This brief delusion that we call our life,
Where all we can accomplish is to die,
and of the many figures in the literary, artistic, and social world
of the day whom I met in Wilde’s company, some have achieved death,
some, knighthood (Mr. Stephen Phillips once said in my hearing,
he was not sure which was the better--or the worse), and some,
distinction. Of the remainder, the worst that could be said against
them is that they have since come a crash financially, as Wilde
himself did. It was only in money matters that I ever had cause to
think Wilde immoral.
In setting down these recollections and impressions I do not write
as one of his intimates. We were friends, we corresponded, I dined
with him and Mrs. Wilde at 16 Tite Street, and he with me, and we
forgathered now and then at clubs, theatrical first nights, and
literary at homes; but the occasions on which we met were not very
many, all told; nor did I desire more closely to cultivate him, and
for two reasons. One was that the expensive rate at which he lived
made him impossible as other than a very occasional companion, and
the other was that “straightness” in money matters is to me one
of the first essentials in the man of whom one makes a friend. On
this point Wilde and I did not see alike. He laughed at me when I
said that, while counting it no dishonour to be poor, I did count
it something of a dishonour deliberately and self-indulgently to
incur liabilities one might not be able to meet. In his vocabulary
there were few more contemptuous words than that of “tradesman,”
as the following incident, which I may perhaps be pardoned for
interpolating, will show.
When _The Picture of Dorian Grey_ was in the press, Wilde came in to
see me one morning.
“My nerves are all to pieces,” he said, “and I’m going to Paris for
a change. Here are the proofs of my novel. I have read them very
carefully, and I think all is correct with one exception. Like most
Irishmen, I sometimes write ‘I will be there,’ when it should be ‘I
shall be there,’ and so on. Would you, like a dear good fellow, mind
going through the proofs, and if you see any ‘wills’ or ‘shalls’
used wrongly, put them right and then pass for press? Of course,
if you should spot anything else that strikes you as wrong, I’d be
infinitely obliged if you would make the correction.”
I agreed, went through proofs, made the necessary alterations, and
passed for press. Two or three days after I had a telegram from
Paris. “Terrible blunder in book, coming back specially. Stop all
proofs. Wilde.” I did so, and awaited events. Wilde arrived in a
hansom.
“It is not too late? For heaven’s sake tell me it is not too late?”
he affected to gasp.
“Oh, make yourself easy. It was not too late. I stopped the proofs,”
I answered.
“Thank God!” he exclaimed theatrically, throwing himself into a
chair and making a great show of wiping away the perspiration from a
perfectly dry brow. “I should never have forgiven myself, or you, had
my book gone out disfigured by such a blunder--by such a crime as I
count it against art.”
Then in a faint undertone, as if the thing were too unholy to speak
of above one’s breath, he said:
“There’s a picture framer--a mere tradesman--in my story, isn’t
there?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What have I called him?”
“Ashton, I think. Yes, Ashton,” I answered.
He simulated a shudder and seemed to wince at the words.
“Don’t repeat it! Don’t repeat it! It is more than my shattered
nerves can stand. Ashton is a gentleman’s name,” he spoke brokenly,
and wrung his hands as if in anguish. “And I’ve given it--God forgive
me--to a tradesman! It must be changed to Hubbard. Hubbard positively
smells of the tradesman!”
And having successfully worked off this wheeze on me, Oscar became
himself again, and sat up with a happy smile to enjoy his own and my
congratulations on the exquisiteness of his art.
Wilde’s contempt for tradesmen, as instanced in this anecdote, I did
not share. Once, when he had spoken thus contemptuously because a
shopkeeper was suing a certain impecunious but extravagant artist
acquaintance of his and mine for a debt incurred, I told Wilde that
even if I despised “tradesmen” as he and the artist did, I should
despise myself much more were I to defraud a despised tradesman by
ordering goods for which I had neither the means nor the intention
to pay. He was not in the least offended, perhaps because the remark
suggested an aphorism--the exact wording I forget, but it was to the
effect that only mediocrity concerned itself with tradesmen’s bills,
that a writer of genius, whether a playwright or a novelist, ran into
debt as surely as his play or his book ran into royalties. I remember
the occasion well, though I do not remember the phrasing of his
aphorism, for on that particular morning he had, for the first time
within my experience, shown less than his usual nice consideration
for others which--whether due merely to love of approbation or to
finer feelings--made him so agreeable and delightful a companion.
