In this spirit Oscar made up his mind that he would write about "Christ as the precursor of the romantic movement in life" and about "The artistic life considered in its relation to conduct."
By bitter suffering he had been brought to see that the moment of repentance is the moment of absolution and self-realisation, that tears can wash out even blood. In "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" he wrote:
And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand, The hand that held the steel: For only blood can wipe out blood, And only tears can heal: And the crimson stain that was of Cain Became Christ"s snow-white seal.
This is the highest height Oscar Wilde ever reached, and alas! he only trod the summit for a moment. But as he says himself: "One has perhaps to go to prison to understand that. And, if so, it may be worth while going to prison." He was by nature a pagan who for a few months became a Christian, but to live as a lover of Jesus was impossible to this "Greek born out of due time," and he never even dreamed of a reconciling synthesis....
The arrest of his development makes him a better representative of his time: he was an artistic expression of the best English mind: a Pagan and Epicurean, his rule of conduct was a selfish Individualism:--"Am I my brother"s keeper?" This att.i.tude must entail a dreadful Nemesis, for it condemns one Briton in every four to a pauper"s grave. The result will convince the most hardened that such selfishness is not a creed by which human beings can live in society.
This summer of 1897 was the harvest time in Oscar Wilde"s Life; and his golden Indian summer. We owe it "De Profundis," the best pages of prose he ever wrote, and "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," his only original poem; yet one that will live as long as the language: we owe it also that sweet and charming letter to Bobbie Ross which shows him in his habit as he lived. I must still say a word or two about him in this summer in order to show the ordinary working of his mind.
On his release, and, indeed, for a year or two later, he called himself Sebastian Melmoth. But one had hardly spoken a half a dozen words to him, when he used to beg to be called Oscar Wilde. I remember how he pulled up someone who had just been introduced to him, who persisted in addressing him as Mr. Melmoth.
"Call me Oscar Wilde," he pleaded, "Mr. Melmoth is unknown, you see."
"I thought you preferred it," said the stranger excusing himself.
"Oh, dear, no," interrupted Oscar smiling, "I only use the name Melmoth to spare the blushes of the postman, to preserve his modesty," and he laughed in the old delightful way.
It was always significant to me the eager delight with which he shuffled off the new name and took up the old one which he had made famous.
An anecdote from his life in the Chalet at this time showed that the old witty pagan in Oscar was not yet extinct.
An English lady who had written a great many novels and happened to be staying in Dieppe heard of him, and out of kindness or curiosity, or perhaps a mixture of both motives, wrote and invited him to luncheon. He accepted the invitation. The good lady did not know how to talk to Mr.
Sebastian Melmoth, and time went heavily. At length she began to expatiate on the cheapness of things in France; did Mr. Melmoth know how wonderfully cheap and good the living was?
"Only fancy," she went on, "you would not believe what that claret you are drinking costs."
"Really?" questioned Oscar, with a polite smile.
"Of course I get it wholesale," she explained, "but it only costs me sixpence a quart."
"Oh, my dear lady, I"m afraid you have been cheated," he exclaimed, "ladies should never buy wine. I"m afraid you have been sadly overcharged."
The humour may excuse the discourtesy, but Oscar was so uniformly polite to everyone that the incident simply shows how ineffably he had been bored.
This summer of 1897 was the decisive period and final turning-point in Oscar Wilde"s career. So long as the sunny weather lasted and friends came to visit him from time to time Oscar was content to live in the Chalet Bourgeat; but when the days began to draw in and the weather became unsettled, the dreariness of a life pa.s.sed in solitude, indoors, and without a library became insupportable. He was being drawn in two opposite directions. I did not know it at the time; indeed he only told me about it months later when the matter had been decided irrevocably; but this was the moment when his soul was at stake between good and evil. The question was whether his wife would come to him again or whether he would yield to the solicitations of Lord Alfred Douglas and go to live with him.
Mr. Sherard has told in his book how he brought about the first reconciliation between Oscar and his wife; and how immediately afterwards he received a letter from Lord Alfred Douglas threatening to shoot him like a dog, if, by any words of his, Wilde"s friendship was lost to him, Douglas.
