""Why does he give it back to me?" I asked carelessly.
""He says you were kind to him and that it is no use trying to "rent"
you; you only laugh at us."
"I looked at the letter; it was very dirty, and I said:
""I think it is unpardonable that better care should not have been taken of a ma.n.u.script of mine."
"He said he was sorry; but it had been in many hands. I took the letter up casually:
""Well, I will accept the letter back. You can thank Mr. Allen for me."
"I gave Cliburn half a sovereign for his trouble, and said to him:
""I am afraid you are leading a desperately wicked life."
""There"s good and bad in every one of us," he replied. I said something about his being a philosopher, and he went away. That"s the whole story, Frank."
"But the letter?" I questioned.
"The letter is nothing," Oscar replied; "a prose poem. I will give you a copy of it."
Here is the letter:
"MY OWN BOY,--Your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvel that those red rose-leaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing. Your slim-gilt soul walks between pa.s.sion and poetry. No Hyacinthus followed Love so madly as you in Greek days. Why are you alone in London, and when do you go to Salisbury? Do go there and cool your hands in the grey twilight of Gothic things. Come here whenever you like.
It is a lovely place and only lacks you. Do go to Salisbury first. Always with undying love,
Yours,
OSCAR."
This letter startled me; "slim-gilt" and the "madness of kissing" were calculated to give one pause; but after all, I thought, it may be merely an artist"s letter, half pose, half pa.s.sionate admiration.
Another thought struck me.
"But how did such a letter," I cried, "ever get into the hands of a blackmailer?"
"I don"t know," he replied, shrugging his shoulders. "Lord Alfred Douglas is very careless and inconceivably bold. You should know him, Frank; he"s a delightful poet."
"But how did he come to know a creature like Wood?" I persisted.
"How can I tell, Frank," he answered a little shortly; and I let the matter drop, though it left in me a certain doubt, an uncomfortable suspicion.
The scandal grew from hour to hour, and the tide of hatred rose in surges.
One day I was lunching at the Savoy, and while talking to the head waiter, Cesari, who afterwards managed the Elysee Palace Hotel in Paris, I thought I saw Oscar and Douglas go out together. Being a little short-sighted, I asked:
"Isn"t that Mr. Oscar Wilde?"
"Yes," said Cesari, "and Lord Alfred Douglas. We wish they would not come here; it does us a lot of harm."
"How do you mean?" I asked sharply.
"Some people don"t like them," the quick Italian answered immediately.
"Oscar Wilde," I remarked casually, "is a great friend of mine," but the super-subtle Italian was already warned.
"A clever writer, I believe," he said, smiling in bland acquiescence.
This incident gave me warning, strengthened again in me the exact apprehension and suspicion which the Douglas letter had bred. Oscar I knew was too self-centred, went about too continually with admirers to have any understanding of popular feeling. He would be the last man to realize how fiercely hate, malice and envy were raging against him.
I wanted to warn him; but hardly knew how to do it effectively and without offence: I made up my mind to keep my eyes open and watch an opportunity.
A little later I gave a dinner at the Savoy and asked him to come. He was delightful, his vivacious gaiety as exhilarating as wine. But he was more like a Roman Emperor than ever: he had grown fat: he ate and drank too much; not that he was intoxicated, but he became flushed, and in spite of his gay and genial talk he affected me a little unpleasantly; he was gross and puffed up. But he gave one or two splendid snapshots of actors and their egregious vanity. It seemed to him a great pity that actors should be taught to read and write: they should learn their pieces from the lips of the poet.
"Just as work is the curse of the drinking cla.s.ses of this country,"
he said laughing, "so education is the curse of the acting cla.s.ses."
Yet even when making fun of the mummers there was a new tone in him of arrogance and disdain. He used always to be genial and kindly even to those he laughed at; now he was openly contemptuous. The truth is that his extraordinarily receptive mind went with an even more abnormal receptivity of character: unlike most men of marked ability, he took colour from his a.s.sociates. In this as in love of courtesies and dislike of coa.r.s.e words he was curiously feminine. Intercourse with Beardsley, for example, had backed his humorous gentleness with a sort of challenging courage; his new intimacy with Lord Alfred Douglas, coming on the top of his triumph as a playwright, was lending him aggressive self-confidence. There was in him that [Greek: hubris]
(insolent self-a.s.surance) which the Greek feared, the pride which goeth before destruction. I regretted the change in him and was nervously apprehensive.
After dinner we all went out by the door which gives on the Embankment, for it was after 12.30. One of the party proposed that we should walk for a minute or two--at least as far as the Strand, before driving home. Oscar objected. He hated walking; it was a form of penal servitude to the animal in man, he declared; but he consented, nevertheless, under protest, laughing. When we were going up the steps to the Strand he again objected, and quoted Dante"s famous lines:
"Tu proverai si come sa di sale Lo pane altrui; e com" e duro calle Lo scendere e "l salir per l"altrui scale."
The impression made by Oscar that evening was not only of self-indulgence but of over-confidence. I could not imagine what had given him this insolent self-complacence. I wanted to get by myself and think. Prosperity was certainly doing him no good.
All the while the opposition to him, I felt, was growing in force. How could I verify this impression, I asked myself, so as to warn him effectually?
I decided to give a lunch to him, and on purpose I put on the invitations: "To meet Mr. Oscar Wilde and hear a new story." Out of a dozen invitations sent out to men, seven or eight were refused, three or four telling me in all kindness that they would rather not meet Oscar Wilde. This confirmed my worst fears: when Englishmen speak out in this way the dislike must be near revolt.
I gave the lunch and saw plainly enough that my forebodings were justified. Oscar was more self-confident, more contemptuous of criticism, more gross of body than ever, but his talk did not suffer; indeed, it seemed to improve. At this lunch he told the charming fable of "Narcissus," which is certainly one of his most characteristic short stories.
"When Narcissus died the Flowers of the Field were plunged in grief, and asked the River for drops of water that they might mourn for him.
""Oh," replied the River, "if only my drops of water were tears, I should not have enough to weep for Narcissus myself--I loved him."
""How could you help loving Narcissus?" said the flowers, "so beautiful was he."
""Was he beautiful?" asked the River.
""Who should know that better than you?" said the flowers, "for every day, lying on your bank, he would mirror his beauty in your waters.""
Oscar paused here, and then went on:
""If I loved him," replied the River, "it is because, when he hung over me, I saw the reflection of my own loveliness in his eyes.""
After lunch I took him aside and tried to warn him, told him that unpleasant stories were being put about against him; but he paid no heed to me.