address in beautiful phraseology a young man who had much culture and
charm."
Sir FRANK.--"How many times have you been in the College Street
'snuggery' of the man Taylor?"
WITNESS.--"I do not think more than five or six times."
Sir FRANK.--"Who did you meet there?"
WITNESS.--"Sidney Mavor and Schwabe--I cannot remember any others. I have
not been there since I met Wood there."
Sir FRANK.--"With regard to the Savoy Hotel Witnesses?"
WITNESS.--"Their evidence is quite untrue."
Sir FRANK.--"You deny that the bed-linen was marked in the way described?"
WITNESS.--"I do not examine bed-linen when I arise. I am not a housemaid."
Sir FRANK.--"Were the stains there, Sir?"
WITNESS.--"If they were there, they were not caused in the way the
Prosecution most filthily suggests."
Sir Edward Clarke, after a slight "breeze" with the Solicitor-General as
to the right to the last word to the jury, then addressed that devoted
band of men for the third time, and asked for the acquittal of his client
on all the counts.
Sir Frank Lockwood also addressed the jury and the Court then adjoined.
Next day the Solicitor-General, resuming his speech on behalf of the Crown
dealt in details with the arguments of Sir E. Clarke in defence of Wilde,
and commented in strong terms on observations that he made respecting the
lofty situation of Wilde, with his literary accomplishments, for the
purpose of influencing the judgment of the young. He said that the jury
ought to discard absolutely any such appeal, to apply simply their
common-sense to the testimony; and to form a conclusion on the evidence,
which he submitted fully established the charges.
He was commenting on another branch of the case, when Sir E. Clarke
interposed on the ground that the learned Solicitor-General was alluding
to incidents connected with another trial. The Solicitor-General
maintained that he was strictly within his rights, and the Judge held that
the latter was entitled to make the comments objected to. "My learned
friend does not appear to have gained a great deal by his superfluity of
interruption", remarked the Solicitor-General suavely, and the Court
laughed loudly. The Judge said that this sort of thing was most offensive
to him. It was painful enough to have to try such a case and keep the
scales of justice evenly balanced without the Court being pestered with
meaningless laughter and applause. If such conduct were repeated he would
have the Court cleared.
The Solicitor-General then criticised the answers given by Wilde to the
charges, which explanations he submitted, were not worthy of belief. The
jury could not fail to put the interpretation on the conduct of the
accused that he was a guilty man and they ought to say so by their
verdict.
The Judge, in summing-up, referred to the difficulties of the case in some
of its features. He regretted, that if the conspiracy counts were
unnecessary, or could not be established, they should have been placed in
the indictment. The jury must not surrender their own independent judgment
in dealing with the facts and ought to discard everything which was not
relevant to the issue before them, or did not assist their judgment.
He did not desire to comment more than he could help about Lord Alfred
Douglas or the Marquis of Queensberry, but the whole of this lamentable
enquiry arose through the defendant's association with Lord A. Douglas.
He did not think that the action of the Marquis of Queensberry in leaving
the card at the defendant's club, whatever motives he had, was that of a
gentleman. The jury were entitled to consider that these alleged acts
happened some years ago. They ought to be the best judges as to the
testimony of the witnesses and whether it was worthy of belief.
The letters written by the accused to Lord A. Douglas were undoubtedly
open to suspicion, and they had an important bearing on Wood's evidence.
There was no corroboration of Wood as to the visit to Tite Street, and if
his story had been true, he thought that some corroboration might have
been obtained. Wood belonged to the vilest class of person which Society
was pestered with, and the jury ought not to believe his story unless
satisfactorily corroborated.
Their decision must turn on the character of the first introduction of
Wilde to Wood. Did they believe that Wilde was actuated by charitable
motives or by improper motives?
The foreman of the jury, interposing at this stage, asked whether a
warrant had been issued for the arrest of Lord Alfred Douglas and if not,
whether it was intended to issue one.
