In the near future it is possible that Science will by closer inquiry and by completer records be found once more in harmony with Scripture. Hypnotism, a science which as yet is not a science, but merely a haphazard accumulation of unorganised data, pointing to the possession of unexplained powers and possibilities by the individual, has established the fact that the living can thus be influenced and obsessed by the living. If so, why not by the dead, who, when emancipated from the body, may possibly be able to concentrate even greater spiritual force upon the living than when they were themselves alive?
I am not likely to live to see it, but my belief is that all these so-called occult matters, Hypnotism, Thought-reading, Obsession, Clairvoyance, Spiritualism, and the like will one day fall into line with Science, and be proved to be not supernatural, but merely the manifestation of natural laws—of certain psychical powers and forces which may be easily explainable and demonstrable with further and exacter knowledge, but concerning the working of which we are at present very much in the dark.
I have written at greater length than I intended, in hinting and in hoping that Wilde was at times under the subjection of powers and forces of darkness outside himself. I say “at times” intentionally, and for the following reason. It would be gratifying to one’s amour propre (I use a French term for once, as it expresses my meaning more nearly than any English equivalent) could I take high ground, and aver that I was vaguely conscious—warned, as it were, by some fine instinct—of evil in the presence of Wilde, but so to aver would be untrue. I have not lived to nearly threescore years without meeting men from whom one does thus instinctively shrink, and concerning whom one found it impossible to breathe the same air. I experienced nothing of the sort in Wilde’s company, and, since his guilt seems uncontrovertible, I ask myself whether it is not possible that Wilde lived a sort of Jekyll and Hyde life, of the latter of which I saw nothing, inasmuch as just as some wounded or plague-stricken creature withdraws itself from the herd, so, during the Hyde period of madness or of obsession, some instinct moved him to withdraw from his home, his haunts and the companions of his everyday life, only to return when the obsession or madness had passed, and once again he was his sane and normal self.
This “periodicity” is not infrequent in madness, whether the madness be due to a brain derangement, explainable by pathology, or to some such demoniacal possession as that of which I have spoken. A memorable instance is that of Mary Lamb, who was herself aware of the return of homicidal mania, and at such times of her own accord placed herself under restraint. Recalling the fact that I saw in Wilde no sign either of the presence of evil or of insanity, I ask myself whether in picturing Dorian Grey as at one season living normally and reputably, and at another disappearing into some oblivion of iniquity, he was not consciously or unconsciously picturing for us his own tortured self. I write “tortured” advisedly, for whether he were wholly, or only partly, or not at all, responsible, I refuse to believe that the man, as in his saner moments I knew him, could sink thus low, without fighting desperately, if vainly—how desperately only the God who made him knows—before allowing himself in the hopelessness of despair to forget his failures in filth, as other unhappy geniuses have before now drowned their souls in drink.
One talk with him I particularly remember. I had been reading the proofs of Dorian Grey, and, on our next meeting, I said that he had put damnable words into the mouth of one of his characters.
“Such poisonous stuff is not likely to affect grown men and women,” I said, “but for a writer of your power and persuasiveness to set up a puppet like Lord Henry to provide ready-made excuses for indulgence, and to make evil seem necessary, unavoidable, and easy, by whispering into the ears of readers, of impressionable age and inflammable passion, that ‘the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it’—when you do that, you are helping to circulate devils’ doctrines in God’s world.”
Wilde was visibly perturbed.
“You are quite right,” he said. “It is damnable; it is devils’ doctrine. I will take it out.”
But, alas, other influences, whether within himself in the shape of the whisperings of some evil spirit, by which he was, as I believe, at times possessed, or in the form of so-called friends, whose influence over him was of the worst, I cannot say, but some days after the conversation recorded above I received the following letter:
Grand Hôtel de L’athenée,
15 Rue Scribe, Paris.My Dear Kernahan,
Thank you for your charming letter. I have been very ill and unable to correct my proofs, but have sent them off now. I have changed my mind about the passage about temptation. One can’t pull a work of art about without spoiling it, and after all it is merely Luther’s “Pecca Fortiter” put dramatically into the lips of a character.
Do you think I should add to preface the definition of “morbid” and “unhealthy” art I gave in the Fortnightly for February? The one on morbidity is really good.
Will you also look after my “wills” and “shalls” in proof! I am Celtic in my use of these words, not English.
You are excellent on Rossetti. I read you with delight.
Your sincere friend,
Oscar Wilde.