When exactly may I expect his letter?
When exactly will Oscar be released?
I suppose you will let me know any other necessary directions about writing the letter. I suppose it would be inadvisable to put more than My dear Oscar at the beginning, or might I put Dearest? Forgive what seems harsh or disagreeable in this letter. My nerves are much unstrung by this incident & you know I am truly fond of you dear More & appreciate you kindness, though your ways are not my ways & I can’t see with your eyes. Yours always, Bosie.’ (Clark).
33 Daily News and Leader (London), 11 December 1913, in Mikhail, 329.
34 RR to M. Adey, CL, 1212.
35 Ricketts, 49.
36 CL, 669.
37 CL, 812; in 1892 RR and Adey had collaborated on a new edition of Melmoth the Wanderer for the publisher Richard Bentley. In their joint introduction (dated February 1892) they recorded ‘their best thanks to Mr Oscar Wilde and Lady Wilde (Speranza) for several details with regard to Maturin’s life’. Michael Seeney, More Adey (2017), 31.
38 CL, 812.
39 CL, 800.
40 CL, 802.
41 CL, 677.
42 CL, 812.
43 Harris, Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions (1918 edition), 2:577.
44 Martin, in Mikhail, 335.
45 CL, 754.
46 CL, 759; Ricketts, 48–9, mentions plans for his play about ‘Pharaoh’; O’Sullivan, 220, on OW evolving new plot-lines from his Bible-reading in prison.
47 CL, 798.
48 CL, 680, 811.
49 CL, 677–8.
50 CL, 827.
51 CL, 806.
52 CL, 800, 813; Harris’s memory of the interview, in the ‘Appendix’ to Harris, Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions (1918 edition), 577, suggests that he simply offered to pay Wilde for any contributions he made to the Saturday Review at a higher rate to that which he gave Bernard Shaw.
53 CL, 791, 811.
54 CL, 828.
55 CL, 809.
56 CL, 809.
57 CL, 829, 831.
58 CL, 807.
59 CL, 813.
60 CL, 814.
61 CL, 827–8.
62 CL, 823.
63 CL, 837.
64 CL, 789.
65 CL, 808.
66 Hansell visited OW at Reading in March 1897 to propose the plan. On 10 April 1897 he sent the terms for such an arrangement as drawn up by himself and Hargrove. OW accepted them, and signed the ‘deed of separation’ at Reading on 17 May 1897; Robins, Oscar Wilde: The Great Drama of His Life, 95–7.
67 ‘In the Depths’, in Mikhail, 330.
68 Arthur Hansell to More Adey, 11 May 1897 (Clark): ‘I have learned today that Mrs Wilde will make the allowance of £150 run as from 20th Feby. last so that there will be an quarter to receive on the 20th inst.’
69 J. G. Adderley, In Slums and Society (1916), 178–9.
70 CL, 828. Ernest Leverson to More Adey, 11 May 1897 (Clark) had given the account balance as £168 11s 6d. The reduction in this amount was probably the result of a payment to the solicitor, Humphreys.
71 A. Schuster to More Adey, 30 April 1897 (Clark).
72 CL, 831 + n.
73 CL, 829.
74 CL, 831.
75 Adderley, In Slums and Society, 178–9; see Robins, 68–9, for details of Adderley’s application to the prison commissioners. Adderley (1861–1942), when at Oxford, had been a founder member of the University Dramatic Society, and OW had praised his performance in the society’s production of Twelfth Night (OET VI, 64). He was also a friend of OW’s cousin, Fr Basil Maturin.
76 ‘News of the World’, Evening News (Sydney), 3 July 1897.