The Judge said he could not tell, but he thought not. It was a matter they
could not now discuss. The granting of a warrant depended not upon the
inferences to be drawn from the letters referred to in the case, but on
the production of evidence of specific acts. There was a disadvantage in
speculating on this question. They must deal with the evidence before them
and with that alone. The foreman said, "If we are to deduce from the
letters it applies to Lord Alfred Douglas equally as to the defendant."
THE JUDGE.--"In regard to the question as to the absence of Lord A.
Douglas, I warn you not to be influenced by any consideration of the kind.
All that they knew was that Lord A. Douglas went to Paris shortly after
the last trial and had remained there since. He felt sure that if the
circumstances justified it, the necessary proceedings could be taken."
His lordship dealt with each of the charges, and the evidence in support
of them, and he then, after thanking the jury for the patient manner in
which they had attended to the case, left the issues in their hands.
The jury retired to consider their verdict at half past three o'clock and
at half past five they returned into Court.
_THE VERDICT_
Amidst breathless excitement, the Foreman, in answer to the usual formal
questions, announced the verdict, "Guilty."
Sir EDWARD CLARKE.--"I apply, my lord, for a postponement of sentence."
The JUDGE.--"I must certainly refuse that request. I can only characterise
the offences as the worst that have ever come under my notice. I have,
however, no wish to add to the pain that must be felt by the defendants. I
sentence both Wilde and Taylor to two years imprisonment with hard
labour."
The sentence was met with some cries of "shame", "a scandalous verdict",
"unjust," by certain persons in Court. The two prisoners appeared dazed
and Wilde especially seemed ready to faint as he was hurried out of sight
to the cells.
* * * * *
Thus perished by his own act a man who might have made a lasting mark in
British Literature and secured for himself no mean place in the annals of
his time.
He forfeited, in the pursuit of forbidden pleasures, if pleasures they
can be called, all and everything that made life dear.
He entered upon his incarceration bankrupt in reputation, in friends, in
pocket, and had not even left to him the poor shreds of his own
self-esteem.
He went into gaol, knowing that if he emerged alive, the darkness would
swallow him up and that his world--the spheres which had delighted to
honour him--would know him no more.
He had covered his name with infamy and sank his own celebrity in a slough
of slime and filth.
He would die to leave behind him what?--the name of a man who was
absolutely governed by his own vices and to whom no act of immorality was
too foul or horrible.
Oscar Wilde emerged from prison in every way a broken man. The wonderful
descriptive force of the _Ballad of Reading Gaol_; the perfect, torturing
self-analysis of _De Profundis_ speak eloquently of powers unimpaired; but
they were the swan-songs of a once great mind. All his abilities had fled.
He seemed unable to concentrate his mind upon anything. He took up certain
subjects, played with them, and wearied of them in a day. French authors
did not ostracise the erratic English genius when he hid himself amongst
them and they honestly endeavoured to find him employment. But his
faculties had been blunted by the horrors of prison life. His epigrams had
lost their edge. His aphorisms were trite and aimless. He abandoned every
subject he took up, in despair. His mind died before his body. He suffered
from a complete mental atrophy. A nightingale cannot sing in a cage. A
genius cannot flourish in a prison. He died in two years and is now--the
merest memory! Let us remember this of him: if he sinned much, he suffered
much.
Peace to his ashes!
HIS LAST BOOK
AND HIS LAST YEARS IN PARIS
_By_ "_A_"
(LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS?)
The following three articles, two of them from the "St. James's Gazette"
and one from the "Motorist", are marked with so much good sense and
dissipate so many errors touching Oscar Wilde's last Years in Paris that
the publisher deemed it a duty to reproduce them here as a permanent
answer to the wild legends circulated about the subject of this book.
