Thou hast led me like an heathen sacrifice,
With music and with fatal pomp of flowers,
To my eternal ruin.--Webster's _The White Devil_.
"Lady Windermere's Fan" was a success in every sense of the word, and
during its run London was at Oscar's feet. There were always a few
doors closed to him; but he could afford now to treat his critics with
laughter, call them fogies and old-fashioned and explain that they had
not a decalogue but a millelogue of sins forbidden and persons tabooed
because it was easier to condemn than to understand.
I remember a lunch once when he talked most brilliantly and finished
up by telling the story now published in his works as "A Florentine
Tragedy." He told it superbly, making it appear far more effective
than in its written form. A well-known actor, piqued at being
compelled to play listener, made himself ridiculous by half turning
his back on the narrator. But after lunch Willie Grenfell (now Lord
Desborough), a model English athlete gifted with peculiar intellectual
fairness, came round to me:
"Oscar Wilde is most surprising, most charming, a wonderful talker."
At the same moment Mr. K. H---- came over to us. He was a man who went
everywhere and knew everyone. He had quiet, ingratiating manners,
always spoke in a gentle smiling way and had a good word to say for
everyone, especially for women; he was a bachelor, too, and wholly
unattached. He surprised me by taking up Grenfell's praise and
breaking into a lyric:
"The best talker who ever lived," he said; "most extraordinary. I am
so infinitely obliged to you for asking me to meet him--a new delight.
He brings a supernal air into life. I am in truth indebted to
you"--all this in an affected purring tone. I noticed for the first
time that there was a touch of rouge on his face; Grenfell turned away
from us rather abruptly I thought.
At this first roseate dawn of complete success and universal applause,
new qualities came to view in Oscar. Praise gave him the fillip needed
in order to make him surpass himself. His talk took on a sort of
autumnal richness of colour, and assumed a new width of range; he now
used pathos as well as humour and generally brought in a story or
apologue to lend variety to the entertainment. His little weaknesses,
too, began to show themselves and they grew rankly in the sunshine. He
always wanted to do himself well, as the phrase goes, but now he began
to eat and drink more freely than before. His vanity became defiant.
I noticed one day that he had signed himself, Oscar O'Flahertie Wilde,
I think under some verses which he had contributed years before to his
College magazine. I asked him jokingly what the O'Flahertie stood for.
To my astonishment he answered me gravely:
"The O'Flaherties were kings in Ireland, and I have a right to the
name; I am descended from them."
I could not help it; I burst out laughing.
"What are you laughing at, Frank?" he asked with a touch of annoyance.
"It seems humorous to me," I explained, "that Oscar Wilde should want
to be an O'Flahertie," and as I spoke a picture of the greatest of the
O'Flaherties, with bushy head and dirty rags, warming enormous hairy
legs before a smoking peat-fire, flashed before me. I think something
of the sort must have occurred to Oscar, too, for, in spite of his
attempt to be grave, he could not help laughing.
"It's unkind of you, Frank," he said. "The Irish were civilised and
Christians when the English kept themselves warm with tattooings."
He could not help telling one in familiar talk of Clumber or some
other great house where he had been visiting; he was intoxicated with
his own popularity, a little surprised, perhaps, to find that he had
won fame so easily and on the primrose path, but one could forgive him
everything, for he talked more delightfully than ever.
It is almost inexplicable, but nevertheless true that life tries all
of us, tests every weak point to breaking, and sets off and
exaggerates our powers. Burns saw this when he wrote:
"Wha does the utmost that he can
Will whyles do mair."
And the obverse is true: whoever yields to a weakness habitually, some
day goes further than he ever intended, and comes to worse grief than
he deserved. The old prayer: _Lead us not into temptation_, is perhaps
a half-conscious recognition of this fact. But we moderns are inclined
to walk heedlessly, no longer believing in pitfalls or in the danger
of gratified desires. And Oscar Wilde was not only an unbeliever; but
he had all the heedless confidence of the artist who has won
world-wide popularity and has the halo of fame on his brow. With high
heart and smiling eyes he went to his fate unsuspecting.
