* Despite Wilde’s continued help and friendship, Barlas’s mental health problems persisted. He was committed to a mental institution briefly in 1892, and permanently in 1894. When Wilde was told that Barlas’s insanity had been partly ‘a result of reading the Bible’, he remarked, ‘When I think of all the harm that book has done I despair of ever writing anything the equal of it.’
† There was, certainly, a clandestine sexual element in the equation. Wilde had borrowed the name ‘Cecil Graham’ from the cross-dressing Ernest Boulton (aka ‘Stella’) who, together with his friend Frederick Park (aka ‘Fanny’), had been the subject of a celebrated court case in 1870, when they faced charges of conspiracy to commit sodomy. When arrested – in female attire – at the Strand Theatre, Boulton had given his name as ‘Cecil Graham’. Boulton and Park had been represented by George Lewis; he helped secure their acquittal.
‡ The actor Arthur Roberts, who had recently coined the term ‘spoof’, recalled that Wilde and Beerbohm Tree once took him to supper at the Carlton Grill to quiz him about the phenomenon. When Roberts had explained that ‘spoofing’ was ‘the knack of persuading people that something wildly improbable is gospel truth,’ Wilde remarked, ‘I am afraid, my dear Roberts, that some of us have been playing “spoof” all our lives without knowing the name of the game.’
7
White and Gold
‘All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.’
oscar wilde
The great success of Lady Windermere’s Fan gave Wilde the confidence – and the resources – to follow his own doctrine of individualism. He was able to re-assert that vision of self-realization that he had held since his university days, with a new force and a new focus. He declared his own life ‘a work of art’. It seemed to one friend that ‘what he desired was no less than to embody in the eyes of his fellow men a conception of life founded on the worship of beauty and pleasure’. Even the minor details of existence were addressed. Pierre Louÿs was impressed at the way that Wilde and his disciples ‘envelop everything in poetry’. Instead of simply offering a cigarette to a friend, they would – in an ‘exquisite’ refinement – light it, and not hand it over until they had taken the first drag. If the new focus on ‘pleasure’ tended to find expression in luxurious living – expensive dinners and more expensive cigarettes – he was delighted to indulge himself, content to carry out the realization of his vision ‘with contempt for any objections raised by the excesses of his hedonism’.1
Success touched all aspects of Wilde’s life. He blossomed under the bright light of attention. He was in conspicuously ‘good form’ at a dinner given by Violet Fane (and her future husband), sitting up into the early hours with Wilfrid Blunt and a few others. And he added to the conviviality of a dinner with the ‘Sette of Odd Volumes’, to which he had been invited by Heron-Allen. There were some, though, who detected a new taint of snobbery in his manner. Edith Cooper (one half of ‘Michael Field’) was most put out by him not speaking to her at one reception: ‘We do not belong to the fashionable world, so Oscar rolls his shoulders towards us.’ His play, meanwhile, was taking on a life of its own. Although he seems to have abandoned his own plans for a French-language production, there was interest from Italy, Germany and Austria. Wilde sold the American performing rights to Charles Frohman who was over from New York, and also secured the services of the splendidly effective Elisabeth Marbury to act as his agent in the States.2