77 Lena Ashwell, Myself A Player (1936), 80.
78 Ricketts, 46.
79 Shane Leslie, ‘Oscariana’, National Review, 15 January 1963, in Ellmann, 492.
80 Leverson, Letters to the Sphinx, 46.
Part X: The Fisherman and his Soul
Chapter 1: Asylum
1 Hyde, Aftermath, 140; Bettany, Stewart Headlam, 131; CL, 832–3. OW’s bath is conjectural, based on his stated desire to cleanse himself of all trace of prison, and the fact that (when he thought he would be going to a hotel, rather than to Headlam’s) he told Turner, ‘Try and find a hotel with a good bathroom close to bedroom: this most essential’ (CL, 833).
2 Leverson, Letters to the Sphinx, 44–7; Maude M. Ffoulk, My Own Past (1915), 213. Ada Leverson said that Wilde ‘made most of the other men look like convicts’.
3 Bettany, Stewart Headlam, 131.
4 There are four slightly conflicting versions of this incident. Bettany, Stewart Headlam, 131, quotes Headlam as saying, ‘at length he asked me to send for one of the Farm Street priests I sent off a message, but they would have nothing to do with him there’. Ada Leverson, in her ‘Reminiscences’ (in Letters to the Sphinx, 45), describes how ‘[OW] wrote a letter, and sent it in a cab to a Roman Catholic Retreat, asking if he might retire there for six months’. LAD, Autobiography, 141, reports that OW, on the day of his release, ‘went to the Brompton Oratory and asked to see one of the Fathers’ (perhaps Fr Bowden). Reggie Turner, in a letter to John H. Hutchinson, 27 February 1937 (Clark), corrects this version, saying that ‘when Oscar came out of prison he didn’t go to the Brompton Oratory, but sent to ask one of the priests to come to him. The priest was either out, or – as I was told [probably by Adey, or Ada Leverson] declined to come.’ Given that OW’s existing Catholic connections were all with the Brompton Oratory it seems the most likely place for him to have directed his inquiries. Schroeder, 191, suggests that OW’s application for a six-month retreat is ‘a myth invented by Ada Leverson’, and Holland and Hart-Davis (CL, 842 n1) also find it ‘implausible’. But it seems to me that OW’s anxieties about money, and about Dieppe (CL, 135–6), and his general state of nervous agitation, might well have prompted him to scout such a plan on the spur of the moment.
5 Leverson, Letters to the Sphinx, 45–7.
6 Hyde, Aftermath, 146.
7 CL, 844.
8 Ross ms of unfinished preface to projected collection of OW letters, CL, 842; R. Turner to Christopher Millard, 29 October [1920] (Clark).
9 Hart-Davis, ed., Max Beerbohm’s Letters to Reggie Turner, 118.
10 CL, 845; Douglas, Autobiography, 145, claimed that when Wilde left England ‘a sum of £800 was subscribed for him by various friends’, and this figure has been re-used by biographers (e.g. Ellmann, 496). But there is no evidence to support it. Although there were reports in the press that a subscription among ‘several gentlemen of the highest respectability’ had raised £500 to give Wilde ‘a fresh start in life’ (Western Mail, 3 June 1897), these, like many articles published in the wake of Wilde’s release, were pure invention. At the Clark Library there is a small accounts notebook, inscribed with the name ‘Melmoth’ – perhaps given to OW by RR to encourage habits of economy. The amounts listed to ‘Credit’ on page 1 are: ‘Cheque – Leverson [the residue of Adela Schuster’s fund] – £111.11s.6d; Notes – Leverson – £80; More [Adey] Collection – £50; Anonymous [Adela Schuster] £25; cheque Harris – £50; Mrs Wilde’s cheque – £37.10s.’ This gives a total of £354 1s 6d. Ricketts did raise £100 to give to Wilde, but RR – aware of the artist’s own straightened circumstances – returned the money. RR, aware of OW’s tendency to excess, seems to have kept back some of the money due to Wilde, so that it would not all be spent at once (by 2 June OW was asking him to send a further £40). Listed on page 3 of the accounts notebook are further small, undated, credits apparently received up until the end of July. They total £90 16s and include contributions from Vincent O’Sullivan, Rothenstein, Lady Queensberry, Smithers, Bosie and a ‘Miss Martin’ [?].