OSCAR WILDE
His last Book and his last Years
_The publication of Oscar Wilde's last book, "De Profundis," has revived
interest in the closing scenes of his life, and we to-day print the first
of two articles dealing with his last years in Paris from a source which
puts their authenticity beyond question._
_The one question which inevitably suggested itself to the reader of "De
Profundis," was, "What was the effect of his prison reflections on his
subsequent life?" The book is full not only of frank admissions of the
error of his ways, but of projects for his future activity. "I hope," he
wrote, in reply to some criticisms on the relations of art and morals, "to
live long enough to produce work of such a character that I shall be able
at the end of my days to say, "Yes, that is just where the artistic life
leads a man!" He mentions in particular two subjects on which he proposed
to write, "Christ as the Precursor of the Romantic Movement in Life" and
"The Artistic Life Considered in its Relation to Conduct." These
resolutions were never carried out, for reasons some of which the writer
of the following article indicates._
_Oscar Wilde was released from prison in May, 1897. He records in his
letters the joy of the thought that at that time "both the lilac and the
laburnum will be blooming in the gardens." The closing sentences of the
book may be recalled: "Society, as we have constituted it, will have no
place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on
unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and
secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the
night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without
stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me
to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs
make me whole."_
_He died in November, 1900, three years and a half after his release from
Reading Gaol._
* * * * *
Monsieur Joseph Renaud, whose translation of Oscar Wilde's "Intentions"
has just appeared in Paris, has given a good example of how history is
made in his preface to that work. He recounts an obviously imaginary
meeting between himself and Oscar Wilde in a bar on the Boulevard des
Italiens. He concludes the episode, such as it is, with these words:
"Nothing remained of him but his musical voice and his large blue
childlike eyes." Oscar Wilde's eyes were curious--long, narrow, and green.
Anything less childlike it would be hard to imagine. To the physiognomist
they were his most remarkable feature, and redeemed his face from the
heaviness that in other respects characterised it. So much for M. Joseph
Renaud's powers of observation.
The complacent unanimity with which the chroniclers of Oscar Wilde's last
years in Paris have accepted and spread the "legend" of his life in that
city is remarkable, and would be exasperating considering its utter
falsity to anyone who was not aware of their incompetence to deal with the
subject. Scarcely one of his self-constituted biographers had more than
the very slightest acquaintance with him, and their records and
impressions of him are chiefly made up of stale gossip and secondhand
anecdotes. The stories of his supposed privations, his frequent inability
to obtain a square meal, his lonely and tragic death in a sordid lodging,
and his cheap funeral are all grotesquely false.
True, Oscar Wilde, who for several years before his conviction had been
making at least L5,000 a year, found it very hard to live on his rather
precarious income after he came out of prison; he was often very "hard
up," and often did not know where to turn for a coin, but I will
undertake to prove to anyone whom it may concern that from the day he left
prison till the day of his death his income averaged at least L400 a year.
He had, moreover, far too many devoted friends in Paris ever to be in need
of a meal provided he would take the trouble to walk a few hundred yards
or take a cab to one of half a dozen houses. His death certainly was
tragic--deaths are apt to be tragic--but he was surrounded by friends when
he died, and his funeral was not cheap; I happen to have paid for it in
conjunction with another friend of his, so I ought to know.
He did not become a Roman Catholic before he died. He was, at the instance
of a great friend of his, himself a devout Catholic, "received into the
Church" a few hours before he died; but he had then been unconscious for
many hours, and he died without ever having any idea of the liberty that
had been taken with his unconscious body. Whether he would have approved
or not of the step taken by his friend is a matter on which I should not
like to express a too positive opinion, but it is certain that it would
not do him any harm, and, apart from all questions of religion and
sentiment, it facilitated the arrangements which had to be made for his
interment in a Catholic country, in view of the fact that no member of
his family took any steps to claim his body or arrange for his funeral.
Having disposed of certain false impressions in regard to various facts of
his life and death in Paris, I may turn to what are less easily controlled
and examined theories as to that life. Without wishing to be paradoxical,
or harshly destructive of the carefully cherished sentiment of poetic
justice so dear to the British mind (and the French mind, too, for that
matter), I give it as my firm opinion that Oscar Wilde was, on the whole,
fairly happy during the last years of his life. He had an extraordinarily
buoyant and happy temperament, a splendid sense of humour, and an
unrivalled faculty for enjoyment of the present. Of course, he had his bad
moments, moments of depression and sense of loss and defeat, but they were
not of long duration. It was part of his pose to luxuriate a little in the
details of his tragic circumstances. He harrowed the feelings of many of
those whom he came across; words of woe poured from his lips; he painted
an image of himself, destitute, abandoned, starving even (I have heard him
use the word after a very good dinner at Paillard's); as he proceeded he
was caught by the pathos of his own words, his beautiful voice trembled
with emotion, his eyes swam with tears; and then, suddenly, by a swift,
indescribably brilliant, whimsical touch, a swallow-wing flash on the
waters of eloquence, the tone changed and rippled with laughter, bringing
with it his audience, relieved, delighted, and bubbling into
uncontrollable merriment.
