris, letting them know that Wilde was dying. He also wired the solicitor Holman, in order that he might inform Adrian Hope, the guardian of Wilde’s children. Dr Tucker called again in the evening. He thought the patient could linger on ‘for a few days’.
Throughout that night a vigil was maintained at the bedside. A dedicated garde-malade was requisitioned, as the regular nurse was worn out. Ross and Turner slept at the hotel in a room on the floor above. ‘We were called twice by the nurse, who thought Oscar was actually dying,’ Ross reported to More Adey:
About 5.30 in the morning a complete change came over him, the lines of the face altered, and I believe what is called the death rattle began, but I had never heard anything like it before. It sounded like the horrible turning of a crank, and it never ceased until the end. His eyes did not respond to the light test any longer. Foam and blood came from his mouth, and had to be wiped away by someone standing by him all the time.79
At some moment during the morning Fr Dunne, summoned by telegram, returned and administered the sacrament of extreme unction.80 At noon Ross and Turner went out briefly, in turn, to find some lunch. By one o’clock they were both back at the bedside. The strange noise from Wilde’s throat became louder and louder. Dupoirier came in to relieve the two nurses who were also in attendance. At quarter to two Wilde’s breathing altered. Ross went to the bedside and held his hand. Wilde heaved a deep sigh, and his limbs seemed to stretch involuntarily. The breathing became fainter. He died at ten minutes to two exactly.81
Oscar Page 92