11 CL, 858.
12 CL, 844n.
13 CL, 848.
14 CL, 870.
15 CL, 847.
16 CL, 873.
17 CL, 855.
18 CL, 858.
19 Harris, 226; John Rot
henstein, The Life and Death of Conder (1938), 118.
20 Simona Pakenham, Sixty Miles from England: The English at Dieppe, 1814–1914 (1967), 168.
21 CL, 922; Blanche, Portraits of a Lifetime, 99–100; Sherard, Life, 406; Pakenham, Sixty Miles from England, 168.
22 CL, 881n.
23 CL, 882, 1089.
24 Rothenstein, Men and Memories I, 90.
25 CL, 883, 908, 901, 906.
26 CL, 891, 892–3, 885; Gide, Oscar Wilde, 55–63.
27 Stuart Merrill, in La Plume (15 December 1900), in Mikhail, 466.
28 A. Gide, Oscar Wilde, 57.
29 Ernest Dowson to H. Davray, 11 June 1897, in Flower and Mass, eds, The Letters of Ernest Dowson, 386.
30 CL, 892.
31 Alin Caillas, Oscar Wilde, tel que je l’ai connu (1971), translated in Padraig Rooney, ‘Feasting with Cubs: Wilde at Berneval’, Harp, vol. 11, 1996
32 John Fothergill, ms memoirs, quoted in David Sox, Bachelors of Art (1991), 140.
33 CL, 861–2.
34 Georgette Leblanc, Souvenirs, My Life with Maeterlinck (1932), 127–8.
35 CL, 886.
36 CL, 894.
37 A. Gide, Oscar Wilde 65.
38 CL, 879; Harris, 214; CL, 880.
39 CL, 865n; Maguire, 85–6.
40 CL, 865, 909.
41 CL, 872, 861.
42 CL, 865.
43 H. Martin Holman to More Adey, 10 May 1897 Clark).
44 CL, 876.
45 CL, 873.
46 CL, 880.
47 Lady Queensberry to More Adey, 9 June 1897 (Clark).
48 CL, 901–2; LAD, Autobiography, 151.
49 Sox, Bachelors of Art, 141. Sox suggests that the couplet referred to Fothergill and Douglas, but this seems unlikely. It is perhaps possible that Wilde’s comforting dark-haired ‘love’ was Constance. He may even have fashioned it so that it could taken for either Constance or Ross.
Chapter 2: Artistic Work
1 CL, 865, 869.
2 CL, 874, 923; Harris, 227.
3 CL, 928.
4 CL, 952, 926, 937.
5 CL, 873; Gide, Oscar Wilde, 72; O’Sullivan, 220.
6 John Fothergill’s ms memoirs, quoted in Sox, Bachelors of Art, 139.
7 PMG, 9 August 1897; LAD to More Adey, 24 October 1896 (BL); Octave Mirbeau was said to be the moving force behind the idea of OW’s inclusion.
8 CL, 928–9; when the American producer Augustin Daly approached him, offering an advance for a new work, OW felt obliged to put him off until he had fulfilled these existing obligations.
9 NYT, 12 December 1897, reported a comment in the St James’s Gazette regarding a ‘prominent manager’ (probably Wyndham) ‘preparing to produce [OW’s] latest play under a thinly veiled pseudonym’: ‘The manager has failed to grasp the fact that this dramatist’s career at respectable London playhouses must be considered closed.’
10 CL, 873.
11 CL, 876, 912.
12 CL, 867 and n. Although OW did not mention the plot details of his planned ‘play’ during his time at Berneval, his various references to the piece suggest that it was a commercially viable, English-language, modern comedy-drama about marital relations. And, in view of his subsequent attempts to promote the Alexander scenario, it seems certain that this was the story he was envisaging. The proposed title ‘Love is Law’ was first mentioned in OW’s letter to Harris, 20 June 1900, but is used here for convenience.
