IV
A factor in Wilde’s downfall was, I am sometimes told, evil association, but if so it was a factor on which I can throw no light, as if evil associates he had I saw nothing of them.
Louise Chandler Moulton sings of
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.