Another transatlantic visitor that summer was Mrs Frank Leslie, who arrived with the unfortunate Willie. Before leaving New York she had informed her friends, ‘I’m taking Willie over, but I’ll not bring Willie back.’ The marriage had proved a disaster. Willie refused to work. In his view there was far too much work being done in America already: ‘What New York needs,’ he declared, ‘is a leisure class, and I am determined to introduce one.’ He refused to go to the office. Dividing his days between the luxurious Gerlach and the convivial Lotos Club, he spent his time – and his wife’s money – on drink and idleness. He would entertain his fellow club members with ‘simply killing’ imitations of Oscar, striking Aesthetic attitudes, and extemporizing parodies of Aesthetic verse in a ‘fat, potato-choked sort of voice’. His wife very soon wearied of settling his bar bills, enduring his boorishness and urging him to work. Willie had, in her estimate, ‘more laziness to the square inch than any man of his size in Christendom’. She ruefully came to the conclusion that he was no use to her ‘by day or night’, and would have to be got rid of. Oscar – and Lady Wilde – were scarcely thrilled to have Willie back in London, more a liability than an asset. Although he hoped to resume his connection with the Telegraph, he found the paper did not want him. He continued on his downward spiral, ‘doing drama criticism for unimportant papers and writing general articles in which he would mention tradespeople and get perquisites’.3
Oscar tried not to engage; his own thoughts were directed more towards how he might spend the money he was earning. One scheme was to pay for the publication – by Mathews and Lane – of John Gray’s poems. Wilde admired Gray’s French-influenced decadent verses immensely, and relished the idea of promoting them, with the help of Ricketts, in a beautifully-crafted volume. He had hoped, also, to celebrate the success of Lady Windermere’s Fan by having it published in book form, but Mathews and Lane, after the success of their edition of Wilde’s Poems (which had sold out in a matter of days), really wanted another poetical work. So Wilde arranged for them to bring out his Sphinx; the poem’s 174 lines might be disposed elegantly over enough pages to make up a book, which could be handsomely decorated by the ever-inventive Ricketts.4
In the midst of these various plans, Wilde was surprised to receive ‘a most pathetic and charming letter’ from Lord Alfred Douglas, up at Oxford. Douglas was ‘in terrible trouble with people who were blackmailing him’. The details of this ‘unfortunate Oxford mishap’ remain obscure: a compromising letter fallen into the wrong hands, perhaps; an outraged parent or guardian. Wilde (who, by his own estimate, ‘hardly knew’ Douglas at this point, and had not seen him for some time) was both ‘touched’ and flattered by the appeal. He offered his assistance, putting Douglas in contact with George Lewis, the great expert on evading scandal. Edwin Levy was brought in, and together with Wilde he arranged for the blackmailers to be paid off with £100. Levy recognized the signs of danger in the debacle, and in Douglas’s refusal to take responsibility for it (Wilde, it seems, provided the money). He devoted an hour to warning Wilde against continuing the friendship. His efforts, though, were wasted.5
The incident, with its freight of danger, sex, conspiracy and crime, was exciting in its way – for Wilde. For Douglas it provoked relief and gratitude; Wilde had saved him from disaster. The varied elements worked a strange alchemy: Wilde’s friendship with Douglas was transformed, shelving quickly into, first, a mutual and all-consuming infatuation, and then an enduring, but always turbulent, love. Wilde, already drawn to Douglas’s youthful loveliness and ancient name, was now snared by all his traits of character: his aristocratic contempt for convention, his ‘pagan’ guilt-free enjoyment of sex, his extraordinary disregard for consequences; his willingness to depend upon others; if he was selfish, spoilt, vain, intemperate, needy and demanding, that only added to his attractiveness. Lust, as ever, was mixed with idealism. There was a glamour about Douglas that readily allowed Wilde to view him as that ideal and inspiring Platonic ‘beloved’ – a ‘Willie Hughes’ to his Shakespeare, a ‘Dorian Gray’ to whom he might play both Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotton.