13 CL, 915; 918–19.
14 CL, 897; A. Gide, Oscar Wilde, 62; O’Sullivan, 25.
15 OW to LAD, 23 June 1897, CL, 906–7; OW in his letter says the children ‘chose’ their own instruments (‘6 accordions, 5 trompettes, 4 clarions’), but Alin Caillas, in his memoir of the event, recalls: ‘In a large chest was a pile of musical instruments: accordions, trumpets, bugles, a drum and a kettledrum. We drew lots, and whatever the outcome everybody was perfectly satisfied. Félicien Bellêtre got an accordion – which he didn’t know how to play – and I got a magnificent kettledrum which was much easier to play!’
16 CL, 916.
17 CL, 925.
18 CL, 930–1; the publisher was Grant Richards.
19 Pakenham, Sixty Miles from England, 166. Pakenham links this incident to the first days of OW’s exile, but this seems unlikely. At that time he was under the care of Ross and Turner, and was anxious not to draw attention to himself. Moreover Gide, who visited OW on 19 June, claimed that he was the first French writer to see OW after his release.
20 Flower and Mass, eds, The Letters of Ernest Dowson, 390.
21 CL, 355.
22 CL, 924.
23 CL, 926.
24 CL, 919.
25 J-E. Blanche, Dieppe (Paris, 1927), 1–2.
26 CL, 921.
27 Sox, Bachelors of Art, 140; John Fothergill, Confessions of An Innkeeper (1938), 134.
28 Sox, Bachelors of Art, 141; John Fothergill to A. J. A. Symons, [1933?] (Clark).
29 Sox, Bachelors of Art, 141; Sherard, Life, 405.
30 O’Sullivan, 72.
31 Pakenham, Sixty Miles from England, 168.
32 Caillas, Oscar Wilde, tel que je l’ai connu.
33 Blanche, Portraits of a Lifetime, 98.
34 O’Sullivan, 87.
35 CL, 1229.
36 CL, 920.
37 CL, 921, CMW to Otho Lloyd, 5 August 1897, at CL, 865n.
38 Yeats, Autobiographies, 404.
39 CL, 880; in this and several other letters to friends OW asserted, ‘I do not accept the British view that Messalina [a byword for heterosexual vice] is better than Sporus [the infamous catamite of Nero]; these things are matters of temperament’ – while allowing that, as purely ‘sensual pleasures’, they lacked nobility.
40 CL, 887.
41 R. H. Sherard to A. J. A. Symons, 3 June [1937] (Clark). Sherard suggests the incident took place in ‘June 1897’, but as neither he nor RR was at Berneval in that month, and both were staying there in mid-August, the latter date is to be preferred.
42 CL, 922.
43 CL, 953.
44 Smithers to OW, 2 September 1897, in CL, 931n.
45 CL, 922.
46 CL, 929.
47 CL, 861; 893.
48 CL, 936.
49 CL, 923.
50 Sox, Bachelors of Art, 142.
51 LAD, Autobiography, 151; Hyde, LAD, 109–10, suggests that OW’s invitation to meet LAD at Rouen was issued in late July/early August; CL, 930.
52 CL, 934.
53 LAD, Autobiography, 152.
54 Douglas Murray, Bosie (2000), 104; the lines come from Donne’s ‘Canonisation’.
55 LAD wrote to his mother asking for £75, claiming it was needed to repay a debt of ‘honour’ that he and Percy owed. She sent £10 as a first instalment via Adey. Sybil Queensberry to More Adey, 1 August 1897 (Clark).
