in good company 28

in good company 28

Yet there is this to be said of Wilde’s vanity, that its very

nakedness was its best excuse. A loin-cloth, a fig-leaf would have

offended, but it was so artlessly naked that one merely smiled and

passed on. Moreover, it was never a jealous or a malicious vanity.

It was so occupied in admiring itself in the mirror that the smile

on its face was never distorted into a scowl at sight of another’s

success. Wilde’s vanity, I repeat, was as entirely free from venom

as was his wit. No one’s comments on society, on the men and women

he met, the authors he read, were more incisive or more caustic, but

I remember none in which the thought was slanderous or the intention

spiteful.

 

_A propos_ of Wilde’s vanity, here is a story told me long ago by

Lieutenant-Colonel Spencer, who then held a post of some sort in

connection with the Masters in Lunacy. Visiting the Zoological

Gardens one day--in his private capacity, I assume, not in

connection with the Lunacy Commission--he entered the Monkey House.

Within the big cement wire enclosure a certain liveliness--the war

phrase seems to have come to stay--was evident. What it was all about

Colonel Spencer did not know, but with one exception the occupants

were very excited, leaping wildly from end to end of the cage, and

from top to bottom, jabbering, groaning, snarling, emitting shrill

shrieks of terror or hoarse howls of rage.

 

The one exception was an evil-looking and elderly monkey which sat

humped and brooding in a corner, absolutely motionless except for

the twitching of his nostrils and the angry way in which he switched

his eyes first upon what he apparently thought to be the staring

human idiots outside, and then at the capering and noisy monkey

imbeciles within. “What’s the matter with that monkey?” Colonel

Spencer inquired of a keeper. “Is he ill? He seems too bored even

to scratch.” The keeper shook his head. “No, he isn’t ill, sir,”

he answered. “Wot’s the matter with ’im, sir? Why, wanity.” Then

stirring up the sulking monkey with his cane, he added, “’Ere, get

up--Hoscar Wilde!”

 

One day it was Wilde’s caprice to amuse himself by talking the most

blatantly insincere nonsense, directed against my own political

views, and deliberately intended to “draw” me. He was in his most

exasperating mood, exuding, or affecting to exude, egotism at every

pore, and fondling, or making pretence to fondle, his vanity as

some spinsters fondle a favourite cat. At last I could stand it no

longer, and wickedly told him the story of Colonel Spencer’s visit

to the Monkey House at the Zoo and the keeper’s comment about the

sulky monkey. “Wot’s the matter with ’im, sir? Why, wanity. ’Ere, get

up--Hoscar Wilde.”

 

So far from being annoyed, Wilde simply rocked, or affected to rock

with delight.

 

“I hoped once,” he said, “to live to see a new shape in

chrysanthemums or sunflowers, or possibly a new colour in roses, blue

for choice, called after me. But that one’s name should percolate

even to the Zoological Gardens, that it should come naturally to the

lips of a keeper in the Monkey House, is fame indeed. Do remind me

to tell George Alexander the story. It will make him so dreadfully

jealous.”

 

And I answered grimly:

 

“Your game, Wilde!”

 

 

II

 

My friendship with Wilde was literary in its beginnings. Flattered

vanity on my part possibly contributed not a little to it, for when I

was a young and--if that be possible--a more obscure man even than I

am now, Wilde, already famous, was one of the very first to speak an

encouraging word. Here is the first letter I received from him:

 

16 TITE STREET, CHELSEA.

 

DEAR MR. KERNAHAN,

 

If you have nothing to do on Wednesday, will you come and dine at

the Hotel de Florence, Rupert Street, at 7.45--morning dress, and

chianti yellow or red!

 

I am charmed to see your book is having so great a success. It is

strong and fine and true. Your next book will be a great book.

 

Truly yours,

OSCAR WILDE.

 

This letter, it will be observed, is undated. Apparently Wilde

never dated his letters, for of all the letters of his which I have

preserved not a solitary one bears a date, other perhaps than the

name of the day of the week on which it was written, and that only

rarely. He had the impudence once at a dinner-party, when taken to

task by a great lady for not having answered a letter, to reply:

 

“But, my dear lady, I never answer or write letters. Ask my friend

there, whose faithful correspondent I am.” Then turning to me, he

said, “Tell Lady ---- when you heard from me last.”