It was in the autumn of 1891 that he first met Lord Alfred Douglas. He
was thirty-six and Lord Alfred Douglas a handsome, slim youth of
twenty-one, with large blue eyes and golden-fair hair. His mother,
the Dowager Lady Queensberry, preserves a photograph of him taken a
few years before, when he was still at Winchester, a boy of sixteen
with an expression which might well be called angelic.
When I met him, he was still girlishly pretty, with the beauty of
youth, coloring and fair skin; though his features were merely
ordinary. It was Lionel Johnson, the writer, a friend and intimate of
Douglas at Winchester, who brought him to tea at Oscar's house in Tite
Street. Their mutual attraction had countless hooks. Oscar was drawn
by the lad's personal beauty, and enormously affected besides by Lord
Alfred Douglas' name and position: he was a snob as only an English
artist can be a snob; he loved titular distinctions, and Douglas is
one of the few great names in British history with the gilding of
romance about it. No doubt Oscar talked better than his best because
he was talking to Lord Alfred Douglas. To the last the mere name
rolled on his tongue gave him extraordinary pleasure. Besides, the boy
admired him, hung upon his lips with his soul in his eyes; showed,
too, rare intelligence in his appreciation, confessed that he himself
wrote verses and loved letters passionately. Could more be desired
than perfection perfected?
And Alfred Douglas on his side was almost as powerfully attracted; he
had inherited from his mother all her literary tastes--and more: he
was already a master-poet with a singing faculty worthy to be compared
with the greatest. What wonder if he took this magical talker, with
the luminous eyes and charming voice, and a range and play of thought
beyond his imagining, for a world's miracle, one of the Immortals.
Before he had listened long, I have been told, the youth declared his
admiration passionately. They were an extraordinary pair and were
complementary in a hundred ways, not only in mind, but in character.
Oscar had reached originality of thought and possessed the culture of
scholarship, while Alfred Douglas had youth and rank and beauty,
besides being as articulate as a woman with an unsurpassable gift of
expression. Curiously enough, Oscar was as yielding and amiable in
character as the boy was self-willed, reckless, obstinate and
imperious.
Years later Oscar told me that from the first he dreaded Alfred
Douglas' aristocratic, insolent boldness:
"He frightened me, Frank, as much as he attracted me, and I held away
from him. But he wouldn't have it; he sought me out again and again
and I couldn't resist him. That is my only fault. That's what ruined
me. He increased my expenses so that I could not meet them; over and
over again I tried to free myself from him; but he came back and I
yielded--alas!"
Though this is Oscar's later gloss on what actually happened, it is
fairly accurate. He was never able to realise how his meeting with
Lord Alfred Douglas had changed the world to him and him to the world.
The effect on the harder fibre of the boy was chiefly mental: to
Alfred Douglas, Oscar was merely a quickening, inspiring, intellectual
influence; but the boy's effect on Oscar was of character and induced
imitation. Lord Alfred Douglas' boldness gave Oscar _outrecuidance_,
an insolent arrogance: artist-like he tried to outdo his model in
aristocratic disdain. Without knowing the cause the change in Oscar
astonished me again and again, and in the course of this narrative I
shall have to notice many instances of it.
One other effect the friendship had of far-reaching influence. Oscar
always enjoyed good living; but for years he had had to earn his
bread: he knew the value of money; he didn't like to throw it away; he
was accustomed to lunch or dine at a cheap Italian restaurant for a
few shillings. But to Lord Alfred Douglas money was only a counter and
the most luxurious living a necessity. As soon as Oscar Wilde began to
entertain him, he was led to the dearest hotels and restaurants; his
expenses became formidable and soon outran his large earnings. For
the first time since I had known him he borrowed heedlessly right and
left, and had, therefore, to bring forth play after play with scant
time for thought.
Lord Alfred Douglas has declared recently:
"I spent much more in entertaining Oscar Wilde than he did in
entertaining me"; but this is preposterous self-deception. An earlier
confession of his was much nearer the truth: "It was a sweet
humiliation to me to let Oscar Wilde pay for everything and to ask him
for money."
There can be no doubt that Lord Alfred Douglas' habitual extravagance
kept Oscar Wilde hard up, and drove him to write without intermission.