56 CL, 935; 1029.
57 CL, 936.
58 CL, 932–3.
59 LAD, Autobiography, 152.
60 Max Beerbohm to Reggie Turner, 5 September 1897, in Hart-Davis, ed., Max Beerbohm’s Letters to Reggie Turner, 122.
61 CL, 934.
62 CL, 935.
63 CL, 937.
64 CL, 937; Arthur Hansell to OW, 31 August 1897 (Clark); CL, 936.
65 Caillas, Oscar Wilde, tel que je l’ai connu; O’Sullivan, 194–7.
66 W. H. Chesson, in Mikhail, 376.
67 CL, 935, 936.
68 CL, 935.
69 CL, 932–3.
Chapter 3: Outcast Men
1 The hotel, like the other grand waterfront hotels, filled the block between the via Partenope and via Chiatamone, and had entrances on each street. It has since been replaced by the Royal Continental Hotel.
2 CL, 947.
3 CL, 947.
4 CL, 943; CL, 947.
5 LAD, Autobiography, 152.
6 CL, 949.
7 CL, 952.
8 CL, 952.
9 CL, 947.
10 CMW to Carlos Blacke
r, 26 September 1897, in Maguire, 94.
11 Vyvyan Holland to Frank Harris, quoted in Ellmann, 513; Vyvyan left for his school in Monaco shortly before the end of the month. CMW to Carlos Blacker, 30 September 1897, BL RP3291.
12 CMW to Carlos Blacker, 26 September 1897, in Maguire, 94.
13 CMW to Carlos Blacker, 26 September 1897, CL, 955n.
14 OW to RR, CL, 942–3.
15 OW to Reggie Turner, CL, 948.
16 OW to Reggie Turner, CL, 948.
17 Paton to Carlos Blacker, 29 October 1897, quoted in Maguire, 96.
18 Quoted in Maguire, 96.
19 CL, 962, Sherard, SUF, 258.
20 CL, 961.
21 CL, 1006.
22 CL, 949.
23 CL, 963.
24 Wintermans, Alfred Douglas, 87.
25 CL, 994. CMW’s letter was written on 29 September 1897.
26 CL, 955.
27 OW to More Adey, CL, 994.
28 RR to Schuster, CL, 1229.
29 CMW to Carlos Blacker; 1 October 1897, in Moyle, 311.
30 CL, 954–5.
31 LAD, Autobiography, 154; OW to RR, CL, 955.
32 CL, 943, 945, 948, 949.
33 CL, 957.
34 CL, 945.
35 CL, 956.
36 ‘Arnoldo de Lisle’ (G. G. Rocco) in Miracco, Verso il Sole (Naples, 1981), 23, refers to OW moving to a ‘grazioso appartamento’ at the ‘Villa del Giudice [sic]’; CL, 968. LAD to George Ives, 22 October 1897, Clark: ‘We shall be here to the end of January, we have taken this place till then.’ Although it is sometimes stated that LAD paid for the villa, the money must have come from Young’s £100. OW told Ross that since the opera libretto was to be a collaboration, LAD had ‘had half of the £100 provided by Dal Young’ RR to Clement Shorter, 27 December 1916 (Clark). And LAD, describing the villa to Percy, wrote, ‘Oscar Wilde is with me, and we have taken the place between us. LAD to Percy Douglas, 5 November 1897 (BL).
37 Il Pungolo parlamentare, 9–10 October 1897, in Miracco, Verso il Sole, 30–1; LAD, Autobiography, 158.
38 CL, 950.
39 P. Borelli, Esperia (1903), in Miracco, Verso il Sole, 46–7.
40 LAD, Autobiography, 158. The ms of LAD, ‘Autobiography’ (Morgan) gives the servants’ names as ‘Peppino and Ettore’; Il Pungolo Parlamentare, 9–10 October. The Villa [del] Giudice is now No. 37 via Posillipo. There is some doubt as to exactly where OW and LAD stayed as there are several buildings on the site. LAD, Autobiography, 158, recalled ‘the cost of feeding Wilde and myself and the servants was about 12 francs a day’ (ms 10 francs) This converted to 9s 2¼ d – a modest, but not negligible amount.
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