 

As I had heard from him that morning, I dissembled by saying:

 

“How can I answer that, Wilde, for among my other discoveries of the

eccentricities of genius I have discovered that genius, at least as

represented by you, never dates its letters. I never had one from you

that was dated.”

 

Not long after the receipt of this first letter, I proposed to write

what I may call a “grown-up fairy story,” and asked Wilde whether

I might borrow as sub-title a phrase I had once heard him use of a

fairy tale of his own making--“A Story for Children from Eight to

Eighty.” He replied as follows, then, as always, with a capital _D_

for “dear”:

 

16 TITE STREET,

CHELSEA, S.W.

 

MY DEAR KERNAHAN,

 

I am only too pleased that any little phrase of mine will find a

place in any title you may give to any story. Use it, of course.

I am sure your story will be delightful. Hoping to see you soon.

 

Your friend,

OSCAR WILDE.

 

My story written and published, I despatched it cap in hand

to carry my acknowledgments to the teller of supremely lovely

fairy stories--imagined, not invented--from whom my own drab and

homespun-clad little tale had impudently “lifted” a beautiful

sub-title to wear, a borrowed plume, in its otherwise undecorated hat.

 

Here is Wilde’s very characteristic reply. It needs no signature to

indicate the writer. No other author of the day would have written

thus graciously and thus generously:

 

16 TITE STREET,

CHELSEA, S.W.

 

MY DEAR KERNAHAN,

 

I should have thanked you long ago for sending me your charming

Fairy Tale, but the season with its red roses of pleasure has

absorbed me quite and I have almost forgotten how to write a

letter. However, I know you will forgive me, and I must tell you

how graceful and artistic I think your story is--full of delicate

imagination, and a symbolism suggestive of many meanings, not

narrowed down to one moral, but many-sided, as I think symbolism

should be.

 

But your strength lies not in such graceful winsome work. You

must deal directly with Life--modern terrible Life--wrestle with

it, and force it to yield you its secret. You have the power and

the pen. You know what passion is, what passions are. You can

give them their red raiment and make them move before us. You can

fashion puppets with bodies of flesh and souls of turmoil, and so

you must sit down and do a great thing.

 

It is all in you.

 

Your sincere friend,

OSCAR WILDE.

 

That Wilde was an artist in flattery as well as an egotist, is not

to be denied, but when quite early in our friendship I was shown by

a certain woman poet a presentation copy of Wilde’s book of poems

inscribed “To a poet and a poem,” and within the next few weeks saw

upon a table in the drawing-room of a very beautiful and singularly

accomplished woman, the late Rosamund Marriott-Watson (“Graham

Tomson”), who was a friend of Wilde’s and mine, a fine portrait of

himself also inscribed “To a poet and a poem,” I was not so foolish

as to take too seriously the flattering things he said.

 

Egotist as Wilde was, his was not the expansive egotism which, in

spreading its wings to invite admiration, seeks to eclipse and to

shut out its fellow egotists from their own little place in the

sun. Most egotists are eager only for flattery and applause. Wilde

was equally eager, but he was ready for the time being to forget

himself and his eagerness in applauding and flattering others. Not

many egotists of my acquaintance, especially literary egotists,

write letters like that I have quoted, in which there is no word of

himself, or of his own work, but only of his friend.

 

The last letter I ever received from Wilde is in the same vein. It

is as usual undated, but as the play to which it refers was his

first, _Lady Windermere’s Fan_, I am, by the assistance of Mr. Stuart

Mason’s admirably compiled _Oscar Wilde Calendar_, enabled to fix the

date as the middle of February, 1892.

 

HOTEL ALBEMARLE,

PICCADILLY, LONDON.

 

MY DEAR KERNAHAN,

 

Will you come and see my play Thursday night. I want it to be

liked by an artist like you.

 

Yours ever,

O. W.

 

Wilde came to see me, I think, the morning after the production of

the play, or at all events within a morning or two after, and hugged

himself with delight when, in reply to his question, “Do tell me what

you admired most in the play,” I said:

 

“Your impudence! To dare to come before the footlights in response to

enthusiastic calls--smoking a cigarette too--and compliment a British

audience on having the unexpected good taste--for your manner said as

plainly as it could, ‘Really, my dear people, I didn’t think you had

it in you!’--to appreciate a work of art on its merits! You are a

genius, Wilde, in impudence at least if in nothing else.”