Unluckily Mrs. Wilde"s family were against her going back to her husband; they begged her not to go; talked to her of her duty to her children and herself, and the poor woman hesitated. Finally her advisers decided for her, and Mrs. Wilde wrote this decision to Oscar"s solicitors shortly before his release: Oscar"s probation was to last at least a year. I do not know enough about Mrs. Wilde and her relations with her family and with her husband even to discuss her inaction: I dare not criticise her: but she did not go to her husband when if she had gone boldly she might have saved him. She knew Lord Alfred Douglas"
influence over him; knew that it had already brought him to grief. Gide says, and Oscar himself told me afterwards, that he had come out of prison determined not to go back to Alfred Douglas and the old life. It seems a pity that his wife did not act promptly; she allowed herself to believe that a time of probation was necessary. The delay wounded Oscar, and all the while, as he told me a little later, he was resisting an influence which had dominated his life in the past.
"I got a letter almost every day, Frank, begging me to come to Posilippo, to the villa which Lord Alfred Douglas had rented. Every day I heard his voice calling, "Come, come, to sunshine and to me. Come to Naples with its wonderful museum of bronzes and Pompeii and Paestum, the city of Poseidon: I am waiting to welcome you. Come."
"Who could resist it, Frank? love calling, calling with outstretched arms; who could stay in bleak Berneval and watch the sheets of rain falling, falling--and the grey mist shrouding the grey sea, and think of Naples and love and sunshine; who could resist it all? I could not, Frank, I was so lonely and I hated solitude. I resisted as long as I could, but when chill October came and Bosie came to Rouen for me, I gave up the struggle and yielded."
Could Oscar Wilde have won and made for himself a new and greater life?
The majority of men are content to think that such a victory was impossible to him. Everyone knows that he lost; but I at least believe that he might have won. His wife was on the point of yielding, I have since been told; on the point of complete reconciliation when she heard that he had gone to Naples and returned to his old habit of living; a few days made all the difference.
It was at the instigation of Lord Alfred Douglas that Oscar began the insane action against Lord Queensberry, in which he put to hazard his success, his position, his good name and liberty, and lost them all. Two years later at the same tempting, he committed soul-suicide.
He was not only better in health than he had ever been; but he was talking and writing better than ever before and full of literary projects which would certainly have given him money and position and a measure of happiness besides increasing his reputation. From the moment he went to Naples he was lost, and he knew it himself; he never afterwards wrote anything: as he used to say, he could never afterwards face his own soul.
He could never have won up again, the world says, and shrugs careless shoulders. It is a cheap, unworthy conclusion. Some of us still persist in believing that Oscar Wilde might easily have won and never again been caught in that dreadful wind which whips the victims of sensual desire about unceasingly, driving them hither and thither without rest in that awful place where: "Nulla speranza gli conforta mai." (No hope ever comforts!)
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Reproduced in the Appendix.
[8] Fac-simile copies of some of the notes Oscar wrote to Warder Martin about these children are reproduced in the Appendix. The notes were written on sc.r.a.ps of paper and pushed under his cell-door; they are among the most convincing evidences of Oscar"s essential humanity and kindness of heart.
[9] The Home Secretary, Sir Matthew White Ridley, when questioned by Mr.
Michael Davitt in the House of Commons, May 25, 1897, declared that this dismissal of a warder for feeding a little hungry child at his own expense was "fully justified" and a "proper step." This same Home Secretary appointed his utterly incompetent brother to be a judge of the High Court.
[10] The correspondent to whom Wilde writes and the other friend referred to are Roman Catholics.
[11] This refers to a story which Wilde was much interested in at the time.
[12] The proprietor of the hotel.
[13] The Sphinx is a nickname for Mrs. Leverson, author of "The Eleventh Hour," and other witty novels.
[14] Ernest was her husband.
[15] The silver spoon is a proposed line for a play given by Ross to Turner (Reggie).
[16] Wilde"s solicitor in Regina v. Wilde.
[17] A reference to the "Vailima Letters" of Stevenson which Wilde read when he was in prison.
[18] An architect who sent Wilde books on his release from prison.
[19] His letter to _The Daily Chronicle_ about Warder Martin and the little children.
[20] The Ballad was finished in Naples and Alfred Douglas has since declared that he helped Oscar Wilde to write it. I have no wish to dispute this: Alfred Douglas" poetic gift was extraordinary, far greater than Oscar Wilde"s. The poem was conceived in prison and a good deal of it was printed before Oscar went near Alfred Douglas and some of the best stanzas in it are to be found in this earlier portion: no part of the credit of it, in my opinion, belongs to Alfred Douglas. See Appendix for Ross"s opinion.
[21] Hanging in chains was called keeping sheep by moonlight.
CHAPTER XX
"Non dispetto, ma doglia."--_Dante._