When he came in I offered him my cigarette case. They were of a brand
he had often himself smoked in the past--in fact it was he who had
first recommended them to me--quite good tobacco and well made, but
moderate in price, and with no pretence to be of the very best. He
took one, lit it, drew a few puffs, and then tossing it practically
unsmoked on the fire, drew out his own bejewelled case and lit up one
of his own. That was very unlike Wilde as I had known him in his less
prosperous days. Then he would have said, “I have accustomed myself
to smoke another brand lately and am something of a creature of
habit. Do you mind if I smoke one of my own?”
Perhaps the omission was due only to preoccupation and
forgetfulness. Perhaps the incident will be accounted too trivial,
thus seriously to put on record. Possibly, but it is often by the
cumulative effect of small and seemingly trivial details--not always
by the bold broad strokes--that the truest portrait is drawn. Into
the tragedy of human life we are not often permitted to look, but
just as, since all fish swim against the stream, a minnow will serve
to show the run of the current, no less than a pike, so trivial
incidents serve sometimes to point the trend of life or of character
as truly as great happenings.
Nor in Wilde’s case were other signs of change in him wanting. His
first play had just then been produced and with success. He struck
me on that particular morning as unpleasantly flushed, as already
coarsened, almost bloated by success. There was a suspicion of
insolence in his manner that was new to me, and from that time onward
he and I--perhaps the fault was mine--seemed to lose touch of each
other, and to drift entirely apart. Wilde died in the late autumn of
1900. I never saw or heard from him again after the spring of 1892.
V
Was it not Mr. Stead who defined paradox as a truth standing on
its head? Wilde’s aim in paradox was so to manipulate truth and
falsehood as to make the result startle one by appearing to reverse
the existing standard. A paradox by him was sometimes a lie and a
truth trotting side by side together in double harness like a pair of
horses, but each so cleverly disguised that one was not quite sure
which horse was which.
More often a paradox by Wilde was a lie (or a seeming lie) and a
truth (or a seeming truth) driven the one in front of the other
tandem-wise; but whichever Wilde had placed last was tolerably sure
to take one by surprise by lashing out with its heels when one came
to look at it. When Wilde had carefully arranged a paradox with
a kick in it and wished to see one jump, he spoke the first half
smilingly to put one off one’s guard. Then he would pause, suddenly
become grave and thoughtful as if searching his words. But the pause
was not for loss of a word. It was no pause of momentary inaction.
It was, on the contrary, if I may vary the simile, like the backward
swing of a rifle, and was meant only to give fuller play and power
to the forward thrust that bayonets an enemy. No sooner was one off
one’s guard by the smile and the momentary silence, than swift and
sure came the sting of the stab.
Let me give an illustration. Wilde once asked me some question
concerning my religious belief which I did my best to answer frankly
and, as he was good enough afterwards to say, without the cant which
he so loathed. When I had made an end of it, he said gravely:
“You are so evidently, so unmistakably sincere and most of all so
truthful” (all this running smoothly and smilingly) “that” (then came
the grave look and the pause as if at a loss for a word, followed by
the swift stab) “I can’t believe a single word you say.”
And so, having discharged his missile, Wilde, no longer lolling
indolently forward in his seat, pulled himself backwards, and up like
a gunner taking a pace to the rear, or to the side of his gun the
better to see the crash of the shell upon the target, and then, if I
may so word it, “smiled all over.” He was so openly, so provokingly
pleased with himself and with this particular paradox that not to
be a party to the gratification of such sinful vanity, instead of
complimenting him, as he had expected, on its neatness, I ignored the
palpable hit, and inquired:
“Where are you dining to-night, Wilde?”
“At the Duchess of So-and-so’s,” he answered.
“Precisely. Who is the guest you have marked down, upon whom--when
everybody is listening--to work off that carefully prepared impromptu
wheeze about ‘You are so truthful that I can’t believe a single word
you say,’ which you have just fired off on me?”
Wilde sighed deeply and threw out his hands with a gesture of
despair, but the ghost of a glint of a smile in the corner of his eye
signalled a bull’s-eye to me.
