in good company 31

in good company 31

“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.

 

 

V

 

Was it not Mr. Stead who defined paradox as a truth standing on

its head? Wilde’s aim in paradox was so to manipulate truth and

falsehood as to make the result startle one by appearing to reverse

the existing standard. A paradox by him was sometimes a lie and a

truth trotting side by side together in double harness like a pair of

horses, but each so cleverly disguised that one was not quite sure

which horse was which.

 

More often a paradox by Wilde was a lie (or a seeming lie) and a

truth (or a seeming truth) driven the one in front of the other

tandem-wise; but whichever Wilde had placed last was tolerably sure

to take one by surprise by lashing out with its heels when one came

to look at it. When Wilde had carefully arranged a paradox with

a kick in it and wished to see one jump, he spoke the first half

smilingly to put one off one’s guard. Then he would pause, suddenly

become grave and thoughtful as if searching his words. But the pause

was not for loss of a word. It was no pause of momentary inaction.

It was, on the contrary, if I may vary the simile, like the backward

swing of a rifle, and was meant only to give fuller play and power

to the forward thrust that bayonets an enemy. No sooner was one off

one’s guard by the smile and the momentary silence, than swift and

sure came the sting of the stab.

 

Let me give an illustration. Wilde once asked me some question

concerning my religious belief which I did my best to answer frankly

and, as he was good enough afterwards to say, without the cant which

he so loathed. When I had made an end of it, he said gravely:

 

“You are so evidently, so unmistakably sincere and most of all so

truthful” (all this running smoothly and smilingly) “that” (then came

the grave look and the pause as if at a loss for a word, followed by

the swift stab) “I can’t believe a single word you say.”

 

And so, having discharged his missile, Wilde, no longer lolling

indolently forward in his seat, pulled himself backwards, and up like

a gunner taking a pace to the rear, or to the side of his gun the

better to see the crash of the shell upon the target, and then, if I

may so word it, “smiled all over.” He was so openly, so provokingly

pleased with himself and with this particular paradox that not to

be a party to the gratification of such sinful vanity, instead of

complimenting him, as he had expected, on its neatness, I ignored the

palpable hit, and inquired:

 

“Where are you dining to-night, Wilde?”

 

“At the Duchess of So-and-so’s,” he answered.

 

“Precisely. Who is the guest you have marked down, upon whom--when

everybody is listening--to work off that carefully prepared impromptu

wheeze about ‘You are so truthful that I can’t believe a single word

you say,’ which you have just fired off on me?”

 

Wilde sighed deeply and threw out his hands with a gesture of

despair, but the ghost of a glint of a smile in the corner of his eye

signalled a bull’s-eye to me.

 

“Compliments are thrown away on such coarse creatures as you,”

he said. “This very morning I called into being a new and

wonderful aphorism--‘A gentleman never goes east of Temple

Bar’--notwithstanding which I have brought wit and fame and fashion

to lighten your editorial room in the City. Why? To pay you the

supremest compliment one artist can pay another one. To make you the

only confidant of one of my most graceful and delicate fancies. I was

about to tell you----”

 

“Yes, I know,” I interpolated rudely, “you have coined a witty new

aphorism, or thought out a lovely fancy. You do both and do them more

than well. But you are going to the Duchess’s dinner party to-night,

and you will contrive so to turn what is said that your aphorism or

fancy seems to rise as naturally and spontaneously to the surface

of the conversation as the bubbles rise to the surface of the glass

of champagne at your side. But you are not, as actors say, sure of

your ‘words.’ You think it would be as well to have something of the

nature of a dress rehearsal. So you have dropped in here, on your way

to your florist’s or to some one else, to try it upon me as somebody

is said to try his jokes on his dog before publishing them. I don’t

mind playing ‘dog’ in your rôle in the least, but I object to being

made a stalking-horse for the Duchess’s honoured guest.”

 

I have no intention in these Recollections to play the reporter to

my own uninteresting share in the conversation, but one must do so

sometimes for obvious reasons. In this case, I wish to illustrate

the means by which I sometimes succeeded in inducing Wilde to drop

attitudinising and to be his natural self.

 

There is a certain Professor of my acquaintance, a man of brilliant

abilities and incomparable knowledge, whom I used to meet at a

club--let us call him Clough. When Clough could be induced to talk

upon the matters in which he was an expert, he was worth travelling

many miles to hear. Unfortunately he had an aggressive, even

offensive manner, and was troubled with self-complacent egotism. It

was only after a systematic course of roughness and rudeness at the

hands of his fellow clubmen that Clough was endurable, or could be

got to talk of anything but himself.

 

One would sometimes hear a fellow clubman say, “Clough is in the

other room, just down from the ‘Varsity; and more full of information

than ever. Two or three capable members are administering the

usual course of medicine--‘Cloughing’ we call it now--of flatly

contradicting every word he says, ‘trailing’ him, snubbing him,

and otherwise reducing his abnormally swollen head to moderate

dimensions. Then he will be better worth listening to on his own subjects than any other man in England. Don’t miss it.”