V.
Rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, and when once
the storm of youth is past,
Without lyre, without lute or chorus, Death the silent
pilot comes at last.
THE GRAVE AT BAGNEUX.
And a short time afterwards, Wilde went back to Paris.[1]
His play was not written—it will never be written now. Society well knows what steps to take when it wants to crush a man, and it has means more subtle than death. Wilde had suffered too grievously for the last two years, and in too submissive a manner, and his will had been broken. For the first few months he might still have entertained illusions, but he soon gave them up. It was as though he had signed his abdication. Nothing remained in his shattered life but a mouldy ruin, painful to contemplate, of his former self. At times he seemed to wish to show that his brain was still active. Humour there was, but it was far-fetched, forced, and threadbare.
I met him again on two occasions only. One evening on the Boulevards, where I was walking with G——, I heard my name called. I turned round and saw Wilde. Ah! how changed he was. 'If I appear again before writing my play, the world will refuse to see in me anything except the felon,' he had once said to me. He had appeared again, without his play, and as he found certain doors closed in his face, he no longer sought admission anywhere. He prowled.
Friends, at different times, tried to save him[2]. They did all they could think of, and were for taking him to Italy, but he eluded their efforts, and began to drift back. Among those who had remained faithful for the longest time, some had often told me that Wilde was no longer to be seen, and I was somewhat uneasy, I admit, at seeing him again, and what is more, in a place where so many people might pass. Wilde was sitting at a table outside a café. He ordered two cock-tails for G—— and myself. I was going to sit opposite to him in such a way as to turn my back to the passers-by, but Wilde, noticed this movement, which he took as an impulse of absurd shame, (he was not entirely mistaken, I must admit), and said, 'Oh, sit here, near me,' pointing to a chair at his side, 'I am so much alone just now.'
Wilde was still well-dressed, but his hat was not so glossy; his collar was of the same shape, but it was not so clean, and the sleeves of his coat were slightly frayed at the edges.
'When I used to meet Verlaine in days gone by,' he continued with an outburst of pride, 'I was never ashamed of being seen with him. I was rich, light-hearted, and covered with glory, but I felt that to be seen with him was an honour, even when Verlaine was drunk.' Then fearing to bore G——, I think, he suddenly changed his mood, tried to be witty and to make jokes. In the effort he became gloomy. My recollections here are dreadfully sad. At last my friend and I got up. Wilde insisted on paying for the drinks, and I was about to say good-bye, when he took me aside, and, with an air of great embarrassment, said in a low voice, 'I say, I must tell you, I am absolutely without a penny[3].
Some days afterwards I saw him again, and for the last time. I do not want to repeat more than one word of our conversation. He told me of his troubles, of the impossibility of carrying out, or even of beginning, a piece of work[4]. Sadly I reminded him of the promise he had made not to show himself in Paris without having finished one book. 'Ah!' I began, 'why did you leave Berneval so soon, when you ought to have stayed there so long? I cannot say that I am angry with you, but—'
He interrupted me, laid his hand on mine, looked at me with his most sorrowful look, and said, 'You must not be angry with one who has been crushed[5].'
Oscar Wilde died in a shabby little hotel in the Rue des Beaux Arts. Seven persons followed the hearse, and even they did not all accompany the funeral procession to the end. On the coffin were some flowers and some artificial wreaths, only one of which, I am told, bore any inscription. It was from the proprietor of the hotel, and on it were these words: 'A Mon Locataire.'
[1] The representatives of his family were willing to guarantee Wilde a very good position if he would consent to certain stipulations, one of which was that he should never see —— again. He was either unable or unwilling to accept the conditions.
[2] In October, 1897, he stayed with friends at the Villa Gindice, Posillipo, and was in Naples till the end of the year, or the beginning of 1898, when he went to Paris. In the following year he went to the South of France (Nice) for the spring, but was back in June or July. He went also to Switzerland in 1899 and stayed some time at Gland.
[3] M. Gide says that Wilde's words were 'je suis absolument sans ressources,' which, I think, need not mean more than a temporary embarrassment. I have been at some pains to find out what the actual circumstances were, and I am able to state the following facts on the authority of Lord Alfred Douglas. When Mr. Wilde came out of prison, the sum of £800 was subscribed for him by his friends. Lord Alfred Douglas gave or sent Mr. Wilde, in the last twelve months of his life, cheques for over £600, as he can show by his bank-book, in addition to ready money gifts, and several others gave him at various times amounts totalling up to several hundreds of pounds. 'It is true,' Lord Alfred Douglas writes, 'he was always hard up and short of money, but that was because he was incurably extravagant and reckless. I think these facts ought to be known in justice to myself and many others of his friends, all poor men.' In another letter Lord Alfred Douglas says that Mr. Wilde, when he was well off, before his disaster, was the most generous of men. After 1897 received also large sums of money as advance fees for plays which he never finished. 'I hope,' Lord Alfred Douglas continues, 'you will not think that I blame him, or have any grievance against him on any account. What I gave him I considered I owed him, as he had often lent and given me money before he came to grief. I was delighted that he should have it, and I wish I had had time to give him more.' It was not, however, till after the death of his father, that Lord Alfred Douglas was in a position to help Mr. Wilde to the extent that he did, and Mr. Wilde died within a few months of the death of Lord Queensberry.
Lord Alfred Douglas adds that he thinks 'it is about time that some of the poisonous nonsense which has been written about Mr. Wilde should be qualified by a little fact.'
It must be remembered, however, that large as the sums of money were which Mr. Wilde received during the last few years of his life, they would not appear so to him, as in the days of his highest success he was receiving several thousands a year from his plays and other works.
It is since the first sheets of this book passed through the press that I have been favoured with the information that Lord Alfred Douglas has been good enough to give me, and I now wish to qualify the statement in my introductory remarks that Mr. Wilde died 'in poverty.' It would be more accurate to say 'in comparative poverty.'
[4] Two plays produced in London shortly hefore his death have been attributed to Oscar Wilde. One of these, The Tyranny of Tears, does not contain a single line of his. The other is Mr. and Mrs. Daventry, the plot of which was originally Oscar Wilde's, and he sketched out the scenario. The play was then sold to Mr. Frank Harris, who has always acknowledged Wilde's share in it, but the piece was entirely transformed, and except one or two of the situations in it there was very little left of Wilde's idea.
Referring to such works as the translations of Ce Qui ne Meurt pas and the Satyricon which have heen issued under Oscar Wilde's name, Mr. Robert Ross (the editor of De Profundis), writes:—'No one can produce even a scrap of MS. in the author's handwriting of these so-called "last works."'
[5] 'Scandals used to lend charm, or at least interest, to a man—now they crush him.'—An Ideal Husband, Act I.