“Compliments are thrown away on such coarse creatures as you,”
he said. “This very morning I called into being a new and
wonderful aphorism--‘A gentleman never goes east of Temple
Bar’--notwithstanding which I have brought wit and fame and fashion
to lighten your editorial room in the City. Why? To pay you the
supremest compliment one artist can pay another one. To make you the
only confidant of one of my most graceful and delicate fancies. I was
about to tell you----”
“Yes, I know,” I interpolated rudely, “you have coined a witty new
aphorism, or thought out a lovely fancy. You do both and do them more
than well. But you are going to the Duchess’s dinner party to-night,
and you will contrive so to turn what is said that your aphorism or
fancy seems to rise as naturally and spontaneously to the surface
of the conversation as the bubbles rise to the surface of the glass
of champagne at your side. But you are not, as actors say, sure of
your ‘words.’ You think it would be as well to have something of the
nature of a dress rehearsal. So you have dropped in here, on your way
to your florist’s or to some one else, to try it upon me as somebody
is said to try his jokes on his dog before publishing them. I don’t
mind playing ‘dog’ in your rôle in the least, but I object to being
made a stalking-horse for the Duchess’s honoured guest.”
I have no intention in these Recollections to play the reporter to
my own uninteresting share in the conversation, but one must do so
sometimes for obvious reasons. In this case, I wish to illustrate
the means by which I sometimes succeeded in inducing Wilde to drop
attitudinising and to be his natural self.
There is a certain Professor of my acquaintance, a man of brilliant
abilities and incomparable knowledge, whom I used to meet at a
club--let us call him Clough. When Clough could be induced to talk
upon the matters in which he was an expert, he was worth travelling
many miles to hear. Unfortunately he had an aggressive, even
offensive manner, and was troubled with self-complacent egotism. It
was only after a systematic course of roughness and rudeness at the
hands of his fellow clubmen that Clough was endurable, or could be
got to talk of anything but himself.
One would sometimes hear a fellow clubman say, “Clough is in the
other room, just down from the ‘Varsity; and more full of information
than ever. Two or three capable members are administering the
usual course of medicine--‘Cloughing’ we call it now--of flatly
contradicting every word he says, ‘trailing’ him, snubbing him,
and otherwise reducing his abnormally swollen head to moderate
dimensions. Then he will be better worth listening to on his own
subjects than any other man in England. Don’t miss it.”
Similarly, in my intercourse with Wilde, I found that a certain
amount of “Cloughing,” such as, “Now then, Wilde! You know you are
only showing off, as we used to say at home when I was one of a
family of kids. Stow it, and talk sense,” had equally good result. He
would protest at first when minded to let me off lightly, that such
“engaging ingenuousness” alarmed and silenced him. At other times he
would vow that my coarseness made him shudder and wince--that it was
like crushing a beautiful butterfly, to bludgeon a sensitive creature
of moods and impulses with unseemly jibes and blatant speech. Having,
however, thus delivered himself and made his protest, he would often
stultify that protest and provide me with an excuse to myself for my
Philistinism, by throwing aside his stilts (assumed possibly because
he imagined they advertised him to advantage above the heads of
those who walk afoot in the Vanity Fair of Literature and Art), and
by showing himself infinitely more interesting when seen naturally
and near at hand than when stilting it affectedly in mid-air above
one’s head.
At times, and when he had forgotten his grievance at being thus
rudely pulled down, he would forget--egotist that he was--even
himself, in speaking of his hopes, his ambitions and his dreams;
and in his rare flashes of sincerity would show himself as greater
and nobler of soul than many who met and talked to him only in the
_salon_ or in society perhaps realised.
There is a graceful fancy of Wilde’s--I do not know whether he ever
told it in print--the hero of which was a poet lad who had dreamed
so often and written such lovely songs about the mermaid, that at
last--since the dream-world was more real to him than the waking
world--he was convinced that mermaids there really are in the seas
around our shores, and that if one watched long and patiently they
might by mortal eye be seen. So day and night the poet watched and
waited, but saw nothing. And when his friends asked him, “Have you
seen the mermaids?” he answered, “Yes, by moonlight I saw them at
play among the rollers,” telling thereafter what he had seen and with
such vividness and beauty that almost he persuaded the listeners
to believe the story. But one night by moonlight the poet did
indeed have sight of the mermaids, and in silence he came away and
thereafter told no one what he had seen.
So, of Wilde himself, I cannot but hope and believe that though he
told many stories of exceeding beauty, none of which were true, yet
hidden away in his heart was much that was gracious, true, noble
and beautiful, the story of which will now never be known, for like
the poet lad of his fantasy he told it to no one. Of what was evil
and what was good in his life, only a merciful God can strike the
balance, and only a merciful God shall judge.