There were other and worse results of the intimacy which need not be
exposed here in so many words, though they must be indicated; for they
derived of necessity from that increased self-assurance which has
already been recorded. As Oscar devoted himself to Lord Alfred Douglas
and went about with him continually, he came to know his friends and
his familiars, and went less into society so-called. Again and again
Lord Alfred Douglas flaunted acquaintance with youths of the lowest
class; but no one knew him or paid much attention to him; Oscar Wilde,
on the other hand, was already a famous personage whose every
movement provoked comment. From this time on the rumours about Oscar
took definite form and shaped themselves in specific accusations: his
enemies began triumphantly to predict his ruin and disgrace.
Everything is known in London society; like water on sand the truth
spreads wider and wider as it gradually filters lower. The "smart set"
in London has almost as keen a love of scandal as a cathedral town.
About this time one heard of a dinner which Oscar Wilde had given at a
restaurant in Soho, which was said to have degenerated into a sort of
Roman orgy. I was told of a man who tried to get money by blackmailing
him in his own house. I shrugged my shoulders at all these scandals,
and asked the talebearers what had been said about Shakespeare to make
him rave as he raved again and again against "back-wounding calumny";
and when they persisted in their malicious stories I could do nothing
but show disbelief. Though I saw but little of Oscar during the first
year or so of his intimacy with Lord Alfred Douglas, one scene from
this time filled me with suspicion and an undefined dread.
I was in a corner of the Café Royal one night downstairs, playing
chess, and, while waiting for my opponent to move, I went out just to
stretch my legs. When I returned I found Oscar throned in the very
corner, between two youths. Even to my short-sighted eyes they
appeared quite common: in fact they looked like grooms. In spite of
their vulgar appearance, however, one was nice looking in a fresh
boyish way; the other seemed merely depraved. Oscar greeted me as
usual, though he seemed slightly embarrassed. I resumed my seat, which
was almost opposite him, and pretended to be absorbed in the game. To
my astonishment he was talking as well as if he had had a picked
audience; talking, if you please, about the Olympic games, telling how
the youths wrestled and were scraped with strigulæ and threw the
discus and ran races and won the myrtle-wreath. His impassioned
eloquence brought the sun-bathed palæstra before one with a magic of
representment. Suddenly the younger of the boys asked:
"Did you sy they was niked?"
"Of course," Oscar replied, "nude, clothed only in sunshine and
beauty."
"Oh, my," giggled the lad in his unspeakable Cockney way. I could not
stand it.
"I am in an impossible position," I said to my opponent, who was the
amateur chess player, Montagu Gattie. "Come along and let us have some
dinner." With a nod to Oscar I left the place. On the way out Gattie
said to me:
"So that's the famous Oscar Wilde."
"Yes," I replied, "that's Oscar, but I never saw him in such company
before."
"Didn't you?" remarked Gattie quietly; "he was well known at Oxford. I
was at the 'Varsity with him. His reputation was always
rather--'_high_,' shall we call it?"
I wanted to forget the scene and blot it out of my memory, and
remember my friend as I knew him at his best. But that Cockney boy
would not be banned; he leered there with rosy cheeks, hair plastered
down in a love-lock on his forehead, and low cunning eyes. I felt
uncomfortable. I would not think of it. I recalled the fact that in
all our talks I had never heard Oscar use a gross word. His mind, I
said to myself, is like Spenser's, vowed away from coarseness and
vulgarity: he's the most perfect intellectual companion in the world.
He may have wanted to talk to the boys just to see what effect his
talk would have on them. His vanity is greedy enough to desire even
such applause as theirs.... Of course, that was the
explanation--vanity. My affection for him, tormented by doubt, had
found at length a satisfactory solution. It was the artist in him, I
said to myself, that wanted a model.
But why not boys of his own class? The answer suggested itself; boys
of his own class could teach him nothing; his own boyhood would
supply him with all the necessary information about well-bred youth.
But if he wanted a gutter-snipe in one of his plays, he would have to
find a gutter-lad and paint him from life. That was probably the
truth, I concluded. So satisfied was I with my discovery that I
developed it to Gattie; but he would not hear of it.
"Gattie has nothing of the artist in him," I decided, "and therefore
cannot understand." And I went on arguing, if Gattie were right, why
_two_ boys? It seemed evident to me that my reading of the riddle was
the only plausible one. Besides it left my affection unaffected and
free. Still, the giggle, the plastered oily hair and the venal leering
eyes came back to me again and again in spite of myself.