OSCAR WILDE’S LAST YEARS IN PARIS.—II

The French possess the faculty, very rare in England, of differentiating between a man and his work. They are utterly incapable of judging literary work by the moral character of its author. I have never yet met a Frenchman who was able to comprehend the attitude of the English public towards Oscar Wilde after his release from prison. They were completely mystified by it. An eminent French man-of-letters said to me one day: “You have a man of genius, he commits crimes, you put him in prison, you destroy his whole life, you take away his fortune, you ruin his health, you kill his mother, his wife, and his brother (sic), you refuse to speak to him, you exile him from your country. That is very severe. In France we should never so treat a man of genius, but enfin ça peut se comprendre. But not content with that, you taboo his books and his plays, which before you enjoyed and admired, and pour comble de tout you are very angry if he goes into a restaurant and orders himself some dinner. Il faut pourtant qu’il mange ce pauvre homme!” If I had been representing the British public in an official capacity I should have probably given expression to its views and furnished a sufficient repartee to my voluble French friend by replying: “Je n’en vois pas la nécessité.”

Fortunately for Oscar Wilde, the French took another view of the attitude to adopt towards a man who has offended against society, and who has been punished for it. Never by a word or a hint did they show that they remembered that offence, which, in their view, had been atoned for and wiped out. Oscar Wilde remained for them always un grand homme, un maître, a distinguished man, to be treated with deference and respect and, because he had suffered much, with sympathy. It says a great deal for the innate courtesy and chivalry of the French character that a man in Oscar Wilde’s position, as well known by sight, as he once remarked to me, as the Eiffel Tower, should have been able to go freely about in theatres, restaurants, and cafés without encountering any kind of hostility or even impertinent curiosity.

It was this benevolent attitude of Paris towards him that enabled him to live and, in a fashion, to enjoy life. His audience was sadly reduced and precarious, and except on some few occasions it was of inferior intellectual calibre; but still he had an audience, and an audience to him was everything. Nor was he altogether deprived of the society of men of his own class and value. Many of the most brilliant young writers in France were proud to sit at his feet and enjoy his brilliant conversation, chief among whom I may mention that accomplished critic and essayist, Monsieur Ernest Lajeunesse, who is the author of what is perhaps the best posthumous notice of him that has been published in France in that excellent magazine, the “Revue blanche”; among older men who kept up their friendship with him, Octave Mirbeau, Moréas, Paul Fort, Henri Bauer, and Jean Lorrain may be mentioned.

In contrast to this attitude taken up towards him by so many distinguished and eminent men, I cannot refrain from recalling the attitude adopted by the general run of English-speaking residents in Paris. For the credit of my country I am glad to be able to put them down mostly as Americans, or at any rate so Americanised by the constant absorption of “American drinks” as to be indistinguishable from the genuine article. These gentlemen “guessed they didn’t want Oscar Wilde to be sitting around” in the bars where they were in the habit of shedding the light of their presence, and from one of these establishments Oscar Wilde was requested by the proprietor to withdraw at the instance of one of our “American cousins” who is now serving a term of two years penal servitude for holding up and robbing a bank!

Oscar Wilde, to do him justice, bore this sort of rebuff with astonishing good temper and sweetness. His sense of humour and his invincible self-esteem kept him from brooding over what to another man might have appeared intolerable, and he certainly possessed the philosophical temperament to a greater extent than any other man I have ever come across. Every now and then one or other of the very few faithful English friends left to him would turn up in Paris and take him to dinner at one of the best restaurants, and anyone who met him on one of these occasions would have found it difficult to believe that he had ever passed through such awful experiences. Whether he was expounding some theory, grave or fantastic, embroidering it the while with flashes of impromptu wit or deepening it with extraordinary and intimate learning (for, as Ernest Lajeunesse says, he knew everything), or whether he was “keeping the table in a roar” with his delightfully whimsical humour, summer-lightning that flashed and hurt no one, he was equally admirable. To have lived in his lifetime and not to have heard him talk is as though one had lived for years at Athens without going to look at the Parthenon.

I wish I could remember one-hundredth part of the good things he said. He was extraordinarily quick in answer and repartee, and anyone who says that his wit was the result of preparation and midnight oil can never have heard him speak. I remember once at dinner a friend of his who had formerly been in the “Blues,” pointing out that in the opening stanza of “The Ballad of Reading Jail” he had made a mistake in speaking of the “scarlet coat” of the man who was hanged; he was, as the dedication of the poem says, a private in the “Blues,” and his coat would therefore naturally not be scarlet. The lines go—

“Well, what could I do,” said Oscar Wilde plaintively, “I couldn’t very well say

could I?”

The last time I saw him was about three months before he died. I took him to dinner at the Grand Café. He was then perfectly well and in the highest spirits. All through dinner he kept me delighted and amused. Only afterwards, just before I left him, he became rather depressed. He actually told me that he didn’t think he was going to live long; he had a presentiment, he said. I tried to turn it off into a joke, but he was quite serious. “Somehow,” he said, “I don’t think I shall live to see the new century.” Then a long pause. “If another century began, and I was still alive, it would be really more than the English could stand.” And so I left him, never to see him alive again.

Just before he died he came to, after a long period of unconsciousness and said to a faithful friend who sat by his bedside, “I have had a dreadful dream; I dreamt that I dined with the dead.” “My dear Oscar,” replied his friend, “I am sure you were the life and soul of the party.” “Really, you are sometimes very witty,” replied Oscar Wilde, and I believe those are his last recorded words. The jest was admirable and in his own genre; it was prompted by ready wit and kindness, and because of it Oscar Wilde went off into his last unconscious phase, which lasted for twelve hours, with a smile on his lips. I cherish a hope that it is also prophetic, Death would have no terrors for me if only I were sure of “dining with the dead.”[14]