He never lost his marvellous gift of talking; after he came out of prison
he talked better than before. Everyone who knew him really before and
after his imprisonment is agreed about that. His conversation was richer,
more human, and generally on a higher intellectual level. In French he
talked as well as in English; to my own English ear his French used to
seem rather laboured and his accent too marked, but I am assured by
Frenchmen who heard him talk that such was not the effect produced on
them.
He explained to me his inability to write, by saying that when he sat down
to write he always inevitably began to think of his past life, and that
this made him miserable and upset his spirits. As long as he talked and
sat in cafes and "watched life," as his phrase was, he was happy, and he
had the luck to be a good sleeper, so that only the silence and
self-communing necessary to literary work brought him visions of his
terrible sufferings in the past and made his old wounds bleed again. My
own theory as to his literary sterility at this period is that he was
essentially an interpreter of life, and that his existence in Paris was
too narrow and too limited to stir him to creation. At his best he
reflected life in a magic mirror, but the little corner of life he saw in
Paris was not worth reflecting. If he could have been provided with a
brilliant "entourage" of sympathetic listeners as of old and taken through
a gay season in London, he would have begun to write again. Curiously
enough, society was the breath of life to him, and what he felt more than
anything else in his "St. Helena" in Paris, as he often told me, was the
absence of the smart and pretty women who in the old days sat at his feet!
A.
OSCAR WILDE'S
LAST YEARS IN PARIS.--II
The French possess the faculty, very rare in England, of differentiating
between a man and his work. They are utterly incapable of judging literary
work by the moral character of its author. I have never yet met a
Frenchman who was able to comprehend the attitude of the English public
towards Oscar Wilde after his release from prison. They were completely
mystified by it. An eminent French man-of-letters said to me one day: "You
have a man of genius, he commits crimes, you put him in prison, you
destroy his whole life, you take away his fortune, you ruin his health,
you kill his mother, his wife, and his brother (_sic_), you refuse to
speak to him, you exile him from your country. That is very severe. In
France we should never so treat a man of genius, but _enfin ca peut se
comprendre_. But not content with that, you taboo his books and his plays,
which before you enjoyed and admired, and _pour comble de tout_ you are
very angry if he goes into a restaurant and orders himself some dinner.
_Il faut pourtant qu'il mange ce pauvre homme!_" If I had been
representing the British public in an official capacity I should have
probably given expression to its views and furnished a sufficient repartee
to my voluble French friend by replying: "_Je n'en vois pas la
necessite_."
Fortunately for Oscar Wilde, the French took another view of the attitude
to adopt towards a man who has offended against society, and who has been
punished for it. Never by a word or a hint did they show that they
remembered that offence, which, in their view, had been atoned for and
wiped out. Oscar Wilde remained for them always _un grand homme, un
maitre_, a distinguished man, to be treated with deference and respect
and, because he had suffered much, with sympathy. It says a great deal for
the innate courtesy and chivalry of the French character that a man in
Oscar Wilde's position, as well known by sight, as he once remarked to me,
as the Eiffel Tower, should have been able to go freely about in theatres,
restaurants, and cafes without encountering any kind of hostility or even
impertinent curiosity.