Douglas matched his devotion. ‘I was fascinated by Wilde,’ he later told Frank Harris, ‘adored him and was “crazy” about him.’ All Wilde’s gifts for inspiring youthful adulation came into play. Douglas acknowledged how Wilde ‘quickened’ him, transporting him ‘out of this tedious world into a fairy land of fancy, conceit, paradox and beauty by the power of his golden speech’. And his great delight in Wilde’s brillia
nce was perhaps heightened by an unconscious delight in his power to command it.6
In the aftermath of the blackmail payoff, Wilde overwhelmed Douglas with attentions, among them a copy of his Poems (in the recent Bodley Head edition) inscribed ‘From Oscar, To the gilt-mailed Boy. At Oxford, in the heart of June.’ There was sex too. Douglas recalled (some thirty years later, when his attitude to homosexuality had altered completely) how Wilde took him to bed at an empty Tite Street after a night on the town: there, in the spare bedroom, ‘he succeeded in doing what he had wanted to do ever since the first moment he saw me’. Douglas claimed that Wilde treated him ‘as an older boy treats a younger one at school and added what was new to me… He “sucked” me.’ The tone of detached surprise is not to be trusted. Douglas – promiscuous since his Winchester days and notorious at Oxford – was certainly the more experienced party.7 And the true tenor of their sexual relationship is perhaps better conveyed by his letter to Wilde signed ‘your own loving darling boy to do what you like with’.8*
The great excitement of this new passion was matched by another. Sarah Bernhardt was in town. Wilde met her at Henry Irving’s. According to reports, she asked whether he (now the author of a West End hit) might write a play for her; he replied in jest that – with Salomé – he had already done so. The quip seems to have been enough to whet her interest. Wilde gave her a reading of the piece, and to his amazed delight found her ‘charmed and fascinated’ by it. She wanted to act the title role. And not at some unspecified future date, but right away, as part of her current London season, which was being extended into July. For Wilde the prospect of having the ‘Divine Sarah’ – ‘undoubtedly the greatest artist on any stage’ (as he thought her) – premiering his work in a London theatre was a dizzying coup. It offered the prospect of an ‘artistic’ triumph to match the commercial success of Lady Windermere’s Fan.9
Rehearsals were begun at once. Bernhardt recognized that the play was not ‘religious’ but dealt, rather, with ‘love, passion, nature, the stars’ (Wilde told her that ‘the moon played the principal role’). In her conception the piece was ‘héraldique’ – with the stateliness of a ‘fresco’. Ricketts recalled that, for days, she and Wilde ‘discussed the pitch of voice’ required for the performance. Bernhardt’s notion was that each word should fall like ‘une perle sur une disque de cristal’. There should be no rapid movements, only stylized gestures.10 If Wilde harboured any doubts about the forty-seven-year-old actress taking the part of the young princess, they were soon dispelled. To hear his words ‘spoken by the most beautiful voice in the world’ was, he considered, ‘the greatest joy that is possible to experience’. He came to recognize that Bernhardt was, indeed, ‘the only person’ who could act the part; age was immaterial.11 Wilde’s own estimate of his play seems to have shifted at this time. Ricketts suspected that he had initially regarded it as little more than a ‘jeu d’esprit’, crafted to ‘interest the French and charm his friends’. But now, illuminated by Bernhardt’s brightness, he came to see it as a minor masterpiece – one that could enlarge the ‘artistic horizon’ of the stage.12
Wilde enlisted Graham Robertson to help with the staging and costumes, though he himself had long been mulling over ideas. Robertson recalled Wilde wanting ‘everyone on the stage to be in yellow’. He also suggested, in place of an orchestra, ‘braziers of perfume’. His excited vision, however, of ‘scented clouds rising and partly veiling the stage from time to time – a new perfume for each new emotion!’, was dispelled by Robertson’s objection that it would be impossible to ‘air the theatre between each emotion, and the perfumes would get mixed and smell perfectly beastly’. Besides, there was scarcely time (or money) for such extravagant conceits. Bernhardt considered that her scenery and costumes from Cleopatra could be adapted for the occasion.13
Matters were advancing well, to Wilde’s ‘intense pleasure.’ His copy of the rehearsal script is dotted with amendments and notes – including the arresting stage direction for Salome, ‘Elle danse la danse des sept voiles’. Then disaster struck. The script had been submitted as a matter of course to the lord chamberlain’s office in order to receive a performance licence. Mr Pigott, however, ruled that no licence could be granted. The censorship laws (drafted in the seventeenth century) forbade the representation of biblical characters on the stage, and this seems to have been the reason given for Pigott’s decision. But even without such legislation, the sexual perversity of the drama – with its themes of incest and necrophilia – would probably have placed it beyond acceptable bounds. Certainly the production could not go ahead.†