It was this benevolent attitude of Paris towards him that enabled him to
live and, in a fashion, to enjoy life. His audience was sadly reduced and
precarious, and except on some few occasions it was of inferior
intellectual calibre; but still he had an audience, and an audience to him
was everything. Nor was he altogether deprived of the society of men of
his own class and value. Many of the most brilliant young writers in
France were proud to sit at his feet and enjoy his brilliant conversation,
chief among whom I may mention that accomplished critic and essayist,
Monsieur Ernest Lajeunesse, who is the author of what is perhaps the best
posthumous notice of him that has been published in France in that
excellent magazine, the "Revue blanche"; among older men who kept up their
friendship with him, Octave Mirbeau, Moreas, Paul Fort, Henri Bauer, and
Jean Lorrain may be mentioned.
In contrast to this attitude taken up towards him by so many distinguished
and eminent men, I cannot refrain from recalling the attitude adopted by
the general run of English-speaking residents in Paris. For the credit of
my country I am glad to be able to put them down mostly as Americans, or
at any rate so Americanised by the constant absorption of "American
drinks" as to be indistinguishable from the genuine article. These
gentlemen "guessed they didn't want Oscar Wilde to be sitting around" in
the bars where they were in the habit of shedding the light of their
presence, and from one of these establishments Oscar Wilde was requested
by the proprietor to withdraw at the instance of one of our "American
cousins" who is now serving a term of two years penal servitude for
holding up and robbing a bank!
Oscar Wilde, to do him justice, bore this sort of rebuff with astonishing
good temper and sweetness. His sense of humour and his invincible
self-esteem kept him from brooding over what to another man might have
appeared intolerable, and he certainly possessed the philosophical
temperament to a greater extent than any other man I have ever come
across. Every now and then one or other of the very few faithful English
friends left to him would turn up in Paris and take him to dinner at one
of the best restaurants, and anyone who met him on one of these occasions
would have found it difficult to believe that he had ever passed through
such awful experiences. Whether he was expounding some theory, grave or
fantastic, embroidering it the while with flashes of impromptu wit or
deepening it with extraordinary and intimate learning (for, as Ernest
Lajeunesse says, _he knew everything_), or whether he was "keeping the
table in a roar" with his delightfully whimsical humour, summer-lightning
that flashed and hurt no one, he was equally admirable. To have lived in
his lifetime and not to have heard him talk is as though one had lived for
years at Athens without going to look at the Parthenon.
I wish I could remember one-hundredth part of the good things he said. He
was extraordinarily quick in answer and repartee, and anyone who says that
his wit was the result of preparation and midnight oil can never have
heard him speak. I remember once at dinner a friend of his who had
formerly been in the "Blues," pointing out that in the opening stanza of
"The Ballad of Reading Jail" he had made a mistake in speaking of the
"scarlet coat" of the man who was hanged; he was, as the dedication of the
poem says, a private in the "Blues," and his coat would therefore
naturally not be scarlet. The lines go--
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red.
"Well, what could I do," said Oscar Wilde plaintively, "I couldn't very
well say
He did not wear his azure coat,
For blood and wine are blue--
could I?"
The last time I saw him was about three months before he died. I took him
to dinner at the Grand Cafe. He was then perfectly well and in the highest
spirits. All through dinner he kept me delighted and amused. Only
afterwards, just before I left him, he became rather depressed. He
actually told me that he didn't think he was going to live long; he had a
presentiment, he said. I tried to turn it off into a joke, but he was
quite serious. "Somehow," he said, "I don't think I shall live to see the
new century." Then a long pause. "If another century began, and I was
still alive, it would be really more than the English could stand." And so
I left him, never to see him alive again.
Just before he died he came to, after a long period of unconsciousness and
said to a faithful friend who sat by his bedside, "I have had a dreadful
dream; I dreamt that I dined with the dead." "My dear Oscar," replied his
friend, "I am sure you were the life and soul of the party." "Really, you
are sometimes very witty," replied Oscar Wilde, and I believe those are
his last recorded words. The jest was admirable and in his own _genre_; it
was prompted by ready wit and kindness, and because of it Oscar Wilde went
off into his last unconscious phase, which lasted for twelve hours, with
a smile on his lips. I cherish a hope that it is also prophetic, Death
would have no terrors for me if only I were sure of "dining with the
dead."[14]