To Wilde it seemed both incredible and ‘ridiculous’. In a series of interviews and letters, and in a speech to the Authors’ Club, he bewailed the inequalities of a system that allowed painters, sculptors and poets to depict or describe biblical figures, but denied the same right to dramatists and actors. ‘The insult in the suppression of Salomé,’ he declared, ‘is an insult to the stage as a form of art and not to me.’ Although Wilde surely knew that getting a licence for the play might be problematic (and he was perhaps remiss in leaving the matter so late), he would also have been aware that the rules were never applied consistently. His recent experience of The Poet and the Puppets had shown how regulations might be ignored. And there was, besides, a tradition of considerable extra latitude being given to plays in French. Pigott’s irrevocable judgement fell as a terrible blow. It was a blow, too, that so few artists and critics came forward to support him. William Archer and Bernard Shaw were the rare exceptions.14
Wilde tried to salvage something from the wreckage by proposing an ‘invitation performance’ – perhaps along the lines of the Independent Theatre – but Bernhardt declared that such a ploy was not her ‘style’. She would, instead, give the ‘admirable’ play its premiere in Paris, where it would be ‘un immense succès’. She was unsure just when this would happen, but, as she informed a reporter, ‘The role is mine. Mr Oscar Wilde has given it me, and nobody else can perform it. No, no, no.’15
In the fury of the moment Wilde announced that he too would be transferring himself to the French capital – ‘the abode of artists, nay… la ville artiste’ – and have himself ‘naturalised as a Frenchman’. He was stung both by the official disapproval of his work, and the glee taken in his discomfiture. He could not consent to call himself a citizen ‘of a country that shows such narrowness in its artistic judgement’. The philistine press at once started speculating that he would be expected to do French military service; Punch produced a cartoon of him in uniform.16
But instead of taking up residence in France he went to Germany. He needed to recuperate from the stress and disappointment of the Salomé debacle, and perhaps also from the over-excitement of the great success of Lady Windermere’s Fan. July found him at the fashionable spa town Bad Homburg, in a handsome guest house overlooking the beautiful ‘English’ park. Constance reported to her brother that Oscar was ‘under a regime: getting up at 7:30, going to bed at 10:30, smoking hardly any cigarettes and being massaged, and of course drinking waters: I only wish I was there to see it.’ Wilde hoped that Carlos Blacker might join him, claiming he was ‘very miserable’. But, in fact, he soon found congenial friends. A ‘charming day’ was spent with Pierre Louÿs, who was passing through town on his way to Bayreuth. Rider Haggard was taking the waters. The young Douglas Ainslie, now serving as an unpaid diplomatic attaché, arrived at a neighbouring guest house and promptly borrowed money from the always generous – and now seemingly wealthy – Wilde. Alexander had written, transferring £1,000 to Wilde’s account, and relaying news of the continued success of Lady Windermere’s Fan, which was then about to set off on a summer tour of the provinces. The ban on smoking seems to have been double edged in its effect: ‘Je me porte très bien,’ Wilde reported to Louÿs, ‘et je suis horriblement triste’. Rider Haggard, though he found Wilde ‘amusing’ company, was surprised to discover how keenly he had felt the recent ‘sneers and attacks’ on him and
his work; he had supposed ‘they were the breath of his nostrils’.17
After a month of recuperation Wilde returned to London. His stay there was brief; Constance had rented a farmhouse at Felbrigg, near Cromer, in Norfolk, as a place for a summer holiday (George Alexander had recommended the locale to Wilde). Constance’s anxiety that ‘Oscar will get bored to death’ by country life was offset by the fact that there was ‘heaps of room’ and they would be able to ‘ask people down to cheer him up’. At first, though, Wilde was happy with rural calm, and ‘sweet’ country air. There were afternoon walks with Constance into Cromer, where they ‘would generally come across some friend to have tea with’; the Liberal politician Cyril Flower and his wife, Constance de Rothschild, had a beautiful Aesthetic holiday home nearby at Overstrand. And in the mornings and evenings Wilde could work.
At Homburg he had allowed his mind to turn on ideas for a new play – a comedy to build upon the triumph of Lady Windermere’s Fan. Now he began to write. The piece, provisionally entitled Mrs Arbuthnot, was to be another elegantly subversive variation on the ‘fallen woman’ theme, playing upon the ‘double standard’ that pervaded society with regard to the pre-marital (mis)behaviour of men and women.18
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